SLANTblog

Smoking Speakeasies

2009-12-03T10:37:00.007-05:00

Well, the new smoking ban in Virginia’s restaurants has started. Unless the dive has a separate room for smokers, and that space has its own air supply, smoking in the place is now against the law. Violators will be fined. We can expect the new law to be tested in court.

Meanwhile, in the Fan District, I expect to see this new prohibition spawn a burgeoning of private clubs, or speakeasies, in the neighborhood’s basements. Some will be properly registered, others probably not. The smartest operators will locate close to existing clusters of restaurants. That way a customer at the Bamboo or Curbside can slip down the street for a quick smoke break in the speakeasy, then go back to the above-ground bar.

These new underground joints will serve beers out of coolers. They will pours shots. The fancy ones might serve highballs. Most importantly, they will allow smoking. And get this -- the most daring of them will allow any kind of smoking. So, no kids allowed.

My guess is, the daring spots will be much more popular.

This phenomenon will establish a subculture, folks using both tobacco and marijuana, who gather in private spaces to smoke and drink what they please. Some of them enjoy a smoke-filled room so much, they don’t care about the health risk. However foolish it might sound to do-gooders who want to promote healthy life choices, the hardcore smokers might say the health risks they take every day breathing polluted air, and so forth, worry them more than being in smoke-filled rooms.

The pot smokers will just say, “Huh?”

All of this would have been hard to predict 40 years ago. In that time marijuana was viewed as a hard drug in Virginia. Tobacco was still king -- in 1969 UVa. beat VMI 28-10 in the Tobacco Bowl at City Stadium.

When marijuana-smoking became central to the hippie lifestyle in the late-1960s, getting caught with it was serious business -- two joints could get you 40 years. In the Fan District, as in college neighborhoods all over the country, a subculture formed around smoking pot, to avoid the law.

Happy Hour for the stoned set was practiced in private rooms, hopefully with no narcs on hand. Draconian prohibition or not, history tells us pot-smoking flourished, anyway.

While most of those who experimented with smoking weed four decades ago eventually gave it up, there are still some old hippies alive who never quit. Other than when their supplies ran out, some have smoked marijuana on a daily basis since that 1969 Tobacco Bowl game.

Thus, whatever would happen to human beings for subjecting their bodies to such an ordeal has happened by now. Whatever damage to society that widespread marijuana smoking for decades would cause has happened, too.

So, let’s see the evidence. Where are the legions of 60-year-old pot-smokers who have contracted a nasty disease or developed a pitiful condition that shows the terrible dangers of too many bong hits?

When those convivial adults are smoking and drinking in the new speakeasy smoking clubs I’m saying will soon exist -- medically speaking -- those drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco will likely be doing themselves more harm than those smoking pot. And, I believe honest statistics would confirm that both tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption, especially when done in excess, have done far more harm to society that any amount of marijuana smoking ever has.

So, if we’re going to get real about tobacco in 2009, let’s get real about marijuana, too. It’s about time!

Virginia has absolutely no compelling interest in preventing adults from smoking marijuana in their homes, or in private clubs. Moreover, Virginia’s cities and counties can no longer afford to have their police forces and courts tied up with prosecuting people for marijuana-associated crimes.

How much money could Virginia save today, by releasing everyone incarcerated for crimes to do with pot?

Taxing legal marijuana sold to adults, in the same way legal alcohol and legal tobacco are taxed, would be a major windfall to Virginia’s depleted treasury.

So, ironically, trying to do the right thing about tobacco may be what pushes us to actually do the right thing about marijuana. The sudden existence of a new kind of night club -- where adults smoke ’em if they’ve got ’em -- may be what opens our collective eyes, even if they are a little bloodshot.

The prohibition of alcohol consumption in the Roaring Twenties created an underground culture in which speakeasies flourished. Now the tobacco smoking ban in restaurants is likely to do the same thing.

Keeping children away from tobacco smoke is obviously a righteous cause. It should be backed by the force of law. But protecting adults who choose to smoke tobacco from themselves may be little more than folly.

No doubt, to go on pretending that marijuana is anything like cocaine, heroin, or their synthetic substitutes, danger-wise, one must completely ignore the 40 years of evidence that proves it is not.

Freewheeling basement speakeasies will mean jobs, too. Makes me wonder how many of them existed in Fan District basements back in the days of Prohibition, 80 years ago.

-- 30 --

Tiger's game

2009-12-02T13:37:00.006-05:00

So, now we are left to imagine: Tiger Woods was ducking flying golf clubs as he jumped into his SUV in the middle of the night; maybe one of them smashing through his back window distracted him so much he ran over a fire hydrant ... then into a tree.

Tiger wants his privacy. After making zillions from endorsements that have come to him for one reason, because he’s a public figure/television star, now he wants to be able to keep his dirty laundry away from public scrutiny.

Good luck with that, Tiger. It won’t be long before the speculation about his “accident” will be so outrageous that whatever the truth is will be tame in comparison. Then we’ll see if he stays mum.

Well, Tiger may be the smartest player in his game, but maybe he chose the wrong game if he’s still worried that his wife might use the equipment to settle a score with him.

Maybe Tiger should switch to Frisbee-golf.

The photo above shows the target on the second hole of the GRFGA’s Back Nine at the Carillon. My group plays on several unmarked object courses in that area. We throw our discs at trees and light poles and such, rather than lobbing them into metal baskets. Our style predates the baskets. And, when one of us gets accidentally hit by a flying disc, it doesn't hurt as much as a being clobbered by a two iron.

Moreover, we don’t run over fire hydrants with motor vehicles; we just hit them with our plastic Frisbees and count up how many strokes it took to do it.

-- Photo by Colleen Dee

The Stretch

2009-11-30T20:31:00.006-05:00

Originally published by STYLE Weekly in October of 1999

With the turning of the leaves, The Fan District of Richmond, Va., will again be transformed into a living impressionistic cityscape. As they always do, the season’s wistful breezes will facilitate reflection.

All of which leads to the fact that yet another baseball season has come and gone. After 6,783 games, the last game ever has been played at Detroit’s fabled Tiger Stadium. The Giants and the Astros will be playing in new parks next season, as well. The World Series, first played in 1903, will soon be upon us. Although baseball’s claim as the National Pastime may no longer hold up, the colorful lore generated by the magic of events at baseball parks probably outweighs that of all the other sports, put together.

I began going to the Richmond V's (for Virginians) games at Parker Field with my grandfather when I was about seven. I eagerly drank in all I could of the atmosphere, especially the stories told about legendary players and discussions on the strategy of the game.

As I got older I began to go with my friends, most of whom played baseball. We usually took our baseball gloves with us to the game. We’d go early so we could watch the V’s warm up. As often as possible we talked with the players. If one of them remembered your name it was a source of pride.

When we cheered the heroics we witnessed and rose for the seventh inning stretch and stayed until the last out, regardless of the score, it was tantamount to exercising religious rites.

A few seasons before they tore Parker Field down (it was dismantled in 1984 and in its place stands The Diamond), I experienced one last thrill at the old ballpark. This was when my daughter, Katey, was about seven or eight.

The home team by then — as it is now — was The Braves. Katey, her mother, and I were sitting in box seats as guests of neighbors who had gotten comps from a radio station. It was Katey’s first trip to Parker Field.

The spectacle itself was interesting to her for a while. As it was a night game, the bright lights were dazzling. The roar of the crowd was exhilarating. Being old enough to go along on such an outing, instead of staying at home with a baby sitter, was a boost to her morale. Nonetheless, by the middle of the game Katey (pictured above at about the age of this story) was getting tired of sitting still and bored with baseball.

