"It's mythological. It's Greek"

Thanks, Gerard, for alerting us to the most important event in television history. Incidentally, there's at least one person at Beaujon Acres so psyched by a piece of information in this photo that she's dancing around the kitchen singing Irish rebel songs.

Where's Christian Bale when you need him?

Over at One Man's Trash, Norman tackles a subject very close to my heart: the difficulty of getting newspapers delivered in Richmond. It shouldn't surprise regular readers of this blog that I don't subscribe to the Times-Dispatch. I take the Washington Post instead, which is the newspaper I grew up reading and one to which I used to contribute frequently before Christian rock ate my life.

The Post has repaid this loyalty by contracting its Richmond operations to a series of numbskulls. Frequently, my paper doesn't appear. Or I get half of it. Or it comes so late I've already read it online. Earlier this year, after a particularly bad spell, I started calling and complaining every time the carrier screwed up, i.e., every day. I don't even need to look up the customer service number anymore.

I've had more luck with Post customer service than Norman (whose Wall Street Journal is DELIVERED by the T-D!); they're sympathetic and always offer to credit my account, and I'm pretty sure my frequent complaints got the first carrier fired. Now I have someone marginally better, though they still seem to disappear some weekends, or deliver my Sunday paper at noon (I have a kid and hence one hour on that day to read the paper; get it to me before 7 or it's useless).

Last year I tried tipping my carrier well to try to improve service; this had no effect. This year, I'm torn--should I tip the new guy as generously? Service has improved of late, but not for long enough to make me confident. One day when I called, for instance, customer service checked and found the carrier hadn't even picked up that day's stack of papers (for some reason, no other customers had called in). They filed an "action memo," and things have been relatively smooth since.

For all the talk of newspapers disappearing, I'm sure I'm not the only one who prefers to read his paper on paper; online I have to choose stories and don't stumble across them when I'm flipping pages. Also, newspapers are still quite profitable, in the 20 percent range. But I agree with Norman's genral thesis--if newspapers can't solve a problem as simple as getting their product into the hands of people who eagerly await them each day, they'll have no business bitching about Google eating their lunch.

Heart surgery

Nearly a year ago, I floated the theory that the spiraling cost of health care in the U.S. is perhaps the reason Americans in pop songs no longer go to the doctor when they're in love.

The other evening, I was listening to 98.9 Liberty--and finally heard a commercial, for the Mötley Crüe gig, no less--and was grooving to Sinéad O'Connor's version of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U." In it, the narrator, distraught by a breakup, seeks medical attention.

I went to the doctor n'guess what he told me
Guess what he told me
He said girl u better try to have fun
No matter what you'll do
But he's a fool

This seems a plausibly American experience. It sounds like she was asking for MAOI inhibitors, and the doctor told her to try exercise first.

Tomorrow: Why Rod Stewart isn't crap, and other topics you can really dig into only when your wife's away.

Path to no one

Lately, the comments section of this blog has been the place to be. (Memo to self: Buy more bandwidth next time I diss a Melissa Ruggieri review!) My post suggesting bikes, roller skates and skateboards be allowed on Canal Walk drew particular criticism from someone who said s/he could "guarantee you that there are many, many people using the Canal Walk every day, spring, summer, fall and winter" and that if I wanted an accurate picture of it, I should go at lunchtime.

So that's what I did today. Boy, was I wrong--on a 78 degree day, possibly the last warm day of the year, the Turning Basin hosted eight people at 12:59 p.m. Brown's Island was even more hopping: 15 people (and I'm counting one guy who looked like he might have been heading over there and one lady who sat down on a bench on the other side of the island, which I thought was close enough) at 1:07 p.m.

Hey, maybe lunchtime in Richmond ends at 1 p.m. Fair enough; would I see more than three times that many people on Canal Walk an hour earlier? Would I see 100 people at any time? Because if 100 people occupied the 1.25 mile-long walk at any one time, even the world's most inept cyclist (me) would encounter, on average, one person per 66 feet.

