Biograph's 34th Anniverary

There was a time when February 11 meant a party was probably brewing, maybe a few surprises, too, at 814 West Grace Street. That was before the Biograph Theatre closed over 18 years ago. Well, today happens to be the 34th anniversary of the opening of the Biograph in 1972. Accordingly, here's an excerpt of "Thanks Aimee," written for Richmond.com (in 2000):

"...For me, the gig lasted nearly 12 years, including five years of Rocky Horror midnight shows. Four years after my departure, seven years after the arrival of cable TV in Richmond, the Biograph's screen went dark in December '87. Times had changed and the theater could no longer pay its way. But in that little independent cinema's heyday, Feb. 11 meant something to those familiar with the nightlife in the VCU area. The Biograph's second anniversary was the party that established the occasion of the theater's birthday as a date to mark on the calendar. That was the year of The Devil Prank."

A few Biograph Theatre anniversaries have been celebrated since it closed. The ones I know about were parties I organized/hosted. In 1989 I had a part-time gig as a bartender at The Attic in Northside, so it went down there. This one happened by word-of-mouth. We showed some videos and looked at old photos.

In 1992, for the 20th, I booked two acts, lined up a room -- Twisters (it was the Back Door in the 1970s, now it's Nanci Raygun), promoted the event and even made up some T-shirts. We had the Useless Playboys as the headliner; Rebby Sharp did an opening set. I remember the late Carole Kass (perhaps the best friend the Biograph ever had) was there. The reunion aspect of it was nice.

For the 30th, in 2002, working with the Richmond Moving Image Coop, we showed several films and presented three bands at Poe's Pub. Colleen Curran at Richmond.com wrote a piece about the occasion. That party -- featuring Page Wilson with Reckless Abandon; Burnt Taters (now The Taters); Used Carlotta -- packed the house and raised a little money for RMIC. A good time was had by all, as far as I could tell.

Click here to visit the Biograph Archives.

As Bush's World Turns

Thursday was a tough news day for President Bush, who must have started the morning thinking he could control the headlines with his warmed-over declassified story about saving LA from a terrorist attack in 2002. Bush surely hoped the spilling of chilling details about would-be shoe-bombing hijackers would take some heat off his illegal homeland wiretapping program for a spell, maybe even cut him a little slack on the lobbyist scandal front.

Oops, a story about Dick Cheney, as reported by Reuters, one-upped him.

In this AP photo Maryland’s Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and Sen. George Allen of Virginia applauded Vice President Dick Cheney tonight, in spite of the afternoon’s bad news about Scooter Libby singing like a canary.

“Vice President Dick Cheney directed his aide Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby to use classified material to discredit a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq war effort, the National Journal reported on Thursday. Court papers released last week show that Libby was authorized to disclose classified information to news reporters by ‘his superiors,’ in an effort to counteract diplomat Joe Wilson’s charge that the Bush administration twisted intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons to justify the 2003 invasion.”

Uh-oh, then a second Reuters story reported:

“Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public on Thursday that President Bush met him ‘almost a dozen’ times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal. ‘The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows,’ Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor for the Washingtonian magazine.”

Which major city do you think Bush’s embattled domestic surveillance program will have saved from devastation in his next speech? Perhaps a better question is: why does anyone still believe anything the fumbling Bush administration says to fend off scrutiny and defend itself from criticism ?

Cartoon Riots?

Cartoon Riots! If ever there was a bubbling brouhaha I was born to opine about, this business about ‘toons touching off riots in a number of countries has got my attention.

Meanwhile, in the USA somebody is burning Baptist churches down in Alabama, again, and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan got roughed up and busted in DeeCee for wearing a T-shirt that questioned President Bush's war policy in Iraq. So much for thinking all the mean-spirited lunacy is elsewhere.

Back to ink-on-paper concerns, obviously, there are some on Planet Earth who think it’s OK to burn an embassy, even take human lives if they get offended by a drawing published in a newspaper a couple of thousand miles away. What if THAT catches on?

And, what’s a wiseacre cartoonist to do now? Do you draw The Prophet, you-know-who, or not? And, if you do, what does he look like?

For that I go to the best in the business today, Pat Oliphant.

Webb Is In Senate Race

In what runs contrary to a rumor that flashed across the Lefty Blogs on Jan. 30, a rumor that passed for a few days as expert inside information, James Webb announced yesterday that he will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican incumbent George Allen for his Senate seat.

