My Journey Into Richmond
And What I Found There

The story thus far: Philip Gotz, an obstreperous travel writer known for his "What I Found There" pieces detailing his five-day visits to destinations, is in Richmond, Va. The visitors bureau has assigned to him as a guide Tia Chulangong -- who pretty much has his number from the moment she meets him at the Richard Evelyn Byrd International Airport. She provides running color commentary on Richmond sights and history while riding the train to bustling Main Street Station, and from there to Gotz's accommodations. Tia, however, has informed Gotz that Jennifer Royce, his novelist ex-wife, is in town on a book tour and through a scheduling error he's booked into the Jefferson Hotel where she is also staying. The writer and his guide have now gone up to the rooftop terrace of the Jefferson, where Tia is giving Gotz a travelogue explanation of the city's sights. Gotz observes the city's bosky streets and plentiful green and open spaces, lack of automotive traffic or parking lots, the preserved historic architecture and the exile of high rise office and residential towers to the outer edges of the central metro.

Part VI

The unique, quaint and charming boutique

The terrace wended back into the café. The perspective northward was interrupted by the Jefferson’s bellevue towers and the private terraces along Franklin Street.

At the table, Gotz asked a passing waitress for another gin and tonic.

“But, so, I’m glad I have several days here. Because where I kind of like how those high rise buildings are out of the old center district of your beloved town, I wonder about that. I just wonder about it. How does the city function that way? And it seems, to me, a little contrived. Actually, a lot contrived; over-planned. Is this downtown and its satellite neighborhoods just flash frozen in 1900, or is there a street life here, is there an art life, is there some people tearin’ it up and gettin’ er done, as they say in NASCAR.”

“Oh, absolutely, and you'll be seeing plenty of that. And we got the NASCAR. Yes we do. We have a museum and everything. Which I don’t think you chose to go see.”

“Maybe. If I have time. And I won’t have time.”

Tia pursed her lips.

“I think, Tia, that you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m just sitting here.”

“And doing a find job of it, too, if may observe. I mean, I think it’s funny about the NASCAR because Richmond has waged war against internal combustion since it first showed up here.”

Tia's tongue ran along the edge of her front teeth. Gotz sighed.

She said, “Richmond’s all about contradictions.”

“ Yes! It seems so. And that’s key, I think, isn’t it? Most of what happened during the 20th century Richmond batted away. You were ahead on almost every social and civil rights issue, and then there’s the interstate highway system, the no-car downtown." 

“And there’s the car docks.”

Gotz nodded in some vague familiarity about these somewhat legendary Works Project Administration garages at the compass points of the city used for storing visitor vehicles. They served as transit stations, too. The white-shirted, bow-tied drivers for the Richmond car docks attracted the attention of the Maysles brothers who titled their documentary Valet Service.

“So how does that work, Tia? If I’m driving into Richmond from the north -- and plan on staying.”

“You go into the parking tower and nowadays a scanner reads your license plate, and on Virginia licenses there’s indication of your zip code that a machine reads, and depending on how far you’ve come, there’s a discount for your parking there. You leave your car, take the train in, and if you’re planning on leaving in a few days, you can have your vehicle transported to the other side of town and waiting for you. This discourages driving in the city, puts people in transit and on foot. So once you dock your car, and you’re here, and you find so many cool things to do, you might not be so anxious to bounce out. Which is what happens.”

“I’m supposed to see one of these, right?”

“Yes, sir. I think day after tomorrow, something like that,” she looked at her handheld device. “Yes. Actually, Sunday at 3:30, after brunch here.”

“There goes the Gallego Plaza mimes. No, no. I’m kidding. Fine, that’s fine. But -- so basically, you’ve impounded their cars to get a captive audience.”

“They’re not captives if they want to stay.”

“And they want to because of the Charming and Quaint Boutique.”

“Well, Mr. Gotz, some people like the Charming and Quaint Boutique.”

He waved his hand. “No, no, no. I don’t care about them, you don’t really care about them, the CVB has to care about them but wishes it didn’t need to. They come here, and stay their unscheduled two point five days because they see vistas and buildings and street scenes and museums and patterns of light and shadow from magnolia trees cast on brick walls that. they. can’t .get. anywhere. else. They can’t get it anywhere else. That’s what you’re selling here –and that unfortunately gets me to another word that I’ve handed its walking papers, and that is Unique.”

“So the Unique Charming Quaint Boutique -- ?”

“Yeah, I’m gettin’ me some dynamite and I’m blowin’ that sucker up.”

“H’mm – travel writer and urban terrorist.”

“Everybody needs a hobby, Tia. So, what about you? Lining up your nights, a whole glam-tastic circuit, flouncing from one dimly lit establishment to the next with perfect people making beautiful plans?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Gotz. That’s all I do. I smoke and drink all night long, and dance on tables and bars.”

“Well, long as you have your youth and agility, I should hope so.”

She sighed. “Mr. Gotz, you’ve watched way too much Sex And The City.”

Gotz winced. “Those girls -- excuse me --  those women, never interested me.  No, really. Never once --  least when I watched it -- did they ever show the least bit of interest in art or history or books. Only if it increased their hipness quotient. Now, you on the other hand.”

Tia straightened her back, balled a fist onto her side and said in mock irritation, “So I’m not hip?”

“This is not what I’m saying.”

She waved him off. “Mr. Gotz –“

“Phil.”

“Mr. Gotz, not that I’m not enjoying our time –“

“Oh, you’re leaving me. They always leave me.”

“Courage. Morning comes soon.”

“You going to that Mongoose place?”

“Mongoose Civique. Ah, probably not. Cruel Aztec Gods are at Tantilla Garden tonight, so I’m going with some friends.”

“Cruel Aztec Gods?”

“Uh-huh. They’re local and they’re touring, just got signed, and we love them. I used to watch them in tiny little bars in the Fan. They’re great for dancing.”

Gotz’s brows rose. Tia dancing, he imagined, arms up, elbows bent, hands in her hair, hips swaying. And he snapped back.

“Never heard of them. But the whole collection of syllables and their vibrations: the Cruel Aztec Gods at Tantilla Garden – sounds – extraordinary. Where is it?”

“Oh, west,” she raised an arm, squinted, pointed. “Thattaway. The Broad Street Five takes you right there. Great place, from the ‘30s, a ballroom. Huge. The roof rolls away on good nights. You should go there if you can before you leave. I can score tickets for you. There’s a schedule in your packet. Let me know.”

