SLANTblog

Back off, Catholic bishops!

2012-02-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

At this point I don’t really want to hear all that much from Catholic bishops, ganging up to instruct us about morality aspects of the subject of birth control.

No, when your history suggests way too many of you accepted buggering children as a convenient way to have sex -- without messy pregnancies -- well, you’ve lost your standing to instruct us non-believers on morality in such matters.

If a fetus is a human being...

2012-02-15T12:31:00.001-05:00

Once Virginia’s new personhood law passes and is in place, it seems anything that could be construed to have contributed to a miscarriage could be used in a wrongful death lawsuit. Perhaps it could be used as evidence in a manslaughter trial.

So, to steer clear of being hauled into court, pregnant women in Virginia would need to avoid any activity that might put their fetus-person in jeopardy. Here are some helpful suggestions of what not to do: Forget about work or risky recreational activity outside the home. No bicycle riding or automobile driving, because you could get in a wreck. Oh, and forget that happy hour cocktail … it could be construed to be child abuse.

While Virginians in the armed services risk their lives to diminish the fanatical Taliban’s cruel power over women in Afghanistan, Virginia’s Republican Party -- the Virginia Taliban? -- is working hard to diminish the rights of women right here in the Old Dominion.

Moreover, if a fetus is a human being, to perform what is now a legal abortion in the first trimester would seem to make the doctor a murderer and the patient an accomplice. Using some forms of contraception would be tantamount to an abortion, so pharmacists…

Perhaps Del. Bob Marshall (depicted above) would point out that his bizarre bill to redefine what human being means in Virginia is a jobs program, because new prisons will need to be built and lots of new guards will need to be hired.

A tempest in an imaginary teacup

2012-02-13T12:30:00.004-05:00

Ye gods and little fishes, it's 2012! and to play a political game some people are still trying to stand in the way of women who want to avoid pregnancy.

"There's no compromise here," said GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, a Catholic and favorite among religious conservatives. "They are forcing religious organizations, either directly or indirectly, to pay for something that they find is a deeply, morally, you know, wrong thing. And this is not what the government should be doing."

Click here to read the entire AP story.

So, the government shouldn’t dictate to religious organizations? Does Santorum mean the government should step aside and allow ANY religious organization to do as it pleases, regardless of the law of the land? Or, is this just a Catholic thing? You see, I have to wonder if Santorum is just as adamant about protecting Muslims in America from government intrusion.

Meanwhile, I’m glad the government doesn’t allow polygamy. Along those lines, I’m also glad child-molesting Warren Jeffs is in jail. On top of that, I’m more than a little relieved that the self-styled Christians of the Ku Klux Klan aren’t allowed to burn a cross wherever they want to.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says people are free to do whatever they like, as long as they say it’s part of their religious beliefs. Which certainly means that in 2012, if a father -- such as the Old Testament's Abraham -- wants to kill/sacrifice his child to prove his love for God, the cops will take an interest in preventing the crime from taking place.

No need to go on.

When we still had the draft, citizens could refuse to be conscripted to fight in a war on moral or religious grounds. They were seen as conscious objectors. But the conscious objector was not then allowed to refuse to pay taxes, because their money might be spent in the war effort.

If I tell the Commonwealth of Virginia that my religious beliefs prevent me from paying any state taxes, because I'm against my money being used to execute a human being, how far do you think I'll get with that approach?

Since no one is trying to compel Catholics to use contraceptives, Santorum’s argument is obviously about politics, not religion.

When is waterboarding OK?

2012-02-09T12:56:00.001-05:00

Now Virginia Republicans want to force women seeking an abortion to pay for and submit to a test that their doctor says is unnecessary. Abortion opponents seem to believe that ANYTHING they can do to make abortion more of an ordeal is OK, because they see themselves as being on the high ground, morally.

Let’s say a prominent Republican spokesperson asserts that women who want to terminate a pregnancy should be forced to go through an ordeal before the abortion procedure that will allow them to empathize with the fetus. Furthermore, let’s say that anti-abortion spokesperson claims waterboarding would be the best way to achieve that end.

How many of the Republicans in today's General Assembly would be willing to go on record that such women should NOT be waterboarded?

Reagan, the union buster

2012-02-08T14:07:00.000-05:00

Some of those who idolize Ronald Reagan like to believe he knocked down the Berlin Wall with the force of his personality and the strength of his convictions. While I usually scoff at such claims, I do think Reagan's move to fire the air traffic controllers in 1981 was a huge step toward defanging the union movement in America.

It was a significant turning point in the direction of the culture.

All these years later Reagan gets a lot of undeserved praise from modern conservatives for what went on during his eight years as president. Never mind that he both raised taxes and ran up a huge debt, he talked a lot about fiscal prudence. Never mind that he secretly dealt arms to Iran, Reagan talked tough and his legend as a conservative ass-kicker is preferred to the sad truth: He kicked Grenada's ass ... that's about it.

However, the union-busting move mentioned above was important and it definitely pushed the nation to the right. Reagan's fans can legitimately claim that no president since the Great Depression did more to injure the lifestyle of American workers than Reagan.

If that makes him a hero in your book, then so be it.

On the Biograph 40th: Baldwin's 'Golden Age Revisited'

2012-02-07T21:14:00.001-05:00

Here's a snippet of STYLE Weekly's coverage of the Biograph's 40th anniversary celebration to benefit the James River Film Society:

It's the early '70s: An era when rebellion is mainstream and knowing art films can help a young man score. The drinking age is 18, though bars close at midnight. And, if you can believe it, an X-rated porn film titled "Deep Throat" is banned in New York City while playing to sold-out crowds in Richmond.

Terry Rea, longtime local journalist, publisher, cartoonist and former manager of the Biograph, recalls the period well for someone who was actually there. Located at 814 W. Grace St., the theater lasted from 1972 to 1987, before closing primarily because of the national death of repertory cinema by cable television and video.

"A lot of people found out about great art films there. We were expanding minds," Rea says. "That made up for the horrible seats."

Note: The Biograph Theatre's seats were notoriously uncomfortable. They were literally from the 1920s and in their day were never top of the line.

Click here to read Brent Baldwin's "Golden Age Revisited."

Furiously flapping feathers

2012-02-07T13:11:00.002-05:00

The cartoon above is one of mine, it's from a little over six months ago, July 30, 2011.

Now, given how skillfully President Barack Obama has pursued his practical progressive agenda since that contrived crisis, it seems to me that he learned a lesson. Obama's tone and tactics since Labor Day have reflected that he has accepted the sad truth that the most recalcitrant of Congressional Republicans are totally bent on preventing any improvement whatsoever in the nation's general well-being; at least they are for as long as he is president.

So be it.

Of course, the zany series of debates the Republican presidential hopefuls have offered the 24-hour news cycle has helped to underline the sad truth -- as a political party, the 2012 GOP has nothing to offer but angry criticism and proposals warmed over from the Cold War.

So now the furiously flapping feathers of right-wingers trying to defeat Obama are providing wind to fill his sails. Irony from the blow-back of hot air is cool.

What it is.

Birth of the Blockbuster

2012-02-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

The movie business changed during the summer of 1975. A new style of creating, promoting and exhibiting feature films was established when “Jaws” opened in 465 theaters, coast-to-coast, and became a box office smash.

Typically, in those days, major releases opened initially in the most popular movie houses in a handful of large cities. Which meant the advertising buys were all local. The unprecedented marketing strategy for “Jaws” required enormous confidence, because its distributor had to spend millions on national advertising and strike at least 465 prints of the film.

Before that summer was over “Jaws” had already broken all-time Hollywood box office records.

Washington D.C. was a regional hub for film distribution. Part of the strategy for releasing “Jaws” was that the distributor, Universal, chose not to screen the film for bookers and exhibitors in the usual way. Ordinarily, a feature about to be released would be shown a couple of times in a small screening room downtown; it was run by the National Association of Theater Owners and seated about 50 people. Bookers for theater chains would see the new films to help them weigh how much money should be bid for the rights to exhibit the picture in a given market. But security on admission wasn't all that tight, so any industry insider, entertainment writer, etc. might have been in the audience on a given day.

At this time I managed the Biograph Theatre on Grace Street in Richmond. My bosses were located in Georgetown and I saw several movies in the DeeCee screening room over the 12 years I worked for the guys who oversaw the Biograph on "M" Street.

The first and only screenings of “Jaws” took place about a month before it was to open. It was shown to theater owners and their guests in selected cinemas in maybe a dozen cities on the same night. As I remember it, in DeeCee the function was at The Ontario.

As a treat my bosses gave me four of their allotment of tickets to the special screening of “Jaws.” My ex, Valerie, and I were part of a full house and the show itself went over like gangbusters. The rather jaded audience shrieked at appropriate times and applauded as the movie’s closing credits were lighting up the screen.

Not only was I knocked out by the presentation, I came back to Richmond convinced “Jaws” would be a gold mine. It was the slickest monster movie I’d even seen. The next day I tried to talk my bosses into borrowing a lot of money to put up a big cash-in-advance bid on “Jaws.”

Ordinarily, such a picture would play at the dominant theater chain’s flagship house. I wanted to bet everything we could borrow to steal the picture by out-bidding Neighborhood Theatres, Inc., for the Richmond market.

Well, we didn’t get the money. But it was privately satisfying watching “Jaws” go on to set new records for its box office grosses. Its unprecedented success put its director, Steven Spielberg, on the map.

After “Jaws” everybody in Hollywood rushed out to try to duplicate the way the producers and distributors had handled it. Thus, in 1975, the age of Hollywood-produced summer blockbusters with massive ad campaigns and widespread releases began.

Another thing “Jaws” did was make self-absorbed guys like me feel intimidated by Spielberg’s outrageous success at such a tender age. I can still remember reading that he was younger than me.

Although I actually had a great job for a 27-year-old guy who loved movies, it offered no direct connection to filmmaking. At this time I had one nine-minute film and one 30-second television commercial, both shot in 16mm, to my credit. 1975’s Boy Wonder, Steven Spielberg, made me feel like I was on the wrong track.

Fast-forward 30-some years and I watched a BBC-produced documentary, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood,” about filmmaking in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was on Turner Movie Classics. Made in 2003, it was thoroughly entertaining. Directors and other players from that time were interviewed.

Among those who made comments in the documentary were Tony Bill, Karen Black, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, László Kovács, Kris Kristofferson, Arthur Penn and Cybill Shepherd.

Dreyfuss, who was one of the stars of "Jaws," spoke of attending one of those pre-release screenings. He said he totally forgot himself as the actor on the screen, because he got caught up in the experience of seeing it for the first time in a crowded theater.

Actress Margot Kidder (best known for her Lois Lane portrayals in the Superman series of movies) appeared on camera several times. She made a joke out of how Spielberg had begun to fib about his age, once he became famous. She had known him before his sudden notoriety, so she noticed it when he went from being older than her to being younger.

Kidder claimed Spielberg was fudging his birth date by a couple of years.

Well, flashing back on my silly jealousy to do with Spielberg’s rise to stardom, when he was supposedly younger than me, I had to laugh out loud.

Then I looked Spielberg’s age up; he’s older than both Margot and me.

So, I Googled around and found some old articles about “Jaws” and Spielberg. Yes, it looks like Kidder was right. Back in the ‘70s, perhaps to play up the Boy Wonder aspect of the story, Spielberg’s birth date was being massaged. Somewhere along the line, since then, it looks like it got straightened out.

Laughing at one’s own foolishness is usually a healthy exercise. Yes, and when the laugh had been waiting 34 years to be realized, it was all the sweeter.

After all, nothing has ever been more integral to Hollywood’s special way of doing business -- before or after “Jaws” -- than making up fibs, especially about one’s age.

* * *

Biograph 40

2012-02-02T11:52:00.001-05:00

For more information about the films and the event go here. Click on the art above to enlarge it.

To see the Facebook event page go here.

For plenty of old Biograph stories click on the picture of the theater below.

Willard’s Wretched Demise

2012-02-01T13:05:00.003-05:00

It should come as no surprise to most film buffs that sometimes there was a dark side to the business of doing business after dark. While some saw the Biograph Theatre as a beacon in the night, for others it was a place to hide out from a sad reality. Like any business, sometimes things just went wrong.

A man died watching "F.I.S.T." (1978). The guy was in his early-30s; he breathed his last sitting in a seat in the small auditorium. The movie was bad, but not that bad. His face was expressionless, he just expired.

As the rescue squad guys were shooting jolts of electricity into his heart, and his body was flopping around like a fish out of water on Theater No. 2’s floor, down in Theater No. 1 "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was on the screen delighting its usual crowd of costumed screwballs.

There was a night someone fired five shots of high-powered ammo through one of the back exits into Theatre No. 1. Five bullets came through a back door's two quarter-inch steel plates to splinter seats. Amazingly, no one was hit. It happened just as the crowd was exiting the auditorium, about 11:30 p.m., and it seemed no one even caught on to what was happening.

Later the police were baffled, leaving us to speculate as to why it happened.

While it’s fun to brag about successful promotions, on the other hand, sometimes I bit off more than I could chew.

On October 22, 1982, “The Honeymoon Killers” (1969) opened as a midnight show. I had seen it somewhere and become convinced it would appeal to the same crowd that loved absurd comedies by Luis Buñuel and Robert Altman, and those trash culture aficionados who had adored previously popular midnight shows, such as “Eraserhead” (1977), or “Harold and Maude” (1971).

A droll murder spree movie in black and white, it turned out “The Honeymoon Killers” mostly appealed to me … when I was in a goofy mood. I saw it as a comedy. In its two-week-run, it nearly set the all-time record for worst attendance for a Biograph midnight show. The absolute worst? That little fiasco's story is best left for another time.

Sometimes, with unpredictable situations, I just made the wrong call. Perhaps the worst of them was about another death in the Biograph.

Apparently some rat poisons make the victims crave water. Sometime in the mid-'70s, a popcorn-addicted rat we called Willard must have finally nibbled on some the exterminator’s poison; it died in the Coca-Cola machine's drain and totally clogged it up.

The situation called for a manager's quick decision to be made in the field. However, not knowing about the hidden rat corpse, and thinking I knew what to do, I poured a powerful drain clearing liquid -- we called it Tampax Dynamite -- into the problem. My experience told me that stuff could eat its way though any clog in a pipe.

Although the TD had previously done wonders in the theater's rest rooms, well, this wasn't one of my better decisions.

Before long before a foul-smelling brown liquid started bubbling in the drain and then backing up and into the lobby's carpet around the candy counter. There was no stopping its spread, as Willard’s revenge worked its way.

The wretched mess that ensued ran everybody out of there on a busy Saturday night -- the stench was unbearable. We had to close.

Oops!

My forgiving bosses in Georgetown had a new carpet installed in the lobby right away; it was much nicer than the original had been.

Sign of the Times

2012-02-01T10:54:00.000-05:00

One summer afternoon in the mid-1970s, I was walking about 20 yards behind a guy heading east on the 800 block of West Grace Street. Then, like it was his, he casually picked up the Organic Food Store’s hand-painted sandwich board style sign from the sidewalk in front of the store.

Without even looking around for any witnesses to his act of dishonesty the sign thief kept going at the same pace.

As I walked faster to close the distance between us we continued down the red brick sidewalk. By the time we had passed the Biograph Theatre, where I worked, I had sized him up and decided what I would do. He was a big-haired hippie, 18 to 20 years old; he could have been a student. Or, he might have been a traveling panhandler/opportunist. In those days there were plenty of both in the neighborhood.

Passing by Sally Bell’s Kitchen, in the 700 block, I was within six or seven yards of him when I spoke the lines I had written for myself while walking. My tone was resolute, my voice clear: “Hey, I saw you steal the sign. Don’t turn around … just put it down and walk away.”

The thief’s body language announced that he had heard me, but he didn’t turn around. Instead he walked faster, with the sign under his right arm, holding the weight with his hand.

Moving closer to him, I said with more force: “Put the sign down. The cops are on the way. Walk away while you still can.”

Without further ado the wooden sign clattered onto the sidewalk. The sign thief kept going without looking back. As I gathered my neighbor’s property I watched the fleeing hippie break into a sprint, cross Grace Street and disappear going toward Monroe Park at the next corner.

Then I carried the recovered property back to the store, which was a few doors west of the Biograph. Obviously, I don’t really remember exactly what I said to the thief over three decades ago, verbatim, but that was a faithful recounting of the events.

What I had done came in part from a young man’s sense of righteous indignation, together with the spirit of camaraderie that existed among some of the neighborhood’s merchants in that time. There were several of us, then in our mid-to-late-20s, who were running businesses on that bohemian strip — bars, retail shops, etc. We were friends and we watched out for one another.

Now I’m amazed that I used to do such things. My tough guy performance had lasted less than a minute. The character I invented was drawn somewhat from Humphrey Bogart, with as much Robert Mitchum as I could muster. Hey, the thief must have felt lucky to get away.

Who knows? Maybe he’s still telling this same story, too, but from another angle.

This much I know — that quirky pop scene on Grace Street in those days was a goldmine of offbeat stories. Chelf’s Drug Store was at the corner of Grace and Shafer. With its antique soda fountain and a few booths, it had been a hangout for magazine-reading, alienated art students since the late-1940s. It seemed frozen in time.

The original Village Restaurant, a block west of Chelf’s, was a legendary beatnik watering hole, going back to the 1950s. Writer Tom Robbins and artist William Fletcher “Bill” Jones (1930-‘98) hung out there. Strangely, that location has remained boarded up for decades, while the new Village still goes on across Harrison Street. That same neighborhood was also home to cartoon-like characters such as the wandering Flashlight Lady and the Grace Street Midget.

During the late-‘60s the hippies had come on strong to replace the beats, as the strip went psychedelic, seemingly overnight. But by the mid-‘70s the hippie blue jean culture had peaked. It was about to be replaced by the black leather of Punk Rock and polyester of the Disco scene. All-night dance clubs became popular.

So, by the late-‘70s the mood on the strip had changed severely. Cocaine was becoming the preferred drug of choice with the druggie in-crowd, replacing pot. Several restaurants were serving liquor-by-the-drink, the dives catering to the young set began having rugged bouncers at the door.

Into the ‘80s I remember an angry, red-bearded street beggar with a missing foot threatening to “bite a plug out” of me, because I had had the temerity to tell him to stop bothering people in front of the Biograph, to move on.

In that moment it was painfully obvious to me that times had indeed changed. Wisely, I didn’t press my case any further that day. Instead, I moved on.

-- 30 --

Cowardly Elephants?

2012-02-01T00:56:00.001-05:00

Given the painfully slow recovery from the 2008 economic meltdown and the nasty recession it set in motion, it follows that Obama would struggle to get reelected.

Given the glaring flaws of the two GOP frontrunners, it still mystifies me that the GOP hasn't been able to locate a better candidate to run against Obama.

Given the anxiety and anger in the air, it would seem Team Elephant could do better ... not that I'm complaining.

Fletcher on the Giants and Pats

2012-01-31T00:13:00.001-05:00

Probably for Redskins fans only: All-Pro Washington linebacker London Fletcher's take on the Giants, with their stingy defense, and the offensive-minded Pats:

"Absolutely, because of his level of preparation. Because [Brady is] going to know you, he's going to study you, and know what you're going to do and what you like to do. So you've got to be on top of your assignments and execution, because it's going to be as much a mental game as it is physical against Brady.''

Click here to read the entire article at SI.

Propaganda 101: Control the language

2012-01-28T13:40:00.000-05:00

Having grown up in Richmond, Virginia, I understand some things about a certain strain of conservatism. I know that to some conservatives any idea that challenges the establishment will be called “liberal.”

In the 1960s people who opposed the war in Vietnam were called “pinkos,” which was a pale shade of red -- meaning Bolshevik. Citizens who worked to end Jim Crow laws and segregation in public schools were accused of being in league with Moscow. The pinko label was also applied to those who were environmental activists.

Then, in the 1970s, right-to-life people who were opposed to the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion -- those who wanted the government to regulate women's bodies -- claimed to be the true conservatives.

Today those who stand against the notion of “corporate personhood” are branded as liberals by those who agree with the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision. Taxpayers who insist there be no additional regulation of Wall Street appear to think they are being true to their conservative school.

In this view of the political landscape the self-named conservatives appear to see themselves as standing on the sensible middle ground. To simplify their point of view to high contrast, they see feudalism to the right of them and communism to the left. Fascism is frequently viewed as an aberration to be ignored.

Confused yet?

Please note that none of the characterizations above really have had much to do with classic stances of the “left” and “right” on basic economics issues.

Many so-called conservatives seem to believe the mainstream media in the United States are inevitably left-leaning. Never mind that in order to believe that fanciful notion you’d have to be convinced that the millionaires who run the giant corporations behind the broadcast networks, the largest newspapers and periodicals, etc., are dupes.

Dupes, because over the decades they would have to have been consistently tricked by liberal writers and producers into presenting a left-leaning version of the news that runs against their financial interests.

Don’t most multinational corporations want to pay little or no taxes on their income? Why would big media bosses deliberately hire lefties? Why would corporations that profit from war insist that news reports about a war be presented from an antiwar standpoint?

In the last year we’ve seen conservatives decry the negatively slanted coverage of Tea Party stories, and at the same time they complained that the Occupy Wall Street movement received too much coverage ... of course, they see that coverage as having been too sympathetic.

Now for the unvarnished truth about this propagandistic labeling business: To the pickled-brains fans of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, anything they don’t like is seen as liberal. That’s it. And, anything the Democrats favor, they are adamantly against. Even when they were in favor of it a year ago, if Obama is for it, then it’s another dastardly step toward "European socialism" to be avoided at all costs.

In such a strange world of tortured definitions a “conservative” president can launch an elective war over bogus reasons that drives America way deep into debt. Then, of course, it's "conservative" to blame the war debt on the Democratic president that follows ... while calling for another war to be set in motion.

The Biograph's 40th and perhaps a new cinema

2012-01-27T10:19:00.001-05:00

At Richmond Magazine Harry Kollatz focuses his blog, The Hat, on the Biograph Theatre's 40th anniversary celebration and perhaps a new artsy cinema in the works:

The Biograph Theatre closed in December 1987, just shy of its 16th anniversary and amid its “Last Gasp Film Festival,” when the landlord padlocked its doors, ending a consistent run of art-house repertory cinema in Richmond. Since then, in peripatetic fashion, the banner has been taken up by the group known today as the James River Film Society, which is marking the 40th anniversary of the Biograph with a high-quality double feature as part of its effort to establish a “storefront cinema” here.

Click here to read the entire post.

Click here to see the Facebook page for the event set to unfold on February 11th.

Click here to buy tickets.

Note: Tickets, $20 each, are also on sale at Plan 9 Music, Video Fan and Harrison Street Coffee. Proceeds to benefit the James River Film Society.

How About 139 Worthwhile Movies?

2012-01-26T12:36:00.000-05:00

Why another list of old movies?

With the Biograph Theatre’s 40th anniversary celebration on Saturday, February 11, in mind -- "Breathless" (1960) and "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962) will be screened -- my theater manager's instinct to promote good movies was reawakened.

Whereupon, I forced myself to assemble a big fat favorites list and post it at the James River Film Journal. The 139 movies on the list all played at Richmond’s Biograph during my 139-month stint as its manager (1972-83).

For convenience the list was broken up into three posts. To see Part One, the first 40 titles, click here. The second 40 are here. The remaining 59 movies with film notes are here.

Hopefully, this effort represents a fair overview of the sort of movies that were staples at art houses and revival theaters during what was the Golden Age of Repertory Cinema. The James River Film Society is presenting the Biograph's 40th party as part of its focus this year on that Golden Age. Other events will follow.

The Biograph opened at 814 West Grace Street in February of 1972 and closed in December of 1987, two months shy of its 16th anniversary.

Not exactly the Good Samaritan

2012-01-21T00:26:00.000-05:00

So, pretend you're an evangelical conservative down in South Carolina. You're a school-of-hard-knocks, retired military guy.

Today you're wondering which campaigning Republican should get your vote. Since all four hopefuls claim to be purebred conservatives, which of them best lives up to your Christian values? And, of course, it matters which one stands the best chance of beating Obama.

Can you vote for a serial philanderer, who's pomposity is off the charts? Can you vote for a Mormon, who's not exactly the Good Samaritan of the business world? What about that eccentric antiwar doc, the one who's ready to legalize pot? Can you vote for a Santorum?

Dog fights snake to protect girls

2012-01-19T12:10:00.003-05:00

Here's a story lovers of good yarns about heroic dogs will like.

An Australian family's dog is being called a hero after it rescued two young girls from a snake attack.18-month-old River spotted a two-foot-long brown snake hiding under a children's swing just as 7-year-old Michelle Lynch and 2-year-old Kaylee were headed its way.

Go here to read the entire article.

It reminds me of a true story from my own childhood. When I was about five years old I witnessed an event, to do with a snake, I still remember clearly.

In my back yard I saw a big snake that I was later told was a water moccasin. For whatever reason, I wasn't properly afraid of it; I wanted to see it more closely. My golden cocker spaniel, Pixie, would have none of it. She barked at me and nipped at my legs to chase me back toward the porch. Then she went over to the snake in the grass and kept running circles around it, barking continuously.

Suddenly, a kid about 15 named Bud, who lived next door, came to the rescue. With a garden hoe in his hand he jumped the fence. Then he chopped the snake into pieces. Can you imagine how cool that looked to a five-year-old boy?

Later on, some of the neighborhood's old men, including my grandfather, stood around the trash barrel in the yard telling snake stories. Naturally, I took it all in. The snake remains were in the barrel. One of the men told me we ought to separate the pieces of the snake, or it could grow back together, as the sun goes down. My grandfather laughed.

By the way, Pixie suffered no injuries. Needless to say, it was no easy task getting me to come inside the house as twilight descended on the scene. I recall standing guard over the barrel, watching the chunks of that dead snake for any movement whatsoever.

Oodles of Newt

2012-01-18T22:37:00.002-05:00

If Newt Gingrich didn't even exist this election year, and, let's say I'm a fun-loving magician. Dig it: I can invent people out of thin air ... and I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat.

