Lamenting the demolition of yesterday’s future.
You’d think with the elections getting underway, incumbent Brad Miller would have someone updating and monitoring his Wikipedia page. We’d like to think so. So, imagine our surprise when his Wikipedia page informed us that Brad Miller supported his family working as a male prostitute:
Click the image to see an image of the entire page.
We don’t suspect Bernie Reeves because his Wikipedia page is even less flattering.
I saw this banner in the mall and I really don’t have much to say about this. Actually, I have too much to say but I’ll be considerate and spare everyone my thoughts about the cultural irrelevance of Broadway Theater, Waiting For Guffman, David Sedaris, the N&O article about DPAC kicking Raleigh’s ass because it books better productions, and how sad I am that I missed Marilyn Manson in Ira David Wood’s Christmas Carol. That leaves me with two thoughts to express:
1. PLEASE let them do this production with a British accent.
2. Will the Church give me a special dispensation so that I can smoke pot and see this play during Lent?
Okay, three thoughts. Are Sally Struthers and Ira David Wood going to be nude in this play, or just the people who aren’t elderly? I can’t wait!
While the city council haggles over the Lightner Center and the hefty chunk of its budget dedicated to public art, further out of town down on Hillsborough Street, a public art corpse awaits reanimation: Joe Cox’s Color Wall. Cox taught at the NCSU School of Design during its glory years, and while he’s primarily known as a painter he also created at least three kinetic light sculptures. The shifting array of color bars at the base of D.H. Hill Library has been (mostly) dark for years now, with only a brief revival. Still, it has survived and could be rebuilt, unlike Cox’s sculpture that was attached to the BB&T on Hillsborough Street–that was simply discarded when they installed the ATM. The fine folks at Goodnight Raleigh have set up the Color Wall site to raise money and raise awareness. In particular, Karl Larson (aka Raleighboy) has led the charge. Now some other fine folks have agreed to sell Joe Cox paintings to help raise the necessary funds. Those of us who can’t afford a Cox painting still benefit by seeing them hanging up at Lee Hansley Gallery.
Aside from Ruffin Poole and the John Edwards sex tape, the most exciting political action in statewide politics has been, without a doubt, the Wake County School Board fracas. As the new board members took their seats at their very first meeting, it was clear they had an agenda prepared and were ready to ram it through immediately because they had a “mandate”. This new activist block voted on matters that hadn’t even been discussed with the rest of the board. They announced they would act first and study the problems later. And they initiated a survey of the parents of Wake County students in order to reveal how broken the current system is and how angry the populace has become. This was some revolutionary, tea party shit. And now, this week, something remarkable has happened: The survey results are back and 94% of the people surveyed are happy with the status quo. And then the news broke that more than 10% of all the campaign funds were provided by two conservative activists, Art Pope and Bob Luddy. That’s more than 10% of all the campaign funds and more than 20% of the funds raised by Republican backed candidates. All of the sudden it begins to become clear that this “populist outcry” is really just a few angry voices with too much media exposure and financial backing from the same old sources. Now the new board members are stranded in their own “mandate” rhetoric and you have to wonder how they’ll dismiss the 94.5% level of satisfaction.
The school board currently has a Community Engagement Hearing scheduled for this Thursday, February 11th at 6:30pm. The CEH will be held at Southeast Raleigh High School and this should be a very entertaining meeting.
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.
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