Since 1985, in various formats, SLANT -- an independent voice based in Richmond's Fan District -- has offered its readers original commentary on politics and popular culture, including cartoons and selected sundries. Warning: Sometimes that means satirical content. All rights are reserved.
This whimsical team photo of the 1980 Biograph Naturals was snapped by Phil Trumbo (using Artie Probst's camera) at the Fan District Softball League's home field, Chandler Ballfield. As far as what this image means or what it has to do with 4/20, or what 4/20 might have had to do with the Fan League. Well, Mr. Natural was the Biograph's team mascot. In 1980 we actually obtained written permission from R.Crumb to use his character in that role. And, ah ... never mind.
REA GIVES BIZARRE EDGE TO BLAB'S 'MONDO SOFTBALL'
Richmond News Leader Date: July 5, 1990
Byline: Paul Woody
Years ago, when Terry Rea was manager of the now defunct Biograph Theatre, he organized a softball team for the Fan League. But this wasn't just any team. This team had two illegal French aliens.
"One spoke no English at all," Rea said. "Neither had ever seen a baseball game. But they went out to a yard sale, found some funky `50s uniforms and they were a laugh riot."
The Biograph team also had a life-size, cardboard figure of Mr. Natural, a comic-book character created by R. Crumb of Zap Comics. Rea and his teammates took Mr. Natural to every game. They would carry him onto the field and chant to him.
"Some thought it was funny," Rea said. "Some thought we were mocking them. Some thought we were mocking the game."
All Rea was trying to do was enjoy a little softball and make the team and the league, "a rolling comedy show," he said. "I'm not sure everybody on the team was 100 percent behind me on that."
Rea began playing softball in 1976, but now, at the age of 42, he's in semi-retirement. "I try in the offseason to lower my expectations, but I'm losing my game faster than I can lower my expectations," Rea said. "That drives everyone out of the game except the most fanatic."
Rea, however, is hardly done with softball. In fact, he may be contributing more to the game than he ever did as a player. Rea, a freelance graphic artist by trade, is the originator, host and creative force behind "Mondo Softball," a weekly, one-hour talk and call-in show seen Tuesday nights at 9 o'clock on BLAB-TV (Continental Ch. 7, Storer Ch. 8).
Mondo is Italian for "world." Rea took it from the drive-in movies of his youth that were all the rage. "There were a bunch of `Mondo' films," Rea said. "Then, you started to see it thrown in front of almost anything to give it a bizarre connotation. People just know it has some sort of bizarre edge to it. "And, of course, I'm using that."
Rea isn't the host of "Mondo Softball." The host is Mutt deVille, a man of mysterious origin who always wears a baseball cap, sunglasses and softball jersey. Mutt deVille is Rea's alter ego.
Mutt deVille was created by Rea as a pen name for the sports writer in Slant, the twice-monthly newsletter of commentary that Rea publishes, writes and edits. DeVille initially existed to give some diversity to the pages of Slant, "and to create the illusion there was a staff of writers," Rea said. But the more Rea wrote as deVille, the more he liked it.
"My name, and my approach to things, like anyone who stays in his hometown long enough, carries a certain amount of baggage with it," Rea said, "I could move more freely as Mutt deVille.
"When I decided to do a show and it was a sports show, it seemed like a good idea to use Mutt. That led to the idea that Mutt should become a character and the time I was on camera should be a performance. Mutt is a device to make me feel at ease on stage."
"Mondo Softball" is not like any other show you'll see on BLAB. It's a one-hour play, softball as kitsch. It's part news -- standings, results and tournament highlights provided by Paul Joyce, the `field' reporter and a veteran local player -- part conversation with a guest, questions from callers and wisecracks, subtle humor and outright gags whenever possible. It's clever, and it's as entertaining as a show on recreational softball can be.
Rea said he has borrowed from shows he's seen. From the "Tonight Show," Rea took the idea that Johnny Carson is at his best and funniest when things go wrong.
"Part of live TV is that there are a lot of glitches," Rea said. "I've tried to incorporate the production values of an old `50s sci-fi movie and try to go with whatever goes wrong." Each week, there is a great uproar over the magic word.
If a caller says the word, he or she receives a $20 gift certificate from a local restaurant. The magic word is straight out of "You Bet Your Life" with the late Groucho Marx. In that show, it was called the secret word.
"If you're going to steal, steal from the best," Rea said.
Part of the attraction of "Mondo Softball" is that you can never be sure what will happen next. "I think some people watch shows on BLAB just to see if the set will fall over," Rea said. Rea brings a unique element of surprise to the screen. He isn't afraid to take a chance or play a little joke.