Well, I might take a look at awkward-in-his-blue-jeans Mitt Romney -- churning over his tax returns spin -- and say with a smile, let there be oodles of Newt!

Want to make Mitt reveal his tax info?

First you charge that he has paid ZERO taxes in his entire silver-spoon life. He will deny it.

Naturally, the lefty media will howl. Disgustingly, Newt will gain another 10 pounds.

More importantly, Romney is such a chump, it will boost him into admitting that while he has parked zillions off-planet, at times, he frequently paid more in taxes than did anyone in his battalion of secretaries.

God Creates Sidemen

2012-01-07T15:38:00.003-05:00

1. "And so the great Leader Nebulon did embark upon a search for suitable Sidemen for his orchestra, and he could find none; for in those days there were not many, and those he could find were already working.

2. Some worked the Ark with the House of Noah, and some had the house gig at The Walls of Jericho. And many played behind the scat-singing team of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

3. So Nebulon did return to the Lord and saith, "Lord, there are many musicians, but no Sidemen!", and he rent his clothing asunder.

4. And the Lord did say, "Hast thou looked everywhere? Didst thou call the Union?"

5. And Nebulon did say, "Lord, I have looked high and low, especially low; and only one or two could I find. What shall I do?"

6. And the Lord did afflict Nebulon with boils, saying unto him, "Leave Me to think on this!"

7. And just to buy some time he did also visit a plague of locusts upon Egypt.

8. And the Lord did summon a league of Angels, and sent them forth over the land, commanding them to find Him some Sidemen.

9. And the Angels did go to the four corners of the earth, but the only unemployed Sideman they could find was one holy man in India who did play the horn with the slide.

10. So with great fear the Angels did return to the Lord with the bad news, and filled with wrath He said, "How can this be? At one time the world did teem with Sidemen, as dead oxen do with maggots!"

11. And the Angels did say, "Lord, many left the business, many have become idiots, and some have even become Leaders, and no Leader will work for another Leader."

12. So the Lord did cause drought for 40 days while He thought, and at last the answer came unto Him. He did recall that there was a factory, part of his Beasts Of The Field, Inc. division, that was in disuse.

13. For it had earlier been used to create Golems, for which there had been no great demand, and so He had closed down the operation. And He thought, 'We can retool, and start turning out Sidemen.'

14. And so it was done, and it came to pass that the Sidemen started rolling off the assembly line.

15. But somehow a remnant of the Golem program remained, and the Sidemen did come out acting unpredictably.

16. Some stammered and stuttered, some talked to themselves under their breath, and some would not bathe.

17. Some refused to shave their beards or to have their hair shorn, and some refused to wear the Gigging Toga.

18. And some wore the Toga, but left them crumpled in their chariots in between Gigs, or slept in them, or wore Togas from eons past, with ruffles.

19. And some did not believe in maps, and wandered the land aimlessly looking for the Gig, and some did not believe in the use of the hourglass, and arrived at the Gig whenever they chose.

20. And some loved the wine of dates, and some loved the burning of hemp.

21. And some were created without ears, and some with knuckles where their eyebrows should be.

22. And some did worship the gods Mahavishnu, Sun Ra, Trane, Jaco, Ornette, Cecile, and did therefore mock their Leaders at will.

23. And some did steal food from the buffet line, yea, even before the Guests had dined.

24. And some did try to lay with the Chick Singers, and some with the Guests, and some with the Little Sisters of these, the Chick Singers and the Guests.

25. And some did not Read, and some could only Read, but not Blow. And some could only Read one clef and not another. And some could only Blow in certain keys. And some did Blow the same notes no matter what the "Tune."

26. And some had no social skills, and some had no musical skills. And many of them were Dark, not in pigmentation of the skin, but in the Outlook on Life.

27. But every once in a while the line did miraculously produce a Perfect Sideman: One who followed orders without question; One who believed in the hourglass; One who wore the Toga; One whose chariot always ran; One who Knew all "Tunes" in any key.

28. But these Perfect Sidemen were few and far between, and besides their eyes were glazed, and they were shunned by the rest, for they were boring and knew not how to hang.

29. And soon the land teemed with Sidemen milling about, looking for Gigs, complaining and whining and arguing and occasionally stabbing each other in the back.

30. And the Lord looked down upon his work, and said, "It will do."

Note: This was sent to me a few years ago by Gregg Wetzel (piano and vocals).

In 44 days

2012-01-06T11:18:00.000-05:00

In 44 days the Atlanta Braves' pitchers and catchers will report to spring training.

"People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring" -- Rogers Hornsby (pictured above)

Santorum and McDonnell ticket?

2012-01-04T13:50:00.000-05:00

Proving she isn’t as crazy as some thought her to be, today Rep. Michelle Bachmann dropped out of the race to be the GOP’s presidential nominee.

Wisely, most people wouldn't want to be president of the United States of America. Of course, there are still plenty who would gladly take the job, but running for president 25 hours a day for at least two solid years isn't all that inviting a prospect for people who enjoy life.

Is that why most of the Republicans who would have been decent candidates didn't want to run for the office this year? Like, in another year would they have run?

Perhaps they were simply afraid of facing Pres. Barack Obama?

Or, did the best and the brightest in the GOP decide to sit this one out, because they could see that the Tea Party, which seems to be waning in its popularity with most Americans, is nonetheless determined to ruin the chances of any Republican hopeful who won’t stick strictly to its backward precepts?

When all the primaries have come and gone, if Mitt Romney can't close the deal, how likely is a Rick Santorum and Bob McDonnell ticket?

Finally, Iowa's year in the spotlight is over

2012-01-03T18:30:00.001-05:00

When you add up all the money spent on behalf of the Republican presidential hopefuls in Iowa over the last year, it's enough to build a high-speed railroad to Mars.

Now, in the time-honored tradition of presidential punditry, based on nothing more than a willingness -- chutzpah? -- to make a guess, here is SLANTblog's worthless, last-minute prediction for the results in Iowa tonight:

Paul: 23%
Santorum: 19%
Romney: 18%
Perry: 12%
Gingrich 11%
Bachmann 10%
None of the above: 7%

Next up: The squabble is off to New Hampshire.

A Perfect Rainy Day

2011-12-30T13:20:00.000-05:00

Fiction by F.T. Rea

“Com’ere Bustah,” the old coot barked gruffly.

Slouched on a bench of stone and wood, the man wore an oversized pea coat and a dark blue knit cap. Most noticeable were his pale swollen ankles, showing between high-water plaid trousers and scuffed brown brogans.

Roscoe Swift was content to simply ignore the rumpled stranger until the guy made his purpose clear with his next utterance: “Gotta match?”

Out in the bay, Alcatraz was partially visible in the chilly fog. The thick gray sky was speckled with noisy white seagulls.

Roscoe approached the weather-beaten character cautiously to hand him a matchbook. In spite of the breeze the man lit his hand-rolled cigarette on the first try. Then the man coughed, cleared his throat, and spat triumphantly on the heavy support of the nearby tourist telescope. Roscoe watched the oyster slime its way off the heavy base to collect on the pavement.

After a couple of greedy pulls on his smoke, the man tossed the matchbook into the bay and said, “Look’ere kid, y'er no prodigy -- nothing special."

Annoyed, Roscoe looked in the water for the matchbook. It floated up so he could still read the type on the cover. It said Fancy Melons.

“No sir, heh, heh, y'er just another thin-skinned boy -- ha! Maybe a skinless boy -- trying to bluff his way into heaven,” said the old timer. His pale blue eyes twinkled in a maze of wrinkles and broken capillaries.

The sea breeze gusted. When Swift rolled over, he woke up startled and confused. His situation was nearly as weird as his mysterious dream had been. He found that he'd been asleep on a stack of inflated rafts on the beach. Suddenly, it was a beautiful morning in Virginia Beach and Roscoe was very thirsty.

Slowly, he began to remember climbing the lifeguard stand in the sand to the top of a pile of rental rafts lashed to it. Strangely, in the moonlight, it had made sense to sleep on an open-air perch, 15 feet up. He shuddered as he thought of the old man in the dream that was already beginning to fade away.

Then Roscoe realized he was still dreaming.

April 9, 1980: Roscoe Swift woke up already aware of the warm, moist air wafting through the slightly open bedroom window. Contrary to the weather forecast, it was still raining. Selena Cross, asleep on her back, didn’t stir as he deftly climbed over her and down from his loft.

The dream-within-a-dream he had just endured was a new variation on a familiar haunt. It went back to when was 16 and actually did wake up on top of a stack of rafts on the beach. Roscoe shut off the alarm clock, so it wouldn't ring, and he gathered up his clothes from the night before -- a black Rock ‘n’ Roll High School T-shirt, khaki shorts, white socks, and high-top Converse All-Stars. He grabbed a new pair of white socks on his way to the bathroom, where he threw yesterday's socks and T-Shirt into the dirty clothes hamper.

After his morning bathroom routine, Roscoe passed the shoulder-level bed. Still asleep, Selena looked too good to be true. Indeed, their six-week-old secret affair -- out of context from all else -- seemed dream-like much of the time to him. Quietly, he grabbed an old J.W. Rayle softball shirt from the dresser and headed toward the kitchen.

Leggy and graceful, bright-eyed Selena had a feline quality that Roscoe told her was reminiscent of a young Brigitte Bardot, in “And God Created Woman.” While such a comparison was obviously meant to flatter, it also recognized her natural talent for mimicry and disguising her thoughts. To him, Selena usually seemed to be working from a script.

Roscoe and Selena had a big day planned -- a stolen day, removed from time. As he headed for the kitchen to scavenge up some breakfast, she opened her eyes, unbeknownst to him.

Selena Cross waitressed three nights a week at Soble’s on Floyd Avenue. To protect her image as one who never partied after hours, or strayed from her main squeeze, Selena invented a system to facilitate her “sessions” with Roscoe. On the nights she worked, he would swing by the bar on his way home from work at the Fan City Cinema, where he was the manager. Her fiancé -- a 30-year-old antique dealer, with money to burn -- traveled frequently, usually for a couple or three days, on short notice. If she was free and feeling amorous Selena would wear her honey-colored hair in a ponytail, to signal Roscoe she would be showing up at his place later. That way they could confine their conversation in the restaurant to small talk and leave at different times without huddled discussions.

In spite of the obvious chemistry between the two of them, Selena had convinced herself this subterfuge kept her coworkers and the bar’s regulars from suspecting anything.

In the summer between high school and college Selena had learned a lesson about being caught with her pants down, literally. Her outraged boyfriend, a judge’s son, beat her up. When the bruises faded she left her hometown for good.

Sometimes, Roscoe didn’t know whether to believe Selena. Nor was he sure the ponytail really had everybody fooled. Still, with the bangs, it was a great look for her. Just the sight of that ponytail, bobbing and swaying as she walked, had a hypnotic effect on him.

Until this particular occasion it had been her custom to leave Roscoe’s carriage house apartment, in the alley behind the 1200 block of Franklin Street, before the first light of day. This time her fiancé was scheduled to be away longer than usual. Thus, this was their first morning together.

Roscoe Swift, 32, was a divorced wannabe filmmaker, who was too existential for his own good. Having had the same job for nine years, he could coast most of the time. Selena was a 23-year-old art history graduate. She led a disciplined, goal-oriented life and was ready to make her mark on a world of unlimited opportunity. Aside from a shared taste for Rockabilly music and a similar appreciation for black humor, they really didn’t have much in common. Generally, Selena didn’t talk about the past and Roscoe didn’t talk about the future.

Roscoe switched on the kitchen radio and opened the refrigerator. Then he remembered that Selena had wolfed down his leftover pizza.

He was out of eggs, too. What he had to work with was: a half-loaf of wheat bread, an almost new stick of butter, jars of mayonnaise, mustard and strawberry jam, a box of fig bars, a tired-looking head of lettuce, a bottle of extra dry domestic champagne, two cans of ginger ale, seven cans of beer and an empty pizza box.

Roscoe took out the champagne and sat it on the counter next to a small watermelon Selena had brought with her from the restaurant. He opened a can of ginger ale. As he carved up the melon, he whistled along with the radio to the classic Everly Brothers’ not-so-thinly-disguised ode to masturbation: “All I Have to Do is Dream.”

Selena, naked but for her thick socks, entered the room without making a sound. Amused that Roscoe hadn’t noticed her, she leaned her butt against the damp windowsill and folded her arms.

“Morning!” said Roscoe. “Hot coffee, buttered toast and cold champagne, with a watermelon spear, served in a pewter goblet. Presto! A perfect rainy day breakfast.”

Selena grinned. “I like rainy days. With no shadows, colors look more thick and juicy…”

“Miss Cross,” said Roscoe, “would you please slide the coffee pot onto the burner. It’s already loaded up.”

“Done,” said Selena. “Watermelon and champagne, together?”

“Yep,” said Roscoe, watching the gas flame burst into action, “this is an old Southern favorite. They call it a ‘Spring Fling.’ You haven’t heard of it?”

“No, but it’s so appropriate,” she said with a yawn. The gesture fit perfectly with her decadent rich girl act -- sometimes Selena almost seemed to have walked out of a F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Given her blue-collar, small town background, it was a persona he enjoyed watching her affect.

Roscoe popped the cork off the bottle of bubbly and the moment’s perfection promptly fizzled. The bubbly wasn’t!

“Goddamn it!” he growled in a tone she hadn’t heard from him before.

While Selena’s body language had seemed to suggest that something other than breakfast was on her mind, anyway, the suddenly crestfallen Roscoe was focused on the flat champagne.

“I’ll be right back,” Roscoe blurted out, grabbing a hooded sweatshirt. He ran three-and-a-half blocks to a neighborhood wine shop in the rain, convinced the owner to open early, and returned with chilly bubbles aplenty.

“When you’re wet, you look fantastic!” Selena said, at first sight of him.

That prompted an impromptu session, with Selena seated on the porcelain kitchen table. Once again, they delighted in their collaborative ability to please one another. If anything, it was still improving. And, that was that.

The rain stopped and the clouds parted as they polished off their breakfast with gusto. During the drive from Richmond to their destination, Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, Selena and Roscoe sang along with a taped compilation of cuts by Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe.

With her hair gathered in a ponytail, Selena wore a pair of maroon short shorts and a lightweight gray sweatshirt with Bertand Russell's face on it that she borrowed from Roscoe. He knew she would try to steal it. Smitten with the sight of her, Roscoe could hardly keep his eyes on the road.

“I’ve smiled at you so much I feel like a Cheshire cat on two hits of acid,” Roscoe deadpanned, as he pulled his pale yellow 1973 Volvo wagon into the parking lot of the quaint Hilltop Hotel.

As soon as they got to their room, Selena went to the bathroom. As he waited, Roscoe lit a joint, took a hit, and asked, “Do you still want to go to the horse races in Charles Town? We’ve still got the rest of the day to go sightseeing, or do whatever…”

“Whatever suits me fine,” said Selena, as she opened the door wearing only the new Fan City Cinema T-shirt he had given her. That, and a spectacular smile.

“What the hell,” said Selena, who rarely smoked pot, “Up here I’m as out of town as it gets, give me a toke of that.”

After her second hit, she passed the joint back to him. Then Selena lifted her right foot to rub the instep along the back of her left calf. Roscoe stepped closer, tossing the joint at the bedside table’s ashtray. Her head tilted slightly to one side. The air between them was charged.

She pulled at his belt buckle as they landed on the bed. His hands cascaded along her rib cage to her bare hips.

Then Roscoe heard a loud explosion; he flinched. “Wha, what the hell was that?”

Selena laughed as Roscoe rolled onto his back, seemingly dazed. “What was what?” she cooed.

“That sound; like a gunshot, or a bomb,” he gasped. “That bang! Didn’t you hear it?”

“Passion!” she said, widening her eyes. “Pure, pure passion!”

Roscoe was disoriented. Hadn’t the noise been real? Hadn’t she heard it, too? He sat up. “Come on Selena, you didn’t hear that sound?

She kissed him with such fury that he had to stop talking.

Soon, thoughts of fiancés, ex-wives, everyday concerns in Richmond, horse races in Charles Town, and especially mysterious explosions in hotel rooms were put aside. Later they slept the sleep known only to lovers who’ve given their all to the moment.

The next day, in spite of his efforts, Roscoe was unable to determine if Selena had actually heard the explosion he had. They talked about it during the drive back to Richmond, but she never gave him a straight answer. She enjoyed teasing him -- maybe this, maybe that.

Exaggerating her southern accent, Selena would say, “Pah-shun.” Eventually Selena’s evasiveness began to rub Roscoe the wrong way, so he stopped asking.

They finished off the drive with little to say, accompanied by a Kraftwerk tape, turned up loud. He dropped her off at her Volkswagen bug, parked in a lot near his place. She planned to stop by her apartment and then take care of some errands. Selena’s parting words were: “I’ll call you around dinnertime, about getting together later ... if you’re up for a encore session.”

At 6 p.m., that same day, when Roscoe got home from playing Frisbee-golf, he found a message Selena had left on his new telephone answering machine. Essentially, it said her fiancé had returned from his business trip, without warning, two days early. Roscoe felt a sense of panic, wondering how much the man knew. There must have been some gossip.

Although she said twice that everything was “fine,” the fact she said it at all gave him a bad feeling.

The end was abrupt: Harper’s Ferry proved to be the finale for Selena and Roscoe. Two months later, Selena’s wedding took place in her husband’s hometown, Alexandria, Virginia. After a honeymoon in Ireland, the newlyweds surprised everyone by deciding to set up residence in Annapolis, Maryland, instead of Richmond.

And, that was that, except for a rainy day about a year after Harper’s Ferry. Upon returning from a week’s stay in San Francisco, visiting his old friend Finn Daley, Roscoe found a large brown paper bag on the driver’s seat of his Volvo, which he never locked. In the bag was a bottle of Dom Perignon, a small watermelon and an unlabeled tape cassette.

Roscoe shoved the cassette into the stereo and switched the ignition on. Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” poured out of the speakers. He smiled.

“Passion,” said Roscoe, as he let out what was left of his clutch and turned up the volume.

* * *

All rights reserved by the author. A Perfect Rainy Day with its accompanying illustration are part of a series of stories called Detached. Three remaining stories will be added, eventually. Links to the five others which have been finished are below:

Central Time
Dogtown Hero
Maybe Rosebud
The Freelancer's Worth
Cross-Eyed Mona

A pox on loyalty oaths ...

2011-12-30T12:42:00.004-05:00

... and political parties should pay for primaries.

Why not? How the hell did it get this way?

Although it’s taken the current Republican primary mess to shine a light on the intrinsic problem with holding statewide primaries and signing loyalty pledges in Virginia, solving the problem for the long run shouldn’t be a partisan political football. It's actually rather simple to fix this:

Political parties, major or minor, should have to rent the commonwealth's election facilities, at a fair price, or set up their own primary voting apparatus. It could be done online. Or, the party could just opt for the old smoke-filled-room style -- hold a convention.

The public has every reason to pay for and oversee general elections. But there's no good reason for the taxpayers to foot the bill for a political party's primary, or for that matter -- its convention.

Political parties are private organizations the taxpayers have no say-so over. Such groups should pay their own bills for their own activities. That way, when members of a private group want to cheat their own candidates, except for its gossip value, it's none of my business.

In the short run, if disgruntled Republicans and other mischief-makers keep provoking judges to act in this affair, it won’t surprise me if some judge says, “Sorry Virginia Republicans, you can’t have a primary on March 6th.”

Why is Iran so belligerent?

2011-12-29T12:23:00.000-05:00

Looks like next year's foreign policy issue will be what-to-do-about-Iran. With sabers rattling as 2011 ends, are you interested in reading some in-depth background on America's checkered history with Iran?

The quote below is a bullet point from the introduction to a sad story about mistakes made during Cold War times.

The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of its covertoperation to overthrow Iran's government in 1953 offers an inside look athow the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps thatderailed its original plans.

Go here to see a special New York Times supplement created in 2000. It's chock-full of background information that will shed some light on why relations between Iran and the USA have been so strained for such a long time.

Go here to see a map of the American military installations that surround Iran today.

Biograph Theatre 40th Anniversary

2011-12-28T12:26:00.009-05:00

With the Biograph Theatre's 40th anniversary coming up on Feb. 11, 2012, there's a party brewing. Meanwhile, what follows are excerpts of Biograph Times:

My first good look at what was to become the Biograph Theatre was in July of 1971. Having gotten a tip from a friend that the DeeCee-based owners were considering the hiring of a local manager, I went to the construction site chasing the opportunity.

That day I met David Levy, one of six men who owned the repertory cinema operation that would be housed in the cinderblock building going up at 814 West Grace Street. Of the six, Levy would prove to have the deepest knowledge of film history, as well as the most hands-on knowledge of how to run a movie theater. At 33, Levy, a Harvard trained lawyer, was 10 years my senior.

A couple of months later I was offered what I saw as the best job in my neighborhood, the Fan District. The adventure that followed surely went beyond any expectations I might have had about becoming the manager of the Biograph Theatre.

On the evening of February 11, 1972, the venture was launched with a gem of a party. The feature presented that evening was a delightful French war-mocking comedy — “King of Hearts” (1966); Genevieve Bujold was dazzling opposite the droll Alan Bates.

In the lobby, with its cinemascopic view of Grace Street through a glass front, the dry champagne flowed steadily. A trendy art show was hanging on the lobby walls. Hundreds of equally trendy invited guests were there. The local press was all over what was an important event for that bohemian commercial strip, just a stone's throw from the Virginia Commonwealth University campus.

During the 1960s, college film societies thrived. Knowing film was cool; it could get you laid. By the 1970s, many of the kids who had grown up watching old movies on television had learned to worship important movie directors.

The fashion of the day elevated certain foreign movies, selected American classics, a few films from the underground scene, etc., to a level above most of their more accessible Hollywood counterparts. Mixed and matched in double features and packaged into little festivals, such was at the heart of a repertory cinema’s style. In that pre-cable TV age, much of the current-release domestic product was viewed by the film aficionado in-crowd as laughingly naive or hopelessly corrupt.

Once I began to understand more fully what an opportunity my job offered, I wanted the Biograph Theatre to be a place both detached from its surroundings and a good neighbor; like nothing else in Richmond, but a part of the Fan District’s bohemian milieu.

The Biograph’s programs, printed schedules with film notes, covered about six weeks each. Program No. 1 was heavy on documentaries, featuring the work of Emile de Antonio and D.A. Pennebaker, among others. Also on that program were several titles by popular European directors, including Michaelangelo Antonioni, Costa-Gavras, Federico Fellini, and Roman Polanski.

Although most of what we did at the Biograph was standard practice in that era for art houses/repertory cinemas, we were somewhat of a trend-setter with regard to the development of midnight shows. While most of the basic style for what sort of product to exhibit within a repertory format had been set in the ‘60s, at 814 W. Grace St. we managed to get in on the midnight show phenomenon early enough to have played a small role in shaping America’s love affair with midnight shows in the ’70s.

Of course, late screenings were nothing new when the Biograph opened in February of 1972, and the term “midnight show” had been around forever. Still, the midnight show formula for how to do it consistently had not been established. Something as simple as playing the same program on both Friday and Saturday nights, only at midnight, was still not set in stone.

About two months after we opened, an underground twin bill of “Chafed Elbows” (1966) and “Scorpio Rising” (1964) was the first special late show we presented; I think it started at 11:30 p.m. Moving such presentations to midnight soon proved better, and over our initial year of operation we came to understand the sort of pictures that would work best in that limited role and how to promote them.

When the Biograph started running midnight shows in 1972 the bars in Richmond closed at midnight, so there was a lot less to do at 12:01 a.m. than when the official cutoff time was extended to 2 a.m. in 1976.

Another reason midnight shows caught on was that drive-in theaters, which had done well in the ’50s and 60s, were going out of style fast. Some of the low-budget product they had been exhibiting found a new home as late-night entertainment in hardtop theaters like the Biograph. “Mondo Cane” (1962), “Blood Feast” (1963) and “2,000 Maniacs” (1964) all played as Biograph midnight shows.

By the time we booked “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to play, in June of 1978, going to a midnight show was no longer seen as an exotic thing to do in Richmond. Multiplexes in the suburbs ran them all the time. Which made the timing perfect for a kitschy spoof of/tribute to trashy rock ‘n’ roll and monster movies to become the all-time greatest midnight show draw.

The midnight show craze of the ‘70s could only have flourished then, when baby boomers were in their teens and 20s. It came before cable television was widely available and video rental stores popped up in every neighborhood.

Sometimes, a successful midnight show run came along in the nick of time to pay the rent for the Biograph Theatre.

Starting with the second anniversary, the Biograph Theatre’s birthdays always meant a party. Some of the celebrations were promoted and open to the public, others were small affairs for the staff and friends. Former staff members were always encouraged to attend, so the parties served as reunions, too.

Six months after the theater’s second anniversary splash, with its infamous “Devil” prank, the same month that Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, the Biograph closed down for a month to be converted into a twin cinema. With construction workers toiling 24 hours a day that accomplishment remains a story of extremes, to itself.

Automating the change-overs from one 35mm projector to the other was essential to controlling costs. Among other things that meant Xenon lamps, high intensity bulbs that could be ignited by switches, had to replace our out-of-date, manually-operated Peerless carbon arc lamps.

On the day the exchange was made I got to see the same scene projected onto the screen with the two light sources. The light from the old system, which used two burning carbon rods, was whiter and gave the picture more depth and sparkle. The Xenon light was slightly yellow and had a flattening effect on the image.

As the edgy punk style began replacing the hippie culture that had ruled the Grace Street strip for the better part of a decade, none of us who were working at the Biograph Theatre had an inkling that the zenith of the repertory cinema era, nationally, was in the rear-view mirror.

There were a lot of crazy things that happened in the years of babysitting “Rocky Horror.“ Among them was the Saturday night we threw out the entire full house, because so many people had gone wild; bare-chested rednecks were hosing the crowd down with our fire extinguishers. Fights were underway when we shut down the projector and the movie slowly ground to a halt. Everybody got their money back.

Interestingly, after that melodramatic stunt, we never had much trouble with violence to do with “Rocky Horror” again.