“Hum. Yes, yes. Cruel Aztec Gods. Are they, what, punk what?”

“Punk? No. They’re pretty, uh, alt rock.”

“OK, dumb question: what do they sound like?”

“That’s tough. They sound like Cruel Aztec Gods.”

“That’s not good marketing.”

“I don’t do their marketing.”

“OK, I’ll let you go. Thanks for the tours and all the stuff.”

“Oh, glad to do it and excited you’re here. I am, don't make that face. I very much apologize for the mix-up on bookings and schedules."

“I don’t blame you. It’s the Infinite Cosmic Jester who uses as punch lines for his party jokes.”

“I should’ve told you at the very beginning. I’m sorry.”

“S’okay, Tia. Truly. You read her book?”

“Um. No.”

“You should. It’s good. Somehow, her latest bad guy character isn’t based on me.”

“Well, I’m going to take my leave now,” and she settled the strap of the slick black purse on her shoulder.

“So, you going to the ‘Goose?”

“That what the hip kids call that place down there?”

“Some of the hip kids.”

“I may, I may. I think I’m going to study some of the material you’ve helpfully given me, too.”

“The CVB DVD has a few shorts, sort of Richmond trailers, with different approaches. You might try that for fun.”

“I will.”

“OK. Have a good evening,” and she shook his hand and he watched her undulant departure with avid interest over his lifted glass.

The pianist played Gershwin.


Notes: The concept of automobile "docks" was proposed in the 1960s when architect Louis I. Kahn attempted to "pedestrianize" midtown Philadlephia. I'm wholesale stealing the idea and putting it 30 years earlier for advanced alternate reality Richmond. If such a system was in place from the mid-1930s on here, it'd be just part of living and viewed as a Richmond eccentricity.

The image of Tantilla Garden comes from richmondthenandnow.com and I also wrote about the place in True Richmond Stories.

"Festival for the Independent-Minded" -- 15th Edition
"Scientists say the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted."--Sarah Michelle Gellar in "Southland Tales"

[Contains some capsule reviews and perhaps spoilers]



Cheers! It's the 15th annual running of the Richmond Moving Image Co-op's James River Film Festival.

Yes, this is springtime in Richmond, when the cinema extravaganzas commence, just as our weather is at its most splendiferous (though with occasional downpours). [Image is still from Midlothian, Va's own Richard Kelly's Southland Tales via southland-tales-movie.com.]

RMIC's week-long celebration of the independent-minded cinema kind of snuck up on us this year; what with the French Film Festival that came just before, and general demands of the thing called living-in-Richmond-when-you're-busy.

Convenient to us, the bulk of the offerings this year are either at the Byrd or Firehouse and that suits us just find, in particular if the weather allows pedestrian pleasures.

Richmond is bereft of a true repertory art house, but we have scads of cinema around, and maybe there's an advantage to compressing all your art/alternative film into a few weeks. A sense of urgency arises. If you don't see these films as part of a theater audience, you're other option is to get the DVD, and that works better for some film than others, though a number of the offerings at these festivals won't be on DVD. Which is why there's such things as Wholphin, the journal of short video and film, which has its representation here this year, too.

"'Ow about big dog's cock? Can you say that?" -- Control

For those of you in the billion-eyed audiences who are With Partner, and who find out aspects of The Other's personality you didn't know about, I got a revelation last night.

So, after our First Friday-ing-ness we went to see the RMIC's Byrd witching hour showing of Anton Corbin's Control, about the creation of the band Joy Division and the out-out-brief-candle life of its prime motivator, epileptic artist poet musician Ian Curtis.

I knew she owned some New Order CDs and I never thought much of that; but she also in her years of working in a studio amassed many boxes of cassette tapes, and some of them have Joy Division/New Order on them.

She used to listen to them, and even saw New Order perform live in New Orleans, "back in the day," as they say.

The film I'm sure is masterful, its won a raft full of awards, and lensed in clear as crystal moody black-and-white by a director who made some Joy Division videos and knew all the principals -- but the viewing hour was late for the middle-aged. And I had some PBRs in me. And up in the balcony where we'd stole to, I kind of dozed. I mean, this isn't La vie en Rose.

Still, people liked the film a great deal, judging from the excited burble in the lobby after, and WRIR had its table and Melissa of Mercury Falls was there, and Michael Miracle of the Lotus Land show gave a brief commentary prior to the screening.

For some reason, the big curtain rising above the Byrd screen reminded me of a funeral.

We're going to try and hit these events, but may not get to them--there's books to be written and art to make and leaves to rake, between rain showers.

BULLETS INTO BLOGS, SWORDS INTO POWER POINTS: OLD AND NEW MEDIA IN THE QUEST FOR PEACE with DeeDee Halleck (Approx. 2 hrs.)
Sponsored by WRIR, 97.3 FM
3:30 p.m., The Firehouse Theatre
FREE

Tactical media is creative solidarity in the fight for justice and democracy: resistance to the rampant tendencies toward repression, exploitation, isolation, alienation and corporatization.
– DeeDee Halleck

DeeDee Halleck, filmmaker, co-founder of Paper Tiger Television and the Deep Dish Satellite Network, and Professor Emeritus Department of Communication at the University of San Diego, will present a selection of provocative videos produced by Paper Tiger Television and Deep Dish Satellite Network and discuss the role that independent media can play in building community and promoting social change.

• Community Media Around the World
• Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger
• Shocking and Awful (Iraq War)
• The Last Televangelist, Rev. Billy C. Wirtz -- [We experienced Rev. Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping in Charlottesville, Va., as part of the Virginia Film Festival a few years ago--a service held in an abandoned grocery store. It doesn't get much better than that.]
  

