SLANTblog

The Freelancer's Worth

2009-11-04T12:15:00.009-05:00

Fiction By F.T. Rea

Jan. 24, 1991: Bright sunlight lit up the thin coating of freezing rain that had painted the city the evening before. In the crisp air, Roscoe Swift, a slender middle-aged man, a freelance artist/writer, walked at a careful but purposeful pace on the tricky sidewalk. The ice-clad trees along the street were dazzling, as seen through his trusty Ray-Bans.

The woolly winter jacket his girlfriend, Sally, had given him for Christmas felt good.

Since the freelancer couldn’t concentrate on his reading of the morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, he left half a mug of black coffee and a dozing cat on his desk to walk to the post office. He hoped the overdue check from a magazine publisher was waiting in his post office box.

Anxiously, Swift opened the box with his key. It was empty. He shrugged. An empty box had its upside, too -- there were no cut-off notices in it. With his last 20 bucks in his pocket, the freelancer hummed a favorite Fats Domino tune, “Ain’t That a Shame,” as he headed home.

By the end of the workday Roscoe's task was to finish an 800-word OpEd piece, with an accompanying illustration, and drop it all off on an editor’s desk in Scott's Addition. With the drum beat for war in the air he wanted to focus on the inevitable unintended consequences of any war. Yet, with the clock ticking on his deadline he was still at a loss for an angle.

In early-1991 the nation was mired in an economic recession. The national debt was skyrocketing. War with Iraq was looming, it seemed all but inevitable. Pondering what demons might be spawned by an all-out war in Iraq -- only to be discovered down the road -- he detoured a couple of blocks, to pick up a Washington Post and a fresh cup of coffee.

Approaching the 7-Eleven store Roscoe noticed a lone panhandler standing off to the left of the front doors. The tall man was thin and frail. He wore a lightweight denim jacket with a hooded sweatshirt underneath. Snot was frozen in his mustache. The whites of his heavy-lidded eyes were an unhealthy shade of red.

During a time when Roscoe had run the Fan City Cinema, in the '70s, he had determined his policy should be to never in any way encourage panhandlers to hang around on the sidewalk in the neighborhood surrounding the theater. The rigid policy had lingered well after the comfortable job had faded into the mists.

On this cold day it wasn’t easy for Roscoe to avert his eye from the poor soul’s trembling outstretched hand. Not hearing the desperate man’s hoarse plea for food money was impossible. When there are always so many lives to be saved in our midst, Roscoe wondered -- why do we have to go to the Middle East to save lives?

Inside the busy store Roscoe poured a large coffee. Fretting profusely, he snapped the cup’s lid in place. It was one of those times when the little Roscoe with horns was standing on one of his shoulders, while his opposite -- the one with the halo -- was on the other, both offering counsel.

Roscoe's policy caved in seconds later. Still, he decided to give the panhandler food, rather than hand over cash to perhaps finance a bottle of sweet wine. What the hell? it might change my luck, he thought as he smiled.

Trying to max out the bang-for-the-buck aspect of his gesture, Roscoe settled on a king-sized hot dog, with plenty of free stuff on it -- mustard, chopped onions, relish, jalapeno peppers, chili and some gooey cheese-like product. Not wanting to push it too far, he passed on the ketchup and mayonnaise.

Outside the store, Roscoe found the starving panhandler had vanished. So, the crestfallen philanthropist took the meal-on-a-bun with him as he walked, softly singing a Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth.” With his strides matching the beat, he kept to the sunny street to avoid the slick sidewalk in the shade.

"There’s somethin’ happening here,
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there,
Tellin’ me I gotta beware.

I think it’s time we stop, children, what's that sound,
Everybody look, what's going down."

A line from that song’s last verse -- “paranoia strikes deep” -- suddenly snapped an idea for the OpEd into place, which launched an instant mini-mania. A block closer to home an image for the illustration occurred to him. The freelancer picked up his pace and began whistling a jazzy version of “For What It’s Worth.”

Back in his office/studio space, rather than waste money, he tore into the feast he had prepared for a beggar. The food scared, or perhaps offended the cat, who fled. Between sloppy bites the artist wiped his hands off and sketched furiously to rough out a cartoon of Saddam Hussein as the provocative Tar Baby of the Uncle Remus story, inviting America into a war.

About an hour later the heartburn started. Eventually, it got brutal. Roscoe pressed on. He wrote about the way propaganda always works to sell war -- every war -- as glorious and essential to the everyday people, who risk their lives. That while the wealthy, who rarely take a genuine risk on anything, urge the patriots on and count their profits.

Thinking of the war that thinned his generation out in Vietnam, he wrote:

After the war the veterans were largely ignored, even scorned.

Roscoe lamented the popular culture having gone wrong, so there was no longer a place for anti-war protest songs. He wrote:

Where are today’s non-conformists? Today's questioners of authority?

The freelancer turned in his work at 4:50 p.m.

An hour later his sour and noisy stomach began to calm down during his second happy hour beer at the Bamboo Cafe.

When he recounted the tale of the stuffed frankfurter, the inspiration of the Buffalo Springfield song and the belly ache, Roscoe made it seem funny enough to those gathered around the elbow of the marble bar. Since the bar's owner had agreed to hold his tab for a day or two, he bought a round of beers and joked about his empty mailbox.

Swift's audience of familiar faces laughed and groaned, on cue, when he finished his tale off with, “Oh well, another deadline met means another paycheck. Even with the heartburn, in the long run, I suppose it got done ... for what it’s worth.”

* * *

All rights reserved. The Freelancer's Worth with its accompanying illustration are part of a series of stories called Detached. Several remain in various stages of incompletion. Links to the six others which have been finished are below:

Central Time
Dogtown Hero
Gus the Bookstore Cat: The Film
Fancy Melons
Maybe Rosebud
Cross-eyed Mona

Elephant Stampede

2009-11-04T10:37:00.009-05:00

My quick-draw analysis of the election results is up at Richmond.com.