However, there was no stranger night than when about six weeks into the run, a man in his 30s breathed his last, as he sat in the small auditorium watching “F.I.S.T.” Yes, that Sylvester Stallone vehicle was particularly lame, but who knew it was potentially lethal?

The dead man’s face was expressionless … he just expired.

When the rescue squad guys got there they jerked him out of his chair and onto the floor. As jolts of electricity were shot through the dead man’s body, down in Theater No. 1 “Rocky Horror“ was on the Biograph’s larger screen delighting a packed house.

The audience had no idea of what was going on elsewhere in the building. A couple of times, I walked back and forth between the two scenes, feeling the bizarre juxtaposition.

Learning just how much to allow the performers to do, what limits were practical or necessary, came with experience. John Porter’s leadership of the regulars was a key to keeping it fun, but not out of control. For his part John, a VCU theater major, was given a lifetime pass to the Biograph.

On Friday, March 1, 1980, with its 88th consecutive week, “Rocky Horror” established a new record for longevity in Richmond. It broke the record of 87 weeks, established by “The Sound of Music” at the Willow Lawn in the 1960s.

That night, with Porter’s help in front of the full house, I smashed a “Sound of Music” soundtrack album with a hammer, which went over quite well with the folks on hand. A couple of the regulars came dressed as Julie Andrews, in a nice touch to underline the special night‘s theme.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s sweetheart of a movie critic, Carole Kass, wrote a nice piece on the shenanigans. She was always a big help.

On Friday, February 12, 1982, the Biograph celebrated its 10th anniversary with a party that surrounded the Richmond premiere of “My Dinner With Andre.” It was especially fitting, because the artsy film had been shot for the most part in Richmond.

To prepare for the occasion we did some touch-up work on the big collage in the hallway to Theatre No. 1 and the entire lobby got a new paint job. To make the party more fun we brought in the caterer who had prepared the dinner for the characters featured in the film, Chris Gibbs, to serve our $25-per-head guests exactly the same dish. The whole shebang was a benefit for VCU’s Anderson Gallery.

Each day of the shooting of the Louis Malle movie in the old Jefferson Hotel -- it was closed at the time, soon to be renovated -- Gibbs had shown up with a platter full of Cornish game hens and bowls of wild rice, etc. That's what the actors, Wally Shawn and Andre Gregory, had for dinner in the movie’s imaginary restaurant, supposedly in New York City.

About a year-and-a-half before the Biograph’s movie premiere party had been imagined, I had gone with Gibbs to the set, to see how it all looked. For each scene, the production crew had to pick apart the fresh sets of meals to make them look eaten/aged to the point that they fit the timing in the story.

Now, 40 years later, my hope is for these excerpts of the Biograph’s history will pass along some sense of what we who worked there meant, when we referred to the “Spirit of the Biograph.” In short, that spirit could be found in the voice of the theater’s better angels.

Although this telling of the Biograph’s story has been through my eyes, the contributions of its staff were always a considerable part of why that cinema -- with the worst seats in town -- had such a loyal following. The guys who had my back, the dutiful and underpaid assistant managers -- Chuck Wrenn, Bernie Hall, Trent Nicholas and Mike Jones -- kept that theater on the road more than a few times, when I was asleep at the wheel. My stint as manager ended in June 0f 1983.

By the time the Biograph's pair of screens went dark, many art houses and revival cinemas not unlike it had already closed all over the country. Behind on the rent, Richmond’s Biograph was seized by its landlord and closed forever in December, 1987. That was two months shy of its 16th anniversary.

Over the first year of operation we screened over 200 different features for our patrons. In all, I don’t know how many films were thrown onto the Biograph’s screens in its 190 months of existence as a repertory cinema. What I do know is that the advice of those better angels, just mentioned, made a noticeable difference in Richmond, Virginia ... in Biograph Times.

To see information about the Biograph's 40th anniversary celebration on February 11, 2012 click here.

The CAA's woeful RPI rankings

2011-12-27T12:04:00.006-05:00

Yes, it’s too soon for most Division 1 men’s basketball programs to get obsessed with their RPI position. Plenty of time for that in February. But it’s not too soon for members of a mid-major (whatever that is) conference to notice that its league is not on a track to place multiple teams in the NCAA postseason tournament field of 68.

Although in recent years the Colonial Athletic Association has made progress along those lines. This season? Not so much. There are 344 D-1 schools listed in CBS Sports’ RPI rankings. The CAA’s top ranked team, VCU, is sitting at No. 77, after winning six games in a row.

The highest ranked team VCU has beaten, so far, is Richmond (of the A-10), which is ranked No. 90. Of course, at this point in the season, the perceived strength-of-schedule of the teams is still overshadowing won/loss numbers more than it will later on.

RPI: School (record)

77: VCU (9-3)
120: UNCW (3-7)
130: Drexel (6-4)
141: JMU (6-3)
148: ODU (6-6)
194: Mason (8-4)
221: Delaware (5-5)
224: North‘n. (3-7)
271: Ga. State (9-3)
273: Hofstra (5-7)
323: W&M (1-10)
332: Towson (0-12)

Season's Greetings

2011-12-25T11:52:00.001-05:00

Season's Greetings and so forth from Rebus...

Coming Soon: The Biograph's 40th

2011-12-23T11:04:00.012-05:00

On its 40th anniversary, the Biograph Theatre, or perhaps something akin to its reanimated spirit, will serve up a pair of highly acclaimed films as a double feature.

In other words, the James River Film Society will present “Breathless” — a 50th anniversary restoration 35mm print, no less — and “Lonely Are the Brave” at the VCU Grace Street Theater on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

“Breathless” (1960): B&W. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. Note: An opportunistic thief on the run becomes irresistible to a pretty American journalism student in Paris. Uh, oh, the guy is dangerous. How long can it last?

“Lonely Are the Brave” (1962): B&W. Directed by David Miller. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau. Note: To help his friend, a free-spirited cowboy flings himself recklessly at the hobbling effects of modernity … then tries desperately to escape.

"Breathless," based on a story by François Truffaut, did much to set the French New Wave in motion. "Lonely Are the Brave," with its screenplay by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, was an apt American reaction to the artsy European films of that time.

For the JRFS, this special event will kick off a three (or more) part series titled The Golden Age of Repertory Cinema. It will also serve as a fundraiser for the volunteer run nonprofit and an opportunity to officially launch its campaign to establish a small storefront cinema in downtown Richmond.

Soon more information on the event will be available, including the scoop on the post-screening party, plenty of background on the Biograph (1972-87) and the essential how-to-buy-advance-tickets details. Please note: Only 225 seats will be occupied once the light hits the screen. So, mark your calendars and when the advance tickets become available, be smart -- don’t wait.

The JRFS's Biograph 40th Anniversary Facebook event page is here.

About Richmond's Tacky Lights

2011-12-21T15:35:00.003-05:00

The video above ran on the CBS Sunday Morning show (h/t Jackie) on Dec. 18, 2011.

For more about the tour's history click here to read a piece I wrote last year for Richmond.com about the special Tacky Lights 25th tour, which took place in 2010.

Click here to read more anecdotes from the history of the tour, which was originated by Barry “Mad Dog” Gottlieb in 1986.

Rename park after Ralph White

2011-12-13T12:30:00.004-05:00

In recognition of Ralph R. White’s unique contribution to the quality of life in the greater Richmond area, stemming from his valuable work to do with the James River Park, it is hereby proposed that the publicly-owned land that constitutes the park be renamed after White.

Some people think all the land along a river should be exploited to the fullest commercial potential by private owners/developers. White, 67, obviously belongs to a different school of thought. It’s hard to think of anybody in the last quarter century who has done more for the commonweal of Richmond, with less recognition and less tangible reward, than White.

Click here to read a Richmond Times-Dispatch article about White’s 32 years of work to make nature more accessible to the general public.

After his retirement in 2013, the park he has been the good steward of should be called the Ralph White Park on the James River, or something like that. Shouldn't it?

Too many debates?

2011-12-13T01:13:00.009-05:00

It’s looking more and more like nobody, at least no Republicans with any clout, thought enough about the possible unintended consequences -- uh, oh! -- of the GOP staging way, way too many debates.

Six months ago they must have said -- hey, the more televised debates, the better. In the modern equivalent of smoke-filled rooms, the experts must have thought -- dueling conservatives behind podiums will steal the spotlight from the White House.

Nonetheless, now it appears the likely primary voters, schooled by the avalanche of debates, have gotten so fixed on finding a tough-talking arch conservative they imagine will kick Obama's ass in the 2012 presidential debates ... they‘ve wigged out.

The Republicans actually seem poised to embrace a puffy poseur, a friendless burner of bridges, whose lumbering bandwagon must drag behind it a thousand and one trunks full of lead balloons.

The Motion of Occupy Richmond's Saturday

2011-12-12T19:03:00.002-05:00

A short video report with commentary, crafted by yours truly, on the activities of Occupy Richmond, Saturday, December 10, 2011. Spoiler: Only marching, chanting and picking up trash; no floggings or pepper spray content.

Tough Talk vs. Reality

2011-12-08T15:13:00.017-05:00

Republicans have liked bluster and tough talk for a long time. Then-President Ronald Reagan’s borrowed quip, “Make my day,” is still reverberating through GOP halls of power. When Reagan’s aides were caught selling arms to Iran -- and Ollie North was lying through his teeth to Congress -- it didn’t matter much, because they loved it so much when Reagan called out, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

When the Berlin Wall later crumbled, rather than see the myriad of factors that had rotted the far-flung Soviet empire from within, Reagan's most moonstruck devotees preferred believing the Gipper's magic words -- his tough-talk to commies -- had actually done the job.

More recently, former-Vice President Dick Cheney made tough-talk-loving Republicans swoon with his verbal brickbats thrown toward enemies, foreign and domestic. His fans could have cared less whether what Cheney said made much sense, because they loved his growling tone.

Now it seems today's Republicans want to nominate the person who will break bad, verbally, on President Barack Obama in the debates next fall ... even if it's Newt Gingrich! Perhaps they've been reveling in Rush Limbaugh's blowhard style of bashing Obama so much, they now want a similar blowhard as a candidate.

So, even if Mitt Romney gives them a much better chance of actually winning the keys to the White House, they don't care. In other words, some good number of Republicans have lost touch with reality.

However, if you go back a few decades, Republican conservatives stood on the idea that they were about hard-edged reality. In those old days, they saw liberal Democrats as being dreamers about what ought to be, wishful thinkers yearning for utopia.

Republicans today point the finger of blame at government over-regulation of Wall Street and the energy industry for the recession. Spin is one thing, but how crazy is all that?

How deep into the denial of reality does one have to be to say Obama deserves no credit for finishing off Osama bin Laden? But we are hearing just such crazy-talk from conservatives.

Now, even though it’s total bunk to say that so-called “job-creators” need tax breaks, that huge corporations need tax breaks, Republicans go on promoting those bogus ideas as if they are founded in reality.

Now some Republicans don’t even believe in science, when there are votes in pretending that evolution didn’t happen/isn’t happening. When there are votes in ignoring scientists who warn of the dangers of continuing to exacerbate climate change/global warming, to hell with reality.

Virginia currently has a hard charging attorney general who seems to be fantasizing that talking tough to wimpy scientists -- accusing them of falsifying their findings -- will scare them into changing their minds, so as to make science serve his political agenda.

Eventually, we'll all see how realistic that plan to become governor of Virginia turns out to be.

-- Words and art (from 1986) by F.T. Rea.

Newt in the days of Splattergate

2011-12-08T11:44:00.002-05:00

With Newt Gingrich surging to the frontrunner position in the field of GOP hopefuls, it takes us back to the 1990s. It takes us back to when Gingrich the would-be revolutionary lost a showdown with President Bill Clinton over shutting down the federal government. It takes us back to when Gingrich was censured for ethics violations by the House of Representatives -- the vote was a whopping 395 to 28; the fine was $300,000.

Eventually, Gingrich's hypocrisy and hubris toppled him from his high horse. Now his candidacy is blowing the dust off of scandals aplenty, back in the day.

In 1998, with impeachment in the air and the Clinton administration being hobbled by the probe into the nature of the president’s relationships with various women -- most notoriously, Monica Lewinsky -- 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. Above and below are the images that appeared on eight of the ten frames for the Splattergate cards (click on an image to enlarge it).

Allen vs. Kaine

2011-12-07T15:37:00.001-05:00

Just watched the Allen/Kaine debate.

Grades?

Well, I missed the first few minutes, but on what I saw I'm giving Kaine a B. And, Allen gets a C+.

Both candidates did a workman-like job of presenting their particular approach to how governments ought to work. The atmosphere was staid, they both stuck to boilerplate rhetoric.

While Allen may have hurt himself on birth control and abortion, I was a little surprised that he did as well as he did, in general. More such mild-mannered appearances might help to start replacing the bumbling images of him from 2006.

Perhaps, since I agree so much more with Kaine, it seemed to me he was the more effective communicator. Kaine demonstrated a firm grasp of the reasoning behind his positions.

The transmission worked fine, so the Richmond Times-Dispatch did a good job.

The Lost Imaginings

2011-12-07T00:01:00.043-05:00

On the occasion of the anniversary of his death, on Dec. 8, 1980, I can’t help but wonder what the founder of the Beatles — John Lennon, a master of word-play and sarcasm — would have to say about today's music, art and politics.

It would be anybody's guess. After all, in his nearly 20 years as a public figure Lennon’s knack for changing before our eyes was dazzling. There's no reason to think such a restless soul wouldn't have kept on changing.

In November, 2008, on the occasion of what was the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ White Album, the Vatican newspaper praised the groundbreaking British band for its body of work and forgave Lennon for his flippant 1966 quip about sudden success, “[We’re] more popular than Jesus.”

Even the bloody Vatican has changed but peace is still waiting, off-stage, for its chance.

In February of 1964 the Beatles made their initial appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. At the time most people probably didn’t connect the events, but those two appearances were only three months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Surely, the somber mood of the stunned nation, still trying to regain its balance, had something to do with why those early Beatles recordings cut through the heavy airwaves with such verve.

Clearly, there has been no explosion in the American pop music scene since them, with anything near the equivalent impact of Liverpool’s Fab Four.

Then, in 1980, the murder of moody John Lennon had an impact on the public few would have predicted. It was as if a world leader had been gunned down on the street in Manhattan.

Lennon’s obvious contributions as a songwriter and musician were huge. However, it was the working class hero’s sincerity, his sense of humor and delight in taking risks that helped set him apart from his teen idol counterparts, many of whom toyed with politics and social causes as if they were merely hairdos or dance crazes.

With the Vietnam War still underway in the early ‘70s, President Richard Nixon looked at Lennon and saw the raw power to galvanize a generation’s anti-establishment sentiments. Fearful of that potential, the Nixon administration did everything it could to hound Lennon out of the country. The details of that nasty little campaign are just as bewildering as some of the better known abuses that flowed from the Dirty Tricks Department in the White House during those scandal-ridden days.

With so many years of perspective on Lennon’s death, I have to say that even if that particular nut-case (a man I choose not to name because I refuse to add in any way to his celebrity) hadn’t pulled the trigger, it could easily have been another one; surely there were other bullets out there with John Lennon’s name on them.

Like the comets of each generation are bound to do, sometimes Lennon burned too bright for his own good. And, speaking of assassinations, at this time I’m also reminded of an item that ran in the Nashville Banner on Feb. 24, 1987. The article began with this:

Two Nashville musicians remained free on $500 bond today after they went on a magazine-shredding tear …to protest People magazine’s current cover story.

The two musicians were Gregg Wetzel, and Mike McAdam. As members of the Good Humor Band they were fixtures in Richmond’s Rock ‘n’ Roll scene in the early ‘80s. By the time the story mentioned above was published, the pair had established themselves as respected sidemen in Nashville — Wetzel on piano and McAdam on guitar.

In a nutshell, Gregg and Mike became incensed at seeing the magazine with a cover story about John Lennon’s murderer. They felt spotlighting the killer in that way might encourage another deranged wannabe to take gun in hand to go after whoever. So they fortified themselves with an adequate dose of what-it-takes — legend has it they were drinking out of an Elvis decanter — and set out on a mission to destroy the cover of every copy of the offensive publication they could find on the strip.

As the reader may know, this sort of endeavor is frequently best undertaken in the wee hours. In the course of their fifth stop, at a Nashville convenience store, the avenging angels were stopped by the cops and charged with “malicious mischief.”

Shortly afterwards, in a interview about the incident, McAdam said at the time, “If another guy like [name withheld again] sees that, he might think he can get on the cover of People magazine by killing a politician or artist.”

Bravo!

Primary among the reasons John Lennon was selected for the kill by his stalking murderer was he had a rare ability to move people. In that sense, Lennon was slain for the same reason as political figures such as Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Two thousand years ago Jesus H. Christ was taken out of the game for much the same reason: He challenged people to change; to take a chance on a life based on something better than might making right.

Although Nixon miscalculated Lennon’s intentions, the soon-to-be-disgraced president was probably right about the former Beatle’s potential to focus the anti-establishment sentiments in the air. What Nixon didn’t grasp was that Lennon — in spite of his mischievous streak — was really more interested in promoting peace than fomenting revolution.

“The cops looked at me and McAdam,” said Wetzel recently, to flesh out the 24-year-old tale, “decided we weren’t exactly flight risks and entrusted our transport to the pokey with an attractive female officer, all by her lonesome. On the way to the hoosegow, Mickey hit on the cop. True story.”

After listening to a John Lennon compilation CD, even today, some of his best post-Beatles cuts seem fresh, they still have the feeling of being experimental.

Well into what are strange days, indeed, here on the 31st anniversary of his departure from the realm of the living, this grizzled scribbler can smile, wondering what more Lennon would have imagined.

Peace.

-- 30 --

– Words by F.T. Rea. Illustration by Mike Lormand.

D-1 bowls feature 70 college football teams

2011-12-05T15:25:00.002-05:00

Starting on Dec. 17 and through Jan 9, 35 bowl games will be played.

There's the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, the Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl, the New Era Pinstripe Bowl and the season winds up with the Allstate BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 9. In all, that's 70 college football teams, which means just 50 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision (Division 1) aren't going to a postseason bowl game.

Click here to see the entire list of bowls games and the schools that will be participating at Sports Illustrated.

The Riots of 1974

2011-12-05T13:06:00.005-05:00

Some years turn out to be all about change. 1974 was surely one of those years. It was also a time in which extremes masqueraded as the norm. The most obvious change in the air in 1974 had to have been the unraveling of the presidency of Richard Nixon.

In parallel, the whole culture shifted during 1974, as tastes in music, clothes, politics, movies, drugs, and you-name-it, took off in new directions. It was also the year in which social causes suddenly went out of style.

Going into 1974, no one would have guessed the most popular gesture of group defiance on campus -- the protest march -- would morph into spontaneous gatherings to cheer on naked people, as they ran by. Yet, in the spring of 1974, streaking on college campuses became a national phenomenon.

Richmond’s police chief, Frank Duling, announced that his officers would not tolerate streakers running around in the city’s streets, alleys, etc. He didn’t care whether they were students, or not. But the VCU police department said if it took place on campus, streaking was a university matter and would be dealt with by its personnel.

The relationship between Richmond and VCU was still somewhat awkward in this period. And, leading up to this point, there had been an escalating series of incidents on, or near, the VCU campus. Police dogs had been set loose in crowds; cops had been pelted with debris.

So, Richmond’s police department had some history with what might have been seen as the anti-establishment crowd based in the lower Fan District, leading up what happened on the 800 block of W. Franklin St. on the night of March 19, 1974.

Several groups of streakers had made runs before four streakers rode down Franklin in a convertible at about 10 p.m. The crowd of 150-to-200 cheered as the motorized streakers waved. The mood was festive. I know this firsthand, because I was in that crowd. This scene played out a block from the Biograph Theatre, where I worked.

Seconds later a group of some 50 uniformed policemen stormed in on small motorbikes and in squad cars from every direction to arrest those four streakers in the car. No VCU cops were involved.

After a lull in the action, the Richmond cops inexplicably charged into the assembled bystanders. A few of those bystanders were dragged into the middle of the street.

One kid was knocked off of his bicycle and slammed repeatedly against the fender and hood of a police car. Others were beaten with clubs or flashlights. It was a shocking.

It was a riot -- a police riot.

When the dust settled 17 people had been arrested. Most of them were not streakers. While I’ve seen some clashes between policemen and citizens over the years at anti-war demonstrations and a few brawls, up close, what happened that night on Franklin St. was the most out of control I've ever seen from a large group of uniformed officers of the law.

Of course, I didn’t go to the Cherry Blossom Music Festival (which was headlined by the Steve Miller Band and Boz Scaggs) on April 27th at City Stadium. That was where the war between Richmond's partying hippies and its police force escalated beyond all previous clashes. When police officers attempted to arrest pot-smoking members of the audience, things got out of hand. Several police cars were destroyed in what turned into a four-hour battle. In all, 76 people were arrested.

This melee put the kibosh on any outdoor rock 'n' roll shows in Richmond, with alcohol available, for several years.

Back to the streakers on campus angle: Richmond's city manager, Bill Leidinger, promised me there would be an investigation into the conduct of the local police on Franklin St. on March 19 by an outside organization.

In exchange for that promise, I didn't go to the press with some volatile charges being made by a guy who said he had photos of the beatings. Unfortunately, he may have talked about them too much. He showed up at the theater, claiming the prints and negatives had been stolen from his car — while he was in a store, briefly — on his way to deliver them to me. It was strange; I had offered to put the stuff in the theater’s safe, because he told me he felt paranoid about it. The cat got so scared he left town.

Leidinger did not make good on his promise. Eventually, Richmond's police department held an in-house investigation of its own dirty doings on Franklin St. It found that it had done nothing wrong. I regretted trusting Leidinger.

1974 was a great year for movies, too. At the Biograph we premiered “Chinatown,” a superb film about corruption. We got it and several other mainstream Hollywood productions that year because Paramount and Neighborhood Theatres were having a feud. It’s still my all-time favorite feature.

Here are some other noteworthy events that happened during 1974:

January 2: President Nixon signed a bill mandating a 55 mph speed limit in order to conserve gasoline.

February 4: Patty Hurst was abducted; eight days later the Symbionese Liberation Army told the Hurst family it had to give $230 million in food aid to the poor.

March 2: Nixon was named by a federal grand jury as a co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up.

April 8: Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with his 715th round-tripper. Later we found out about the death threats Aaron had received leading up to his feat.

April 15: Patty “Tania” Hurst helped her captors rob a bank at gunpoint. Nobody knew what to make of it.

May 15: A.H. Robins Co. yielded to pressure from the feds to take its contraceptive device, the Dalkon Shield, off the market.

July 1: Argentina’s President Juan Peron died. His wife, Isabel, took over in his stead.

July 27: The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to impeach Nixon. Three days later the Supreme Court said Nixon had to surrender tape recordings of White House meetings that had been sought by the Watergate investigation’s special prosecutor.

August 8: Nixon resigned in disgrace; President Gerald Ford was sworn in. Millions of hippies stayed too long at the party to celebrate Nixon's downfall.

August 12: The Biograph Theatre closed to be converted by a 24-hour-a-day construction crew into a twin cinema in four weeks.

September 8: Ford pardoned Nixon, which all but sealed Ford’s defeat when he ran for reelection in 1976.

October 29: Muhammad Ali regained the world heavyweight boxing crown he had lost by refusing to be drafted into the army in 1967. In Zaire, Ali defeated then-champion George Forman by a knockout in the eighth round.

November 13: Yasir Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, addressed the UN with a pistol strapped to his waist. Supporters of Israel cringed.

December 12: Georgia governor Jimmy Carter announced he would run for president. Nobody noticed. Outside of his immediate circle of friends and advisers, who could have imagined it would matter?

* * *

Art and words by F.T. Rea

Scandal at Penn State is about 'rape' ... not 'sex'

2011-12-03T20:04:00.014-05:00

Let’s say a series of rapes occurred in a small town. The victims were all women who were students at a large university. Then the cops bust a man for the crimes. He is a professor at the same school.

Should the headline be Sex Scandal at the University?

No, because a sex scandal is when a prominent person gets caught having a fleshy relationship with the wrong adult. Rape is a crime!

OK, then why are the media calling what crimes Jerry Sandusky is being accused of a Sex Scandal at Penn State? Yes, I'm wondering why more people aren't pissed off about blurring the distinction between what society calls “rape” and what it calls “sex.”

Sex might imply all sorts of things, some legal, some not. Sex a vague word, but most of the time its use implies that we’re talking about a consensual act. Rape is always a crime. In this case, we're talking about the raping of several children.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter if Sandusky, or anybody else, says it was a consensual act.

But as disgusting as it might sound, to fend off the charges, it seems Sandusky might be saying the acts were expressions of his affection, rather than his lust. If you read between the lines of his bizarre statements to the press, perhaps that’s one way this guy has been able to rationalize his crimes. Maybe Sandusky thinks what he was doing was OK, because he was helping those needy boys so much.

Still, that doesn’t explain away why so many in the media are mislabeling charges of “statutory rape,” as “sex.” Are the editors unwittingly buying into the idea that if the victims didn't resist -- maybe even liked -- what went on, then it somehow mitigates Sandusky's behavior?

Infuriating bottom line: Over the years, hasn’t that been the most common defense offered by serial rapists? Violent, soulless monsters who wink at us and then say the sexy victim actually liked it?

All things Cuccinelli

2011-12-01T20:11:00.004-05:00

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli surprised few who have followed his career in politics, when he announced that he will not run for reelection as AG. Writing for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jim Nolan reports Cuccinelli has changed his mind and decided to run for governor in 2013.

[Cuccinelli] called being attorney general "the best job in my life" and said his decision was based on "my love for the commonwealth and to further the principles on which this country was founded."

Click here to read the entire article.

Click here to read a good analysis of Cuccinelli's move by AP's savvy Virginia political writer Bob Lewis.

Cuccinelli, 43, has been campaigning for higher office since the day he was sworn in as the commonwealth's attorney general. Now I suspect he's trying to figure out when will be the best time to quit his current post, ostensibly, to concentrate on his campaign.