RICHMOND INDIGENOUS GOURD ORCHESTRA plays NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922, 79 min., silent with live score) Sponsored by Plan 9 Music 8:30 p.m., The Firehouse Theatre $10 advance @ Plan 9 Music and JRFF events; $15 at door Seating is limited. Robert Flaherty’s documentary on life with the Eskimos – Itivimuits – of northern Hudson Bay set the standard for narrative nonfiction and made Nanook the Hunter an international celebrity – remember the Eskimo Pie? Flaherty’s chronicle of Nanook’s and his family’s nomadic routine in the frozen North shows man at his best, living harmoniously with his surroundings, i.e. living green in black and white. Seen it before? Hear it new with RIGO’S live accompaniment! The Partner In Art For Life and me saw this at another venue last year, and the sound and experience will be more intimate at the Firehouse. One has to remember that: the family put together for Nanook wasn't all his and that some of the interior igloo scenes were shot on a soundstage under bright lights. Thus, Flaherty created the genre of full-length documentary. Hell, even U.S. Civil War photographers Timothy O' Sullivan and Mathew Brady moved corpses for effect. Barry Bless, of the RIGO, explained to me that the Inuits chose to live up there; they weren't marooned. No poisonous snakes or spiders, malaria, yellow fever, humidity, jungle rot nor many predators except for polar bears and wolves-- and no vegetables. Bless joked that Nanook's people didn't have gourds, either. But the music and sound effects the group created is now tied to the film for me. DONNIE DARKO: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT (2004, 133 min.) with Richard Kelly Co-sponsored by Virginia Film Office 11:30 p.m., The Byrd Theatre Admission $5 Director Richard Kelly will introduce his widely acclaimed feature, the hallucinatory Donnie Darko, an original and dark comic turn on suburban high school late 1980s time travel angst. Referencing everything from Harvey with Jimmy Stewart, Graham Greene’s The Destructors, Marker’s La Jetée to David Lynch and post-modern doppelgangers everywhere, Donnie Darko is a surprisingly assured first outing for Midlothian native Kelly. It was initially released in 2001, and has since been accorded “official cult status.” Please join us for this very special screening. The first time we saw this film was at the Two Boots Theater in Greenwich Village at a midnight showing . Now, here Kelly is, back home, with his preferred edited version. Sunday A.M. update: Interesting cinematic experiences back-to-back: Nanook of the North to Donnie Darko. Films about isolation, adapting to circumstances (or not) and survival of a nuclear family in a confusing and harsh, uncaring world. No fantasy in Nanook's life (except in Flaherty's jiggering of reality), contemplations of immortality, eternity, time and space. Just endless ice on the edge of starvation. Maybe Donnie needed some real Nanook time. Suburbia is a physical isolation that becomes a psychological insularity although you can drive somewhere else. Nanook and his family could travel only by dogsled, kayak and on foot. Without assistance, Donnie would've been dead in few frozen hours. A good audience for the witching hour to see this extended version of John Hughes taking a detour into Rod Serling/David Lynch territory. Amie remarked that the film shows its Lynchian and music video roots, with a dollop of X-Files influence -- which we enjoyed until 9/11 made the series seem rather innocent and irrelevant. Still, Amie said, one could put together a thesis about how Richard Kelly and X-Files writer and producer Vince Gilligan both came out of the cul-de-sac archipelago outside Poe's city. (Gilligan was a couple years behind me at Lloyd C. Bird High School -- Go Skyhawks!) The big addition to the film is the text of the book Philosophy of Time Travel. Kind of reminded me of Myst: portentous and mysterious. I wondered where he came up with the material that expained how the Darko version of time travel worked. And we had an experience of film festival reality mesh -- Joy Division was playing in the background of the Donny Darko house party scene. Kelly spoke a little prior to the screening; he was genial and remarked that he was 25 when he made Darko and seems so long ago now, and made in a blur. Hell, it was 2000-2001, looking back at 1988 -- ah the far away days of Dukakis v. Bush the Senior. And that's enough of a blur right there. I'm wondering if he's just plain tired of talking about the work -- he gave us no special insights -- but you know, billion-eyed audience, I'm an adherent of time distortion and past alterations and alternatives, and that a little free will discussion Darko has with Dr. John Carter, I mean, Noah Wiley, about free will or fate, that concludes with the science teacher saying, "I can't continue this topic of conversation...Because I could lose my job." Kind of sums up why we tend to see matters in a linear fashion. It's less controversial and easier to function. I'd completely forgotten that the adoralicious Maggie Gyllenhaal was playing against her actual brother in the film--there were many nuances that, having not seen the film awhile, that were refreshed on this viewing on the Byrd's big screen. Oh, and he's filming his next--which I think is about a strange time capsule placed in the footing of a school that's unearthed and there's documents with prophecies that have come true--except for the final one. (At least that's what it was when I last interviewed up years ago--but I think that plot line is discarded). Now this one seems more akin to an updated Brothers Grim/Poe fable Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella are in it; film's called The Box, and Kelly is using parts of Hampton Roads and Boston to resemble Richmond circa 1976. I don't get this part, but, maybe we'll hear more later.

SUNDAY:



SOUTHLAND TALES (2006, 145 min.) with Richard Kelly
Co-sponsored by Virginia Film Office & Velocity Comics
12:00 noon, The Byrd Theatre
Admission $5
Guest Richard Kelly’s follow-up to Donnie Darko is an apocalyptic sci-fi war story that challenges an audience’s narrative expectations. Naysayed at Cannes, Southland Tales was re-edited and released and championed by critic Amy Taubin as a new form of cinema along with David Lynch’s Inland Empire, a form employing the associative editing and continuity breaking conventions of dreams. Kelly readily acknowledges the multiple pop cultural influences – comics, music videos, movies, internet – in his films but still manages to somehow twist them in his own image. A Richmond premiere!

The film was booed at Cannes. All this and Mandy Moore, too! She plays a manipulative, foul-mouthed political socialite. The Maestro himself is pictured below, and Sarah Michelle Gellar dances with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson during a sequence that maybe was or wasn't intended to resemble "Dance With The Stars" but while aboard a gigantic zeppelin. And we like zeppelins, or, to be accurate, airships.

Kelly's realization of a 21st century luxury airshp, as sleek, 1920s Deco through a 21st century aesthetic also bears some resembles to the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" U.S.S. Enterpise. Images Via Rotten Tomatoes.com.

When the lights came up at the Byrd Theatre following The Southland Tales experience, Amie turned to me and said, "It's like Vince Gilligan. Like you. It's Richmond. It's time travel. It's all about the end of the world and going forward while going backward."

I think she got something quite right there.

Kelly is one of the Mellennials; a generation in the US bracketed by their media experience ranging from the Challenger explosion to Lady Diana's death to the Columbine slaughter to the televised Gulf Wars to 9/11. It's a generation afflicted/infected/affected by the Internet, global warming, blogs, smart bombs, AIDS, video games and Southern presidents. These under-40/30s don't just expect to see the revolution televised, but that CNN will break in to announce the world's final moments. How else do you account for V for Vendetta?

