It's hard to explain what a few hours of snow does to the extroverted self-employed.
Don't get me wrong, I love seeing snow start falling from the sky shortly after returning from my walk not long after 1:00 in the afternoon. I enjoy it all the more for listening to husband and wife duo Tennis all afternoon. Their indie neo-soul aesthetic is a female-driven sound that speaks to me.
Just when I think that you're mine
You start to slip away
But your love is divide
You know I'm coming for you
But I'm also that person who begins to chafe and sweat at the idea of being trapped at home for days. Yes, I have a great book, plenty of food and the ability to walk, but the fact is, I want company. Give me humans.
Which is why it's barely 4:15 when I head out, umbrella in hand (to the consternation of Canucks everywhere), determined to find company, alcohol and food. The snow is coming down in earnest but that's part of the appeal of the walk.
Stop one is Saison Market for a glass of Cava and the chance to read Atlantic Monthly while Beach House's Teen Dream plays. While "Take Care of You" pours out of the speakers, I chat with the guy next to me who is writing in a notebook while he sips a beer. Unlike me, he's too young to appreciate the lyrics.
Promptly at 5:00, I shoulder on my coat to cross the brief distance to Saison where I find a group of MCV dental students and a glass of Prosecco with my name on it. Animal Collective's "Summertime Clothes" is playing and everything is right with the world.
If only I were wearing summertime clothes, maybe a sundress or something equally lightweight and adorable. Instead, snow is pouring down outside and I am wearing multiple layers to deal with the cold. I am most definitely not a cold weather person.
One of the dental students is celebrating a birthday and clinks glasses with me, having just come from Sam Miller's and multiple Long Island iced teas. I marvel that one so seemingly clueless will soon be in charge of strangers' teeth.
Fortunately, I soon have superior company and a plate of fried chicken. Usually a Sunday night special, tonight's fried chicken appearance is a special due to the snow, along with sides of corn bread and black beans and rice with sausage.
Perhaps the most pleasant part of it all is how uncrowded the dining room is and that most of its occupants are Jackson Ward residents. If you're here, you walked to get here. Howdy, neighbor.
But all good things must come to an end and they want to close so their employees can get home safely. Fortunately, my dining companion had noted that GWAR Bar was open when he walked over. It's enough incentive to trudge over in the still-falling snow.
On the way, I spot a favorite couple through the window of their J-Ward condo and wave under my umbrella until they come to the door and say hello. Turns out they have already been to Max's for the same reason I was at Saison.
It's a meager crowd we find at GWAR Bar despite the open sign and blasting metal soundtrack. With an apologetic look, the bartender tells us they're about to close. Fair enough, but she agrees to serve us one round.
Midway through that round, a favorite gallerist arrives with his wife and we are soon deep in discussion of upcoming events at his gallery. Next thing I know, he has sent over a bourbon shot for me, despite the fact that I don't drink bourbon. Meanwhile the door keeps opening with others seeking warmth and spirits.
All of a sudden, the evening has taken a turn. I shouldn't be surprised given that we're at GWAR Bar.
With people continuing to arrive, the bartender has abandoned any hope of closing early. We're all in it for the long haul. Snow changes the rules.
Before long, the art teacher and her newly-shorn beau arrive and wave from across the bar. It's beginning to look like anyone who lives within trudging distance is here. Outside, everyone in the neighborhood who has a dog is out walking it.
One of my favorite newcomers is a Puerto Rican with a laptop who is experiencing his first major snowfall since moving here a year ago. He is amazed at the city's reaction to snow. "I've seen hurricanes that are much worse than this," he claims. No doubt, but this is a weather wimp town.
Outside the big windows, the snow continues to fall steadily, a sure indicator that we will indeed have 8-10 inches by lunch time tomorrow if it keeps up. I love the snow but hate what it will do to my social life and desire for company this week.
The only good part is that I've had great fun on the opening night of Snowmageddon week. It's a good thing, too, since it may have to last me all week.
Who am I kidding? I'll find someone somewhere who wants to see me tomorrow night and the next, even if they're strangers.
I've been told an optimist's company is always welcome. Let's see if that holds true in the snow.
(*W.B. Yeats)
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Monday, February 16, 2015
Picture That
If there's anything tonight proved, it's that Richmond is not only a photography town but a film town.
Both intersected in Carytown tonight for the Richmond premiere of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Finding Vivian Maier" about the Chicago street photographer whose 150,000+ negatives weren't discovered until after her death.
I know I wasn't the only one who'd been wondering since last March if the documentary would ever play Richmond. And goodness knows, I was one of the scores who first saw a small part of the cache of Maier photographs online a few years ago and marveled at this unknown woman's eye and talent.
Like so many fantastic events that happen in Richmond, this one got its start in my neighborhood, Jackson Ward, at the only photography gallery in town. Gallerist Gordon wanted to bring the film to his Candela Gallery, hoping to draw maybe 40 artsy types. I can assure you I would have been one of them.
Seeing assistance to make it happen, he went to the film-obsessed guys who are trying to get the Bijou - a small 100-120 seat repertory theater - up and running here. They saw the potential to not only bring the film, but use it as a fundraiser for both the Bijou and Richmond's landmark movie palace, the venerable Byrd Theater.
That event alone would have made for a terrific Sunday evening, but things kept growing. Soon an after-party was planned with local legends Chez Roue planning to play their next-to-last show in Richmond at NY Deli immediately after the film.
Then Gordon arranged to have a dozen or so of Maier's prints on loan from a gallery in NYC for viewing at Portrait House before the screening. All of a sudden, it was all Vivian Maier, all the time. Or, at least, for 7 1/2 hours tonight.
I wouldn't have missed it for the world despite temperatures that felt like 11 degrees and the cruelest wind I can recall in years.
After meeting a friend for dinner (and a discussion of the word frigid and its now almost archaic use to describe women), I made a detour to Chop Suey Books to use a birthday gift certificate to pick up a new book I'd seen a review of last week. "1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music" sounded like just my kind of read and luckily for me, they had a copy in stock.
Book in hand, it was on to Portrait House where we were eager to see Maier prints in the flesh. The place was mobbed with others just as eager, so we waited our turn to get close enough to Gordon for him to flip through the large-format matted photographs, each as riveting as the last.
I don't care if this woman worked as a nanny for 40 or 400 years, she clearly had a photographer's eye.
Once we'd seen them, we stepped aside to allow others in for a viewing. In the back, we met a relative newcomer to Richmond, here only a year since moving down from Pennsylvania, and almost giddy with excitement about tonight's film.
The funny part was, he hadn't known about it until this morning when he'd seen a flyer at Globehopper while scoring coffee. I'd bought my ticket weeks ago so as to be sure I didn't miss out. And here we both were, equally thrilled about it.
Given the biting wind and frigid temperatures, it was far from the ideal night to have to stand in a line that ran to the end of the block and around the corner, but with no choice, we made for the end of the line. I soon heard my name called and a favorite couple (he's a photographer and she's a student of pop culture) appeared to join us.
For that matter, once we made it inside, the number of friends I saw was overwhelming. It seemed like everyone was at the Byrd tonight: history geeks, print-makers, prickly types, DJs, authors, Romans and countrymen.
Turns out there were 900+ people crowding the Byrd and overflowing up into the balcony. That's a nice chunk of fundraising and a solid testament to the community's interest in the film.
But the weather and wind had taken its toll not just on my freezing legs but also on the loading door behind the Byrd, which had blown off during a screening of "Annie" earlier. Richmond, we just don't do winter well.
Before the main event, they showed "The Critic," an Oscar-winning Mel Brooks animated short from 1963 with enough hilarious dialog to get everyone chuckling at his commentary about art and modernity.
I think I knew going in that I was going to be fascinated by the documentary because I could have been happy watching an hour and 24 minutes of just her photographs. But listening to the people who employed her as a nanny and the now grown children she'd watched just provided additional reasons to find the story so compelling.
How could she have been so driven to take thousands of pictures without making an effort to have them shown? How would she feel about her pictures being shared now? Why did she hoard newspapers? Was her pseudo-French accent an affectation?
For a documentary dork like me, as many questions were raised as were answered and that's fine, too.
Afterwards, my friends went home and I went next door to NY Deli to hear Chez Roue for the last time. It was packed in there, but the music was rollicking and everyone eager to talk about what we'd just seen.
Sharing a film in a public space has always been the bedrock of the American film experience. No one will ever convince me that watching a movie at home with stops for bathroom breaks and food runs is anything like a genuine film experience.
Which is exactly why we need the Bijou. I don't want to just read about amazing films, I want them to have a place to play in Richmond where I can watch them with 100 or so of my closest strangers (or people I know, I won't discriminate).
Because if 900 people come out on a blustery, nearly sub-zero work night to see a documentary about a dead nanny with a Rolleiflex, we are most definitely a film town.
Both intersected in Carytown tonight for the Richmond premiere of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Finding Vivian Maier" about the Chicago street photographer whose 150,000+ negatives weren't discovered until after her death.
I know I wasn't the only one who'd been wondering since last March if the documentary would ever play Richmond. And goodness knows, I was one of the scores who first saw a small part of the cache of Maier photographs online a few years ago and marveled at this unknown woman's eye and talent.
Like so many fantastic events that happen in Richmond, this one got its start in my neighborhood, Jackson Ward, at the only photography gallery in town. Gallerist Gordon wanted to bring the film to his Candela Gallery, hoping to draw maybe 40 artsy types. I can assure you I would have been one of them.
Seeing assistance to make it happen, he went to the film-obsessed guys who are trying to get the Bijou - a small 100-120 seat repertory theater - up and running here. They saw the potential to not only bring the film, but use it as a fundraiser for both the Bijou and Richmond's landmark movie palace, the venerable Byrd Theater.
That event alone would have made for a terrific Sunday evening, but things kept growing. Soon an after-party was planned with local legends Chez Roue planning to play their next-to-last show in Richmond at NY Deli immediately after the film.
Then Gordon arranged to have a dozen or so of Maier's prints on loan from a gallery in NYC for viewing at Portrait House before the screening. All of a sudden, it was all Vivian Maier, all the time. Or, at least, for 7 1/2 hours tonight.
I wouldn't have missed it for the world despite temperatures that felt like 11 degrees and the cruelest wind I can recall in years.
After meeting a friend for dinner (and a discussion of the word frigid and its now almost archaic use to describe women), I made a detour to Chop Suey Books to use a birthday gift certificate to pick up a new book I'd seen a review of last week. "1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music" sounded like just my kind of read and luckily for me, they had a copy in stock.
Book in hand, it was on to Portrait House where we were eager to see Maier prints in the flesh. The place was mobbed with others just as eager, so we waited our turn to get close enough to Gordon for him to flip through the large-format matted photographs, each as riveting as the last.
I don't care if this woman worked as a nanny for 40 or 400 years, she clearly had a photographer's eye.
Once we'd seen them, we stepped aside to allow others in for a viewing. In the back, we met a relative newcomer to Richmond, here only a year since moving down from Pennsylvania, and almost giddy with excitement about tonight's film.
The funny part was, he hadn't known about it until this morning when he'd seen a flyer at Globehopper while scoring coffee. I'd bought my ticket weeks ago so as to be sure I didn't miss out. And here we both were, equally thrilled about it.
Given the biting wind and frigid temperatures, it was far from the ideal night to have to stand in a line that ran to the end of the block and around the corner, but with no choice, we made for the end of the line. I soon heard my name called and a favorite couple (he's a photographer and she's a student of pop culture) appeared to join us.
For that matter, once we made it inside, the number of friends I saw was overwhelming. It seemed like everyone was at the Byrd tonight: history geeks, print-makers, prickly types, DJs, authors, Romans and countrymen.
Turns out there were 900+ people crowding the Byrd and overflowing up into the balcony. That's a nice chunk of fundraising and a solid testament to the community's interest in the film.
But the weather and wind had taken its toll not just on my freezing legs but also on the loading door behind the Byrd, which had blown off during a screening of "Annie" earlier. Richmond, we just don't do winter well.
Before the main event, they showed "The Critic," an Oscar-winning Mel Brooks animated short from 1963 with enough hilarious dialog to get everyone chuckling at his commentary about art and modernity.
I think I knew going in that I was going to be fascinated by the documentary because I could have been happy watching an hour and 24 minutes of just her photographs. But listening to the people who employed her as a nanny and the now grown children she'd watched just provided additional reasons to find the story so compelling.
How could she have been so driven to take thousands of pictures without making an effort to have them shown? How would she feel about her pictures being shared now? Why did she hoard newspapers? Was her pseudo-French accent an affectation?
For a documentary dork like me, as many questions were raised as were answered and that's fine, too.
Afterwards, my friends went home and I went next door to NY Deli to hear Chez Roue for the last time. It was packed in there, but the music was rollicking and everyone eager to talk about what we'd just seen.
Sharing a film in a public space has always been the bedrock of the American film experience. No one will ever convince me that watching a movie at home with stops for bathroom breaks and food runs is anything like a genuine film experience.
Which is exactly why we need the Bijou. I don't want to just read about amazing films, I want them to have a place to play in Richmond where I can watch them with 100 or so of my closest strangers (or people I know, I won't discriminate).
Because if 900 people come out on a blustery, nearly sub-zero work night to see a documentary about a dead nanny with a Rolleiflex, we are most definitely a film town.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Public Displays of Devotion
Romance is everything ~ Gertrude Stein
My parents taught me that Valentine's Day, like wedding anniversaries, was meant to be celebrated between two people.
Sure, in elementary school, we all took valentines for everyone in the class, but Mom was adamant as we got older that it was a holiday to celebrate love between two people, not an all-purpose holiday where you sent your aunt, cousin or, god forbid, parents a mushy card.
That made sense to me, so if I was in a relationship, I searched out the perfect card in which to write something meaningful, along with maybe a token of my affection to present to my significant other. But no one knew what we exchanged or said because no one compared notes about the nature of their Valentine's Day.
Talk about the Stone Age.
Now, thanks to Facebook (and for all I know, Instagram and Twitter), it's a Valentine's Day free-for-all of over-sharing.
A single friend who works retail posts a rant about the male madness at the store where she works, but its central purpose is to remind women that this is a holiday for us. And that men go through the motions for two simple reasons: a) they love us and b) they think they'll be in trouble if they don't.
I see her post as sort of a public service announcement.
Several friends post pictures of their cats, some identifying the cats as their valentines, while others are just a general Valentine's Day wish from their cats.
We all know this is just what cat people do no matter what day of the week it is.
A feminist, wife and mother I know posts a beautiful kissing picture from her wedding and comments about a holiday our country has increasingly monetized by feeding off our collective insecurities and need for materialism.
But she also states her complete adoration and deep love for her husband because, she says, our culture values public displays of devotion and she aspires to be a a good wife.
I'm impressed with how seamlessly she has melded social commentary, satire and her feelings.
A favorite photographer and printmaker offers up a photo of a hot chick in honor of St. Valentine. Worthy of note is that the picture was of one of her backyard chickens.
It's hard to fault holiday humor.
In a gesture sure to earn the scorn of men everywhere, a musician friend recorded a song for his girlfriend and posted it online. He even prefaced it by saying he'd gone all the way to Valentine's Day-land and all he'd gotten her was this silly love song.
Sure, I listened, wouldn't you? They recently got engaged in Paris, so clearly he's a highly romantic kind of guy, something I admire, covet even.
But my parents would be appalled at such public displays of devotion and I'm not far off. The gestures are perfectly lovely, but using the online world as a forum goes against every romantic precept instilled in me by a couple who are still in love and married after more than half a century.
Don't get me wrong. I'll take as much romance as I can get and chances are good I won't get anywhere near as much as I'd like in my lifetime. Back in college, my best buddy Leo dubbed me "hopelessly romantic" and that's still a completely apt moniker.
Call me prehistoric, but I just don't want anyone's romantic intentions toward me shared with the online world.
Happily ever after, yes, please, if possible (and my guess is, it's not). Posting about it, not going to happen.
And yet, when I end up at the GWAR bar to wind down Valentines' Day with restaurant staff blowing off steam after the misery of the past few hours (Graffiato's 600 Valentine's Day covers, a Rogue Gentlemen report from the kitchen, Helen's switched to local Bloody mix for Sunday brunch), where exactly is the romance?
Hopeless, absolutely hopelessly. Romance means something different to everyone.
My parents taught me that Valentine's Day, like wedding anniversaries, was meant to be celebrated between two people.
Sure, in elementary school, we all took valentines for everyone in the class, but Mom was adamant as we got older that it was a holiday to celebrate love between two people, not an all-purpose holiday where you sent your aunt, cousin or, god forbid, parents a mushy card.
That made sense to me, so if I was in a relationship, I searched out the perfect card in which to write something meaningful, along with maybe a token of my affection to present to my significant other. But no one knew what we exchanged or said because no one compared notes about the nature of their Valentine's Day.
Talk about the Stone Age.
Now, thanks to Facebook (and for all I know, Instagram and Twitter), it's a Valentine's Day free-for-all of over-sharing.
A single friend who works retail posts a rant about the male madness at the store where she works, but its central purpose is to remind women that this is a holiday for us. And that men go through the motions for two simple reasons: a) they love us and b) they think they'll be in trouble if they don't.
I see her post as sort of a public service announcement.
Several friends post pictures of their cats, some identifying the cats as their valentines, while others are just a general Valentine's Day wish from their cats.
We all know this is just what cat people do no matter what day of the week it is.
A feminist, wife and mother I know posts a beautiful kissing picture from her wedding and comments about a holiday our country has increasingly monetized by feeding off our collective insecurities and need for materialism.
But she also states her complete adoration and deep love for her husband because, she says, our culture values public displays of devotion and she aspires to be a a good wife.
I'm impressed with how seamlessly she has melded social commentary, satire and her feelings.
A favorite photographer and printmaker offers up a photo of a hot chick in honor of St. Valentine. Worthy of note is that the picture was of one of her backyard chickens.
It's hard to fault holiday humor.
In a gesture sure to earn the scorn of men everywhere, a musician friend recorded a song for his girlfriend and posted it online. He even prefaced it by saying he'd gone all the way to Valentine's Day-land and all he'd gotten her was this silly love song.
Sure, I listened, wouldn't you? They recently got engaged in Paris, so clearly he's a highly romantic kind of guy, something I admire, covet even.
But my parents would be appalled at such public displays of devotion and I'm not far off. The gestures are perfectly lovely, but using the online world as a forum goes against every romantic precept instilled in me by a couple who are still in love and married after more than half a century.
Don't get me wrong. I'll take as much romance as I can get and chances are good I won't get anywhere near as much as I'd like in my lifetime. Back in college, my best buddy Leo dubbed me "hopelessly romantic" and that's still a completely apt moniker.
Call me prehistoric, but I just don't want anyone's romantic intentions toward me shared with the online world.