Of course, the best time will probably be before too many of the metaphorical chickens from the questionable legal actions Cuccinelli initiated in his first year in office start coming home to roost.

Here are links to stories I have written about his performance on the job:

Click here to read "Our Showboating AG."
Click here to read "Healthcare Brouhaha: It Ain't Over …"
Click here to read "Cuccinelli the Corrector."
Click here to read "Cuccinelli demands VMFA doodles."
Click here to read "Cuccinelli’s Miracle."
Click here to read "Activist Attorney General."
Click here to read "How Free Are We to Express Hate?"

Norquist's legacy ... under a bus

2011-11-28T12:32:00.008-05:00

George W. Bush must be liking Grover Norquist more each day that goes by.

Hopefully, readers are now wondering how anyone in their right mind could find Norquist increasingly more likeable. Even those who agree wholeheartedly with Norquist’s strategy to starve the federal government into utter dysfunction might wonder about how any lobbyist could be easier to like ... each day?

OK, here’s my premise: Former presidents are always keen on polishing their legacy’s surface. But plenty of disgruntled Republicans have been mad at the most recent President Bush for some time. They say he was a bogus conservative and he did much to damage the so-called Big Tent coalition of conservatives that Ronald Reagan erected with his presidency in the 1980s.

The most unhappy of them have hurled more blame toward Bush for that transgression than any other Republican.

Now comes Norquist, with his notorious Pledge, which has most elected Republicans bound to Norquist’s self-serving whims and proclamations about revenue streams. Republican office holders fear the wrath of Norquist like nothing else. Without ever having to run for public office, by virtue of his file cabinet full of signed pledges, he has become the most important player on the GOP side of the aisle.

So, when either former-Speaker Newt Gingrich or former-Gov. Mitt Romney loses to President Barack Obama, and Democrats do surprisingly well -- coast-to-coast -- in next year’s elections, who will get the blame? What Republican will be blamed most for inciting the third party challenge from the right that will siphon off key conservative voters in swing states?

Of course, the loser at the top of the ticket will be denounced roundly, as was Sen. John McCain in 2008. With control of the House of Representatives returning to the Democrats, Speaker John Boehner will be in trouble.

But it says here that when the pundits start examining the Democratic landslide, asking what could have brought it on -- with so many still out of work -- the truth will emerge: One man did more to crash Reagan‘s Big Tent than anyone else. One rather unattractive person, who wielded his power so foolishly that history will brand him a crackpot, will emerge as the guy who destroyed a 30-year-old coalition and scattered it like leaves in the wind.

My prediction is that Grover Norquist will be named the culprit. He will be called a Judas goat. He will be likened to a sadistic inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition. Eventually, a DC Transit bus will run over him, twice to make sure, and not a single Republican will attend his funeral.

No doubt, Bush has a nickname for Norquist. I bet it’s a doozey.

Pepper-spraying cop, Lt. John Pike, for president?

2011-11-21T20:19:00.013-05:00

In what country was this photograph of police brutality taken?

Given what we've seen with this year's kaleidoscopic GOP presidential nominating process, for those picky Republicans who still can't stomach the chameleon-like Mitt Romney, what's next?

In the opinion polls we've seen a series of candidates rise and light up like fireworks, then waft dimly back to Earth. Donald Trump's gravitas flashed over the political landscape, briefly, followed by Michele Bachmann's crazy eyes and crazier statements. Rick Perry was fine until he started talking. Then Herman Cain bumbled and tumbled into scrutiny -- uh, oh!

Now, even with his uniquely ponderous baggage, Newt Gingrich seems to be having his day in the sun. All the while, Romney's approval rating in the mid-20s has remained remarkably stable ... whatever that means.

Who's the next anti-Romney?

My guess is UC Davis cop, Lt. John Pike (pictured above), who enthusiastically pepper-sprayed passive student protestors, to become a YouTube star of the first magnitude. With his nonchalant style, as he tortured those he had power over, Pike has surely become an instant folk hero in certain quarters. How long before Fox News hires him as a political commentator is anybody's guess.

Channeling the dogged spirit of Bull Connor, and in the recent tradition of non-traditional candidates like Joe the Plumber and Christine "I'm Not a Witch, Anymore" O'Donnell, Pike has already demonstrated the peculiar star power that could go a long way toward getting the vote out in those early Republican primaries next year.

First screening: 'The Harder They Come'

2011-11-21T12:12:00.014-05:00

Once I began to understand more fully what an opportunity my job as manager of the Biograph Theatre offered, I wanted the theater to be a place both detached from its surroundings and a good neighbor; like nothing else in Richmond, but a part of the Fan District’s bohemian milieu.

As a promoter, I wanted the Biograph to have an underdog personality that was likeable beyond whatever movie might be playing that particular day. I suppose an adman today would call all that stuff “branding.”

Still, I learned the hard way that when I made a mistake there would be a price to pay. When the wrong movie was booked, or if I didn’t promote a festival or midnight show properly, it led to losing money. If I hired the wrong person, we all had to live with the negative effect it had on the staff’s morale. As with any team effort, morale was one of the keys to whatever success we hoped to enjoy.

Too many bad decisions and I could lose the manager’s keys to the funhouse. Learning just how far to push the envelope in Richmond, how to be ahead of the local curve without being too scary to the wrong people, was one of the keys.

Radio played a large role in the early days at the Biograph Theatre. For a couple of years we had a sweet deal with WGOE-AM, the most popular station for the under-35 set in the Fan District. For 30-second spots we were paying a dollar or two for each airing.

In the fall of 1973, David Levy, then the most significant managing partner of the Biograph Theatres in Georgetown and Richmond, asked me to look at a film to evaluate its potential. From time to time, he did that for various reasons. In this case he had a new 35mm print of “The Harder They Come” (1972) shipped to me.

In those days at the Biograph, we used to have after-hours screenings of films we obtained in one way or another. Usually on short notice, the word would go out via the staff and our friends that we would be watching a movie at a certain time. These gatherings were essentially movie parties.

A couple of times it was 16mm boxing films from a private collection. Sometimes films that were in town to play at a film society, or a VCU class, would mysteriously appear in our booth. In those cases the borrowed movies were always returned the next day, before they were missed ... so I was told.

Although I don’t remember any moments, in particular, from that first screening of “The Harder They Come” at the Biograph, I do remember the gist of my conversation with Levy the next day. After I told him how much I liked the Jamaican movie, he asked me how I would promote it.

Well, I was ready for that question, because I’d done some brainstorming with friends after the screening. So, I told him I’d have an open-to-the-public, sneak preview free showing of the movie. I said I’d use radio only to promote it. He loved the idea.

So, on a Friday morning in November the deejays at WGOE began reading announcements of a free showing of “The Harder They Come” at the Biograph that afternoon at 3 p.m. Then, each time, they would play a song by Jimmy Cliff, the film’s star, or perhaps one by Toots and the Maytals. This pattern was continued maybe three times an hour, for four or five hours, leading up to the screening.

As I recall, some 300 people showed up and they loved the movie. It must be noted that at this time Reggae music hadn’t hit its stride in Richmond, yet. Although it was building a following in America, it was still a year, or so, away from becoming huge, nationally. Of course, Reggae was being heard in Richmond before that screening, but it was clearly still on the periphery of popular culture.

After the audience at the Biograph reacted so well, Levy wanted to book it to run as a regular feature, rather than as a midnight show. In most previous runs in other markets, it had been treated more or less as an underground movie. As it was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for its American distribution, it had a grainy, documentary look to it. Given our confidence in our reading of the test-screening’s effect on the audience, the Biograph’s brain trust decided to try playing it at regular hours.

It all worked like a charm. While, it didn’t set any records for attendance, “The Harder They Come” returned to play subsequent dates at the Biograph in Georgetown, as well as the one in the Fan.

Levy became a sub-distributor for “The Harder They Come” and when he rented it to theaters in other cities within his region, he urged them to use the same radio-promoted-free-screening tactic.

Over the next few years Reggae music became ubiquitous. It crossed over from niche to mainstream. For me, in this case, it was fun being in a position to see -- from the inside, out, to some extent -- how popular culture was developing, flying by the seat of its pants.

On the other hand, as a promoter, sometimes I bit off more than I could chew.

On October 22, 1982, “The Honeymoon Killers” (1969) opened as a midnight show. I had seen it somewhere and become convinced it would appeal to the same crowd that loved absurd comedies by Luis Buñuel and Robert Altman, plus those trash culture aficionados who had adored previously popular midnight shows, such as “Eraserhead” (1977), or “Harold and Maude” (1971).

A droll murder spree movie in black and white, it turned out “The Honeymoon Killers” mostly appealed to me … when I was in a goofy mood. I saw it as a comedy. In its two-week run, it nearly set the all-time record for worst attendance for a Biograph midnight show. As far as the sad tale of the record setter goes, that little fiasco's story is best left for another time.

The Big Stretch

2011-11-19T17:11:00.004-05:00

-- This piece was originally published by STYLE Weekly in 2002.

The prototype was assembled during a lull in seventh grade shop class. After tying some 15 rubber bands together to make a chain, a collaborator held one end of the contraption as I stepped back to stretch it out for a test. Squinting to sight along the taut line to take proper aim, finally, I let go.

The whole thing gathered itself and shot past the holder. The released tip smartly struck a target several feet beyond the holder. While the satisfaction I felt was a rush, the encouragement from the boys who witnessed that launching felt transforming.

Through a pleasant sequence of trial-and-error experiments, it was soon determined how to best maximize distance and accuracy. Once guys across the room were getting popped with the bitter end of my brainchild -- dubbed The Stretch -- the spitballs that routinely flew around classrooms in 1961 at Albert H. Hill Junior High -- were strictly old news.

The following morning, uncharacteristically, I appeared on the schoolyard an hour before the first bell. Inside a brown paper bag I had with me an updated version of the previous day’s invention. This one was some 60 links long -- the Big Stretch.

Once it was tested on the schoolyard, demonstrating its amazing new range, boys were soon shoving one another aside just to act as holders. Most of the time I did the shooting. Occasionally, one of the guys from my inner circle was permitted to be the shooter. As the wonder whizzed by it made such a splendid noise that just standing close by the holder was a thrill, too. On the asphalt playground behind the yellow brick school building an enthusiastic throng cheered each flight.

The Big Stretch went on to make an appearance at an afternoon football game, where its operators established to the delight of the audience that cheerleaders on the sideline at a football game could be zapped on their bouncing butts with impunity from more than 25 yards away. After a couple of days of demonstrations around the neighborhood and at Willow Lawn shopping center, again, I significantly lengthened the chain of rubber bands.

But the new version -- about 100 rubber bands long -- proved too heavy for its own good. It was not as accurate or powerful as the previous model. Then came the morning a couple of beefy ninth-grade football players weren’t content with taking a single turn with the new Big Stretch. Although there was a line behind them they demanded another go.

Surrounded by seventh-grade devotees of the Big Stretch, I stood my ground and refused. But my fair-weather-friend entourage was useless in a pinch. Faced with no good options, I fled with my claim-to-fame in hand. In short order I was cornered and pounded until the determined thieves got the loot they wanted. They fooled around for a while trying to hit their buddies with it. Eventually, several rubber bands broke and the Big Stretch was literally pulled to pieces and scattered.

By then my nose had stopped bleeding, so I gathered my dignity and shrugged off the whole affair, as best I could. I choose not to make another version of the Big Stretch. A couple of other kids copied it, but nobody seemed to care. Just as abruptly as it had gotten underway, the connected-rubber-band craze ran out of gas at Hill School.

It was over.

At that time the slang meaning of “cool” had an underground cachet which has been stretched out of shape since. We’re told the concept of cool, and the term itself, seeped out of the early bebop scene in Manhattan in the ‘40s. That may be, but to me the same delightful sense of spontaneity and understated defiance seems abundantly evident in forms of expression that predate the Dizzy Gillespie/Thelonious Monk era at Minton’s, on 118th Street.

Wasn’t that Round Table scene at the Algonquin Hotel, back in the ‘20s, something akin to cool? If Dorothy Parker wasn’t cool, who the hell was? And, in the decades that preceded the advent of bebop jazz, surely modern art -- with its cubism, surrealism, constructivism, and so forth -- was laying down some of the rules for what became known as cool.

Cool’s zenith had probably been passed by the time I became enamored with the Beats, via national magazines. Widespread exposure and cool were more or less incompatible. Significantly, cool -- with its ability to be flippant and profound in the same gesture -- rose and fell without the encouragement of the ruling class. Underdogs invented cool out of thin air. It was a style that was beyond what money could buy.

The artful grasping of a moment’s unique truth was cool. However, just as the one-time-only perfect notes blown in a jam session can’t be duplicated, authentic cool was difficult to harness; even more difficult to mass-produce.

By the ‘70s, the mobs of Hippies attuned to stadium Rock ‘n’ Roll shrugged nothing off. Cool was probably too subtle for them to appreciate. The Disco craze ignored cool. Punk Rockers searched for it in all the wrong places, then caught a buzz and gave up.

Eventually, in targeting self-absorbed Baby Boomers as a market, Madison Avenue promoted everything under the sun -- including schmaltz, and worse -- as cool. The expression subsequently lost its moorings and dissolved into the soup of mainstream vernacular. Time tends to stretch slang expressions thin as they are assimilated; pronunciations and definitions come and go.

Since then people say, “ku-ul,” simply to express ordinary approval of routine things.

The process of becoming cool, then popular, pulled the Big Stretch to pieces. Once the experimental aspect of it was over it got old, like any worn out joke. Then it began to play as just another showoff gimmick, which was something less-than-cool, even to seventh-graders a long time ago.

Cool was elusive by its nature. More importantly, in that time being a copycat was never cool.

-- 30 --

History written on the fly

2011-11-19T15:52:00.003-05:00

For an account of how the Occupy Wall Street movement got started, click here to read "Reawakening The Radical Imagination: The Origins of Occupy Wall Street" by Matt Sledge for the Huffington Post.

Here's a brief excerpt:

The movement didn't get that big simply because AdBusters, a Canadian magazine, sent out a flashy email promoting it, or because the hacker collective Anonymous flicked out a few tweets. Instead, it took a group of about 200 committed activists 47 days to outline the ground rules that have allowed the protest to flourish.

Previous SLANTblog posts on Occupy/The 99%:

Mic Check at Monroe Park is here.
Occupy/The 99% Is Already Winning is here.
Through a Partisan Prism Darkly is here.
Occupy Richmond's Halloween Move is here.
The 99% @ City Hall is here.
Cantor's Overplayed Hand is here.

Cantor's Overplayed Hand

2011-11-18T10:54:00.004-05:00

The video above is my three-and-a-half minute take, Cantor’s Overplayed Hand, on part of what spawned the Occupy/The 99% phenomenon. More specifically, it's a commentary on the link between the Republican Party’s longstanding gross-out-the-voters-to-keep-the-turnout-down tactics and the OWS/The 99% movement.

Note: There may be off-the-wall, or even satirical, material included. So don’t let that scare you. And, for the record, or just in case you’d rather not view the film, the script I wrote for it is as follows:

For decades Republicans have been using a low-road tactic that has helped them win elections: They have deliberately tried to make politics seem so frustrating and disgusting that a lot of people have opted to ignore that side of life … when they can. The process has worked like a charm, because it usually discouraged more Democrats than it did Republicans. It’s no secret that Republicans have seemed to benefit from low turnouts for a long time.

The elections of 2010 provided a good example of what I mean. Lots of liberals were so grossed out by the growling repetition of the Tea Party’s rants, together with what they perceived as the Democrats’ wimpy response, they simply ignored Election Day.

Rather than cite a laundry list of other examples of how this style of gaming elections has worked over the years, usually to the advantage of the GOP, I’m going point out that I sense a change in the air that stems from recent events. Over the summer, to protect the interests of America’s wealthiest one percent, Congressional Republicans threatened to push America into a default, to renege on its debts.

But that time Rep. Eric Cantor and his teammates overplayed their hand so egregiously it became a tipping point. The GOP’s unprecedented brinkmanship blew back into its face. Forget about the phony Super Committee, this time the gross-out strategy helped launch the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.

When some good number of young citizens returned to school this fall, it seems they had lost their faith in governments at all levels in America. Of course, lots of factors caused the OSW/The 99% movement to materialize this fall. What happened in Egypt and in Wisconsin earlier this year surely played a part, too.

Now the seven-week-old movement has already changed the national conversation. A new, free-spirited force seems to be affecting the political landscape. My hunch is that this country’s three-decades-long drift to the right ended abruptly on Sept. 17th, with the birth of this year’s Occupy movement. Wishful thinking?

Maybe, but Mic Checks are changing political vernacular.

Moreover, in a message aimed at Cantor, and other cock-of-the-walk politicians who routinely do the One Percent’s bidding, I’m saying this: The previously scheduled frog-marching of the American culture back to when it was OK to dump Kepone in the James River, back to before Democrats provided Americans their Social Security program — that forced march back to Gilded Age — it has been cancelled.

Meanwhile, will the GOP’s propaganda machine stop trying to hold down election turnouts, using whatever means necessary?

Of course, they won’t.

Will that immoral, anti-worker, anti-student, anti-99% strategy keep working forever to serve the 1%?

We’ll see.

The 1982 Handbill Art Show

2011-11-15T20:50:00.021-05:00

On Friday, February 12, 1982, the Biograph celebrated its 10th anniversary with a party that surrounded the Richmond premiere of “My Dinner With Andre.” It was especially fitting, because the artsy film had been shot for the most part in Richmond.

To prepare for the occasion we did some touch-up work on the big collage in the hallway to Theatre No. 1 and the entire lobby got a new paint job. To make the party more fun we brought in the caterer who had prepared the dinner for the characters featured in the film, Chris Gibbs (a friend), to serve our $25-per-head guests exactly the same dish. The whole shebang was a benefit for VCU’s Anderson Gallery.

Each day of the shooting of the Louis Malle movie in the old Jefferson Hotel -- it was closed at the time, soon to be renovated -- Gibbs had shown up with a platter full of Cornish game hens and bowls of wild rice, etc. That's what the actors, Wally Shawn and Andre Gregory, had for dinner in the movie’s imaginary restaurant, supposedly in New York City.

About a year-and-a-half before the Biograph’s movie premiere party had been imagined, I had gone with Gibbs to the set, to see how it all looked. For each scene, the production crew had to pick apart the fresh sets of meals to make them look eaten/aged to the point that they fit the timing in the story.

While putting the party together with the Biograph’s staff, Gibbs and the Anderson Gallery was a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun. Fortunately, the Biograph’s owners in DeeCee were 99 percent behind such promotions. For me, it was the sort of special project that I loved, even as my passion for the day-to-day routine of operating a movie theater was slowly dissolving into a blur.

Later that same year another special project appeared, to become my raison d'être for months. Although it was a big distraction from my duty to find solutions for the cinema’s endemic problems, winning the “handbill case” still stands as my favorite singular achievement as manager of the Biograph.

In my thinking, first it was about free speech. I had long admired freedom-of-speech heroes and people who fought censorship, so I was eager to do my bit. In a more practical sense, it was also about defending a promotional tool I had relied upon for 10 years. So, it was about keeping the theater open. From experience I knew eye-catching handbills posted on certain utility poles and in particular shop windows were vital to promoting our smorgasbord of attractions, especially midnight shows.

In the larger picture, culturally, it was Rock ‘n’ Rollers vs. Yuppies. The Fan District Association was dead set against handbills promoting nightlife. Prompted by that civic association’s pressure, the City of Richmond officially proclaimed the matter to be strictly about trash.

So, early in 1982, City Council tweaked the statutes about posting notices in the public way. Then the police department began cracking down directly on those who posted handbills. Not so much the notices posted about yard sales or lost dogs. No, the focus was strictly on flyers promoting entertainment.

After noting the arrests of fellow handbillers, musicians who played in popular bands, David Stover (Prevaricators) and Charles Williams (Good Guys), I decided to confront the situation. While some other promoters in the Fan District chose to let the crackdown stop them, I simply went about my routine handbilling rounds, as I had since 1972.

Which led to an 8½-by-11-inch paper poster for “The Atomic Café,” which opened on June 24, 1982, becoming evidence. When a cop brought the flyer to the Biograph, to issue us a warning, I freely admitted to having posted it on a utility pole. So, he handed me a summons to appear in General District Court.

Subsequently, I told my bosses it would cost the Biograph nothing in legal fees, but that I wanted to fight the City of Richmond on freedom of speech grounds. I assured them a couple of my friends who were lawyers would handle the defense.

The study of laws and decisions about free speech and using the public way for the common good became my obsession. Scheming about how to present the argument filled my head for the next four months. First, I wanted the court to see an important context -- our society tolerates all sorts of signage on utility poles, because the messages are considered useful.

Then, I wanted to convince a judge that once you considered all the handbills in the neighborhood around VCU, as a whole, it could be seen as an information system. It was a system that some people were relying on for information, just as others might rely on newspapers obtained from a box sitting on public sidewalk.

One person might read the entertainment section in a local periodical, another person might glance at the utility poles in their neighborhood, to read the posters touting live music shows or poetry readings.

To gather plenty of good examples to use as evidence, we had a handbill art show at the Biograph. On October 5, some 450 flyers, posted on black foam core panels, hung in the theater’s lobby. In all, there were probably three dozen, or so, different artists represented. A group of impromptu art experts acted as judges to select the best five of the show. Naturally, there was a keg of beer on hand to grease the wheels of progress.

One of Phil Trumbo’s Orthotones (later Orthotonics) handbills was named Best in Show. Most people who knew much about the handbill artists in the Fan would have said Trumbo was top dog, so it was a popular decision by the judges. Trumbo would later testify at the trial as a “handbill expert.”

Two of the handbill art show judges from that night also served as expert witnesses at the trial. They were: Gerald Donato and David Manning White. Donato was an art professor at VCU; White was the retired head of the mass communications department at VCU. The best 100 of the handbills from the show went to court as evidence.

After all was said and done, we won. On Saturday, November 6, the Frank Green-penned story about winning the handbill case was draped stylishly across the top of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s front page.

In dismissing the case, the judge (Jose R. Davila) appears to have opened the question of the enforceability of the city law used by police to combat the proliferation of advertising and other signs on utility poles and other “fixtures” in “public ways.”

The case concerned the seemingly simple issue of the allegedly illegal posting of a handbill. But before it was over, the proceedings touched on topics that included free speech, soup cans, and nuclear energy, and invoked names of such diverse personalities as Andy Warhol and the city’s public safety director.

Rea’s attorneys, John G. Colan and Stuart R. Kaplan, argued the city ordinance was unconstitutional because it violated Rea’s right of freedom of speech.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney William Bray argued that Rea had means of expressing himself and of advertising the movies other than the posting of handbills on public property.

Davila did not rule the city ordinance unconstitutional, but he dismissed the charge despite the defense’s concession that Rea had the handbills posted.

Without elaborating, Davila said he was concerned about the use of the term “public way” in the ordinance.

“The city, the GRTC, VCU, churches, the Boys Club and all the candidates use the public’s utility poles to post their signs. They know as well as the general public that there is nothing pretty about a naked pole. Handbills pose no danger to anyone. Is free speech only for some?” Rea asked in a handbill he had printed up before yesterday’s trial.

So I walked. We probably had a little party, but I don‘t remember.

A month or so later, I began planning the Biograph’s 11th anniversary program, which would feature Abel Gance’s restored masterpiece, “Napoleon” (1927). That would prove to be the last special project, the last anniversary party that I planned for the Biograph ... while it was still open.

Stay tuned...

Key questions about the Penn St. coverup

2011-11-14T14:52:00.000-05:00

A question about the Penn State facilitating-the-predator scandal for which there is no good answer:

If Mike McQueary had walked into a room and seen Jerry Sandusky beating a cornered 10-year-old boy with a bullwhip, or a two-by-four, would McQueary have walked away? Would he have simply told his boss, Joe Paterno, something about the incident the next day and let it go at that?

After all, short of paralyzing the victim, would a beating such as that really be any less damaging to his long-term health than what is alleged to have happened?

Unfortunately, the next question has to be:

If McQueary had walked in on what one might assume was one of the most disturbing sights of his life, could he really have walked away without taking any direct action to stop the crime from continuing? So, that makes me wonder what else McQueary might have seen in his travels that would make what he claims he saw Sandusky doing to a helpless child seem like something to mostly keep quiet about?

What could possibly make the eyewitness, McQueary, opt to participate in such a coverup?

2011-11-14T12:19:00.000-05:00

Spinning won't cure the problems at Penn State

2011-11-12T20:01:00.009-05:00

This Washington Times article, “At Penn State’s stadium, profanity, scorn greet one father’s protest,” penned by Nathan Fenno, suggests the shameful denial problem up in Happy Valley still needs a lot of work.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — In the middle of Curtin Road, John Matko held one handwritten sign in his right hand and rested another against his jeans. Two inches of black tape obscured Penn State’s logo on the 34-year-old father’s hat, as he tried to ignore the jeers, slaps and beer hurled at him.

“Put abused kids first,” one of Matko’s signs read. “Don’t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.”

Penn State's Beaver Stadium loomed 30 yards away, rumbling with the first roars of Saturday’s game with Nebraska. The sea of blue-clad supporters wearing gray fedoras and camouflage hunting jackets and “This is JoePa’s house” T-shirts parted around Matko.

“That is such [expletive]!” one young woman screamed at him after glancing at the signs. “Who the [expletive] do you think you are?”

Eyes hidden by blue aviator sunglasses, Matko didn’t respond.

As I watched (about half of) the Nebraska at Penn State game on TV this afternoon, much of the commentary I heard about the facilitating-the-predator-coach scandal amounted to gushing over how the healing has already started. How the riot Wednesday night was an aberration, not at all indicative of how Penn State people truly feel … now, upon reflection.

Listening to the damage control -- the ESPN spin and the Penn State slant -- I had to wonder if a college town community that for decades has been bound together by its idolatry of Paterno could actually wake up, snap out of its denial and start to change so fast.

Change in the football-worshiping culture at Penn State?

Maybe ... some day.

