The Right Brand of Treason?

On March 2, in his speech in the House of Representatives, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear he doesn't trust Iran's government. Although his remarks along those lines drew applause, some of Netanyahu's supporters in the room surely knew that nobody trusts the regime in Iran all that much, including America's President Barack Obama. 

Although I have no good reason to trust Iran's bosses, either, sometimes the more a person talks about trust the less I trust them. Hey, who trusts Netanyahu? 

And, dear reader, do you trust many American politicians, elected or wannabe -- donkey, elephant or off-brand -- to regularly put considerations for the commonweal over all other interests? My reason for asking is to set up this question: Does trust even matter all that much in 2015?

For a lot of people, it seems to have become much more important to agree with a politician's perceived "brand" than to trust that person to be fair and honest in their dealings. Furthermore, I'm saying that as a baby boomer/geezer, I remember a time when trustworthiness seemed to be more important than appears to be today. At least, I think I do... 

Oh well, eventually, I'll finish this piece about how "branding" in our culture has become more important than trust. But for today, I'll wind up with this two-part question connected to how to deal with Iran:

Did you buy it that the 47 Republican senators who wrote a letter to Iran, trying to scuttle the international negotiations about limiting that country's nuclear program, were motivated by good intentions? Or, put it this way -- because you trust in the persuasiveness of bombs, is a letter that nudges America toward war with Iran just the right brand of treason? 

West Regional Preview

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is my favorite sports championship. When comparing it to baseball and football, in my view basketball is the best sport for a tournament format. The one-loss-and-go-home rule in college basketball's championships always seems to make a few players do things they probably didn't know they could do ... before they had to invent something to win and advance.  

While the highly-regarded teams usually win the last game of the NCAA's, along the way underdogs inevitably have their moments in the bright lights. Longtime VCU fans still talk about a game-winning shot by Rolando Lamb that beat Jim Calhoun's Northeastern team in the 1984 tournament. 

It's always fun to see a team that's won a lot of games in a supposedly weak conference prove to the fans who expect power conference members to have an advantage that some teams are just good at winning, no matter who they face. Only one squad will finish the whole shebang without a loss. 

The top two seeds of the West Regional, Wisconsin and Arizona, seem quite capable of going all the way, if you think anybody can beat Kentucky. The third seed, Baylor, is certainly good enough to reach the Sweet 16. The fourth seed, North Carolina, has the talent to play with anybody, but there's a softness about the Tar Heels collective team personality this season that I suspect will betray them.

Below I've listed the four teams I think are most likely to win the regional to appear in the Final Four; they are listed in my perception of the order of their likelihood. All four should win their first games. So, with my prejudice for VCU showing, I think the Fearsome Four schools in the West Regional are: 

• #1 Wisconsin (31-3). Last five games: 5-0. RPI: 4. Conference: Big 10. Best wins: Oklahoma and Michigan St. at neutral sites. Worst losses: Duke at home and Rutgers on the road.

• #2 Arizona (31-3). Last five games: 5-0. RPI: 5. Conference: Pac-12. Best wins: Gonzaga at home and Utah away. Worst losses: Oregon St. and UNLV both away.

• #3 Baylor (24-9). Last five games: 3-2. RPI: 10. Conference: Big 12. Iowa St. and W. Va., both on the road. Worst losses: Kansas St on the road and Oklahoma St. at home.

• #7 VCU (26-9). Last five games: 5-0. RPI: 15. Atlantic 10. Best wins: No. Iowa at home and Dayton at a neutral site. Worst losses: La Salle at home and St. Bonaventure away. 

The most likely Cinderellas to stage upsets in their first games are #12 Wofford (vs. #5 Arkansas) and #13 Harvard (vs. #4 UNC). Should I be right about VCU and wrong about UNC, it sure would be fun to see them play at the Elite Eight level, with the winner Final Four bound.

AP Poll: No. 25 VCU

Upon winning the Atlantic 10 championship by beating the tough Dayton Flyers on Sunday afternoon, by a score of 71-65, the VCU Rams finished their pre-NCAA's schedule with a 26-9 record (16-6 in overall A-10 games).

