Orchid Paulmeier needed a winner, something that would stick out for the judges. Paulmeier, 39, of Bluffton, South Carolina, attended an open call audition last August for the seventh season of the popular cable reality series The Next Food Network Star—her third attempt in as many years.
“I just figured three times a charm, or three strikes, you’re out. It was going to be one or the other at this point,” recalls Paulmeier, a chef and partner at One Hot Mama’s, a popular eatery in Hilton Head Island. “This time I was really just like, ‘Let’s just go for it, and we’ll see what happens.’” And go for it she did.
On the second day of the Atlanta-based audition, she was asked to present judges with a dish that would be representative of her culinary approach. Staying at a nearby hotel, she ventured out to a local market and purchased her ingredients. She decided on a plate of poached salmon with a black bean couscous, a nice dish anytime of the year, to be sure, but what put it over the top was Paulmeier’s ingenuity.

She ran tap water through the hotel room coffeepot four times, to get the water up to temperature, and then seasoned it to make a modified poaching liquid. She then poured the seasoned broth over the fish and couscous separately to cook the dish.
The judges were impressed with her crafty use of everyday objects. Heck, even MacGyver would’ve been impressed with the impromptu display.
“The [judges] were like, ‘How’d you make this again?’

And I said, ‘In the hotel room.’
‘With what?’
‘The coffee maker.’”
And just like that, as quick as you can say drip-drip-drip, she’d beaten out over 3,000 hopefuls for one of 15 spots for the upcoming season.
For the uninitiated, the show pits 13 contestants against each other in a series of unique culinary challenges. At the end of each show, one candidate is usually eliminated based on a judge’s decision. At the end of the season, a winner is crowned and is given their own show on The Food Network.
Taping started in January and ended seven weeks later in March. But since the show wouldn’t air until June, the normally outgoing and animated Paulmeier had to keep things under wraps.
“I had to have a cover story. That was the funny part,” says Paulmeier, a mother of three originally from Orland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. “It was my own little secret. I had just had this wonderful experience and no one knew about it.”
So she kept her candidacy hush-hush, only telling her husband, Michael, and her business partner, Chris. As far as friends, family and restaurant colleagues knew, she was out of town doing some restaurant consulting work.
“On sabbatical,” she recalls wryly.
By the time the show aired the first Sunday in June, Paulmeier already began to feel the initial tinges of celebrity. She found herself spending most of her workday on the floor at One Hot Mama’s, signing autographs and telling stories to locals and vacationers. Business more than doubled, and she had to hire additional staff to handle the surge.
Her warm smile, lively personality and apparent on-camera comfort quickly endeared Paulmeier to the online masses, as she won the preshow fan vote in a landslide with 54% of the tally. Several online message boards, including some on the Food Network website itself, tapped Paulmeier as an early favorite for the show’s top prize. Even the judges picked her as a frontrunner, going as far as telling her on one of the early shows not to change anything.
The competition itself started auspiciously enough for Paulmeier, who won the two challenges on the season’s first episode, which featured an appearance by Dinner: Impossible host Robert Irvine, a Hilton Head resident. On the season’s fourth episode, Orchid won another challenge, as the finalists traveled to the set of the hit ABC television show Cougar Town to feed the crew. In a bit of Southern karma, that episode’s special guest ended up being none other than Food Network luminary (and fellow Lowcountry native) Paula Deen.
So, it was with shock that viewers saw Paulmeier eliminated in the season’s sixth episode, a substitution of canned oysters for abalone leading to her ultimate undoing. The show’s season finale tapped Jeff Mauro as its winner.
Like many talent-based reality television programs, the end of the show is not necessarily the end of the line. In fact, for many, it’s a new beginning. Orchid still thinks about a conversation the contestants had with celebrity chef Guy Fieri, a guest on the season’s fifth episode and winner of the show’s second season.
“I remember he pulled us all aside and said, ‘You know, this is your year to make something happen. If you want to get ahead in the world, this is the year to do it,’” recalls Paulmeier. She’s taken the advice to heart. Paulmeier is eyeing additional television opportunities, has partnered in a second Hilton Head restaurant (The Lodge), and is marketing her signature line of One Hot Mama’s sauces. “Whatever doors open up, I’m just going to go for it,” she says. “There’s obviously a reason I did this and had this great opportunity.”