When he was manager of the Biograph, a repertory theatre located near Virginia Commonwealth University, Rea once offered free admission to "The Devil and Miss Jones." The line for the show, which most believed to be a well-known X-rated movie, stretched around the 800 block of West Grace Street. But the X-rated movie was "The Devil in Miss Jones." "The Devil and Miss Jones" was a 1941 comedy.
"Most people thought it was funny," Rea said. "But you always have some who get mad about something like that." "Mondo Softball" has something of the same problem.
Hard-core softball players don't always appreciate Rea's attempts at humor. "I've heard some don't like Mutt's approach," Rea said. "But that's the reason Paul is there. Overall, though, the reaction I get is that they (the hardcore players) like Mutt."
BLAB-TV likes Mutt so much that another show already is in the works. "Mondo Pops," [which actually became Mondo City] covering everything from sports to who knows what will premier this fall. It should be an interesting experience. Who knows, maybe even Mr. Natural will make an appearance.
-- 30 --
Note: This account was written in 2012.
*
Upon
hearing the news of musician Earl Scruggs’ death, on Mar. 28,
2012, my thoughts went straight to a then-36-year-old memory connected to a
Scruggs documentary that played for two weeks in January of 1976 at the Biograph Theatre (which I managed
at the time). The film was “Banjoman” (1975).
As “Banjoman” had only been in release for a couple of months when it
played at the Biograph, the two young independent
producers/filmmakers/distributors
of the movie told me they were learning the
distribution business on the fly. When their 105-minute movie opened at
the Biograph
they were there, too ... they had brought the 35mm print with them. They also brought with them the monster-sized sound system that was used to present the film to our
patrons.
The filmmakers/distributors were my age (I was 28 at this time). And, I almost think
there was a third guy, but I’m not sure. My bosses in D.C. had booked
the film sometime after meeting one (or more) of the filmmakers in a
social situation; I don‘t remember the details of that occasion.
Traditional distributors, like Paramount, Warner Bros., UA, and so forth,
generally shipped the prints of their films by way of a courier
accustomed to handling film shipping cans. Although it was unusual for distributors to
travel with a print of a movie in the trunk of their car, it was not
unprecedented. As an independent exhibitor, the Biograph booked product
from various sources that large movie chains would have routinely
ignored.
“Banjoman” was just such a situation and its distributors actually hung
around at the theater during screenings. They seemed like nice enough
guys ... at first.
Clue No. 1: It was unusual when my bosses had me pay those guys their cut of the first week's gross directly in
cash from box office receipts. But it was not my job to question it. Then, when they had to
leave after the first week to work in another city, we also advanced them some money against anticipated receipts. That surprised me, but I don't remember if I said so.
Since they didn’t have much in the way of pressbook materials, ad
slicks, etc., I created the Biograph’s display advertisements for the
newspaper. I used stills from the film that I had half-toned and I had
some type set and pasted it all up. That led to me agreeing to create
similar materials for
the "Banjoman" guys to use in other cities. We agreed upon my price; it was something
quite reasonable, like $250; plus what it cost me to produce a stack of different sized ad
slicks for them to use in other cities.
At that point I think they had two other prints of their movie (with
sound systems) working on the road in the Southeast. We kept in touch by telephone. They
were anxious to get their new promotional materials from me for their
other play-dates. So I did a rush job for them, which they said they greatly
appreciated.
Then came the day to ship their print and sound system to them in
another city. The run at the Biograph was over. When the truck driver
came by the theater he told me his helper wasn’t with him, so I
needed to put the rather heavy equipment on his truck.
Well, at the time, I was the only one in the building and I was nursing a slipped disc in my lower back. Unless I wanted to be laid-up for a spell, I couldn’t lift the stuff.
When the driver asked me how long it would take to get somebody there,
to do the lifting, it annoyed me.
Therefore, I told the driver it was his job to
get that junk on the truck, just to come back the next day with a
helper. Yet, as I spoke with him I suddenly had a hunch that something
was wrong.
The truck driver shrugged and said, OK, he’d come back tomorrow. When I
told one of the “Banjoman” guys what had happened, he said there was
still plenty of time to get the equipment set up for the next
engagement. So shipping it out the next day would be fine.
Clue No. 2: Later that
same day the mailman delivered a bank notice that a $200 check they had
written to me had bounced. Uh-oh!