Former Attorney General Robert F. "Bob" McDonnell, a calm, hard-line conservative Republican from Virginia Beach, clobbered his earnest but vaguely moderate Democratic opponent from Bath County, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, by 18 percentage points.

Click here to read the entire piece.

After a bit of the dust has settled, I'm sure I'll have more to say about the way this year's voting went. In the meantime, we should gird ourselves to hear a thousand chattering Republicans say what happened in Virgina and New Jersey was mostly a referendum on Obama and congressional Democrats, in general. And, a thousand disappointed Democrats will say it wasn't, that the results were mostly based on issues and candidates in the two states.

With the damn Yankees poised to win the World Series and the way it's been going for the Redskins this season, watching the Democrats crash and burn yesterday wasn't fun.

Go Phillies!

Updates:

Click here to see the SBE's election map, showing which counties and cities went which way in the gubernatorial contest.
Click here to read an insider's morning-after analysis by Lowell Feld at Blue Virginia.
Click here to read the post and comments at Church Hill People's News.
Click here to read "It's Not 2008 Anymore," analysis at the Washington Post.

SLANTblog election guide

2009-11-02T14:35:00.007-05:00

Links to pieces that I've written about this season's politics and elections, as they matter to Richmonders, are below:

"Local Elections Tuesday" (Nov. 2) at Richmond.com -- click here.

"Democrats, Over Easy" (Nov. 1) at SLANTblog -- click here.

"Deeds vs. McDonnell: The Rematch" (Oct. 26) at Richmond.com -- click here.

"The Quiet Majority" (Oct. 23) at Virginia Free Press -- click here.

"McDonnell's Rev. Wright-like Problem" (Oct. 19) at SLANTblog -- click here.

"This View Is Our View" (Oct. 13) at Richmond.com -- click here.

"Deeds, McDonnell and Dog Days Polls" (Aug. 6) at Richmond.com -- click here.

Candidates official web sites

Deeds campaign web site:
McDonnell campaign web site:
Bolling campaign web site:
Wagner campaign web site:
Cuccinelli campaign web site:
Shannon campaign web site:

The Last Customer's Bag

2009-11-02T12:43:00.000-05:00

When a spell of rapid heartbeat commences, experience has taught me to go into a controlled deep breathing mode, to try to quell it as early as possible. Long, slow, deep-breathing, with my stomach muscles held taut, can usually allay the blood-rush demon.

Most of the time that technique works and the spell lasts less than a minute. When it doesn’t work the episode can drag on for 10, 20 minutes, or longer. With my chest pounding and my anxiety roiling it can be rather distracting. Work is nearly impossible.

Sometimes, waiting it out is all I can do. Going outside and moving around usually around helps. Rarely do the spells begin outdoors.

This problem began about the time I was turning 30. In those days my marriage was slowly but steadily coming unglued, and I was chain-smoking Kools. I was leading a life of extremes -- long hours at work and play. I kicked the Kools 30 years ago. Since then I have gone whole years at a time without such a spell, but when I’m living with some extra stress they return.

When the demon releases me, and just as suddenly as the exaggerated thumping in my chest had started it stops, I usually laugh. Hey, a laugh is just a big smile.

Unfortunately, my work has me sitting down, indoors and probably breathing shallowly for too much of many days. One of my theories is that shallow breathing can trigger a spell. So, it’s usually a pleasure to take a break from the keyboard or drawing board to walk for a short errand.

Walks and bike rides frequently improve my disposition. Pumping fresh air though my body feels good.

Several years ago on one of my walking excursions, it was in mid-autumn, an oddball incident provided comic relief for an uncomfortable moment that needed it. As it unfolded, it felt like a scene in a movie. Perhaps that was suggested to me by the fact its setting was a video store -- I was looking over the rack of current releases. Or, maybe I’ve always thought I was living in a movie.

Reading the film notes on the box for Scorsese’s latest blood bath, I sensed movement behind me. As I had been the only customer in the room, idle curiosity turned me toward the counter. On the other side of a wall-of-videos display rack, I caught sight of a man I hadn't seen in years. Having just come into the store, he purposely handed a plastic bag to one of the two female sales clerks behind the counter.

My being obscured by the rack of video boxes was a blessing, as I had good reasons for preferring to avoid interaction with this character.

So, I returned my attention to the movie selections in front of me. When I heard the bells ringing than meant the front door had opened, I glanced up in time to see the aforementioned customer leaving the store.

As she dumped out the contents of the last customer’s bag, one of the two young women standing behind the counter burst out laughing in the manner of a likable-but-bad actress playing a scene. With overstated comic gestures she feigned being troubled by the mystery of what might tumble out.

“What’s tha-at?” said the other girl, throwing up her hands to join the moment’s improvisation.

They had my full attention. My curiosity was aroused. So, I stepped closer, to see what I could see.

Black VHS video tape cassettes were all that came out of the bag. Yet the two young women were going to a lot of bother to avoid touching what appeared to be ordinary stock of that very store.

A spray bottle of Windex was produced; they invited me into their conspiracy with the sparkle of eye contact. Both then busied themselves spraying and wiping off the tapes. It was reminiscent of conspiratorial children removing cooties from objects touched by a someone they don’t like.

Assuming there had to be something peculiar about the movies -- like maybe they were kinky flicks, or peculiar in some way -- I stepped even closer to see what the titles were. Without looking so hard that it would indicate anything more than a casual interest, I noticed a couple of titles.

Both were mainstream films; one a crisp black comedy I had recently seen and liked. And, yes, I was somewhat disappointed the guy had the least bit of good taste in selecting his video rentals. Playing along with their tongue-in-cheek tone I offered a line, “Do you have to wipe down all the tapes when they are returned?”

“Oh, no,” they chirped. They assured me this procedure was special for the customer who had just left the building. They shuddered, having no reason to know it delighted me to see their reaction to that same character.