During the sixth inning it fell to me to entertain, or at least restrain her, so the others could enjoy the game. I tried telling her more about the object of baseball, hoping that would help her pay some attention to the game.

That didn’t work for very long. She was soon climbing across seats again and this time she knocked a man’s beer into his lap. As the visiting team began their turn at bat, in the top of the seventh, I got an idea and asked Katey if she wanted to see some magic. Of course she did.

Then I got her to promise to be good if I showed her a big magic trick. She agreed to the terms without qualification. Making sure she alone could hear me, I pulled her in close and whispered my instructions.

The gist of it was that she and I, using our combined powers of concentration, were going to make everyone in the ballpark stand up at the same time. Katey was thrilled at the mere prospect of such a feat. I told her to face the ongoing game, close her eyes, and begin thinking about making the crowd stand up.

After the visiting team made their third out, I cupped my hand to her ear and reminded her to think, “stand up, stand up …”

As baseball fans know, when the home team comes to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning everyone stands up, ostensibly to stretch their legs. It’s a longtime tradition called “the seventh inning stretch.” There’s a mention of the practice in a report about a Cincinnati Red Stockings (baseball’s first professional team) game that took place in 1869.

Tradition aside — when Katey turned around, opened her big blue eyes and saw thousands of people standing up — it was pure magic in her book.

No one in the group gave me away when she told them what we had done. As I remember it, she stayed true to her word and was well-behaved the rest of the game.

It was a few years later that Katey confronted me, having learned how the trick worked. We still laugh about it.

Sports dilettantes today complain that baseball games are too slow and meandering. While I admit baseball has its lulls, nonetheless there are textures and layers of information present at baseball parks that are just too subtle and ephemeral for the lens of a TV camera to capture. To appreciate them you have to be there, and you have to bother to notice.

Sometimes there’s even a hint of magic in the air.

-- Words and photo by F.T. Rea

– 30 –

Crumb and Mouly in SF video

2009-11-30T13:15:00.010-05:00

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the Crumb/Mouly gabfest at the Carpenter Theater. It was my first time inside the newly renovated theater. As far as what I thought of the new face on what was the old Loew's, it looked nice but I'll have to go back and see the place when it's not so crowded.

Still, I'm happy to say a substantial audience turned out for the originator of Zap Comix, R. Crumb.

As Crumb is an artist I greatly admire, but don't know, personally, it was gratifying to see that he seemed as I have perceived him to be. His onstage conversation with with his old friend, Françoise Mouly, a New Yorker art director, was quite entertaining.

At least it was to a guy who still has a precious stack of Zap Comix in the top drawer of a sturdy oak file cabinet, only a few feet from his keyboard.

Anyway, to read more of what I thought about the show that night please click here. However, the reason for this post is to call attention to a video I found this morning.

It is a half-hour excerpt of the same basic presentation, with noticeable differences, so it was fun to watch. But this was recorded at their San Francisco show. The show here in Richmond was maybe a little over an hour, with about 20 minutes of questions from the audience and Crumb's answers.

Although I've never met Crumb, I did receive a post card from him in 1980. It was when he was living in Winters, CA. I had written to him six or seven weeks before the arrival of his brief message:

Dear Terry Rea:

Your letter was only just lately forwarded to me.... So, that's why this is so late...

So use Mr. Natural if you still want to use him.... Okay by me...

-- R. Crumb

My letter to him was probably sent to an address in one of his comic books. In it I had asked him for permission to use Mr. Natural as the mascot for the Biograph Naturals, the theater's softball team in the Fan District Softball League. I didn't want to rip off his character without his permission.

While I had wanted to put Mr. Natural's image on our T-shirts, the note from him came too late. Our shirts just said "Biograph Naturals" on the front. So, once Crumb had said we could use his dormant character -- he had stopped drawing The Natch in 1977 -- I made a five-foot-tall foamcore Mr. Natural and we took him out to the game to see what would develop.

At the end of each game we would hold up our Mr. Natural and chant, "Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Fred! Fred! Fred!"

What the other softball teams didn't know was that Fred was Mr. Natural's first name. Nor could they fathom why in heaven's name we were doing that ritual ... which was nothing but a goof on any sort of sports chanting.

So, some of them figured we were mocking them. And, of course, when you think you're being mocked ... then there's no end to the clues that you might be right. Naturally, we didn't do much to quash those fears. Fred! Fred! Fred!

Finally, one team, known as the deTreville devils, got their fill of it. They kidnapped Mr. Natural when some of us were too busy catching a post-game buzz and they set fire to him. For proof of this claim, click here to watch a short video I made a year ago, using some visual souvenirs. There's a quick shot of poor Mr. Natural in flames.

Yes, the devils had their fun that night. Some of them told me they even pissed on the smoldering ashes. So what! I made another big foamcore Mr. Natural the next day, and he finished the season without further injury ... Fred!

Even though I didn't use Mr. Natural on the team's T-shirt, I sent one of them out to Fred's creator, anyway. Later, the team adopted Natural Bridge as its mascot. I did do a softball T-shirt with that image on it.

Most controversial 'zine covers

2009-11-30T11:55:00.001-05:00

Webdesigner Depot has an interesting post up with 30 American magazine covers it calls "the most controversial of all-time." I'm sure I bought at least five of the magazines when they came out (maybe still have a couple of them) and I remember about half of them.

Click here to look at the covers.

H/T to Bert Holland

Groh's parting poem

2009-11-28T22:58:00.005-05:00

Here's a bizarre twist to the postgame scene that followed the drubbing head coach Al Groh's Virginia Cavaliers absorbed from their arch-rival (Va. Tech 42, UVa 13) today at Scott Stadium. Virginia finished its season, losing six games in a row, to establish a 3-9 record for the season.

With many in Charlottesville saying Groh will soon be fired, he read a poem to his team in the locker room, then apparently walked out without further explanation.

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

Huh?

Click here to read the entire poem, etc.

Sounds like a frustrated Groh thinks he did his job ... but he was betrayed by bad luck or others not doing their job.

Splattergate

2009-11-26T23:16:00.002-05:00

In 1998, with impeachment in the air and the Clinton administration being hobbled by the investigation of the nature of the president’s relationships with various women -- most notoriously, Monica Lewinsky -- eventually, I felt called upon to lampoon the scandal. So I created a series of caricatures featuring some of the main characters and wrote goofy captions for them.

That was "Splattergate," my fifth series of collectible cards on a theme. Below the reader will see seven of the nine frames for the Splattergate cards (click on an image to enlarge it).

However, by the time I got this set on the market -- in my regular shops in Carytown and the Fan -- a lot of people were way tired of hearing about the never-ending investigation. So, for that reason and perhaps others, it didn’t get the amount of publicity my earlier card sets had enjoyed, and it didn’t sell as well either.

Wachapreague Reflection

2009-11-26T22:56:00.001-05:00

Wachapreague Reflection
(August 1977)

Kaine on rights restoration

2009-11-25T11:13:00.002-05:00

Tim Kaine's time as the Commonwealth of Virginia's chief executive is winding down and this morning on his WTOP radio show he had a message for Virginians who have old felony convictions.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who leaves office in January, today encouraged people with nonviolent felony convictions who have paid their debt to society to apply to have their voting rights restored.

Click here to read the entire article by Jim Nolan at the RT-D.