At this point, in addition to that check, they owed me another $600, or
so, most of which I owed to a printer. And, they owed the Biograph maybe
another $300, or so, because in the second week of their film’s run it didn’t
live up to expectations. It failed to cover the advance in rental
they had received.
By coincidence, I talked with my friend Dave DeWitt right after I got
the rubber check in the mail. Dave had moved from Richmond to
Albuquerque about a year earlier. At this time he was hosting a late
night movie program on television there.
When I told Dave about the check
and about my hunch to delay shipping the equipment, he said he’d heard of the
guys who had produced "Banjoman." He told me he wanted to do a little
checking up on them.
Dave called
back soon to tell me the jokers I’d been dealing with had left a trail
of angry people behind them out in the West, back when they were
shooting concert footage of Scruggs' tour. It seemed they had found ways
to do a lot of things without paying up front. They had also ripped off
a movie theater that had played "Banjoman," just a month before.
After that unsettling news I told the guys who had been conning me that
until they settled up, I was keeping their sound equipment and print of
"Banjoman." They threatened me with legal action. After a couple of
months with no word from them I sold off their sound equipment, it was
the sort of stuff a band might use.
Then some time later, maybe another couple of months, I was indeed
served with legal papers. By way of a local attorney they sued me for about $90,000. Don't remember
how that figure was generated. I laughed and offered their lawyer the print
of the film and about $800, which was what the equipment brought in, minus what they
had owed the boys in D.C. and me.
Over the telephone line they huffed and puffed again. At
this point, I handed over their print of
"Banjoman" to the local attorney. After a
few weeks of silence, they agreed to take the $800. In my view, they
were lucky to get that. My guess is most of
that dough went to that local attorney. Or maybe they somehow stiffed
him and moved on.
Never heard another word from those guys. Ever since this oddball episode, when I hear Earl Scruggs’ banjo, I can't help but think of the weaselly Banjoman Conmen. RIP, Earl.
 |
| Black Label star pitcher Jeff Dodge |
In April of 1985 I dislocated an ankle playing basketball. Consequently, I missed playing in most of the Fan District Softball League's season. (I did play in two or three games for the Max's Mutts team in late-July, but I really shouldn't have.) Anyway, it was during the time I was on crutches and couldn't play sports that I discovered the local punk scene's regular Sunday afternoon game in Byrd Park.
First, as an amused spectator. Then as a limping player in late-summer.
Of course, I already knew some of them. Also during my time on crutches, I designed the first issue of SLANT that came out as a 16-pager in June. When I wrote about their Sunday game in SLANT, I called what I had seen in the park the "Black Label Team," or something like that. Now I don't know if I invented it, or maybe got it from some of the punks/players. It was the brand of beer that was most plentiful at their games/parties.
Having played a decade of organized softball, all in the Fan League, I already had enjoyed plenty of combining partying with team sports. Most of the city's organized softball world considered the Fan League to be “the hippie league.” But the founders of the Fan League weren't kids, anymore. By the mid-'80s we were pushing 40.
The loose, colorful style of the Black Label gang was sort of a throwback to the early, freewheeling Fan League's salad days; before we Fan Leaguers learned how to play better and/or how to recruit better athletes ... all of which can lead to collectively taking the game a little too seriously.
For instance, in the Fan League all the teams used 10 players on defense; it was normal and standard practice for any legit league. No variations. The Black Labels might have a dozen or more.
Plus, in those days there was another anarchist style regular Sunday softball game I knew of, and had participated in, several times. It was staged at a field on Fulton Hill by a Main Street Grill-type crowd. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences.
 |
| The loyal fans. |
They also thought they could stay with the Fan League's best team – the Bamboo Cafe. Outside of wishful thinking, I had no idea what prompted any of them to think that could be true, so I explained they were laughably wrong with that.
 |
| Crispy |
Eventually, it was settled on a Sunday afternoon on South Allen Avenue, which was The Diner team's regular practice field. As I remember the occasion, it was a pretty day. The Diner won the first game easily, but it wasn't a crazy score.
Then, after a short break, to freshen up, the Bamboo crushed the Black Labels. The score was crazy.
Nonetheless, everyone still had a fine old time during the games and throughout the after-party (except for a couple of the punks who got so drunk it turned them into sore losers). Overall, the culture clash was fun.
After enough pats on the back and handshakes, it was generally agreed that it should be done again. But I don't think it ever was.
-- Words and photos by F.T. Rea
 |
| Satchel Paige in 1949 |
Each spring, with the return of Major League Baseball, naturally, I think of times spent at what was a temple of baseball in my youth, Parker Field. It was located where the Diamond is now on Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
In 1954 Parker Field became the baseball park to serve as the home field for a new International League club — the Richmond Virginians. When the Baltimore Orioles (formerly the St. Louis Browns) joined the American League that year, it created an opening in the IL for the Richmond entry.