Happily ever after, yes, please, if possible (and my guess is, it's not). Posting about it, not going to happen.
And yet, when I end up at the GWAR bar to wind down Valentines' Day with restaurant staff blowing off steam after the misery of the past few hours (Graffiato's 600 Valentine's Day covers, a Rogue Gentlemen report from the kitchen, Helen's switched to local Bloody mix for Sunday brunch), where exactly is the romance?
Hopeless, absolutely hopelessly. Romance means something different to everyone.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Haven't Got a Prayer
Usually I steer my own course, but tonight was all about the invitations.
When a theater-loving friend asked me to join him for "Sister Act" at theMosque Landmark Altria Theater, I immediately accepted knowing full well I didn't have $70 for a ticket. But then he surprised me by saying I could invite two friends because he had four tickets.
So not only was I being treated but I could share my largess. I tapped Pru and her new beau to join me for two main reasons: she's a theater devotee and while I'd heard plenty about him, I hadn't yet met him.
And, believe me, I was some kind of curious given their story.
They'd known each other 30 years ago, moving in the same circles, sharing the same friends, and had only gotten reacquainted a few months back. Naturally I'd want to see what that renewed dynamic looked like.
Conveniently, she invited both of us to her place for wine before the show. He brought his favorite, Pinot Noir, and she began ribbing him about how she liked Sancerre even better while he reminded her they'd had one just the other day so it was his turn to choose.
When I asked him about what she was like back then, he tried telling me stories but she couldn't resist interrupting and embellishing his memories. It wasn't hard to see they had great banter.
At one point while we were talking, she glanced at his jeans and pronounced that the cuffs were rolled up inappropriately. Wasting no time, she reached for a leg and re-cuffed it explaining that his way looked too '80s. His look may have been long-suffering but he was also grinning at the attention.
I think my friend has found a good man. Full disclosure: it didn't hurt that he'd read one of my reviews and quoted a line from it, either.
We stopped by Garnett's for a nosh on the way, finding the place positively slammed and it was obvious some of it was Valentine's Day-related. Several couples were doing the date night deal with wine bottles on their tables while others were exchanging affectionate looks and eating coconut chocolate cake, which happens to be my favorite.
But we didn't have time for dessert with an 8:00 curtain looming. Walking from a parking lot in Oregon Hill manned by a friendly guy who looked half-frozen to the theater, I was surprised to see how many people were dropping bills in the bucket for the kids who drum on the sidewalk. So different from the people who pass them on a daily basis.
Whether because it was a musical, based on a '90s movie or because of the ticket price, it was most definitely an older crowd, meaning s-l-o-w walkers on a 20-degree night. I don't understand this. Cold weather makes me walk faster, not slower.
When we met my ticket-holding friend in the lobby I gave him a hard time for not having a hat on his shaved head in this weather, especially since he'd walked eight blocks to the theater. Seems he couldn't find his black hat and he said he certainly wasn't going to wear his brown one with his black overcoat.
Most of the men I know can't even distinguish black from brown, so I had to give him props for that.
Pricey tickets paid off with seats in the orchestra section, row L, center. Waiting for the play to start, I overheard the man behind me tell his wife he'd been in Strange's Florist at 5:00 today and it had been a testosterone-fueled mob scene.
"Men, lots of them, were everywhere looking desperate and the only women in the whole place were the ones who worked there." Neither his wife nor I were the least surprised, both of us having seen the same wild-eyed look on flower-seeking men at Kroger this afternoon.
Although I saw "Sister Act" at the theater in 1992, I didn't have much memory of it beyond Whoopi Goldberg in a nun's habit, so the story unfolded for me a little like I was seeing it for the first time. Which it sort of was since this was a musical version from 2006.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if there was going to be enough to engage me (none of the songs or performers had grabbed me yet and we were four songs in) I was rewarded with the first song sung by a male and it was wonderfully soul-inflected.
"When I Find My Baby" had the melody of a slow burn soul classic but with lyrics about how he was going to kill her - shoot, stab, disembowel her - when he got his hands on her. Sexy and hilarious, a killer (ha!) combination.
Just as fabulous was "I Could Be That Guy," sung by the mild-mannered cop Sweat Eddie in a timid voice that grew to a Barry White roar by mid-song as his cop uniform gave way to a white disco suit.
For sheer exuberance, "Sunday Morning Fever" had the nuns doing a mash-up of disco-era songs ("Shake it like you're Mary Magdalene") with lyrics about feeling the beat and rocking the pews. They even used the melody of "Rappers' Delight" with an aged sister rapping.
We got Matt, Mark, Luke and John
Those guys are pros and that ain't a con
So let's party on till the break o' dawn
like a sanctifunkadelic orgasmatron
Of course they're such a hit singing at church that the media takes notice and one funny scene has the nuns reading their press. "If you only see one Roman Catholic mass this season, this is the one to see!"
During a scene where three nuns slip out to a bar across the street where they order beer and Philly cheese steaks, one nun starts dancing to the jukebox. "Is this what it feels like to be a Protestant?" she asks and people like me laughed out loud.
By people like me, I mean people raised Catholic who are now heathens. People who get a kick out of seeing altar boys dancing in polyester shirts cut to their waist. People lucky enough to have a generous friend.
Since I was only going to see one Roman Catholic play this season, I think I shook it like Mary Magdalene to the right sanctifunkadelic one.
Hell, it's not like I was going to heaven anyway.
When a theater-loving friend asked me to join him for "Sister Act" at the
So not only was I being treated but I could share my largess. I tapped Pru and her new beau to join me for two main reasons: she's a theater devotee and while I'd heard plenty about him, I hadn't yet met him.
And, believe me, I was some kind of curious given their story.
They'd known each other 30 years ago, moving in the same circles, sharing the same friends, and had only gotten reacquainted a few months back. Naturally I'd want to see what that renewed dynamic looked like.
Conveniently, she invited both of us to her place for wine before the show. He brought his favorite, Pinot Noir, and she began ribbing him about how she liked Sancerre even better while he reminded her they'd had one just the other day so it was his turn to choose.
When I asked him about what she was like back then, he tried telling me stories but she couldn't resist interrupting and embellishing his memories. It wasn't hard to see they had great banter.
At one point while we were talking, she glanced at his jeans and pronounced that the cuffs were rolled up inappropriately. Wasting no time, she reached for a leg and re-cuffed it explaining that his way looked too '80s. His look may have been long-suffering but he was also grinning at the attention.
I think my friend has found a good man. Full disclosure: it didn't hurt that he'd read one of my reviews and quoted a line from it, either.
We stopped by Garnett's for a nosh on the way, finding the place positively slammed and it was obvious some of it was Valentine's Day-related. Several couples were doing the date night deal with wine bottles on their tables while others were exchanging affectionate looks and eating coconut chocolate cake, which happens to be my favorite.
But we didn't have time for dessert with an 8:00 curtain looming. Walking from a parking lot in Oregon Hill manned by a friendly guy who looked half-frozen to the theater, I was surprised to see how many people were dropping bills in the bucket for the kids who drum on the sidewalk. So different from the people who pass them on a daily basis.
Whether because it was a musical, based on a '90s movie or because of the ticket price, it was most definitely an older crowd, meaning s-l-o-w walkers on a 20-degree night. I don't understand this. Cold weather makes me walk faster, not slower.
When we met my ticket-holding friend in the lobby I gave him a hard time for not having a hat on his shaved head in this weather, especially since he'd walked eight blocks to the theater. Seems he couldn't find his black hat and he said he certainly wasn't going to wear his brown one with his black overcoat.
Most of the men I know can't even distinguish black from brown, so I had to give him props for that.
Pricey tickets paid off with seats in the orchestra section, row L, center. Waiting for the play to start, I overheard the man behind me tell his wife he'd been in Strange's Florist at 5:00 today and it had been a testosterone-fueled mob scene.
"Men, lots of them, were everywhere looking desperate and the only women in the whole place were the ones who worked there." Neither his wife nor I were the least surprised, both of us having seen the same wild-eyed look on flower-seeking men at Kroger this afternoon.
Although I saw "Sister Act" at the theater in 1992, I didn't have much memory of it beyond Whoopi Goldberg in a nun's habit, so the story unfolded for me a little like I was seeing it for the first time. Which it sort of was since this was a musical version from 2006.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if there was going to be enough to engage me (none of the songs or performers had grabbed me yet and we were four songs in) I was rewarded with the first song sung by a male and it was wonderfully soul-inflected.
"When I Find My Baby" had the melody of a slow burn soul classic but with lyrics about how he was going to kill her - shoot, stab, disembowel her - when he got his hands on her. Sexy and hilarious, a killer (ha!) combination.
Just as fabulous was "I Could Be That Guy," sung by the mild-mannered cop Sweat Eddie in a timid voice that grew to a Barry White roar by mid-song as his cop uniform gave way to a white disco suit.
For sheer exuberance, "Sunday Morning Fever" had the nuns doing a mash-up of disco-era songs ("Shake it like you're Mary Magdalene") with lyrics about feeling the beat and rocking the pews. They even used the melody of "Rappers' Delight" with an aged sister rapping.
We got Matt, Mark, Luke and John
Those guys are pros and that ain't a con
So let's party on till the break o' dawn
like a sanctifunkadelic orgasmatron
Of course they're such a hit singing at church that the media takes notice and one funny scene has the nuns reading their press. "If you only see one Roman Catholic mass this season, this is the one to see!"
During a scene where three nuns slip out to a bar across the street where they order beer and Philly cheese steaks, one nun starts dancing to the jukebox. "Is this what it feels like to be a Protestant?" she asks and people like me laughed out loud.
By people like me, I mean people raised Catholic who are now heathens. People who get a kick out of seeing altar boys dancing in polyester shirts cut to their waist. People lucky enough to have a generous friend.
Since I was only going to see one Roman Catholic play this season, I think I shook it like Mary Magdalene to the right sanctifunkadelic one.
Hell, it's not like I was going to heaven anyway.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
14th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)
Opinionated as I am, I was born to be part of a charette.
After happy hour with Prosecco/tequila cocktails and an old friend from out of town, I set my sights on the Virginia Center for Architecture's panel discussion, "Reprogramming the City," based on the fascinating new exhibit there.
I'd already written a piece on it for Style Weekly, here, with my own suggestions for utilizing the ideas in the exhibit but tonight was about listening to savvy panelists explain macro and micro ideas for using Richmond's infrastructure to improve the city.
Stewart Schwartz gave us an overview of the D.C area's mistakes and successes in creating walkable urbanism, followed by a look at Richmond's efforts. Incredibly knowledgeable about development, he stressed the importance of the public in planning a city's future (that's where I want to come in).
Next came Jim Smither who teaches at VCU and used images of projects done by urban planning students to re-imagine parts of Richmond.
Although I have no interest in the suburbs, the plan for redeveloping Chesterfield Town Center mall looked like a huge improvement with a clock tower, parks, an arch with a rooftop cafe, a library, post office, hotel and apartments breaking up the existing block of stores.
Turns out it's in response to a demand for more public space in the suburbs. Who knew they wanted that?
Far more compelling was another project proposing redevelopment of the old bus station at Robinson and Cary Streets. There, the students had struck a balance of preserving the historic trolley sheds and infilling with retail, residential and a parking garage.
But it went further than that. They'd laid out a plan for pocket parks, a sculpture garden, a rain garden, a playground and even managed to find a place to put one of the old trolleys on display for historical reference, all within the block where the sheds sit.
Where Robinson Street crosses over the Downtown Expressway, they'd envisioned pedestrian walkways, crosswalks and lamp posts with flags to make the bridge a gateway to Robinson Street.
Best of all, everything was done in the scale of the existing neighborhood, so nothing looked out of place, just more welcoming.
When the moderator brought up his fiscal conservatism in the face of these plans, Smither explained that a project like this was a 20 year plan that would need to be broken into phases.
He even brought up another student's project in Jackson Ward, one I knew well since I'd been a part of it. A group of neighbors had met over four consecutive weeks to reimagine the triangle at Adams and Broad and while we had no money to implement our ideas, a few of them had been accomplished with sweat equity as proof to the city that they were not only possible but a major improvement to the neighborhood.
It was through that project that I'd discovered how satisfying it is to be part of a charette and collaborate on a vision for development.
As the audience began asking questions, it became clear which topics are high on everyone's radar. BRT (bus rapid transit) was one, with Schwartz emphasizing the importance of making people want to live near the bus stops and how people need to have a positive experience - exciting, interesting, appealing -when they get off a bus to make it successful (see: D.C.).
We talked about the over-abundance of parking garages downtown and how they're privately owned and aren't shared, making them useless too much of the time. "If we want a vibrant city, we have to get a handle on parking," he insisted.
Apparently during the downtown master plan charettes a few years back, there was talk of making the Leigh Street connector more attractive by adding a green median and better bike lanes. Having just walked it today and picked up two bags of trash along the way, I couldn't agree more that it needs a face-lift
But the idea that grabbed me, thrilled me most and the one he said should be an even higher priority than the bridge park currently being planned was for Mayo's bridge.
In order to knit together Shockoe Slip and Bottom to Manchester, he said, Mayo's bridge should be closed to traffic and made a green space with bike lanes, wide sidewalks and places from which to fish. A loop would be formed with a park on Mayo Island.
It's so easy to imagine because the scale of that bridge is so unlike the others that cross the James. It's low to the river, it's only one lane in either direction. It's a bridge scaled for people, not cars.
A traffic study has already shown that the paltry amount of traffic using that bridge could easily be shifted to the Manchester bridge seven blocks away leaving that old, historic stone bridge to become a pathway from one downtown neighborhood to another.
It's by far the best idea for reprogramming the city I've heard. And in case anyone's taking names, I want to be part of the charette that works on such a brilliant idea.
Let me be one of the voices giving feedback to the designers and the city about the best way to walk from one neighborhood to another. I'd say I'm pretty close to an expert on that subject.
After happy hour with Prosecco/tequila cocktails and an old friend from out of town, I set my sights on the Virginia Center for Architecture's panel discussion, "Reprogramming the City," based on the fascinating new exhibit there.
I'd already written a piece on it for Style Weekly, here, with my own suggestions for utilizing the ideas in the exhibit but tonight was about listening to savvy panelists explain macro and micro ideas for using Richmond's infrastructure to improve the city.
Stewart Schwartz gave us an overview of the D.C area's mistakes and successes in creating walkable urbanism, followed by a look at Richmond's efforts. Incredibly knowledgeable about development, he stressed the importance of the public in planning a city's future (that's where I want to come in).
Next came Jim Smither who teaches at VCU and used images of projects done by urban planning students to re-imagine parts of Richmond.
Although I have no interest in the suburbs, the plan for redeveloping Chesterfield Town Center mall looked like a huge improvement with a clock tower, parks, an arch with a rooftop cafe, a library, post office, hotel and apartments breaking up the existing block of stores.
Turns out it's in response to a demand for more public space in the suburbs. Who knew they wanted that?
Far more compelling was another project proposing redevelopment of the old bus station at Robinson and Cary Streets. There, the students had struck a balance of preserving the historic trolley sheds and infilling with retail, residential and a parking garage.
But it went further than that. They'd laid out a plan for pocket parks, a sculpture garden, a rain garden, a playground and even managed to find a place to put one of the old trolleys on display for historical reference, all within the block where the sheds sit.
Where Robinson Street crosses over the Downtown Expressway, they'd envisioned pedestrian walkways, crosswalks and lamp posts with flags to make the bridge a gateway to Robinson Street.
Best of all, everything was done in the scale of the existing neighborhood, so nothing looked out of place, just more welcoming.
When the moderator brought up his fiscal conservatism in the face of these plans, Smither explained that a project like this was a 20 year plan that would need to be broken into phases.
He even brought up another student's project in Jackson Ward, one I knew well since I'd been a part of it. A group of neighbors had met over four consecutive weeks to reimagine the triangle at Adams and Broad and while we had no money to implement our ideas, a few of them had been accomplished with sweat equity as proof to the city that they were not only possible but a major improvement to the neighborhood.
It was through that project that I'd discovered how satisfying it is to be part of a charette and collaborate on a vision for development.
As the audience began asking questions, it became clear which topics are high on everyone's radar. BRT (bus rapid transit) was one, with Schwartz emphasizing the importance of making people want to live near the bus stops and how people need to have a positive experience - exciting, interesting, appealing -when they get off a bus to make it successful (see: D.C.).
We talked about the over-abundance of parking garages downtown and how they're privately owned and aren't shared, making them useless too much of the time. "If we want a vibrant city, we have to get a handle on parking," he insisted.
Apparently during the downtown master plan charettes a few years back, there was talk of making the Leigh Street connector more attractive by adding a green median and better bike lanes. Having just walked it today and picked up two bags of trash along the way, I couldn't agree more that it needs a face-lift
But the idea that grabbed me, thrilled me most and the one he said should be an even higher priority than the bridge park currently being planned was for Mayo's bridge.
In order to knit together Shockoe Slip and Bottom to Manchester, he said, Mayo's bridge should be closed to traffic and made a green space with bike lanes, wide sidewalks and places from which to fish. A loop would be formed with a park on Mayo Island.
It's so easy to imagine because the scale of that bridge is so unlike the others that cross the James. It's low to the river, it's only one lane in either direction. It's a bridge scaled for people, not cars.
A traffic study has already shown that the paltry amount of traffic using that bridge could easily be shifted to the Manchester bridge seven blocks away leaving that old, historic stone bridge to become a pathway from one downtown neighborhood to another.
It's by far the best idea for reprogramming the city I've heard. And in case anyone's taking names, I want to be part of the charette that works on such a brilliant idea.
Let me be one of the voices giving feedback to the designers and the city about the best way to walk from one neighborhood to another. I'd say I'm pretty close to an expert on that subject.
Fun and Funner
So, yup, I've now done havoc.
I somehow got invited to a VCU Rams basketball game with three guys, two of them season ticket holders and rabid fans and one attending his first VCU game. Not to brag, but even I'd been to a VCU basketball game before (okay, once) and I'm the least athletically-inclined woman in Richmond.
We met at Ipanema to pre-game, which for them meant beer and pierogis, and for me meant white Rioja and our charming server's favorite salad of mesclun, orange, pomegranate seeds and nuts over grilled endive. Not everyone's idea of a pre-basketball meal, but pretty delicious to this non-fan..
Apparently it had been long enough ago since I'd been to a game that I didn't recall the VCU Peppas or the Goldrush dancers who were the entertainment every second that the team wasn't playing. And I use the term loosely because sometimes the extent of their entertaining was a handstand race across the court.
The game was far better entertainment. Having been raised by a mother who went to Catholic school in Washington, D.C., my sisters and I had been expected to understand basketball, much like the way my football-loving father expected us to knowledgeably follow that sport. For that matter, we had to play basketball in junior high and high school, so I also had that to fall back on.