Nonetheless, I am a little surprised the March 16 AP Poll had the Rams at No. 25. Last week VCU didn't wasn't even listed among the "others receiving votes." For a team not in one of the power conferences that lost three straight games in late-February/early-March it's quite a feat to leapfrog a bunch of good teams that quickly.

Maybe the NCAA's expert seeding committee didn't show the Rams as much respect as some VCU fans might have wanted -- 7th seed in the West -- but it seems the AP Poll's voters noticed what happened in Brooklyn. What the committee couldn't ignore was VCU's eye-popping ranking in the RPI, due in great part to the Rams strong out-of-conference schedule. Today VCU stands at No. 15 in the RPI at CBS Sports.

Thus the Rams are one spot better than Notre Dame, the impressive team that just won the ACC tournament. The first game of the Big Dance for VCU will tipoff at about 4:40 p.m. on Thursday in Portland, Ore. (TNT). The Rams opponents will be one of the blue blood programs of college basketball -- the 10th-seeded Ohio St. Buckeyes (23-10) out of the Big Ten.

VCU has won five consecutive games, after losing the three previous games. Earlier this season the streaky Rams put together a 12-game run of wins. In the last week of the regular season VCU's head coach Shaka Smart was still tinkering with the starting lineup.

Which VCU Rams team will show up on the hardwood floor to face the Buckeyes in Portland? Will it be the confused Rams of March 5th in Charlotte? Or will it be the bold Rams of March 6th through the 8th at the Barclays Center?

Here's a prediction from ESPN's Joe Lunardi. 

Rams Take A-10 Tournament Title

 Post by Barclays Center.

Highlight reel from Brooklyn.

Rams Will Stomp Spiders

After going five and three with a tough schedule in November and early December, during a nine-win run, from Dec. 13 through Jan. 13, the VCU Rams performed steadily like a Top 20 team, a legitimate Final Four possibility. This spell raised expectations.

After three more wins, on Jan. 31 VCU's eye-popping streak of victories ended at the Siegel Center with a loss to the Richmond Spiders. More importantly, the Rams lost their most indispensable player -- senior point guard Briante Weber (pictured above with the ball in his hands), who blew out a knee.

Since the injury that ended Weber's college basketball career, head coach Shaka Smart's team has struggled to find its new balance. Weber's contributions had been at the heart of what Havoc had meant. Beyond his statistics his enthusiasm has been missed. His voice has been missed. His ability to make the opponents paranoid has been missed. In spite of his efforts to coach 'em up, Coach Smart has seen his team struggle with its confidence over the last six weeks. 

Now expectations don't matter any more, but an answer for what was lost on Jan 31st is at hand. Smart's job is to put everything else out of his team's mindset. VCU is still a good team, but it's a good team that hasn't played a particularly good game in several weeks. Well, it says here the Rams are due. They're due for a hot shooting game.

Yes, the Spiders are a good team, too, but not good enough to beat VCU if the young players step up and give their best effort to executing the coach's overplaying system. Not if Melvin, playing so close to his home, is feeling it. Not if the Freight Train is running on schedule. 

The Rams will beat the Spiders: VCU 72, Richmond 63. 

-- Photo from VCU Athletics

Bibi Strangelove?

Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper

From what I can tell the Americans making the most noise in their support of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seem to believe the force of their hero's swaggering personality, if directed at the worst villains in the Middle East, will scatter them to run into holes in the ground, to cower. Poor devils.

Beyond that, there seems to be no plan. At least, no plan short of another war to to bring on another regime change; after all that went so well in Iraq in 2003. Prior to launching that war, let's not forget America's post-WWII history with overthrowing governments in order to install more friendly regimes. Here are a few highlights:

• Let's start with Iran in 1953, where the USA combined with Great Britain to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, to put a dictator, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, in charge until 1979.
• America's CIA had its fingerprints all over various regime-change campaigns waged in South America in the 1960s.
• The real lollapalooza of the '60s was the coup arranged by the USA in South Vietnam in '63. 
• Of course, during the '80s we threw billions in arms support to the mujahideen militants in Afghanistan. They returned the favor by morphing into al-Qaeda. 