Today?

Nebraska 17, Penn State 14.

700,000 Americans have moved their money

2011-11-11T14:34:00.002-05:00

A note from Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos:

To SLANTblog,

Since September 29, at least 700,000 Americans have moved their money out of big banks and into credit unions.

The big banks say they don't care because they are getting rid of their least profitable clients. In reality, they are so freaked out by what's happening that some have locked their doors and even called the police on customers who tried to close their accounts.

Click here for ten amazing stories about big banks desperately trying to stop customers from closing their accounts. Please share the stories with a friend, too. Everyone needs to know we have the big banks on the run.

Saying it ain't so for too long

2011-11-11T12:02:00.013-05:00

The unfolding story of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's alleged crimes is truly mind-boggling. The firing of 84-year-old Joe Paterno -- heretofore, a living legend -- who has been Penn State's head football coach since 1966, was unthinkable in most sports fans’ minds until the horrific Sandusky child abuse story broke over last weekend.

But as shocking as this has been to most of us, it's obvious there are people in Happy Valley who have known this day of reckoning was coming for some time. From here on that part of the story is going to get steadily more important. It may lead to people going to jail, besides just Sandusky.

In my memory there’s never been a sports-related scandal like this one. But as others have already pointed out, this is more than a sports story. It's more than an aberrant story about a predator. This story is about idolatry. It’s about money and politics. At the bottom line, it’s about the corrosive effect power can have when it grows, unchecked, to bully all sorts of supposedly decent people into doing shameful things.

Eventually, Penn State is going to have to fire everyone who was in any way connected to Paterno. That's going to mean everybody! To clean house, all the assistants, the secretaries, the people who washed the uniforms, popcorn vendors at the games, etc., will all have to go.

Who knows? This may even mean a SMU-like death penalty for football at Happy Valley.

Over the last few days, each time I’ve read about what’s been going on at Penn State, I’ve said to myself, that's it! I'm so disgusted that I'm not going to read any more about it. Then I read/watch the next story, anyway.

So here are some links to related stories that seem worthwhile, without being over-the-top on being sensational:

Click here to read “Penn State tragedy shows danger of making coaches false idols”
Click here to read “Coaching icon Paterno sacked in ignominy”
Click here to read “Abuse victim's mother says Paterno had to be fired”
Click here to read “The Question Joe Paterno Needs to Answer”
Click here to read “Will Paterno Scandal Hurt Pennsylvania Republicans”
Click here to read “Who knew what about Jerry Sandusky?”
Click here to read "Penn State Sponsors Anxiously Watch How Events Unfold at University"

A long way from home ... on a horse

2011-11-11T08:59:00.005-05:00

A Veterans Day Remembrance: In 1916 the fit young men who had already volunteered to be members of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues were dispatched to Brownsville, Texas, to watch over the border and chase Mexican bandit/revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had crossed the border to stage a few raids on American soil ... or, so people said.

To do the job the Richmonders were quickly converted into a cavalry unit.

My grandfather, Frank W. Owen (1893-1968), seen at the age of 23 in the 1916 photo above, was one of those local boys in that Richmond Blues outfit.

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 across the pond to France to finish off the Great War -- the war to end all wars.

Frank Owen grew up in South Richmond in what was then called Manchester. Before his active duty he had mostly made his living as a vocalist. The stories I remember him telling from his years as a soldier were all about his singing gigs, playing football and poker, and various other adventures.

Owen is on the right in the photo above. Like other men of his generation, who saw war firsthand, he apparently saw no benefit in talking about the actual horrors he'd seen. At least I never heard such stories. However, he was always quick to point with pride at having been in the Richmond Blues, then seen by many in Richmond as an elite corps.

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

F. W. Owen believed there was a coward at the heart of every bully. Without hesitation, he depended completely on his own view of life. He passed what he could of that self-reliance on to me. The badge below is from the mid-1950s.

My grandson's middle name is Owen. It's a name he should always wear proudly. A long way from home, almost a century ago, his great-great-grandfather certainly did.

The Origins of Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-10T19:59:00.004-05:00

The movement didn't get that big simply because AdBusters, a Canadian magazine, sent out a flashy email promoting it, or because the hacker collective Anonymous flicked out a few tweets. Instead, it took a group of about 200 committed activists 47 days to outline the ground rules that have allowed the protest to flourish.

Abuse is Forging Tomorrow's Bloody Monsters

2011-11-10T10:53:00.013-05:00

The mind-boggling story at Penn State has reminded me of a piece about child abuse I penned for STYLE Weekly in 1999. "Abuse is Forging Tomorrow's Bloody Monsters" was written not long after the shocking Columbine High School incident.

Today I might write it somewhat differently, but the point still hits home about how our society, as a whole, routinely refuses to look unflinchingly at the obvious cause of so much trouble and heartache.

Hey, I know people who usually believe the accusers are making most of it up, regardless of what sort of abuse is being reported. They think the reports of child molestation by Catholic priests have been greatly exaggerated. They even believe disgraced boxer Mike Tyson was not a rapist.

Here's the text of the 12-year-old piece:

We've all had to listen to almost monotonous explanations of the reasons for the explosion of teen-age mayhem: too many guns, not enough morality, too much violence on TV, not enough personal responsibility. These are all true. But as the news directors and speech writers spin in their desk chairs to find out what we want to hear, there is one aspect of the picture that is being avoided.

Perhaps this reason is considered an uncomfortable subject. Maybe it strikes a little too close to home. Consequently, we aren't hearing much about the common denominator in many massacres, wherever they occur. Instead of recognizing the systematic abuse of children as the key factor it has always been in such matters, we fret and search for peripheral reasons to explain the bewildering carnage.

In a knee-jerk response to the recent school yard blood baths, some would make schools and streets safe by putting a cop with unlimited power in every classroom and on every street corner. Hopefully, most Americans would still see such a cure as worse than the malady.

But the truth is we don't enjoy absolute freedom and never have. It is the balance between freedom and control that is the secret to making our system of democracy, free speech, and free markets work.

America is a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. Elections are held at regular intervals to control public policy. Freedom of speech doesn't allow for a fool to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, and so forth. What we do have is a tradition of wanting as much freedom as possible because we believe that it brings out the best in us. Amen.

Returning to the trouble that launched this most recent national debate — teen-age violence — I'm convinced we need to divide our thinking into long term and short term, or perhaps indirect and direct.

The long-term/indirect approach should recognize that the four obvious reasons for the escalating violence are excellent areas for concentrated efforts.

However, there is a solid reason that violence on TV, or the availability of guns, hasn't made us all blow each others' brains out. And that reason is tragically simple: Most of us have not gone through a soul-crushing experience of abuse as a child.

Some children who are tied up and beaten bloody will not break. Some little girls who are sexually molested by an adult they naturally trusted will outgrow the painful confusion and learn to trust again. Some little boys, who hear gunshots outside their windows most nights, will resist giving in to fear and grow up without joining a street gang. Some kids who suffer from cold neglect will be strengthened by the ordeal and become good citizens.

The others, the ones who can't overcome their bad luck, may shoot each other at school. If they survive the nightmare of their childhood, they are likely to end up being a perpetual nuisance to everyone. At some point it's probably too late to help them. However sad that may be, it's the truth.

By the time the most damaged kids are in school, they aren't really that hard to spot.

Here's the unvarnished truth: We can't continue to allow kids that we know are powder kegs to play with matches. Children of this ilk must be watched constantly and have absolutely no access to weapons with more potential than a spitball.

Here's the short term/direct strategy: We have to accept that children who are being subjected to systematic abuse must be taken away from the source of that abuse immediately. It's their only hope. It may be our only hope.

Yes, in some cases this essay is advocating the government's bold intrusion into private rooms behind locked doors. And that will always be painful. Yet, in order to protect the freedom of the many, we must be willing to focus our effort on the few who are central to this particular problem.

Once again, it's a matter of balance.

So forget about ranting at Goth fashions or the Internet. Unless we slow down the assembly line process of neglect and overt abuse that is forging tomorrow's bloody monsters, there's precious little use in talking about what else we are going to do to make schools, streets, workplaces or homes safe.

If we continue to allow our politicians to demagogue this issue, if we allow an irresponsible media to go on promoting aberrant behavior in the name of reporting on it, we do ourselves no good.

Furthermore, if we fail to act effectively to slow down the assembly line, then the very tenets of our free society could soon be ablaze on the altar of order, at any price.

Not much has changed on this front in recent years. Most people are still averting their eyes. Then again, there is this discouraging news about child abuse.

Cantor's Overplayed Hand

2011-11-09T11:20:00.006-05:00

The video above is a commentary on the link between the Republican Party's longstanding gross-out-the-voters-to-keep-the-turnout-down tactics and the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street/The 99% movement.

Note: There may be off-the-wall, or even satirical, material included. So don't let that scare you. And, for the record, or just in case you'd rather not view my three-and-a-half-minute film, the script I wrote for it is as follows:

For decades Republicans have been using a low-road tactic that has helped them win elections: They have deliberately tried to make politics seem so frustrating and disgusting that a lot of people have opted to ignore that side of life ... when they can. The process has worked like a charm, because it usually discouraged more Democrats than it did Republicans. It’s no secret that Republicans have seemed to benefit from low turnouts for a long time.

The elections of 2010 provided a good example of what I mean. Lots of liberals were so grossed out by the growling repetition of the Tea Party’s rants, together with what they perceived as the Democrats’ wimpy response, they simply ignored Election Day.

Rather than cite a laundry list of other examples of how this style of gaming elections has worked over the years, usually to the advantage of the GOP, I’m going point out that I sense a change in the air that stems from recent events. Over the summer, to protect the interests of America’s wealthiest one percent, Congressional Republicans threatened to push America into a default, to renege on its debts.

But that time Rep. Eric Cantor and his teammates overplayed their hand so egregiously it became a tipping point. The GOP’s unprecedented brinkmanship blew back into its face. Forget about the phony Super Committee, this time the gross-out strategy helped launch the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.

When some good number of young citizens returned to school this fall, it seems they had lost their faith in governments at all levels in America. Of course, lots of factors caused the OSW/The 99% movement to materialize this fall. What happened in Egypt and in Wisconsin earlier this year surely played a part, too.

Now the seven-week-old movement has already changed the national conversation. A new, free-spirited force seems to be affecting the political landscape. My hunch is that this country’s three-decades-long drift to the right ended abruptly on Sept. 17th, with the birth of this year’s Occupy movement. Wishful thinking?

Maybe, but Mic Checks are changing political vernacular.

Moreover, in a message aimed at Cantor, and other cock-of-the-walk politicians who routinely do the One Percent’s bidding, I’m saying this: The previously scheduled frog-marching of the American culture back to when it was OK to dump Kepone in the James River, back to before Democrats provided Americans their Social Security program -- that forced march back to Gilded Age -- it has been cancelled.

Meanwhile, will the GOP’s propaganda machine stop trying to hold down election turnouts, using whatever means necessary?

Of course, they won’t.

Will that immoral, anti-worker, anti-student, anti-99% strategy keep working forever to serve the 1%?

We’ll see.

The 99% @ City Hall

2011-11-03T19:12:00.006-04:00

The footage for this short video piece was shot outside of Richmond, Virginia's City Hall on Nov. 2, 2011. The commentary on the demonstration at City Hall and about the Occupy/99% movement, in general, is by yours truly.

At Mayor Dwight Jones' behest, the Occupy Richmond encampment at Kanawha Plaza had been disassembled by the Richmond Police Department two days before. Nine arrests were made. The charges ranged from trespassing to being in a public park after dark.

More demonstrations in front of local branches of big banks are apparently in the works for Occupy Richmond.

Click here to view an earlier video of mine on Occupy Richmond in Monroe Park.

Occupy Richmond's Halloween Move

2011-10-31T23:47:00.007-04:00

Let the record show the 15-day Occupy Richmond demonstration/encampment at Kanawha Plaza was broken up by forces of the Richmond Police Department in the wee hours of the chilly morning on Halloween Day, 2011.

Irony aside, most of the local occupiers left the area when ordered to go by the cops. That, while reports say nine stalwarts were arrested for refusing to move. A meeting in Monroe Park was called for the afternoon.

What’s next?

As cynics have predicted, maybe the movement itself will fizzle, nationwide, as the nights get longer and colder. Then again, the entire Occupy Wall Street/The 99% phenomenon may have taken on a life of its own. So, like an impossible-to-kill monster in a midnight show, it may be mutating into something much more formidable and relentless.

Happy Halloween.

Updates:

Click here for a report from WCVE-FM.

Click here to read a firsthand account at Occupy Richmond.

Click here for a firsthand account at Auspicious Jots.

Cain's past under scrutiny

2011-10-31T10:22:00.010-04:00

A story that dredges up something about sexual harassment on the job from Herman Cain's past, when he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association, was published by Politico last night. So far, we don 't have the raw details. Whether this still-developing revelation will turn out to be a loose thread that unravels Cain's long-shot bid to win the Republican presidential nomination, or a false alarm, remains to be seen.

The Cain camp is hitting back, but the language being used is not necessarily a good sign for Cain. Among other things, J.D. Gordon, a Cain spokesperson, said, "...Sadly, we’ve seen this movie played out before — a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics,” Gordon said.

Perhaps Cain's spinner knows that a "liberal" gave the story to Politico. But if he doesn't know that to be true, I have to say it's more likely that a trickster who supports one of Cain's Republican rivals planted this story, a story that isn't likely to go away by simply blaming unnamed liberals and the media.

Stay tuned...

The Pursuit of Extremism

2011-10-29T20:02:00.012-04:00

In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (1909-98) famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Now, in the name of defending liberty, Republican candidates are debating one another over who is more against abortion in every case, to the point that some now seem to be opposed to birth control. They argue over who is more willing to allow the environment to be poisoned for the sake of quick and dirty money. They fight over who is more willing to beat up on teachers, veterans and firefighters to protect the fortunes of corporate CEOs and the zillionaires of Wall Street.

In 2011, Republican candidates are striving to top their opponents in the all-out pursuit of extremism … for the sake of extremism.

Through a partisan prism darkly

2011-10-27T15:53:00.010-04:00

From its inception, what we’ve seen of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon has been shaped in some part by our own point of view. The occupiers hadn’t been in Lower Manhattan long before the gathering movement was being seen through familiar partisan prisms.

Some Democrats rushed to praise the demonstrators, some Republicans rushed to put them down. For the first week, it seemed the mainstream media were rushing to trivialize what was happening in Zuccotti Park. Outside the ranks of party politics and beyond the reach of slanted newsy talk shows there had to have been millions of regular people who were mildly amused and wondered what was going on.

So millions of Americans awoke to find themselves in the midst of a stampede to label the movement as good, bad or insignificant. “What do the protestors want?” demanded a discordant chorus of liberal and conservative pundits.

Since its first week the burgeoning OWS movement that has labeled itself The 99% has spread from Manhattan to cities coast-to-coast, and to other countries. So, most people who want to see for themselves what’s going on can simply take a look by visiting one of many “occupations” in public spaces all over America.

However, for some people, rather than seek out firsthand knowledge of what’s been going on, it’s too easy to project their own feelings.

Conservatives can depend on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to tell them all they really want to know:

(To paraphrase) Occupiers are mostly moochers and lazy good-for-nothings. Plenty of communists and jihadists are embedded within the OWS/The 99% movement, which reeks of George Soros’ money ... and so forth.

Still, opponents of the OWS/The 99% movement aren’t the only ones who are complaining about how the demonstrators seem unfocused and in need of forming a clear agenda. Democrats have been projecting their preconceived notions, as well. Clearly, some want to see today’s demonstrators as resembling Civil Rights marchers and Vietnam War protestors.

Well, from my vantage point, this year’s demonstrations look different from their supposed counterparts in the 1960s. There is no particular overriding law or governmental policy the demonstrators have been citing as the bull‘s-eye for their protests. If anything, perhaps a general opposition to the concept of “corporate personhood” is a popular target.

Rather than pursuing specific goals through influencing the government, OWS/The 99% seems to be about the process, itself. It seems to be about refusing to obediently accept the ticky-tacky future the young demonstrators sense is being foisted upon them by the powers that be.

These demonstrations will end, one way or another. Sadly, we have already seen violence break out in some cities. My guess is that brutal police tactics will do little to make the OWS/The 99% movement fold up its tents and go away.

So, this can be read as a heads-up to Richmond’s Mayor Dwight Jones -- don‘t create a problem you can‘t possibly solve. Later on, there will be plenty of time to worry about what precedents are being set and whatever complaints the Tea Party wants to hurl your way.

Still, nobody knows when or what will cause the demonstrations and sleep-ins in public spaces to end. Not in New York, Oakland, or Richmond. However, when they do, what happens next is what this thing is really all about.

That’s my view.

Once all the tents have been folded up and people go home, or wherever, what happens next will depend on what the process has taught the demonstrators. It will depend on what they, especially the youngest among them, take away from their experience as occupiers.

The demonstrators have been learning how to cooperate and how to organize. They are learning about how tedious democracy can be; they are learning civics. Then, too, they are connecting with their counterparts, who empathize with their concerns about the future, all over the world.

What began on September 17, 2011, has set a new force in motion. The most important thing about this force probably isn’t what it demands now, or what shape it will take this week. People who think they already know what effect it will have on 2012’s elections are kidding themselves.

Yes, it’s been disappointing to see some of the local reactions to what Occupy Richmond has been doing in Kanawha Plaza. To scrape the bottom of the barrel there’s Dale Brumfield’s snide Back Page piece for STYLE Weekly, which hardly passes as an analysis of the movement. Rather than an essay, Brumfield offers his readers a heap of low-brow zingers crafted to piss off folks he likes to irritate.

Fortunately, there are ways to follow this movement’s story without having to rely on the likes of STYLE Weekly.

Bottom line: There are times when it's better to rely on your own firsthand knowledge, rather than the labels others might want you to use.

Too many cigarettes

2011-10-27T11:52:00.004-04:00

These little drawings (click to enlarge) were part of a pitch I made to the Virginia chapter of the American Cancer Society in 1985, to make a 30-second public service announcement for them in 16mm. Each frame shown here represented a decade, starting with the 1950s. The film was to have used a series of about 10 still photos, one fading into the next. Essentially, it was about women smoking too long.

My aim was to make the act of smoking cigarettes look less stylish. The last scary frame (not shown here) of the PSA would have depicted the brunette in a hospital bed with tubes going into her face. 1985 was the year after my mother had died of lung cancer. The executive director of the ACS turned me down, saying she liked it, but it just couldn't be done ... not in Richmond, Virginia. So, the little film was never made.

Lou DiBella on the stadium issue

2011-10-25T15:30:00.003-04:00

In response to this article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the Richmond Flying Squirrels' managing partner put out a statement via press release. Here is Lou DiBella's statement:

“The Flying Squirrels will continue to provide the quality of baseball, entertainment and community impact that the Greater Richmond area has grown to expect from us. We are not actively looking to other locations at this time, but we have always maintained that our long term success is dependent upon a new facility that our terrific Front Office Staff [sic] can maximize for the benefit of the entire metro region. We believe that the RMA and its’ [sic] stakeholders share this same desire and that we will collectively work towards accomplishing this common goal sooner rather than later.”

A new JRFJ piece

2011-10-18T22:33:00.002-04:00

To read my piece about midnight shows in the James River Film Journal click here.

OWS/The 99% Is Already Winning

2011-10-18T15:25:00.008-04:00

Occupy Wall Street/The 99% is already transforming the political landscape. In ways that matter the demonstrators have already started to win. Tired of waiting for politicians to affect change, the energy emanating from Lower Manhattan is being felt by young people all over the world.

On Saturday, September 17, the “occupation” in Manhattan began. Wishful thinking aside, no one really knew it would spread to other cities in the USA, then across the world. But it has. No one knows for sure what it will lead to next, or when it will end. After all, the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon’s agenda is coalescing, but it says here that the genie is out of the bottle; this thing now has a life of its own.

As The 99% movement grows many are cheering it on, even some are joining in on it. Some are puzzled by it, even flabbergasted. Others are ignoring it, even laughing at it. Still others are thoroughly peeved by it, even afraid of it.

Eventually, books will be written about what is happening, telling us who did what to set it in motion. No doubt, some Americans who stand in support of Wall Street’s billionaires, against OWS, will find nefarious conspiracies and villains in the shadows. But how it started will be much less important to people in the future than where it’s going.

Yes, I’m one of those who is already convinced that this movement -- OWS/The 99% -- is going to reshape politics in America. How much impact it will have on the rest of the world is anybody‘s guess.

Enemies of the movement and others baffled by it ask, "What do the demonstrators want? What's all the fuss about?

My answer is one word -- dignity.

Although it can’t be said that all of the demonstrators are liberals, or Democrats, this explosion of outrage in the streets is going to embolden frustrated liberals within the Democratic Party. In the next year it is going to put pressure on Democratic candidates to embrace some of what the movement is talking about.

Furthermore, I’m expecting it to eventually reverse the gradual drift to the right that America’s politics has been suffering from for 30 years. Yes, something had to do it, and I think this is it.

One thing OWS/The 99% has already given us is the “human microphone.” Born out of necessity, to sidestep New York’s law about electric amplification, it is spreading fast.

Each speaker at a General Assembly meeting talks in brief bursts, sentence fragments, so their listeners can repeat what they heard to amplify it to allow others further away from the speaker to get the message. This improvisation apparently started in Zuccotti Park/Liberty Park in New York. It has already spread to Richmond and probably most of the similar protests in other cities.

For those who can adapt their speech-making to this style, it works like a call and response style in a church. I suspect we will be hearing this human microphone way of speechifying for a long time.

In my view, the Occupy Wall Street/The 99% movement became inevitable with the infamous Supreme Court decision that ratified the Wall Street-friendly notion of “corporate personhood,” which the Court expanded with its Citizens United decision of Jan.21, 2010.

People have families; they have parents, siblings, children and friends. They have business associates and colleagues. Those are ties that bind to form a collective sense of duty and morality that comes to bear on most people. Untethered from such connections to life itself, rather than being born corporations are invented. The purpose of their existence is to make money for the stockholders. The corporate veil conveniently shields those owners from responsibilities and liabilities in a way no one enjoys as an individual human being.

You can’t put a corporation in jail.

While right-wingers are happy to make war on America’s students and public education system, on the health of the nation’s workforce, on trade unions, on needy veterans and our voting rights, on everyone’s firefighters, on the planet’s environment, even on your grandma, who really thinks a little symbolic class warfare from some peaceful demonstrators is such a bad thing?

Mic check ... MIC CHECK: You know ... YOU KNOW ... The answer ... THE ANSWER ... To that one ... TO THAT ONE.

-- 30 --

The Unregulated, Kepone Truckin’ Blues

2011-10-17T12:37:00.016-04:00

With the economy struggling Republicans are demanding lower taxes on so-called job creators and less government regulation. They want the feds off of the backs of the energy industry, Wall Street, etc. Although history tells us they‘ve been calling for the same things for a hundred years -- no matter what else was going on -- it hasn’t stopped Tea Party devotees from pretending those are fresh, tailor-made solutions to current problems.

So, the GOP would want job-creators the likes of BP and Massey Energy to worry less about government regulators. Never mind those corporate citizens' recent records for disasters.

Conservatives of a certain stripe still like to claim the marketplace will always take care of correcting for problems, mistakes and so forth. They say consumers will buy what proves to be the best medicine, dog food and automobile every time. Such conservatives blithely ignore the effects false advertising and withholding scary product information can have on their precious marketplace. So, it's a snap to go own pretending that when capitalists fail the system reacts quickly to correct for the dangers that stem from blunders and bad luck.

To bring it closer to home, consider how easily Allied Chemical’s top dogs got off for deliberately flushing truckloads of a powdered pesticide, Kepone, into the James River (1966-75). Production was suddenly shut down when employees packaging the stuff for shipment were discovered to be alarmingly sick -- some of those workers were trembling so badly they couldn't work.

This bizarre episode dealt a serious blow to Virginia’s seafood industry for years. Moreover, a lot of that now-banned pesticide still rests on the bottoms of the James and the Chesapeake Bay. So, we Virginians hope nothing, dredging or a storm, will stir up the old poison.

In the late-70s, as some millions of dollars changed hands, nobody at Allied ever did a day in jail for what Kepone did to harm innocent Virginians in a myriad of ways, some we’re still finding out about.

Recent news from France offers evidence that Allied’s recklessness dramatically increased the chance its employees, who stood ankle deep in Kepone as they shoveled it into bags, would get prostate cancer. The Journal of Clinical Oncology published findings last year that bear on this matter:

Although it was totally banned in the USA in 1976, from 1973 to 1993 chlordecone (Kepone) was used as an insecticide to fight banana weevils in the French West Indies. A significant number of the population of Martinique and Guadeloupe were directly exposed to chlordecone for years. The JCO cites a telling study which says chlordecone is responsible for at least half of the epidemic of prostate cancers found on the two islands.

One is left to wonder at what point does a reckless disregard for the health of others become criminal? Is there some point where the wanton poisoning of the planet is so egregious it should be considered criminal?

Moreover, how did the marketplace do anything to react to the problems Kepone in our water presented?

Nobody said, "I'm buying a different pesticide because Allied's stuff is too nasty for the environment." If its production hadn't been outlawed by the government in 1976, nobody knows how much more Kepone would have been dumped into the James before the marketplace would have made a correction.

Here’s a serious question that should be considered by lawmakers: If a big cheese at Allied Chemical had pulled a year or two for poisoning the Bay, how much might it have changed the culture in this country?

If that episode of bad acting had been criminalized, how much would that have curbed some would-be polluters over the last 35 years? For instance, would the explosion at Massey Energy's mine in West Virginia that killed 29 have happened? Is it possible the BP oil rig explosion that killed 11 and caused the spilling of untold zillions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico wouldn’t have happened?

Instead of less government oversight, doesn’t society need more federal protection from the next batch of risky shortcuts the most aggressive capitalists -- the Allieds, Masseys and BPs -- have always been willing to take?