81 seasons at UR Stadium

2009-11-24T14:47:00.005-05:00

At Richmond.com there’s a story up about Richmond beating Wm. & Mary on Saturday (13-10) that I wrote; the piece also looks at some of the colorful history of UR Stadium. For instance:

The advance notices for the two-day rock festival announced it would be a “No Hassles” event, which in the vernacular of the day meant marijuana-smoking would be ignored by the authorities. However, it seems nobody told The City’s policemen on duty at the stadium about ignoring anything, especially marijuana smoking. So, on the event’s first day there were hassles aplenty. When the cops began pulling what they saw as law-breaking pot smokers out of the stands, some of the bare-chested hippies resisted. Other young attendees came to the rescue and a battle started. A full-fledged four-hour riot ensued. Police cars were destroyed and heads were bloodied.

Click here to read the story, “Spiders Outlast Tribe: Ending an era at UR Stadium.”

Black Knights of Health Care Reform

2009-11-24T12:43:00.008-05:00

You've got to give it to them, the shameless shills for the health insurance industry are delivering on their end of a deal with the devil. They are going to resist health care reform as long as they have the capacity to do so.

Like some of their forerunners in the age of Massive Resistance knew, they know their side is eventually going to lose. While some see they're on the wrong side of history, they're going to keep on kicking that reform can down the road, as long as they have feet.

In the marketplace of ideas, when the reform resisters' limbs have all finally been chopped off the resisters will still try to fight on, like Monty Python's Black Knight (in the video above).

Why?

Money.

Every day billions of dollars are being sucked toward the owners of heath insurance companies; dollars that don't really have much to do with protecting America's greatest asset -- its workforce.

Furthermore, until we, as a people, understand that in the long run that's fundamentally why the government has to act now -- to protect society's interests -- we're likely to keep on spinning and spinning and getting nowhere. Nonetheless, if a lot of people get too sick to work that will be a major problem.

With the potential for an epidemic to break all the banks, one day, the government now has a duty to oversee the delivery of timely health care to all of us. That also means once we finally do move around the noisy Black Knights of the reform resistance movement, to establish a single-payer system, we'll all have to get occasional checkups.

Legs to stand on, or no legs, the health care reform resisters are never going to quit.

So, whatever lofty notions of compromise and bipartisan consensus President Barack Obama may have envisioned, when the debate started, has become yesterday's news.

Now it's time for Democrats to do the job without Republicans. It'll a lot easier to walk around Black Knight resisters once Democrats give up on trying to appeal to the good sense of people who know only one thing -- never quit.

Flying disc news: Hoppers trounce Nichs

2009-11-24T11:15:00.016-05:00

Hoppers captain Jack Richardson with the Easy Rider Cup in hand

The group of disc golfers (some of us still call the game Frisbee-golf) that I've been a part of since the mid-1970s is known as the GRFGA. We play on unmarked object courses (trees, poles, etc., serve as targets) in Byrd Park and Maymont.

Once a year the group divides into two teams to play a tournament modeled after the Ryder Cup in professional golf. Our tournament is called the Easy Rider Cup; it consists of three nine-hole rounds, both partners and singles, played over two days. One player on a team serves as the captain each time. The two team captains decide which courses to play and assign the individual match-ups.

With baffling consistency, the four previous Easy Rider tournaments were won by the Nichs team (after Jack Nicholson).

On Sunday, November 22, for the first time, the Hoppers (after Dennis Hopper) won: 13 matches won to 11 matches won. It was the singles round, which is always the last to be played, that made the difference. By the way, your reporter and the photographer are Hoppers.

After the tournament some of the disc-throwing golfers went over to Colleen Dee's to consume a feast and watch the Redskins at Cowboys game fizzle. For desert we gobbled up the winners' cake, baked just for the occasion by Andrew Potterfield, who won all three of his matches. Both Colleen and Andrew are Hoppers, too.

-- Photos by Steve Macaulay

Cat People

2009-11-24T01:04:00.002-05:00

In its day RKO was known for its ability to produce well-crafted, sometimes artsy or offbeat features using a smaller budget than the other so-called major studios. Nonetheless, it was almost always in trouble, financially.
Founded in 1929, RKO stopped making movies in 1953 and eventually sold its lot and production facilities to television’s Desilu Productions.

Twenty-seven years ago, as manager of the Biograph Theatre, I booked a festival of 24 titles to play at the Fan District's twin cinema, all from RKO, which was still operating in a Los Angeles office as the distributor of its original library.

The 12 double features in the RKO Festival were:

“Top Hat” (1935) and “Damsel in Distress” (1936); “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939) and “The Informer” (1935); “King Kong” (1933) and “Mighty Joe Young” (1949); “Suspicion” (1941) and “The Live By Night” (1948); “Sylvia Scarlett” (1936) and “Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House” (1948); “Murder My Sweet” (1945) and “Macao” (1952); “The Mexican Spitfire” (1939) and “Room Service” (1938); “Journey Into Fear” (1942) and “This Land Is Mine” (1943); “The Thing” (1951) and “Cat People” (1942); “The Boy With Green Hair” (1948) and “Woman on the Beach” (1947); “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “Fort Apache” (1948); “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944) and “The Body Snatcher” (1945).

One feature, “Cat People,” which was later remade as a vehicle to present the youthful Nastassja Kinski’s naked form in all of its lithe glory, was a low-budget black-and-white thriller. Unlike the florid remake, the original was a lean and subtle production that left much to the viewer’s imagination.

Still, any film of the monster movie genre, no matter how subtle, can be disturbing to a sensitive viewer.

For some reason the Val Lewton classic,“Cat People,” got under one such viewer’s skin. He was a solitary man who walked around the VCU neighborhood during daylight hours. He stayed in some sort of subsidized group home at night. Night or day, he was always medicated to the hilt.

At the theater we used to let him in free. Then, of course, he would complain about everything. We joked around about him when he wasn’t there, sometimes, but we treated him with respect when he was -- always at matinees.

“Are there really any cat people?” the man would ask, in his forced, cartoon way of speaking, as he scratched his head. “No,” he would be gently assured.

Then, with his hands flexing and twitching, a few minutes later he would ask the same thing again. His eyes would wander. We figured a lot of it was his medication.

He would get the same answer. Then he’d take his free popcorn and go into the dark auditorium to watch the movie for a while. He always walked with an odd, exaggerated shifting of his weight.

When I created the image above of a cat named Zeke in a coat and tie, for a calendar in 1996, I thought of that same man. And, I smiled, thinking he probably still remembered that movie, if he was still alive.

Well, I saw him a few years ago. He was totally gray and must have been well into his 60s. He still walked with his distinctive, swaying gait.

There are no movie theaters in the Fan District now, but there probably are still cat people left. Although some of them might be dangerous, most of them just look at you ... pretending they know something you don’t.

-- 30 --

SLANTblog Video Report No. 1

2009-11-23T22:07:00.004-05:00

SLANTblog's Video Report No. 1 looks at two big games on one Saturday in Richmond -- Wm. & Mary vs. Richmond (football) and Oklahoma vs. VCU (basketball). Richmond won 13-10. VCU won 82-69.

Still Crazy

2009-11-20T14:02:00.003-05:00

The avalanche of happy birthday wishes I received yesterday via Facebook, and otherwise, calls for an answer. After saying "thanks," my cousin Ray will supply the rest.

Psalm 109 as a weapon

2009-11-18T13:46:00.011-05:00

Some of my readers aren't old enough to remember when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Well, I am. Here's something most of the TV documentaries don't dwell on -- some people openly expressed their pleasure that Kennedy was dead.

