a good drink is hard to find

There's this thing about the future that I'm bad about believing. In my head, it always seems like there'll be a moment "in the future" when you'll cross a finish line with your arms raised in victory, bright yellow tape clinging to your chest as you barrel through it, conquering that final obstacle.

As if every goal has a definitive moment, a time to pause then celebrate.

Despite the long, drawn out process of believing and acting in the faith that Macon not only can be cool but one day will be cool, I continue to think of it like crossing a threshold. Like today Macon sucked but then tomorrow we've reached our goals, defeated our demons and now Macon is totally rad. "Whew! Glad that's done now!"

No, it'll happen subtly, without our having really noticed it until we're taking stock and collecting knick-knacks for the Way Back When Museum.

Roger Riddle has stepped down from public displays of rocking the ones and twos. He went out with a bang and there was no way I could miss what might be the last time I ever get to one of my favorite people perform. Favorite and among the most influential in my little life here.

The problem with going in like that, with that mindset, was that I was primed for nostalgia and its way-bad misdirection. Though I don't go out to the bars expecting to write about it later, I did choose to sit on the sidelines like before, watching and taking notes, mostly mental.

(Not that I'd have to write down something as easy to remember as "There are a lot of frat guys here" or "Why is everyone dressed like they just came from a meeting with their banker?" or "That guy must've come from a post-grad clam bake in Cape Cod.")

The Hummingbird ain't what she used to be, which might be good if you squint your eyes and tilt your head. It isn't the place you'll find me getting drunk, dancing badly and behaving worse, but way back when, there weren't as many people present either. A bar could go broke like that. Not a concern of theirs anymore, apparently. I hear it's pretty full every weekend now.

This weekend, my group was completely outnumbered, the best of them out where Nigel's hand-painted hummingbird picture used to be, waving their metaphorical freak flags, doing their little dances, making plans to make a little love. Meanwhile, a steady stream of pastel-clad college kids trickled in from the back patio, past Riddle and his dancing minions, to the bar and back, sometimes as they engaged in a scrum or two.

Isn't this what we asked for? Didn't we indiscriminately say we wanted the "college crowd", which in this case seems to be constituted of dudes who keep golf visor companies in business and the chicks who settle for them.

This is what a college town looks like, right?

Not that there's anything wrong with the kids that were there (I used to absolutely LOVE polo shirts, braided leather belts, tucking my shirttails in and wearing socks with my sandals... seriously, I did) but what became apparent to me is that there's got to be more than just coaxing the college crowd out to get plastered.

I mean, get plastered but realize there's an art to that sort of thing. My friends and I perfected it.

Sitting there with a table full of people once considered most likely to cause troublel, walk out on their tabs and somehow still be likeable, I suddenly felt an overwhelming amount of empathy for Hank Williams, Jr. He'd grown used to a life where all his rowdy friends were coming over (because they were ready for some football) but now, as he famously sang, these same rowdy friends have settled down.

Except I am settled down now too. (Mostly.)

There and then, I wanted my youth back, but just for a second, and only because I didn't trust those college kids with it. There was no rage in them, no restlessness. Yeah, they get mad and get in fights but that's all ego. We had a bunch of hurt feelings and weren't those more interesting? We got drunk and went exploring, using alcohol as anesthesia so we could pull back the layers without feeling it too much. We were curious and pissed off, and ignored, crying out in the wilderness like John the Baptist, making wishes we weren't careful about only aware of the mistake now that the headman's plate has been passed around.

Bah.

I shouldn't be so negative about it. I should be more open-minded. I'm just getting old. And I'm tired. It's after 1am. Past my bed time.

Besides, some of my best friends were in a frat.

Unified Macon Theory: What stays in Macon, dies in Macon

This won't make sense to some of you, at least the part where I'm authoring it. It'll seem contradictory and maybe even contrary to my previously stated beliefs. Hopefully the rest of you will get it.

There are three reasons why I believe so strongly that some of the players in our current music scene will make a significant impact on the music world-at-large (and thusly, the world-at-large). No, reason number one isn't that I believe in magic, or that it's because there's something in the water (though I do believe in magic and think there's something in the water... something magic in the water).

In fact, these three reasons are the same three reasons why I think historic Macon musicians have had such an impact on the world of music, thusly the world.

#1) To be a remotely serious musician in Macon, Ga, means you have dedicated yourself to your music because you know no one is listening, which, in turn, means you're going to be more concerned with your craft than whether or not the people here like it. You probably have more than a little confidence in yourself, which doesn't hurt.

#2) Having relegated yourself to the outskirts of the local population, your friends are likely going to be other remotely serious musicians from whom your learn and take some motivation. Your clique is probably pretty tight and most of your conversations are, at some point or another, about music. Your passion is becoming your life fully.

#3) Being a remotely serious musician in Macon soon leads you to one inevitable question--"How serious am I?"--and depending on your answer--if it is "very serious"--you're then led to another question: "How do I get the fuck out of here?"

The same thing that seems like a problem in Macon is probably what has given Macon its place in history, its advantage over other places like Atlanta, LA or New York. You THINK you're serious about music when you uproot and head to LA, but trying to get someone to pay attention in Macon, you've got to be serious then, right?

More than that, there's the issue of your competency. Just because you're serious (or you think you're serious) doesn't mean that you're any good. In most cases, good just means you've been working on it. Talent or talentless, nothing good comes without practice. In other words, it doesn't matter if there's something in the water here because all the water in the world won't make you worth listening to. So you can go to LA or New York because you're serious (or think you're serious) but if you're in Macon for a little while, you'll find yourself consumed by your music.