In the Washington Post Michael D. Shear writes, “James Webb, who served as President Ronald Reagan's Navy secretary, said Tuesday that he will seek the Democratic nomination to run against U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) this year, hoping to challenge the one-term incumbent on foreign policy and the conduct of the war in Iraq.

“...A former Marine, Webb served in Vietnam and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. On his personal Web site, he describes having been raised in a family with ‘a strong citizen-soldier military tradition.’ He is also a novelist and filmmaker, having written ‘Rules of Engagement,’ a 2000 film that opens with a confrontation involving U.S. Marines in Yemen. But winning the Democratic nomination in Virginia this year will require Webb to explain his Republican roots. He had served as an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and was appointed secretary of the Navy in 1987. A year later, Webb resigned the post abruptly amid clashes with Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci.”

Here's a link to the Richmond Times-Dispatch's account of the same story.

In a related story AP writer Jon Sarche's "Veterans Enter Political Arena" shows that Webb is hardly the only vet campaigning against President Bush's foreign policy.

"...By one count, at least 11 veterans of the Iraq war or Afghanistan are hoping to get elected to the House or Senate, all but one of them Democrats. The fighting Democrats, as some call themselves, say their military experience could give them the credibility to criticize the war without being dismissed out of hand by the GOP as naive and weak on defense, as the Bush administration has often done."

A Cartoon To Die For?

Georgie Anne Geyer, turns her sharp gaze on most recent crisis in the Middle East -- this one spawned by political cartoons deemed by some elements as insulting to Islam, blasphemous for even depicting the prophet Mohammed. As usual, the classy Geyer is a cool head when others are loosing theirs. Over the decades she's been impossible to label in a world determined to force "liberal" or "conservative" labels on every person and every idea. Here are a few sentences of Geyer’s column, "Cartoon Reactions Turns Up Flame Under a Simmering Middle East."

“...What do these maddened demonstrations, riots and arsons say about what is really happening in the heart and soul of the Middle East? Unfortunately, they illustrate the extent to which the Arab and Islamic world, far from moving toward more just and democratic societies, is again sinking into the old religions and ethnic sectarianism that have cursed this region, with so much intrinsic potential, for so long. Just this week, Muslim mobs were attacking Christian churches in Beirut again; Christians have been leaving Iraq in droves; and the Shiite-Sunni split in Iraq, with all its historical ugliness, is back upon us.”

Why Monica?

The cartoonish photograph of Hillary Clinton above this paragraph is from Reuters coverage of the State of the Union address on Tuesday night. It reminded me of the way Pat Oliphant, my favorite current political cartoonist, draws her. Then it made me think, hmm, that’s probably an expression old Bill Clinton knows all too well.

Which gave me pause to chuckle. Then I thought of a Monica and Bill cartoon by one of my all-time favorite artists, R. Crumb. That panel is below this paragraph (click on it to enlarge). Taken together, I now think these images may help to answer the very question -- Why Monica? -- many of us were asking way back at this time of year in 1998. Why in the world would the president, a former Rhodes Scholar, go for such a bimbo? Well, the answer could simply have been that after looking at scary Hillary’s visage for so long, cheeky Monica looked rather sweet and harmless. Boy was he wrong...

And, please don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending Slick Willie’s dalliance. Only trying to better understand the Splattergate scandal, which put Dubya & Co. in the White House. That pizza Monica delivered led to us having to swallow Cheney, Rove, "Brownie," Alito, color-coded fear, and all the rest of it.

That chatterbox, Monica, if only... (make up your own punchline)

Bush lame; Kaine safe

The state of the union?

Oy vey...

Bush is still smirky Bush. He probably knows my ilk is wise to him, that he’s a phony on several scores. And, he’s a "fortunate one," who counts on knowing I/we can’t really do much about it.

To call the boilerplate blather of President Bush’s State of the Union address “rhetoric,” or even “propaganda,” elevates it. It was pap. Tonight he had nothing to say; so he said it with utter conviction. Who really believes this oil-bred president wants America's oil addiction cured in our time?

Who can't tell that "W" is a galling son of a president, quite confident he's going to get away with everything he's done to dupe his fellow citizens?

The Democrats' response to Bush’s waste of an hour of primetime television -- I bet the cable TV alternatives’ ratings were boffo during this ho-hum presentation -- was delivered by Virginia’s brand new governor, Richmond's former mayor Tim Kaine. This was a big moment for Kaine, a politician I’ve happily supported over the years.

Kaine presented an upbeat message. Yes, it was better than Bush's. However, the main reason was that it was shorter. Yes, Kaine played it safe.