BROOKE ANDERSON, CO-HOST: I`m Brooke Anderson outside of Buckingham Palace, and what an amazing day it has been. The royal wedding—Kate and William looked spectacular.
A.J. HAMMER, CO-HOST: And Brooke, might I say, you look spectacular. I`m A.J. Hammer in New York. And tonight, on Showbiz Tonight, we`re breaking some big news about the frenzy surrounding the royal wedding.
ANDERSON: Right now, a Showbiz Tonight royal event, dressed to thrill. Showbiz Tonight in London with the remarkable story behind Kate Middleton`s breathtaking wedding dress. Plus, the royal wedding fashion hits and misses. How about the hats?
HAMMER: Will and Kate`s big kiss-off. Their fairytale royal kisses. Not one but two. How did these smooches stack up?
ANDERSON: Kate compared to Di. The absolutely remarkable similarities and differences between Kate Middleton`s wedding and Princess Diana`s.
HAMMER: A special edition of TV`s most provocative entertainment news show, a Showbiz Tonight royal event—
ANDERSON: Starts right now.

Just a few days later, on May 2, the Savannah-born Anderson filmed her last show as co-host of the entertainment program Showbiz Tonight, ending an exciting 11-year run with CNN and Headline News, as a producer, writer, correspondent and a host, that had taken her from Claxton straight to Atlanta to the gilded world of Hollywood.
“It was really bittersweet leaving CNN, and leaving all the friends that I’d made there,” says Anderson, in an exclusive interview with South magazine. “They weren’t just colleagues; they were like family to me after that long.”
But the end of her run at CNN actually marked a new beginning for the 33-year-old Anderson, who accepted an offer to co-host The Insider, a popular nationally syndicated entertainment news program.
Just a few weeks after covering the wedding of the century for CNN, what was her first major assignment with the new show? Just a ho-hum press junket with A-list actors Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment in the popular Jack Sparrow anthology.
“It’s so amazing to be able to do this type of work. Sometimes Ihave to just take a step back and absorb what I’m doing and where I’m working,” says Anderson, who started in mid-May at The Insider.
The Insider, a spin-off of Entertainment Tonight produced by CBS Television Studios, debuted in 2004. Anderson took over for Lara Spencer, who left the program to return to New York to join the team at ABC’s Good Morning America. Anderson joins co-host Kevin Frazier, a one-time correspondent at ET and a former sports anchor at ESPN and Fox Sports Net. Based out of Los Angeles, the show is a collage of celebrity interviews, red-carpet awards coverage, and television, movie and music news items and gossip.

Styling by Anya Sarre and Kate Ehrlich

Any number of issues may dominate this year’s municipal election: classic election year staples like the economy, jobs, and business-friendly conditions in Savannah, as well as more nebulous puzzles like racial harmony and City Council transparency and accountability. South magazine recently spoke with Savannah’s five mayoral candidates to get the long and short on whom should be the next person to set up shop at 2 East Bay Street.

Read the full story on our June / July Issue!

It was a nondescript Lowcountry evening back in 2006, and Jim Stone and his wife decided to stop by the Sundae Cafe, a popular eatery on Tybee Island’s First Street, for a quick bite to eat. Like many nights, the locals’ favorite was busy, so they decided to avoid the wait and sit at the bar. While looking over the menu, a gentleman walked up to the bar and grabbed an empty seat a few spots down from them, Stone recalls.

He couldn’t help but notice the stranger. A career spent providing high-end design and project management expertise for the toys of the uber-wealthy (jets, yachts and the like) had given him a trenchant, discerning eye for detail.

“In walks this guy—he’s wearing what looks to be wrinkled parachute pants, Prada sunglasses, a Donna Karan Couture full length [jacket] with the long tuxedo tails, and a T-shirt,” chuckles Stone, who had originally purchased a vacation home on Tybee while doing design work for Gulfstream in the 1990s. “My wife, Roxy, whispers to me ‘I don’t think he’s from here. He’s got to be from L.A.’” He was.

Both men exchanged tentative, sidelong stares, politely sizing each other up. The stranger, Scott Jacobs, an affable, outgoing extrovert—and a recent transplant from Santa Monica—broke the ice and offered a hearty ‘hello,’ and the two men exchanged pleasantries and had the type of perfunctory conversation that typically takes place when strangers meet while waiting for a meal. It turns out they shared a similar career arc and knew some of the same people.

“I remember Scott saying he’s supposed to meet me,” Stone says. “He had heard I was doing work down here.” The two men exchanged information, talked about calling each other back and went on their separate ways. tytancreates.com

To read more on Tytan, pick up the latest issue of South magazine!

The structure, withered away by time, at first appeared to be a discarded fuel tank, far from a novelty item. But a closer look at the capsule, found on the shores of Fairhope, a plantation property roughly 50 miles south of Savannah, revealed something much more cryptic. Literally.

The mysterious case was in fact a coffin, and one that bore a strong resemblance to an Egyptian mummy case. The faint elements of a human visage—a protruding nose, a jaw line, a skull inset around the eyes—were clearly visible on the metal structure. “Our first priority when we found the body was to try to determine who it was,” says Lamar Smith, a real estate developer and Fairhope’s current owner.