Kelly is one of those younger directors who've swallowed pop culture whole and now release the mashed up results in frantic frenetic visual collages.

Southland also represents how movies aren't movies anymore. Well, they've rarely been art for art's sake. Kelly doesn't want to be Jonas Mekas or Stan Brakahge. He's about something else, as are movies in the 21st century. No, movies have always been about pushing ancillary products: soundtracks, toys, fashion lines and assorted touchstone reproductions of themselves.

But here is an example where a mere movie--stretching and straining to pack as much information into the frame as possible-- is one component part of a universe-- a mythos--that utilizes graphic novels and the Internet to complement and overlap a story with layers to give a sense of complexity. The complicated interrelatedness of these realizations give a greater sense of importance to them than they merit. I'll leave aside whether they are huge wastes of time. Their audiences don't think so. Go ask any devoted fan of Lost.

The sum effect is a cataract of information that people Kelly's age have had to figure out how to process. They're exposed to such attention-robbing nuisances from the cradle on. And don't even get me started on video games that are now movies that spawn more video games and comic books.

All that said, I don't know sitting here in the misty Richmond evening waiting to see Juno if Southland Tales is a disaster movie or a movie disaster. That he shot it in 30 days accounts for the film's headlong rush.

I'm reminded of those 1970s films, The Towering Inferno, the Airport series, (many of which featured the late great Charlton Heston) The Poseidon Adventure, or trying-to-be-zany It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

The premise is simple: load a film up with a variety of recognizable faces from either their marquee wattage or character value, put them in a frantic situation and keep the pace rolling and the unusual cameos flowing. Voilá!

But in most of the above films, the situation was straight-forward: a burning building, a crashing airplane, Jimmy Durante kicks a bucket and sets in motion a crazy cross-country car chase in search of a pile of money under the Big "W."

Kelly's through lines are multiple and multifaceted. He said it himself: the movie starts with an atomic bomb blast during a Fourth of July party and goes on from there, to a Doomsday Scenario underwritten by Hustler and Bud Light. He said that perhaps that's why he hired the 1990s roster of Saturday Night Live and a Los Angeles comedy troupe, The Mechanicals, to bring his doomed, distressed and demented characters to life. (I recall how director Philip Kaufman hired a comedy troupe to represent "The Permanent Press Corps" attached to the U.S. space program in his The Right Stuff.)

And with an eye to the culture, there's actors playing characters who seem like other actors: a Will Ferrell double on roller blades; a Rob Lowe political suit (or, maybe, Robert Downey Jr.), and Kevin Smith sounding like Jack Black, playing a latter day Karl Marx. There's even a floating glowing ice cream van reminiscent of the car in Repo Man.

"This is only a movie, after all," Kelly said to the Byrd audience.

Yes, and it carries themes of his other one: vehicular homicides, eyes shot out, time travel, free will and fate and the End of Everything. I was reminded, too, Until The End of the World. The 1991 Wim Wenders endeavor featured, among other things, like Kelly's films-- an incredible soundtrack (which I still have, on tape, bought new at the time). Ominous chords conveyed by Moby were also reminiscent of the Wenders epic.

The '91 film also had a crazy scientist portrayed (naturally) by Max Von Sydow, here played by Wallace Shawn (!) who is a cross between his Smartest Man In The World from the Princess Bride, his journalist character in The Moderns ("If it wasn't for me, those people would think Surrealism was a breakfast cereal!") and Gary Oldman's Jean-Baptiste Zorg in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element -- another mashup of a film, that worked much better. Kelly, like, Besson, suddenly stops the show for a production number aboard a mammoth vessel.

[And another weird connection: Shawn was in the classic My Dinner With André that was lensed right here in Richmond, Va., at the Jefferson Hotel. Thank Thespis that the great Louis Malle, Shawn and Andre Gregory made the film 1981, just before the advent of hyperkeneticism in movies that Southland Tales is just but one and fuller expression. Only on HBO could something like Dinner made today.]

A reviewer of Until The End of the World praised Wenders for showing the audience a glimpse of the future. I'm paraphrasing from memory, but words tothe effect of: some films claim to show the future, but here, the future is impinging on the present. Maybe that's what I missed in Kelly's film: Germanic seriousness as opposed to U.S. antic-ness.

But that's personal taste; whether you prefer the first Batman or Batman Begins. I caved in to commercials and stood in line to see the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton effort but have always faulted the thing because of the devolution into glory passes of the Batmobile and Kim Basinger screaming. More rain. More darkness. More psychodrama. I don't care if it is a comic book, make it like Bergman meets Brueghel becomes The Bat-Man. Then you have the great trifecta: pretentious and portentous and ponderous. And I don't care. Why do we give up hours of our lives in big dark rooms, anyway? Entertainment is one thing; creating memorable art is another.

But there's something else at work here, too. There was some Charlie Kaufman in that a half-baked movie script becomes the movie you're watching.

So, OK. There's plenty of nods and winks and irony -- so much that the movie has more tics and twitches than some viewers may find comprehensible.

But for all the operatic pretense of Southland Tales, I left it feeling that I should be more than just conflicted.

Amie at one point whispered to me: Kitsch is hard.

But I don't think that's what Kelly sought to accomplish. If he did, as Amie said, it isn't bad enough to be good, nor bad enough to be really bad.

Camp is tough, if you're attempting to make it fresh and satire is difficult if your quarry is the sum total of contemporary existence. There were some amazing inspired moments -- the scene on the mega-zeppelin where the National Anthem his sung by a heavy-bosomed chanteuse backed by a contemporary music quartet is just one. The mighty mite, buffed Cheri Oteri kicking serious ass is another.


But after the third or fourth killing and arms thrown up like that Spanish Civil War soldier photograph, I got kind of disheartened. [That's the Robrt Capa image, via kilroywashere.org.]

And in the end, I guess, I'm from Richmond, and I like my dystopia dark, rainy, dismal and monochromatic, with far less self-reference and with fewer levels of plot.

I don't need to be reminded I'm seeing a movie, I want to experience that world the director is taking me into, even if I'm unnerved and distressed. And if there are several story strands, they each should be fascinating.

Finally, was it Orson Welles?-- I think it was--who said being director of a major motion picture was like a boy getting the biggest train set in the world. Kelly is having fun. He's smiling through the apocalypses he keeps making movies about.

Maybe I'm too old to think that the End of the Age is a laughing matter.