There are lots -- lots! -- of other regrettable foreign policy moves that could be added to this list, but you get the picture they paint, when taken as a whole. Answers for why some people in the world harbor bitter feeling toward America's government, maybe its people, too, can be found in the stories of our government's bloody overreaching, and its very expensive failures.
    
Back to Bibi. He says the Iranians can't be trusted. Then Netanyahu says he wants more than a 10-year deal. Does that mean the same Iranian he doesn't trust will become more trustworthy, if they agree to a longer deal? What the hell does Netanyahu really want? 

It seems obvious he first and foremost he wants to get reelected. Netanyahu has taken a big gamble with this week's blatantly political stunt in DC, to align himself with American Republicans. No doubt, he hopes the gamble will pay off. If Netanyahu gets reelected, my guess is the next he wants is to sucker the USA into backing him up when Israel unilaterally bombs Iran, initiates a war and then tells us we have to go along. This was the same sort of strategy Gen. Jack D. Ripper employed in "Dr. Strangelove..." (1964) by provoking a nuclear first-strike. 

Dig it: No matter what the details of the deal now being negotiated with Iran turn out to be, it's a given Netanyahu is going to say it's a bad deal. The sitting prime minister of Israel seems to have convinced himself that war to institute regime-change in Iran is the only sure way to make Israel safe from Persian plots against Israel's "precious bodily fluids."

Seeing through Jack Leigh's lens

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 what was a new game to me. 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 it with a broomstick or even 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. When the catcher did catch it on the fly, 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, flat-sided ball, was the kick that came from hitting it. When we connected with that little red devil it left the broomstick bat like a rocket. It felt better than crushing a golf ball. Smashing it across the lot, completely over the theater and halfway to Broad Street was a gas.

Click here to read more about Jack Leigh.

VCU Rams through an RPI perspective

What follows could be described as cabin fever-driven fooling around with the RPI (for basketball junkies only). No. 25 (AP Poll) VCU (20-6, 10-3 in A-10) has enjoyed a strong RPI number for most of this season, due in great part to the Rams strong schedule before entering their Atlantic 10 Conference schedule.

And speaking of the A-10, five teams are currently in the top 68 of the CBS Sports RPI: VCU #13; Dayton #30; UMass #41; Davidson #49; Rhode Island #63.

VCU has played seven teams in the top 68 of the CBS Sports RPI, to notch a 4-3 record against such tough competition. The Rams lost to UVa. #3, Villanova #4 and ODU #54. The Rams defeated No. Iowa #16, Cincinnati #45, Davidson #49 and Rhode Island #63.

With five games left in the regular season schedule, VCU is tied for first place in the A-10. The A-10 current standings are here.

-- My photo

Throwback Thursday: The Biograph's 1982 RKO Festival

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

In July and August of 1982 program the Biograph Theatre's No. 60 played out in Theatre No. 1, the larger of the two auditoriums. It was an unusual program for Richmond's repertory cinema in that all 24 of the features were from one studio, RKO, which still operated as a distributor of its old library.

The 12 double features in this festival were: "Top Hat" (1935) and "Damsel in Distress" (1936); "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939) and "The Informer" (1935); "King Kong" (1933) and "Mighty Joe Young" (1949); "Suspicion" (1941) and "The Live By Night" (1948); "Sylvia Scarlett" (1936) and "Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House" (1948); "Murder My Sweet" (1945) and "Macao" (1952); "The Mexican Spitfire" (1939) and "Room Service" (1938); "Journey Into Fear" (1942) and "This Land Is Mine" (1943); "The Thing" (1951) and "Cat People" (1942); "The Boy With Green Hair" (1948) and "Woman on the Beach" (1947); "Citizen Kane" (1941) and "Fort Apache (1948); "The Curse of the Cat People" (1944) and "The Body Snatcher" (1945).

Finding Vivian

Here's a trailer for the Bijou's screening of "Finding Vivian Maier" (2014) at The Byrd. It presents a little gallery of her photographs and the music of Chez Roué. Here are the event's details:

What: Richmond premiere screening of Academy Award nominee
"Finding Vivian Maier" (2014); proceeds to benefit the Bijou Film Center and the Byrd Theatre Foundation.