The resulting research and inquiry, which has played out since 2006, turned out to be an exercise in patience, archaeology and history. Inside the vessel were the mummified remains of someone. But whose? And why?

A FEW GOOD ANSWERS

Shortly after its discovery, the coffin was turned over to the McIntosh County Coroner’s Office, which has stored it at a nearby funeral home ever since. Smith subsequently hired professionals from Brockington and Associates, an archaeological research firm with offices throughout the Southeast, to investigate the matter further. The inquiry, led by Brockington’s Jacksonville-based expert Jeff Gardner, included reviews of county land grants and historical records, personal interviews and ground-penetrating radar of the Fairhope site. After lengthy research, which ultimately involved numerous public and private experts, several hypotheses were formed: first, that the body rolled out of the riverbank onto the edge of the marsh due to the natural erosion of the soil; second, that the vessel for the body was a Fisk coffin (a brand popular among the wealthy, landowning elite during the mid-nineteenth century that were predominantly used for male decedents and were known for their airtight construction and unique glass apertures); and last, that the case held the remains of Colonel John McIntosh. Short of expensive DNA tests, this last hypothesis was widely believed, especially since the McIntosh family had resided at Fairhope for many generations.

A distinguished soldier, McIntosh served honorably in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He is perhaps best remembered for his bold retort—“Come and take it”—in response to British demands for the surrender of Fort Morris (now a state park in Sunbury, Georgia) on November 20, 1778. McIntosh, whose family’s branches extend in all directions throughout Savannah and coastal Georgia, lived at Fairhope after inheriting the property from his father Colonel William McIntosh (1726-1801).

“This man was a hero. It’s just amazing, the determination to move from the Scottish Highlands to the Georgia lowlands,” says Smith. “We think we’re adventurous, but these [settlers] were amazing.”

But here the story gets murky again. Per the records, Colonel John died in 1826 and was buried initially with four other family members at nearby Mallow Plantation (now Pine Harbor), on a flat tract of land near a massive oak tree at the river’s edge. The coffin, however, wasn’t patented until 1848.

Read More

Photography by Tim Johnson

Seer suckered

v., to wear a thin, comfortable, all-cotton fabric at a socially inappropriate occasion; in the South especially, it is traditional for men to wear seersucker during the hottest months of the summer, usually from Memorial Day to Labor Day; any seersucker garment worn after September 1 is typically considered inelegant or gauche.

Example:

Though not quite fall, the sun had unofficially set on summer. Gone were the incandescent late-afternoon strolls in Forsyth Park; the swelter of August’s moist, stifling midday heat a mere memory. Yet, there they strolled, a cadre of young Savannahians, clad in the uniform of the summer, seer suckered by the specter of a season gone by.

Submit your own Savannah slang to editor@thesouthmag.com. For more inventive words and phrases, visit writer David Gignilliat’s official Quixotica blog at

www.quixoticawords.blogspot.com

If you thought racing yachts was strictly the province of Fortune 500 CEOs, the salty dogs at the Sun City Model Yacht Club would beg to differ.

Yes, model yachts—miniature versions of the real thing.

The Sun City Model Yacht Club started nearly 13 years ago in the Sun City community, an upscale 55-and-over retirement community in nearby Bluffton. The group sails two types of boats: an East Coast 12 Meter (5 feet long by 6 feet high, weighing 26 pounds) and a Soling One Meter (1 foot long by 4 feet high, weighing 10 pounds).

The club has 32 members and sails four days a week on Lake Somerset, competing in spring, summer and fall series. In addition, the club hosts two regattas.

But the Sun City sailors aren’t alone. The American Model Yachting Association boasts thousands of members around the country and even has its own AMYA Hall of Fame.

The boats themselves are radio-controlled and cost anywhere from $1300 for a build-it-yourself model to $2500 for a professionally built one. One hand controls the rudder while the other controls the sails. “You’ve got to marry the two perfectly or you’re not going to get the optimum speed,” advises Fran DiTommaso, who retired to Sun City from upstate New York. “It’s all in the thumbs,” he says emphatically.

Most of the club’s members are Sun City residents, with a few active members sailing well into their eighties. “It’s the kind of activity where you can do it for many, many years during retirement,” DiTommaso says.

Like many of the club’s members, DiTommaso used to sail the real thing, though he concedes he prefers sailing models. “No, I gave up big boats,” he says with a laugh. “It was just too much trouble keeping a boat, keeping it maintained, finding crew and then [sailing on] bad days,” says the club’s EC-12 champion for four years running. “With models, it’s pretty easy. If you look out the window and see it raining, you just don’t go.”

Interested in model yachting? Visit www.modelyacht.org for tips on how to get started.

