Local hardcore legends, Corrosion of Conformity, received a nice tip of the hat from Saturday Night Live. Take a look:
I’m sure we’ve mentioned it before but few sites in the Triangle have as much rabbit hole potential as Zspotlight.com. It might start with a simple musing, such as: “Is Club Dolce still open, or has it been shut down by riot police? Because that place looks crazy!” A few seconds later, I Google “Club Dolce” and see the Z Spotlight listing with some eyegrabbing text: “With over two dozen flat screen plasma TV’s, including many that rotate 720 degrees, we guarantee you will not miss any of the action. ” What? 720 degrees? Apparently there’s an entire dimension i’ve been missing. 4D television! And CLICK, and…. goodbye workday.
Once I start clicking on the photos of people clubbing at different venues around town, the day is over. The lights are being turned off at work, the doors locked and I’ve just wasted six hours browsing through photos that are intended to be appealing, alluring, and attractive but they aren’t and I wonder why. My head starts swimming. I want to email Errol Morris to get his analysis. Is it because these are sober photos of people who might not be sober? I thank God I’m not single. I wonder why Looking for Mr. Goodbar isn’t available on DVD. I question whether I find current fashions so unattractive that I think every person, in every photo, might be emulating some particular American Idol contestant. Occasionally I come across someone really attractive and think “Sure, BUT they’re hanging out THERE, with those other people in the photo!”
Then I wonder if this is all just tabula rasa, or a cultural Rorscach test that reveals my own craziness. I don’t have an answer. I just find it to be very entertaining, and a guilty pleasure, and that’s okay. Isn’t it?
Until today, my favorite instance of political eavesdropping occurred almost 6-years ago, at the Farmer’s Market Restaurant. Rufus Edmisten was sitting next to my table, with a woman I presumed to be his wife – she was middle-aged and wearing a holiday sweater. She was going off on a tangent about Representative Deborah Ross with a theme of “I mean, who does she think she IS?”. Fun stuff but that was nowhere near the entertainment level of my lunch today at the Oakwood Cafe, where former Traffic Reporter Mark Roberts was seated nearby and strategizing about running, as a Republican, against Brad Miller. By doing so, he might be face Bernie Reeves in a Republican primary, something Roberts and an unrecognized political adviser discussed at length. Neither Roberts, nor his adviser, felt Reeves had much of a chance. Adviser: “People don’t know who Bernie Reeves is. I’ve lived here since 1992 and I don’t know who he is. He has his magazine that has a small readership and not all of the people who read the magazine read his column.” But Roberts did seem to recognize one thing about Reeves: “He’s considered a little crazy, isn’t he? He was one of the proponents of the theory that Michael Peterson’s wife was killed by an owl! I saw the footage of that crime scene and a person MUCH larger than she bludgeoned her to death.” Well, yes people do think Bernie Reeves is crazy but we look forward to his running for office. We’ve heard unsubstantiated stories about Reeves’ volatility erupting into golf course violence but those are just rumors. I repeat: those are just rumors. We’d like to see those rumors investigated and reported properly because Reeves deserves the chance to address them and good rumors deserve the chance to become good news items. There was also discussion of Carter Wrenn: Adviser: “Carter is out of money and getting to get back in the consulting game, so that’s 20% to him.” By which I assume they mean 20% of Reeves’ campaign funds would go into Wrenn’s pocket. There was more discussion about whether being a yankee would be a problem for Roberts in the outlying counties, Yes!, and whether Roberts’ boss at Crossroads Ford would keep him employed until the election. Roberts seemed pretty optimistic: “I think he will, he’s an R.”
I would like to be a political adviser someday. I’d advise people that if they want confidentiality, it is best to order takeout. I would remind them discretion is the better part of valor. Lastly, I would suggest that if my candidate was to run against a crazy narcissist blowhard in the primary, he should drag that man through the mud for the entertainment of the electorate.
It may be premature but I would like to announce that Mark Roberts is considering a run for office.
P.S. A Google image search for Mark Roberts delivers mostly images of (an apparently very prolific) streaker and Mr. Gay UK. That should make the election more interesting.
