www.roanoke.com

Photo by Dan Casey

Just kidding, folks.

I know of no attempt by Salem to outdo Roanoke's most revered landmark, the 100-foot-tall Mill Mountain Star. But given the history, you might understand why a paranoid Roanoker might fret about that.

Which brings us to today's story about the new Salem amphitheater officials in that city announced today. (An update with a rendering is here). It left reader Dick Howard, who lives in western Roanoke County, absolutely inspired:

I love it when [The Roanoke Times] uses a Salem reference as a club to whack the boobs in Roanoke's City Hall. Today's headline "Salem plans to build own amphitheater" was a great one. The word "own" implies that, once again, Salem has gone its self absorbed way, pulled out and co-opted the [Roanoke] with an amphitheater. The reality is that it will most likely be some dinky thing seating a couple hundred smug, in-bred blue hairs but it obviously rattled some cages downtown.

And now for the genius part of Howard's email:

Isn't is time for the word "salem" to be used as a verb to denote a haughty, co-opting, efficient action  as in "Boy, they salemed the City on that issue?"

Yeah! Let's coin a new verb, shall we?

And you can kind of understand what Howard means, right? After all, the only thing Roanoke has that Salem doesn't is Chik-fil-A. (Which Salem desperately wants, by the way).

But let's add some other definitions, too!

2. To build miles of adjacent fast-food joints (just like West Main Street in Salem): "The city of Roanoke has decided to salem Williamson Road with McDonald's, Popeye's, Wendy's, Hardees and Burger King."

3. To vote (almost always) unanimously on every issue: "Salem City Council salemed the agenda and concluded its meeting in 14 minutes.

What other definitions for the verb "salem" are out there?

Aaron McFarling had a great column today about Monday night's Salem Red Sox game. It was an extraordinary cluster you-know-what in every possible way.

It's not all the Red Sox' fault. Much of the parking lot was eaten up by carnival rides for the Salem Fair. The weather Monday night was perfect for baseball: dry air but not-too-cool temps. And, you could buy a general admission ticket for $1 if you had a coupon from The Roanoke Times.

That perfect storm left more than half the crowd still standing outside the park, trying to buy tickets or get in the gate, when the National Anthem started playing.

Meanwhile inside the park, cheap seats were hard to come by because hundreds of them were covered by infernal crowd-packing tarps. AND, they were selling $1 beer and $1 hot dogs, but they rigged it so you had to wait in long lines at separate stands to buy them.

Not. Much. Fun.

After the game, I wrote some new lyrics for an old song. Here they are, sung to the tune "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Get me out of the ball game,
Get me out of the park,
Get me away from insanely long lines,
One dollar dogs
Are not worth the long time.

It is wait, wait, wait,
At the beer stand,
My back is turned on the game,
And it's one, two, three runs I missed
At the Red Sox shame!

Were you there, too? Did you experience what I did? If so, post it as a comment below!