A couple of years later, via a business agreement, the V’s became one of the New York Yankees’ Triple A farm clubs. As such, in those days the Bronx Bombers paid Richmond an annual visit in April, just before the Big Leagues' opening day. That meant Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and the other great Yankees of that era played a preseason exhibition game in Richmond facing the V’s. It was always a standing-room affair.
Today I wish I hadn't lost track off the photos I shot of a few of those Yankees stars at one of those games. When the game ended I hopped over a low wall, to get on the playing field with my Brownie Hawkeye in hand. Before I was shooed away, I did manage to fire off a few semi-closeups.
Other than the pinstripe-clad hometown V’s, my favorite club in the IL in those days was the pre-revolution Havana Sugar Kings. With a single every one of them would round first base like they were going to second. They played with a striking intensity, bordering on reckless abandon. It made them a lot of fun to watch, especially for the kids who played baseball and appreciated that style.
One of my all-time favorites I saw perform on that ball field was Leroy “Satchel” Paige (1906-'82). Yes, the legendary Paige, with his windmill windup, high kick and remarkably smooth release still working for him, actually plied his craft on the mound here in Richmond. I don't remember how many appearances he had here, but I suppose this piece is probably based on a composite of two or three times he pitched.
In 1971, Paige (pictured above, circa 1949) was the first of the legendary Negro Leagues’ stars to be admitted to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. His induction was based mostly on his contributions to baseball before he helped break the color line in 1948, as a 42-year-old rookie.
The statistics from Paige's pre-Big League days are mind-boggling. It's been said he won some 2,000 games and threw as many as 45 no-hitters. Furthermore, well before the impish boxer/poet Muhammad Ali, there was the equally playful Satchel Paige, with his famous Six Guidelines to Success:
Long after his days as the best pitcher in the Negro Leagues (maybe any league), and following his precedent-setting stint in the American League, Paige was on the roster of the Miami Marlins (1956-58). Like the V’s, the Marlins played in the International League. When I saw him, Paige was in his 50s (his date of birth was vague). Not a starter, anymore, he worked out of the bullpen.
In the late-1950s live professional baseball in Richmond was mostly a White guys’ scene. Unfortunately, that meant the chorus of boos would start as soon as some in the crowd noticed Paige’s 6-foot-3, 180-pound frame warming up in the middle of a game. When he’d be summonsed to pitch, in relief, the noise level would ratchet up. Not all the grown men booed, but many did. That, while their children and grandchildren were split between booing, cheering, or perhaps being embarrassed and not knowing what to do.
Naturally, some of the kids (like me) liked seeing the grownups getting unraveled, so Paige was all the more cool to us. Sadly, for plenty of White men in Richmond, then caught up by the thinking that buoyed Massive Resistance, any prominent Black person was seen as a figure to be against. So, those booing Paige probably would have booed Duke Ellington or A. Philip Randolph, too.
 |
| Paige with two Marlins teammates. |
Upon being called in, the showman Paige would take forever to walk to the mound from the bullpen. Each of his warm-up pitches would be a big production. After a slow motion windup, the ball would whistle toward home plate with a startling velocity, making some of the kids cheer and laugh ... to mix with the boos. Everything Paige did seemed to prompt a reaction from the grandstands.
With his worldwide travels, Paige, from Mobile, Alabama, must have understood what was going on better than most who watched him pitch in the twilight of his career. He knew perfectly well there wasn’t much he could do to change the minds of those who were booing; those folks were trapped in the past.
So, Paige played to the cheers, as his vast experience as a performer had surely taught him to do. Of course, as a 10-year-old I lacked the overview to understand that what I was seeing was an awkward but long overdue change, to do with race, the South was beginning to go through. Much more of that was on the way and some of those booing were probably protesting that, too, in their way.
Nonetheless, my guess is few in attendance grasped that the crowd's mixed reaction to Paige, largely being split on generational lines, was foreshadowing of how America’s baseball fans, coast-to-coast, were going to be changing. One day Jim Crow attitudes would have no proper place at baseball temples.
Now, with the benefit of decades of reflection, I understand that Satchel Paige was a visionary. At Parker Field, Paige was seeing the future by following his own advice -- "Don’t look back."