The first affordable (relatively speaking), modern, prefab homes have arrived in the Triangle area – and they are energy efficient, stylish, and green. The I-House is available and on display at Clayton Homes, in Rolesville. I trekked out to Rolesville last weekend, hoping for a tour, but the house wasn’t quite finished. It looks nice and I told the salesman so. “Yep, people seem to like it, if they like that modern kinda thing, which I kinda do.” See, they’re enthusiastic about these houses! Call before driving to Rolesville but it may already be available to tour.
Modern prefab housing had quite a buzz a few years ago, especially as the first Dwell House was built outside Pittsboro. The concept originates with Buckminster Fuller in the post-WW2 era. Fuller envisioned the factories, materials and manufacturing skill that had been used to produce aircraft and weapons for the war effort, could be transitioned to produce housing for the returning soldiers and their families. Obviously, that never happened. The prefab idea didn’t start to take hold until more recently and the initial results were design pieces priced only for the wealthier fans of modern architecture but it appears that less expensive options are finally arriving.
The i-House will be produced in a number of factories around the country, including a factory in North Carolina.
Triangle Modernist Homes just organized a series of films with architecture as the theme. Just when you wonder if they’re just settling into the business of marketing for realtors, they get back to doing something interesting. Really interesting. Especially interesting is the selection of films:
Thursday, December 10 — Visual Acoustics: a documentary about Julius Schulman. Wonderful!
Thursday, March 18 — Infinite Space a documentary about visionary architect John Lautner. Alright!
And to lighten the mood between those two showings, they’ve selected two contenders for the “Worst Movie of All Time”: The Lake House and The Fountainhead. I recommend seeing them all. For the documentaries, I suggest having a glass of wine and/or bottle of beer at the Galaxy because it really is great that we have local theaters that sell beer and wine. For the Lake House and The Fountainhead, I suggest smoking marijuana and trying to get through the films without laughing so hard that you are asked to leave. I tried to get through a film with Keanu Reeves’ character was a surgeon and I couldn’t do it. I was laughing too hard.
Forget that other video about Raleigh. The folks at Post22 have something to be proud of: Raleigh. This may be the most beautiful representation of Raleigh I’ve seen in ages. A great reminder that surfaces, architecture, and city planning look completely different to someone on a skateboard. Click here.
What could make more sense than a full-scale fundraising effort to send Ira David Wood IV to France so that our local theater can perform A Christmas Carol? I mean, English culture must seem so exotic to the French, especially when conveyed with a Southern accent! You may not have realized that in France, Waiting for Guffman was, how do they say, énormément populaire! Sorry, but the food bank is experiencing some modern day Dickensian drama and I think our hard earned dollars might be better spent there. Is complaining about Scrooge a double negative?
Raleigh Art, Architecture and Urbanism, a nice addition to the local blogscape, reports that the Catalano House will be rebuilt near Dorothea Dix. No details available yet. We wouldn’t be surprised if George Smart and the Triangle Modernist Houses gang were involved in some capacity. Perhaps some blog with a bigger research team (we’re looking at you, Goodnight, Raleigh!) will run down the details on this.
For now we’ll speculate that this will not be a remake of the Catalano House, but rather a pavilion with the hyperbolic paraboloid shape of the original Catalano House roof, as was planned but never built on NCSU’s Court of the Carolinas and on the grounds of the NC Art Museum a few years ago. We’ll also speculate that Catalano himself will bankroll a large chunk of the cost, which was part of those previous plans that fell through. Here’s hoping it all works out this time around.
The Links in this post have been updated.
I’ve been enjoying the Old North State series from the News & Observer. Using the WPA guide to North Carolina as a springboard, writers check in on rural areas of the state, from Fort Landing to Little Switzerland. It’s great to see a series like this as the local paper struggles to stay relevant.