Bush was directing his blessings at his loyal core audience. Alas, Kaine seemed to have his eye mostly on Virginia's political landscape. Maybe it was smart for Kaine's career. In my book, it was mostly a waste.

It will be interesting to see how Kaine’s rebuttal plays out of town. Maybe my disappointment will fade when I've slept on it.

For tonight, tha, tha, that's all folks!

Kaine Sharpens a Point

In comments today Gov. Tim Kaine signaled his concern about an issue that’s a sure winner for Democrats -- the illegal domestic spying being done by Bush operatives in the name of chasing enemies.

"'Whether it's a technical violation of the law or not, I think the clear intent of the law has been bypassed,' Kaine, a Democrat, said about the National Security Agency warrantless eavesdropping program. 'Leaders who do that suggest you can treat laws and rules in an instrumental way and when it serves your purpose you don't need to follow them. And I think that that's dangerous,' Kaine said at a breakfast meeting with reporters."

That quote is from this Richmond Times-Dispatch article.

This issue is almost risk-free. In the long run, only the most diehard Bush supporters, crazed hawks and neoconservatives are going to support the president's lame position that he can do whatever he likes if he snaps his fingers and claims its part of his War on Terror. Realistically, what’s that? Probably somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the voters, at the most. And, that's a hardcore group no Democrat will ever get. So, who cares if they squawk about attacking Bush for being a law-breaker?

The upside of the strategy of decrying Bush's disregard for the law is huge. Most voters don't want a president who thinks he's above the law. As long as Kaine stays on this point -- Bush is not above the law -- Kaine is speaking as a lawyer and as a governor protecting his constituents‘ rights.

This loose legal thread has the potential to unravel into many other areas, some which may prove quite embarrassing to Bush. That's if its pulled hard enough at the right time. This isn't about policy. It's about the law of the land.

OK, I'll get SLANTblog's review of tonight's televised political drama posted, ASAP. No doubt, Virginia's blogs will be going full steam tonight.

Webb Out; Now What?

At Raising Kaine activist/writer Lowell Feld has bad news for those who saw James Webb as the best man to unseat George Allen in November -- James Webb Is Out; The Rebellion is On! The piece is lively and makes some good points that Democrats ought to consider. Like Feld, I, too, am sorry to see Webb apparently doesn't feel moved to enter politics to serve Virginia as one of its two US Senators. Not now, anyway. Here's a sample of Feld's rant:

"...I’ve got very bad news: despite our best efforts to 'draft' him, James Webb apparently has decided not to run for US Senate this year. I am hopeful that Mr. Webb will make a formal announcement regarding his thinking on this matter, but for now I’ll just say that this is extremely discouraging news for me, and should be extremely discouraging news for all Virginians and all Americans. Unless, of course, their name happens to be 'George Allen' that is.

"Why do I say this? Because I strongly believe that James Webb offered the potential for a unique sort of leadership. Because I strongly believe that James Webb offered a chance to heal some giant rifts within the Democratic Party, and in the country as a whole. Because I strongly believe that James Webb offered the potential to win back the working class, the 'Reagan Democrats,' and the national security-minded Americans to the Democratic Party. And because I strongly believe that former Senator Bob Kerrey was 100% correct when he wrote to me (on January 7, 2007) about Webb: 'He is a unique and powerful voice which could change the course of our nation’s future.'"

Holes in Reid's Bullet Story?

"Yes, I believe Delegate Jack Reid lied to the General Assembly and the public," writes J.C. Wilmore at the Richmond Democrat -- a blog devoted to politics as seen by a self-proclaimed Democrat. And this donkey has political opinions aplenty.

This time the Richmond Democrat's opinion is that the red-faced Reid's story about the accidental discharge of a round of live ammo in his office last week is baloney. Several posts on his site have been on this same subject. Furthermore, he's gotten an opinion from the handgun's manufacturer, to check out the veracity of Reid‘s claim. Guess what it says.

Wilmore may just have something with this. Reid's story reminds me of another one, from about 20 years ago. Roy West, a career-educator and then-Richmond's mayor, had a handgun go off on him at his home, which was never explained in a way that satisfied me.

As I recall it, West said he was trying to shoot a rat and somehow blew off the tip of a finger. Then he tweaked the story a bit; it seems that he would have been breaking the law to hunt rats in the city with a handgun. SLANT ran at least a couple of cartoons on the topic. West frequently lent himself to lampooning in a way hard to ignore. (I'll look around in the archives and see if I can find one of them.)