It doesn't hurt that basketball is so fast-moving (no time to be bored) or that VCU has had such good teams the past few years (city pride). And while I wore a black sweater and a black, gold and orange skirt to show my allegiance, I was unprepared for the mass of black and gold that greeted me at the Siegel Center.
Of course I knew none of the ritual movements, songs or chants that everyone else seemed to know. Some questions (I had havoc as it pertains to the team explained to me) were directed at the guys I was with while other times I just watched what the fans did. Luckily, clapping and cheering when VCU stole the ball or scored was instinctual.
During halftime, we milled around the practice gym where beer, wine and drinks were sold - sort of a giant beer garden - and people earnestly dissected the first half. I went to the ladies' room, where I found this delightful PSA on the stall door:
Even the horniest Rams are wary of condom slackers.
I mean, do we really need to wear a condom?
Absolutely!
I think that message is petty clear.
Everyone sitting around us was an expert on what VCU was doing wrong - not enough interior defense, couldn't hit the ocean if they tried, running out of steam while LaSalle was not - except me. I just watched hopefully for a win.
But of all the unlikely ways for someone's first VCU basketball game to end, tonight's went into overtime. Twice. Still it wasn't enough because they lost.
Our quartet decided to drown our sorrows at Ipanema again, although this time I went with a pot of mint tea while the guys kept to suds.
As we drank and chatted, people began arriving in droves, alerting us to the fact that something was going on. Hello, karaoke.
A guy came in, bowed and doffed his hat at me, a guy I used to work with at Media General who had a posse of out-of-town account reps with him. Talking to him, as always, was a delight, from his insistence that he always checks Style Weekly for my byline to discovering we had some friends in common.
I'd barely finished chatting with him about what he planned to sing for karaoke when I spied another former co-worker who pulled me aside to say hello. It was turning out to be old home week with some of my favorite guys from my last real job.
Once the staff had cleared away the front booths, karaoke was ready to roll and people began signing up to sing. And not what I'd expected given the relative youth of the crowd, but oldies.
Songs such as "With a Little Help from My Friends," Cher's "Do You Believe" and "Addicted to Love," but also songs from their toddlerhood: "Santeria," "Baby Got Back," and "Slim Shady." And as they sang, the crowd kept growing, with more people signing up to sing.
One of the guys I'd come with decided to take advantage of his wife not being there and began ordering shots, stuff like Jameson's and B52s, stuff I wouldn't drink if you paid me. Besides, I was already on to my second pot of tea when I wasn't standing up to get a better view of the brave soul singing.
Walking to the back to get a better view of the crowd, the manager smiled at me and gestured toward the frenetic dancing and enthusiastic singing going on up front. All around us, empty beer cans and glasses littered the tables like so many dead soldiers.
"Just a quiet, little vegetarian restaurant where you can relax and have a nice pot of tea," he joked around midnight.
I'm no expert, but it looked like a lot like havoc to me. Thankfully, the only losses I saw were dignity.
I somehow got invited to a VCU Rams basketball game with three guys, two of them season ticket holders and rabid fans and one attending his first VCU game. Not to brag, but even I'd been to a VCU basketball game before (okay, once) and I'm the least athletically-inclined woman in Richmond.
We met at Ipanema to pre-game, which for them meant beer and pierogis, and for me meant white Rioja and our charming server's favorite salad of mesclun, orange, pomegranate seeds and nuts over grilled endive. Not everyone's idea of a pre-basketball meal, but pretty delicious to this non-fan..
Apparently it had been long enough ago since I'd been to a game that I didn't recall the VCU Peppas or the Goldrush dancers who were the entertainment every second that the team wasn't playing. And I use the term loosely because sometimes the extent of their entertaining was a handstand race across the court.
The game was far better entertainment. Having been raised by a mother who went to Catholic school in Washington, D.C., my sisters and I had been expected to understand basketball, much like the way my football-loving father expected us to knowledgeably follow that sport. For that matter, we had to play basketball in junior high and high school, so I also had that to fall back on.
It doesn't hurt that basketball is so fast-moving (no time to be bored) or that VCU has had such good teams the past few years (city pride). And while I wore a black sweater and a black, gold and orange skirt to show my allegiance, I was unprepared for the mass of black and gold that greeted me at the Siegel Center.
Of course I knew none of the ritual movements, songs or chants that everyone else seemed to know. Some questions (I had havoc as it pertains to the team explained to me) were directed at the guys I was with while other times I just watched what the fans did. Luckily, clapping and cheering when VCU stole the ball or scored was instinctual.
During halftime, we milled around the practice gym where beer, wine and drinks were sold - sort of a giant beer garden - and people earnestly dissected the first half. I went to the ladies' room, where I found this delightful PSA on the stall door:
Even the horniest Rams are wary of condom slackers.
I mean, do we really need to wear a condom?
Absolutely!
I think that message is petty clear.
Everyone sitting around us was an expert on what VCU was doing wrong - not enough interior defense, couldn't hit the ocean if they tried, running out of steam while LaSalle was not - except me. I just watched hopefully for a win.
But of all the unlikely ways for someone's first VCU basketball game to end, tonight's went into overtime. Twice. Still it wasn't enough because they lost.
Our quartet decided to drown our sorrows at Ipanema again, although this time I went with a pot of mint tea while the guys kept to suds.
As we drank and chatted, people began arriving in droves, alerting us to the fact that something was going on. Hello, karaoke.
A guy came in, bowed and doffed his hat at me, a guy I used to work with at Media General who had a posse of out-of-town account reps with him. Talking to him, as always, was a delight, from his insistence that he always checks Style Weekly for my byline to discovering we had some friends in common.
I'd barely finished chatting with him about what he planned to sing for karaoke when I spied another former co-worker who pulled me aside to say hello. It was turning out to be old home week with some of my favorite guys from my last real job.
Once the staff had cleared away the front booths, karaoke was ready to roll and people began signing up to sing. And not what I'd expected given the relative youth of the crowd, but oldies.
Songs such as "With a Little Help from My Friends," Cher's "Do You Believe" and "Addicted to Love," but also songs from their toddlerhood: "Santeria," "Baby Got Back," and "Slim Shady." And as they sang, the crowd kept growing, with more people signing up to sing.
One of the guys I'd come with decided to take advantage of his wife not being there and began ordering shots, stuff like Jameson's and B52s, stuff I wouldn't drink if you paid me. Besides, I was already on to my second pot of tea when I wasn't standing up to get a better view of the brave soul singing.
Walking to the back to get a better view of the crowd, the manager smiled at me and gestured toward the frenetic dancing and enthusiastic singing going on up front. All around us, empty beer cans and glasses littered the tables like so many dead soldiers.
"Just a quiet, little vegetarian restaurant where you can relax and have a nice pot of tea," he joked around midnight.
I'm no expert, but it looked like a lot like havoc to me. Thankfully, the only losses I saw were dignity.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Social Studies
I feel hopeful about the world when a heavy topic gets a huge crowd.
Tonight was VCU Libraries 13th annual Black History Month lecture and despite the positively frigid weather, I walked over to the Singleton Center from Broad Street to hear it. Greeting attendees was the only woman I know who can use her voice to imitate a musical saw, a rare skill set not in evidence tonight.
When she's not dazzling the world with her musicality, she's working at the VCU library, which tonight meant working the lecture crowd. Since we already have plans to meet up next week, we took a moment to discuss where that might happen before I joined the throngs headed into the auditorium.
Politically incorrect or not, let me just say how satisfying it is to attend an event as well-integrated as this one was. Besides the two times I saw Prince, I can't recall too many events in Richmond that could pull such a racially balanced audience.
Taking a seat near a black man who looked to be near my age, I didn't hesitate to ask him what had brought him out to the lecture tonight. "I just wanted to learn more about civil rights," he said, echoing part of my reasoning.
I overheard a female student behind me tell her companion that she'd come because when she'd tried out for VCU's music program, they had given her a list of areas in which she needed improvement, none of which she'd been taught at her high school. She blamed it on the poor resources offered at her mainly black school.
Everyone seemed to have a definitive reason for being there.
ACLU Racial Justice Program director Dennis Parker was speaking on "Still Separate, Still Unequal," sadly as relevant today as ever, even all these years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
Parker saw the importance of the Brown case as having codified two things: that no child could reach his or her potential without an education and that separate but equal had been a lie perpetrated by the highest court in the land.
In talking about how separate but unequal schools continue to this day, Parker brought up an interesting point made to him by a principal in a wealthy Connecticut suburb. Whites who go to a predominantly white, well-resourced school also face a disadvantage. They don't get the opportunity to learn from others with different views and life experience, a handicap going forward in life whether they realize it or not.
He talked a lot about the school to prison pipeline and how 68% of the men in federal prison don't have a high school diploma, throwing out percentages about how even one school suspension greatly increases the likelihood of a kid ending up in jail.
The problem, as he shared with statistics and studies, is that black students are disproportionately suspended and expelled from school for infractions that get ignored when white students are the offenders. It has to do, he said, with bias.
And, of course, we're all biased to one degree or another. He admitted to a bias against blacks despite being one. His suggestion was to take the Harvard Implicit Assessment test, a way of measuring unconscious biases in all kinds of areas - race, gender, weight - as a way to trying to be more mindful when dealing with other people.
"I used to say that we don't talk about race," he said, "but now I say we do talk about it but badly. You can't fix what you don't talk about." Isn't that the truth, whether you're discussing race relations, office dynamics or a relationship with someone.
He pointed out that the racial discussion in 2015 isn't like it was in 1954 with the Brown decision but that we've got just as many issues now to deal with.
Once he opened up the floor to questions, people weren't shy about asking his thoughts on everything from kindergartners being suspended to a woman who described herself as a "womanist" (yet again, that reluctance to associate with the feminist term) why black girls weren't more of a focus in his discussion.
One man wanted to know, "Are there countries less racist than the U.S. and could you name them?" Parker looked taken aback, saying, "Hmm, there must be," and tried to make a case for Finland.
I almost put in my two cents' worth when a woman led off her question by saying that back in the '70s during enforced busing, it was only black kids who'd been bussed, not white. As someone who was taken from my predominantly white, college-prep high school in the middle of my junior year and bussed to a black school in a crime-ridden, poor neighborhood, I knew she was mistaken in her thesis, but I held my tongue.
As Parker had pointed out, one of the benefits of sending kids to radically different schools is to expose them to different kinds of people and experiences, widening their circle of understanding and better preparing them for the very diverse world we live in. Even then, I'd understood that I was part of something bigger than me.
Because the audience had so much to say,questions kept coming until finally it was announced there'd be just one more.
A young, black man stood up and told us that he is a teacher and a big part of his job is role modeling for young, black children and how challenging that can be given where they come from. He'd been inspired tonight but sought direction. "How do facilitate these changes we've been talking about at my school when I go back to my class tomorrow morning? How can we fix this?"
The room broke into applause. The two women in front of me, also teachers, nodded and stood up in support as Parker answered. It was a moving end to the discussion.
Walking out into the lobby, I ran into a friend who teaches and we stopped to share our take on the lecture. Despite having taught in a war zone in the middle east, he admitted to feeling challenged by teaching here. Tonight's lecture had left him feeling "inspired and at the same time paralyzed about doing the wrong thing."
We were then joined by another friend who teaches art in the school system and she jumped right in. "How can we implement these changes and start making a real difference?" she asked. All three of us admitted that we were going home to take the Harvard test and find out what our unconscious biases were in hopes of addressing them.
Like me, they'd been impressed with the size and diversity of the crowd who'd come out on a bitterly cold night for lecture about the state of inequality in our school system.
"How'd you guys find out about tonight?" she asked and before I could respond, she waved her hand at me. "Karen, you know about everything." Our friend had heard from a counselor at school. She'd seen a poster. The man next to me wanted to learn more. The teacher wanted inspiration to take back to his kids.
A roomful of people who know that we can't fix it if we don't talk about it. All of us.
Tonight was VCU Libraries 13th annual Black History Month lecture and despite the positively frigid weather, I walked over to the Singleton Center from Broad Street to hear it. Greeting attendees was the only woman I know who can use her voice to imitate a musical saw, a rare skill set not in evidence tonight.
When she's not dazzling the world with her musicality, she's working at the VCU library, which tonight meant working the lecture crowd. Since we already have plans to meet up next week, we took a moment to discuss where that might happen before I joined the throngs headed into the auditorium.
Politically incorrect or not, let me just say how satisfying it is to attend an event as well-integrated as this one was. Besides the two times I saw Prince, I can't recall too many events in Richmond that could pull such a racially balanced audience.
Taking a seat near a black man who looked to be near my age, I didn't hesitate to ask him what had brought him out to the lecture tonight. "I just wanted to learn more about civil rights," he said, echoing part of my reasoning.
I overheard a female student behind me tell her companion that she'd come because when she'd tried out for VCU's music program, they had given her a list of areas in which she needed improvement, none of which she'd been taught at her high school. She blamed it on the poor resources offered at her mainly black school.
Everyone seemed to have a definitive reason for being there.
ACLU Racial Justice Program director Dennis Parker was speaking on "Still Separate, Still Unequal," sadly as relevant today as ever, even all these years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
Parker saw the importance of the Brown case as having codified two things: that no child could reach his or her potential without an education and that separate but equal had been a lie perpetrated by the highest court in the land.
In talking about how separate but unequal schools continue to this day, Parker brought up an interesting point made to him by a principal in a wealthy Connecticut suburb. Whites who go to a predominantly white, well-resourced school also face a disadvantage. They don't get the opportunity to learn from others with different views and life experience, a handicap going forward in life whether they realize it or not.
He talked a lot about the school to prison pipeline and how 68% of the men in federal prison don't have a high school diploma, throwing out percentages about how even one school suspension greatly increases the likelihood of a kid ending up in jail.
The problem, as he shared with statistics and studies, is that black students are disproportionately suspended and expelled from school for infractions that get ignored when white students are the offenders. It has to do, he said, with bias.
And, of course, we're all biased to one degree or another. He admitted to a bias against blacks despite being one. His suggestion was to take the Harvard Implicit Assessment test, a way of measuring unconscious biases in all kinds of areas - race, gender, weight - as a way to trying to be more mindful when dealing with other people.
"I used to say that we don't talk about race," he said, "but now I say we do talk about it but badly. You can't fix what you don't talk about." Isn't that the truth, whether you're discussing race relations, office dynamics or a relationship with someone.
He pointed out that the racial discussion in 2015 isn't like it was in 1954 with the Brown decision but that we've got just as many issues now to deal with.
Once he opened up the floor to questions, people weren't shy about asking his thoughts on everything from kindergartners being suspended to a woman who described herself as a "womanist" (yet again, that reluctance to associate with the feminist term) why black girls weren't more of a focus in his discussion.
One man wanted to know, "Are there countries less racist than the U.S. and could you name them?" Parker looked taken aback, saying, "Hmm, there must be," and tried to make a case for Finland.
I almost put in my two cents' worth when a woman led off her question by saying that back in the '70s during enforced busing, it was only black kids who'd been bussed, not white. As someone who was taken from my predominantly white, college-prep high school in the middle of my junior year and bussed to a black school in a crime-ridden, poor neighborhood, I knew she was mistaken in her thesis, but I held my tongue.
As Parker had pointed out, one of the benefits of sending kids to radically different schools is to expose them to different kinds of people and experiences, widening their circle of understanding and better preparing them for the very diverse world we live in. Even then, I'd understood that I was part of something bigger than me.
Because the audience had so much to say,questions kept coming until finally it was announced there'd be just one more.
A young, black man stood up and told us that he is a teacher and a big part of his job is role modeling for young, black children and how challenging that can be given where they come from. He'd been inspired tonight but sought direction. "How do facilitate these changes we've been talking about at my school when I go back to my class tomorrow morning? How can we fix this?"
The room broke into applause. The two women in front of me, also teachers, nodded and stood up in support as Parker answered. It was a moving end to the discussion.
Walking out into the lobby, I ran into a friend who teaches and we stopped to share our take on the lecture. Despite having taught in a war zone in the middle east, he admitted to feeling challenged by teaching here. Tonight's lecture had left him feeling "inspired and at the same time paralyzed about doing the wrong thing."
We were then joined by another friend who teaches art in the school system and she jumped right in. "How can we implement these changes and start making a real difference?" she asked. All three of us admitted that we were going home to take the Harvard test and find out what our unconscious biases were in hopes of addressing them.
Like me, they'd been impressed with the size and diversity of the crowd who'd come out on a bitterly cold night for lecture about the state of inequality in our school system.
"How'd you guys find out about tonight?" she asked and before I could respond, she waved her hand at me. "Karen, you know about everything." Our friend had heard from a counselor at school. She'd seen a poster. The man next to me wanted to learn more. The teacher wanted inspiration to take back to his kids.
A roomful of people who know that we can't fix it if we don't talk about it. All of us.
Curry and Crumpets
You could say the food was as unexpected as the history lesson.
Tonight the beer-centric Cask was allowing Chef Mel from Curry Craft to turn their former garage space for the beer-inclined into Curry Cask, a one-night Indian experience. Call it what you want, it was a pop-up.
With a fellow curry fan in tow, we arrived after the bar had been filled but while tables still sat empty waiting for eager mouths. Oh, sure, the big table was already occupied with a bunch of guys deep in their beer discussion (peach ale versus Budweiser, no doubt), but they were mere window-dressing for the place.
Ignoring the blackboards touting their vast beer selection, we opted for a bottle of Hugl Gruner Veltliner to accompany our meal. The menu was simple with an appetizer and two entrees, and with the smell of cardamom scenting the air, we ordered them all.
Our server, a veteran I recognized from any number of past serving positions, warned us that the kitchen (including one guy whose t-shirt read, "I am your enemy") was rockin' it and food was likely to come out all at once, bam! style.
We might have gotten through one glass each before the plates began showing up, first a Bombay masala porker starring Sausagecraft's habanero pork sausage with tamarind-chili-cumin glaze and Bombay slaw, a stellar Indian take on a very Virginia standard (pig and slaw) that got our mouths ready for more.
Our next two plates followed almost immediately, their poppadom sitting aloft like windblown sails on a boat. One was garam masala-scented market vegetable curry over basmati rice and the other a traditional chicken tikka masala.
Their aromas were tantalizing and because Mel had made them, perfectly seasoned with nice, big chunks of vegetables in one and an abundance of chicken in the other. We had no problem trading plates and taking them down to licked-clean plates.
While we did, enjoying them immensely with the Gruner Veltliner, a nine-top that included four young children with sodas took up residence next to us. It made me wonder, what happened to to the good old days when babysitters watched kids while Mom and Dad went to adult places like beer joints without them? Would it be too much to start a movement for adults-only pop-ups?
Instead, we took the path of least resistance, getting the check and heading out to a movie at the Westhampton since that won't be possible much longer now that the building has been sold.
