A butterfly in the Amazon flaps its wings...

Last year I wrote a story about the marching band at the United House of Prayer near my house. In it, I mentioned that several members of the group wore Atlanta Braves caps to go with their red, white and blue uniforms, which prompted the Richmond Braves to send over some caps to the church. It was a cute postscript, I thought, but the law of unintended consequences is equally amusing.

From today's Times-Dispatch:

When a group of 50 protesters crashed a pro-ballpark rally at the 17th Street Farmers' Market, the stadium crowd kicked up the volume, literally.

A 12-man band from United House of Prayer in Church Hill—all wearing Richmond Braves caps—played their tubas, saxophones and drums as loud as they could and drowned out the anti-stadium cries.

I'm still on the fence about the stadium. On the one hand, I feel like it's a classic Richmond solution-in-search-of-a-problem. Let's face it, the reason the Braves don't draw isn't that the Diamond is charm-challenged. Like most examples of Richmond's mediocrity, the Braves suffer from a confluence of problems: a meager sporting tradition, a disinterested fan base and the fact that most player development is at AA now. AAA is a holding tank for slumping big timers and a form of purgatory for guys who will probably never make the Show their home (like, say, Stubby Clapp).

Moreover, R-Braves games are already a hell of a lot of fun, and I seriously doubt that the kind of guys a new retro stadium attracts (you know, the ones who tie their sweaters around their necks) are enough of an economic base for a team. They're not real fans, and they don't go often enough.

Still, Shockoe Bottom is a bit of a wasteland. The farmer's market and train station are jokes, the bars are mostly meathead magnets that change owners every 90 days or so, and even the jewel of the area, Cafe Gutenberg, would be unremarkable in any other city. I can't see a stadium screwing this hodgepodge up much more.

But I also don't buy the stadium boosters' claims that it will be self-financing, and I'm glad Wilder is holding their feet to the fire on this one. While the noise of the debate over this thing rises (and, okay, I am a bit uncomfortable with my role in same), I'm hopeful fiscal responsibility will be the final note.

Paper tigers

My review of the American version of The Office is now available for public consumption. The series may be a doomed idea, but it's really, really funny. Seriously.

Pinhead spars above his weight class (again)

Striking with speed usually reserved for the paper's editorial board, Times-Dispatch "film critic" Dan Neman (above) uses valuable Entertainment-section space today to review a movie that came out six months ago. Included are such observational gems as "Editing is a ruthless business" and "Because abortion is such a volatile subject, we thought it was important to make the film's topic public." Thanks, Dan, for sharing the plot of the movie you're reviewing. Such candor is rare among the inexplicably employed.

Go Cavs

You probably won't read about this in any Richmond media, because it concerns Charlottesville, but The Virginia Quarterly is a finalist for a General Excellence Award at this year's National Magazine Awards. Which is a very big deal.

You experience sick, I experience music

It didn't take long for coffee shock to set in; I dropped the missus off at work this morning on my way to get our tire fixed and stopped at Chick Fil-A for breakfast. All those "Ah, so this is what life is about" moments I had out West haunted me with each sip. On the other hand, here at home I can go to an ATM in the morning and not have to flee for my life while a couple aggressive street dudes make a play for my checking account. (Believe me, it's not worth the jail time, fellas.)


On Sunday, with nothing to do until the evening, I decided to go ahead and check out the Experience Music Project. I didn't really want to go, but I talked myself into it in an internal dialogue that went roughly like this:

ME

You know, you probably won't be back here for a long time. What if someone asks you your opinion of the museum?

ME

I don't really hang out with people who care about stuff like that.

ME

Still, you are looking for a job. And besides that, you've already eaten that whole box of Thin Mints you bought from the Girls Scouts on the ferry, taken photos of yourself in the hotel bathrobe and watched two SportsCenters—and it's not even 10 a.m.

ME

But it costs like $20 to get in.

ME

Money you'd gladly spend on beer.

And so on. In the end, boredom and fear of being asked about it in a job interview won out, so I swallowed hard and paid my 20 beans, reminding myself that at least I was helping to keep Ann Powers in epiphanies. The museum was...okay. It was cool to see Gene Simmons' costume up close (even if it was from the back-in-makeup tour), I guess, and I enjoyed the history of Seattle music exhibit as well as the Beatles and Hendrix stuff.