And, before Nov. 22, 1963 there were plenty of people who openly expressed their hatred for President Kennedy; some who saw him as too Catholic, too much of a pinko liberal and too determined to desegregate Southern public schools, said he should be killed.

Well, somebody was listening.

Now some of the crazy rightwingers who like to say President Barack Obama was born on Mars and is a secret Muslim, etc., have taken another step toward the dangerous game of calling for his assassination.

The newest gimmick is to use Psalm 109 in the Old Testament. T-shirts and bumper stickers are being circulated with this message on them: "Pray for Obama Psalm 109:8."

Psalm 109 is very Old Testament. Take a look at verses six through ten and I think you'll get the picture:

:6 Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.
:7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.
:8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
:9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
:10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

Yes, it's hard not to notice the verse that follows the one cited on the T-shirts. Are the people behind this sicko campaign glad it scares some of us who would rather not see Obama's children fatherless?

Of course they are.

Do they hope some unhinged Bible-thumper will see the words in verse nine as marching orders and try to kill Obama?

What do you think?

If deliberately inciting lunatics to commit murder isn't evil, what is? Are there any Republicans, Christians or otherwise, who will step forward to condemn such tactics?

What do you think?

Would we be safer with an atheist president?

2009-11-17T20:50:00.006-05:00

SLANT's spokesdog, Rebus, wonders: All other considerations equal, would it be safer for us to have an atheist president with his finger on the button -- nuclear oblivion! -- than to have a Christian president, who truly believes in an afterlife? Wouldn't an atheist president, who couldn't hedge his bet, care more about the life we are living now on Earth?

GOP talking points

2009-11-17T10:41:00.004-05:00

-- Words and photo by F.T. Rea

VCU men's basketball

2009-11-16T21:37:00.003-05:00

VCU basketball fans can follow the Rams' 2009/10 season at the Fan District Hub.

Click here for a report on VCU's first regular season game, a win over Bethune-Cookman at the Siegel Center.

Click here for CAA Monday Notes.

Head on a Pole Solution

2009-11-16T15:16:00.004-05:00

Republicans are having a good time with their anti-tax tea parties. It has even brought out the creative side of some right-wingers, as they have staged various stunts to demonstrate their contempt for certain Democrats and what they see as excessive government spending, in general.

While this staging-stunts strategy may have seemed silly to people who disagree with the sentiments behind this movement, so far, it seems to me they have received so much attention from the media that they have been effective. Republicans mocking their opponents and raising hell in the street like anti-war demonstrators in the 1960s has been something to see ... and think about.

Emboldened by their success, such as it has been, now more creativity is emerging from the flat-earth side of the aisle.

The Danville TEA Party plans a “Fired Up For Freedom” rally Nov. 21, which will end in burning Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in effigy, according to a news release from organizer Nigel Coleman.

Click here to read the rest of the story at GoDanRiver.com.

Like cross-burning, effigy-burning sends an attention-getting message to a particular person, and then all those who might sympathize with the targeted individual. In the good old days governments used public executions to send clear messages to those who witnessed them. I’ve heard people say a return to that practice might curb crime today.

Well, I agree, but my idea of what might constitute a crime worthy of a public execution is probably different from what the Danville TEA Party would consider as such. In fact, my idea is much more innovative than anything the Republicans have come up with yet. And, it won't cost the taxpayers a cent.

My plan would call for just one public execution a year. It’s purpose would be to end famine, cure diseases, educate the poor and prevent wars. One person would die each year, in order to facilitate solutions for the worst problems facing not only America, but societies all over the world.

Here's how it would work:

First you make a list of all the billionaires in the world; their names would be put on a ballot. The ballots and ballot boxes would be put in convenience stores all over the world. The same ballots would be available online, as would be the virtual ballot boxes.

Each person would get to vote for the bad billionaire they choose once each month, by paper or online. The unfortunate billionaire who gets the most votes, for being the worst billionaire in the world (hat-tip to Keith Olbermann), would be executed on New Year’s Eve at midnight in the city that wins the bid, sort of like how the Olympics rotates.

The method of putting the billionaire to death would be up to the city. Still, however it’s done, the chosen billionaire’s head must not be physically damaged (on the outside), because it will be put on a pole in the same city.

The selected billionaire’s head would stay on that pole for one year, then, out of respect for the dead, it would sent wherever the late billionaire requested before his or her demise.

Meanwhile, the rest of the billionaires in the world would take note, no doubt. They would basically have two choices to keep their head from being selected to be the next one to sit on the pole:

1: Give away (no tricks) enough money to good causes (again, no tricks) to get off the list of billionaires. 2: Use some of their money to do good works and curry favor with voters who hang around convenience stores or stay online all day.

So, if you are a billionaire, let’s say you’ve got $50 billion, you could choose to give away $49.1 billion, or you could take a chance on spending a billion or two on curing cancer, or AIDS. Or, you could spend a few billion on feeding orphans, or on bringing peace to the Mideast. Maybe you’d pick a particular line of work, say all the musicians in a state or province, and pay their taxes for one year.

Busy billionaires would naturally buy lots of ads in magazines and newspapers, to promote what good deeds they’re doing, in order to increase their chances of keeping their heads on their respective shoulders. So, this deal would save the inky wretches from extinction, too.

Of course there would be lots of blogs calling for the death of every single billionaire. So, the smart billionaires would have no choice but to hire plenty of other bloggers to plead their cases, in order to avoid being the top voter-getter that year.

So, crime rates would drop. Every kid who wants one would get new puppy. The research for new green-friendly technologies would be fully funded. Better recreational drugs with no hangovers ought to be developed. And, publishers would have enough money to pay freelance writers a decent fee for their work.

Each year would start out with a visible symbol atop a tall pole, showing us why we should be good to one another. Just one person would have to die to pour some relief on all our pains, especially those embarrassing pains stemming from the consequences of our own bad works.

Now here’s the reward for reading this far, you get to decide for yourself which billionaire would get your vote, this year.

-- 30 --

What's wrong with justice in Manhattan?

2009-11-13T11:52:00.009-05:00

Other than the fact that the Bush administration chose not to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the supposed mastermind of 9/11 -- in a courtroom in New York, what is wrong with it?

Yes, I understand that many Republicans automatically backed whatever the previous president did during his time in the White House, but now he's gone. So, at this point, is it just a matter of automatically opposing whatever the Obama administration does? Or, in this case are there actually good reasons to object to seeking justice in a federal courtroom?

“I am really disgusted by it,” [Rep. Peter] King told POLITICO Friday morning. “To me, it’s truly an insult to the memory of those killed on 9/11.”

Disgusted? Insult?

Do Republicans still believe in justice? Or, has fear and payback politics trumped all other concerns?

Jumping the gun, again

2009-11-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

Jumping the gun, to turn the Ft. Hood shootings into a political issue, is a shameless game. It's also a dangerous game -- it could get more people killed.

With much of what will eventually be known about the background and crimes of the shooter -- Major Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist in the U.S. Army, has been charged -- still to be revealed, some folks are already forging the shooting spree into a tool with which to bludgeon President Barack Obama.

Rather than look at the shooter's acts, they are focusing on what words he was saying as he mowed down his victims. Rather than seeing the mayhem as perhaps similar to the madman's massacre that happened on Virginia Tech's campus, on April 16, 2007, they seem to prefer to cast it as more like 9/11.

Maybe they will turn out to be right. Maybe not.

Rather than seeing Hasan as another crazy religious guy who turned violent, they seem to be saying Hasan has the wrong religion. It's like they want to charge him with a "hate crime."