Besides its classic movie palace exterior, it's got that upstairs theater unlike any normal theater space. I never sit anywhere but the front row (for the leg room) which is about as close to a movie screen as anyone needs to be. The ledge also conveniently holds a box of Milk Duds.
Tonight's attraction was "The Imitation Game" about the British mathematician who more or less came up with the prototype for modern-day computers. Ordinarily, I'd have zero interest in a movie about computers, but the fact that it was based on a true story sold me.
And you can make fun of me all you want, but I had no idea who Benedict Cumberbatch was. Now that I've looked him up, I know that I must have seen him in "Atonement" and "12 Years a Slave," but apparently he didn't register at all.
If only I'd known he'd been dubbed "the thinking woman's crumpet," I might have paid attention to him sooner. Hey, I like to consider myself a thinking woman and I certainly like crumpets, if you know what I mean.
So instead, I focused on the story, more than a little fascinated that this group of mathematically-inclined nerds was able to break the Nazi's Enigma code during WW II, thereby ending the war two years earlier and saving millions of lives. To a history nerd, those are facts worth knowing.
What I found appalling about another part of the history lesson was not just his prosecution for being gay (forcing him into chemical castration to avoid prison) but that indecency with a man was still a crime as late as 1967 in Britain. Thankfully the epilogue tells us that he got a royal pardon for his "crimes" in 2013.
The man who gave us the devices we can't live without had to be "pardoned" for who he was attracted to? The man responsible for shortening the war and saving all those lives? That's a difficult history lesson to swallow.
But, curry and Milk Duds, those were pure pleasure going down.
Tonight the beer-centric Cask was allowing Chef Mel from Curry Craft to turn their former garage space for the beer-inclined into Curry Cask, a one-night Indian experience. Call it what you want, it was a pop-up.
With a fellow curry fan in tow, we arrived after the bar had been filled but while tables still sat empty waiting for eager mouths. Oh, sure, the big table was already occupied with a bunch of guys deep in their beer discussion (peach ale versus Budweiser, no doubt), but they were mere window-dressing for the place.
Ignoring the blackboards touting their vast beer selection, we opted for a bottle of Hugl Gruner Veltliner to accompany our meal. The menu was simple with an appetizer and two entrees, and with the smell of cardamom scenting the air, we ordered them all.
Our server, a veteran I recognized from any number of past serving positions, warned us that the kitchen (including one guy whose t-shirt read, "I am your enemy") was rockin' it and food was likely to come out all at once, bam! style.
We might have gotten through one glass each before the plates began showing up, first a Bombay masala porker starring Sausagecraft's habanero pork sausage with tamarind-chili-cumin glaze and Bombay slaw, a stellar Indian take on a very Virginia standard (pig and slaw) that got our mouths ready for more.
Our next two plates followed almost immediately, their poppadom sitting aloft like windblown sails on a boat. One was garam masala-scented market vegetable curry over basmati rice and the other a traditional chicken tikka masala.
Their aromas were tantalizing and because Mel had made them, perfectly seasoned with nice, big chunks of vegetables in one and an abundance of chicken in the other. We had no problem trading plates and taking them down to licked-clean plates.
While we did, enjoying them immensely with the Gruner Veltliner, a nine-top that included four young children with sodas took up residence next to us. It made me wonder, what happened to to the good old days when babysitters watched kids while Mom and Dad went to adult places like beer joints without them? Would it be too much to start a movement for adults-only pop-ups?
Instead, we took the path of least resistance, getting the check and heading out to a movie at the Westhampton since that won't be possible much longer now that the building has been sold.
Besides its classic movie palace exterior, it's got that upstairs theater unlike any normal theater space. I never sit anywhere but the front row (for the leg room) which is about as close to a movie screen as anyone needs to be. The ledge also conveniently holds a box of Milk Duds.
Tonight's attraction was "The Imitation Game" about the British mathematician who more or less came up with the prototype for modern-day computers. Ordinarily, I'd have zero interest in a movie about computers, but the fact that it was based on a true story sold me.
And you can make fun of me all you want, but I had no idea who Benedict Cumberbatch was. Now that I've looked him up, I know that I must have seen him in "Atonement" and "12 Years a Slave," but apparently he didn't register at all.
If only I'd known he'd been dubbed "the thinking woman's crumpet," I might have paid attention to him sooner. Hey, I like to consider myself a thinking woman and I certainly like crumpets, if you know what I mean.
So instead, I focused on the story, more than a little fascinated that this group of mathematically-inclined nerds was able to break the Nazi's Enigma code during WW II, thereby ending the war two years earlier and saving millions of lives. To a history nerd, those are facts worth knowing.
What I found appalling about another part of the history lesson was not just his prosecution for being gay (forcing him into chemical castration to avoid prison) but that indecency with a man was still a crime as late as 1967 in Britain. Thankfully the epilogue tells us that he got a royal pardon for his "crimes" in 2013.
The man who gave us the devices we can't live without had to be "pardoned" for who he was attracted to? The man responsible for shortening the war and saving all those lives? That's a difficult history lesson to swallow.
But, curry and Milk Duds, those were pure pleasure going down.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Hemming and He-hawing
A good daughter goes to visit her parents for myriad reasons - to help out around the house, to hear how their lives are going, to enjoy meals and conversation with them.
I go to laugh.
Let me set the scene for you: Within minutes of walking in the door, I am up on a step stool removing curtains from the three windows in the breakfast room. The intent is to cut off most of the fabric and make valances out of them. I have come to hem.
The only logical place to cut these large pieces of fabric is the kitchen floor, so I'm down there measuring and marking so I can cut while Mom sits at a chair at the breakfast table watching me. I reach for the scissors to start cutting.
"Do you think you'll ever get married again?" she asks apropos of nothing.
I look up at her, confused. "I don't know, Mom. Why?"
Without missing a beat, she replies, "I'd like to think you'll be taken care of before I shuffle off this mortal coil."
The laughter erupts out of me sometime around "shuffle" and is in full force by the time she gets to "coil." I drop the tape measure I'm laughing so hard. She begins laughing, too.
Dropping the scissors, I lean against the nearest cabinet, telling her that I want to savor this moment when I was sitting on the kitchen floor cutting curtains and she brings up her concerns about me being a spinster. All, I might add, within 15 minutes of my arrival.
Now she's laughing so hard tears are running down her cheeks while I'm bent over double with laughter.
Dad walks in the swinging door from the dining room, peering down at the two of us lost in a laugh attack. "What's afoot here?" he wants to know.
When I sputter out how Mom can't shuffle off her mortal coil because I'm still single, he raises an eyebrow and reminds me, "Your mother is very funny." Then he leaves for the family room and his chair, Post crossword puzzle in hand.
My mother isn't just funny, she's hilarious. An hour and a half is nothing to drive for that kind of shared laughter.
Best Mom ever.
I go to laugh.
Let me set the scene for you: Within minutes of walking in the door, I am up on a step stool removing curtains from the three windows in the breakfast room. The intent is to cut off most of the fabric and make valances out of them. I have come to hem.
The only logical place to cut these large pieces of fabric is the kitchen floor, so I'm down there measuring and marking so I can cut while Mom sits at a chair at the breakfast table watching me. I reach for the scissors to start cutting.
"Do you think you'll ever get married again?" she asks apropos of nothing.
I look up at her, confused. "I don't know, Mom. Why?"
Without missing a beat, she replies, "I'd like to think you'll be taken care of before I shuffle off this mortal coil."
The laughter erupts out of me sometime around "shuffle" and is in full force by the time she gets to "coil." I drop the tape measure I'm laughing so hard. She begins laughing, too.
Dropping the scissors, I lean against the nearest cabinet, telling her that I want to savor this moment when I was sitting on the kitchen floor cutting curtains and she brings up her concerns about me being a spinster. All, I might add, within 15 minutes of my arrival.
Now she's laughing so hard tears are running down her cheeks while I'm bent over double with laughter.
Dad walks in the swinging door from the dining room, peering down at the two of us lost in a laugh attack. "What's afoot here?" he wants to know.
When I sputter out how Mom can't shuffle off her mortal coil because I'm still single, he raises an eyebrow and reminds me, "Your mother is very funny." Then he leaves for the family room and his chair, Post crossword puzzle in hand.
My mother isn't just funny, she's hilarious. An hour and a half is nothing to drive for that kind of shared laughter.
Best Mom ever.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Get Lucky
I sacrificed "Roadhouse" for Democracy.
And that wasn't an easy choice with a tagline like, "The dancing is over. Now it gets dirty." It's so bad, it's good.
Movie Club was showing the 1989 "B" movie classic but I'd already said yes to the Democracy Vineyards Valentine's wine dinner at Camden's. So while I would have loved watching Patrick Swayze play bouncer, I instead spent the evening with a couple of lobbyists who now make wine.
When I arrived, I found a room at capacity, a stool at the bar and an air of enthusiasm for what was to come in the room. Did these people not care that "Roadhouse" was playing a few miles away?
Turns out their minds were focused in other directions.
The evening began with the chef assuring us that the menu was laden with aphrodisiacs "guaranteed to get you laid!" He'd even gone so far as to underline them on the menu - scallops, bacon, pomegranate, cheese, salmon, fig, mushrooms, all kinds of yummy stuff. Our chances looked good for scoring.
One woman piped up saying, "Do we have to tell you when we do?" To ensure carnal success, he also put on the Marvin Gaye Pandora station to get everyone in the mood.
Ah, this was why people took a chance on the wine dinner over "Roadhouse."
The winery owners, he a former lobbyist and she still doing it, wound up sitting at the bar next to me, making for lots of great stories throughout the night as we chowed through five courses.
Scallop ceviche with apple gastrique and housemade bacon over kale was paired with a German-style apple wine called Village View Gold, made from a hybrid apple developed after Hurricane Camille. When the woman next to me left her kale, I finished it for her.
Declaration, a white blend, was a lovely match for a salad of arugula (inexplicably an aphrodisiac), roasted beets, goat cheese and pomegranate dressing with toasted bread crumbs. The winery owner's wife commented about how challenging pairing salad with wine was and how impressed she'd been with this combination.
Between courses, I chatted with the kale hater about the candle holders on the bar, raffia-covered Chianti bottles with candles in them leaving a waxy coating on the bottle. "They're so doggone '60s," she commented. True that, although then colored candles were used for a variegated effect on the bottle. This was more neo-'60s.
Grilled salmon over polenta cake with wilted spinach, dried mission figs (which I could eat all day) and Hollandaise got paired with Forum, a blend of 2/3 Merlot and 1/3 Pinotage.
When I mentioned that pinotage was a favorite grape of mine, the winemaker's wife and I got into a discussion of visiting South Africa. I haven't been since 2004 while she'd gone in 2010 ("Oh, you have to go back") and we compared notes on the people, wines and terrain we'd experienced.
It's so rare that I meet someone who has a frame of reference for that kind of talk.
The next wine was Suffrage, made with the Chambourcin grape and the woman to my right took one sip and smiled widely. "This is my kind of red," she said. "I'm a red meat kind of a gal."
Fortunately for her, our next course was rosemary roasted tenderloin of Angus with red wine Bordelaise, roasted oak mushrooms and fingerling potatoes. The tenderloin lived up to its name with a texture like butter and a robust beef flavor.
By that point, the room was noisy with the exuberant chatter of people after four wines and so much good food. Patrick Swayze was becoming a distant memory.
Overhead, the music was so good - Isley Brothers, Stylistics, Billy paul - that I pulled out my stock question, asking the women on either side of me about their first concert. One was John Denver and the other was the Supremes. Coincidentally, a Supremes' song, "You Can't Hurry Love" was playing at that moment.
The final course thrilled some and disappointed others. Gorgonzola cheesecake with graham cracker crust and 70% cocoa ganache turned the idea of a sweet dessert on its ear. Sweetness came in the form of Parliament, a Petit Verdot dessert wine with 7% residual sugar.
Now, me, I love stinky cheese. I'll lick a barnyard floor any day. Ditto the winemaker's wife. But the woman to my right took one bite of the cheesecake and her face curled up as if she'd eaten a lemon. Even after I suggested she sip the sweet wine, she found no pleasure in the dessert. Her loss.
Instead of the usual show and tell before each course, the winemaker had gone table to table to discus the wines with people, making friends along the way and working the room like a pro, which he was given his lobbyist career.
In fact, his wife told me that when he'd first asked her out 20 years ago, she'd assumed he needed a political favor. Her initial impression was that he was some kind of wheeler dealer. It was only after he pulled out an invitation to the Clinton White House Christmas party and asked her to join him that she saw him differently.
Of course she'd gone (and eventually married him) although she admitted to being too nervous to drink for fear she'd break something in the White House. "The velvet ropes were down and you could sit on the East Room furniture," she marveled.
She'd even seen the inscription on the state dining room fireplace with the John Adams quote that reads, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."
"They're going to have to change that wording and add 'woman' when Hillary gets elected," she laughed. Yes, they are.
By the end of the meal, everyone was stuffed, loopy and looking pretty satisfied with life. One woman gave her server a $100 tip. Lots of people ordered bottles of the wine we'd been drinking.
My tip was more modest and I can't afford to order wine but I'd enjoyed fascinating conversation with two very different women about how differently men are wired. And not everyone has a man, meaning not all of us were getting laid tonight even after all those assists from the menu.
Doesn't seem very democratic, does it?
And that wasn't an easy choice with a tagline like, "The dancing is over. Now it gets dirty." It's so bad, it's good.
Movie Club was showing the 1989 "B" movie classic but I'd already said yes to the Democracy Vineyards Valentine's wine dinner at Camden's. So while I would have loved watching Patrick Swayze play bouncer, I instead spent the evening with a couple of lobbyists who now make wine.
When I arrived, I found a room at capacity, a stool at the bar and an air of enthusiasm for what was to come in the room. Did these people not care that "Roadhouse" was playing a few miles away?
Turns out their minds were focused in other directions.
The evening began with the chef assuring us that the menu was laden with aphrodisiacs "guaranteed to get you laid!" He'd even gone so far as to underline them on the menu - scallops, bacon, pomegranate, cheese, salmon, fig, mushrooms, all kinds of yummy stuff. Our chances looked good for scoring.
One woman piped up saying, "Do we have to tell you when we do?" To ensure carnal success, he also put on the Marvin Gaye Pandora station to get everyone in the mood.
Ah, this was why people took a chance on the wine dinner over "Roadhouse."
The winery owners, he a former lobbyist and she still doing it, wound up sitting at the bar next to me, making for lots of great stories throughout the night as we chowed through five courses.
Scallop ceviche with apple gastrique and housemade bacon over kale was paired with a German-style apple wine called Village View Gold, made from a hybrid apple developed after Hurricane Camille. When the woman next to me left her kale, I finished it for her.
Declaration, a white blend, was a lovely match for a salad of arugula (inexplicably an aphrodisiac), roasted beets, goat cheese and pomegranate dressing with toasted bread crumbs. The winery owner's wife commented about how challenging pairing salad with wine was and how impressed she'd been with this combination.
Between courses, I chatted with the kale hater about the candle holders on the bar, raffia-covered Chianti bottles with candles in them leaving a waxy coating on the bottle. "They're so doggone '60s," she commented. True that, although then colored candles were used for a variegated effect on the bottle. This was more neo-'60s.
Grilled salmon over polenta cake with wilted spinach, dried mission figs (which I could eat all day) and Hollandaise got paired with Forum, a blend of 2/3 Merlot and 1/3 Pinotage.
When I mentioned that pinotage was a favorite grape of mine, the winemaker's wife and I got into a discussion of visiting South Africa. I haven't been since 2004 while she'd gone in 2010 ("Oh, you have to go back") and we compared notes on the people, wines and terrain we'd experienced.
It's so rare that I meet someone who has a frame of reference for that kind of talk.
The next wine was Suffrage, made with the Chambourcin grape and the woman to my right took one sip and smiled widely. "This is my kind of red," she said. "I'm a red meat kind of a gal."
Fortunately for her, our next course was rosemary roasted tenderloin of Angus with red wine Bordelaise, roasted oak mushrooms and fingerling potatoes. The tenderloin lived up to its name with a texture like butter and a robust beef flavor.
By that point, the room was noisy with the exuberant chatter of people after four wines and so much good food. Patrick Swayze was becoming a distant memory.
Overhead, the music was so good - Isley Brothers, Stylistics, Billy paul - that I pulled out my stock question, asking the women on either side of me about their first concert. One was John Denver and the other was the Supremes. Coincidentally, a Supremes' song, "You Can't Hurry Love" was playing at that moment.
The final course thrilled some and disappointed others. Gorgonzola cheesecake with graham cracker crust and 70% cocoa ganache turned the idea of a sweet dessert on its ear. Sweetness came in the form of Parliament, a Petit Verdot dessert wine with 7% residual sugar.
Now, me, I love stinky cheese. I'll lick a barnyard floor any day. Ditto the winemaker's wife. But the woman to my right took one bite of the cheesecake and her face curled up as if she'd eaten a lemon. Even after I suggested she sip the sweet wine, she found no pleasure in the dessert. Her loss.
Instead of the usual show and tell before each course, the winemaker had gone table to table to discus the wines with people, making friends along the way and working the room like a pro, which he was given his lobbyist career.
In fact, his wife told me that when he'd first asked her out 20 years ago, she'd assumed he needed a political favor. Her initial impression was that he was some kind of wheeler dealer. It was only after he pulled out an invitation to the Clinton White House Christmas party and asked her to join him that she saw him differently.
Of course she'd gone (and eventually married him) although she admitted to being too nervous to drink for fear she'd break something in the White House. "The velvet ropes were down and you could sit on the East Room furniture," she marveled.
She'd even seen the inscription on the state dining room fireplace with the John Adams quote that reads, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."
"They're going to have to change that wording and add 'woman' when Hillary gets elected," she laughed. Yes, they are.
By the end of the meal, everyone was stuffed, loopy and looking pretty satisfied with life. One woman gave her server a $100 tip. Lots of people ordered bottles of the wine we'd been drinking.
My tip was more modest and I can't afford to order wine but I'd enjoyed fascinating conversation with two very different women about how differently men are wired. And not everyone has a man, meaning not all of us were getting laid tonight even after all those assists from the menu.
Doesn't seem very democratic, does it?
Ultimate Fun Equation
Everybody's got their own idea of how to spend a 70-degree day in February.
Naturally, mine involved walking, in this case a sunny walk down Broad Street for brunch with hordes of other wanna-be brunchers at Supper. We tried Lunch first but the tiny space was full up, so we went next door to Supper which was also looking full, but the hostess tucked us into a high-top bar table near the kitchen and we were all set.
My stool was next to a window and although the view was less than stellar (a shed a foot from the glass), the music was terrific: bossa nova on a Sunday morning. Perfect brunching music and a nice distraction from the noisy group of people waiting for a table right next to us .