Of course, if you think miners have always been killed on the job, so it doesn’t matter, then such questions may not concern you sufficiently to open your eyes to reality. If you don’t believe pollution is anything to worry about, not when it takes one dollar out of a billionaire’s clutches, then your answer to the question in the paragraph above is “no.”

Mic Check at Monroe Park

2011-10-15T23:04:00.008-04:00

In case you missed the Occupy Richmond discussion/meeting at Monroe Park, today, this short video report I've thrown together is for you.

The Occupy Richmond meeting was held on what was a spectacular sunlit afternoon. With the Richmond Folk Festival drawing overflow crowds to the river bank -- just a mile away -- in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, the folks in Monroe Park were deciding where their local occupation would take place. Cops watched from a distance; all was peaceful.

A decision was eventually made by the collective that moved many of those assembled further downtown to Kanawha Plaza. Now we'll see what Richmond's powers that be will do with an "occupation" aimed at embarrassing banks.

Click here to read the Richmond Times-Dispatch's story.

This mostly young and idealistic crowd is about to get its first dose of how the establishment tends to react to such challenges to its authority. No doubt about it, there's something happening here...

Justice for Wall St. Swells

2011-10-07T12:31:00.006-04:00

The swells of Wall Street who created the economic meltdown of 2008 should be brought to justice. If Eric Holder can’t find those culpable, the USA needs a new attorney general. It's time for some powerful people to face the music.

Moreover, the notion of corporate personhood is not only absurd, it is poisonous. Rather than being a person, a multinational corporation is more like a Frankenstein Monster, jacked up on speed. With no sense of family, community or morality, such an entity exists only to make money. Its nature is to devour our common resources and destroy anything else in its way ... including our environment, including us.

Wise up.

Half-Rubber

2011-10-05T12:29:00.006-04:00

An excellent photographer, Jack Leigh (1948-2004), was part of the Biograph Theatre’s staff in late-1973/early-1974. While he worked at the Biograph as an usher, Leigh taught me to play Half-Rubber, a game he said originated in his home town, Savannah. Half-Rubber is a three-man baseball-like game that is played with a broom handle and half of a red rubber ball.

Jack’s best known picture was snapped in 1993, when he was commissioned to shoot the photograph in a Savannah cemetery that would appear on the cover of what became a bestselling book -- “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt. Later the same photo was used to promote the movie with the same title.

When I knew him, Jack was earnest and quick-witted. He liked to play chess and talk about movies, and of course -- photography. In his Biograph days he was already a very good photographer.

Once, when we went out shooting pictures together, he snapped his shutter maybe twice. In the same amount of time, a couple of hours, I went through two rolls of Tri-X. The quiet style Jack would use throughout his career was already evident. He eventually authored six books of photographs, including "Oystering," which featured a foreword by James Dickey.

So, to kill time one warm afternoon, I cut a ball in half, ruined a broom and crossed the street with Jack and the theater’s assistant manager, Bernie Hall, to play a new three-man game. At the time there were several vacant lots on Grace Street, across from the Biograph.

It turned out the key to pitching was to throw the half-ball with a side-arm delivery, with the flat part down. That made it curve wildly and soar, somewhat like a Frisbee. Hitting or catching the damn thing was quite another matter. Oh, and hitting the ball on a bounce was OK, too. In fact, it was better to do so, from a strategic standpoint.

The pitcher threw the half-sphere in the general direction of the batter. If the batter swung and missed, and he usually did miss, the catcher did his best to catch it, which wasn't easy, either. When the catcher did catch it, providing the batter had swung, the batter was out. Then the pitcher moved to the catching position, and the catcher became the batter, and so forth. Runs were scored in a similar fashion to other home run derby-like games.

But the best reason to play, other than the laughs stemming from how foolish we looked dealing with the crazy ball, was the kick that came from hitting it. When we connected with that little red devil it left the bat like a rocket. It felt better than crushing a golf ball. Smashing it over the theater and halfway to Broad Street was a gas.

Click here to visit Jack Leigh’s online gallery.

Egg McGuffin

2011-10-04T13:49:00.004-04:00

Although most of the art shows that hung in the gallery area of the Biograph Theater's lobby displayed the work of local/VCU-connected artists that was not always the case. In the first three years, or so, when the gallery regularly featured shows that changed every couple of months, occasionally art by renown artists was on display.

Among them were Ernest Trova, Robert Indiana and sculptor George Segal.

In the summer of 1978 we had a show up that was memorable for an odd reason. It was a group of silkscreen prints and paintings by Barry Fitzgerald, a VCU-trained artist, who later played in a popular band that got some MTV exposure -- Single Bullet Theory.

Fitzgerald’s work had a pop art, reaction-to-advertising look. His droll sense of humor showed in a series of a half-dozen similar paintings. Each had a large line drawing in black against a flat field of a single color; the colors varied. The renderings were done in the sparse style one might have seen in a '50s government pamphlet's illustrations. Each had the same girl, Lois, coughing as she faced the viewer. Each had a caption written across the bottom of the colored panel which explained that Lois was choking on something.

Maybe Barry was asking about $100 apiece for them.

Let’s say the first one was blue. It might have said, “Lois chokes on a gumdrop.” I think one of them did say that. The next one could have been yellow, it would have said something like, “Lois chokes on a pocket watch,” and so forth. The only other caption I remember had Lois choking on an Egg McMuffin.

One day a man claiming to be a lawyer called me on the telephone to say I had to take the Egg McMuffin piece down, pronto. He told me he was a local guy, who’d been talking that day with an attorney for the McDonald's fast food empire. He asserted that if I didn’t take it down McDonald's was going to lay some legal action on the artist, the Biograph and me.

For my part, I said something like, “What!”

The caller explained that it wasn’t a matter of Fitzgerald saying anything against McDonald's signature breakfast sandwich, which was fairly new then. No. The problem was that McDonald's wanted to protect the use of the words “Egg McMuffin.” They didn’t want it to become a generic term for a sandwich made by anyone using the same ingredients, etc.

Then I must have said something like, “What!”

Anyway, the threat finished with how I better do what the caller said, because all the law was on McDonald's side.

Well, I called a lawyer friend, Jack Colan, to ask him what he thought. He said I ought to buy the painting. Then I told Fitzgerald what had happened. He loved it. We decided to leave it up to see what how it would play out.

Never heard from the wannabe McDonald's lawyer again. For a long time I've wished I had bought the painting.

Phil Trumbo had at least three shows at the Biograph, maybe more. For 50 bucks or less, I could have bought that infamous painting Phil did, which depicted a scene in which Mickey Mouse's little gloved hands had been chopped off with an ax. Missed out on that one, too.

Bottom line: When you see art you like a lot, for whatever reason, buy it if you have the money. Later, you'll be glad you did.

Drake the Flake's departure

2011-10-04T13:33:00.001-04:00

In the first months of operation at 814 W. Grace St. there was the series of annoyances that led up to Linwood “Woody” Drake (pictured right) being literally thrown out of the Biograph Theatre. Owing to his talent for nuisance, the staff had already dubbed him “Drake the Flake” before he landed face-first on Grace Street.

Although Drake resembled many of the hippie-style hustlers of the times, it was his ineptness at putting over the scam that set him apart. Every time he darkened our door there was trouble. If he didn't try to beat us out of the price of admission or a cup of popcorn, there would be a problem of some sort in the auditorium … and so forth.

His ruse was usually rather transparent. Then, when confronted, he'd go into a fit of denial that implied a threat. Eventually that led to the incident in Shafer Court, on VCU's campus, when Drake choked a female student, Susan Kuney.

Susan was also a cashier at the Biograph.

That evening Drake showed up at the theater to see the movie, just like nothing had happened. Shoving his way past those already in line, he demanded to be admitted next. An argument ensued that became the last straw. Drake the Flake was physically removed from the building and banned from the Biograph for life.

The next afternoon as we were about to open for business Drake made what would be his final appearance at the Biograph. He burst through the lobby's exit doors and ran around the lobby for a few seconds, testifying. He claimed I had humiliated him. Then he stopped suddenly and issued a finger-pointing death threat directly at me.

Although I tried to act unruffled by the incident, it made me more than a little uncomfortable. In spite of the anger of his words, there was an emptiness in his eyes. For a moment Drake had pulled me into his world. It was scary and memorable; he left the building promptly, this time without any persuasion from me.

On Nov. 8, 1992, 20 years later, a revenge-driven crime spree in California ended as the man I remembered as Drake the Flake blew out his brains with a .32 caliber revolver.

Shortly before Drake ended his wretched life, he woke up a 60-year-old woman who was his former landlord by smacking her in the head with a blackjack. She scrambled to hide under her bed and miraculously lived to tell the story. In the 11 hours before taking his own life Drake, who had grown up in Richmond, had shot and killed six people.

The lurid news reports said that Drake, who had always fancied himself an actor, had made a list for himself of people he intended to pay back, going all the way back to Virginia. Drake wore theatrical grease paint on his face when he committed his murders.

As the cops were closing in on him, Drake the Flake punched his own ticket to hell.

Over-awareness of the camera

2011-09-30T13:23:00.003-04:00

Behind makeshift barricades in the basement of a small church there will be 18 people, 17 of which will hostages of a 20-year-old schizophrenic full of sweet red wine and homemade speed. He will have his finger on the trigger of a portable nuclear device.

A little camera and microphone hooked up to a laptop will capture and transmit the hostage-taker's cryptic announcement: "I am the Looney Tunes Bomber, my presentation will be a one-reeler."

The entire nine minutes and 11 seconds of the LTB’s ranting performance will be consumed by a rapt audience that some will estimate to be a billion viewers in its final minute.

After chuckling, “Tha, tha … that’s all folks,” he will set off the bomb.

It will blow Boise, or maybe Baltimore, off the map. The first video of the suicidal bomber’s diabolical stunt will go up on YouTube less than an hour after the appearance of the mushroom cloud.

Somewhere, in Rio, or Tokyo, or elsewhere, a heart will be beating faster in the chest of an abused and angry boy who will be instantly determined to top the LTB’s bloodthirsty audacity.

We are watching a generation grow up with an awareness of the camera that goes far beyond previous generations. And, we are also witnessing a snowballing of the ability of anyone to transmit words and images about love, hate, religion, style and politics, by way of the Internet, to a worldwide audience.

It’s anybody’s guess where the current generation’s insatiable thirst to record and share voluminous records of their everyday lives will lead ... good or bad. We do already know that revolutionaries everywhere are relying on social media in a way that is mind-boggling.

Meanwhile, more and more we are seeing news stories that are tantamount to stunts staged for willing cameras. While it's fashionable these days to scold the press for its tasteless and excessive coverage of certain events, it's not entirely the fault of media executives and editors. The stories they encounter, in some cases, have been planned and packaged by people who are damn good at planting a story.

A precedent-setter in this area occurred 32 years ago with the shameful cooperation that developed between news-gatherers for television and the Iranian "students," who demonstrated on a daily basis in front of the American embassy during the hostage crisis (1979-81) that sabotaged the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Now we know that much of the feverish chanting and fist waving was done on cue. Now we know the camera shots were pushed in tight because the angry horde yelling, "Death to America!" was only a dozen souls deep.

Today, it seems cultural and religious grievances are routinely becoming more heated, here and abroad, by provocative or slanted news coverage. Moreover, much of the reportage these days actually seems designed to inflame situations being covered.

On top of that, in America, the press scrutiny of angry the anti-government firestorm being stoked by some for political gain is surely helping to push some alienated militia types closer to the edge -- the sort that sees Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as a hero.

Speaking of McVeigh, the future’s bomber in the church basement will have already seen how plenty of sullen murderers have been made into celebrities by the press. So, he'll be confident the television networks and online newspapers would not switch off a live feed from an on-going hostage situation. Sadly, even if they could see they would be magnifying the reach and power of our maniac, it’s hard for this scribe to believe the mainstream media would be able to deny him his last terrible wishes.

Several movies have been made using this same basic hostage-holding hook.

Ka-boom!

Post-ka-boom, can’t you hear the executives explaining their decisions? "Hey, if we didn’t cover the story in real-time, the other networks would have..."

-- 30 --

High on the Hog ... not!

2011-09-29T14:58:00.010-04:00

What exactly is STYLE Weekly's semi-mysterious, half-page advertisement trying to say?
(click to enlarge)

While STYLE Weekly has deliberately tried to create the impression that its pork and music event in Libby Hill Park on Saturday is a reanimation of the old High on the Hog tradition, in truth, it is not connected to that 30-year legacy at all.

Hey, it would have been easy enough for the promoters of what they are calling “Hogtober” to have put together an afternoon pork and music fest in the park, without trying to make it seem like it's an extension of the original HOTH effort.

Moreover, I have it on good authority that STYLE representatives told High on the Hog’s originators -- a small group of guys who live(d) adjacent to the park -- that there would be no attempt made by STYLE to create the impression there is a connection between the 30 years of HOTH parties (1977-2006) and the magazine’s new promotion.

Then, with its ads -- both art-wise and copy-wise -- STYLE has done exactly what it said it would not do. For example, check out the ad above that appeared in STYLE's Aug. 31 issue. Another display ad in STYLE (Sept. 7) announced: THE HOG WILL RISE AGAIN.

To me, this sort of weaseling deserves to have a penalty flag thrown its way for “illegal piggybacking.”

For some authentic HOTH history go here and here.

Day 11: Still 'Occupying' Wall Street

2011-09-29T14:02:00.013-04:00

There's something happening in Manhattan that may be important. Although it has been unfolding for 11 days, it has largely been ignored or treated as a curiosity by the national media. Nonetheless, this unusual story is gradually picking up momentum.

NEW YORK, September 29 - A standoff near Wall Street between protesters opposed to what they say is corporate greed and police may drag on into winter, with a march on police headquarters the likely next test of whether tensions escalate.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was planning on Friday an unauthorized demonstration on the streets outside the New York City police center of operations.

Read the entire Reuters article here.

Here's some background:

A Sept. 19 article in The Guardian is here.

A Sept. 27 New York Times article on Occupy Wall Street is here.

Adbusters' OccupyWallStreet page is here.

An Alternet report is here.

Some background on Occupy Wall Street at The Nation is here.

An update by Jack Johnson, reporting directly from the occupation, is posted at the Alliance for Progressive Values .

How Free Are We to Express Hate?

2011-09-28T15:06:00.012-04:00

Note: The piece that follows was originally published in June of 2010 by Richmond.com

The Westboro Baptist Church stretches the word “church” into a shape that boggles the mind. It is best known for force-feeding its messages about hate into situations in which they are particularly offensive. According to the Westboro gospel, the list of people that God hates includes Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists and gays.

In 1955 Westboro’s founder was Fred W. Phelps; at this writing he is still the pastor of the independent church based in Topeka, Kansas. According to reports most of the church’s 70-or-so members are related to Phelps.

Members of Westboro‘s congregation were in Richmond on Mar. 2, carrying their distinctive signs about God’s hates. Since then Westboro has been in local news stories, because Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli decided against supporting a lawsuit against Westboro that was filed in Maryland by Albert Snyder.

In 2006 Snyder’s son was killed in Iraq. A Westboro contingent armed with fire and brimstone placards demonstrated outside the church at the funeral. Snyder sued Phelps for invading his privacy. Snyder prevailed and was awarded $5 million for the emotional distress he had endured.

In 2009 the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond reversed the decision, saying it violated the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections. Furthermore, it ordered Snyder to pay Westboro’s court costs of more than $16,000. In October the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Snyder’s appeal.

Cuccinelli apparently agrees with the 4th Circuit’s decision, his office cited a concern about curtailing “valid exercises of free speech,” as its reason for choosing to make Virginia just one of two states not to file a supporting amicus brief.

Westboro grabbed the national spotlight in 1998 when some of its members appeared at the Wyoming funeral of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old man who had been brutally murdered. The Phelps contingent brandished signs announcing that because he was gay Shepard was burning in hell.

Since then Westboro has routinely targeted military funerals, to inform grieving families that their lost loved one deserves an eternity in hell. Why? Because the deceased had died serving a nation that enables homosexuality.

When the Westboro group came to Richmond three months ago Hermitage High School, the Virginia Holocaust Museum and the Weinstein Jewish Community Center were among its targets. At each location four people stood on the sidewalk holding up signs with messages in block lettering that said “God Hates the USA” and “God Hates Jews.” Their pre-announced appearances generated sizable counterdemonstrations, so they got the full treatment from the media -- top of the news.

The Phelps technique, while outrageous, has been seen before in Richmond. In August of 1998 an anti-abortion/pro-life group of about 50 people staged a demonstration on Monument Ave.

The occasion was the funeral of Associate Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church. The demonstrators set themselves up on the grassy, tree-lined median strip in front of the church. Dozens of uniformed police officers were there to keep the peace.

Inside the church Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered the eulogy, “…[Powell] was the very embodiment of judicial temperament; receptive to the ideas of his colleagues, fair to the parties to the case, but ultimately relying on his own seasoned judgment.”

Outside the church the eager TV crews had their cameras and microphones ready. The news-makers held up giant oozing fetus placards and posters citing Powell as a “murderer.” When Powell’s family, friends and Supreme Court colleagues came outside, following the service, they had no choice but to notice the demonstration before them. Lenses zoomed in to focus on their stunned reactions.

It’s difficult to imagine the demonstrators at Powell’s funeral changed any minds on the abortion issue by creating such a spectacle in the middle of the street. It didn’t seem they were there to persuade. It did seem they were there to punish Powell’s family and friends, because the sign-waving zealots still hated Powell for his Roe vs. Wade vote in 1973.

As disturbing as that demonstration on Monument Ave. was, it was also an example of American citizens standing on public property, exercising their right to speak their minds about matters political. Such expressions are usually protected.

However, Snyder has claimed that when he was attending his son’s funeral he was a captive audience, so he couldn’t just choose to ignore the Westboro signs.

Whether the Supreme Court will reverse the 4th Circuit’s decision on that basis remains to be seen. No doubt, it was good politics for attorneys general in those other 48 states to take Snyder’s side. Still, freedom of speech rights aren’t needed to shield popular speech. They never were. And, however designed-to-injure Phelps warmed-over Ku Klux Klan language may have seemed -- in the name of religious speech -- it was definitely political speech.

If the Supremes buy Snyder’s captive-audience argument, it seems that would open the door to laws prohibiting all sorts of demonstrations in public, because particular people couldn’t easily opt out of being subjected to them. So his lawyers may have a tough job on their hands.

If the 4th Circuit’s decision that threw out the damages on free speech grounds is upheld at the highest level, Cuccinelli is going to suddenly look smarter than the AGs in those other 48 states. Such a decision would suggest Cuccinelli wisely avoided jumping on what was an easy bandwagon … just to strike a pose.

Note: On March 2, 2011 the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the First Amendment protected the Westboro demonstrators in the Snyder case.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

While these messages may fall short of refined social or political commentary, the issues they highlight -- the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our Nation, homosexuality in the military and scandals involving the Catholic clergy -- are matters of public import…

Among the papers Roberts and his colleagues had to consider were copies of the piece you just read. In the brief for respondent Fred W. Phelps, et al, on Page 4 there’s a footnote that cites “How Free Are We to Express Hate?” by F.T. Rea.

When I found out from a friend about being in the footnote I was delighted. It amused me to no end that the Westboro defense team had to suck up everything else I had written about them, in order to use the part they wanted the justices to see -- the account of Justice Powell’s funeral.

In July of 2010, when I posted the unusual news at SLANTblog, about my Richmond.com piece being cited in the Westboro brief, Shirley Phelps-Roper -- Fred Phelps’ daughter and lead attorney -- promptly commented:

It's too bad you are compelled to work so hard to distance yourself from the Word of God! This generation hates God's commandments and will NOT have that man Christ Jesus to rule over them. You are so afraid to be aligned with anything close to God that you make a fool of yourself with all your multiplying of words. How sad.

‘Mark 8:38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

BTW, you should have done your OpEd piece as if you were speaking those words to God! ALL you do should be as if you are doing it unto God, because rebel, you are.

Here’s what I posted as my answer:

Thanks for the advice. And, I have a Bible saying for you, Matthew 7:15:

‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.’

Phelps-Roper never thanked me for writing the piece she used to defend her church's mission of spreading hate, nor has she sent me any more Bible sayings.

So far, this is the only time I can remember agreeing with Ken Cuccinelli about anything.

-- 30 --

Coca-Cola, drain cleaner and a rat

2011-09-27T12:48:00.010-04:00

Apparently some rat poisons make the victims crave water. Sometime in the mid-'70s, a popcorn-addicted rat we called Willard must have finally nibbled on some the exterminator’s poison; it died in the Biograph Theatre's Coca-Cola machine's drain and totally clogged it up.

The situation called for a manager's quick decision to be made in the field. However, not knowing about the hidden rat corpse, and thinking I knew what to do, I poured a powerful drain clearing liquid -- we called it Tampax Dynamite -- into the problem. My experience told me that stuff could eat its way though any clog in a pipe.

Although the TD had previously done wonders in the theater's rest rooms, well, this wasn't one of my better decisions. Before long before a foul-smelling brown liquid started bubbling in the drain and then backing up and into the lobby's carpet around the candy counter. There was no stopping its spread, as Willard’s revenge worked its way.

The wretched mess that ensued ran everybody out of there on a busy Saturday night -- the stench was unbearable. We had to close.

Oops!

My forgiving bosses in Georgetown had a new carpet installed in the lobby right away; it was much nicer than the original had been.

Message to Allen's flack, Bill Riggs

2011-09-21T16:03:00.000-04:00

Every time I read that former-Sen. George Allen’s flack, "Bill Riggs (bill.riggs@georgeallen.com), has called former-Gov. Tim Kaine “Chairman Kaine,” I am going to post something that recalls the Macaca Meltdown that ruined Allen's reelection campaign.

You see, I'm already tired of Riggs' silly game.

The Stretch

2011-09-21T14:53:00.000-04:00

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 –

Rea never planned to play with a full deck

2011-09-16T00:42:00.004-04:00

After seeing this old video from the 1984 City Council campaign, with WTVR's footage of yours truly, I was reminded of this article that appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch 17 years ago. It's a funny piece in many ways. The talented writer was so charming that she got me telling all sorts of stories I probably should have withheld.

Feb. 6, 1994
"Wild card Rea never planned to play with a full deck"
by Sibella Connor

Provided your corset isn’t laced too tightly, you could probably understand that F.T. Rea’s artwork is actually a sort of extended Public Service Announcement. Granted, it’s not your regular P.S.A. -- rarely politically correct or even serious. But then, precious little is regular with this irreverent artist and writer.

In one sentence, Rea’s P.S.A. might go like this: “Don’t believe everything you read.”

Fair enough, it would seem.

But given the reaction his ideas -- appearing most frequently in the alternative periodical The Slant -- have received over the years, it would appear Richmond has more than its fair share of lungs grown accustomed to shallow breathing.

The fact is, not everyone enjoys reading Rea’s rambunctious little paper. His essays, which range from obituaries of the city’s more disaffected souls to discussions of TV violence, have led some people to call him a crackpot. A loony. Some weird guy living in the Fan who should shut up and get a job, for Pete’s sake.

Well, take a deep breath, Richmond, because Rea’s delivering another corset-popper.

“Slant Legends” is a deck of 12 cards with the faces of Richmond’s famous, infamous, and virtually unknown. Landing in several local bookstores last month, the $10 deck of “Legends” has already earned the mixed reaction Rea has come to expect.

“Some people really like them,” he said. “Other people sort of look at them and walk away scratching their heads.”

In addition to the obvious Virginia celebrities such as former Gov. Doug Wilder, Rea has tossed in a few oddball characters, friends he thinks should be celebrities -- a disc jockey, a guitar player and a “wizard.”

Each 2-by-3-inch card is signed by the artist and laminated for long life, although the legends themselves may hope the cards meet an early demise. Rea’s drawings verge on unflattering caricature, while the explanatory notes offer biographic tags nobody’s bragging about.

Joe Morrissey’s hyperkinetic eyebrows bounce above the identifier “Embattled Dude.” Richmond City Councilman Roy West looks nearly demonic, and has been labeled “Councilmanic Windbag.” And lawyer and BLAB-TV owner Michael Morchower has the face of a homely basset hound, with one word as explanation: “Mouthpiece.”

“I just like to tease people,” said Rea, sitting in his tidy Fan apartment.

Most of the “legends” first appeared in Slant, the biweekly broadsheet Rea has single-handedly cranked out since 1985. The Slant serves up Rea’s many splendored takes on the world, from what happened in Richmond last week to what happened years ago in Beirut.

It also offers Rea, 46, a place to show his art. But his Slant portraits usually have more words than what’s on the cards -- more words or more ammo, depending on how you look at it. For instance, Gov. George Allen pops up in the Legends deck with a simple tongue-in-cheeker: “Intellectual/Governor.”

But his grinning portrait in Slant after last November’s election carried the following quote: “...And finally, I want to thank those Democrats who helped so much -- Doug Wilder, Patricia Cornwell, and whoever dressed Mary Sue in that K mart Maggie Thatcher look.”

The jab is vintage Rea. Artist as gadfly.

In between scraping by as a graphic artist and publishing Slant, Rea has heard the disparaging words, Get a job.

“Even my good friends tell me that all the time, ‘Why don’t you get a job?’ Well I had a job for a long time, and to tell you the truth, I apply for jobs I think I’m qualified for all the time, part-time PR and things like that. And I don’t know, they never hire me. I guess I’m just not the corporate type.”

From all appearances though, it’d be hard to peg Rea as counter-culture. He looks like anything but the merry prankster, with his professorial demeanor and his dress code out a 1940s movie. Most often, he can be seen nattily attired in shirt and tie, his brown hair clipped short.

“I’ve never had a radical appearance,” he said. “Even during the hippie years, I never had long hair. Of course, that’s probably the Richmond in me.”

He can never resist another jab.

*

The city provides ample material for Rea, who’s known as Terry. But after awhile it becomes clear his relationship with the city is love-hate. Like so many gadflies, Rea bothers the sacred cow mostly because he cares about it. After all, he’s never left.

“I was raised in an offbeat fashion by my grandparents, my mother and the streets,” he said. During the 1960s, he attended Thomas Jefferson High School, but never saw the final ceremonies.