Then, it dawned on me the two of them were just doing what bored service workers everywhere in the world do, to kill time. To amuse themselves they were mocking a bad-vibes person, a customer they saw as deserving of ridicule. Unknowingly, they had validated my prejudice against him and, in the doing, they had cheered me up quite a bit.

Being let in on their harmless goofing around reminded me that the spontaneous sharing of unanticipated, totally unscripted moments of levity is truly one of life’s treasures. Shared laughs that come out of the blue can cut right through bad moods.

My stride for the walk home through the Fan District had an optimistic bounce. Along the way I recalled that the excursion itself had been brought on by one of those rapid heartbeat spells, which I had left at the video store. I laughed out loud a few times, just replaying the spray bottle scene on the moviola in my head.

Fresh air, taken in with gusto, always helps. Maybe the air smells best in Virginia in the fall.

Laughing is a special way of breathing. The best. A good belly laugh can even chase the hounds of doubt away from nipping at my heels and back to wherever such creatures belong.

-- 30 --

Democrats, Over Easy

2009-11-01T20:05:00.006-05:00

Unless one wants to blow off a heap of opinion polls, it appears likely Democrats in Virginia are going to get a real thumping on Tuesday.

It would be easy to dwell on what a disappointment Creigh Deeds’ campaign has been, with its awkwardness and rather negative-toned strategy. The professional political experts in that camp should loose their credentials and get another line of work.

It would be easy to point a finger at the leadership in Virginia's Democratic Party and blame it for dropping the ball, after statewide victories in 2005 (Gov. Tim Kaine), 2006 (Sen. Jim Webb) and 2008 (Sen. Mark Warner).

If I wanted to shift the blame out of state it would be easy enough to throw dead cats at President Barack Obama’s steady dip in popularity in recent months. Easy to blame the backdrop of the contentious healthcare reform debate for making plenty of Democratic politicians look somewhat foolish and weak, coast-to-coast.

No, this piece isn’t about all that obvious stuff. It's about something below the surface. It’s about how that word “easy” has become a problem for too many voters who generally vote Democratic, if they vote.

In 2005 Warner’s crazy high approval rating made electing Kaine easier than it might have been. The blowback from Jerry Kilgore's bad Hitler ads was a gift to Kaine.

Allen’s Macaca Meltdown was about as big a gift as a long-shot candidate could have received from his opponent. Warner beat former Gov. Jim Gilmore, last year. And, Gilmore has remained a hard man to like since his last couple of years in the governor's mansion.

Each of those wins, including Obama’s -- he was the first Democrat to carry Virginia since 1964 -- came to Democrats in great part, because Republicans had done remarkably stupid things, which made it easier for Democrats to beat them.

Even with all his charm, electing Obama would have been much more difficult had he not followed the worst president in generations. Yes, Bush made Obama’s theme of “change” seem much more righteous and palatable than it might have been otherwise.

This year Bob McDonnell has not made it easy to beat him; he hasn’t had anything resembling meltdown. His campaign has run smoothly and calmly throughout the process. Over and over, the candidate has said the things about taxes and government spending that Republicans always like to hear, but he hasn’t said them in a way to inflame Democrats.

McDonnell's ultra conservative history, especially on cultural matters, and his longtime connection to televangelist Pat Robertson haven't been seen by enough Democrats as problematic enough to motivate them.

Without having been inflamed, some of the Democrats in Virginia, meaning the voters who elected Kaine, Webb and Warner (again), seem unmoved by Deeds. Too many Democrats, it seems, need to be angry at Republicans in order to enthusiastically support their own candidates.

These same lukewarm Democrats appear to have forgotten what it was like in Virginia when Gilmore was governor. His last year in office the budget-making process in the General Assembly completely broke down.

This time around Republicans haven’t made it easy for Democrats to get pissed off. Without being so aroused, with the economy apparently improving, it seems some number of Democrats have gotten bored with this year's issues and candidates. McDonnell doesn't scare them; he doesn't piss them off.

After Gov. McDonnell's many appointees have been on the job for a couple of years, it might be easier for Virginia's most passionless Democrats to remember why life is usually better for working taxpayers when Republicans aren't in charge.

-- 30 --

How Margot Kidder made my day

2009-11-01T15:56:00.014-05:00

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 screened 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 attend the screenings to help them weigh how much money should be bid for the rights to exhibit the picture in a given market. But any industry insider might have been in the audience.

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 ran 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 screening of “Jaws.” The auditorium was packed and the show went over like gangbusters. The audience applauded as the movie’s 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 satisfying watching “Jaws” go on to set new records for 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 guys like me feel intimidated by Spielberg’s outrageous success at such a tender age. I 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.

A few night’s ago 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 so famous. She had known him before his sudden notoriety, so she noticed 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 has been waiting 34 years to be discovered, it’s all the sweeter.

After all, new-style techniques, or not, 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.

-- 30 --

It Paid to Advertise

2009-10-30T13:53:00.007-04:00

When the doorway into show business suddenly opened for me I entered gladly. At the time I had a job selling janitorial supplies that I wanted to quit. As I wanted to be a writer and eventually make films, working in a beer joint seemed like a step in that direction.

So, the sales job was cast off when a friend, Fred Awad, offered me work at the restaurant he was operating. My coming aboard as a bartender/manager was part of a larger plan we had cooked up to convert what was then a typical Fan District blue collar neighborhood restaurant/dive into the area’s most happening club.

The restaurant belonged to my friend’s parents, who wanted to retire. They had recently turned it over to their sons, Fred and Howard. The brothers promptly changed the name of place at Allison and West Broad St. from Moroconi's to the Bearded Brothers.

Growing beards was easy, but the Awad boys couldn’t agree on how to run the business, so the younger brother, Howard, left to pursue the quest of opening a place of his own.

Fred and I were convinced the burgeoning baby boomer bar crowd in the Fan District needed a place to enjoy cold beer, hot food, live music, a psychedelic light show and the edgy spectacle of go-go girls dancing topless. At this time, late-1969, topless dancing was going on in other states, even in Roanoke, but it had yet to come to Richmond.