North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State: http://books.google.com/books?id=dQDwh9Ep6jAC
N&O Old North State articles: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/multi/sort/The%20Old%20North%20State
May 14th saw the passing of a major figure in the Raleigh alternative arts scene of the 80’s, Russell Boone, publisher of Scream magazine. Russell had a stroke in 2003 and then an accident involving traumatic brain injury in 2004, and had been cared for since by his wife and publishing partner, Katie Boone. She held a memorial gathering at the PR, and the attendees represented a fine tribute to Russ as well as a fascinating cross section of a certain segment of Raleigh’s intellectual culture. Russell was a Vietnam War veteran who made a pretty complete break with his earlier life. In finding and wooing Katie at a tender age, he married into a strong and distinct group of Raleighites who have always particularly charmed and impressed me – that is, the wave of NCSU professors’ kids who came of age in the 70’s, mostly in Cameron Park. The PR’s side room was filled with them, many of whom made it back into town for the event. The late Mike Reynolds, an NCSU Hemingway scholar, was one of the aforementioned parents, but also a personal friend of Russell, who spent some time at NCSU. Mike provided original Hemingway material for publication in Scream, and helped it land on the map of small press publications of the era.
Scream was touted as a new combination of “literature, art comix and journalism.” Drawing on the local zine tradition that included Blind Boy’s Gazette and Biohazard Informe, Russell upped the ante and went for a full scale magazine with designer graphics. The marvelous community of artists, writers, and designers he attracted to his project created a body of work well worth remembering. In September 1985 Guy Munger, NandO’s book editor (and father of another family of Cameron Park intelligentsia) described the first issue thusly:
“…a mad melange of prophecy, poetry and ‘Rollywood Funny Papers’ (what us Mad mag grads call comix). Among the attractions: ‘Gemstone File,’ a collection of predictions starring JFK, Jackie, Richard Nixon, Onassis, Howard Hughes and other notables that would make Nostradamus nervous; an eerie little piece by Mike Reynolds, ‘A Green in June’ about a hedge trimmer who just might play ‘paranoid parchesi’ with a chainsaw, and several poems worthy of note.” (News and Observer, 9-8-85)
Billed as a quarterly, Scream’s run comprised seven issues, ending in 1989. Each was more lush and polished than the previous, and Scream became an important venue for the emerging fusions of genre that would lead to graphic novels. Local expressionist extraordinaire David Larson did many of the covers, but others such as William Waters, Errol Engelbrecht, and Denis Draughon got their turn. Writers such as David Weaver, Richard Butner and Peter Eichenberger published early work. The Rollywood Funny Papers took on a life of their own as the flip side of what was essentially a double magazine, with powerful and beautifully presented dark comix by Lillian Jones, Rick Koobs, and Matt Feazell. Danny Gallant also contributed comix, but became a leading force in Scream’s truly sumptuous graphic designs, executed in multi-color offset by Richard Kilby’s Barefoot Press. The final two issues gained some extra excitement when Charles Bukowski ackowledged his admiration for Scream by sending two pieces for Russell to publish.
After Russell decided to stop publishing Scream, Danny Gallant went on to publish several issues of Alternating Crimes in 1996-97, using an imprint Russell had founded in 1985. Russell was a consulting editor, and Danny continued to work with Russ on his own new publishing project – the catalogs for Boone’s Native Seed Company, his heirloom seed mail-order business. Just as Scream laid new ground for a local literary magazine, these catalogs educated about heirloom plants long before they were hot topics, offered the fruits of Russ and Katie’s wildcrafting, and managed to offer more art and literary value than anything of it’s kind. David Larson’s sultry charcoals and pastels were on the covers, and toward the back- “The Anguished Adventures of Cowboy Ant” ! This comic insertion in a seed catalog featured an ant hero whose work and words rocked the sleazy world of industrial agriculture. Russell wrote the strips and Danny Gallant illustrated and lettered them.
Though he was a successful editor and also worked many years on a novel, Russell’s seed enterprise brought him closer to his true love – outdoors and botanical adventures. He was just about the only person from whom I’d accept a wild mushroom to eat, and I was rather glad he never got to see the destruction of the wooded hills surrounding Lake Raleigh, which he loved to roam. He and Katie went all over the state wildcrafting, and Russell always had so much to teach and share about plants, whether in the wilderness or the garden. His last years were inactive, and for the most part speechless, but Katie faithfully rolled his chair along the greenway and occasionally got him down to Sadlack’s. She will get some well deserved respite now, but she was fiercely loyal to him, and communicated with him in a way that most of us couldn’t. Russell said his piece, a big piece, with Scream, and for that and more he will be well remembered.
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