wha? what was that?

So, I'm driving home thru the rain from seeing my counselor and refilling my 'scripts.  And ya know, I've got the radio on, sorta zoned.  Ya know, on auto-pilot and cruise control.  When all of a sudden, I do the attentional double-take.  What was that I heard on the radio, I think as I turn the volume up and clue in to the announcer saying that 'the police are turning their heads for now.'

Bet they won't for long.  Particularly now that it has been spotlighted on the local radio station.  Especially cuz there will be folks like me going, 'wha, what?' and trying to search it when I get home (and perhaps even writing about it online, in a public journal where more attention will be given to the matter, cuz that's how rumors start, and I'm just feeding the mill).  Cuz search is just what I did and I couldn't find it, but lemme share the snippet I do remember.

A bit of back story perhaps:  Here in Mississippi we have been slowly phasing out public smoking acceptability and making it more mandatory that public facilities are smoke-free.  So your restaurant has no smoking section.  For some towns, like Starkville, this has been the case for several years and there is not too much grumbling still (Starkville was the first smoke-free town in Mississippi).  But for most places are NOT happy about it, and there is some fuss that comes up in some of the more staunch locales where they don need no steenkin college kids (or whatever harbingers of new fangled idears have come to change things, dammit).

So the snippet I heard on the radio was pertaining to the no smoking in eating establishments ongoing change.  It seems that there is a restaurant that has gotten around the mandate in an interesting innovative way.  I think smoking is disgusting, but I like the way these folks think!

The owners/managers have decided that dining there is now an interactive dinner theatre experience.  One in which the diners have become actors and those burning smoking things they are huffing and puffing on, waving about theatrically?  Why those are mere props, of course.

Kudos for the nimble maneuvers thru the loop holes, dudes!