And, speaking of booming babies, Fred’s wife was seven months pregnant; my wife was six months along.

With the help of a few friends it took us a couple of weeks, or so, to paint the interior flat black, build the stage and light show apparatus for the bands and dancers. We also painted the front window panes that faced Broad Street in Dayglo colors and put in black lights.

Believe it or not, although everything we did was as derivative and current as could be in other towns, in Richmond all that stuff played as ahead of the curve. I don’t know about Fred‘s thinking, but my ideas were coming mostly from clubs in Georgetown, movies and magazines.

The rock ‘n’ roll bands went over well and brought in a fresh crowd right away. A local group calling itself Natural Wildlife quickly became a regular attraction. Then it came time to hire the go-go dancers. So we put up a help wanted sign in the restaurant.

A few young women came in asking about the dancing job. Eventually, we settled on two. One of them had some experience, the other didn’t. But only the girl new to the exhibitionism trade could be there for our first night, which we advertised in the local newspaper. I did the ad art; it featured a pen-and-ink rendered silhouette of a female dancer and a Bearded Brothers logo I had designed.

By 8 p.m. the place was packed, wall-to-wall. We were selling beer like never before. Presto! Fred and I had become successful nightlife promoters overnight. The only problem was that our featured dancer with her brand new costume, which included tasseled pasties to cover her nipples (ABC Board regulation?), was scary late. She hadn’t called, either.

With the crowd clamoring for the dancing aspect of the show to get underway, Fred and I tried to think of any women we might be able to talk into filling in.

As I opened a handful of bottled beers, a woman wearing shades waved to get my attention. She was chewing gum. The joint was so noisy I could barely hear her. Setting her suitcase down, in a thick Brooklyn accent, she asked, “Could you use another dancer?”

Trying to hide my glee, I called Fred over. He offered her a fast $50 to alternate sets with the other girl as the band played. She told us she had noticed the ad in a discarded newspaper on the counter of the Greyhound bus station’s coffee shop. That night’s experience gave me new faith in the power of advertising.

The Greyhound Girl even had her costume with her. She got her money in advance. Fred suggested that since the other dancer was running late, she could go on as soon as she could get ready.

Well, it all went over like gangbusters. Up on stage, with the lights and music, she danced like the pro she actually was — she had been working along the same lines in Baltimore and actually appeared to be a trained modern dancer. Natural Wildlife never sounded better. The beer taps stayed open.

After the dancer’s first set was over, she put on a robe and found me behind the bar serving beer. She laughed, “There ain’t no other girl, is there?”

I paused to shrug and returned her smile, “I don’t know where she is.”

“I’ll need a hundred bucks to go back up there,” she said firmly.

The money was put in her hand without hesitation. Hey, she knew she had rescued the night.

Yes, a hundred and fifty was a lot of money, then, but there was no use in quibbling. After that night we never saw her again. Other women were hired, pronto. The show went on but we were never as busy as that first night again.

It became my duty to paint the dancers with Dayglo paint. They'd have vines curling around their arms and legs, stars and stripes on their torsos, etc. But after a few weeks of that, it seemed most of the customers didn't care much about the artsy aspects of topless dancing, such as they were. They preferred bare skin. So, the body painting stopped.

Although painting the dancers was a pleasant enough task, hanging out after work was the best perk of the job, which wasn't always paying as much as I needed to make. Frequently friends/musicians stayed around late, jamming, playing pinball games and smoking pot.

The most notable of the musicians who passed through was Bruce Springsteen, whose band Steel Mill often played in Richmond then. He was a quiet guy who didn’t stand out as much then as he would later.

For a few months the Bearded Brothers scene was quite lively, then it began to dissipate. Other clubs opened up offering live music, some of which were closer to VCU. Gradually, the restaurant began to drift back toward being what it had been before it had been painted black.

In the spring I had to look for a real job again. Fred left, too, and his mother took the place back over. About a year later Howard Awad opened up Hababas on the 900 block of W. Grace St., where he had a lot of fun making large money (1971-84) serving cold beer and playing canned music on his popular bar’s monster sized stereo.

The topless go-go girl thing soon morphed into a form of entertainment aimed at an entirely different type of crowd. Truth be told, I've never had much interest in the places that feature topless dancing since the time of the Bearded Brothers.

A year later I got a job at WRNL, a radio station then owned by Richmond Newspapers. Once again I learned it paid to advertise. The only souvenirs I have from my first stint in show biz are a few black and white photographs not unlike the one of the front windows above.

– Words and photo (1970) by F.T. Rea

The Quarter Trick

2009-10-30T00:27:00.005-04:00

In the seventh grade a friend named Buddy showed me how to fling a quarter into the air so it would land heads-up every time. He would toss it 10 or 12 feet high and catch it flat in his right palm, with his left hand slapping down to secure it. Then Buddy would lift his left hand to show the coin to whatever audience there was — heads!

Of course, it could be tails, if that’s what the thrower desired; yes, there was a trick to it. With practice I learned how to do it, too.

As I remember it, first I learned how to do the quarter trick, then the bright idea of teaming up to beat a third guy in playing odd-man-wins emerged. I don’t recall which of us first suggested it.

It worked like this: If I always came up the opposite of Buddy, one of us would always win at tossing quarters. I don’t remember how much I enjoyed working the deception, before it became clear to me it wasn’t really a good thing to be doing.

We did it a few times and soon quit; at least I’m sure I did. This was just one of my lessons about the difference between a prank and cheating that needed learning. Pranks, or stunts, such as Orson Welles' famous “War of the Worlds” radio hoax (1938), fascinated me as a kid.

As a cartoon-drawing kind of boy, I was frequently so lost in my imaginary thoughts that learning lessons the hard way was inevitable. This same trait bought me occasional trouble that flowed from my experimental efforts at being a comedian.

The quarter trick came back into the picture when I started drinking beer in bars in the mid-1960s. In Richmond then, 18-year-olds could drink “three-point-two” beer, which was less-than-full-strength — not so different than drinking a light beer today. The cans or bottles has a green stamp on them.