-- 30 --
-- Images from satchelpage.com
The Tenth CommandmentAccording to the Old Testament, Moses heard directly from God about establishing standards of civilized conduct. A portion of the instructions Moses is purported to gotten from God, Himself – known as the Ten Commandments – is still a news-maker as the millennium winds down.
The Bible tells us there were several other rules offered by God atop Mount Sinai; rules we hear less about. If you try reading the book of Exodus, it won’t take long for you to see why. Some of those other rules are rather Old World – such as the proper regulation of slavery and burnt offerings.For the most part the Ten Commandments are to-the-point laws about behavior, covering basic stuff: Be willing to make sacrifices for what matters most to you. Along the way don’t kill, lie, or steal. Don’t cheat on your spouse, or perhaps spouses – uh-oh, there's that Old World thing again. In the last of the Ten Commandments, Moses said that we ought not to “covet” our neighbors’ goods.
Isn't is curious that after a rather easily understood list of rules, put in the form of “shalt-nots,” the last rule is against even thinking too much about a shalt-not? Like, don't allow yourself to dwell on wanting what's not properly yours.
Covet? Come on Moses, what’s the problem with a little mild coveting? Why not stick to nine rules about actual behavior?
Hopefully, the reader will permit me the postmodern license to move directly from the Bible to a Hollywood thriller, in order to help out Moses'ghost with his answer: In “Silence of the Lambs” (1991) the brilliant but evil psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, instructs the movie’s detective heroine, Clarice Starling – who is in search of a serial killer – that people only covet what they see, probably what they see all the time.
Bulls-eye! Of course the ravenous doctor was right about what fuels obsessive cravings. If one hasn’t seen it, how can one lust for it? Coveting is a festering of the mind; it's a craving for that which one should not have.
Today, because of the reach of television and the Internet, just about everyone alive can see how wealthy/powerful people live, day-to-day. One sure thing movies, sitcoms, soaps, and the celebrity news all do – in addition to telling a story – is to show us how well off some people are. Then, reliably, the advertisements chime in to tell us just how to buy the consumer version of the same pleasures and accouterments the stars in those stories possess.
If you’ve got the dough to buy the stuff, that’s one thing. If you don’t that’s another, because it might spawn some coveting.
We may not have asked for it, but the lifestyle of a celebrity is constantly sold to us as the good life -- live like royalty! Wanting that good life is a carrot on the stick that helps drive our consumer culture.
Therefore, in some ways, it has been good to us. My thesis for today’s rant is that there is a dark side to this strategy. When powerless/poor people see those same "good life" come-ons and promos they want the good life, too.
Why not?
However, if they are trapped in their modest circumstances and have no hope, they may not believe the good life is actually available through legitimate channels. So, instead of feeling motivated to work overtime, to earn more money, the most powerless among us are left to covet.
Eventually all that desire for the unobtainable can lead to trouble. I’m convinced that some part of the violence we have seen from teenagers, in recent times, stems from their exaggerated sense of powerlessness. In the worst cases, their impatience boils over while waiting for what they imagine to be an adult’s prerogatives and awesome powers.
The good news is that kids grow up. Most of our children won’t shoot up their schools because of frustration with having so little say-so over their schedule. The bad news is that for most of the world’s underdogs is that their sense of powerlessness is something that isn’t going to dissipate so easily.
In the so-called Third World, the longing for First World goods and options is festering as you read this. Meanwhile, the aforementioned powerless folks aren’t thinking about where to shop for knockoffs of what they see flaunted on screens. A hundred years ago, 50 years ago, the world's underclass wasn't wired into the rest of civilization. Now it is. It sees what we brag about the most. Today the underclass knows exactly how soft life is for the well-off.
History isn’t much help here because it tells us the unwashed masses have usually had to take what they wanted by force. How much longer we can rely on the gentle patience of the world’s hungriest millions is anybody’s guess.
In the meantime, perhaps the other side of “thou shalt not covet” is “thou shalt not flaunt.” Just think about how many American movies and TV shows are about rich people doing as the please. If the wisdom of the ages — the Ten Commandments — suggests it's smart to discourage destructive cravings in the shadows, perhaps it would also be smart to stop spotlighting the very economic injustices that encourage the world's have-nots to have cravings.
Bragging was never cool. Now American's braggarts, who flaunt their wealth, are asking for the sort of trouble that eventually will surely splash onto all of us.
– 30 –
-- Words and art by F.T. Rea
 | |
| Rebus reminiscing about what mattered in 1973. |
Note: A version of this piece I penned about the time in which underground comics mattered, culturally, was published by Style Weekly on Oct. 21, 2009. It originally ran as a sidebar to a feature story about editor Françoise Mouly interviewing artist R. Crumb at CenterStage in Richmond in '09.