“I fled rather than graduated,” he said, laughing. “But when I went to school, I went to Thomas Jefferson. I had a very hard time sitting down for more than 10 minutes at a time. Consequently, I was tossed out of school on a regular basis.”

He bounced around Richmond for several years, landing odd jobs, then leaving them. At one point, he sold advertising for a radio station. Then in 1972, Rea found the Biograph Theatre on West Grace Street. It was a match made in heaven. A movie buff of the biggest sort, Rea appeared made [to manage] the [new] arthouse theater.

In his apartment, Hollywood biographies and film lore line his bookshelves -- not to mention the strange convolutions of his brain. Searching to explain certain situations, Rea often uses a scene from a movie -- “You know when John Wayne turns and says ... You know how Aubrey Hepburn looked in ‘Sabrina?’”

Run on a shoestring budget, the Biograph was modeled after a Georgetown theater by the same name. During the day there were Truffaut and Bergman films. And after awhile, there was porno after midnight.

“We did it to make money,” Rea said.

Along with its eclectic cinematic showings, the Biograph grew infamous for its personality, in large part due to Rea’s ring-leadership. In the summer of 1973, a Richmond civil court banned the Biograph from showing the porno movie “The Devil in Miss Jones.” Using the new yardstick sent down by the U.S. Supreme Court, judge and jury decreed the film violated the contemporary community standards of obscenity.

Four months later, the Biograph was celebrating its two-year anniversary. Rea wanted to give the public a present, so he offered free admission to anyone who wanted to see “The Devil and Miss Jones,” with the short feature “Beaver Valley.”

Five thousand people showed up for the several hundred seats in the theater. A radio helicopter circled the air above Grace Street, reporting on the line that stretched around the block. When the lights went down, not everyone in the audience was delighted to discover that “Beaver Valley” was a Disney documentary on river animals. Nor were they dancing in the aisles about the prepositional distinction that separated the banned porno flick and the 1941 black-and-white classic starring Robert Cummings -- a preposition that placed Miss Jones in vastly different proximities to the devil.

“Actually, there were people who thought they were seeing the censored version of the skin flick,” Rea said.

In the lobby, the laughing manager served cake and beer, thoroughly enjoying the joke with those patrons who could take it. Like most of Rea’s pranks, however, politics lurked near the punchline.

“Part of my point was, by whose community standards was this deemed naughty? I mean, five thousand people showed up to see what they thought was a porno flick, so you tell me whose community we’re talking about. Besides I had to come up with schemes like that to make people pay attention to the theater. We had no money for advertising.”

*

About the same time the Biograph was tossing banana peels on the pavement, Rea helped organize the Fan District Softball League. It was, typical of the Fan, a mixture of human types. Professionals, students, offbeat artists. Rea’s team quickly became known for its left-field mentality and underhanded tactics.

It included two guys from Europe who spoke no English and had no idea what softball was. Also on the roster was a life-size cardboard cutout of Mr. Natural, the hitchhiking cartoon character created by R. Crumb. Of course, not everyone appreciated the humor. But -- also, of course -- Rea milked it for all it was worth. He created a newsletter for the league, recording team statistics and standings.

“I made most of it up,” he said.

Softball in part explains why Leo Koury made the “Slant Legends” deck.

Koury remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for many years. And for many years, lived in Richmond. The [wanted] poster said Koury was “sought in connection with shooting murders of two individuals and attempted contract murder of three others, and conspiracy to kidnap an individual for substantial ransom payment.”

Koury was never caught, and died several years ago in San Diego, where he lived under an assumed name and worked at a convenience store. In the Legends’ deck, his card reads: “Umpire/Escape Artist.”

“Leo Koury was a softball umpire for our league,” Rea explained. “That’s how I knew him. He was the only one who put up with the Fan District league. He seemed like a very nice man, and actually if you asked a lot of people around here, you would get a full rainbow of perceptions, people who thought he was evil and people who thought he was wonderful. It depends on how you knew him.”

Rea’s softball antics eventually led him to BLAB-TV, the local public access channel. He hosted a sports sendup called “Mondo Softball,” which starred Rea’s athletic alter ego, Mutt DeVille (Rea dressed as a jock).

After Mondo Softball came "Mondo City," another sendup, this one devoted to popular culture. Both shows were almost too weird to be believed. In fact, “Mondo City” got so weird it went down in flames soon after a guest appearance by the rock/theatric group GWAR.

Rea recalled an “unusually provocative phone call from a female” coming in during the show, and a cameraman, who thought his camera wasn’t transmitting, zoomed in for a close-up of a GWAR costume -- the part of the costume bearing a rather sizable, anatomically unambiguous male body part.

Suddenly, somebody hit a switch. The camera came on. And the view of the penis was sent around the city, followed by some graphic discussion of it. Corset strings popped. And Michael Morchower, the station’s owner (and Slant Legend) issued formal apologies repeatedly.

“There were apologies all over the place,” Rea said. “But actually BLAB milked it for all the publicity they could get while protesting that they didn’t like it. It’s my understanding that the tape is a collector’s item among a certain set.”

“Actually,” he continued, “I don’t think that anybody got that upset over that. I’m sure Mike Morchower has seen worse than that. Have you ever seen his show?”

Morchower is the host of a weekly call-in show on legal matters, “Lawlines.”

“Take a look at that show and see if you think I’m being unkind.”

“Mondo City” survived the GWAR fiasco, but Rea’s rowdy heart had fled. The gadfly got swatted too hard.

“I got scared. I stayed away from the edge for a while and the next few shows just weren’t there. So I said, forget it.”

Would he consider doing it again?

“I would consider almost anything.”

As an aside -- perhaps -- Slant recently explained BLAB’s call letters: “Babbling Locals and Blowhards.” Rea did not exempt himself from categorization.

*

In 1984, Rea ran for Richmond City Council. “Predictably, I lost,” he wrote several years later in an issue of Slant. But the essay recounting his run in the 5th District was a winner. It represents the best of Slant, with writing that ranges from pungent to poignant.

He wrote: “Meeting the candidates, who ranged from soup to nuts, was a trip.” And he went on to describe the world of single-person candidacy, with Rea motoring to beleaguered housing projects like Gilpin Court to post fliers announcing his candidacy.

“Prior to my days as a candidate, Gilpin Court had been just another vague, scary place on the map,” he wrote.

Pounding the pavement with his staple gun and sneakers, he was soon joined by a group of neighborhood kids who followed him through Gilpin Court and distributed fliers. After all the other kids had grown bored “with the goofy white guy,” one boy remained with Rea.

“In an effort to be friendly, I tried to engage him in conversation,”

Rea wrote:

“That tactic met with little success. As we were finishing the last section to be covered (with leaflets), I asked him a question that had gone over well with children in other parts of town. ‘What’s the best thing and the worst thing about your neighborhood?’

“He stopped and stared through me. Although I felt uncomfortable about it, I repeated the question after a moment.

“Then he replied. His words hit hard, but he spoke without emotion.

‘Ain’t no best thing.’”

When asked about the candidacy, Rea sighed. “I found out real fast that I’m better off on the outside throwing my mudballs and making my comments than I am in the limelight and under the scrutiny that a political candidate lives with.”

“I think people want their political candidates a little more restrained than I’ve been. I’m not saying that’s the way it should be, but that’s the way it is.”

Rain or shine, poor or just dead broke, Rea continues to publish The Slant, cranking out the essays, paying tribute to the people and things he likes and dislikes, then fielding all calls for his head. He’s also branching out with more art work, which will be on display at Coffee & Co in Carytown this month. Somebody will always have something to say about Rea.

“I’ve always gotten wild reactions,” he said.

“Sometimes I can laugh it off. Other times, it’s more difficult. What’s bothered me more than anything is the hate mail and the strange characters who come out of the woodwork and think something I’ve written in The Slant is speaking to them in a special way.

“That’s just one more reason why I use a post office box.”

He distributes The Slant himself, dropping off 3,000 copies at about 90 places from Carytown to Shockoe Bottom. It’s on these distribution runs that Rea sometimes gets some of his best feedback.

“One time in the Fan Market, I was delivering a batch of The Slants and I was setting them down by the checkout,” he said. “A woman reached down and picked up a copy. She was in her late 50s, if I had to guess. Maybe a legal secretary. And she couldn’t have had any idea that the guy delivering those things was the same guy who wrote it.”

“She said to checkout guy, ‘You know why I read this?’ She waited for an answer, stuffing the periodical in her bag. Then she said: ‘Because it makes me feel less crazy.’”

Looking up at her, Rea thought one thing: “Boy, I must be doing my job.”

Unvarnishing Virginia History

2011-09-14T14:21:00.002-04:00

-- Originally published by STYLE Weekly in 2007

Having grown up in Richmond, I've been steeped in its dual sense of bitterness and pride over matters to do with, and stemming from, the Civil War. Perhaps thinned out somewhat by time, it remains in the air we breathe at the fall line of the James River.

Most of my life has been spent in the Fan District, which is home to four statues honoring heroes of the Confederacy. Beyond monuments, to know what it was like in Richmond in the past, we look to history. It comes to us in many ways — stories told, popular culture and schooling among them.

In 1961, my seventh-grade history book, which was the official history of Virginia for use in public schools — as decreed by the General Assembly — had this to say about slavery at the end of its Chapter 29:

Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those whom they worked. They were not so unhappy as some Northerners thought they were, nor were they so happy as some Southerners claimed. The Negroes had their problems and their troubles. But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to those arguments.

In 1961 I had no reason to question that paragraph's veracity. Baseball was my No. 1 concern in those days. Now those words read quite differently.

Living through the Civil Rights era, with its bombings, assassinations, marches, sit-ins, boycotts and school-closings, did much to show me a new light, to do with truth and fairness. However, for me, there was no moment of epiphany, no sudden awareness I was growing up in a part of the world that officially denied aspects of its past. More than anything else, it took time. Life experience taught me to look more deeply into things.

Now I know that dusty old history book was a cog in the machinery that made the Jim Crow era possible.

Nonetheless, that same history book's view of how it was for those enslaved is one that some Virginians still want to believe. It's probably what they were taught as children, too. Some call it "heritage." Many of this persuasion also cling to the bogus factoid that since most Southerners didn't hold slaves, the Civil War itself was not fought over slavery.

Which is preposterous.

Of course poor Southerners, those who weren't plantation owners, had little to do with starting the Civil War. Generally speaking, poor people with no clout don't launch wars anywhere; rich people with too much power do.

So, for the most part, the men who fought in gray uniforms were doing what they felt was expected of them. As with most wars, the bulk of those who fought and died for either side between 1861 and 1865 were just ordinary Joes who had no say-so over declaring war or negotiating peace.

In Virginia, many who chose to wear gray did so to reverse what seemed to them to be an invasion of their home state.

Yet, if the reader wants to understand more deeply why Virginia eventually left the Union, to follow the secessionist hotheads of South Carolina and Mississippi into war, here's a clue from Chapter 30 of that same history book, which opened with this:

In 1790 there were more than 290,000 slaves in Virginia. This number was larger than that of any other state.

Those 290,000 slaves were worth a lot of money to their owners.

Thus, the largest part of the real blame for the bloodshed of the war, and the subsequent indignities of the Reconstruction era, probably rests with wealthy slaveholders who would not give up their investments in cheap labor without a fight.

Readers interested in how much the official record of the Civil War has changed over the decades since the Civil Rights era should pay a visit to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. Its telling of the story of the Civil War is now based on the unvarnished truth.

Moreover, I am proud to be a Virginian. There's plenty of Virginia history that has nothing to do with picking sides in the Civil War. My ancestors go back to the 1600s in this commonwealth. But I will not stand with anyone who chooses to stay the course with the absurd denials of history — to do with slavery — that were crammed into that old public school textbook.

Even the Museum of the Confederacy, for now still housed in what was the Richmond home of the president of the Confederate States of America, is apparently poised to change its name to reflect its modern mission — telling the history of that time accurately, rather than to simply memorialize the Confederacy.

As for my friends in Richmond who haven't had a fresh thought on matters racial since they were seventh-graders, well, I don't want to pick a fight with them. So mostly we talk about other things — baseball still works.

All that said, Robert E. Lee, whose spectacular monument I see every day, remains a Virginian I admire. The dual sense of tragedy and dignity his statue conveys is striking. In his time and place, Lee clearly did what he saw as his duty. How can an honest person not respect that?

After the war Lee urged his fellow Virginians to let it go — to move on. That was good advice in 1865. It still is.

-- 30 --

Republicans Eschew Reality

2011-09-13T14:23:00.005-04:00

It seems modern Republicans like their meat red and their talk tough.

The audiences for the two recent Republican debates cheered for dealing out death to the deserving on two occasions. The first to do with Gov. Rick Perry’s plain delight in executing the guilty in Texas and his certitude that all 234 of them have been as guilty as sin. The other had to do with Rep. Ron Paul’s willingness to let a hypothetical 30-year-old patient die because he lacks insurance.

Dana Milbank's savvy piece about the CNN/Tea Party Express debate is here.

After watching those two debates and seeing how far into Fantasyland the Republicans have wandered, I feel compelled to comment about how much the Republican Party has changed in one particular respect.

If you go back a few decades, Republican conservatives stood on the idea that they were about hard-edged reality. In the old days they saw liberal Democrats as being dreamers about what ought to be, wishful thinkers. But during those two debates the live audiences had no passion for grasping reality, because they only had ears for the tough talk coming from the stage.

Last night the crowd took to Perry’s exaggerated swagger. He was clearly the early favorite, yet it also liked Paul’s attacks on Perry. It liked Rep. Michele Bachmann’s attacks on Perry, too. Then it liked Perry’s attacks on former-Gov. Mitt Romney, etc.

However, the same crowd loved it when anybody talked tough to Pres. Barack Obama. Whether any of it actually made sense mattered little to the assembled Tea Party sympathizers.

The Republican debates, so far, have been exercises in assertiveness -- style. Substance has been in rather short supply. As for reality, forget about it. The candidates have tossed phony facts/numbers around like confetti.

In the doing, at times some of the Republican hopefuls have seemed as though they were auditioning for the protagonist’s role in the remake in an old action movie.

No, not Clint Eastwood’s Harry “Make My Day” Callahan in “Sudden Impact.”

But rather, Robert De Niro’s Travis “Are You Talking to Me?” Bickle in “Taxi Driver.”

Evil's Second Coming

2011-09-10T17:31:00.000-04:00

Note: This reaction to 9/11 piece was written by yours truly. It was originally published by STYLE Weekly on May 15, 2002.

Washing in on what poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) might have called a “blood-dimmed tide,” the specter of evil suddenly emerged from the periphery of modern life eight months ago. In the blue skies of the time before 9/11’s sucker punch, the notion of pure evil had an Old World air about it. Absolutes, such as good and evil, had no seat at the table of postmodern thinking.

After 9/11, a generation of Americans suddenly learned a bitter lesson: Evil never went away. It had gone out of style, as a concept, only because times were so easy. Living in a land of plenty, it had gotten to be a pleasant habit to avert our eyes from evil-doings in lands of want.

The last American president to get much mileage out of the word evil was probably Ronald Reagan, with his “evil empire” characterization of the USSR and its sphere of influence. Now, 20 years later, we have a president who sees “an axis of evil” — an alleged phenomenon that puzzles most of the world’s leaders, or so they say.

George W. Bush apparently has little use for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s stalwart advice to a nation in need of a boost in confidence — “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Instead, Bush chooses to color-code fear rather than urge his people to rise above it.

The propagandists of the Bush administration have been successful in cultivating the public’s anxiety since September. Whether that’s been done for our own good remains to be seen. Perhaps it has, but this much is clear now — all the official danger alerts about nuclear power plants, bridges and crop-dusters have been effective in keeping most of the natural questioning of the administration’s moves at bay.

To hear Attorney General John Ashcroft tell it, the architects of 9/11 are the personification of the most virulent form of evil ever known. Although much of the evidence that would establish his absolute guilt in connection with 9/11 remains a state secret, Osama bin Laden is said to have shot to the top of the chart. Forget about Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin and Pol Pot. They were amateurs.

Then again, evil, like beauty, has always been in the eye of the beholder.

Wasn’t it evil to deliberately dump tons of potent pesticide into the James River during the ’70s to make a greedy buck? Once it was in Virginia’s water, it turned out that kepone wasn’t much different from a bio-terror agent in the same water.

Although it was first reported that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people was likely to have been the work of Middle Eastern terrorists, such wild speculation soon fizzled in the face of the facts.

With the news seeping out of the cloisters about child-molesting priests and the Catholic Church’s systematic cover-ups, whose betrayal was more evil, the molester or the higher-ups who hid and facilitated his crimes?

Whether evil exists in some pure form, off in another dimension, is not my department. What’s known here is that in the real world evil is contagious. Lurking in well-appointed rooms or hiding in caves, evil remains as it ever was — ready to spread.

None of this is to suggest that al Qaida shouldn’t be put out of business. It isn’t to say that knocking the Taliban off was a bad idea. There’s no question here about whether the United States should protect itself from the networks of organized terror that are hell-bent on destroying the modern world.

Still, today’s evil is the same evil our forefathers faced in their wars. Evil hasn’t changed; technology has. With modern weapons in their hands, the fanatics of the world have the potential to wreak havoc like never before.

What has changed is the extent to which the hate festering in the souls of the world’s would-be poobahs and their sociopathic minions can be weaponized. It’s worth noting that the weapons of mass destruction that are scaring us the most were developed during the arms-race days of the Cold War by the game’s principal players.

So another question arises, who is more dangerous to civilization, the guys who spent their treasure to weaponize germs, or the guys who want to steal the stuff and use it on somebody?

Decades ago this was a concern expressed by some in the disarmament movement. Its scary what-if scenarios always included the likelihood that the super powers would eventually lose track of some of their exotic weapons. Looking back on it now, it seems obvious that there was no way any government could keep all that material locked away from the greed and hate of determined free-lancers.

A man with a briefcase-style nuclear device may be no more evil than a man armed with a knife. Either danger could kill you just as dead. Those of us who feel connected to others know which one we should fear the most.

The “rough beast” of dreadful evil “slouching towards” us is traveling on the back of technology of our own making. While we watch out for organized terrorists in the short run, with a handy color code to guide us, it’s time to think more seriously about how to get rid of a lot of very dangerous weapons in the long run.

-- 30 --

Flashback: 'Smooth Noir'

2011-09-10T15:11:00.002-04:00

With tobacco's status changing, so it will be controlled more and more, here's a flashback to an issue of SLANT 19 years ago. It was printed when the infamous Joe Camel ad campaign was still popular. The Tobacco industry was still riding high ... but not for much longer.

In August of 1992 the art above appeared over the text below:

It's Happy Hour. Rebus starts the Lamberts, Hendricks and Ross tape that he had selected to kick off his shift. In walks his first customer.

It's Joe Camel, smooth matchbook celebrity.

Although Rebus recognizes him immediately, even without his makeup, he doesn't call attention to it. Joe looks like he would rather not be bothered.

Joe: Two shots of Cuervo Gold. No fruit. No salt.

Rebus: Hey pal, if it's been that kind of day, let me buy the first one. It's the...

Joe: THAT kind of day? Yeah, I guess it's been about as bad a day as ... forget it.

The bar's only customer slaps the first empty glass down onto the cold marble as Rebus turns the stereo's volume up a notch.

Joe: The tests came back. It's the Big C. I'm doomed. It's too late to operate. Just like that -- cancer. Kaput!

Rebus: Well, er, in that case, I'll spring for the second one, too.

Joe: Thanks.

Rebus: How about a sandwich?

Joe: A sandwich?

Rebus: Sure. Like something to eat. We've got a killer cold meatloaf sandwich, or...

Joe: Cancer of the hump.

Rebus: The hump?

Joe: They said my five-pack-a-day habit probably had nothing to do with...

Rebus: I didn't even know you had a hump. Like, it never shows in the commercials.

Joe: I wear corset. We all do. It's part of the act. The Mad Ave. geniuses want smooth camels, not hunchbacks. Hey, let me tell ya, they tighten those babies down with a torque wrench.

Rebus: I won't say anything about it.

Joe: I'm not hungry. How 'bout another shooter?

Rebus: Sure, ah, did the doctor, er...

Joe: Did they say how, how long I've got?

Rebus: Yeah. No offense meant.

Joe: Maybe the weekend.

Rebus: Cancer of the hump! What a bad break.

Joe: I deserve it.

Rebus: Hey, nobody deserves hump cancer. Not even...

Joe: I do man. I'm paying the price for selling my soul to the devil. All those kids.

Rebus: Kids?

Joe: Innocent children that Joe Camel suckered into smoking the product. It's karma.

Rebus: You didn't invent cigarettes.

Joe: Above all else, be smooth. Don't you want to be the smoothest dude?

Rebus: Come on Joe, kids are going to smoke cigarettes regardless of...

Joe: Maybe, but this campaign was slick. They brought in behavioral voodoo scientists.

Rebus: Joe, it's not your fault. You've just been dealt a bad hand. Joe, ah, that is your real name?

Joe: What's in a name? What's real? Way back, maybe before your time, people knew me as Clyde. Since then I've...

Rebus: Right! Clyde. I knew you looked familiar. Yeah, you worked with a cat named Ahab the Arab. But, now you look, like, ah, wider.

Joe: You're talking 30 years since that gig. Who hasn't put on a little weight?

Rebus: I can dig it. But it's still not your fault if a kid smokes. Everybody's got to earn a living. You're like Tony the Tiger or Ronald McDonald, or...

Joe: No! I knew it was wrong. I went to the meetings. I knew the marketing strategy. We were going after third-graders. It was sick.

Rebus: So, what are you going to do?

Joe: Get drunk, then make a plan.

Rebus: Good move. Ready for another?

Joe: I wonder if strapping my hump down made the cancer, ah...

Rebus: Maybe it's never too late to beat the devil. They made you a celebrity; call a press conference. Go public with it. Confess! Drop a dime on the subliminal sleazemeisters.

Joe: Do you really think people would listen?

Rebus: The Marlboro Man went clean.

Joe: You're right! I knew getting drunk was a good idea. Hand me that telephone. I'll do it. I'll blow the lid off the...

Rebus: That's the spirit!

Joe: I've got work to do; call my agent. And, you know what?

Rebus: Chicken-butt!

Joe: Let me try one of those meatloaf sandwiches. And, some coffee.

Rebus opens his eyes. The dream was OK until that business about the meatloaf sandwich. Not to mention the stupid chicken-butt joke.

He gets out of bed and walks toward the bathroom. On the way, Rebus remembers the Joe Camel jacket draped over the chair by the door. A steady customer had given it to him at the bar. He picks it up and throws it into the trash can next to the toilet.

Rebus: Sorry Clyde, I'm not taking any chances.

-- Fini --

Obscure Oldies on Netflix

2011-09-09T14:27:00.004-04:00

Marilyn Monroe in "Don't Bother to Knock"

Here's the link to my latest know-it-all piece about old movies at the James River Film Journal -- "Five Film Favorites: Obscure Oldies on Netflix."

The movies on the list of five are:

“Don’t Bother to Knock” (1952): Directed by Roy Ward Baker; Cast: Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft.

“The Intruder” (1962): Directed by Roger Corman; Cast: William Shatner, Frank Maxwell, Beverly Lunsford.

“Man in the Shadow” (1957): Directed by Jack Arnold; Cast: Jeff Chandler, Orson Welles, Colleen Miller.

“The Naked Street” (1955): Directed by Maxwell Shane; Cast: Anthony Quinn, Farley Granger, Peter Graves.

“Patterns” (1956): Directed by Fielder Cook; Cast: Van Heflin, Everett Sloane, Ed Begley.

To read more about those movies and why they were selected go to the JRFJ.

The Billy Roast ... Perhaps

2011-09-07T15:03:00.005-04:00

Billy Snead's pals roasted him at the Biograph Theatre softball team's 30 annual Derby Day reunion party on May 2, 2009. At the time some of us also wanted to celebrate our friend Billy's stiff-arming of leukemia. The video above documents the roasting.

The footage was shot using a digital camera with no tripod (camera sitting on a table), no lights, with whatever sound was in the air (including a brief rainstorm). Nonetheless, rough as it might be, this short film manages to capture a natural celebration of camaraderie that is uplifting.

The music, "Bill's Journey," is by Bill Blue. It was used with his permission.

Enjoy "The Billy Roast ... Perhaps."

To read some very funny stories Billy has written about growing up in the Fan District click here.

Obama to test the post-jobs-speech atmosphere in Richmond

2011-09-03T13:16:00.004-04:00

So, now it seems Richmond will become a postscript for the made-for-TV brouhaha to do with Pres. Barack Obama’s speech about jobs, now scheduled to be delivered on Thursday at 7 p.m. According to the Washington Post, the president will then be coming to Richmond on Friday (with the details about where and when to follow).

We know this because of a “White House official speaking on condition of anonymity” planted the story and the Post accepted it. No comment is being offered at this time about the use of anonymous sources.

Furthermore, at this writing we’re still having to guess what Rep. Eric Cantor will have to say about Obama’s speech or his visit to Richmond. But it's a given Cantor will find not a whit of good in whatever the president has to say on Thursday or Friday.

The above mentioned brouhaha has been about the scheduling of the speech, which will be delivered before a joint session of Congress. In happier times the tedious sort of wrangling over when a president ought to speak to Congress would have been played out behind closed doors. Normally, neither side would have seen any good in exposing the back-and-forth of such negotiations to public scrutiny.

Well, either we don’t live in normal times, or there’s an ugly new normal. Because it seems that in 2011 the most important aspect of anything that happens in DeeCee is how it can be packaged to put the other side in a bad light. Forget about solving problems, the postmodern mission is to tar the enemy.

As far as the tale of the timing of Obama’s jobs address has gone, the stridently partisan are all aglow about having made their opposites look petty, once again. Apparently, even when it stains both parties, perhaps equally, that‘s OK. As long as derision is being heaped on the enemy, self-inflicted collateral damage can be shrugged off by the professional campaign experts.

So, the unholy alliance between the hired-gun PR flacks of both parties and the mainstream media has force-fed another story down our throats. Once again these propagandists and their accomplices have justified their existence.