At some point I bet some guy a beer I could flip ten heads in a row. After that I pulled the stunt so many times I won’t venture a guess at the number. Every now and then it would miss and I had to pay; most of the times it was more of a demonstration than a wager, anyway. Whether in a bar, or at a party, plenty of witnesses scrutinized my hands closely. However, if I missed catching the quarter, for whatever reason, it didn’t count as a throw. The deal was: ten straight throws and catches.

As it was introduced in the context of a bar trick and there was no hidden conspiracy, to me, that meant any slight of hand that might be involved was OK, morality-wise.

From about 1966, I have a vivid memory of watching lights flickering on a soaring quarter in Luigi’s, a popular beer joint on Harrison St. (The building now houses the 534 Club.) With each consecutive successful toss some in the attentive crowd called out the number. A cheer met the tenth heads-up, and I guess I won a beer that probably cost twenty-five cents.

It was all in the technique of tossing the coin. It had to be a quarter, too, I could never make it work with any other coin. Over the years lots of people have asked me how I did it.

The last time I performed the quarter trick was for my two grandchildren, Emily and Sam. I didn’t make them buy me a beer. But I don’t think I showed them how to do it, either. In fact, I don’t remember ever telling anyone much about how I actually did the trick until the other day in Chiocca’s, after a round of Frizbee-golf.

During the ride to Chiocca’s from Byrd Park, I got to thinking about various pranks, then the quarter trick. When I walked into the bar the first guy I spoke with was called Buddy when he was young. So, for no reason better than that I tried my best to explain to him how to execute the quarter trick. And, why it would land just as I wanted it to, when I did it right.

The feel for how to do the toss is very subtle. If the technique is ever so slightly off it turns the toss and catch into a fifty/fifty proposition. Anyway, I told the guy how it worked, or at least how I think it works.

Which is where this little memoir was heading all the way — in truth, I’m not completely sure I know how it works. I just know how it feels when I execute it perfectly. It’s not so different from throwing a putt perfectly in Frisbee-golf — when it feels righteous leaving my hand I know it’s going to hit the target.

Maybe I knew exactly how/why the quarter trick worked back when Buddy showed it to me. Maybe I still knew why it worked that night in Luigi’s. Or, maybe I’ve never known, for sure.

It’s a mystery now.

-- 30 --

Crumb and Mouly on the Carpenter's stage

2009-10-27T22:30:00.014-04:00

Robert Crumb, known to his legions of fans as R. Crumb, spent an hour-and-a-half on the Carpenter Theatre's stage tonight. He was interviewed, or perhaps guided through the presentation, by an old friend -- Françoise Mouly, art editor at The New Yorker. In the 1980s she published (and co-edited with her husband, Art Spiegelman) a series of comic book anthologies, under the masthead of "RAW" (I still have some of them).

Crumb did a pratfall when he came on stage. Then he popped up and laughed. Hey, this guy is 66 years old!

The Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond sponsored the show.

Mouly and Crumb sat in comfortable chairs. There was a laptop on a table between them. Mouly used the computer to put images on a large screen behind them that illustrated what they were talking about. With her French accent, she was utterly charming in her handling of a gentle old friend, who is a notorious curmudgeon.

Half of the presentation was about the old Zap Comix days, etc., the other half was about Crumb's latest project, his take on the first book of the Bible -- "The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb."

For those, like me, who've been familiar with his work for a good while, there were few real surprises. The pleasure was in seeing firsthand that Crumb is the guy we've thought he was all along. He was playful and quick-witted.

To finish the evening Crumb took questions from the audience, which brought out his wiseass side a little more. Overall, he appeared to be enjoying himself, although he seemed most pleased when it was over.

On his way out, the lanky Crumb did another goofy tumble onto the stage, then got up like a man 25 years younger than he is, and waved goodbye.

-- Image from Crumbproducts.com

Update: Here's Harry Kollatz's take on the same show -- click here.

Council members who fought the law

2009-10-25T21:06:00.008-04:00

In the wake of news about 5th District Councilman Marty Jewell's DUI arrest in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has published a list of other legal entanglements by then-sitting members of Richmond's City Council.

The little walk down memory lane goes back to Raymond Royall's infamous fake suicide in 1978. Click here to read the list.

Holdsworth: Is it Creigh’s fault?

2009-10-24T14:48:00.004-04:00

At Virginia Tomorrow Bob Holdsworth writes that with the election still over a week away some Democrats are already jumping ship.

The Washington Post ran a front page Pre-Mortem (wiseacres are calling it a Creigh-Mortem) today in which a high ranking Obama administration official anonymously complained that Deeds should have listened to us, that he didn’t take advice or assistance from the White House and that he rejected the counsel of their DNC Chair and Deed’s Governor, Tim Kaine.

Click here to read "Self-Inflicted Destruction."

Williams: The portal of something transformative

2009-10-23T13:27:00.006-04:00

Now that the dust has settled on the cold and motionless proposal to build a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, the time is right to lend a shoulder to the push to do the right thing in that neighborhood.

Michael Paul Williams does a fine job of presenting what is easily the best plan I've heard for what to do with Shockoe Bottom in his column, "Richmond is appropriate place for slavery museum."

Richmond, which has stopped running and hiding from a fundamental facet of its history, is poised to give birth to a slavery museum that never should have been shopped elsewhere.
The Richmond Slave Trail Commission unveiled plans Monday for a slave heritage site in Shockoe Bottom that would include a slavery museum. It's hard not to examine what has been proposed by the commission, led by Del. Delores L. McQuinn, D-Richmond, and not sense that we're at the portal of something transformative.

Click here to read the column.

At Richmond Magazine Jack Cooksey has a piece up on the Slave Trail:

Richmond was the most active slave market after New Orleans, with some 300,000 African-Americans having  passed through here. And among cities that exported slaves throughout the South, Richmond was the top market, according to historians,
On the Devil’s Half Acre, African-Americans were held captive, punished and “broken” before being sold off as property.
Archaeological excavation of the site last year uncovered the Lumpkin’s Jail foundation, a cobblestone courtyard where slaves were held and a kitchen, as well as artifacts from the period.