When: Sun., Feb. 15, 2015 at 7 p.m.

Where: The Byrd Theatre in Carytown.

Admission:

$7.00 at the box office; Advance tickets for $5.00 available at Bygones
Vintage Clothing, Candela Books + Gallery and Ipanema Café through Feb.
14. Advance tickets available online here.

After-Party: Chez Roué will perform live on stage at the New York Deli at 9 p.m.; no cover charge.

More information:

• The full press release with all the details is here. 


• News of the showing of a portfolio of Vivian Maier's work before the screening is here. 


• The Bijou Film Center's Facebook group page is here.


• The "Finding Vivian Maier" trailer is here.                              

What Would Vivian Think of All This Publicity?

"Finding Vivian Maier" (2014) is one of five Academy Award nominees in the Best Documentary Feature category. For its Richmond premiere it will be screened at the Byrd Theatre on Sun., Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. only. For more background on the film and the fundraising event, to benefit the Bijou Film Center and the Byrd Theatre Foundation, click on the links below.

For Richmond Magazine Harry Kollatz wrote:

Then, you scan some of the prints. You start a blog. You make queries. And what you’ve found is the artistic legacy of one Vivian Maier. She turns out to have been a fantastic street photographer, but something of a hermit, who supported herself as a nanny — an eccentric shutterbug Mary Poppins, though without the cheer and singing and the happy ending. But, there is nonetheless something magical about all those images, how close she was able to get to her subjects and their variety. By now, as some stories do, Vivian has possessed you. You study photography and take it up.

Click here to read The Hat's: "'Finding Vivian Maier' at the Byrd on Sunday."

For STYLE Weekly Brent Baldwin wrote:

She hadn’t paid rental fees on the storage, so her images and audio recordings were auctioned to several buyers. Maloof’s discovery is now the subject of the recent Oscar-nominated documentary, “Finding Vivian Maier,” which will be screened Sunday, Feb. 15, at the Byrd Theatre. The showing is a joint fundraiser for the Byrd and the Bijou Film Center.

Click here to read Baldwin's "Who Was Vivian Maier?" You can also read this piece in the Feb. 11 paper edition of STYLE Weekly.

From the Candela Books + Gallery newsletter for February:

Candela Books + Gallery is pleased to have a portfolio of Vivian Maier’s work on consignment from Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York for a limited time. We will be sharing (from 4:30-6:30) this portfolio of Vivian Maier's work before the movie at a preview reception hosted by The Portrait House directly across the street from the Byrd Theatre. Candela will also share the portfolio by appointment through February 21st.

Click here to read the entire post.

Here's a link to Jerry Williams' timely Tales from the Grips post at The Sifter.

And, here's a link to the Feb. 9 article in The Commonwealth Times. 

-- Selfies by Vivian Maier

Flashback: 'Armageddonville, Texas'

The satirical piece below appeared in a special Summer 2003 issue of SLANT. It was published three or four months after the invasion of Iraq, which, of course, was justified by the ginned up need to find imaginary weapons of mass destruction. 

Armageddonville, Texas

Words and Art by F.T. Rea

From the cover of SLANT (2003)

Armageddonville, Texas is the story of the proud Blusterbush clan. G. Phineas T. Blusterbush, the patriarch, owned miles and miles of all he surveyed. The scion of a wealthy Connecticut family, young Gee-Phinnie Blusterbush settled in Texas for a reason that was never quite clear.

With his utter determination to succeed, and a carpetbag full of Wall Street bread, Blusterbush eventually became a cattle rancher of mammoth proportions. A tall and flinty man, Gee-Phinnie believed he owned the Armageddon River that flowed across his land. To make his belief a reality, over the years, he steadily bought up any property along the river he could. He had a special way of convincing the small ranchers and sod-busters to sell off their land and leave the area.

Note: This character’s costume is patterned after Phineas T. Bluster, a puppet villain on the Howdy Doody Show television show of the 1950s. He carries a derringer, hidden in his coat pocket.