BAD GIRLS (2000-2005, 85 min.) with David Williams 5:00 p.m., The Firehouse Theatre Admission $5 Another in a series of works that delve into artists’ personalities and processes, Richmond filmmaker David Williams offers a work-in-progress on the local art duo known as “Bad Girl Art.” Keithley Pierce and Georgia Terry--who died in June 2007-- who make their art with an unflinching honesty and a humorous tongue-in-cheek quality derived from their own relationships with men and family. After cultivating a loyal patronage, they’re finally able to quit their day jobs and pursue their one true calling. Stay for a Q&A after the film with Mr. Williams. If you don't see a Williams film here, the likelihood of you seeing it is remote, unless you're on a festival circuit somewhere. We love David and his work, and we're honored that he makes his art here.

As with all of his films, Bad Girls is a Williams character study -- and Keithley is quite a character; but real, vulnerable-- eccentric--and committed to her craft. She's gone from real estate to making her vision. Able to spin out world-wise steel magnolia-styled bon mots and apply them to fanciful, folk-styled portraits with the drawling ease of thought, but proving that making them is an industrious, wearying, chain-smoking process.

The film begins with a jolt--the death of Keithley's father. And ends with an ambiguous image of her standing in Hollywood Cemetery, her back to the camera. Fatality is never far from this story, which is also busy with the Bad Girls making their pieces in mass production fashion, and enlisting family and friends to help. By turns funny, poignant, and always authentic, this film deserves more viewings by other audiences other than the packed house at the Firehouse.

WHY HAS BODHI-DHARMA LEFT FOR THE EAST? (1989, 135 min., Korean with subtitles) 7:30 p.m., The Firehouse Theatre Admission $5 The first major Korean film to be released in the U.S., director Bae Yong-kyun’s Zen saga relates the last days of an elderly Buddhist monk, and his two charges, a disciple and an orphan. As he prepares for his death, he wisely prepares them for their own life paths. Stunning cinematography in a restored print from Milestone Films. In Korean with subtitles.

I regret that Amie and I just couldn't stay for this; I think the film would've provided a unique capstone to our movie feast this weekend. We just had to go home.

The True Richmond Stories Are Here! The True Richmond Stories Are Here!

Yes, the World and his Wife can rest easy. The second printing of True Richmond Stories is arrving at finer book stores, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com even as we speak. Now, over at Chop Suey Tuey in Carytown right this instant they got 15 of the first editions that just, for reasons I cannot explain, showed up. I think History Press was shifting some back orders around, I dunno. I got a call from a friend telling me about that many were at of all places Sam's Club in Southside. So.

Anyway, I ambled over there and signed, dated and explained that the hand annotations weren't from just somebody writing in your book, but from me...writing in your book.

That's me, after the September release event, during the afterparty at Cafe Gutenberg.

Along the way I met filmmaker David Williams, and Keithley Pierce, one of the stars of his Bad Girls film screening tomorrow.

Federal Marshals! Open up!

Our place on Colonial Avenue has a criminal past. The place was a half-way house for those released from incarceration who had drug and alcohol problems. We on occasion get pleading letters from men behind bars who are soon to be released and don't have any immediate place for residence.

And there's also fierce communications from creditors--used to be, by phone, but not so much anymore, and maybe even a sheriff who didn't get the memo six years ago that those people don't live here anymore.

Well, this week, the Partner In Art For Life was home during the day. A knocking came at the door. This means we know the person. Amie thought the timing odd, as nobody had called, but we still have friends who do drop in. The knocking on the door got louder.

She throws her house robe on and dashes down stairs and peers out the front door window to see....two men in dark suits and one holding up a badge.

"Federal marshals!" was the insistence.

"Oh no," Amie thought. "What did we do? What did we not do?"

They were, actually, looking for a prior resident whose name was familiar to us due to correspondence that she's always noting, 'No longer at this address' and clipping to the post box. Amie explained to the federales the recent history. One chuckled, "Do you want us to stay?"

Amie said they were more like actors in a film portraying federal marshals. They did apologize for the interruption.


Weird.

[Image: Marc's Voice blog]

Hey Y'aa-aalll: It's First Friday


Yes, billion-eyed audience, if you've visited here often, you know what this image means: these two ladies, of opposing expressions but exuberant attitudes, shown here during a long ago opening at the defunct Three Miles Gallery which is now Tarrant's restaurant -- it's First Friday in Richmond.

The Weather Channel says' "Soon It's Gonna Rain" so, ladies, carry a bumbershoot and slip on a pair of cute but functional galoshes.

The printmakers (Southern Graphics Council) are coming to town, thus there's a number of galleries dedicated to one of the oldest, and newest, art forms. Check out Transmission's exhibition of the Women of Studio 23, and visit the gallery with the most appropriate name this month, Ghostprint.

Now, further uptown, actually in Uptown, as this strip of Ruchmun' styles itself, at the Red Door Gallery is work by five artists, including Amie Oliver, my partner-in-art, in an exhibition called Sugar and Spice. You have until the end of the month to see the work of these unique makers and creators.

Another Oliver, Rebecca Goldberg Oliver, has new paintings up at Gallery6. She's an Art Cheerleader, you know, and they won a Muse award last night at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Gooooo- Art!


Another friend of the Blue Racccoon was celebrated in the Marble Hall; developer Tom Robinson, whose Vacant Spaces = Artful Spaces program makes waiting for the bus in midtown even more of an an aesthetic experience, and also provides attention for empty and neglected interwar storefronts. He's a caution, that Tom, as they used to say.


By the way, for those of you who've anxious about the second printing of True Richmond Stories, it'll be in the finer regional book shops as of March 28. If your Little Shop Around The Corner doesn't carry it by April, demand that the slender volume be stocked. Or -- you can go to Amazon.com.

Last night I spoke with a book group hosted by Katie at the "Dooley Mansion" and had a splended time. They didn't mind my three-cornered hat.

In other unrelated news, Charlie
Wilson's War has arrived at the
Byrd Theatre. We're going.

Slouching Toward 2008: A Miscellany


The yoga-dacious, cheer-riffic Kendra is a cover girl for
Art and Style Weekly's year-end Score. Scott Elmquist
photo.


Billion-eyed audience, I'm taking a pause from the present shuddering of the world to catch up on some of this and that.