It reminds me of the events of April 19, 1995, when we listened to cable news experts telling us that the still smoldering Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist act, most likely perpetrated by dark forces based in the Middle East. When the evidence began to go against those early accusations all we got was "oops!"

If it turns out Hasan was working with a network of accomplices then fine, let's unravel the entire conspiracy. If the outcome of the investigation reflects badly on Obama's Defense Department, then let the blame fall where it should. Until then, there's no good reason to assume that the tragedy at Ft. Hood unfolded chiefly because of changes in the way the U.S. Army has been doing its business since Obama took office.

Since it happened on Obama's watch, it's his job to find out as much as he can about what happened and tell the American people the truth about what is uncovered. Which will be an improvement over what came before him.

Moreover, it will be Obama's job to make it more difficult for the next crazy guy/terrorist to do the same thing on an army base ... if he can.

What Obama should not do is use this situation to give the Muslim world the idea that Hasan is going to be dealt with according to his religion, rather than according to what he did. Which is exactly what some of the gun-jumpers seem to want to do -- stick it to Islam, again, as if it is the only religion with blood on its hands.

The Nazis were Christians, but most people don't blame Christianity for their atrocities.

Was Timothy McVeigh's role in murdering 168 people in Oklahoma City a greater or lesser crime because his motive might have been to avenge the deaths of the Branch Davidians at the bizarre Waco Siege in 1993?

Regardless of what they tell us, or what we discover, do we ever really understand why murderous madmen do what they do?

Meanwhile, the very people who have turned a blind eye on the crimes of abortion clinic bombers and cross-burners in the past should probably be more careful about jumping the gun, again, over which god certain unhinged criminals worship.

In conclusion, let's note that al Qaeda is not a leftist organization. America's trouble with Muslim extremists who are bent on destroying our way of life is not coming from the left side of the political spectrum. Generally, religious fanatics are rightwingers, regardless of where they live or what they call their god.

The Cheaters

2009-11-11T17:05:00.008-05:00

In 1916 the Richmond Light Infantry Blues were dispatched to Brownsville, Texas to watch over the border and chase Pancho Villa. There they were converted to a cavalry unit. Following that campaign, in 1917, the Blues were sent to Fort McClellan, located in the Alabama foothills near the town of Anniston, for additional training. Then it was off to France to finish off the Great War, the war to end all wars.

My grandfather, Frank W. Owen (1893-1968), seen in the 1916 photo above, was one of those local boys in that Richmond Blues contingent sent first to Brownsville. He grew up in South Richmond in what was then called Manchester. As a young man he had mostly made his living as a vocalist.

The stories I remember him telling from his years as a WWI soldier were all about his singing, playing football and having adventures with his pals. And, a few fistfights.

Like other men of his generation, who saw war firsthand, he apparently saw no benefit in talking about the actual horrors he’d seen. However, he was always quick to point with pride at having been in the Richmond Blues, then seen by many as an elite corps.

Eventually, he became a draftsman, then an architect. He worked for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (forerunner to CSX), which was then based here in Richmond. He continued to perform as a soloist and in barbershop quartets into his 60s.

The original version of the story below was published in SLANT in 1990. For Armistice Day (now Veterans Day), here it is again, a true story about a wise old WWI vet teaching a wiseass kid a lesson in a way to make it stick.

The Cheaters

Having devoted countless hours to competitive sports and games of all sorts, nothing in that realm is quite as galling to this grizzled scribbler as the cheater’s averted eye of denial, or the practiced tones of his shameless spiel.

In the middle of a pick-up basketball game, or a friendly Frisbee-golf round, too often, my barbed outspokenness over what I have perceived as deliberate cheating has ruffled feathers. Alas, it’s my nature. I can’t help it any more than a watchful blue jay can resist dive-bombing an alley cat.

The reader might wonder about whether I’m overcompensating for dishonest aspects of myself, or if I could be dwelling on memories of feeling cheated out of something dear.

OK, fair enough, I don’t deny any of that. Still, truth be told, it mostly goes back to a particular afternoon’s mischief gone wrong.

*

A blue-collar architect with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway for decades, my maternal grandfather, Frank Wingo Owen was a natural entertainer. Blessed with a resonant baritone/bass voice, he began singing professionally in his teens and continued performing, as a soloist and with barbershop quartets, into his mid-60s.

Shortly after his retirement, at 65, the lifelong grip on good health he had enjoyed failed; an infection he picked up during a routine hernia surgery at a VA hospital nearly killed him. It left him with no sense of touch in his extremities. Once he got some of his strength back, he found comfort in returning to his role as umpire of the baseball games played in his yard by the neighborhood’s boys. He couldn’t stand up behind home plate, anymore, but he did alright sitting in the shade of the plum tree, some 25 feet away.

This was the summer he taught me, along with a few of my friends, the fundamentals of poker. To learn the game we didn’t play for real money. Each player got so many poker chips. If his chips ran out, he became a spectator.

The poker professor said he’d never let us beat him, claiming he owed it to the game itself to win if he could, which he always did. Woven throughout his lessons on betting strategy were stories about poker hands and football games from his cavalry days, serving with the Richmond Blues during World War I.

As likely as not, the stories he told would end up underlining points he saw as standards: He challenged us to expose the true coward at the heart of every bully. “Punch him in the nose,” he’d chuckle, “and even if you get whipped he’ll never bother you again.” In team sports, the success of the team trumped all else. Moreover, withholding one’s best effort in any game, no matter the score, was beyond the pale.

Such lazy afternoons came and went so easily that summer there was no way then, at 11, I could have appreciated how precious they would seem looking back on them.

On the other hand, there were occasions he would make it tough on me. Especially when he spotted a boy breaking the yard’s rules or playing dirty. It was more than a little embarrassing when he would wave his cane and bellow his rulings. For flagrant violations, or protesting his call too much, he barred the guilty boy from the yard for a day or two.

F. W. Owen’s hard-edged opinions about fair play, and looking directly in the eye at whatever comes along, were not particularly modern. Nor were they always easy for know-it-all adolescent boys to swallow.

Predictably, the day came when a plot was hatched. We decided to see if artful subterfuge could beat him at poker just once. The conspirators practiced in secret for hours, developing signals and passing cards under the table with bare feet. It was accepted that we would not get away with it for long, but to pull it off for a few hands would be pure fun.

Following baseball, with the post-game watermelon consumed, I fetched the cards and chips. Then the four card sharks moved in to put the caper in play.

To our amazement, the plan went off smoothly. After hands of what we saw as sly tricks we went blatant, expecting/needing to get caught, so we could gloat over having tricked the great master. Later, as he told the boys’ favorite story — the one about a Spanish women who bit him on the arm at a train station in France — one-eyed jacks tucked between dirty toes were being passed under the table.

Then the joy began to drain out of the adventure rapidly. With semi-secret gestures I called the ruse off. A couple of hands were played with no shenanigans but he ran out of chips, anyway.

Head bowed, he sighed, “Today I can’t win for loosing; you boys are just too good for me.” Utterly dependent on his cane for balance he slowly walked into the shadows toward the back porch. It was agonizing.

The game was over; we were no longer pranksters. We were cheaters.

As he carefully negotiated the steps, my last chance to save the day came and went without a syllable out of me to set the record straight. It was hard to believe that he hadn’t seen what we were doing, but my guilt burned so deeply I didn’t wonder enough about that, then.

*

My grandfather didn’t play poker with us again. He went on umpiring, and telling his salty stories afterwards over watermelon. We tried playing poker the same way without him, but it didn’t work; the value the chips had magically represented was gone. The boys had outgrown poker without real money on the line.

