booty booty rockin' everywhere

The bucolic town of Bell Buckle is known for at least three things. It plays host to the annual RC & MoonPie Festival; it's the hometown of blogger Katie Allison Granju and it's the site of the original Webb School. There are two other Webb Schools, one in California and one in Knoxville.

Webb School of Knoxville is also known for at least three things: producing quality athletes like Chad Pennington; graduating some of the brightest students in town and supplying "eye candy" to elaborate birthday parties for fifteen year olds. A story in last Sunday's News Sentinel described the MTV-worthy celebration thrown for Brittany Gibbs. She received a $45,000 BMW as a gift and Bubba Sparxxx provided live entertainment. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Five young hunks didn't require an invitation to the party. The five Webb High School athletes were handpicked to mingle and dance with partygoers. Their uniform: pink bow ties, jeans, and a coat of spray glitter on their bare upper bodies.

"Basically, our job is to be eye candy," said Jeffrey Johnson, a 16-year-old football player at Webb. "It's an odd request, but we have a good story to tell for the rest of our lives."

With her court in tow wearing pink and green satin evening gowns and shiny wings, Brittany enters on a green litter trimmed with pink feathers, carried by four of the shirtless Webb athletes.

The article generated so much negative reaction that the newspaper editor has had to defend the story on his blog. In an earlier post he included a link to the paper's video coverage of the party. Bloggers in East Tennessee and all over the world just love it, love it, love it. Did I mention that bloggers love it, love it, love it?

Last night was the annual football game between Webb and their crosstown archrival, Knoxville Catholic High School. It was homecoming night for Catholic. The game was regionally televised on CSS, which didn't help me because my cable company showed the wrong feed again. The game was a nail-biter. Catholic won by one point in overtime.

Before the game, flag-waving pep squads from both schools got the crowd psyched up. A group of KCHS students called the Catholic Cheering Crazies (or it might be the Crazy Cheering Catholics) parodied the photo of Brittany Gibbs' party that was in Sunday's paper. A male student dressed in a ball gown and tiara was carried on a litter by four shirtless classmates right past the Webb fans in the grandstands. Twice. Classic.