*
During the spring semester of the 1972-1973 school year the student newspaper at Virginia Commonwealth University published three tabloid supplements that were inspired by the irreverent, frequently-salty underground "comix" of that age. The first issue of Fan Free Funnies came out near 1973's St. Valentine's Day.
The timing was perfect for Fan Free Funnies. It was created at the zenith of the hippie era in the Fan District. FFF published my first Rebus strip. Before Rebus even had a name he had been appearing as a spokesdog on my flyers touting midnight shows at the Biograph Theatre, which I managed at the time. Rebus was somewhat influenced by R. Crumb's Mr. Natural, in that I went to school on how Crumb used Mr. Natural as a spokesman, sometimes like a carnival barker. However, Rebus was hardly a holy man. Instead, he was an everyman schlemiel with a dog's head.
In that time some local, mostly VCU-trained artists, were making paintings and prints in a style reminiscent of some old animated cartoons of the 1930s and then-current underground funny books. Some of the same young artists also were making short films in Super 8 and 16mm. So the Biograph became a hub of a sort for them.
Not long after FFF came out, my 3-year-old daughter, Katey, asked me a question. “Is Rebus real?”
I shrugged. “What do you mean?”
She said, “Like Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck.”
“Sure,” I said, “Rebus is real. But only the cool people know about him.”
The inspirational Crumb was the most celebrated of the underground artists in the days when cartoonists bitterly lampooning the tastes and values of middle class America were making an impact on popular culture. Spontaneously, Crumb launched the movement in 1968, selling his “Zap Comix No. 1” out of a baby carriage on San Francisco sidewalks.
In 1973, in spite of cultural changes that had been in the air for years, mainstream pop culture was still serving up plenty of safe schmaltz and accessible old hat: Billboard's top single of the year was “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree.” A month after the first issue of FFF was published the Oscar for the Best Picture of 1972 was presented to “The Godfather.” Thus, the term “underground,” as associated with art, film and music, still had a yet-to-be-fully exploited edge to it.
Perhaps the best known of the FFF cartoonists was Phil Trumbo (VCU 1972). “Ed Slipek, the editor of VCU's student newspaper, Commonwealth Times, approached me to help create an underground, comix-style supplement,” Trumbo remembers. “I suppose he contacted me because I had done some independent comics and was exhibiting paintings influenced by comics imagery.”
Each invited artist was instructed by Slipek to create a full page, drawn to proportion, in black and white. Some submitted a page of images set within traditional comic strip frames; others wandered into loose, more avant-garde styles. Scans of the three issues of Richmond's 1973 underground comics can now be seen online at the VCU Libraries Digital Collection.
“The journalism department at VCU didn't see that this was journalism,” recalls Slipek (who is, today, Style's senior contributing writer). “The media [advisory] board questioned the fact that we were doing this, but it was very well-received with the students. I'm proud of it because the Commonwealth Times continued to have comics of some sort — it's a lasting tradition that started with us.”
Trumbo left Richmond in 1984 to pursue a career in animation, which eventually led him to the West Coast and his current position as an art director at Hidden City Games. Along the way he picked up an Emmy Award for his work on “Pee Wee's Playhouse” and has been the art director of more than 100 video games, including “Lord of the Rings” and “Spider-Man.” Also a noteworthy musician, Trumbo recently returned home to play a reunion show with the Orthotonics, the influential Richmond band that he played with during his time here.
Charles Vess (VCU 1974) is another award-winning illustrator who contributed to FFF. Vess' art has since appeared in “Heavy Metal” and “National Lampoon”; he's a World Fantasy Award-winner who has worked for comic book publishers such as Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Epic. Other contributors to the 1973 series included Bruce Barnes, Eric Bowman, Michael Cody, Greg Kemp, Nancy Meade, Bill Nelson, Trent Nicholas and Ragan Reaves.
“Fan Free Funnies was a really diverse collection, representing vastly different graphic styles and inventive, experimental approaches to sequential storytelling,” Trumbo remembers. “We were all influenced by the amazing work of '60s underground cartoonists, like Robert Crumb, Rick Griffith, S. Clay Wilson and Trina Robbins and the rest.”
Note: Scans of the art presented in the three issues of Fan Free Funnies can be found here.
-- 30 --
Here is a series of photographs that I shot at 2017's annual Easter event.
Click on the images to enlarge them.