I chose chicken and waffles for breakfast, pouring syrup over it all, and somewhere midway through eating it realized that the music had taken a turn for the '80s. The Smiths and New Order had replaced Latin rhythms. Not better or worse, just very different.
The walk back along Leigh Street took us past the Bowtie theaters and a full parking lot, past the empty Redskins training facility and the bustle of Sugar Shack Donuts, a place I haven't visited since opening day.
Once home, I took care of business - three quick errands accomplished in less than 20 minutes - and set out for more walking, this time toward the river to see what was happening.
As I'd approached the Lee Bridge yesterday, I'd seen a bunch of guys doing what looked like hill surfing down the incredibly steep grassy knoll to Second Street. They'd get a running start, throw down what looked like a cardboard disc and jump on it to sail down a hill that had to be close to a 60-degree angle.
I have no doubt it was a major adrenaline rush but the grassy hill was so steep that sometimes their momentum took them off the disc and running or falling down the slope, which ended at Second Street's occasional traffic.
But when they nailed it, it looked to be a kick to glide down to the bottom. Kind of like snow sledding but standing and on grass.
Being nosy, I'd had to ask what it was. "Radical fun boarding," the bearded guy nearest me said. "It's based on radical fun discs that you throw." What I'd wanted to know was how radical fun discs differed from Frisbees, but I was reluctant to sound so uninformed.
Didn't matter. It was his turn and he grabbed a "board" which I now assumed meant cardboard, threw it down and ran to jump aboard, making it all the way to the bottom upright without falling off. Rad, I guess.
But they weren't there today, so I walked home, got my Washington Post and took it outside to read in the afternoon sun for the first time in months.
I read about the guy who came up with Pandora (and why it took him so long to figure out his business model) because I've always been thrilled to understand my music genome which I had no words to describe until Pandora provided them to me.
Almost as irresistible to this writer was a piece about how Lincoln cut and pasted (literally using scissors and animal bone-based glue) his second inaugural address ("with malice toward none...") until he got it right. And now that version is going on display for four days at the Library of Congress.
An enormous front-page piece on Al Sharpton upped my knowledge of his roots, path and goals of furthering the movement, along with pictures showing him almost unrecognizable after his 176 pound weight loss. Al, we hardly knew ye.
Today's book reviews skewed romantic given the upcoming holiday. "How To Be Husband" sounded funny mainly because the author apparently holds himself up as an awful husband despite 23 years of marriage.
And while the reviewer gushed about "Unrequited: Women and Romantic Obsession," that seems to be related to her just getting over a man who didn't love her back.
Easily the best title went to "The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs and the Search for the Ultimate Equation," which tries to explain attraction and relationships using something as dull as algorithms and ratios. If I didn't like them in math class, why would I want to use them to help me with my love life?
But when the air is balmy and the sun is shining directly on my face despite the calendar reading winter, I am happy to read absolutely any and everything in front of me just to extend my afternoon outside. No board required.
Let's just say radical fun is in the eye of the beholder.
Naturally, mine involved walking, in this case a sunny walk down Broad Street for brunch with hordes of other wanna-be brunchers at Supper. We tried Lunch first but the tiny space was full up, so we went next door to Supper which was also looking full, but the hostess tucked us into a high-top bar table near the kitchen and we were all set.
My stool was next to a window and although the view was less than stellar (a shed a foot from the glass), the music was terrific: bossa nova on a Sunday morning. Perfect brunching music and a nice distraction from the noisy group of people waiting for a table right next to us .
I chose chicken and waffles for breakfast, pouring syrup over it all, and somewhere midway through eating it realized that the music had taken a turn for the '80s. The Smiths and New Order had replaced Latin rhythms. Not better or worse, just very different.
The walk back along Leigh Street took us past the Bowtie theaters and a full parking lot, past the empty Redskins training facility and the bustle of Sugar Shack Donuts, a place I haven't visited since opening day.
Once home, I took care of business - three quick errands accomplished in less than 20 minutes - and set out for more walking, this time toward the river to see what was happening.
As I'd approached the Lee Bridge yesterday, I'd seen a bunch of guys doing what looked like hill surfing down the incredibly steep grassy knoll to Second Street. They'd get a running start, throw down what looked like a cardboard disc and jump on it to sail down a hill that had to be close to a 60-degree angle.
I have no doubt it was a major adrenaline rush but the grassy hill was so steep that sometimes their momentum took them off the disc and running or falling down the slope, which ended at Second Street's occasional traffic.
But when they nailed it, it looked to be a kick to glide down to the bottom. Kind of like snow sledding but standing and on grass.
Being nosy, I'd had to ask what it was. "Radical fun boarding," the bearded guy nearest me said. "It's based on radical fun discs that you throw." What I'd wanted to know was how radical fun discs differed from Frisbees, but I was reluctant to sound so uninformed.
Didn't matter. It was his turn and he grabbed a "board" which I now assumed meant cardboard, threw it down and ran to jump aboard, making it all the way to the bottom upright without falling off. Rad, I guess.
But they weren't there today, so I walked home, got my Washington Post and took it outside to read in the afternoon sun for the first time in months.
I read about the guy who came up with Pandora (and why it took him so long to figure out his business model) because I've always been thrilled to understand my music genome which I had no words to describe until Pandora provided them to me.
Almost as irresistible to this writer was a piece about how Lincoln cut and pasted (literally using scissors and animal bone-based glue) his second inaugural address ("with malice toward none...") until he got it right. And now that version is going on display for four days at the Library of Congress.
An enormous front-page piece on Al Sharpton upped my knowledge of his roots, path and goals of furthering the movement, along with pictures showing him almost unrecognizable after his 176 pound weight loss. Al, we hardly knew ye.
Today's book reviews skewed romantic given the upcoming holiday. "How To Be Husband" sounded funny mainly because the author apparently holds himself up as an awful husband despite 23 years of marriage.
And while the reviewer gushed about "Unrequited: Women and Romantic Obsession," that seems to be related to her just getting over a man who didn't love her back.
Easily the best title went to "The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs and the Search for the Ultimate Equation," which tries to explain attraction and relationships using something as dull as algorithms and ratios. If I didn't like them in math class, why would I want to use them to help me with my love life?
But when the air is balmy and the sun is shining directly on my face despite the calendar reading winter, I am happy to read absolutely any and everything in front of me just to extend my afternoon outside. No board required.
Let's just say radical fun is in the eye of the beholder.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Short and To the Point
Some things I came to accidentally, like short stories.
Despite being an avid reader my entire life, the only time I'd read short stories had been when they'd been assigned reading. All that changed about ten years ago when a bartender friend was also teaching English to middle school boys.
One night as I sat eating my dinner and reading a book at the bar, he pulled out "Enjoying Stories," a 1987 compilation he was then using to pull stories for his class. Flipping through it after I ate, I found myself drawn to story after story, author after author.
In some cases, I didn't even know the author had written short stories. There were other revelations, too. A D.H. Lawrence story was called "The Rocking Horse Winner." At that time, I'd just discovered a band by that name but had no clue about its origins.
I went home, ordered a used copy of the book online, promptly read all 974 pages' worth and a strong affection for short stories was born. What I discovered was the practically instant gratification of reading something so brief.
From there, I began scouring used book stores (Black Swan was particularly good) for short story collections and bought everything I could find: John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, V.S. Pritchett, Jean Stafford.
All of this is a roundabout way of explaining how I fell into an affection for short films. Several local film groups screen shorts; one has an annual short film festival. The Black Maria film fest which stops by Richmond every year, is all shorts.
Like short stories, they deliver beginning, arc and denouement in a matter of minutes. And if one story line doesn't grab or interest you, there's a good chance the next one might. Or the one after that.
So as I'm looking for a reason to go out tonight after my fellow Gemini cancels on me, I spy the 2015 Oscar-nominated animated shorts being screened at Criterion. An international host of short animation sounds like just the ticket and I join a dozen other cinephiles in one of the smallest theaters for the screening of some very diverse shorts.
"Me and My Moulton" claims to be Norwegian/Canadian but it comes across as pure Norwegian, a tale of an eccentric family with three daughters in a small Norway town in 1965 and the girls' heartfelt desire to be more ordinary.
Among their burdens, their father is the only man in a town of 10,000 with a mustache and their grandmother pays them every week not to quarrel with each other.
Like good Scandinavian design, the lines of the animated story were clean and the colors bright and clear like a Marimekko fabric, which is exactly what the girls bedspreads and dresses resembled. Even the jokes were appropriate, with the girls always falling off their parents "modern" 3-legged chairs on the carpet-less floor.
When "Feast" began, the guy behind me spotted the Disney Animation Studio credit and said, "They always get one in every year." That may be true, but this year's was a sweet story of a puppy found by a single guy and fed all the junk food single guys eat.
Fries, nachos, pizza, after a while the pup just opens his gob and the processed food falls in.
That comes to a screeching halt when the guy starts dating and eating healthier (to the doggie's disgust) but when they break up, guess who brings them back together?
From the UK came "The Bigger Picture," the tale of two sons attending their dying mother (so a sad story) but executed in the most painterly way with a combination of oil painted animation and real objects in Claymation.
It also had the hilarious line by one of the brothers, "I thought about sex every minute of every day until I was 40. Since I turned 40, I think about death every minute." Dour Brits.
"A Single Life" was made in the Netherlands and very much had a Pixar look. In it, a girl gets a package with a record and when she plays it, her own life is affected, aging her late in the record and reverting her to a baby at the start.
As the record gets close to ending, she tries to hobble over in her walker to restart it but ends up an urn of ashes instead. Fast and funny at only two minutes long.
The longest short we saw was "The Dam Keeper," a US entry, at 18 minutes. It was the story of a little pig who was in charge of winding the mechanism for the village's windmill so clouds of ash didn't overtake the village. His father taught him how to do it and then died.
As if that wasn't enough responsibility for one little pig with a backpack, he also got bullied at school by all the other animals. This was another painterly style of animation that masterfully showed brilliant light (with pastel-colored rooves worthy of an Impressionist) and moody darkness as the sad story unfolded.
Since I don't see a lot of animated films, I haven't any idea which one might win the Academy Award.
We also saw four of the Honorable Mentions, my favorite being "Bus Story," a UK/Canada collaboration about a woman whose goal was to drive a school bus so she could wave at people.
She gets to eventually although she backs over a dog (killing it) and almost backs over a kid. I felt like these were plot points US filmmakers might think twice about including with our obsession with political correctness.
As far as I was concerned, the screening was over all too soon, my only consolation the tidy way each story had been tied up in minutes, like a short story.
It's not that I don't have a sustained attention span. I do. It's just that sometimes it's nice to read or see stories in condensed form. I can appreciate that sometimes brevity is the soul of wit.
No, really, despite my penchant for going on and on, I can. Just don't ask me to do it.
Despite being an avid reader my entire life, the only time I'd read short stories had been when they'd been assigned reading. All that changed about ten years ago when a bartender friend was also teaching English to middle school boys.
One night as I sat eating my dinner and reading a book at the bar, he pulled out "Enjoying Stories," a 1987 compilation he was then using to pull stories for his class. Flipping through it after I ate, I found myself drawn to story after story, author after author.
In some cases, I didn't even know the author had written short stories. There were other revelations, too. A D.H. Lawrence story was called "The Rocking Horse Winner." At that time, I'd just discovered a band by that name but had no clue about its origins.
I went home, ordered a used copy of the book online, promptly read all 974 pages' worth and a strong affection for short stories was born. What I discovered was the practically instant gratification of reading something so brief.
From there, I began scouring used book stores (Black Swan was particularly good) for short story collections and bought everything I could find: John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, V.S. Pritchett, Jean Stafford.
All of this is a roundabout way of explaining how I fell into an affection for short films. Several local film groups screen shorts; one has an annual short film festival. The Black Maria film fest which stops by Richmond every year, is all shorts.
Like short stories, they deliver beginning, arc and denouement in a matter of minutes. And if one story line doesn't grab or interest you, there's a good chance the next one might. Or the one after that.
So as I'm looking for a reason to go out tonight after my fellow Gemini cancels on me, I spy the 2015 Oscar-nominated animated shorts being screened at Criterion. An international host of short animation sounds like just the ticket and I join a dozen other cinephiles in one of the smallest theaters for the screening of some very diverse shorts.
"Me and My Moulton" claims to be Norwegian/Canadian but it comes across as pure Norwegian, a tale of an eccentric family with three daughters in a small Norway town in 1965 and the girls' heartfelt desire to be more ordinary.
Among their burdens, their father is the only man in a town of 10,000 with a mustache and their grandmother pays them every week not to quarrel with each other.
Like good Scandinavian design, the lines of the animated story were clean and the colors bright and clear like a Marimekko fabric, which is exactly what the girls bedspreads and dresses resembled. Even the jokes were appropriate, with the girls always falling off their parents "modern" 3-legged chairs on the carpet-less floor.
When "Feast" began, the guy behind me spotted the Disney Animation Studio credit and said, "They always get one in every year." That may be true, but this year's was a sweet story of a puppy found by a single guy and fed all the junk food single guys eat.
Fries, nachos, pizza, after a while the pup just opens his gob and the processed food falls in.
That comes to a screeching halt when the guy starts dating and eating healthier (to the doggie's disgust) but when they break up, guess who brings them back together?
From the UK came "The Bigger Picture," the tale of two sons attending their dying mother (so a sad story) but executed in the most painterly way with a combination of oil painted animation and real objects in Claymation.
It also had the hilarious line by one of the brothers, "I thought about sex every minute of every day until I was 40. Since I turned 40, I think about death every minute." Dour Brits.
"A Single Life" was made in the Netherlands and very much had a Pixar look. In it, a girl gets a package with a record and when she plays it, her own life is affected, aging her late in the record and reverting her to a baby at the start.
As the record gets close to ending, she tries to hobble over in her walker to restart it but ends up an urn of ashes instead. Fast and funny at only two minutes long.
The longest short we saw was "The Dam Keeper," a US entry, at 18 minutes. It was the story of a little pig who was in charge of winding the mechanism for the village's windmill so clouds of ash didn't overtake the village. His father taught him how to do it and then died.
As if that wasn't enough responsibility for one little pig with a backpack, he also got bullied at school by all the other animals. This was another painterly style of animation that masterfully showed brilliant light (with pastel-colored rooves worthy of an Impressionist) and moody darkness as the sad story unfolded.
Since I don't see a lot of animated films, I haven't any idea which one might win the Academy Award.
We also saw four of the Honorable Mentions, my favorite being "Bus Story," a UK/Canada collaboration about a woman whose goal was to drive a school bus so she could wave at people.
She gets to eventually although she backs over a dog (killing it) and almost backs over a kid. I felt like these were plot points US filmmakers might think twice about including with our obsession with political correctness.
As far as I was concerned, the screening was over all too soon, my only consolation the tidy way each story had been tied up in minutes, like a short story.
It's not that I don't have a sustained attention span. I do. It's just that sometimes it's nice to read or see stories in condensed form. I can appreciate that sometimes brevity is the soul of wit.
No, really, despite my penchant for going on and on, I can. Just don't ask me to do it.
A Neurotic Affair to Remember
With age comes new perspective.
While that sounds really deep, it's based on seeing "Sleepless in Seattle" today at the historic Henrico Theater. When I saw it was playing, I thought sure, why not see a movie I hadn't seen since 1993?
I've been to the restored Art Deco theater, which has its good points ($1 admission) and bad (no concession stand), before to see vintage movies. Today I took a different route, though, tooling through the East End rather than taking the highway since it's such a gloriously warm afternoon.
When I first saw "SIS," I'd never seen "An Affair to Remember," the classic Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr film from which it takes its inspiration. So while I had enough context clues to understand the relevance of the older movie, it was certainly more meaningful now that I've finally seen the classic.
But, whoa, 1993! How had I forgotten what another world that was? It doesn't seem that long ago.
Land lines with extensions in every room (a red wall unit in Meg Ryan's kitchen). The most primitive of computers. Kids with record players. White wine spritzers. Non-passengers at the boarding gate. A 65-cent cup of tea. People with radios on the kitchen counter. References to "Paul is dead." Writing letters to people. Women wearing full slips.
For that matter, I'd also lost sight of how very young Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were (37 and 32) and what the social mores of the time were.
Tom's character is worried about dating because he hasn't dated since the Carter administration (would today's audiences even know when that was?). He's surprised to learn women ask men out and split the tab (when he insists he'll pay for dinner on a date, his friend says he'll be the most popular man in Seattle). His friend tells him women want men with great pecs and cute butts. He's confused about why women toss their hair (amen). And it seems to be common knowledge that no one in the '90s is getting laid.
I was there in the '90s but I really don't recall any of this being a big deal. And some of us were getting laid, thank you very much.
Given that that was the era of grunge, I was surprised at how gorgeous the soundtrack was with an array of songs from the Great American songbook (As Time Goes By, Stardust, Make Someone Happy) sung by the new and old (Jimmie Durante, Nat King Cole, Carly Simon, Joe Cocker).
What I especially liked about the film was all the discussion of relationships. "What we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match." Were we really so jaded already?
Or this gem from her best friend, played by Rosie O'Donnell, looking far skinnier than I ever remembered her: "Verbal ability is a highly overrated thing in a guy and it's our pathetic need for it that gets us into so much trouble." Don't remind me.
For me, the best and worst part of this romantic comedy classic was how unconnected a world I got to experience back then.
Was it only 22 years ago that some wooing was done via the postal service? I know I have letters to prove it but I guess I'd forgotten. How is it possible only two decades later that no one even meets for a drink without Googling their date when we used to just take a chance on instinct and attraction?
Right now, I want nothing so much as to put on a full slip and read a letter from a suitor while the kitchen radio plays "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" by Louis Armstrong. And if my land line rings (because it's the only phone I have), I will walk into the bedroom to answer it.
At no point will I toss my hair, although I may silently rue my attraction to verbal ability. Some things are timeless.
While that sounds really deep, it's based on seeing "Sleepless in Seattle" today at the historic Henrico Theater. When I saw it was playing, I thought sure, why not see a movie I hadn't seen since 1993?
I've been to the restored Art Deco theater, which has its good points ($1 admission) and bad (no concession stand), before to see vintage movies. Today I took a different route, though, tooling through the East End rather than taking the highway since it's such a gloriously warm afternoon.
When I first saw "SIS," I'd never seen "An Affair to Remember," the classic Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr film from which it takes its inspiration. So while I had enough context clues to understand the relevance of the older movie, it was certainly more meaningful now that I've finally seen the classic.
But, whoa, 1993! How had I forgotten what another world that was? It doesn't seem that long ago.
Land lines with extensions in every room (a red wall unit in Meg Ryan's kitchen). The most primitive of computers. Kids with record players. White wine spritzers. Non-passengers at the boarding gate. A 65-cent cup of tea. People with radios on the kitchen counter. References to "Paul is dead." Writing letters to people. Women wearing full slips.