Then it's on to the next popularity polls. On to the tortured spin about what those poll numbers mean. On to Richmond.

Blogspot bugs

2011-09-01T11:02:00.004-04:00

For some reason the rest of my posts won't display in the usual way on this page, nor are they showing in the archive for August. Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm working on getting it fixed, but I have no idea what to do.

Rick Perry as Elmer Gantry

2011-08-27T13:25:00.006-04:00

The summertime parade of pachyderms who would be president seems to have featured a new leader every few weeks. The newest entry into the field of hopefuls, Gov. Rick Perry, has shot straight to the frontrunner position in the latest Gallop Poll.

What about Rep. Michele Bachmann? What about former-Gov. Mitt Romney? What about Donald Trump?

They have all become old news, it would seem. For the time being they are out of style with fickle voters who like to call themselves Republicans. Hey, Rep. Ron Paul is ahead of Bachmann in that same poll.

No need to ask what about former-Gov. Sarah Palin. Which means Palin is mostly a publicity stunt on an endless loop; she’s plainly not going to enter the race for the Republican nomination, but she‘ll surely love it if she is permitted to play a significant role in selecting the ticket.

Who knows what it means for GOP-leaning voters to jump from one elephant to another so quickly? But it seems that 15 months ahead of the 2012 election, which hopeful thumps the Bible with the most passion and authenticity matters plenty. Perry says he's not so sure about evolution.

Like, maybe it's mostly charlatan scientists just trying to get more grants, which is exactly how Perry views climate change science.

Meanwhile, former-Gov. Jon Huntsman says: “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem.”

But among active candidates, Huntsman is at the bottom of the aforementioned latest poll, so do many Republicans care what he has to say about anything? And, what kind of Christian is he, anyway?

For the Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker writes:

Even so, in the absence of a better candidate, Romney had a fighting chance to win his party’s support. Then came Perry.

Talk about a perfect-storm, composite candidate. Combine Elmer Gantry’s nose for converts, Ronald Reagan’s folksy confidence and Sarah Palin’s disdain for the elites — and that dog hunts.

Perry doesn’t just believe, he evangelizes.

Click here to read Parker’s piece, “Rick Perry, the Republicans’ Messiah?,” in its entirety.

Parker is spot on with that Elmer Gantry thing. By the way, if you haven’t seen Burt Lancaster’s Oscar-winning performance in “Elmer Gantry” (1960), do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s a film well worth seeing more than once.

High on the Hog's zombie will walk Oct. 1

2011-08-26T15:07:00.013-04:00

It seems STYLE Weekly is about to become the promoter of something akin to the old High on the Hog pork and music festival that used to be staged in Libby Hill Park (1977-2006). Its current issue has a full-page ad for an event that might be called “Hogtober” on Sat., Oct. 1.

Click here to visit the volunteer page at STYLE. It's called "Hogtoberfest" in the copy on this page. The weekly magazine is working with the Church Hill Association to put together this day filled with live music on stage, cold beer on tap and pork aplenty.

From a piece, "Big Pig Postmortem," I wrote for Brick in October of 2007 (in its Pete Humes era), here’s a little bit of HOTH history:

Due to the intrusion of an all-day downpour, last year’s edition of High on the Hog, No. 30, was a soggy affair. Two of the bands scheduled couldn’t play under the circumstances. Yet, in spite of the stormy weather, the Bop Cats and the Memphis Rockabilly Band performed using a scaled down sound system. Tarps were lashed to the sides and back of the stage to block the wind-driven rain.

A few party stalwarts danced in the mud with umbrellas. The show went on … but perhaps for the last time.

“It was a Nor’easterner that settled over Richmond,” said the longtime director of matters musical, Chuck Wrenn. “We’ll see what the future brings.”

Meanwhile, there certainly will be no High on the Hog 31 this year. So, the director of matters porcine, Larry Ham, won’t be slathering his Carolina red vinegar basting sauce over slow-cooking pork this Saturday in Libby Hill Park.

Moreover, it seems likely that High on the Hog—which for three decades has served a generation as a reliable reunion party—has probably happened for the last time.

The heavy losses sustained from last year’s fizzler meant the handful of friends/neighbors who have staged and financially backed HOTH since its inception took a bath in red ink ... the rainy day fund was wiped out.

Going back to HOTH’s origins, other than Ham, among Wrenn’s chief co-conspirators have been: Bobby Long, Dave O’Kelly, John Cochran, Randy Smith and Steve McKay. For such veterans last year’s weather had to bring to mind another rainy day, 26 years before. 1980 was the year they significantly enlarged the plan for what had originally been a small annual neighborhood party.

Three rousing rock n’ roll bands played on a flatbed trailer in the cobblestone alley behind Wrenn’s 2808 East Franklin Street back yard for what was the then-largest HOTH crowd ever.

Yet, this was a time when one couldn’t get a permit from the proper authorities for such an event. Amplified rock simply wasn’t allowed at outdoor shindigs in Richmond, most especially on public property. So, in a sense HOTH 4 was flying below, or perhaps above, the radar. For whatever reason the cops on the beat chose not to bust it.

When it suddenly began raining in 1980, rather than lose momentum by shutting off the electricity and clearing the stage—to wait out the downpour—Wrenn broke out his staple gun and large rolls of heavy-gauge transparent plastic. With the help of volunteers an awning was hastily improvised to keep the rain off the stage. A portion of the yard closest to it was also protected, somewhat.

Then, with the electric guitars of Don’ Ax Me ... Bitch wailing in defiance of the chilly rainstorm, the sense of common purpose felt by those dancing in the mud was unforgettable. The full potential of live rock n’ roll music to simultaneously express both lamentation and celebration was realized.

In 1983 HOTH had outgrown its alley venue, so it shifted gears and moved into the park across the street. The throwdown even went legit. Subsequently, HOTH’s rollicking success and noteworthy lack of trouble planted the seeds for Jumpin’ in July, Friday Cheers and the outdoor music festivals that have blossomed since.

The HOTH record for beer sales on a Saturday afternoon still stands at 209 kegs; it was some time in the early ‘90s, according to Chuck. At its peak, it took some 350 volunteers to chop the pork, serve the beer, tend the stage, etc. Each year volunteers got a new HOTH T-shirt for their trouble; extras were sold to the public. There have been 25 different models.

What was a beloved local gospel group, The Silver Stars, holds the record for most HOTH appearances with 10 (1987-‘96). The Memphis Rockabilly Band played the gig seven times (1980, ‘81, ‘84-‘87, ‘06).

“The Silver Stars, we got every year we could ... until they died,” Wrenn recalled.

What were locally-based bands with multiple appearances include: The Bop Cats, The Good Humor Band, Billy Ray Hatley’s bands, Page Wilson with Reckless Abandon and The Wall-O-Matics. Maybe the three most noteworthy national acts were: Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band in ‘83 and ‘85; NRBQ in ‘87; Marcia Ball in ‘01.

Presented with the prospect that HOTH has run it course, a smiling Chuck Wrenn offered familiar advice, “Don’t forget to have a good time.”

Those coveted laminated backstage credentials, which meant free beer to the wearer, will probably be selling on eBay soon. Who knows what T-shirts will eventually be worth?

Aug. 23,1:51 p.m. EDT

2011-08-24T15:30:00.002-04:00

My first sense of it was as a noise. It sounded like my upstairs neighbor’s washing machine had the most unbalanced load ever. The bam-bam-bam noise had a rhythmic quality. But it was louder than ever before. Then I realized I could feel it, too.

As I sat facing my laptop wondering what could make such a noise that the building seemed to be moved by it, I hadn’t accepted that it really was moving.

No. It had to be a garbage truck lumbering down the cobblestone alley, or a low-flying helicopter just overhead.

Then I flashed back onto a time when some kids were playing a noisy game in the alley behind my place. They had found several sets of old metal file cabinets in the alley. So they took out the green drawers and made a few stacks of them, maybe three or four drawers high. Then they started rolling black bowling balls, the big ones with holes that are used in tenpins, at the towers of file cabinets.

The players took turns. When the file drawers tumbled, crash! kaboom! the group cheered. With the racket it made, fortunately, they were playing their whimsical game in daylight hours.

There you have it -- even in a genuine emergency some of us are still able to digress and detach from reality.

After some 15 seconds into yesterday's shaky business it finally dawned on me that maybe it was an earthquake. As I’d never seen/felt one before, I had only movies for a frame of reference.

Suddenly my desire to get out of the old three-story building I was in overwhelmed me. I was on my feet and through the door pretty damn fast for an old goat. When I got close to the alley, I turned around to look back at the building.

Yes, it was moving!

There was dust, or something like it, popping out of its brick walls. The wooden two-story back porch was dancing up and down. It went on for another 30 seconds, or so. I was so focused on watching and trying to make sense of what I was seeing before me, I couldn’t tell if the other buildings on the block were doing the same thing ... it stopped.

Why would it happen to only one building? With my heart still racing, I walked down the alley to investigate.

Instantly, there were others in the alley and on the street. I walked around for about five minutes. If they spoke at all most people said essentially the same thing: "Was your building shaking, too?"

The episode had lasted so long, the better part of a minute, it seemed unlike movie earthquakes. I listened for sirens or other signs of trouble. It was over.

When I went back indoors, I sat back down and checked in on Facebook. I saw posts from other parts of the state, and as far away as New York, all saying the same thing -- “EARTHQUAKE.” It took another five minutes for the wire services to get the story out.

Closer to home, Brad Tucker posted a video on Facebook. It was The Cars’ “Shake It Up.” I laughed and played it. Feeling better immediately, I clicked on “share.”

Then I went back to reading about the hurricane that’s threatening to rearrange the East Coast.

Upon reflection, I thought about the tornado I saw in 1968. It was heading straight for where I was standing, struck still with awe, before it slammed into a huge, low-rise storage building, perhaps a quarter-mile away in an open field.

After a slight pause, to chew up and spit out half of the building, the skittering blue-black funnel turned hard right and here I am to tell the story. That intense scene, 43 years ago, lasted about as long as did yesterday's earthquake.

Didn't go out after dark, but I bet the bars in the Fan were lively. Now I can put another large item on my special list of things I’m glad I’ve seen … but wouldn’t want to see again.

Aug. 23,1:51:04 p.m. EDT

2011-08-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

Over-awareness of the camera

2011-08-22T14:08:00.010-04:00

Behind makeshift barricades in the basement of a small church there will be 18 people, 17 of which will hostages of a 20-year-old schizophrenic full of sweet red wine and homemade speed. He will have his finger on the trigger of a portable nuclear device.

A little camera and microphone hooked up to a laptop will capture and transmit the hostage-taker's cryptic announcement: "I am the Looney Tunes Bomber, my presentation will be a one-reeler."

The entire nine minutes and 11 seconds of the LTB’s ranting performance will be consumed by a rapt audience that some will estimate to be a billion viewers in its final minute.

After chuckling, “Tha, tha … that’s all folks,” he will set off the bomb.

It will blow Boise, or maybe Baltimore, off the map. The first video of the suicidal bomber’s diabolical stunt will go up on YouTube less than an hour after the appearance of the mushroom cloud.

Somewhere, in Rio, or Tokyo, or elsewhere, a heart will be beating faster in the chest of an abused and angry boy who will be instantly determined to top the LTB’s bloodthirsty audacity.

We are watching a generation grow up with an awareness of the camera that goes far beyond previous generations. And, we are also witnessing a snowballing of the ability of anyone to transmit words and images about love, hate, religion, style and politics, by way of the Internet, to a worldwide audience.

It’s anybody’s guess where the current generation’s insatiable thirst to record and share voluminous records of their everyday lives will lead ... good or bad. We do already know that revolutionaries everywhere are relying on social media in a way that is mind-boggling.

Meanwhile, more and more we are seeing news stories that are tantamount to stunts staged for willing cameras. While it's fashionable these days to scold the press for its tasteless and excessive coverage of certain events, it's not entirely the fault of media executives and editors. The stories they encounter, in some cases, have been planned and packaged by people who are damn good at planting a story.

A precedent-setter in this area occurred 32 years ago with the shameful cooperation that developed between news-gatherers for television and the Iranian "students," who demonstrated on a daily basis in front of the American embassy during the hostage crisis (1979-81) that sabotaged the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Now we know that much of the feverish chanting and fist waving was done on cue. Now we know the camera shots were pushed in tight because the angry horde yelling, "Death to America!" was only a dozen souls deep.

Today, it seems cultural and religious grievances are routinely becoming more heated, here and abroad, by provocative or slanted news coverage. Moreover, much of the reportage these days actually seems designed to inflame situations being covered.

On top of that, in America, the press scrutiny of angry anti-government firestorm being stoked by some for political gain is surely helping to push some alienated militia types, who see Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as a hero, closer to the edge.

Speaking of McVeigh, the future’s bomber in the church basement has already seen how plenty of sullen murderers have been made into celebrities by the press. So, he will be confident that the television networks and online newspapers would not turn down a live broadcast of an on-going hostage situation.

Sadly, even if they could see they would be magnifying the reach and power of our wigged out terrorist, it’s hard for this scribe to believe the mainstream media would be able to deny him his last terrible wishes. Several movies have been made using this same basic hostage-holding hook.

Can’t you hear the executives explaining their decisions? If we didn’t cover the story in real-time, the other networks were going to, etc…

-- 30 --

Eric E: Jukebox of Americana

2011-08-19T11:18:00.006-04:00

Note: After attending the memorial ceremony for the man known to his many fans as Eric E., eight years ago today, I wrote the short piece that follows for what was then my new blog:

RICHMOND, VA (August 19, 2003): The horns wailed as they entered the Arthur Ashe Center. At about 12:30 p.m. a brass New Orleans-style procession playing "Just A Closer Walk With Thee" led the family, friends and fans of the late L. Eric "Rick" Stanley into the memorial ceremony.

It was a service for the deejay known to his local listeners as Eric E. Stanley died on August 12, 2003.

The program billed the occasion as a "celebration of life." What followed the procession, two hours-plus of music and colorful Rick Stanley anecdotes with a somewhat restrained dose of old-time religion, lived up to the billing.

Many of the faces in the crowd of approximately 1,500 were familiar to anyone who has followed the live music scene in Richmond over the last 20-some years. Interestingly, for a city reputed to be trapped in habits that separate blacks from whites, Stanley once again demonstrated his unique ability to appeal to both sides of Broad Street.

Eric Stanley, who was 53 when cancer took his life, was the host and producer of the Bebop, Boogie, & Blues Review, a radio show of his own invention that was heard most recently on WJMO-105.7FM on Sunday nights. As well, he was a promoter/producer of many live shows.

Stanley's bright-eyed daughter, Erin Stanley, closed her remarks with her father's trademark radio sign-off: "Gotta go ... gotta go."

Tears flowed – of course they did – but the overall mood in the room was decidedly upbeat. Stanley's presence was symbolized throughout the cavernous space by photographs and other traditional remembrances on display, which included his own harmonica – a Hohner Pro Harp, a 10-hole diatonic with black cover-plates.

For the recessional the musicians played "When the Saints Go Marching In" to lead the gathering into the sunlight.

Those who were so disposed went to the closest restaurant/bar, Dabney's, where a lively reception ensued, and lingered. No doubt, it was a crowd Rick Stanley would have enjoyed being a part of.

His silent black harmonica was there.

Note: A year-and-a-half before that ceremony I wrote this profile of Stanley for a Fifty Plus, local magazine.

Eric E: Jukebox of Americana
By F. T. Rea

FEBRUARY 2002: Richmond’s Eric E is a jukebox of colorful anecdotes about American music. Push any button and out comes another of his takes on some aspect of the music he has found in his midst. Then you get a set that might include a mix of Jazz, Blues, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Zydeco, Rockabilly, Country & Western, Hip Hop, Soul, Gospel, or Du-Wop. You name it.

Otherwise known as Eric E. Stanley, Eric E has made a lifelong study of American working-man’s music styles and the connections between them. His understanding of those integral connections -- synapses between genres -- lies at the core of his own authentic style.

All that said, Stanley is on the air, again, with a better-than-ever version of his trademark radio show: the Bebop Boogie & Blues Revue. He’s back after dodging a bullet that came at him out of blue -- prostate cancer. After a routine test alerted him to his situation, he was basically out of the game for a year.

With that ordeal behind him, what comes out of his listeners’ speakers on Sunday nights, between 7 p.m. and midnight, is the Eric E jukebox of Americana. His free-association decision of what recording to play next can be as improvised as a jazz musician landing on just the right note and quirky pause to justify the experimental riff he just played.

Seamlessly, Eric E moves from Jimi Hendrix to Patsy Cline to Muddy Waters to Li’l Ronnie and the Grand Dukes to Stanley Turentine, all, without worrying about why.

In an age of ubiquitous ticky-tacky radio programming, Stanley’s variety-oriented ideas can’t be packaged into a standard format. Thus, his current arrangement with WJMO, 105.7FM, allows him to do as he pleases with the five-hour block of time. He not only hosts the show and selects the music, but he also arranges for the program’s underwriting. In effect, Eric E. is his own boss.

The product, the Bebop Boogie & Blues Revue, is an utter delight. Typical of the Eric E style, he also does the commercials live. With no canned hype, the ads come off more as endorsements than intrusions. At this writing, BB&BR’s five sponsorships, one for each hour, are the Richmond Jazz Society, Plan 9 Music, Kuba Kuba restaurant, the Commercial Taphouse, and Creole Arts.

“If you advertise with me, I’m going in your business,” says Stanley. “If I haven’t been in the place, I don’t accept the ad.”

The Path to Radio

As a child, Eric Stanley spent as much time as he could at his aunt’s restaurant, a spacious old log-house with a stone fireplace. The Hilltop Restaurant, located on US Route 1 in Ashland, catered mostly to a rural black clientele. In the summer he’d cook hamburgers and do what he could to seem useful.

The Hilltop featured live entertainment, mostly acts from what was known as the Chitlin’ Circuit. Down in the basement, Stanley’s uncle poured off-the-record shots of liquor. Fascinated with the raw music and the natural scene surrounding it, Ricky -- a skinny kid with glasses -- soaked up all he could from traveling bluesmen such as Jimmy Reed and Elmore James.

Sometimes Reed would baby-sit for precocious Ricky (who tended to ask too many questions) when his aunt and uncle were running errands for the business. “I remember it from the late '50s to early '60s,” says Stanley with his easy smile. Of the legendary Reed, Stanley recalls: “He’d give me a quarter for the vibrating [lounge] chair, drink whiskey from a little bottle, and play his guitar.”

Stanley’s favorite hit tunes from his childhood? Off the top of his head he answers, “‘In the Still of the Night,’ ‘It’s All in the Game,’ and ‘Twist and Shout,’ the Isley Brothers version.”

During his high school days, playing drums and harmonica in bands, together with performing as a dancing drum major, Stanley leaned that he enjoyed performing in front of a crowd. That yen would resurface.

In 1968, after Stanley finished Virginia Randolph, he went on to study advertising at Virginia Commonwealth University for a couple of years. For the next nine years he was away from the Richmond area, for the most part, studying Early Childhood Education at Bowie State College in Maryland and working as a day-care teacher in Washington. It was during his period in D.C. that he fell into broadcasting.

A friend was hosting a radio program with commentary about prison life. He helped her with the project and began playing some jazz here and there to broaden the narrowly focused show’s appeal. That led to Eric Stanley’s first program of his own, a 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. gig on WPFW-FM.

Color Radio

In 1979 Stanley returned to Richmond, and in 1982, while managing a Reggae band, Awareness Art Ensemble, he found his way to Color Radio. “I got involved with Color Radio because Charles Williams, of the Good Guys band [bass guitar], called and told me they were starting a station on Continental Cablevision and I should get involved,” says Stanley.

Color Radio (1982-84) was the sound heard behind cable television company’s static color-bar test pattern on Channel 36. The station was started by alternative music enthusiasts who were, for the most part, neophyte broadcasters. Some had had experience at college stations.

The sound traveled by phone line from a makeshift studio over Plan 9 record store in Carytown to Continental, which sent the signal out on its lines. The DJs were invited volunteers -- several were musicians -- and they essentially played and said whatever they liked.

The eclectic, spontaneous style Stanley developed then is what he has used when he could ever since. He dubbed his show, “The Frontline -- 360 degrees of Ba-Lack Music.” Stanley closed each show with what has become his signature sign-off as Eric E, the performer: “Gotta go … Gotta go.”

From WANT to WVGO

In the radio business some things change fast, others never change. One day you’re the toast of the town. The next week your front door key doesn’t work because the station’s locks have been changed; you’ve been sacked. Eric Stanley, like anyone who has hung around for any time in the radio biz, has been buffeted about by a variety of stations through all sorts of changes in ownership and format.

The story of how he came to his present gig on Sunday nights picks up in 1988, when WRNL, 910-AM, hired Eric Stanley to host an oldies midday show. Later, he expanded into Saturday nights, with an R&B-oriented oldies show.

In 1990 Harriet McLeod, popular music writer for the Richmond News Leader wrote:

Stanley, music director since January, has set out to make it [WRNL] Richmond’s funkiest radio station, adding to the oldies format B-sides, album cuts, tunes that never charted in the era when sales in black-owned record stores, and often sales of black artists, weren’t counted for the charts. Stanley draws much of his playlist from a personal collection of 5,000 albums, singles, tapes, CDs.

His move to WRXL-FM marked the beginning of the Bebop Boogie & Blues Revue, which Eric E hosted on Sunday nights. Although it was Blues-based, this time he got the freedom to do something closer to what he had done with his Color Radio show. At this point he called his format “free-form.”

Among other things freeform meant taking risks in stride. In speaking of two of his favorite musicians, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Stanley says, “The ones [musicians] who got the most respect took chances.”

His next move, in 1992, was to WVGO, 106.5-FM. The new station positioned itself as an alternative to "classic rock" and took the Richmond market by storm. Soon Stanley was recognized widely for his amazing crossover success: in other words, a black radio personality appealing to a white audience. Suddenly he was everywhere; hosting live events for the station and the darling of local entertainment writers.

On the air Eric E pushed the envelope, even for a station with a so-called “alternative” format. In addition to his “almost anything but opera” style of presentation he made a point of playing the recordings of local acts, too; such as Boy O Boy, the Good Guys and Theories of the Old School.

In 1994, having acted as DJ/host of a blues night at Mulligan’s Sports Bar for five years, he moved his act to Memphis Bar & Grill in Shockoe Bottom. There he played records and presented live music on Wednesday night for two years. But in October of 1995 the wind shifted in the market once again. Eric E and WVGO went their separate ways. And the next year he moved his live version of Bebop Boogie & Blues Revue to the Moondance Saloon. At this point he was also busy doing voice-overs for commercials and acting as a consultant and/or executive producer for several area bands' recording projects.

Diagnosis and Recovery

Over the years the resourceful Eric Stanley has worked a number of jobs to fill in and around his show business activities. It was in one of those situations that he suddenly learned of a totally unexpected problem. A screening for prostate cancer, conducted through his workplace, Haley Pontiac, revealed that he had no viable option to surgery, which took place in July of 2000.

Since this meant no work for a lengthy spell and his insurance was inadequate to cover all the ramifications, money problems loomed, not to mention the natural worry about his prognosis. Although these were dark days, there was a shaft of light at the end of the tunnel.

Enter two friends: Marilyn Marable and Lee Pillsbury. Overnight they organized a benefit show at Alley Katz, a Shockoe Bottom live stage. The all-star lineup included; Plunky & Oneness, Rene Marie, Jazz Poets Society, Bio Ritmo, The Deprogrammers/Good Guys (a combination of the two bands), Car Bomb, Inc., The Nighthawks, Helel, and Fighting Gravity.

Of the night of the Alley Katz extravaganza, Stanley says: "The most humbling thing was when they put that benefit on."

Today, cancer free and undergoing no cancer-related treatment, he laughs at an unflattering photograph of a somewhat wan-looking Eric E that accompanied an article about the benefit. "When I saw that picture of me I thought I was dying."

Since then the American Cancer Society has approached him about acting as a spokesman for the organization, speaking to groups of men on the importance of testing.

“Since I’m exercising and eating better, I may be healthier than I was,” says the ever upbeat Stanley. “Last year, I was diagnosed and treated for cancer. Thanks to God, a real good woman [the previously mentioned Marilyn Marable], a good doctor, and the mojo [a green bag of mysterious herbs, bone powder and who-knows-what? he picked up in New Orleans years ago] I keep in my pocket, I'm still here and laughing at you."

Sunday Night Live

Now that Eric E is back in the saddle, the last Arbitron ratings book [as of this writing] reported that the Bebop Boogie & Blues Revue had already shot to a close second to WCDX-FM, Power 92, in his time-slot, among listeners in the 25-to-54 demographic.

So instead of complaining about how lame radio in Richmond can be, the reader is advised to tune in to Eric E for an escape from the ordinary. On top of its entertainment value, his show is not unlike a class in music history. Yes, Stanley sounds very much the professor as he explains, for example, how Muddy Waters put together the traditional electrified blues ensemble of two guitars, drums and harmonica, with piano on occasion.

In fact, Professor Eric E is teaching a class, American Music: Blues, Hip Hop, Jazz, and Rock 'n' Roll, at St. Catherine’s School this semester. So the young ladies on Grove Avenue, nestled up to the Country Club of Virginia, are learning how Chuck Berry took Country & Western songs and gave them a Blues shuffle-beat in order to become a Rock ‘n’ Roll pioneer.

Those private school students will also be exposed to Eric E. Stanley’s well-honed thoughts on the power of music to reach across cultural barriers. Of music’s ability to bring people of different backgrounds together he says: “Many times it’s the hammer that breaks the wall down.”

From the Hilltop Restaurant, by way of countless hours of platter-spinning air-time, Eric Stanley, 52-years-old on February 26 (a birthday he shares with music legends Fats Domino and Johnny Cash), is at the top of his game, again.

Meanwhile, as the former hamburger flipper and dancing drum major would no doubt say at this point, “Gotta go … gotta go.”

-- 30 --

-- Photo by Al Wekelo