See it Live

Wanna see the sailors in action? The Sun City Model Yacht Club hosts its signature event, the Sun City Regatta, on September 19–20. For more information, e-mail frandito@sc.rr.com

Teeter-toddler
/”tē-tər-’täd-lər/

n., A child who sits on a parent’s shoulders, usually a father’s, in order to better view an event occurring on adult eye level, such as Fourth of July fireworks on River Street.

Example:
As the first firework cascaded over the Savannah River and into the distant night sky, I could see an army of parents begin to mobilize. One by one, fathers lifted their little ones onto their shoulders for the best view of the pyrotechnics. From the wide-eyed smile of every teeter-toddler there, it was clear that the thrilling perspective from their elevated perch outdid the views of any box seat imaginable.

Submit your own Savannah slang to editor@thesouthmag.com. For more inventive words and phrases, visit writer David Gignilliat’s official Quixotica blog at www.quixoticawords.blogspot.com

A lifelong Savannahian, Ernest Frazier served 14 years in the Army before taking over the front lines of Chatham County’s hallowed halls of justice. As a primary deputy (referred to as a bailiff in other circles) in the court of the Honorable John E. Morse Jr., Frazier has helped to command and ensure a safe environment for the court’s civil and criminal proceedings for the last 11 years.

The South magazine spoke with Frazier recently about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding life on the right side of the law.

The South magazine: How does your workday begin?

Ernest Frazier: The typical day for me begins at about 7 a.m. I want to make sure I have all the court documents, that I have a way to ensure that every inmate is in court once his name is called. With the personnel that’s assigned with me, I’ll search the courtroom for contraband. And I’ll go to the judge’s chambers for any additional instructions. Then I’ll open court for the judge, his staff and everyone in that courtroom.

TSM: How do you view your role within the judiciary?

EF: I play an important role in the community, giving the people of Chatham County and the judges a sense of safety. Providing the security for the judges and the citizens, that’s a very rewarding thing for me. I believe that I’m truly serving a purpose in the community.

TSM: What’s the most difficult courtroom situation you‘ve encountered?

EF: Once one of the guys came into court, and he basically had a razor blade in his mouth. Once he’d determined [what] the outcome of his case was going to be, he was going to use the razor blade. I discovered the razor blade myself and removed it from his mouth.

TSM: Any humorous or lighthearted stories?

EF: There’s a defendant that came to court for trial. After the jury’s guilty verdict, the defendant put the Bible in his hand and said, ‘God said, let’s get naked. Yeahhh-uhh.’ And he disrobed himself and exposed himself to the jury.

TSM: In open court?

EF: In open court, yes.

TSM: Oh, boy. What happened next?

EF: I had to subdue him and escort him out of the courtroom and into one of the secure lockup areas.

Stock car racing and the South boast a subtle harmony not unlike biscuits and gravy. Both pairs are greasy and potentially hazardous to one’s health, yet utterly satisfying.

The sport’s origins in the Savannah area date back to the birth of the Oglethorpe Speedway, a half-mile dirt track that opened in Pooler in 1951. Many of racing’s seminal figures—Dale Earnhardt, Johnny Parsons and Lee Petty—cut their teeth on the D-shaped clay oval, just 15 minutes from downtown Savannah.

Every Friday evening from April to October, motor sports enthusiasts still congregate at the Pooler track for stock car and go-kart races. Narrating the action for the 2009 season is the team of Big Red Womack, a former Oglethorpe driver, and Jim Weaver, a veteran racing announcer.

The South took a pit stop with the pair to learn a little more about loudspeakers, short tracks and the beauty of four left turns.

The South magazine: How do you enhance the action on the track?
Jim Weaver: Before [the race], I’ll try to go down in the pits and visit with as many drivers as I can to get any insight into how their day is going, their week, or life—anything they’d like to get across to their audience. I’ve always believed that the people who are buying the tickets and sitting up there, aside from seeing the cars on the track, they’d like to know about the drivers and what they’re involved in.

TSM: It must be a huge rush to announce a race.
Big Red Womack: I still get very, very excited following the races. It’s not the same kind of adrenaline rush you get driving a car, because that’s in a [league] by itself. But announcing is the next best thing to driving a car.

TSM: What does this sport mean to the fabric of the South?
JW: Stock car racing was born in the South, grew up in the South, and originally, there were no paved tracks. Everything was a dirt track. If you’re a driver and someday have dreams of driving on the big asphalts, this is where it all starts. You’re seeing tomorrow’s drivers today racing on the dirt.

TSM: How do you handle it when tempers flare between drivers on the track?
BRW: I raced for 20 years. I know what’s going on inside that cockpit. If two drivers start running into each other, I know what each of them are thinking. You can’t tell me you’re not pissed off at the other driver. I know better. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. But, as an announcer, you can’t say they’re flippin’ the bird or shakin’ their fists at each other. So I’ll try to make a joke out of it, like, “What they’re doing right there is one of them is inviting the other over for Sunday dinner.” H