Click here to read the entire article and see drawings of what the proposed museum could look like.

In April of this year I penned an opinion piece on this topic for Richmond.com.

We Richmonders need for historians and anthropologists to dig up the truth about the business of selling slaves that went on in Shockoe Bottom. We must get over the threadbare notion that leaving that part of the past buried or glossed over with false history is best. A state-of-the-art museum on the history of the international slave trade is the perfect project for those who want to put a unique tourist attraction in Shockoe Bottom. That's something that would bring people to Richmond from all over the world.

Click here to read the entire piece.

Cerrato: Zorn will stay

2009-10-23T12:25:00.005-04:00

This morning Vinny Cerrato, who supposedly speaks for Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, said head coach Jim Zorn will not be fired during the season.

"Let me start by making a few things very perfectly clear: Jim Zorn is the head coach of the Washington Redskins, and will be for the rest of this season, and hopefully into the future."

Click here to read the entire article at NFL Fanhouse.com.

If this endorsement of Zorn had come two or three weeks ago, it might have helped. At this point the team's morale appears to be a lost cause.

Meantime, the Richmond Times-Dispatch's lone remaining sports columnist, Paul Woody, has zeroed in on the real problem at Redskins Park.

Cerrato, the executive vice president of football operations, is not the problem. Replacing him with a "real" general manager will not solve anything. The problem is that team owner Dan Snyder runs a hands-on operation, and even after 11 years in the NFL, he still does not have a handle on how to produce a consistent winner.

Click here to read Woody's column.

Mr. Natural's Fan League days

2009-10-21T21:14:00.004-04:00

Speaking of R. Crumb, from 1979 to 1983 the Biograph Theatre's team in the Fan District Softball League was called the Naturals. Out of deference to the artist, we did obtain written permission from Crumb to use his character Mr. Natural as our team mascot.

-- Photo by Phil Trumbo

When Comix Ruled

2009-10-21T11:04:00.005-04:00

Rebus appeared in all three issues of Fan Free Funnies

Click here to read about Fan Free Funnies, a collection of local (Fan District) underground comix from 1973. "When Comix Ruled" is a STYLE Weekly sidebar I wrote for an article about R. Crumb's upcoming appearance at the Carpenter Theatre next week.

In 1973, in spite of the cultural changes that had been in the air for years, mainstream pop was still offering up plenty of safe schmaltz and accessible nostalgia: Billboard’s top single of the year was “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree.” The Oscar for best picture went to “American Graffiti.” The word “underground,” associated with art, film and music, still had a yet-to-be-fully exploited edge to it.

Perhaps the best known of the Fan Free Funnies cartoonists was Phil Trumbo (VCU 1972). “Ed Slipek, the editor of VCU’s student newspaper, Commonwealth Times, approached me to help create an underground, comix-style supplement,” Trumbo remembers.

Yes, I'll be there on Oct. 27 to hear Crumb say his piece.

Click here to read more about Rebus. Here's another link.

Flying Squirrels, indeed

2009-10-21T10:57:00.004-04:00

Well, the contest is over and on April 15, 2010 the new baseball team in Richmond, a franchise in the Eastern League, will play its first game at The Diamond.

Well, who didn’t chuckle, or at least smile, when they found out the new team would be called the Flying Squirrels?

Some were probably expressing relief -- at least they won’t have to put up with watching a puffy Rhino or Hush Puppy mascot dance on top of the dugout. Others had to laugh because it was a stretch trying to remember when a flying squirrel was last seen in Richmond.

On the new local baseball team's nickname, click here to read "Flying Squirrels, indeed" at Richmond.com.

Redskins donated $50,000 to McDonnell

2009-10-20T11:32:00.003-04:00

Six weeks into the 2009 season the Washington Redskins are a bad team. So many things seem wrong it’s hard to know where to put the bulk of the blame, personnel-wise. But it’s clear that the offense is worse than the defense. And, it's obvious the problems flow from the top down.

Ten years into the Dan Snyder era, he bought the franchise from Jack Kent Cooke’s estate in 1999, and it’s easy to see that Snyder remains the biggest problem the Redskins have. Maybe the biggest problem with The Danny is that he keeps making the same mistakes, but he seems to expect different results, anyway.

My prediction is that Snyder will fire Jim Zorn during the halftime of a game, then will install a new head coach for the second half. Wouldn’t that set some kind of new record? It might even make Cowboys owner Jerry Jones jealous, because Snyder will have one-upped him on the audacity scale.

Meanwhile, only to make matters worse, the Virginia Public Access Project reports that Snyder has donated $50,000 to Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell. He did it in the name of the Washington Redskins.

LIFE (1936-72)

2009-10-20T11:21:00.004-04:00

At Google Books you can look through every LIFE magazine published between Nov. 23, 1936 and Dec. 29, 1972. Just looking at the covers in a trip.

Click here to see 36 years of LIFE.

McDonnell's Rev. Wright-like problem

2009-10-19T11:16:00.011-04:00

The separation of church and state is a fundamental precept of American democracy that seeks to prevent government at any level from force-feeding religion upon the citizens. So, governments in the USA aren't supposed to promote one religion over another, nor can they require a citizen's adherence to the rules of any religion.

Our government, of the people, is not supposed to require or discourage any faith in a Creator.

But since the concept for codes of conduct all began with ancient religions, and for most of history there wasn't much difference between church and state, washing all the vestiges of religion out of government has been easier said than done. It's a work in progress.

Still, people sometimes get confused about how separation of church and state is supposed to work. It doesn't mean preachers, or any sort of religious figures, shouldn't vote, or take part in the political process.

So, it was entirely proper when Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took a leadership position in the most important political causes of his day. Rev. Pat Robertson still enjoys the same license to pursue the goals in politics he sees as worthwhile.