Delegate (R-Henrico) Reid’s inability to control his personal handgun properly in a public building has the feel of a story that's growing legs. His first explanation, which may be starting to crumble, must be inspiring some folks to use their imagination to deduce what may have really happened. Let’s see. There was this big rat...

Harvey Segment on Dateline

Just watched NBC’s Dateline segment on the Harvey murders. In short, it was nowhere near as sensational as I, and perhaps many others, feared it might be. The producers mostly handled it as an in-depth news story. They didn’t dwell on the lurid speculations all that much; the mourners weren't turned into a sideshow.

However, to see that Johnny Hott -- who was on camera the most -- was put through the wringer by the local investigators was yet another painful page to a bitter story. For Hott to have been squeezed and prodded by official inquisitors in the hard, hard days after he discovered Bryan, Kathy and their kids had been murdered was like something in a Kafka story.

Then there's this: OK, I know the cops will say the doer is usually a person close to the victims and how the guy who did the deed often calls in the alarm, too, but to have focused on Hott, exclusively, was crazy, if that's what that they did. The Dateline piece suggests that may have been the case.

So, like Johnny said in the report, one must wonder what would have happened to him if the two mad dogs arrested in Pennsylvania hadn’t just fallen into the cops’ laps? How much worse would it have gotten for Hott?

Some of the statements attributed by the media to the local police, made in the days after the murders, still don’t make sense to me, either. It seems like we were told things that weren’t exactly true. Why? Did the cops know they were spreading disinformation? Were they misquoted? Richmond’s new police chief, Rodney Monroe, needs to clear the air on this -- the sooner the better.

Chief Monroe: When you could have said, "We don't know if anything was stolen," why were we told nothing had been stolen? Why were we told the crime was personal, not random? Weren't we told that? What was the good of it? And, that gag order before arrests, whoever thought of that, wasn't that rather unusual? Looking back on it now, did that help or hurt the public's interest?

These are just quick thoughts. Rest assured, I’ll follow up on these concerns soon. Anyway, if nothing else, I’m glad Dateline gave Johnny Hott a chance to let people know what extra hell he went through.

Republican-Lite Is Out

At Raising Kaine a recent Molly Ivins column was praised by Teddy Goodson. That piece by Ivins ran in the Richmond Times-Dispatch a few days ago and I, too, thought it said something essential quite well. I know Ivins may seem old hat sometimes, but this time she's saying exactly what needs saying.

So, let me add my praise to Goodson's. Here's a taste of Molly's take on what Democrats who want to do more than strike a pose most need to grasp:

"...The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief."

Selling the Long War

Writing for his Washington Post column, William M. Arkin targets, then skewers the brazen Bush strategy for accumulating power (while making his friends rich) by declaring a perpetual state of war: “Goodbye War on Terror, Hello Long War.”

Have you noticed? Perpetual war, not nearly enough unlike the conditions of George Orwell's “1984,” is where we're heading with the scattered War on Terror that Bush says he sees in our future. That neoconservative concept for expanding a wartime president's power is really nothing new. It's just another power grab, wrapped in a cheap banner of patriotism, nothing more, nothing new. Here's a sample of Arkin's bulls-eye:

“...Defense experts want the long war to be the new name for the war on terror, a kind of societal short hand that will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Cold War, promoted to capital letters, an indisputable and universally accepted state of the world. ‘This generation of service members will be in what we're calling the Long War,’ Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier this week.”

This analysis lays out an important case quite well in a small space.

Bopcats Forever

Lindy Fralin's band the Bopcats has been at it for 30 years. Can that possibly be true?

Let's see, thirty years ago the Steelers beat the Cowpies in Super Bowl X. “All the President’s Men,” “Taxi Driver” and “Rocky” were among the popular films that came out in 1976. Tom Petty’s and Blondie’s first albums were released. The Reds swept the Yankees in the World Series. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the presidential race (I won a hundred bucks on that one!). And, somewhere in all of that swirl "them cats what's boppin" were set in motion.

To commemorate their 30-year run the Bopcats are performing at the Tobacco Company on both Friday and Saturday nights, Jan. 27 and 28. About the Bopcats' history and the gig Melissa Ruggieri writes in her column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

"Co-founder Lindy Fralin guesses the band has rotated through 'something like eight drummers and seven bass players over the years,' a thoroughly believable number for a band that has nestled in the corners of Richmond's smokiest bars for 30 years.To celebrate its longevity, several old 'cats -- as well as the current ones will set up for a pair of free concerts at The Tobacco Company this weekend, pulling out their favorite '50s and '60s covers from Elvis and Chuck Berry and indulging Fralin's wife with her requests for 'Magic Carpet Ride' and '96 Tears' -- 'stuff we haven't done in 15 years,' Fralin says."