Although I thought about that afternoon’s shame many times before he died nine years later, neither of us ever mentioned it. For my part, when I tried to bring it up, to clear the air, the words always stuck in my throat.

Eventually, I grew to become as intolerant of petty cheating as he was in his day, maybe even more so. And, as it was for him, the blue jay has always been my favorite bird.

-- 30 --

Richmond's Anti-Show Biz Ways

2009-11-11T10:55:00.003-05:00

When and why did the City of Richmond turn against show business?

In the middle of the 20th century, officialdom in Virginia’s capital city used its powers to make it more difficult to offer entertainment to the public for profit. Laws and taxes were the tools. The unabashed racism that drove much policy 50 years ago was at the heart of why that strategy was set in motion.

Before World War II, Richmond was widely known for the vibrancy of its entertainment scene. The largest concentration of theaters and restaurants was downtown.

In the 1950s, with the Massive Resistance movement dominating Virginia’s politics, a social/political agenda entered the picture. The same guys who worked to prevent desegregation in public education decided that public entertainment should be discouraged, too. The same guys who wanted to keep blacks and whites drinking water from separate fountains, also wanted to see nightlife in Richmond confined mostly to private clubs.

In those days, cocktails -- liquor by the drink -- were only available in segregated, private bottle clubs and off-the-record speakeasies.

The Byrd Machine’s brain-trust did not want black students and white students matriculating together. And, it sure as hell didn’t want them dancing to rock ’n’ roll music together in public spaces. Some readers may not remember how much the bizarre anti-rock ’n’ roll movement of that era was fueled by fears to do with race.

In Virginia it got more difficult to get a license to serve alcohol to the public -- even beer -- and in the same room allow dancing. Operating under the direction of political appointees, the Alcohol Beverage Control agency had an all-powerful police force that could put licensees out of business, anytime.

So, a simple thing like a couple of girls swaying to the sound of a popular tune, as they stood next to a jukebox scanning its menu, could get an otherwise law-abiding restaurant busted for permitting dancing without the proper license.

Even in recent years, ABC agents have been regularly assigned to duties that amounted to undercover police work -- sometimes setting up their licensees to break a rule, then busting them.

When an ABC agent shined a flashlight into a restaurant, to spy on the owner sitting at his bar after he had closed and locked the doors -- at 3 a.m.! -- the agent should have had a compelling reason for such an intrusion. The owner was doing paperwork, alone, with an open beer bottle on the bar.

Busted!

It's hard to say who was being protected from what, when the restaurant’s ABC license was suspended. This is part of the story of what killed off a rock ‘n’ roll stage 10 years ago.

ABC needs to be replaced with a modern entity that regulates commerce to do with alcohol and leaves police work to the police department.

In the ‘50s Richmond also raised its admissions tax on entertainment tickets sold to the public. It’s now set at seven percent.

However, since this tax comes off the top, the show’s producer/promoter surrenders that seven percent, even when the show fails at the box office. Hungry for revenue, Richmond takes its seven-cents gouge from every dollar spent on a seat for movies, basketball games, live music or travelogues.

Over the years, like the dog that didn’t bark, the touring company shows and pop concerts that have skipped Richmond -- because of its extra tax -- just didn’t happen.

Before they finally went belly-up, few fans who lament the loss of pet venues like the Flood Zone, the Biograph Theatre and the Moondance Saloon ever knew how much the management of those places struggled with the local establishment’s anti-show business red tape. Beyond the clubs and theaters that closed, what about those that never got off the drawing board?

Movieland, the first new movie theater (17 screens) to open within the city limits since the old Biograph in 1972, is presently coughing up seven percent of its box office take. Its competitors in the surrounding counties are paying zero admissions tax.

Of course the tax collectors will tell you Richmond needs that money. But, it seems nobody at City Hall wonders enough about how much money in other taxes would flow into the system from new businesses if that bad tax went away. Richmond’s extra tax on entertainment had plenty to do with that 37-year gap between new cinemas being built in town.

Richmond’s City Council needs to wake up and realize the counterproductive admission tax is yesterday’s wrong policy, warmed over.

Some wags and washed up impresarios think our fair city would have already had a busy theater/nightlife scene downtown 10 or 20 years ago -- sans large public money -- if the ABC board and the city, itself, had just gotten out of the way.

Perhaps now, more by habit than for any nefarious reason, Richmond’s anti-good times attitude -- leftover from another time -- lingers yet in City Hall. It walks the corridors like a zombie.

Richmond needs sensible policies that aren’t stuck in yesterday’s mud of bad attitude. It most certainly does not need publicly-owned theaters.

-- 30 --

Note: The piece above, penned by yours truly, was originally published under the title "The Show Mustn't Go On" by Richmond.com on May 7, 2009.

Cross-Eyed Mona

2009-11-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

Fiction by F.T. Rea

September 21, 1977: The Luis Bunuel double feature playing at the Fan City Cinema drew a sparse but appreciative crowd. In the lobby, just before the nine-thirty show got underway, manager Roscoe Swift said to a pair of regular customers who were Bunuel aficionados, “Yeah, I suppose if we’ve got to go broke at least we’re doing it with style.”

At 10:45 p.m. Swift locked the bank deposit from the evening’s take in the ancient safe in his office. As he left the theater the 29-year-old manager set out to wash away the still-clinging vestiges of a hangover that had dogged him all day. Swift’s destination was the stained glass and wood-paneled confines of J.W. Rayle, his favorite watering hole. Once outside, he decided to walk, hoping the fresh air would do him some good.

Monroe Park was quiet. As he walked Roscoe recollected a series of images from events that had unfolded in that park, which bordered the Virginia Commonwealth University academic campus. The montage stopped abruptly at his memory of a Sunday afternoon live-music happening where a young man fell to his death from atop the park’s cast iron fountain.

Upon arriving at the restaurant Roscoe was glad to see Rusty Donovan was the bartender on duty. He and Rusty had been friends since boot camp in 1966. Eleven years later they were teammates on the J.W. Rayle softball team.

Lean and agile Rusty was the best all-around athlete in his high school class. Yet he passed on opportunities to play college basketball because he didn’t crave competition as do many jocks. Nor did he have any desire to launch a serious career. He liked being a bartender, attracting pretty girls and playing shortstop on the bar’s softball team. All three tasks were easy for Rusty. That’s how he liked it.

Rusty’s droopy mustache widened as he glanced up from washing a glass to see Roscoe. “Yo!”

“Heineken please,” Roscoe said, taking a seat at the bar. “Slow night?”

“So far,” Rusty replied, setting the bottle in front of Roscoe, “Maybe it’ll pick up. Peach said she’d stop by. Sal just called, he’s on his way.”

“It was slow at the Fancy, too,” said Roscoe. “I watched most of ‘Los Olvidados,’ it still knocks me out. Bunuel is the champ.”

“Aw, give me the ol‘ ‘Dog,’ every time,” Rusty laughed. “That eyeball-slicing scene, oh man, the effect it ... it’s cosmic.”

“The audience always groans,” Roscoe affirmed. “What year was it that kid died climbing on the fountain in Monroe Park?”

“Beats me,” Rusty shrugged. “You’re the stickler for dates. I’d guess five or six years ago, maybe more. Why?”

“No real reason,” said Roscoe, “I walked here from the Fancy and something reminded me of being there the afternoon it happened. I didn’t see him fall, but I remember Bake said he was rocking back and forth. I think you and Finn were there, too. I sure remember how the fountain looked, all skewed.”