For that matter, I'd also lost sight of how very young Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were (37 and 32) and what the social mores of the time were.
Tom's character is worried about dating because he hasn't dated since the Carter administration (would today's audiences even know when that was?). He's surprised to learn women ask men out and split the tab (when he insists he'll pay for dinner on a date, his friend says he'll be the most popular man in Seattle). His friend tells him women want men with great pecs and cute butts. He's confused about why women toss their hair (amen). And it seems to be common knowledge that no one in the '90s is getting laid.
I was there in the '90s but I really don't recall any of this being a big deal. And some of us were getting laid, thank you very much.
Given that that was the era of grunge, I was surprised at how gorgeous the soundtrack was with an array of songs from the Great American songbook (As Time Goes By, Stardust, Make Someone Happy) sung by the new and old (Jimmie Durante, Nat King Cole, Carly Simon, Joe Cocker).
What I especially liked about the film was all the discussion of relationships. "What we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match." Were we really so jaded already?
Or this gem from her best friend, played by Rosie O'Donnell, looking far skinnier than I ever remembered her: "Verbal ability is a highly overrated thing in a guy and it's our pathetic need for it that gets us into so much trouble." Don't remind me.
For me, the best and worst part of this romantic comedy classic was how unconnected a world I got to experience back then.
Was it only 22 years ago that some wooing was done via the postal service? I know I have letters to prove it but I guess I'd forgotten. How is it possible only two decades later that no one even meets for a drink without Googling their date when we used to just take a chance on instinct and attraction?
Right now, I want nothing so much as to put on a full slip and read a letter from a suitor while the kitchen radio plays "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" by Louis Armstrong. And if my land line rings (because it's the only phone I have), I will walk into the bedroom to answer it.
At no point will I toss my hair, although I may silently rue my attraction to verbal ability. Some things are timeless.
Doing Up a Decade
When you don't want to stand out in a crowd, there's WRIR's party for the rest of us.
The annual fundraiser, this one celebrating ten years on the air, always delivers a dizzying array of music, plenty of familiar faces and cake. That it takes place six blocks from my apartment is, well, icing on it.
Because I'd met a favorite couple for dinner first, it was an hour into the festivities before I arrived, left my coat in the unmanned black hole that is the coat closet and made my way to see the Dave Watkins Big Band.
I was far from the only one. I'd overheard the guy in the ticket line behind me say he'd come specifically for them and en route to the room, I picked up a girlfriend also intent on witnessing this musical event.
We all had good reason. Dave alone is unparalleled in what he does and Dumb Waiter and Navi are natural complementary sonic soul mates.
Spotting two empty chairs in the front of the room, we claimed them as the bands were setting up. I heard my name called and spotted my former Floyd Avenue neighbor, the long-time WRIR supporter.
Setting up the abundance of cords and pedal boards these bands required gave me a chance to hear about my friend's ongoing battle with her tonsils (I lobbied for removal since mine hadn't come out until I was an adult) while admiring her perfect skin.
A photographer friend arrived without his cute wife but with birthday cake in hand, so we quickly claimed ours, too, before it was all gone (this isn't my first WRIR rodeo). My slice was dark chocolate with white icing, my favorite combination.
Tonight's inaugural performance of this super group found namesake Dave Watkins all the way in the back (hardly surprising given his self-effacing demeanor), except for a few times when he stepped forward to point at the other musicians in succession to play. Guitar, sax, guitar, bass, dulcitar, each appointed musician grinning in delight when it was his brief turn.
Their opus was a free-ranging improvisation that also included two drummers for a total of seven musicians weaving together a sonic tapestry that occasionally dipped into pure effects (knob twirling, chains on drums) before finding the thread again. It was amazing.
Since I'd been all the way in the front for their set, I had no clue until I got up to leave how packed the room was behind me.
Making my way out through the party to the big stage, I ran into the ukulele player, more DJs than you could shake a stick at, the beer maker without his beloved and the J-Ward neighbors. Honestly, I'm always more surprised at who I don't see at this party than who I do.
Over in the ballroom, I said hello to the birthday boy and fell into a discussion of electronica, a kind of music we both adore despite the dearth of it in Richmond. Like me, he was totally stoked that Ki: Theory was the next band to play so we moved to the front for a better view.
"They're huge in Europe, huge in Japan, huge all over the country except Richmond," he said. "Their music has been used in all kinds of movies, TV shows and video games but no one here knows them." He was preaching to the choir. While I have seen them in Richmond, I've also seen them out of town open for other bands, so I already knew how much I liked the sound.
"Our show will be a lot cooler if you turn off these chandeliers," singer Joel said from under his black hoodie (which eventually he removed once sweat was streaming down his face after so much guitar/synth playing, singing and moving across stage) as the drummer began playing. They didn't, a shame since Ki: Theory's strobe light show deserved a darker room.
I know electronica isn't everyone's thing (I'm guessing they weren't dancing in clubs as much as I was in the '80s) so some in the crowd stayed for a while and then left for greener pastures, but there were plenty of people like me who couldn't stand still for the dance-worthy set the two-man band delivered.
The birthday boy and I agreed that they need to play out more around here until people start to appreciate them as much as the rest of the world.
Then it was back out into the party room which was like one big traffic jam of humanity as long lines at the bar and knots of people chatting made it tough going even to cross from one side to the other.
From the filmmaker, I learned that the documentary about D.C.'s hardcore scene, "Salad Days," will screen here next month. A friend shared his theory that eventually we'll have the technology that'll allow a drummer to program his style into his drum kit so others can play like him or her. I heard that a D.C. shoegaze band is coming to town for the filmmakers' forum.
The gallerist spotted me and gestured to his friend. "She's a writer, he's a farmer," he said by way of introduction. Turns out the farmer, a Richmond native, moved to Maryland to grow organic vegetables right about the time I moved to Richmond, meaning no possible overlap in lives or friends. Instead we talked CSAs and Maryland types.
From the jewelry maker, I heard about his soon-to-open studio in Church Hill near Sub Rosa. If only I wore jewelry. The musician whose band I'd gone to see last night came over to give me a hug and say hello. WRIR's volunteer of the year Richard was awarded a plaque for his efforts and we all applauded his hard work.
The urban planner was entranced when I told him about the new exhibit "Reprogramming the City" at the Virginia Center for Architecture, adding it to his plans for tomorrow, right after a visit to Early Bird Biscuit (I raved about that, too). He was so grateful to hear about the show, he high-fived me. Twice.
My final band of the night was Bermuda Triangles because there is no better way to end a musical party than with their tribal drumming, a sound too big to be contained in the room in which they were playing. You'd think all those bodies in the audience would deaden the sound, but no. Their thundering beats bellowed out into the party room drowning out the mindless and even tipsy chatter of party-goers.
Walking home afterwards, there were people on the street post-artwalk and spilling out of restaurants. A group of guys in front of me made fun of every store window they passed ("You call that art? Who'd pay for that?"). Behind me, a couple talked about how they'd seen more bands tonight than they'd seen in months. A guy on a bike rode down the sidewalk, dodging us all.
I was just the innocuous Jackson Ward dweller headed home after supporting the best little radio station in Richmond. The rest of us had a ball at the birthday party.
The annual fundraiser, this one celebrating ten years on the air, always delivers a dizzying array of music, plenty of familiar faces and cake. That it takes place six blocks from my apartment is, well, icing on it.
Because I'd met a favorite couple for dinner first, it was an hour into the festivities before I arrived, left my coat in the unmanned black hole that is the coat closet and made my way to see the Dave Watkins Big Band.
I was far from the only one. I'd overheard the guy in the ticket line behind me say he'd come specifically for them and en route to the room, I picked up a girlfriend also intent on witnessing this musical event.
We all had good reason. Dave alone is unparalleled in what he does and Dumb Waiter and Navi are natural complementary sonic soul mates.
Spotting two empty chairs in the front of the room, we claimed them as the bands were setting up. I heard my name called and spotted my former Floyd Avenue neighbor, the long-time WRIR supporter.
Setting up the abundance of cords and pedal boards these bands required gave me a chance to hear about my friend's ongoing battle with her tonsils (I lobbied for removal since mine hadn't come out until I was an adult) while admiring her perfect skin.
A photographer friend arrived without his cute wife but with birthday cake in hand, so we quickly claimed ours, too, before it was all gone (this isn't my first WRIR rodeo). My slice was dark chocolate with white icing, my favorite combination.
Tonight's inaugural performance of this super group found namesake Dave Watkins all the way in the back (hardly surprising given his self-effacing demeanor), except for a few times when he stepped forward to point at the other musicians in succession to play. Guitar, sax, guitar, bass, dulcitar, each appointed musician grinning in delight when it was his brief turn.
Their opus was a free-ranging improvisation that also included two drummers for a total of seven musicians weaving together a sonic tapestry that occasionally dipped into pure effects (knob twirling, chains on drums) before finding the thread again. It was amazing.
Since I'd been all the way in the front for their set, I had no clue until I got up to leave how packed the room was behind me.
Making my way out through the party to the big stage, I ran into the ukulele player, more DJs than you could shake a stick at, the beer maker without his beloved and the J-Ward neighbors. Honestly, I'm always more surprised at who I don't see at this party than who I do.
Over in the ballroom, I said hello to the birthday boy and fell into a discussion of electronica, a kind of music we both adore despite the dearth of it in Richmond. Like me, he was totally stoked that Ki: Theory was the next band to play so we moved to the front for a better view.
"They're huge in Europe, huge in Japan, huge all over the country except Richmond," he said. "Their music has been used in all kinds of movies, TV shows and video games but no one here knows them." He was preaching to the choir. While I have seen them in Richmond, I've also seen them out of town open for other bands, so I already knew how much I liked the sound.
"Our show will be a lot cooler if you turn off these chandeliers," singer Joel said from under his black hoodie (which eventually he removed once sweat was streaming down his face after so much guitar/synth playing, singing and moving across stage) as the drummer began playing. They didn't, a shame since Ki: Theory's strobe light show deserved a darker room.
I know electronica isn't everyone's thing (I'm guessing they weren't dancing in clubs as much as I was in the '80s) so some in the crowd stayed for a while and then left for greener pastures, but there were plenty of people like me who couldn't stand still for the dance-worthy set the two-man band delivered.
The birthday boy and I agreed that they need to play out more around here until people start to appreciate them as much as the rest of the world.
Then it was back out into the party room which was like one big traffic jam of humanity as long lines at the bar and knots of people chatting made it tough going even to cross from one side to the other.
From the filmmaker, I learned that the documentary about D.C.'s hardcore scene, "Salad Days," will screen here next month. A friend shared his theory that eventually we'll have the technology that'll allow a drummer to program his style into his drum kit so others can play like him or her. I heard that a D.C. shoegaze band is coming to town for the filmmakers' forum.
The gallerist spotted me and gestured to his friend. "She's a writer, he's a farmer," he said by way of introduction. Turns out the farmer, a Richmond native, moved to Maryland to grow organic vegetables right about the time I moved to Richmond, meaning no possible overlap in lives or friends. Instead we talked CSAs and Maryland types.
From the jewelry maker, I heard about his soon-to-open studio in Church Hill near Sub Rosa. If only I wore jewelry. The musician whose band I'd gone to see last night came over to give me a hug and say hello. WRIR's volunteer of the year Richard was awarded a plaque for his efforts and we all applauded his hard work.
The urban planner was entranced when I told him about the new exhibit "Reprogramming the City" at the Virginia Center for Architecture, adding it to his plans for tomorrow, right after a visit to Early Bird Biscuit (I raved about that, too). He was so grateful to hear about the show, he high-fived me. Twice.
My final band of the night was Bermuda Triangles because there is no better way to end a musical party than with their tribal drumming, a sound too big to be contained in the room in which they were playing. You'd think all those bodies in the audience would deaden the sound, but no. Their thundering beats bellowed out into the party room drowning out the mindless and even tipsy chatter of party-goers.
Walking home afterwards, there were people on the street post-artwalk and spilling out of restaurants. A group of guys in front of me made fun of every store window they passed ("You call that art? Who'd pay for that?"). Behind me, a couple talked about how they'd seen more bands tonight than they'd seen in months. A guy on a bike rode down the sidewalk, dodging us all.
I was just the innocuous Jackson Ward dweller headed home after supporting the best little radio station in Richmond. The rest of us had a ball at the birthday party.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Dancing in the Moonlight
Everyone's whining about Mercury in retrograde, but I can't say I've noticed any effects myself.
I've read people say that it's a period when communication goes haywire and weird things happen, but I had no problem meeting a charming polymath at the preview night performance of "The Lion in Winter" at VMFA.
Might as well go ahead and admit it, I'd seen neither the play nor the film, although I did look up Eleanor of Aquitaine beforehand so I'd have a little background.
It was easy finding a single seat in the fourth row near a well-dressed man who was also companion-less. The artistic director soon informed us, "You are our ambassadors so if you like what you see, please tell everyone you know. If you don't like it, let's keep it our little secret."
Then, appropriately before a play about a long-time married couple, she wished a couple - Vaughn and Nick - happy 33rd anniversary. Then it was on to a 12th century Christmas.
Through lies, deception, manipulation and posturing, we watched as Henry II's family played out its dysfunction in every relationship - parent/child, husband/wife, siblings - and interaction. Everyone was so busy scheming it was a miracle anyone had time to wage war, father illegitimate children or run the country and isn't that what British royalty did back then?
Much was made of Eleanor's age - 60- with comments such as, "I've heard she's aging badly," followed by her son's gleeful request, "Let's go look!" She directs them, "Take what memory you have of me and mark it out of date." That's what happens to a woman's looks when her husband, the king, imprisons her for ten years for helping her son plan a rebellion against him.
During intermission, I pulled out my Washington Post to read while the man next to me pulled out his book but before long he spoke to me and reading materials were set aside. Even readers can't resist the spoken word.
Turns out he was the theater critic for the Richmond Times Dispatch years ago and for at least the first six years after I moved to Richmond, meaning surely I'd read his work at one point. Interestingly enough, he'd also written critiques for the RTD of opera, ballet and art. I was amazed to hear that one year alone, he'd seen 200 plays (because of trips to NYC and London, lucky dog).
We really clicked when he told me that his only qualifications for the job had been all of his going out to events and a knack for writing. When I shared that I go out every night, he insisted that was proof that I was qualified to write about culture. Imagine his surprise when he heard what I do.
The 1966 play had a contemporary layer to it with humorous asides ("Of course we all have knives. It's 1183, we're still barbarians!") and a surprise plot twist involving a gay tryst ("Oh, no!" someone moaned from the back of the theater when it was revealed). Its twisted middle-aged romance ("I could listen to you lie for hours") was timeless and sometimes brutally honest ("Jealousy looks silly on us, Henry").
My new critic friend admitted afterwards that he'd found the acting a bit stiff but attributed it to the first night of the run. Perhaps the cast just needs a bit more time to get used to each other, sort of like with the early years of marriage or cohabitation.
Walking out of the museum, it was so bitterly cold and windy that I considered heading home but since my drive would take me right past Emilio's and music, that seemed like a foolish plan.
The temptation was twofold: Goldrush was playing, so I could expect friends, frivolous discussion and their familiar yet solid sound. Plus Adam and the Yew Banks were opening and I'd fallen hard for them at the Ghost of Pop show in December.
I scored on all counts. The handsome bass player not only regaled me with stories of hiding things from his mother-in-law's prying eyes, he also told a stranger that I'd given him and his wife a housewarming gift of velvet handcuffs (it should be noted that the gift also included two bottles of wine). Also covered were the folly of bourbon shots on Bourbon Street, moving doors and ego-less sax players
Standing near the front of the crowd where plenty of familiar faces gathered, the only downside was the frequency with which the door opened to admit new guests and allow smokers to escape to freeze their patooties off while feeding their addiction.
One smoker clad in a long, summery-looking skirt complained about her poor choice in attire on such a frigid night. "I shaved my legs, what the hell was I thinking?" she asked rhetorically while hiking up her skirt to show me a bare leg. "All I've got on under this is a thong." Yikes, honey.
Once again, Adam and the Yew Banks blew my mind with their well-executed set, a tantalizing combination of great voices, excellent songwriting and an overall sound both loose and polished that had many of us moving our hips to. A musician friend instructed me to pay close attention to how talented the drummer was, but it seemed to me that they all were.
Goldrush took the stage after a break that allowed for the essentials (drummer extraordinaire Willis to set up and Prabir to do a shot) and for more people to arrive to partake of their hook-laden chamber rock.
Although I've been going to Goldrush shows for years, who knows, some of tonight's crowd could have been experiencing the distinct pleasures of two classical musicians playing violin and upright bass in a pop context for the first time. I'd call them Goldrush virgins but I don't want to give Prabir any ideas.
Or maybe they just wandered in off the street because their thongs weren't keeping them very warm and it's so cold out there. So cold I almost bypassed music tonight.
Maybe that was Mercury in retrograde trying to mess me up. Wait, this is 2015, you call that science?
Bueller, Prabir, anyone?
I've read people say that it's a period when communication goes haywire and weird things happen, but I had no problem meeting a charming polymath at the preview night performance of "The Lion in Winter" at VMFA.
Might as well go ahead and admit it, I'd seen neither the play nor the film, although I did look up Eleanor of Aquitaine beforehand so I'd have a little background.
It was easy finding a single seat in the fourth row near a well-dressed man who was also companion-less. The artistic director soon informed us, "You are our ambassadors so if you like what you see, please tell everyone you know. If you don't like it, let's keep it our little secret."
Then, appropriately before a play about a long-time married couple, she wished a couple - Vaughn and Nick - happy 33rd anniversary. Then it was on to a 12th century Christmas.
Through lies, deception, manipulation and posturing, we watched as Henry II's family played out its dysfunction in every relationship - parent/child, husband/wife, siblings - and interaction. Everyone was so busy scheming it was a miracle anyone had time to wage war, father illegitimate children or run the country and isn't that what British royalty did back then?
Much was made of Eleanor's age - 60- with comments such as, "I've heard she's aging badly," followed by her son's gleeful request, "Let's go look!" She directs them, "Take what memory you have of me and mark it out of date." That's what happens to a woman's looks when her husband, the king, imprisons her for ten years for helping her son plan a rebellion against him.
During intermission, I pulled out my Washington Post to read while the man next to me pulled out his book but before long he spoke to me and reading materials were set aside. Even readers can't resist the spoken word.
Turns out he was the theater critic for the Richmond Times Dispatch years ago and for at least the first six years after I moved to Richmond, meaning surely I'd read his work at one point. Interestingly enough, he'd also written critiques for the RTD of opera, ballet and art. I was amazed to hear that one year alone, he'd seen 200 plays (because of trips to NYC and London, lucky dog).