Cuba to Play

The story of the Bush administration’s curious strategy -- mixing sports and politics obnoxiously -- to do with Major League Baseball’s first World Classic has made for headlines in many ports of call. This is an update to a story reported on SLANTblog on Jan. 18 about Cuba being barred from play -- now Cuba is back in the game.

As of this writing, 16 teams, representing 16 nations -- including feisty Fidel Castro’s Cuban national team, perhaps with a few potential defectors on board -- are set to play baseball in a few weeks. The slant on this offbeat sports story depends entirely on one's point of view; it's much more than sports news in lots of places.

To illustrate that point here’s a set of links, all updates on Cuba’s renewed participation in the tournament, which is set to run from Mar. 3 to Mar. 20:

heartbeatnews: U.S. Caves -- Allows Cubans To Play In WBC
Miami Herald: Playing ball now in Cuba’s court
The Daily Yomiuri: U.S. frees Cuba, averts World crisis
LA Times: Cuba Back in the Game
AP: Castro says Cuba will play

Play ball!

Domestic Spying is THE Issue

For the unsure donkeys who’ve been waiting in the weeds for years, especially the sorry poseurs that endorsed President George Bush’s folly of a war plan for Iraq -- because they were afraid to seem soft on terror -- this domestic-spying flap is exactly what they’ve been waiting for. At this desk it says this is the issue that will unravel Bush’s overreaching presidency, unless...

The only way Bush will get out of this scandal with his political scalp intact will be if the sometimes-squirrelly Democrats once again fail to step up to the line, toe the mark, and clobber the palooka. America’s public opinion is poised to turn against President Bush like never before. Now he’s probably something worse than an inept executive -- “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Now Bush appears he may be an arrogant law-breaker, even a tyrant-in-the-making.

In short, it seems to me there aren't more than two basic reasons for Bush’s spies not to go to the FISA courts, as the law clearly calls for. Either the judges aren’t trusted to keep secrets, uh-oh, or the eager spies already know the judges would frown on their requests.

Bush can dress up in a flight-suit and declare whatever he likes, he can change the fear code from yellow to orange, but he’s still not above the law. This administration is out of control. Nixon's ghost needs to be driven out of the White House.

The play-it-safe guys should stand aside, it’s now up to bold Democrats to do their duty -- restore the rule of law. This is a time for leadership. Perhaps a fresh voice is what the doctor ordered.

Well, I hope Gov. Tim Kaine steps up to the line and throws a stiff jab, or two, when he speaks after Bush's State of the Union address. Instead of a scattered criticism of Bush’s entire presidency, Kaine should zero in on domestic spying as the can't miss issue it is. Kaine is a skilled trial lawyer, he could seize the moment and present the case for Virginians' privacy in a free society. Will he?

And, if Sen. George Allen is fool enough to stand too near President Bush’s peculiar interpretation of the law, he does so at his own political peril. Once everybody gets it that the ship is sinking, a clueless lingering in the wrong position could get an ambitious man trampled.

Illustration: F.T. Rea

Rainy Day Escape

This 9-by-12 inches, oil-on-paper study was done last summer on a rainy afternoon, when a fog of melancholia drove me to get out some old art supplies I hadn't touched in years. Once I got started I drew that set of steps at least a half-dozen times, one after another, almost in a frenzy. The first was with pencils, then I tried charcoal and finally went to oil sticks. This was the last of them. It's called "Escape."

City in Denial

With Martin Luther King Day having just passed and anticipating Black History Month in February, I want to recycle another of my Back Page pieces for STYLE Weekly (this one ran in 2002, not all that much has changed). Here's a preview:

“...With payback being heaped upon payback, progress didn’t stand a chance. Now, every time a controversy that touches on race pops up the oh-so-familiar cries are heard: ‘Oh Gawd! Let’s hope this business dies down before it makes the national news.’ Like a dysfunctional family in denial, we don’t want the rest of the country to catch on that Richmond is still trapped in yesteryear’s snare.

“Well, take it from me dear reader -- they already know. Everybody knows. Even in other parts of Virginia they know Richmond is frozen in time when it comes to race.”