So please, let me know what I'm doing wrong here. Should I go earlier? Hell, get in touch, let's set up a time and go together.

First you play the state fairs...

...then you play the Richmond Coliseum.

There was someone downtown on a Friday night?

Let us now turn from the topic of my qualifications for discussing music criticism to an issue of local significance. Sometime over the weekend, the Canal Walk was vandalized. I'm kind of amazed that anyone noticed so quickly.

For a long time, I obeyed the rules about no bike riding on the portion of the walk that goes through Brown's Island. Then, about two months ago, I got a wild hair and rode through it anyway, figuring I couldn't do more damage than, say, Seal's tourbus. Now I do it every day, and I've never once seen another human being. This could be the time of day I go (about 10 a.m., usually), but you'd think the law of averages would kick in at some point, and someone--a disoriented tourist, a shopper reeling from the prices at La Diff, someone from the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation fitting Don Harrison with cement shoes--would cross my path.

But no.

I emailed a friend who's in an unusually good position to know how the Canal Walk was planned, and he confirmed my suspicion that the walk's restrictive rules (no bikes, no skateboards, no food from Kroger) was a somewhat optimistic attempt at a safety policy in what the city saw as the key to waterfront density. That may yet happen before we all die, but most of the time Canal Walk looks like another fine example of what-if-they-gave-a-downtown-and-nobody-came. The typical Richmond twist is that the only people who might be interested in using the park regularly--skaters, cyclists, tearoom enthusiasts--are banned from it.

Last year I went to a meeting with Councilman Bill Pantele, who said the city was going to look at easing the restrictions on the Canal Walk somewhat. Uncharacteristically, this doesn't seem to have happened, and Anal Walk remains empty, save for criminals such as vandals and renegade cyclists. Score another one for the Richmond of the future.

Sad sack says so little

Melissa Ruggieri continues her editing-free reign as the T-D's pop critic with a review of last night's Elton John concert only marginally more dreary than the prospect of hearing Peachtree Road in its entirety.

Note, for example, her continued reliance on the word "chestnuts," followed by an incorrect use of a comma and a favor to Rocket/Universal's publicity department:

For the first 40 minutes, there were no well-worn chestnuts, but a string of material from last year's underrated "Peachtree Road" album (not-so-coincidentally being rereleased Nov. 22).

Or that she says the show had only a "few missteps" but the overall tone is one of crushing boredom. Or that she thinks "Philadelphia Freedom" reflects "cheesy patriotism" rather than, oh I don't know, gay pride?

"Few things are as reliable as an Elton John concert," she says in the gripping lede (swiping from the Daniel Neman bore-'em-away-before-the-second-graf school of criticism), but the only thing reliable about a Melissa Ruggieri review is how little she has to say about any type of music.

Wednesday-morning quarterbacking

I generally "do" only local politics, but I'm gonna step out and talk a little bit about yesterday's results. First off, while it was thrilling to see Jerry Kilgore lose (I guess Virginians just weren't ready for a governor so in touch with his feminine side), I'm not sure Tim Kaine's victory should make Democrats delirious with joy (read his issues page). Both men are social conservatives--pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gay marriage--and neither had a plan for dealing with the state's real issues, such as our wheezing transportation system, that sounded as if more than a few moments of thought went into it.

Still, Kaine was more liberal than Kilgore on immigration and wild exurban growth, so it's not all bad news for left-of-center Democrats. Nor is the fact that his victory put the lie to the Times-Dispatch's claim that Kilgore's "philosophy generally reflects Virginia's philosophy." These days, a typical Virginian is as likely to be a naturalized Salvadorean Catholic as a branchwater-and-bourbon Episcopalian who went to all the right schools, and until Richmond's paper finds a way to speak to the whole state, its pronouncements are gonna appear ever more anachronistic and provincial.