-- 30 --
Note:
During the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel hitting Richmond, on Sept. 18, 2003, with the electricity having been off for days, I was a getting spooked. While I had always
loved storms, Isabel abruptly changed that.
In those days my work was getting published regularly, so I was writing on
something specific most every day. So after several powerless days, I needed my
routine. Plus, I wanted the Internet at my fingertips for research ...
and comfort.
Which
meant schlepping my laptop down to a coffee shop with electric power
and WiFi, which wasn't something I was accustomed to doing.
Anyway, because I had already assembled a file of information on Manny
Mendez's background for a project that hadn't materialized, I was able
to assemble the piece seen below in one sitting. It was published later that
fall by Style Weekly, as part of a special section about the monster hurricane.
Today, Apr. 3, 2021, is Kuba Kuba's 23rd birthday.
Unplugged: Waking Up the day After
by F.T. Rea
On the Friday morning after Hurricane Isabel blew through town, the sky was blue and the air smelled clean. The residents of the Fan District, at the heart of Richmond, Va., woke from an uneasy sleep. Day One of the unplugged life was underway.
Before the worst of the storm passed, about midnight, Isabel tossed huge trees around like a handful of pickup sticks. Power lines snapped. Cars were crushed. Roofs caved in and basements flooded. As the shocking devastation dealt out by the previous night’s onslaught of wind and rain was revealed to the stunned urbanites in the Fan, so too did the reality of widespread electricity deprivation.
Still, faced with all sorts of uncertainty and disconnected from the doings in the rest of the world, many wandering the streets like zombies on that morning faced the immediate problem that there was no hot coffee to be had.
For hundreds of his neighbors, Manny Mendez, owner of Kuba Kuba, took care of the coffee shortage on that surreal morning. Boiling water on the restaurant’s gas stove and pouring it over sacks (improvised coffee filters) in a big colander, Mendez and his staff doled out tasty Cuban coffee to anyone who stopped by.
While opportunists in other parts of town were marking up prices on candles, batteries, ice, generators and anything else for which the supply was short and the demand was great, Kuba Kuba was pouring strong coffee for one and all at no charge — free!
“What are we going to do [under these circumstances], charge people for coffee?” Mendez asked rhetorically with a shrug.
When word got around that Kuba Kuba — at Park Avenue and Lombardy Street — had hot coffee, the crowd on the sidewalk outside the small restaurant swelled. Into the afternoon the size of the gathering fluctuated between 20 and 40 people at a time. Many neighbors met for the first time. By the time the coffee-making effort shut down in mid-afternoon, 100 gallons of free coffee had been served in paper cups.
By then several of Manny’s tables were on the sidewalk, with chairs arranged around them. Out came the boxes of dominoes.
The marathon dominoes scene continued for hours under the lights of a borrowed generator. Players sat in for a while, then sat out. Neighbors appeared with what they had in the way of libation. They swapped stories and the laughter from what had become an impromptu party drove off the demons that lurked in the eerie darkness, only 50 yards away.
Dominoes shark Manny Mendez was all of sx years old when he boarded an airplane with a one-way ticket to a totally uncertain future in the United States. In 1968, for people such as the Mendez family, getting out of Cuba was worth the risk of fleeing into the unknown.
The day little Manny left Cuba, his father was thought to be in Spain, as he had been deported. His mother was crestfallen when told that there were no flights going to Spain on the day her family was offered its chance to flee what Cuba had become. Recently released from 13 months of confinement at an agricultural labor colony, she opted to board the Red Cross-sponsored Freedom Flight for wherever it was going.
On Aug. 2, 1968, that airplane took Judith Mendez and her two children, Manny and his sister, Judy, away from Cuba. It landed in Florida. Upon touching down, Judith Mendez called her relatives, who lived in Richmond, to tell them the good news.
To her surprise she was told her husband, Manuel, was already in Richmond.
After a spell in an apartment building at Harrison Street and Park Avenue, the Mendez family moved to the 3400 block of Cutshaw Avenue, where several other Cuban families had settled. There was one car, a ’56 Chevy owned by his uncle, for the whole group to share.
Manny’s father had been an accountant in Cuba; in Richmond his first job title was “janitor.” As time passed, Manuel Mendez improved his situation and became a leader of the growing Cuban community in Richmond by making regular trips to Washington, D.C., to buy the essentials for Latin cooking and other imported goods unavailable in Richmond.
“Papi, how often did we used to lose power in Cuba?” Manny asked of his father during one of the dominoes games.
In his distinctive accent, with the timing of a polished raconteur, Manny’s father rolled the “r” as he said, “Oh, about two or three times … a night!”