Gee-Phinnie’s oldest son, G. W. “Dubya” Blusterbush, a ne’er-do-well in his youth, swore off booze and subsequently found religion (or maybe it was the other way around.) Always on the trail of two nasty villains, Dubya was out to prove he was worthy of walking in his father’s boot-prints.

Dubya was convinced that the two villains were allies -- O’ Sammy Benlion and Sa’ad Hellsbells - because it came to him in a dream in which a dead horse rose up and spoke to him in the voice of Jesus.

Note: That's the dream that makes Dubya get off the sauce. Since Dubya had always been afraid of horses, anyway -- he rides around in a blue designer stagecoach to keep from having to mount a horse -- this dream rocks his world. Dubya’s signature outfit is an all-leather affair. For protection Dubya always carries his matched pair of .44 caliber Colts -- blue, of course.

Gee-Phinnie also owned Amageddonville’s sheriff, a defrocked preacher named Johnny Asskleft. Asskleft had to leave his final post as a pastor in great haste. Blusterbush, the elder, was the only man who knew the reason, thus, he had a firm grip on Asskleft.

Note: Asskleft bares a strong resemblance to Paul Lynde, of Hollywood Squares fame. He wears the stock Western Movie sheriff wardrobe.

Gee-Phinnie also secretly owned half of the town’s saloon, The Tumbleweed, operated by his partner, who fronted the business -- the lovely and semi-talented Miss Candi.

Note: The sloe-eyed, sepia-toned Miss Candi is cute as a button, but she has no originality whatsoever -- her wardrobe is a total ripoff of Miss Kitty’s (Gunsmoke). Still, Miss Candi was loyal to Gee-Phinnie to a fault. Whoa, Nellie! Is something going on there?

Dickie Chains was the foreman of the Blusterbush family’s ranch, the “Flying W.” As a teenager Chains was at the Battle of the Alamo. He survived because he proved to be quite an actor - Chains convinced Santa Anna that he was the shy female servant of an officer. He and a handful of others were released to tell the bloody story of what happened

Note: The swaggering Chains dresses as a cowhand and rides a huge red horse. The horse swaggers, too.

Don Rumdummy was part-owner of an expanding railroad company that wanted to put tracks through the town. He had a secret alliance with Gee-Phinnie to acquire the land. Even more secretly, Rumsdummy and Chains were partners in slime -- they sold whiskey and guns to renegade Indians, highwaymen and anyone with the cash to pay.

Note: Rumdummy dresses in the all-black garb of a Pinkerton agent, which he had once been. He carries guns of various sizes, wherever he can.

Collard Kungpowell was the figurehead mayor of Armageddonville. He had no real power and he was eaten up with guilt. He was addicted to laudanum.

Note: Once a soldier, Kungpowell had hung up his guns. He dresses like a banker.

O’ Sammy Benlion, a half-breed, was the adopted son of an Indian chief, who was assassinated by Chains’ henchmen. The kindly old chief had been unwilling to sign the bad treaty the federal government was offering. Before the tribe moved to the reservation O’ Sammy took several young warriors with him. The group became marauding renegades. O’ Sammy and his band of snake-handling, whiskey-drinking followers were determined to wreak havoc. They blew up barns and poisoned water holes, just for fun.

Note: O’ Sammy dresses in a skintight outfit with an “O” on his chest and a cape! He thinks Hellsbells is yesterday’s heavy, riding for a fall.

Sadistic Sa’ad Hellsbells was a mustachioed Mexican bandito chief with a mean-as-dirt gang. They rustled cattle and robbed the stagecoaches that passed through the region with impunity. They shot up the town when they felt like it, too. Sa’ad also had a prize stock of Arabian horses, in his secret mountainous hideout.

Dubya spent most of his waking hours searching, in vain, for those nasty hidden horses.

Note: Hellsbells wears the obligatory bandito outfit -- big sombrero -- “we don’t need no steenking badges!” - and ammunition belts across his chest.

This swashbuckling story, set in Texas -- the land of hot air and bum steers -- will continue.