We really clicked when he told me that his only qualifications for the job had been all of his going out to events and a knack for writing. When I shared that I go out every night, he insisted that was proof that I was qualified to write about culture. Imagine his surprise when he heard what I do.
The 1966 play had a contemporary layer to it with humorous asides ("Of course we all have knives. It's 1183, we're still barbarians!") and a surprise plot twist involving a gay tryst ("Oh, no!" someone moaned from the back of the theater when it was revealed). Its twisted middle-aged romance ("I could listen to you lie for hours") was timeless and sometimes brutally honest ("Jealousy looks silly on us, Henry").
My new critic friend admitted afterwards that he'd found the acting a bit stiff but attributed it to the first night of the run. Perhaps the cast just needs a bit more time to get used to each other, sort of like with the early years of marriage or cohabitation.
Walking out of the museum, it was so bitterly cold and windy that I considered heading home but since my drive would take me right past Emilio's and music, that seemed like a foolish plan.
The temptation was twofold: Goldrush was playing, so I could expect friends, frivolous discussion and their familiar yet solid sound. Plus Adam and the Yew Banks were opening and I'd fallen hard for them at the Ghost of Pop show in December.
I scored on all counts. The handsome bass player not only regaled me with stories of hiding things from his mother-in-law's prying eyes, he also told a stranger that I'd given him and his wife a housewarming gift of velvet handcuffs (it should be noted that the gift also included two bottles of wine). Also covered were the folly of bourbon shots on Bourbon Street, moving doors and ego-less sax players
Standing near the front of the crowd where plenty of familiar faces gathered, the only downside was the frequency with which the door opened to admit new guests and allow smokers to escape to freeze their patooties off while feeding their addiction.
One smoker clad in a long, summery-looking skirt complained about her poor choice in attire on such a frigid night. "I shaved my legs, what the hell was I thinking?" she asked rhetorically while hiking up her skirt to show me a bare leg. "All I've got on under this is a thong." Yikes, honey.
Once again, Adam and the Yew Banks blew my mind with their well-executed set, a tantalizing combination of great voices, excellent songwriting and an overall sound both loose and polished that had many of us moving our hips to. A musician friend instructed me to pay close attention to how talented the drummer was, but it seemed to me that they all were.
Goldrush took the stage after a break that allowed for the essentials (drummer extraordinaire Willis to set up and Prabir to do a shot) and for more people to arrive to partake of their hook-laden chamber rock.
Although I've been going to Goldrush shows for years, who knows, some of tonight's crowd could have been experiencing the distinct pleasures of two classical musicians playing violin and upright bass in a pop context for the first time. I'd call them Goldrush virgins but I don't want to give Prabir any ideas.
Or maybe they just wandered in off the street because their thongs weren't keeping them very warm and it's so cold out there. So cold I almost bypassed music tonight.
Maybe that was Mercury in retrograde trying to mess me up. Wait, this is 2015, you call that science?
Bueller, Prabir, anyone?
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Words Remind You of Someone
Poetry should always be the precursor to discussing romance.
Nothing could have suited me better today than waking up to an invitation to a poetry reading. With the exception of a man I barely knew reciting "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" to me a couple of weeks ago, it had been far too long since I'd heard poetry read.
Sometimes you need more than a snippet from a stranger.
Walking in to Reynolds Gallery was bittersweet since it was the first time since owner Bev Reynolds had died that I'd been in. But she was certainly there in spirit because, as it turned out, she was the one who'd originally asked the poet to read at the gallery last August.
But poets are busy people who apparently put off readings and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan was only now getting around to it.
The female energy in the crowded room was fabulous with all kinds of talented women - painters, poets, gallerists - taking up the folding chairs in the gallery around me with the men scattered throughout like tapioca balls in bubble tea.
After being introduced as Buffy rather than Elizabeth, the elegant woman spoke (with a former teacher's ability to project vocally) to the crowd before the reading, allowing the tardy to find seats as she made observations.
"My poet friends are coming in late of course," she said, smiling. "All my artist friends were early or on time." Explaining that she didn't believe in poetry going on too long, she warned us matter-of-factly that, "I stop when the eyes glaze over." This crowd definitely didn't look like she had anything to worry about.
She compared her latest book, "Spans: New and Selected Poems" to an artist's retrospective covering work over the course of a career, saying she'd chosen the name because the poems spanned so many periods of her life.
Before reading an early one, What's the Most Elvis Ever Weighed? she explained that the first stanza took place when he was fat (260 pounds) and the second in 1956. "I brought the proof in case anyone doesn't believe me. It's in the back."
I never saw the proof but the second stanza was about a backstage visit with a friend to talk to Elvis who opened a Coca Cola (pronounced CoCola like the Atlanta native she was) with his key ring and shared it with the girls.
I don't imagine you'd ever forget that soda.
Some time after she read A Sun Lover's Book about afternoons spent with sun-warmed books read in a tree platform, we heard the door open and without missing a beat or looking up, she said, "If it's Ron Smith, don't let him in."
It was and as he sat in the only remaining available chair in the front row, she shared that, "Ron is the poet laureate of Virginia." So while he wasn't punctual, he got a pass because of his presumed talent.
From The Party Before the Party came the line, "I was a grown-up in a sundress," an imagery that I no doubt find appealing because I am unapologetically that grown-up all summer long. Given all her lilac imagery, she also sounded like as big a fan of the fragrant flowers as I am.
Sunset on Eastern Beaches (not that there is such a thing except in Key West, she pointed out) was directed at those who loved the Outer Banks ("Our faces glow with sun we cannot see") but also referenced Tuscany ("Fired horizon hushed us into silence").
Listening to the poems was like following along with the journey of her life as various issues presented themselves with age. "This is the most jagged grief," she wrote in Lost Without Ceremony. About friends who'd downsized and moved out of their homes, she wrote The Owner is Leaving This House, an elegy to the gradual removal of belongings from one house to a new space.
Keeping to the elegiac theme, she read poems about poisoning and shutters, but also said to laughter, "They're elegiac but not wallowing. I'm trying to encourage you to buy my book."
Fittingly, she closed with, "This is my last poem. Pay attention," an ode to her listeners and a wish that in the poetry, "Some word I said reminded you of someone." The last line was yet another reminder that this was the last poem, in case we'd missed it. I don't think anyone had.
More than once she checked to make sure our eyes weren't glazing over and the first time she tried to stop reading, the crowd got vocal yelling for her to keep going, which she did. Don't try to tell me poetry lovers can't get rowdy.
With the reading officially ended, I took the collective female energy in the room and left to go meet a friend for dinner. Why surround yourself with so much life experience and not put it to good use?
Friend and I had made these plans weeks ago, both of us committing to the date so nothing could interfere. Two weeks ago at Lucy's, he'd told me he was intending to ask an interesting woman he'd just met out. Tonight we were going to reconvene at Lucy's to discuss what had transpired since.
After telling me it had taken him a few days to get up the nerve to first message her after we'd talked, he admitted when he finally had done it, it had been at 6 a.m. when he woke up. Before he lost his nerve.
Brilliant, I told him, surprising him. Getting a message with a time stamp like that tells a woman you are thinking of her at an unusual time. "Just don't do it at 3 a.m., right?" he guessed.
Sharing a meat and cheese plate (flank steak to die for), Lucy's big bowl of comfort (also known as beef stew with duchess potatoes) and winter salad (kale, brussels sprouts, pine nuts, lemon vinaigrette and arguably the finest kale salad in all of Richmond), I heard from my friend about their getting-to-know-each-other process.
By the second date, he found himself watching her smile and looking forward to the sight of it. At a Super Bowl party, she insisted that he sit closer than the arm of the couch, patting the seat cushion next to her. Everything was going beautifully.
"But I have a conundrum," he said. "What do I do about Valentine's Day?" A holiday admittedly fraught with danger even for those beyond the third date, I understood his dilemma. Things are going well, but you never want to overstep bounds. On the other hand, she seems interested and he doesn't want to underplay it if doing something would make her happy.
Summoning the wisdom of the ages, I made a suggestion when he said that he may have to work that night anyway. Perfect, I told him.
By being obligated for the big event, he is free to invite her to do something mid-day, a time period that doesn't carry the same romantic weight as evening. If it were me, I advised, I'd invite her to brunch or lunch that Saturday. Have a lovely meal, spend some quality time with her and go off to work.
Even better, stop by Mongrel and get one of those pithy Valentine's Day cards that address this situation. While I guarantee it was a woman who wrote them, I think they swing both ways.
I know we're not like together or anything but it felt weird to just not say anything so I got you this card. It's no big deal. It doesn't really mean anything. There isn't even a heart on it. So basically, it's a card saying hi. Forget it.
To my thinking, if she isn't won over by the charm of a mid-day meal and a self-deprecating card, she probably isn't worth the trouble. Lilacs can come later.
Now he thinks I'm the brilliant one. He gave me all kinds of thanks for the terrific dating advice. Given that my romances have spanned multiple periods in my life, I should have a little bit of experience on the subject.
Most importantly, friend, never stop watching her smile. That's romantic.
Nothing could have suited me better today than waking up to an invitation to a poetry reading. With the exception of a man I barely knew reciting "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" to me a couple of weeks ago, it had been far too long since I'd heard poetry read.
Sometimes you need more than a snippet from a stranger.
Walking in to Reynolds Gallery was bittersweet since it was the first time since owner Bev Reynolds had died that I'd been in. But she was certainly there in spirit because, as it turned out, she was the one who'd originally asked the poet to read at the gallery last August.
But poets are busy people who apparently put off readings and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan was only now getting around to it.
The female energy in the crowded room was fabulous with all kinds of talented women - painters, poets, gallerists - taking up the folding chairs in the gallery around me with the men scattered throughout like tapioca balls in bubble tea.
After being introduced as Buffy rather than Elizabeth, the elegant woman spoke (with a former teacher's ability to project vocally) to the crowd before the reading, allowing the tardy to find seats as she made observations.
"My poet friends are coming in late of course," she said, smiling. "All my artist friends were early or on time." Explaining that she didn't believe in poetry going on too long, she warned us matter-of-factly that, "I stop when the eyes glaze over." This crowd definitely didn't look like she had anything to worry about.
She compared her latest book, "Spans: New and Selected Poems" to an artist's retrospective covering work over the course of a career, saying she'd chosen the name because the poems spanned so many periods of her life.
Before reading an early one, What's the Most Elvis Ever Weighed? she explained that the first stanza took place when he was fat (260 pounds) and the second in 1956. "I brought the proof in case anyone doesn't believe me. It's in the back."
I never saw the proof but the second stanza was about a backstage visit with a friend to talk to Elvis who opened a Coca Cola (pronounced CoCola like the Atlanta native she was) with his key ring and shared it with the girls.
I don't imagine you'd ever forget that soda.
Some time after she read A Sun Lover's Book about afternoons spent with sun-warmed books read in a tree platform, we heard the door open and without missing a beat or looking up, she said, "If it's Ron Smith, don't let him in."
It was and as he sat in the only remaining available chair in the front row, she shared that, "Ron is the poet laureate of Virginia." So while he wasn't punctual, he got a pass because of his presumed talent.
From The Party Before the Party came the line, "I was a grown-up in a sundress," an imagery that I no doubt find appealing because I am unapologetically that grown-up all summer long. Given all her lilac imagery, she also sounded like as big a fan of the fragrant flowers as I am.
Sunset on Eastern Beaches (not that there is such a thing except in Key West, she pointed out) was directed at those who loved the Outer Banks ("Our faces glow with sun we cannot see") but also referenced Tuscany ("Fired horizon hushed us into silence").
Listening to the poems was like following along with the journey of her life as various issues presented themselves with age. "This is the most jagged grief," she wrote in Lost Without Ceremony. About friends who'd downsized and moved out of their homes, she wrote The Owner is Leaving This House, an elegy to the gradual removal of belongings from one house to a new space.
Keeping to the elegiac theme, she read poems about poisoning and shutters, but also said to laughter, "They're elegiac but not wallowing. I'm trying to encourage you to buy my book."
Fittingly, she closed with, "This is my last poem. Pay attention," an ode to her listeners and a wish that in the poetry, "Some word I said reminded you of someone." The last line was yet another reminder that this was the last poem, in case we'd missed it. I don't think anyone had.
More than once she checked to make sure our eyes weren't glazing over and the first time she tried to stop reading, the crowd got vocal yelling for her to keep going, which she did. Don't try to tell me poetry lovers can't get rowdy.
With the reading officially ended, I took the collective female energy in the room and left to go meet a friend for dinner. Why surround yourself with so much life experience and not put it to good use?
Friend and I had made these plans weeks ago, both of us committing to the date so nothing could interfere. Two weeks ago at Lucy's, he'd told me he was intending to ask an interesting woman he'd just met out. Tonight we were going to reconvene at Lucy's to discuss what had transpired since.
After telling me it had taken him a few days to get up the nerve to first message her after we'd talked, he admitted when he finally had done it, it had been at 6 a.m. when he woke up. Before he lost his nerve.
Brilliant, I told him, surprising him. Getting a message with a time stamp like that tells a woman you are thinking of her at an unusual time. "Just don't do it at 3 a.m., right?" he guessed.
Sharing a meat and cheese plate (flank steak to die for), Lucy's big bowl of comfort (also known as beef stew with duchess potatoes) and winter salad (kale, brussels sprouts, pine nuts, lemon vinaigrette and arguably the finest kale salad in all of Richmond), I heard from my friend about their getting-to-know-each-other process.
By the second date, he found himself watching her smile and looking forward to the sight of it. At a Super Bowl party, she insisted that he sit closer than the arm of the couch, patting the seat cushion next to her. Everything was going beautifully.
"But I have a conundrum," he said. "What do I do about Valentine's Day?" A holiday admittedly fraught with danger even for those beyond the third date, I understood his dilemma. Things are going well, but you never want to overstep bounds. On the other hand, she seems interested and he doesn't want to underplay it if doing something would make her happy.
Summoning the wisdom of the ages, I made a suggestion when he said that he may have to work that night anyway. Perfect, I told him.
By being obligated for the big event, he is free to invite her to do something mid-day, a time period that doesn't carry the same romantic weight as evening. If it were me, I advised, I'd invite her to brunch or lunch that Saturday. Have a lovely meal, spend some quality time with her and go off to work.
Even better, stop by Mongrel and get one of those pithy Valentine's Day cards that address this situation. While I guarantee it was a woman who wrote them, I think they swing both ways.
I know we're not like together or anything but it felt weird to just not say anything so I got you this card. It's no big deal. It doesn't really mean anything. There isn't even a heart on it. So basically, it's a card saying hi. Forget it.
To my thinking, if she isn't won over by the charm of a mid-day meal and a self-deprecating card, she probably isn't worth the trouble. Lilacs can come later.
Now he thinks I'm the brilliant one. He gave me all kinds of thanks for the terrific dating advice. Given that my romances have spanned multiple periods in my life, I should have a little bit of experience on the subject.
Most importantly, friend, never stop watching her smile. That's romantic.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
It Takes a Woman
It takes a certain kind of woman to spend her days at a winery.
Oh, I'm not talking about someone like me who can easily (and just did) spend three days touring Virginia wine country. Going through a tasting, spending time by a fireplace hearth, admiring views of mountains and vineyards, that's a cinch. Actually, quite fun.
But working at a winery and spending your days catering to any strangers who walk in the door? Repeating the same information about your wines all day long? Refraining from drinking when you're dealing with obnoxious people?
That, I think, takes a particular skill set.
At Mediterranean Cellars in Warrenton, it looked effortless done by the wife of the winemaker. A charming woman who grew up in Greece before moving here with her husband in the early '60s, she didn't hesitate when I got nosy. In her distinctive accent, she shared that she'd been married for 54 years, sounding both proud and matter-of-fact.
Of course I had to know the secret of her success after a half century of marriage. "You have to hold hands and work things out together. Don't give up," she said with a twinkle in her eyes. Keep on keeping on, in other words.
It probably doesn't hurt that her husband's also a jeweler who works at a shop when he's not making wine, leaving the tasting room to her capable hands. I can't imagine such longevity in a relationship without a bit of space and probably a lot of wine.
If she was the winery pro, at Chrysalis Vineyard in Middleburg we met the complete novice. It was the first day of work for the young woman, a transplant from Puerto Rico, manning the counter and we were only her second customers.
We promised to make it as painless as possible for her.
Turns out her husband is in the Air Force and she'd taken the job despite knowing virtually nothing about wine. What she lacked in knowledge (she was reading the tasting notes to us straight out of a notebook), she made up for in eagerness to please and meaningless doublespeak. It was adorable.
She admitted in her lilting accent to not having tasted all of the wines and seemed convinced that certain aromas - cocoa, pepper - had been added to the grapes. "This one has a lot of grapes," she said in her most knowledgeable voice. Given that wineries are a business, one habit that's sure to be corrected very quickly was the generosity of her pours. But her smile never dimmed.
One of the biggest wineries (partially due to a massive gift shop full of merchandise that seemed to be geared toward women) of the past three days was Prince Michele Vineyard in Leon.
While a guy greeted us, we were soon handed off to a friendly woman to take us through the wines. She knew her stuff and was pleasantly easy-going, even sharing her wine drinking preferences, so it didn't take long for me to start getting to know her.
An army brat, she said she'd lived all over the world growing up, even being moved just before her senior year of high school (something she still seemed to resent, but who wouldn't?).
When I inquired where she lived now, she surprised me. "On a boat," she said, on the Northern Neck, but only during nice weather after experiencing how cold a boat's lower deck gets in winter. "By the time you get your cup of coffee upstairs to drink it, it's cold," she explained.
Turns out she also pours at General's Ridge Vineyard in Hague as well as works at a restaurant at the marina where they keep their boat. That's a busy woman.
Eventually I got out of her that her first concert was Ted Nugent at the Capital Center in 1980. Since I went to dozens of shows there back then, I asked her if she remembered how the air was always thick with pot smoke during a show. She remembered, she said, because she'd been one of the people smoking it.
Her best story involved being on the way to the hospital to have a baby and hearing "Catch Scratch Fever" on the radio and feeling like it was proof that Ted Nugent was the man and that she was his biggest fan. Why else would it have come on at that moment?
So big a fan apparently that she'd once tried to go backstage to say hello to Ted before a show and been promptly escorted outside, causing her to miss the show.
"I learned if you're going to try to sneak backstage, do it after you see the show not before," she said, summing up a life lesson well-learned.
Meanwhile, I learned that if you're going to stop by half a dozen wineries over three days, you'd better make plenty of stops to eat.
For sheer charm, I liked the Red Truck Bakery in Warrenton, a former Esso station with nothing but women behind the counter, all friendly and open to selling you breads, quiche, pies or breakfast and lunch which you could then eat at the communal table (we did).