Rusty asked, “Didn’t that happen the day after we went to that post-Kent State war-protest in DeeCee?

“Sounds right,” said Roscoe. “Kent State was 1970, so...”

“Look!” bellowed an unfamiliar male voice behind Roscoe, “I saw you. Don’t lie!”

Rusty cringed. Roscoe turned to look behind him at the squabbling couple, seated about twelve feet away.

The balding, rather soft-looking man, was probably in his mid-30s. Roscoe pegged him as the ne’er-do-well son of a fat cat. Decked out in a big-collared shiny polyester get-up, the guy had an air about him that reeked of bad karma. His opposite at the small round lounge table was a striking beauty. She couldn’t have been much over 21, if that. With her dark hair and gamine, long-limbed look, Roscoe was reminded of Audrey Hepburn, as she appeared in “Sabrina.”

After taking a generous swig of his beer, Roscoe was pleased to see the veteran bartender cranking the volume up on the bar’s stereo, which was playing a reel-to-reel tape: The rather apt song of the moment was the Amazing Rhythm Aces’ “Third Rate Romance.”

Roscoe cracked his knuckles as he once again noticed the irritating joke reproduction of the Mona Lisa on the back wall; this version of Mona was cross-eyed. Once again, he wondered why the silly thing struck others as funny.

A couple of minutes later the song ended and Roscoe glanced at the bickering girl. She was sitting alone, retouching her lipstick. He studied her gypsy-like eyes, her long nose and wide mouth. Her small head rested perfectly on a swan-like neck. She had a dark tan. Wearing a form-fitting powder blue tube top and tiny floral-print shorts she looked like a fancy dessert.

Leaning on her elbow, lovely Sabrina glanced up from her hand mirror at Roscoe. Her vexed expression melted into a sweet smile that took his breath away. When had he seen her before? After a long second, the girl averted her eyes, unsmiled, and nervously lit up a cigarette. Roscoe turned away, so as not to stare.

His thoughts drifted. Over the previous Labor Day weekend Roscoe and his wife of nearly seven years, Julie, decided to separate, temporarily. He wondered if the hard-edged single man’s life he had been leading would bring tobacco back into the picture. It had been almost a year since he had fired up a Kool Filter.

“Do you believe that?” whispered Rusty, nodding toward the two-top, as Sabrina’s sparring partner returned. “Why would she be with him?”

“What a waste,” agreed Roscoe, polishing off the dregs of his first beer of the night. He closed his eyes to see the teal color of Julie’s eyes light up and dissolve into a familiar picture of her in mid-stride, running on the beach the day her met her.

Rusty placed a second frosty green Heineken in front of his friend and said, “On the house, amigo.”

“Just what the doctor ordered,” said Roscoe, “thanks.”

Sal Modiano, the art professor, walked into the room. Sal was a skinny, cocky son of Italian immigrants from New Jersey, he looked like a character straight out of “The Godfather.” Sal was an ordinary athlete, if that. He played second base on the restaurant’s softball team.

Since the split-up with Julie, Roscoe had been staying in Sal’s Grove Avenue carriage house art studio. The amenities were minimal but the roof didn’t leak. Although he had no plan for what to do next, after only two weeks, Roscoe already sensed that he and Julie would not live together again. While they still cared for one another, far too many injuries to their relationship -- which began the summer before they were juniors in high school -- had been ignored over time, left to heal wrong.

As John Lennon’s voice warbled from the speakers, Roscoe softly sang along, “Ah, bowakawa pousse, pousse.”

“Yeah, yeah ... Turn me on dead-man,” Sal chuckled, as he plopped down next to Roscoe at the bar. “Rustman, I’ll have the same as our leftfielder here. And, ‘Scoe, what the hell does that bozo-cow-eye, pussy, pussy line actually mean?”

“Beats me,” Rusty laughed.

Roscoe shrugged, then suggested to Sal they move from the bar to get further away from the obnoxious battle underway behind them. Sal nodded and picked up his beer to follow Roscoe to a table nearer the back of the room.

Having scored an ounce of expensive hothouse marijuana that afternoon, Sal was wearing a telltale illegal smile. “Bet your life, man, I’m having just an excellent night -- happy hour at the Rainbow Inn, followed by some excellent oysters at Gatsby’s...”

“Who was at the Rainbow?” asked Roscoe.

“The usual suspects,” said Sal. “Zach came in. The mouthpiece bought a round for the house to celebrate winning a big case. Later on JD was in the back booth dealing nasty, nasty half-grams for thirty-five bucks. The sample line felt like he had cut it with Ajax. I think JD, the crazy deejay, is stepping all over the product and going to get himself in trouble. Oh, and Julie came in.”

Roscoe resisted, then asked, “Was she with anybody?”

“One of her girlfriends,” Sal replied. “I forget, ah, heavy jugs, thick ankles, bleached blonde hair. What say we take us a little a ride ‘round the block to burn one? I’ve got a fresh batch of sweet primo for you to test. Forget Julie for a while, man. Give it a rest.”

Twenty minutes later, the teammates were finished with their smoke break. Re-entering Rayle’s lounge, Roscoe and Sal were pleasantly surprised to see that Rusty’s sharp-looking new strawberry blonde girlfriend, Peach, was sitting at the bar with another young woman, an equally attractive brunette.

Peach introduced Kit to Roscoe. Sal already knew her, as both girls were art majors who had transferred from Old Dominion University. Both wore the obligatory paint-speckled faded blue jeans and T-shirts that signaled they were art girls.

Peach mentioned that Kit had played volleyball at ODU. Roscoe liked her immediately. He hoped to get to know her better, but when the battling couple resumed their argument, he and Sal fled to their table.

For Roscoe and Sal a discussion followed that digressed effortlessly from the rudderless aspect of current politics into the days of the Grove Avenue Republic, which was a group of anarchy-loving neighbors living on the 1100 block of Grove. That area of the Fan District was the epicenter of a few notable street parties that brought out the worst in the local police force. Roscoe brought up the time the cops actually turned dogs loose to chew up a crowd of hippies.

Sal complained about how the Fan, with its distinctive architecture, was suddenly losing its front porches to a “weird trend” in renovation.

“What’s so wrong about a porch?” demanded Sal, in a voice the whole room could hear. “The Fan is changing, man! No surprise, Bake was right again when he predicted a new breed would move into the Fan to run off the hippies and old folks. Look around, it’s happening!”

“Yep, the times are a-changing,” said Roscoe. “How about having to choose between Disco and Punk Rock?”

“Not in Rayle, not on my shift,” Rusty tossed out from behind the bar. On cue, the next cut on the tape started -- “Poor Little Fool,” by Ricky Nelson.

Sal’s rant morphed into his favorite source of material for yarn-spinning, the colorful life of the late Roland “Bake” Baker.

A bullet to the head finished off Bake in 1975. His body was found in a boarded-up house on Floyd Avenue, a couple of blocks from where Julie and Roscoe lived. It had never been determined what happened, or who else was involved. The weapon that killed him wasn’t found. In the newspaper, according to a police department spokesperson, it was considered to have been, “a drug-related murder.” In the same article, Bake was made out to have been a “known associate of anti-American radicals and underworld figures.”

While Bake had played guitar in a couple of Rock ‘n’ Roll bands and dealt pot on a substantial basis for several years, to cast him as a spy or mobster was preposterous to anyone who knew him at all.