-- 30 --

Biograph Art Gallery Notes

The staff art show that hung during the Biograph's second anniversary party on Feb.11, 1974, included various works by several then-current employees and some former staff members, too. Most of those who worked there in the early days were artists of one stripe or another.

The sign above, by yours truly, was made to hang in the space of the lobby’s gallery that usually featured the artists' statements. I also had a couple of pieces in the show. One of them sold and that was fun. Another piece was stolen. That was a bummer and a weird kind of violation.

Although most of the art shows that hung in the gallery displayed the work of local/VCU-connected artists, that was not always the case. In the first three or four years, when the walls of the lobby regularly featured shows that changed every couple of months, or so, occasionally art by then-renown artists, usually printmakers, was on display. Among them were Ernest Trova, Robert Indiana and George Segal. The Trova print displayed was from the Falling Man series (see below).

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 Richmond-based band that got some MTV exposure in the early '80s -- 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 a few art shows at the Biograph. So at one time, for 50 bucks, 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. It looked like a cell from a cartoon. A dialogue balloon from a speaker outside the frame said something like, "Finally got rid of those goddamned gloves." 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.

A ‘Gem’ of an Idea

The February issue of Richmond Magazine -- its annual Sourcebook -- has an article (on Page 74) about the Bijou Film Center, which mentions the upcoming event on Feb. 15, featuring a screening of "Finding Vivian Maier" at the Byrd Theatre.

While collaborating on the 40th anniversary of the opening of Richmond’s Biograph Theatre for the James River Film Society in 2012, James Parrish and Terry Rea discussed the idea of bringing a “little cinema” to Richmond. “Little cinema” was an idea that formed in the 1920s, when Hollywood had made everything big — big screens, big theaters, longer films.

Click here to read the article by Stephanie Manley.

Click here for more on the Feb. 15 event, which includes an after-party.

About "Finding Vivian Maier"

When it came to selfies, Vivian Maier wrote the book.

What: Richmond premiere screening of Academy Award nominee "Finding Vivian Maier" (2014); proceeds to benefit the Bijou Film Center and the Byrd Theatre Foundation.

When: Sun., Feb. 15, 2015, at 7 p.m.

Where: The Byrd Theatre in Carytown.

Admission:

$7.00 at the box office; Advance tickets for $5.00 available at Bygones Vintage Clothing, Candela Books + Gallery and Ipanema Café through Feb. 14.
Advance tickets available online here. 

After-Party: Chez Roué will perform live on stage at the New York Deli at 9 p.m.; no cover charge.

More information:

The full press release with all the details is here.

The Bijou Film Center's Facebook group page is here.

The "Finding Vivian Maier" trailer is here. 

Contacts:

James Parrish: Email: jtparrish@bijoufilmcenter.org. Phone: (804) 564-3224.
Terry Rea: Email: ftrea9@gmail.com. Phone: (804) 938-7997.

Rebus is Against Shooting Cartoonists

But, of course!

From my OpEd piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Sunday Commentary section (Jan. 25, 2015):

With its dark ironies and sarcastic jabs, satire stretches us. It’s never been everyone’s cup of tea. History tells us it’s always been dangerous. Since one person’s freedom of expression can be another person’s enemy of peace, some attempts at satirical humor bend us out of shape. The debate that’s been underway since the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris on Jan. 7 has served to remind us that the edge of mockery can cut two ways. Maybe more than two ways.

Note: Rebus is and always has been against shooting cartoonists. Click here to read "Cream Pies for Bullies: The Importance of Satire." 

Chez Roue' signed for Feb. 15 Bijou event

Chez Roue' will play live at the New York Deli, 
9 p.m. - 11 p.m. on Sun., Feb. 15. 

The Academy Award nominee, "Finding Vivian Maier" (2014), is being presented by the Bijou Film Center, in conjunction with the our partners for this occasion: The Byrd Theatre Foundation, Candela Book + Gallery and the VCUarts Department of Photography and Film.

Show time for the movie is 7 p.m. Admission at the box office will be $7.00. Advance tickets for $5.00 will be available soon at selected locations. Advance tickets are already available online at Eventbrite for $5.00 (plus $1.27 handling fee).