Likewise, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago, has been both a religious and political figure. Some of Wright's political rhetoric got President Barack Obama in trouble during the campaign last year. Obama's deft handling of the crisis Wright's antics had injected into presidential politics was impressive.

First Obama managed to show a reasonable amount of loyalty to a man he had respected, as the minister of his church, for a long time. After Wright made new statements away from his pulpit that threw gasoline on the flames, Obama pushed away from Wright's off-the-wall behavior. Then Obama gave a speech about race and politics that was very well received.

OK. How about former Attorney General Bob McDonnell? Doesn't he have a preacher problem? First associated with Rev. Robertson in his days as a postgraduate at the televangelist's Regent University in Virginia Beach, McDonnell has continued as Robertson's protégé throughout his career in politics. Has McDonnell ever really distanced himself from the most extreme things Robertson has said or done?

Let's face it, Robertson has said a lot a goofy things over the years.

No need to dredge up his ridiculous comments about bad weather and blurred genders, and so forth. A more ambitious researcher could put together a nice long list of absurd Robertsonisms. The point is, when has McDonnell ever stood before cameras and mics and said where he draws the line, regarding some of the stuff Robertson has said to make headlines?

Maybe he did and I missed it?

Moreover, it says here that McDonnell's connection to Robertson is at least as strong as was the one Republicans were so upset about between Obama and Wright. Remember the righteous indignation?

Then Obama put the record straight. Although many Republicans weren't satisfied, the issue was put to rest for most voters. Now, let's see McDonnell do the same thing.

Since we saw last year that the GOP insists candidates say just exactly where they separate church and state, in their own life, they should be happy to hear Mr. McDonnell set the record straight.

Where and when does McDonnell push away from Robertson?

Washington Post: Mr. Deeds

2009-10-18T00:01:00.013-04:00

The Washington Post's enthusiastic endorsement of state Sen. Creigh Deeds is rooted in realism.

If the current campaign for governor has clarified anything, it is that state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic nominee, has the good sense and political courage to maintain the forward-looking policies of the past while addressing the looming challenge of fixing the state's dangerously inadequate roads. The Republican candidate, former attorney general Robert F. McDonnell, offers something different: a blizzard of bogus, unworkable, chimerical proposals, repackaged as new ideas, that crumble on contact with reality. They would do little if anything to build a better transportation system.

Click here to read "Mr. Deeds for Governor."

With Deeds' poll numbers still in a stall, it looks like some of Virginia's Democrats are still less than enthusiastic about their gubernatorial candidate. So, they're maybe going to sit this election out. Maybe they have forgotten how depressing it was under former-Gov. Jim Gilmore.

Former-Attorney General Bob McDonnell may not be as much of a rube as Gilmore, but he's given to using the same mindless, teabagger-style rhetoric about taxes -- always taxes! -- to bash honest problem-solvers like Deeds.

If McDonnell wins, as it looks like he will, his Republican administration's likely effort to force-march Virginians back across the bridge to the 20th century, culturally, will not set well with many of those same unenthusiastic fair-weather Democrats. But by then it will be too late to squawk.

McDonnell's history, in words and actions, tells us he has consistently had more faith in yesterday's rules that kept a lot of people in their place(s), than he has had in a future that gives everybody an equal chance to succeed.

Speaking of faith, how much do Virginians really want McDonnell's rather eccentric mentor, Rev. Robertson, all over their government? You remember Roberston -- he was the TV preacher who said God told him he sends tornadoes to certain places to kill homosexuals.

Chasing Dignity

2009-10-17T13:28:00.002-04:00

This piece ran originally in STYLE Weekly (May 31, 2006):

“…Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn’t want to know said ‘Yes, we have no bananas,’ and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were — and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.”

– from “Echoes of the Jazz Age” (1931) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the summer of 1978, with the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” playing to the delight of a midnight show packed house, a fight broke out in the middle of Grace Street. Insults, rocks and bottles flew back and forth between the two factions of four each: VCU frat boys vs. an Oregon Hill crew. Their battle was unfolding a perilous 25 to 30 yards from the Cinemascopic all-glass front of the Biograph Theatre, a Fan District cinema I then managed.

At the same time a group of my Biograph Swordfish softball teammates was in the lobby playing a pinball machine. As manager, I felt obliged to drive the danger away, so I opened an exit door and yelled that the cops were already on the way, which they were.

The frat boys scampered off. Their opposites simply switched over to bombing me. A tumbling bottle shattered on the sidewalk. Rocks bounced closer as I closed the door. A piece of brick smashed through its bottom panel of glass to strike my right shin.

When we lit out after them, there were at least a half dozen men running in my impromptu posse of employees and pinball players. The hooligans scattered, but my focus was solely on the one who’d plunked me. Hemmed in by three of us in a parking lot, he faked one way, then cut to the other. His traction gave way slightly in the gravel paving, and I tackled him by the legs.

The others got away. With some help from my friends, we marched the captured 19-year-old back toward the theater. During the trek east on Grace, the culprit said something that provoked one in my group to suddenly punch him. That, while the punchee’s arms were being held.

A policeman, who had just arrived, saw it. He sarcastically complimented the puncher for his aggressive “technique” before the street-fighting man was hauled off in the paddy wagon. In contrast, I told the vigilante puncher he had overreached in hitting the kid unnecessarily, especially while he was helpless.

Surprised by my reaction, my softball teammate laughed. So I said something like, “Hey, we’re no better than the fascists we’ve claimed to deplore if we resort to their tactics.” He disagreed, saying essentially this — that his summary punishment would likely be the only price the little thug would ever pay for his crime. Another in the group agreed with him.

It wasn’t long after that night I found myself poring over an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age.” The excerpt above is the evocative piece’s last paragraph. During that rereading, it occurred to me the shattering glass door had been the sound of the hippie era ending for me.

Yes, we baby boomers were about to see that our sweetest day in the sun, with its righteous causes and rock ’n’ roll anthems, had been another dollop of time, a period with its look and sound, not unlike others. In some ways, the Roaring ’20s redux.