Locally, the election of C.T. Woody as sheriff looks like another signal that Richmond politics are changing. There was a time that a buffoon like Michelle Mitchell could serve as long as she liked, painting her name on everything that wasn't nailed down instead of doing her job and fixing blame on others when she got called on it, but with her defeat and Mayor Wilder's surprising tenure so far, is it too early to forecast an end to cronyism and incompetence in city government? Probably, but let's take this as a promising sign to the contrary.

Finally, I'm thinking of sending Norman over at One Man's Trash a bottle of Scotch to get him through the next few days, but perhaps he'd rather wait until January for it.

Two states

The senate's president pro tempore looked like he'd swallowed a turd.

"I didn't realize y'all were from Northern Virginia," he said after our ninth-grade teacher identified our class to the senators in attendance on the president's request.

Even at 14, I thought that was a little weird. It hadn't taken very long to get to Richmond from Arlington, but every time I came down here I was struck by how different Richmonders viewed their part of Virginia from ours. There were the competing accents, of course, but mostly what registered was the surprise that we'd made the journey at all.

"I can't believe you're going back today," they'd say.

Because Richmond has such a marginal role in the national music scene, I travel a lot for my job. The other night I drove up to D.C. to see a concert. Now, I don't think this is such a big deal. But I have friends and neighbors who think it's absolutely insane. The guy who lives next to me has been to D.C. once in his life. He's 60.

Recently, the Rolling Stones played in Charlottesville. To read the local press here in Richmond, it was as if Keith Richards bought a place in the Fan. There were no fewer than six pieces about the show, the normally somnolent Times-Dispatch columnists falling all over themselves to express gratitude that the rock dinosaurs had finally discovered Virginia. But here's the thing--bands every bit as old, artistically irrelevant and contemptous of their fans as the Stones play the Nissan Pavilion all the time.

The Nissan Pavilion is 101 miles from the Times-Dispatch's offices on Franklin. Scott Stadium in Charlottesville is 74 miles from them. That's a measly 28 mile difference--roughly from here to Kings Dominion, a distance Ross MacKenzie wouldn't think twice about driving to laugh at a drowning orphan.

So what I'm wondering here is what's the source of the mental distance between Richmond and Northern Virginia. I don't find it in Tidewater, where life is a lot closer to that in NoVa. Is it that there's more traffic? More people? That it's an economic powerhouse while Richmond's been treading water for a long, long time? Is it that Northern Virginia doesn't allow people who own grocery stores to set its cultural agenda?

Tomorrow, if patterns hold, Tim Kaine will probably win most of Northern Virginia. Just one Northern Virginia county, Fairfax, has a greater population than that of Henrico, Hanover, Chesterfield, and the City of Richmond combined. And yet the T-D feels comfortable stating that Kilgore's "philosophy generally reflects Virginia's philosophy."

I'm not interested in arguing the particular merits of the gubernatorial candidates. The point I'm getting at is that Richmonders still want to claim ownership of a particular idea of Virginia, one into which Northern Virginia does not fit too neatly. So it's generally ignored, even though it's a lot closer to Richmond than places that the T-D editorial board feels more in line with philosophically.

The risk is in pretending the most dynamic part of the state doesn't exist, because irrelevance for this region looms larger every time we try to fight closer integration with Northern Virginia. I've heard from people on both sides of the performing arts center debate that they don't want Richmond to become a suburb of D.C. What they don't seem to grasp is that there is no way around that happening. Fredericksburg used to be a far-out suburb of the District. Now suburbia is growing ever-southward, past Fredericksburg and inexorably toward Caroline County. You only need to drive down 95 to see that.

But who could ever imagine doing such a thing?

Thank you for reading

Today at the Brunswick Stew festival I saw two kids wearing Washington Redskins sweatshirts and Dallas Cowboys hats. I mention this only because when remembering it, I thought, "That's the craziest thing I've ever seen."

I've actually seen crazier stuff than that.

Are you a Kilgore voter...

...or are you just happy to see me?