Chez Roue' will perform live on stage following the Richmond premiere screening of “Finding Vivian Maier” at the Byrd Theatre. Please note, there will be no cover charge for the live music at the Deli.

In the photo above, left-to-right, Chez Roue' are: Debo Dabney on piano, Roger Carroll on saxophone, Johnny Hott on drums. Brian Sulser (seen only in the mirror) is on bass. For Chez Roue' fans it's important to bear in mind that this gig will be Roger Carroll's next-to-last performance in Richmond, before he moves to Chicago.

Please note: James Parrish and I are still polishing some details for the event, including lining up prizes for the raffles, but the schedule is now set for our second Bijou at the Byrd fundraising event. As before, film-wise, there will also be a wee surprise. Stay tuned for more information soon.

-- Photo credits: Chez Roue' by Scott Elmquist. 
Vivian Maier's selfie by herself.

Ballpark Bandwagon Breakdown

Between January and September of 2014 Richmond witnessed the coalescence of a significant resistance to the notion of building a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom. In May the volume of the opposition chorus apparently surprised Mayor Dwight Jones (pictured left). Now it seems unlikely Jones’ so-called “revitalization” plan, as originally advertised, is ever going fall into place.

However unpopular with the voters the mayor’s plans for Shockoe Bottom and North Boulevard have become, shifts in the thinking of some on City Council may animate makeovers in 2015. What effect the rearranging of councilmanic chairs will have on the ballpark issue isn't known, yet. As we wait for that drama unfold, it's worthwhile to organize the 2014 record of the brouhaha for the sake of facilitating a clear perspective.

What came to stifle the mayor’s stadium-building scheme last year began gathering over the winter. Although no single entity was coordinating it, by early spring the escalating criticism of the Jones plan was pouring in from several directions.

However, now it seems there was one standout event that proved to be the tipping point. It appeared out of the blue on Apr. 28. On that Monday morning a group of students from Richmond public schools appeared at City Hall with a purpose. The majority of them were from Open High.

Whether one called it a "flash mob," or a "walkout," the protest march had obviously been prompted by a couple of telling Style Weekly articles ("Caving In" and "Filling Holes") published earlier the same month. The stories revealed dreadful conditions in some local public schools; the students acted on their own volition. They carried signs with messages for all to see. Some messages decried dilapidated school buildings. Others protested the Shockoe Stadium plan.

The next surprise came later that same fateful day. Instead of dispatching a brief note to congratulate the kids for their civic-minded moxie, and to say he was too busy to meet with them, Hizzoner decided to smooth the students’ ruffled feathers with his practiced mayoral patter. Well, in baseball parlance, Jones "booted" his chance to make a play. His painfully awkward response to the students' questions about the city's skewed spending priorities was worse than inadequate.

Naturally, the local media were all over the story of a flummoxed mayor. The kids looked good on TV.

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Pre-turning point:

When Mayor Jones rolled out his large-dollar plan to “revitalize” the city on Nov. 11, 2013, he presented the building of a baseball stadium in the Bottom as an essential component. He spoke of how it would create jobs, enlarge the city's tax base and get a slavery-related museum built, too.

No doubt, 2014 began with the perceivable momentum on the mayor's side. Jones’ Chief Administrative Officer and top salesman, Byron Marshall, appeared more than up to the task of ramrodding the taxpayer-backed project through Richmond’s nine-member City Council.

As the baseball-in-the-Bottom bandwagon chugged through the first month of the 11th year of baseball stadium debate in Richmond, dissent to the mayor’s plan couldn’t be heard over establishment media-amplified boosterism. Venture Richmond’s ubiquitous LovingRVA public relations campaign was pumping high-test fuel into the bandwagon’s tank.

That, while no person or organization was speaking for the scattered opposition. Some wanted to protect Shockoe Bottom from an outrageously inappropriate development. Some saw another build-it-and-they-will-come boondoggle in the making. Others stood against what they believed to be an impractical plan, a plan that turned a blind eye on what baseball fans seemed to prefer.