Direct your attention to the year-end issue of Style Weekly and a few familiar faces and mentions of favorite things. First on the cover, the Art Cheerleaders. Frequent glommers here may remember the cheerleaders from the appearance of Kendra and Rebecca in the video shot for the collaboration between Amie and me, "Dictation," for her just-closed "Walk The Walk" exhibition. You can see the cheerleaders in motion, and more, down at the December 5 post. Great to see Rebecca Oliver, Robbie Kinter, Mary Burruss captured in full flight. And Jocelyn Bandas and Rebecca Buhrman, too. Jocelyn looks quite excited by the prospect of 2008.

I can't tell you how wonderful their presence felt...cheerleaders jumping and shaking their pom poms for history and art! What a great cultural pradigm shift. Made me feel good, that's for sure. Yeahhhhh art!

David Timberline gave the Firehouse Theatre a mention, "The year ended on a hopeful note, though. Firehouse Theatre Project’s brilliant rumination on race, “Spinning Into Butter,” underscored theater’s unique ability to address serious social issues in ways that are both entertaining and engaging." Dave also has a theater blog of his own, here.


*********************************************************************

Last night I was walking past Black Swan Books and Nick and Ellen invited me in to sign their remaining stock of books, about 10 or so, to which also I added hand-made editorial ammendations that are getting changed in the second printing. I've received some quite wonderful reports back from people who've given the slender volume as a gift. I thank all those 1,800 or so people who have made TRS the earliest book among its first releases ever to go into an encore printing.

During the next few days, I'm sorting out through piles of stuff to get my desk and office ready to begin making progress on research for the second book.

*************************************************************************

During the Christmas holiday, we had up from Mississippi Amie's mom Sue and her nephew Justin. This allowed us to show off the town a little. I introduced Justin to the New York Deli, and during the moderate temperatures, walked him up Monument Avenue giving discourse on the histories of the monuments.



Being more of an outdoorsman than his uncle-by-marriage, he could identify the types of fish carved into Maury's pedestal. Also pointed out to him that the swirling mass of humanity wround the globe presented Monument Avenue's only woman, and she's quite a hottie, I think. (The figure next to the akilter boat, left. You can click on the image to make her more discernible.)

I became one of those tourist types I wrote about in "24 Hours With General Lee" -- taking pictures of my relative in front of each statue. Well, he wanted them. I wasn't tugging him kicking and screaming, he's a bit of a Civil War buff.

Then we went down to the Lee Houseon East Franklin. Because of the holiday, I couldn't get him in to the back porch where Mathew Brady took the famous photograph of him with the Cross-and-Bible door providing a background for him, just-so posed by the photographer to give the impression that Lee was both a main of great faith, and the commander of many martyrs. I also explained that Lee didn't really reside in the house for long; the place was where he came to after the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox.



I also had opportunity to give him a tour of Hollywood Cemetery and show him some of the more prominent among those in their eternal rest there, and of couse, the Pyramid.

My Grande Louvre, however, has been suffering from her second bad head cold of the season and had to deal with not feeling well, relatives in town and Christmas. This past Monday when the weather was dreadful, she shepherded them to the American Civil War Center at Tredegar, where Amie was distracted because people we knew were in the films, including our pal Raynor Scheine, who now lives here after more than 30 years in New York. Then they the Museum and White House of the Confederacy and the Virginia Historical Society's Lee and Grant exhibit.

Amie said, despite her depleted physical condition, she enjoyed playing tourist, going to places she's never been here. Good that Justin saw the Museum of the Confederacy before its collection is broken up and sent to three different locations throughout the state.

**********************************************************************

My father's birthday is Christmas Eve. That morning, Amie and me, with her mother, and Justin driving his rental car, aided by Mapquest directions, journeyed to a Cracker Barrel restaurant somewhere off Hull Street Road deep in the whorls of Chesterfield County's cul-de-sac archipelago. This is what Dad wanted, and it was his birthday, his 69th.

I'd not seen my sister Sharon and her husband Kevin in months, and had missed my niece Mya . Amie gave them a portrait painted of Mya.

The place was packed and with a waiting line. So many people who looked as though they perhaps had breakfast there more than once-a-year. I couldn't eat that much food on a regular basis and my Dad shouldn't, either.

But perhaps a present to him came later, on Christmas Day, when he dropped by to deliver some presents Mom forgot to haul to the Cracker Barrel. In conversation about family, I was reminded that Dad's two older brothers were both dead--of heart problems. And he'd had little dealings with them during the past decades. To call them estranged is euphemistic. He has a younger brother, whom he's not seen in 30 years, and didn't even know whether he was alive, and if so, where.

Well. I put the Interwebs to work. Using Switchboard.com, upon Amie's suggestion, and Google, we found someone with his brother's name and that of his wife living in Arizona. No phone number, but an address, and a chance to communicate. Further, with his 50th high school reunion coming up in October, Dad was curious to see if he could find a classmate to whom--for some weird reason--he'd given letters written to Dad from Wernher von Braun! Dad in those days was interested in cars and rockets and aerodynamics. "They used to call me Rocket," Dad told me, and not in a kind way, I gathered. I think we found him and his phone number--the person had the right age and an unusual name--living in Minnesota.

Hope he's able to connect with these folks after all this time.


***************************************************************************


I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the recent death of retired Virginia Museum of Fine Arts éminence grice Fred Brandt. His memorial service was quite High Church Episcopal, according to a friend of ours who was there, which surprised him. He'd known Brandt many years, "And I couldn't remember a time when he ever mentioned the word God." Perhaps he enjoyed the aspects of ritual and ceremony.

He's one of those people who can make an impact on a city like Richmond that needed people like him to help mold the culture, yet few are as well aware of his handiwork as they should be. Writer Ed Slipek Jr. gave him an appropriate farewell in Style. Another one of Richmond's cultural lights has gone out as those of Brandt's generation fade into the mystic. Pax.

Bloggus Interruptus:
When good programs go bad

Via Cooqy: the 'Trainwreck at Montparnasse,1865."

Billion - eyed audience, forgive my lack of fresh posting during the past few days. My browser and perhaps computer operating system are at odds -- this is what Amie has deduced thus far. Reloading Firefox, performing various cyber-Santaria rituals over the machine through Norton and other such devices, caused the blog to operate a bit, then, last night, crashing when I sought to type an update. Does the same thing with YouTube and some Google searches. So, I'm at a loss.

Anybody out there know anything about the relationship between Mac OX 10, Firefox and Blogger? Is my operating system not upgraded and that's causing the friction? Haaalllp!!