After a chicken salad sandwich on divine hearty wheat bread with golden raisins, craisins and nuts, Route 11 potato chips and a root beer, I headed back to the bakery counter for dessert.
Two women were making their selections from the counter, trying to narrow their decision down and neither blinked an eye when the order total was $49. At a bakery. Toto, I don't think we're in Richmond anymore.
When I explained to the woman behind the counter that I was back for chocolate, she got a serious look on her face, peering into the case. She mentioned the Better than Kentucky Derby pie because of its chocolate chips, but they only came as whole pies.
Then reaching into the case, she said, "It's going to have to be a brownie" and handed one to me. You have to appreciate a woman who assesses the situation and just does what's needed.
Not that I expect to ever work in a bakery. Back in college, I mentioned to my then-boyfriend that I might want to open a bakery after I graduated. He unkindly pointed out that I'd get in there, start baking and eating and not be able to get out of the door. That youthful dream died a chauvinistic death.
But maybe the winery thing has possibilities. I might get a kick out o being the person encouraging visitors to love the wine they're with. Plus I'd be surrounded by wine. Could I pour for and chat with strangers all day long? Instead of going out to find conversational partners, they'd come to me. Oh, but wait. I couldn't just walk away when things got dull.
Scratch that fever.
Oh, I'm not talking about someone like me who can easily (and just did) spend three days touring Virginia wine country. Going through a tasting, spending time by a fireplace hearth, admiring views of mountains and vineyards, that's a cinch. Actually, quite fun.
But working at a winery and spending your days catering to any strangers who walk in the door? Repeating the same information about your wines all day long? Refraining from drinking when you're dealing with obnoxious people?
That, I think, takes a particular skill set.
At Mediterranean Cellars in Warrenton, it looked effortless done by the wife of the winemaker. A charming woman who grew up in Greece before moving here with her husband in the early '60s, she didn't hesitate when I got nosy. In her distinctive accent, she shared that she'd been married for 54 years, sounding both proud and matter-of-fact.
Of course I had to know the secret of her success after a half century of marriage. "You have to hold hands and work things out together. Don't give up," she said with a twinkle in her eyes. Keep on keeping on, in other words.
It probably doesn't hurt that her husband's also a jeweler who works at a shop when he's not making wine, leaving the tasting room to her capable hands. I can't imagine such longevity in a relationship without a bit of space and probably a lot of wine.
If she was the winery pro, at Chrysalis Vineyard in Middleburg we met the complete novice. It was the first day of work for the young woman, a transplant from Puerto Rico, manning the counter and we were only her second customers.
We promised to make it as painless as possible for her.
Turns out her husband is in the Air Force and she'd taken the job despite knowing virtually nothing about wine. What she lacked in knowledge (she was reading the tasting notes to us straight out of a notebook), she made up for in eagerness to please and meaningless doublespeak. It was adorable.
She admitted in her lilting accent to not having tasted all of the wines and seemed convinced that certain aromas - cocoa, pepper - had been added to the grapes. "This one has a lot of grapes," she said in her most knowledgeable voice. Given that wineries are a business, one habit that's sure to be corrected very quickly was the generosity of her pours. But her smile never dimmed.
One of the biggest wineries (partially due to a massive gift shop full of merchandise that seemed to be geared toward women) of the past three days was Prince Michele Vineyard in Leon.
While a guy greeted us, we were soon handed off to a friendly woman to take us through the wines. She knew her stuff and was pleasantly easy-going, even sharing her wine drinking preferences, so it didn't take long for me to start getting to know her.
An army brat, she said she'd lived all over the world growing up, even being moved just before her senior year of high school (something she still seemed to resent, but who wouldn't?).
When I inquired where she lived now, she surprised me. "On a boat," she said, on the Northern Neck, but only during nice weather after experiencing how cold a boat's lower deck gets in winter. "By the time you get your cup of coffee upstairs to drink it, it's cold," she explained.
Turns out she also pours at General's Ridge Vineyard in Hague as well as works at a restaurant at the marina where they keep their boat. That's a busy woman.
Eventually I got out of her that her first concert was Ted Nugent at the Capital Center in 1980. Since I went to dozens of shows there back then, I asked her if she remembered how the air was always thick with pot smoke during a show. She remembered, she said, because she'd been one of the people smoking it.
Her best story involved being on the way to the hospital to have a baby and hearing "Catch Scratch Fever" on the radio and feeling like it was proof that Ted Nugent was the man and that she was his biggest fan. Why else would it have come on at that moment?
So big a fan apparently that she'd once tried to go backstage to say hello to Ted before a show and been promptly escorted outside, causing her to miss the show.
"I learned if you're going to try to sneak backstage, do it after you see the show not before," she said, summing up a life lesson well-learned.
Meanwhile, I learned that if you're going to stop by half a dozen wineries over three days, you'd better make plenty of stops to eat.
For sheer charm, I liked the Red Truck Bakery in Warrenton, a former Esso station with nothing but women behind the counter, all friendly and open to selling you breads, quiche, pies or breakfast and lunch which you could then eat at the communal table (we did).
After a chicken salad sandwich on divine hearty wheat bread with golden raisins, craisins and nuts, Route 11 potato chips and a root beer, I headed back to the bakery counter for dessert.
Two women were making their selections from the counter, trying to narrow their decision down and neither blinked an eye when the order total was $49. At a bakery. Toto, I don't think we're in Richmond anymore.
When I explained to the woman behind the counter that I was back for chocolate, she got a serious look on her face, peering into the case. She mentioned the Better than Kentucky Derby pie because of its chocolate chips, but they only came as whole pies.
Then reaching into the case, she said, "It's going to have to be a brownie" and handed one to me. You have to appreciate a woman who assesses the situation and just does what's needed.
Not that I expect to ever work in a bakery. Back in college, I mentioned to my then-boyfriend that I might want to open a bakery after I graduated. He unkindly pointed out that I'd get in there, start baking and eating and not be able to get out of the door. That youthful dream died a chauvinistic death.
But maybe the winery thing has possibilities. I might get a kick out o being the person encouraging visitors to love the wine they're with. Plus I'd be surrounded by wine. Could I pour for and chat with strangers all day long? Instead of going out to find conversational partners, they'd come to me. Oh, but wait. I couldn't just walk away when things got dull.
Scratch that fever.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
All About That Drum and Horns
I am nothing if not a devoted fan.
Back in 2007, I saw a fairly new 11-piece group called No BS Brass Band and fell in love with their ten horns and a drummer audio onslaught. A webcast producer at the time, I wasted no time in inviting them into the studio to play for a show.
My rationale was purely selfish; I wanted to see them in what amounted to a private show for me and my staff. From there, it snowballed and I rarely missed an opportunity to catch them playing where ever that might be, including a street corner downtown during lunch hour.
When their first album came out, they thanked me in the liner notes, not that I realized it. It was years later when someone pointed it out to me. The irony was that they were thanking me when I was the one grateful not only for their music but their enthusiasm for the Richmond scene.
But if someone as musically illiterate as me could spot their massive talent and overall good vibes, it was inevitable that the rest of the world would follow. Performances at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series proved it.
So there was no way I was missing their performance with the Richmond Symphony at Center Stage tonight.
A $10 ticket in the next to last row of the nosebleed section was all I could afford, but history had proven to me that the sound of No BS reaches the rafters and beyond. If I needed further proof, it was in the attendants at the theater offering patrons complimentary ear plugs, the first time I've experienced that at the symphony.
"Do I need them?" one geezer-looking man asked. "Well, it's going to be a little loud," the attendant explained tentatively. He took a pair for himself and another for his wife. I kept on walking.
Once in my seat, I saw two little old ladies with stiff helmet hairdos who looked to be straight off the Cedarfield bus trying to rip open their cellophane wrappers. I'm willing to bet it was their first ear plug experience, but they were there. You go, girls.
Around me, seats were being taken by what I can only assume to be No BS fans because they certainly didn't look like the usual symphony crowd. If the goal tonight was expanding the audience base, mission accomplished.
The lights darkened, conductor Steven Smith came out, lifted his baton and music began. When drummer Lance walked onstage, cheering began followed by the sounds of ten brass musicians playing just offstage and then walking on playing "Jalapenos on the Side."
Not going to lie, there was a thrilling frisson in the air, an excitement that rippled through the fan base in the crowd.
"I feel like I'm overdressed," the conductor joked about the more casual attire of No BS before returning to the podium and leaving center stage to them.
"All right, y'all, how you feeling?" trombonist/vocalist Bryan hollered to the hopped up crowd before singing "Runaround," a song that caused some of the oldsters to look worried. Oh, no, Mabel, what kind of music is this anyway? You could just see the concern on their faces.
"Infamous," written by trumpet player Marcus got an MGM-sounding start from the symphony before No BS took over and it tore it up the way Marcus had intended it to sound. You haven't lived till you've seen Stefan wailing on that tuba.
Maybe because they knew they were playing to a lot of fans, but we were treated to a song they've never put on an album, "Get Slow," which writer Bryan described as, "A song about when you think you know what life is supposed to be or who it's supposed to be with and then life says whoa! Slow down!"
I think we've all had our get slow moments and anyone who says they haven't is lying.
Many of the novice members of the audience were flummoxed by trombonist Reggie's six-movement suite, "The Ballad of Eagle Claw," randomly clapping throughout. He explained that the piece had been inspired by a martial arts movie he described as insane and recommended it highly for those who like such things.
Beginning with just Lance and Reggie onstage in front of the symphony, the rest of the band eventually came out to join them, leading us on a cinematic-sounding journey that mimicked a villain, a centipede and much fighting. You know, insane stuff.
No surprise, the band that excels as ambassadors of and cheerleaders for Richmond closed out their set with the anthemic "RVA All Day!" with Reggie instructing the boisterous crowd, "Y'all know this. Feel free to sing along!" Even better, they did a call and response on the chorus. They sang, "RV," we sang "A!" They sang, "All," we sang "day!"
It was one big No BS love fest, unfortunately with no room for dancing, but a memorable moment nonetheless.
I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was still a bit disappointed when the lights came up for intermission and many of the younger attendees bolted for the door. Sure, they'd come for No BS, but apparently they're unaware of Karen's three-song rule for shows.
Many is the time I've gone to see an opening band with no interest in seeing the headliner. Even so, I make myself stay for three songs so I can at least have an opinion about them instead of a presumption. When I went to see Muse, I had zero interest in My Chemical Romance, but I gave them three songs before bolting for the door. Fair is fair.
Talk buzzed around me about No BS's performance during intermission. Several people mentioned that it had been almost impossible to hear the strings over the horns of No BS.
"You don't realize how much like a symphony they sound by themselves till you hear them play with a symphony," one guy said. Exactly why I'd felt sure my cheap seat would serve me just fine.
The second half of the program began with the conductor saying, "Happy Mardi Gras, guys! Now, straight from New Orleans, here's Dukes of Dixieland."
Granted, it's a little over two weeks until Mardi Gras, but there was no way a band whose home base is the Steamboat Natchez wasn't going to flaunt its NOLA jazz roots and they did with not one but two Mardi Gras medleys.
A finely tuned entertainment machine, albeit one with solid musical chops, they were swinging that music every which way.
The trumpet player sang and provided the polished patter. The pianist (who had his back to us so we could watch him play) stood on his bench to play with his hands and one foot on the high keys. The bass player opened his mouth to sing and turned out to be a ringer for Louis Armstrong's gravely rasp.
The classic "It's a Wonderful World," done as an instrumental, got cheers from the first few notes for its instant familiarity. While all three horns soloed on the extended arrangement, the clarinetist's was the sweetest and most moving.
When it came time for the drummer's solo, he moved from behind his kit, drumming on everything he encountered: microphone stands, the floor, even the upright bass the bass player was playing.
Impressive as that was, they took it to a new level when the drummer grabbed the bass to play it and the bassist took the mic to begin singing "All About That (Upright) Bass."
It was probably the most perfect moment of their entire set because it was so unexpected. Then the drummer returned to his soloing.
For the big finale, No BS returned to the stage to join the Dukes of Dixieland for "When the Saints Go Marching In," trading off solos and each band playing separately and together while the symphony swelled behind them.
Unlike his fellow musicians, though, bandleader Reggie was playing triangle (of which he is a master) instead of trombone, eventually trading it for tambourine as the three musical entities wound up for a slam bang finish
In the screaming standing ovation that followed, it didn't matter that some misguided fans had already left. The faithful remained, the first-timers were rewarded and we all got a showstopper of a finale that left little doubt that No BS is the real deal.
They help make RVA all day a wonderful world. Any idiot could have seen that from the start. Oh, wait, I did.
Back in 2007, I saw a fairly new 11-piece group called No BS Brass Band and fell in love with their ten horns and a drummer audio onslaught. A webcast producer at the time, I wasted no time in inviting them into the studio to play for a show.
My rationale was purely selfish; I wanted to see them in what amounted to a private show for me and my staff. From there, it snowballed and I rarely missed an opportunity to catch them playing where ever that might be, including a street corner downtown during lunch hour.
When their first album came out, they thanked me in the liner notes, not that I realized it. It was years later when someone pointed it out to me. The irony was that they were thanking me when I was the one grateful not only for their music but their enthusiasm for the Richmond scene.
But if someone as musically illiterate as me could spot their massive talent and overall good vibes, it was inevitable that the rest of the world would follow. Performances at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series proved it.
So there was no way I was missing their performance with the Richmond Symphony at Center Stage tonight.
A $10 ticket in the next to last row of the nosebleed section was all I could afford, but history had proven to me that the sound of No BS reaches the rafters and beyond. If I needed further proof, it was in the attendants at the theater offering patrons complimentary ear plugs, the first time I've experienced that at the symphony.
"Do I need them?" one geezer-looking man asked. "Well, it's going to be a little loud," the attendant explained tentatively. He took a pair for himself and another for his wife. I kept on walking.
Once in my seat, I saw two little old ladies with stiff helmet hairdos who looked to be straight off the Cedarfield bus trying to rip open their cellophane wrappers. I'm willing to bet it was their first ear plug experience, but they were there. You go, girls.
Around me, seats were being taken by what I can only assume to be No BS fans because they certainly didn't look like the usual symphony crowd. If the goal tonight was expanding the audience base, mission accomplished.
The lights darkened, conductor Steven Smith came out, lifted his baton and music began. When drummer Lance walked onstage, cheering began followed by the sounds of ten brass musicians playing just offstage and then walking on playing "Jalapenos on the Side."
Not going to lie, there was a thrilling frisson in the air, an excitement that rippled through the fan base in the crowd.
"I feel like I'm overdressed," the conductor joked about the more casual attire of No BS before returning to the podium and leaving center stage to them.
"All right, y'all, how you feeling?" trombonist/vocalist Bryan hollered to the hopped up crowd before singing "Runaround," a song that caused some of the oldsters to look worried. Oh, no, Mabel, what kind of music is this anyway? You could just see the concern on their faces.
"Infamous," written by trumpet player Marcus got an MGM-sounding start from the symphony before No BS took over and it tore it up the way Marcus had intended it to sound. You haven't lived till you've seen Stefan wailing on that tuba.
Maybe because they knew they were playing to a lot of fans, but we were treated to a song they've never put on an album, "Get Slow," which writer Bryan described as, "A song about when you think you know what life is supposed to be or who it's supposed to be with and then life says whoa! Slow down!"
I think we've all had our get slow moments and anyone who says they haven't is lying.
Many of the novice members of the audience were flummoxed by trombonist Reggie's six-movement suite, "The Ballad of Eagle Claw," randomly clapping throughout. He explained that the piece had been inspired by a martial arts movie he described as insane and recommended it highly for those who like such things.
Beginning with just Lance and Reggie onstage in front of the symphony, the rest of the band eventually came out to join them, leading us on a cinematic-sounding journey that mimicked a villain, a centipede and much fighting. You know, insane stuff.
No surprise, the band that excels as ambassadors of and cheerleaders for Richmond closed out their set with the anthemic "RVA All Day!" with Reggie instructing the boisterous crowd, "Y'all know this. Feel free to sing along!" Even better, they did a call and response on the chorus. They sang, "RV," we sang "A!" They sang, "All," we sang "day!"
It was one big No BS love fest, unfortunately with no room for dancing, but a memorable moment nonetheless.
I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was still a bit disappointed when the lights came up for intermission and many of the younger attendees bolted for the door. Sure, they'd come for No BS, but apparently they're unaware of Karen's three-song rule for shows.
Many is the time I've gone to see an opening band with no interest in seeing the headliner. Even so, I make myself stay for three songs so I can at least have an opinion about them instead of a presumption. When I went to see Muse, I had zero interest in My Chemical Romance, but I gave them three songs before bolting for the door. Fair is fair.
Talk buzzed around me about No BS's performance during intermission. Several people mentioned that it had been almost impossible to hear the strings over the horns of No BS.
"You don't realize how much like a symphony they sound by themselves till you hear them play with a symphony," one guy said. Exactly why I'd felt sure my cheap seat would serve me just fine.
The second half of the program began with the conductor saying, "Happy Mardi Gras, guys! Now, straight from New Orleans, here's Dukes of Dixieland."
Granted, it's a little over two weeks until Mardi Gras, but there was no way a band whose home base is the Steamboat Natchez wasn't going to flaunt its NOLA jazz roots and they did with not one but two Mardi Gras medleys.
A finely tuned entertainment machine, albeit one with solid musical chops, they were swinging that music every which way.
The trumpet player sang and provided the polished patter. The pianist (who had his back to us so we could watch him play) stood on his bench to play with his hands and one foot on the high keys. The bass player opened his mouth to sing and turned out to be a ringer for Louis Armstrong's gravely rasp.
The classic "It's a Wonderful World," done as an instrumental, got cheers from the first few notes for its instant familiarity. While all three horns soloed on the extended arrangement, the clarinetist's was the sweetest and most moving.
When it came time for the drummer's solo, he moved from behind his kit, drumming on everything he encountered: microphone stands, the floor, even the upright bass the bass player was playing.
Impressive as that was, they took it to a new level when the drummer grabbed the bass to play it and the bassist took the mic to begin singing "All About That (Upright) Bass."
It was probably the most perfect moment of their entire set because it was so unexpected. Then the drummer returned to his soloing.
For the big finale, No BS returned to the stage to join the Dukes of Dixieland for "When the Saints Go Marching In," trading off solos and each band playing separately and together while the symphony swelled behind them.
Unlike his fellow musicians, though, bandleader Reggie was playing triangle (of which he is a master) instead of trombone, eventually trading it for tambourine as the three musical entities wound up for a slam bang finish
In the screaming standing ovation that followed, it didn't matter that some misguided fans had already left. The faithful remained, the first-timers were rewarded and we all got a showstopper of a finale that left little doubt that No BS is the real deal.
They help make RVA all day a wonderful world. Any idiot could have seen that from the start. Oh, wait, I did.
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