Those gathered laughed, having instantly gained a wider perspective of coping with bad luck. Manny’s mother and the Cuban employees of Kuba Kuba laughed the loudest. Then, too, that may account for why Kuba Kuba routinely carries candles for sale along with other sundries.
The dominoes party broke up about 1:30 a.m. Most of the crowd returned to homes without power — with strange noises in the anxious quiet — no televisions, no Internet, and refrigerators full of risky food. No doubt, some of those dominoes players that unusual night carried away a new appreciation for people who can handle hardship with grace. Some may have even gained a new sense of how it must be in places where millions do without power, in one way or another, most of the time.
-- 30 --
My art has been appearing in print for over 50 years. My first
caricature (of Hubert Humphrey) was published in 1965. And, I began
inflicting my writing on the public in the 1970s. In
all that time, most of the people who have bothered to speak to me
about my
work have been complimentary, or at least they seemed to mean well
enough.
Most of the fine art we've seen is about depicting some aspect of reality; at least on the surface it is. Thus, we have all seen countless pictures of natural scenes and every sort of animal. And we've all seen zillions of pictures of man-made objects.
When I say "fine art," for the most part I mean art that wasn't created to promote products, services, etc. Generally, we label such selling art as "commercial art." However, the process of creating art, regardless of its label, inevitably calls for artists to gather their thoughts and pour them out of their head, without bruising them too much.
As an example, the painting above was done outdoors in 1983. It was a
cartoonish depiction of a recurring childhood dream. Abstract plein air,
perhaps?
This written piece is about the gathering and the steps of assembling parts of the creative process, as I know it. Thus, I am drawing on my own experience as an artist/writer, plus many
of my friends are also artists of one stripe or another. So I have exchanged these notions with some of them over the years.
Before artists craft their thoughts into references and symbols and doo-dads, what is gathered and what does it look like along the way? Put another way, what does my imagination look like?
For that matter, what do my memories look like? What do my dreams look
like? How are their looks different? How do others see such things?
After almost 12
years serving as the Richmond Biograph Theatre's manager, 1971-83, I was
in my mid-30s. By then, I had seen lots of art shows and watched
plenty of art movies. And, I had created countless art things to promote
the Biograph's movies and other show business ventures.
During my last two years at the Biograph and the three years, or so, afterward, I tried in several way to depict the coalescing of my thoughts. How it looked in my head when I was designing a piece.
Suddenly
I found myself believing in the interaction, back and forth -- with
inspiration and improvisation in the air -- between artist and a forming
art object. I imagined the art speaking to me. Sort of like a jam
session in my head. For a while, I thought maybe the doodles that I did
when I was talking on the phone, or listening to the radio, were my most
natural way of drawing.
With
that kind of thinking, during this time, I came up with the Zism
(example seen below), as a symbol of this sort of shadow boxing with my
art and time passing. A series of collages and SLANT -- a little
magazine I edited and published for nine years -- also came from this
unusually creative period.
Consequently,
in 1984, when I ran for City Council to me it started as a performance
art thing. While I had been interested in politics since my teens, in
the beginning it was a prank of a sort. Then it changed and
I tried to win. I also saw the first couple of years of publishing
SLANT -- the writing, the drawing, the pasting up, the ad sales, etc. --
as a performance challenge, as much as it was anything else.
During
this time I wanted to plunge into art more deeply, to see more than the
first glance, the surface. I can remember yearning to better understand
what artists of any era were thinking, while they were making art that
went beyond merely being decorative. With my own stuff, I felt drawn
toward wanting to do more than persuade and entertain an audience. Like,
why have one color shine though another?
My
girlfriend at the time, Tana, was a talented painting and printmaking
student. Going to art shows and music happenings with her was a gas. At
some point she urged me to quit the Biograph job and go to art school,
or travel. Although she had a lot of influence on me, I didn't take her
advice about formally studying art. But during our three years together I
did start making more fine art than I ever had before ... so, in a way I
traveled.
However, I did take Tana's advice about quitting my longtime movie theater manager's job. Which was either the dumbest thing I ever did, or maybe I should have done it five years sooner. So it was better late than never.
Nonetheless, the immediate problem with that impulsive move in the summer of 1983 was that I suddenly had to find a new way to make a living. Ever since then, my journey as an artist has proceeded with fits and starts, because of recurring money problems.
*
That's the end of the chapter of this story about my sifting though some art thinking that was done half a lifetime ago.
 | |
| The Zism has always looked like a 3-D thing in my head. |
--30 --