Meanwhile, like overburdened sacks filled with Christmas presents, I've amassed bundles of backlogged news and observations. F'rinstance.

• The slender volume, True Richmond Stories, is going into its second printing by the History Press and that collection will be now be owned by yours truly. This is the earliest that a book has undergone a second printing for House of History, and for this we are all quite glad. On sale at finer bookstores throughout Richmond.

•Two women died in the past few days, one whom I wish I'd met, the other whom I knew and served as an inspiration and muse for my partner-in-art-for-life. The piece below was inspired by the late artist Jackie Wall, made for Amie's current exhibition, up through December 23.


Jackie Wall was a true individual, a great lady, whose artistry was part of her life as much as her work. You should go to Amie's blog and read more about Jackie and her life.

Amie visited with Jackie this past fall when she took the photograph upon which this drawing is based. Jackie didn't get to see this piece; Amie had meant to call her to bring her into town from Farmville; but just goes to bear out what it is that we're aware of on an intellectual level, but ignore through the pragmatic denials that allow us to live: You just never know that if the the most recent moment you spent with someone will be the last time.

You may also read a review of Amie's Walk The Walk exhibition, here.

Another idiosyncratic individual left this mortal plane, and it was by her works that I knew her, and not the ones most others recognized. She was Christine A. Gibson.

In her obituary, Gibson's face looked almost like somebody I knew, and I imagine, in that Richmond way, she was someone with whom I had a passing familiarity from "around"-- seeing her at this or the other thing.

But I was oblivious to her being a charter member of BEEX, the Richmond punk band (image below, from 30underDC). For years I've walked by her house in Vine Street and admired her antic Barbie Garden, featuring usually mostly nude Barbies getting savaged by also nude Kens and other misfit toys. She changed the tableaux to match the seasons. I even put the Barbie Garden on a walking tour I conducted this past winter.

I took a memorial walk by the other day. Someone had cleaned out the Barbie Garden of dead leaves and refreshed the scene with doll bodies fixed with candy cane heads, and lights, and on the front porch was a big, heart-shaped floral arrangement.

Great sadness, all the way around, for everybody.



•Why in all the hair-tugging, shirt-ripping and ponderous pontificating about the latest bout of Crupi here, nobody has mentioned one or two curious gaffes.

On page 44-45 of the assessment about the Richmond region's future, or lack thereof (both of Richmond's potential for dynamic existence in days ahead, and, what one may call a region), he writes pertaining to the conversion to the strong mayor system and the current Governor-Mayor:

"The question in Richmond today is not that the exercise of power was necessary, but about the extent and manner in which it is exercised. It is hard for a reformer to sustain the message three years out because without action, words become rhetoic. In the late 19th century, people felt the same way about Mayor John Fulmer Bright."

Bright, not so much, and too much

Fair enough. But Mayor Bright--one of the most oxymoronic names ever in the history of Richmond public servants--ruled the city for 16 years, 1924-1940. This was a crucial period for the city's growth; what could've been a progressive era was squandered by Bright and his supporters. The time was not the late 19th century. Nor was Bright a reformer. He was a diametric opposite. The mayor refused to take a dime from the Federal government in the bottom of the Great Depression.

When he died in 1953, The Times-Dispatch eulogized, "He was probably the most conservative citizen of what is, on the whole, a conservative city. Pretty much anything that had been going on for a long time seemed good...No matter what anybody said, no matter how many cities discarded their bunglesome, outmoded systems...ours was a "splendid form of government...If he ever changed his position on an important public matter, the event escaped us."

Bright's astounding stubborness ran the gamut from orneriness to absurdity. He opposed hiring additional firefighters and a court order forced him to create the position of public safety director. He opposed Byrd Airport, the Virginia State Library, the appointment of black police officers, purchasing the Mosque (now Landmark Theatre) and, to his credit, Federal housing projects (but he didn't advocate historic preservation and responsible adaptation/renovation, either).

He once ordered that the manly attributes of the Bull Durham logo be painted over to prevent giving offense. Bright, a native Richmonder and physician at the Medical College of Virginia was always an impeccable dresser, spoke well, carried himself as befit a brigadier general in the National Guard (through the First Virginia Regiment), and demonstrated personal generosity. His will set up a trust fund which resulted in Patrick Henry Memorial Park across from St. John's Church and he distributed $77,520 in cash to a variety of churches and charitable organizations. His bequest set up the Children's Milk Fund that came to be administrated by Family and Children's Service of Richmond.

And, one old Richmonder told me, Bright the only person who had drapes in his East Grace Street house.

"Good government for less money"

Bright's sclerotic tenure proved one of the enduring arguments for overhauling the city's government to prevent the rise of his like again. Despite vigorous attempts to unseat Bright and constant criticism from the press, his disdain for which was no secret, he kept enough of the status quo happy and assured his return to the office, again and again. His philosophy was "good government for less money or better government for the same money." City leadership remained entrenched and placed greater emphasis on public order, tradition and white unity, while deferring the modernization of public services and structures, as historian Marie Tyler-McGraw describes.

There was, for example, no city planning office. Engineers were allowed to do their work without oversight. Bright's reluctance to even think about planning bequeathed to Richmond, by the fault of his doing nothing, oceans of parking lots and highways bisecting the city through historic and (at the time), poor neighborhoods.

Pottage As Legacy

The city charter was at last changed in 1947, giving the city an appointed mayor, with a city-manager system, but that proved, in the end, worthless, too. Why Richmond can't manage to manage herself is another entire question and one the Crupi report can't answer. Our failings as a city are maddening and pathetic.

I am reminded of an incident years ago during one of these perennial conferences on "regional cooperation." This was held in the gymnasium of Douglas Southall Freeman High School. A white-haired gentleman stood up during a comments period and stated with a straight face that Richmond ought to realize that it is lost and should turn in its charter and let Henrico and Chesterfield counties administrate her! The Berlin Scenario! Build a wall around Richmond and have checkpoints at the cardinal gates.

I've since encountered other sentiments, not too dissimilar from that gentleman's -- including one drunk Henrico uberfrau who declared to me Richmond needs to be stopped, because all they want to do is support Hillary Clinton and that can't happen. I mean, she was just short of declaring the residents should be packed up in trucks.