A month later I agreed to the court’s proposal to drop the assault charge, provided the brick-thrower was convicted of a misdemeanor for breaking the glass and paid for the damage. A payment schedule was set up. As we spoke several times after that, I came to see the “hooligan” wasn’t really such a bad guy. Payment was made on time. Eventually, he asked for the name of the man who’d punched him. While withholding the name, I agreed with him that the blow had been a cheap shot.

About a year later, a quick thief snatched a handful of dollar bills from a Biograph cashier, then bolted out the front door. The cashier’s frightened look triggered an alarm in your narrator’s sense of duty/propriety. Her face was quite expressive, and I was still young enough to think chasing criminals down the street was normal. Quaint as it may sound now, it seemed then that some collective sense of dignity was at stake.

In short, it took about 10 minutes to discover the thief’s hiding place, then turn him over to the policemen who’d shown up. I received some unexpected help in cornering him. As I ran west on Grace Street behind the 20-year-old grab-and-run artist, another young man — a total stranger — jumped out of his pickup truck to join in the chase.

Later, when the dust settled, I asked the volunteer why he’d stopped. He answered that he knew I was the Biograph’s manager because a buddy of his had once pointed me out. His friend? It was the same Oregon Hill street-fighter I’d tackled a year before.

My assistant thief-chaser also told me his friend assured him I’d dealt fairly with him. Consequently, a favor was owed to me. Before he left, my collaborator said that in his neighborhood the guys stick together. Thus, he’d supported me in my time of need to help pay his friend’s debt. We shook hands.

Over the years what connects those two chase scenes has become increasingly more satisfying. No doubt that’s because so many times over the years, in dealing with bad luck and other ordinary tests of character, I’ve done nothing to write home about — even the wrong thing.

At least in this story, maybe, I got it right.

The point?

Dear reader, in spite of the wall-to-wall cynicism of our current age, there really was a time when cheap shots — delivered mostly because you can get away with them, so why not? — were seen in a bad light. Returning favors was part of what held things together.

Through the mist of “ghostly rumbles” and “asthmatic whispers,” to some graying hippies, that hasn’t changed.

– 30 –

The Polanski dilemma

2009-10-14T22:25:00.006-04:00

While acclaimed movie director and convicted-rapist-on-the-lam Roman Polanski is fighting his extradition to the USA from Switzerland, he is also trying to finish his latest film ... while he is in jail.

Harris said Polanski had recently given instructions about the film score and was making other decisions from his cell. "It is a nightmare looming that the director might be in jail at the time (of the film's release) but we will just have to cope with this as the situation develops. I'm sure he would want the film to go ahead, having worked on it for two years."

Click here to read the entire Reuters article.

Of course Polanski wants to think about/work on finishing his film. What else has he got to do?

And, once the director of respected films such as "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion," "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown," "Tess," and "The Pianist," gets hauled back to Los Angeles, it's going to be a media circus to rival O.J.'s trial.

Won't that be fun for the cable news networks?

No, I don't know anything about international law or extradition agreements between Switzerland and America. But one can easily get the sense that Polanski is eventually going to have to face the music in LA for what he did over 30 years ago.

Moreover, it's hard to believe that the end product of this whole process will be anything close to satisfying. No matter what a new judge in LA decides, it's unlikely it will seem much like justice that settles the matter and serves society's interests.

Gladstone's "Justice delayed is justice denied" sticks to this baby like glue.

The culture has changed quite a bit since 1977. Movies such as "Manhattan" or "Pretty Baby" couldn't be made today. Polanski's victim, 45-year-old Samantha Geimer, seems to want no part of punishing him at this point. Yet, there's no way a moral society can countenance the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl.

The Atlantic: Webb a 'brave thinker'

2009-10-14T16:43:00.006-04:00

In The Atlantic's feature about what it calls Brave Thinkers, Sen. Jim Webb is cited, along with 24 others. Click here to see the entire list.

Name: Jim Webb
Job: Senator from Virginia
Why he’s brave: He’s taking on the nation’s neglected prison system.
Quote: “I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken.”

Click here to read Webb's page.

Click here to see a video about Webb at The Atlantic.

-- Hat-tip to Lowell Feld

This View Is Our View

2009-10-13T00:08:00.004-04:00

A proposed development on the northern bank of James River, Echo Harbour, has been in the local news for the last couple of years. At Richmond.com a new OpEd style piece I've written about that controversial project is up.

A campaign to convince City Council to give USP Echo Harbour what it wants has been underway. The developers have pointed at the money Richmond should rake in from new tax revenues. They’ve talked about the jobs their project will create. There’s nothing new about that tactic. True or false, all developers sing that same basic tune when they want special favors from governments.

It’s then up to the government, in this case City Council, to decide what is the greater good.

If the City allowed a hog farm to be established where the GRTC bus barns are now that would create jobs, too. No doubt, the promoters of such a ridiculous notion could blue sky the story of how the hog farm would impact the neighborhood.

Click here to read the entire piece, "This View Is Our View."

Demise of 'American Exceptionalism'?

2009-10-12T19:48:00.002-04:00

Longtime political columnist Georgie Anne Geyer hits another bulls-eye!

[Nobel Peace Prizes] have often been given to organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has worked years on end on human rights causes. But it has been almost as often been given to "transformational" or "aspirational" individuals or causes, such as Willy Brandt and his "Ostpolitik" opening to Eastern Communism in 1971, long before the policy ended in the dramatic 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
One also has to note that Nobel Committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, has said over and over that "The question we had to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world. And who has done more than Barack Obama?"

So if the question really revolves around the "previous year," then the American president does not seem such a daring choice after all.

Click here to read the entire piece,"Are We Witnessing the Demise of 'American Exceptionalism'?"

Click here to read about Geyer's background, which is impressive. The story goes that Sigourney Weaver's character in "The Year of Living Dangerously" was drawn somewhat from Geyer's experiences.