Leading up to 2014, The Virginia Defender, published by Ana Edwards and Phil Wilayto, had been focused on the issue for years. Owing to that effort and those of other activists, in February the resistance to baseball-in-the-Bottom continued gathering. STYLE Weekly stayed on the stadium beat with a series of news stories and several Back Page OpEds.

Social media’s role was snowballing. Facebook pages dedicated to opposing Shockoe Stadium included: Referendum? Bring It On!; Save the Diamond; Say No to a Stadium in Shockoe Bottom; Shockoe Resistance; A Stadium RVA Can Love!. Outdoor billboard signs went up. Yard signs were posted. Activist Farid Alan Schintzius headed up the signage approach.

In March and April the Citizens Referendum Group held meetings at the City Library to discuss crafting a strategy to put a baseball stadium referendum on the ballot. Although that ad hoc group’s ambitious petition-signing campaign didn’t collect enough signatures to force such a referendum, the connections the undertaking created could come into play again. Many names and addresses of registered voters were collected. (An archive of published notices and articles on this issue is here.)

Other petitions were circulated. Boycott strategies came also into play. Political gadfly Paul Goldman weighed in with an avalanche of opinion pieces for WTVR.com. Although his message meandered over the year, Goldman was relentlessly hard-hitting with his many objections to pursuing the mayor's Shockoe Stadium concept.

In the wake of the notoriety of the Oscar-winning movie, “12 Years a Slave,” on March 25 the Hollywood Reporter weighed in: “Where the jail that held Solomon Northup once stood, a state-of-the-art baseball stadium may soon rise. That’s if the mayor of Richmond, Va., has his way.”

Post-turning point:

On Apr. 29, Preservation Virginia announced its Most Endangered Sites List for 2014, which included Shockoe Bottom. At this point three members of City Council were on record as being opposed to the mayor’s plan. They were: Parker Agelasto, Chris Hilbert and Reva Trammell.

The first of May brought news of an alternative stadium proposal, one for the Boulevard from a new developer. A week later Doug Wilder stuck his thumb in Jones’ eye by announcing his intention to revive his much-traveled slavery museum concept and locate it a couple of blocks from where the mayor wanted to put a similar museum.

On May 23, City Council members Charles Samuels and Jon Baliles put out a joint press release announcing their decision to let the sputtering Shockoe Stadium bandwagon pass them by. Joining with their three colleagues already prepared to vote against the mayor‘s plan, a new five-member majority was thus created. The bandwagon screeched to a sudden halt.

Four days later, Mayor Jones’ office announced his development plan for the Boulevard and the Bottom was being temporarily withdrawn from consideration. It was then anticipated the plan would be re-worked and introduced at a Council meeting before the summer was over.

Nonetheless, inside City Hall during June the stadium issue languished. In July Trammell suggested a referendum might be the best way to go. Her fellow Council members didn’t see it her way.

On August 3 a group of merry Richmonders paraded around The Diamond to mock the notion of demolishing it, only to build a replacement in the Bottom. As the accordion music swelled -- playing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" -- some paraders may have wondered, once again, what the point of the LovingRVA campaign had been in the first place.

Was it to persuade the public? Or perhaps certain members of City Council?

In September, without much in the way of an explanation, Byron Marshall resigned. In the absence of a freshened up presentation from the mayor's office Council went on with other business.

*

If rumors are to be taken seriously, it now seems one member of last year's five-member-majority may flip this year. Time will tell. Still, what the mayor and any potential flip-flopping politicians should take to heart is this plain truth:

The opposition that swelled up in 2014 won’t be difficult to reanimate. It hasn’t gone anywhere, even if some politicians and rainmakers twist all the arms they can reach. After years of this issue flapping in the breeze, most voters have their minds made up. More salesmanship isn't going to change those minds much.

Moreover, last year’s coalescence of factions created something bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s something that isn't likely to ever stand aside for that old ballpark bandwagon. Nor is it likely to forget flip-floppery. For 2015, one thing is a safe bet: Dwight Jones wants no more face-to-face meetings with sign-carrying students at City Hall.

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-- Photo of Dwight Jones from Richmond.com. Photo of parade by WRIC Channel 8.