The residents of the cul-de-sac archipelago won't be satisfied until in some apocalyptic scenario, the mighty River James roars from her banks and, like a socio-economic neutron bomb, wipes away all the wretched, poor, halt, lame, deaf, dumb and people of color, and cleans the city so the Bourbanites can move in.

Always Merry: Vanity Fair's version about Duncan-Blake

Wit of the Staircase, Dec. 25, 2006, Duncan with Marc Jacobs Santa Claus, by Andrew Stiles.


But. While getting the 3 p.m. coffee yesterday with my office mate, taking us to a rather grim 7-11, the new Vanity Fair is out and in it, as we were promised back in the fall, a big story about Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan, "The Golden Suicides."

I want to spend more time with this piece, but, can't at the moment. Suffice to say, the story quite in the physical sense was dropped on the doorstep of writer Nancy Jo Sales when, Father Frank Morales showed up the day after Jeremy Blake walked off the Rockaway Beach.

Morales is Sales' ex-husband. He was also the subject of a profile/interview conducted by Duncan, with a cameo by Blake, on a much-cited posting on The Wit of the Staircase. (Link above)

So. Sales got the inside scoop on everybody, though I'm wondering how much corduroying of the brow was done over the conflict-of-interest aspect of all this, though her referring to Morales as the Fox Mulder of conspiracy theorists--as a compliment?--perhaps gave her journalistic "distance."

But that's not quite the end of that, either. You know, in the old movies, and even today on some TV shows, reporters are yanked from assignments by bellowing editors because they're "too close to the story."

In this case, seems that quite real writer John Connolly was supposed to have written the feature--I'd have to go through the archives here but I remember someone writing in the comments that this was the person--but for some reason, Sales was given the piece to finish. See the Society of Mutual Autopsy for the salacious details.

And I thought, too, when reading the feature, that the interval of "ten minutes" between Blake's arrival at the apartment and inviting up Morales, and the Father's discovery of the death scene with all the attendant police clamor seems...too truncated; more like an episode of Law and Order. Which is what this whole event, in its bare outlines, resembles.

But now with Vanity Fair's contribution, the Duncan-Blake deaths have reached media apotheosis, leastwise far as print media goes.

I'll have more on the story, and other matters, I hope before too long but my computer issues may make regular posting difficult in the coming days.

Shameless Self-Promotion: A continuing series
Hell, nobody else will do it for you, as the saying goes...

Here, billion-eyed audience, is filmmaker David Williams' verison of the event presented by me and the partner-in-art-for life Amie Oliver, with help from the Art Cheerleaders (Kendra, blonde; and Rebecca, both artists in their own right). This piece, called "Dictation," was part of Amie's Walk The Walk exhibit at Plant Zero Art Center, available for viewing through December 23. I read pieces about the arts from my book True Richmond Stories.

This is me, Amie, Kendra (left) and Rebecca posed in front of the wall on which Amie wrote her impressions of my subject matter. Yes, she writes backward with her left hand with greater ease than she can scribe the other way. Yes, she installed a mirror so that passersby who cared to or even noticed could read the text.



Then here's an image of me and Amie with her long-time friend, artist and professor Ken Mitchell, visiting Richmond from the Glasgow School of Art a few weeks back. We love Ken--I first met him when Amie took our wedding holiday around the Scottish Highlands--and were happy to see him even for a brief time. As you can see, too, Ken took some True Richmond Stories with him.


And to round out the multi-media aspect of this post, here is the 26-minute interview conducted by Tim Bowring with me and Amie on his WRIR 97.3 show, Zero Hour.

http://www.twango.com/flash/audioplayer.aspx?media=Aok.10001&channelname=Aok.public&autoplay=true

Below is a snippet from the New York Deli event in Carytown that Amie shot. Here I'm presenting a piece about Martin Hawkins, the Revolutionary War-era sturgeon rider in the James River. Behind me are members of the Happy Lucky Combo; Pippin Barnett on percussion, Barry Bless with the accordian, and Dave Yoh on upright electric bass.

This was a great time. Ward Tefft of Chop Suey Books brough books across the street from Chop Suey Tuey -- about 20 or so-- and sold out of them. People came off the street having seen the slender volume setting on the front window shelf table, even after the music was over. The attraction: the Hollywood Cemetery pyramid on the cover. This is primal stuff; the pyramid is a greater symbol of Richmond than even the Lee Monument, since it is old, mysterious and the shape and meaning are more ancient than Richmond, race, politics, or even the Civil War (which is its putative purpose, commemorating 18,000 Southern dead buried there).

One young woman bought five books. I signed expressions of my appreciation for her choice; and that of her varied future in-laws and family.

The New York Deli gang passed to Amie a splended signature book in which they all expressed their appreciation that made me feel as though I'd accomplished something far more important than I think I have....humbling, is what it was.

Advertisement for Myself: True Richmond Stories

In honor of the late great Norman Mailer, I post this advertisement for myself.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, me and Amie will be at the Can Can Brasserie in Carytown from 6-8 p.m. She'll be showing examples of her work, and I'll be reading examples of mine, for whoever shows up.

Copies of the slender volume will be available.

Not included on this announcement is the November 30 revisitation I'll be making to the Fountain Bookstore, a lunchtime, daytime signing and selling kind of thing. Read all about it here.

Hope some of you billion-eyed audience can make it out tomorrow. Some rain is predicted. Pack your bumbershoot.

The above video was created by filmmaker David Williams and represents highlights of the "Dictation" program performed by me, my partner-in-art Amie Oliver, two of the Art Cheerleaders, Kendra Wadsworth (blonde), and Rebecca Goldberg Oliver. Both of them are artists in their own right.

I'm reading selections from True Richmond Stories that deal with art and art-making and circumstances that had a direct effect on Amie's creative life. This is part of the theme of memory, history--personal and otherwise--as presented in her "Walk The Walk" exhibtion at Plant Zero.

The older guy shambling by the Art Cheerleaders at about 3:43 in the video is my dad.

In the pan of he crowd, you don't see a cluster of folks at the conjunction of the hallways. Why they didn't come forward and sit among the others I don't know.

The cat's name is Zero.

Yes, the three-cornered hat is mine; I had it made for in the day when I was a regular performer in the St. John's Church "Give Me Libery or Give Me Death" reenactment.

And, yes, Amie is writing backwards with her left hand. She is able to scribe with her left hand going one way, and the right the other.

She installed an oval mirror attached to the railing that's visible so that people could, if they slowed down and saw fit to, read her ruminations while looking at their reflection.