I am congenitally unable to appreciate Bob Dylan, but I tried anyway at the museum's main exhibit. There were some cool fetish objects (e.g., Woody Guthrie's notebooks), but I gave up after about 90 seconds because I just don't care. Sorry. Big critical blind spot, I know, but the man never meant shit to me.


I guess the fetishistic stuff is the point of rock history, when you get right down to it. It's not like there'll be a lot to say about Michelle Branch in a decade, most likely, but it might still be interesting to look at the green top she wore for some video and then watch the video. Might.

I skipped the headphone tour that cost $3 extra--$20 is already unconscionable, imho--so maybe I missed out on the total significance of a couple of Heart's '80s costumes. I think I was adequately entertained for my money, but I'm not sure I learned anything. Except that Andy Greenwald, who provides audio commentary for the emo exhibitlit, is approaching ubiquity. Should have been nicer to him at the Eggs show.

Am I out of my mind

or is the light different on the West Coast? I'm not drunk (okay, actually, I am), but I could have sworn that today the light, you know, the kind that shines down from from the Sun, is different here. Everything was...clearer, somehow.

(I very much recommend the Hedges 2002 C-M-S, by the way.)

Peniless in...oh, never mind

I'm in Seattle on the first trip for my new book, and for the first time ever on a business trip, I'm paying my own expenses. This changes the routine dramatically. For instance, when I pulled up to the hotel last night, instead of flinging my keys to valet and paying the 26 FREAKING BUCKS A NIGHT this joint charges for parking, I circled the block until I found a metered spot that I had to get up early and feed. And speaking of feeding, I'm beginning to suspect that I'm going to taste nothing but fast food for a while (unless I'm lucky enough to get a room with a fridge, in which case I'm going grocery shopping).

So if I appear 10-15 pounds larger next time you see me, thank Krystal (No. 5 combo: two mini burgers and two mini chicken sandwiches, fries, and soda at Atlanta airport), Taco Bell (two 7 Layer Burritos in the parking lot next to SeaTac), and whatever modestly priced grub I can scrape up till Monday. No more Wolfgang Puck breakfast pizzas on the company dime! I'm having a nasty peek at what seizing the means of production actually entails.

I got a deal on the hotel, a self-consciously chic place staffed entirely, as far as I can tell, by thin women in vaguely Maoist black smocks, through Orbitz; it turned out to be $4 more altogether to stay here than at the Space Needle Travelodge, which had decidedly mixed reviews on Trip Advisor. There's free WiFi here, too, which actually saves me money, and as you can probably imagine, the coffee in the lobby is first-rate.

Any tips for parking for free or low cost in downtown Seattle would be greatly appreciated.

Amateur fascists 1, Richmond 0

Yet another sign that this area isn't quite ready for prime time: The Chesterfield school system canceled an appearance by a gay author after a successful email campaign led by a bunch of pillars of the community. "What is being taught in our schools?" wondered the subject line of one of these emails. Guess that question got answered. (You can send an email to Chesterfield schools yourself if you like.)

...new bottles

I just bought a bottle of wine I read about in the Post (I know, I know, a Joss Stone CD awaits me) and was tickled to find that it proudly boasts a "Stelvin closure," to which an unsophisticated sort such as myself might refer as "a screwcap." I had heard that some bold vineyards were moving to these tops but haven't yet had the pleasure of giving the night's bottle a hearty twist. The Stelvin closure is a product of Pechiney, which merged with Alcan last year. While my sympathies go to the good cork farmers of Portugal, I'm glad that the same company that manufactured Melbourne, Australia's light-rail cars might at least spare me from getting carpal tunnel syndrome from our wine-saver-vacuum-thingy.

But mostly I like that they're calling a screwcap a Stelvin closure.

Another argument for raising children elsewhere

Spare Us, Please, The Details
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Your Explore section has tried to educate youth and adults in useful scientific information. I was appalled that you would print a feature spelling out in far too much detail the sex-induced, bodily stimulation started by kissing.
A newspaper is not meant to give lessons in sex education or to encourage young people to experiment. The paper owes its readers an apology. Susan Trotter. Midlothian.

Clip job

Jason Hartley wrote a nice thing about Eggs' New York show on his Advanced Theory blog recently. There was also a very accurate critic's pick by Douglas Wolk in the Village Voice last week, but I can't find that one online. And in case you, say, have a life and missed it, last week's Washington Post Weekend section had a good article on Teenbeat's 20th anniversary.