For the benefit of those in the room who were tired of hearing the unhappy couple slug it out, Sal, in full Jersey throat, began telling the “Bake Calling His Shot” story. Roscoe and Rusty had heard it many times.

According to Sal, it all happened at Finn Daley’s pad on Harvie Street. There were six guys there. The happy raconteur named them all to add credibility to the tale.

“They were discussing the clues to the Paul-is-dead controversy, or scam,” said Sal. “Bake was stretched out on his back on the couch. His feet were on the coffee table, next to several beer cans, an ashtray, a bong, and a Coca-Cola bottle. Abruptly, the late Mr. Baker announced, ‘Watch this shot, boys. Swish!’”

Sal took up a matchbook and began acting out the part. “He pulled the last match out and whistled. Then he aimed it, man, squinting one eye. He tossed it at the bottle, and ladies and gents, the match went straight into the Coke bottle like a guided missile. Voila!”

“Voila?” Roscoe interrupted, “Did it swish?”

“‘Voila,’ is what he said,” Sal fired back. “You remember, Rusty, we measured the flight of the match at over seven feet. That’s a one-in-a-hundred, a one-a-thousand shot, man. He called it. Calling the shot man, that’s…”

“How do you know Bake was aiming for the Coke bottle?” Roscoe inquired. “What makes you think you even know what he meant? He could...”

Sal puffed up. “I believe you were still in the brig then, man. I was there and heard him call the shot. I saw the match go in the bottle.”

Roscoe laughed, “Yeah, I know. Oh, for the record, by then I out of the Navy and in school. I was at class that day.”

It both amused and annoyed Roscoe that so many of Bake’s old running mates were continuing to glorify everything he had ever done. Bake climbed the WTVR broadcast tower. Bake hit a flamboyant politician, Howard Carwile, with a water balloon. Got away with it. When the riot broke out in the midst of the Cherry Blossom Festival, he torched one, maybe two of the police cars. Got away with it then, too. Stranger than the exaggerations of Bake’s actual doings were the ghost rumors and soap opera speculations concerning his demise. Roscoe was uncomfortable with the idea of Bake, who had been his closest friend, becoming a minor league James Dean-like cult figure.

“Knowing Bake,” said Roscoe, as Dan Hicks’ “I Scare Myself” began to fill up the room with close harmony. “I just wonder if he had a vision of the match going into the bottle. Or, if he thought he could will it to do so. No doubt, he was capable of either...”

A glass broke on the floor. Sabrina stood up and stomped her foot. Tearful and angry, she raised her voice, “...and don’t ever follow me again!” Her outraged companion grabbed her arm, forcefully. He hissed something unintelligible.

Roscoe closed his eyes and reminded himself that it was none of his business. Sal glanced sideways at the imbroglio and said, “Damn it, man, I wish he wouldn’t rough her up like that.”

“This is awful!” said Roscoe, turning to look through the antique leaded glass windows at the misty night on Pine Street.

“Ease up, buddy,” commanded Rusty from behind the bar, in a tone unusually stern for him.

The angry girl tried to wrench herself loose from the masher’s grip. In a rage he lifted her off the floor and growled, “You lousy coke-whore!”

Sabrina wrinkled her nose and spat in his face.

With his captive suspended overhead by a grip under her armpits, the man charged across the floor. Although Roscoe would rather have watched someone else deal with the crisis -- after all, he wasn’t in charge and he had a hangover -- no one among the others present moved. Significantly, he was the one most directly between the couple and where they seemed to him to be heading. Roscoe saw the scene’s heavy as about to throw the heroine through the windows, so he sprang from his seat.

Knowing a half-hearted gesture was likely to make matters worse, Roscoe slammed his right shoulder into the villain’s thighs with utter sincerity. Sabrina was freed as a result of the collision. Riding the momentum of his surge, Roscoe ripped the man’s legs up to drive him onto the tile floor on his back.

As he scrambled to his feet, Roscoe heard Rusty asking the damsel if she was all right. Disheveled and flustered, she grabbed her pocketbook and ran toward the door. She didn’t look back or say, “thanks.” Roscoe let the urge to speak to her pass, as his Sabrina disappeared forever.

Having caught his breath the lout got up from the floor, apologized profusely and slapped a $20 tip on his $12 check. Nonetheless, Rusty made him stay for a few more minutes in an awkward silence, to give the woman a better head start. Then he sent the guy packing with, “Listen here, don’t let me see you in here again. Get it? Don’t come back.”

Sal observed, “That slimy dude better be happy he’s not on his way to jail, or the hospital.”

Rusty picked up a fifth of Bushmills from the back bar. He placed three shot glasses on the bar. He poured, “Scoe, I’m glad you put that sicko in his place.”

Roscoe said, “I couldn’t just sit and watch him throw her through the glass. I had no choice.”

“Wa-a-ait a minute, man,” Sal said. “What makes you so certain that’s what he was going to do?”

As the Eagles’ “Hotel California” began to play, Rusty put in, “Look, either way, he had it coming. That poseur was way, way out of line. I’ve served him in here before, he’s always had a bad attitude.”

“No! It wasn’t like that, Rusty,” resisted Roscoe. “I wasn’t punishing him. They were two or three steps from ... I could see where it was going. Otherwise, it’s none of my business.”

Kit supported Roscoe, “I’m sure that poor woman is very thankful, even…”

“How can you know? pounced Sal. “Nobody else in the saloon felt obliged to nuke the dandy. Then again, the girl was pretty, hmmm, just your type.”

“Hey, my type, too,” jabbed Rusty.

“I heard that!” Peach laughed.

“Wait a minute,” said Roscoe. “The only reason I interfered was because I could see what he was doing ... the look he had ... I couldn’t allow it.”

“Interfered?” Sal mocked. “If that was interfering, I’d hate to see how hard you’d have hit the sucker if you held a grudge. Like, do you know him from somewhere?”

“No,” Roscoe laughed.

Rusty and Sal began rehashing the details of a two-month-old disputed game with their chief softball rival, the Back Door, a nearby bar. Roscoe searched the room for someone to testify on his behalf. Kit was talking to Peach. Once again he caught sight of the Mona Lisa painting on the back wall. For the first time, it seemed funny -- Mona’s mugging expression said it all.

Roscoe looked through the windows again. Pine Street seemed the same, but his hangover had subsided. With that realization he remembered where he had seen the expression in Sabrina’s eyes before. It was the key scene in “La Jette,” a short French New Wave film, which was made up of still images that dissolved, one over another.

Solving the mystery pleased Roscoe. Setting his empty glass down, he declared, “You guys can say what you want. I made a total commitment to my particular view of reality. Maybe I’m crazy, I couldn’t just watch.”

“Amen,” said Rusty. “I don’t care about any hidden motives. Thanks for putting the brakes on whatever was going to happen next.”

“I tell you what, man,” said Sal. “Bake would have said “amen” over that go-for-broke tackle, too. It was solid as a brick!”

“There you go, saving a worthy damsel-in-distress, that’s good karma,” said Rusty. “Who knows…”

“Nobody knows,” said Roscoe with a sardonic smile. “Nobody. Pour us three more, please, on me. Let’s drink to wherever hangovers go and to the utmost of worthy damsels, Rayle’s own cross-eyed Mona.”

* * *

All rights reserved by the author. Cross-eyed Mona, with its accompanying illustration, are part of a series of stories called Detached. Two remaining stories, set in the '70s, will be inserted, eventually. Links to the six others which have been finished are below:

Central Time
Dogtown Hero
Fancy Melons
Gus the Bookstore Cat: The Film
Maybe Rosebud
The Freelancer's Worth