Consider Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour theory. He says to be an expert means you've put in 10,000 hours into a subject. For Bill Gates it was computers. For the Beatles it was music. Before they broke big, they spent 10,000 hours at their chosen field.

Think about Little Richard on the Chitlin Circuit, in the bawdy houses and nightclubs performing with drag queens and piano players. Just to eat, he was putting in days and days of shows every week, and the hours started racking up. Same for Otis Redding. Think about how many church services, how many of those talent shows, how many Hamp's Hops... the hours piled up.

You might not know this but Otis Redding didn't sound like the Otis Redding we know today back when he was sweeping those talent shows. He was doing Little Richard knock-offs and Sam Cooke covers. That's why he won them--he did a good job impersonating artists the crowd knew. It wasn't until he started hanging out with Johnny Jenkins (or so Jenkins says) that he tried to break away from that because Jenkins told him to find his own voice, and supposedly, with the help of Johnny's guitar-playing,
Otis did just that.

That's that community of outsiders. It's how the Allman Brothers were formed. Go ye forth and make a jam band out of what you find. Boom! Those outsiders came together with their different influences and made some music stew.

And I don't know if I really need to explain reason number three, but I will elaborate. It seems simple enough to get out of Macon, to pick up and leave town, but it isn't. (Both Little Richard and Otis Redding both recorded on the West Coast before going broke and having to return to Macon.) If you're smart that drive to leave will motivate you to do whatever it takes to be successful because that is your best chance at leaving.

Look at Emmett Miller. I know he's not a popular example because he's most widely known as a blackface minstrel singer, but he is considered an important figure in American music and he is from Macon. And he does illustrate my point.

He so wanted to leave town, to join the minstrelsy circuit, that he dropped out of school and started hanging out with black people so he could be more "authentic". Yes, his caricature of them is absolutely deplorable, but at the turn of the century, when the predominant form of popular music (i.e. - pop music in the early 1900s, which prevailed for nearly 100 years of this country's 233 year existence) was blackface minstrelsy, and white folks weren't supposed to mingle with black folks, he had to be dedicated to what he was doing if he was going to go that far. (By the way, the first all-black blackface minstrelsy group was also formed in Macon, a few decades before Emmett Miller got famous.)

For Otis Redding, it meant serving as Johnny Jenkins roadie on a trip to Memphis because Jenkins and the Pinetoppers--not Redding--had the recording contract with Stax Records. He loaded and unloaded the band's gear and begged (or pestered) the Stax crew until they let him record his song with the 30 minutes left on the session.

I see these parallels now with the folks making music in Macon, GA. I see a handful of passionate and dedicated musicians doing nothing but making music and hanging out with other people who make music. You should already know their names because they're playing here so much. And I see most of them eyeballing the bright lights of the big city. That is as it should be because the only way they'll ever realize their dreams will be to try it out somewhere else.

Every show I go to now, I'm thinking about whether or not it's the last time I get to see them here, in the grungy little dive bars, in the ill-suited night clubs, in the basement of an "event center". I don't see them stopping here, not because they're greedy and want lots and lots of money, but because they just want lots and lots of people to be able to hear what they've done.

There is no doubt in my mind that one of these people (and probably more)--Floco Torres, Oh Dorian, Al K!NG, Rolybots, Nomenclature, City Council, Citizen Insane, Abby Owens, etc., etc.,--will make a big splash when they jump into that big pond. No doubt in my mind at all.

The weird part is that this is sort of an argument against supporting the music here. Or maybe, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head, it's just another way to tell you all that it's happening whether or not you like it, support it or even know it exists. In another 20 or 30 years, it'll just be another wonderful facet of our city's cultural contribution that isn't utilized to make the city better, which means in another 20 or 30 years, another crop of musicians will emerge.

And so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Amen.

Mouthin off...

(This is the long overdue posting of my long ass response that I wrote {and sent to the appropriate people} to an editorial in the Mercer Cluster, which stated we have no music scene and then blamed it on the lack of bands and venues. While I agree we have some work to do, my belief is that what we lack is fans. Wow. That's probably all I had to write... whoops. If you feel like reading three pages of my ranting, get down on it.)

Mr. Brown, Editors, et. al,

Loved the April Fools Day stories. Good satire. It is unfortunate that Eric Brown's piece about the Macon music scene wasn’t conceived in a similar vein. It would’ve been closer to the truth if it had been.

It’s disingenuous for Brown to name Nomenclature and then say they moved away and think that’s an accurate or even adequate description of what’s happening here, as if the only good band left town. The problem here is folks here don’t look for local music so they don’t know that there is anything good.

So what Brown accidentally illustrates is one of the major and generally unaddressed causes of our chronically sick music scene: uninformed opinions have become the prevailing wisdom, having spread like a fungus that colors public perception so that it becomes a "reality".

In other words, one of the reasons our “music scene sucks” is because so many people think our “music scene sucks”.

Just as it is hard for a “dirt-poor college student” to “create an award-winning venue”, it’s hard for a dirt-poor musician to bust his and/or her butt when no one’s showing up because they’ve already decided that there isn’t a music scene worth supporting. (The musicians, however, continue to.)

To avoid making this a totally subjective argument about taste, just look at one of this year’s Bearstock posters. The bulk of the opening acts are local, spanning a variety of styles and sounds, and there were many more from which to choose. The bands that made the cut (and most of those that didn’t) all play frequently, so the real question is why didn’t Eric Brown know that they existed?

Until recently there haven’t been enough fans to support local bands to make it a financially reasonable prospect for venue owners to showcase more local talent, which means the scene wasn’t very visible. But that’s changed. All the good venues—limited as they may be—book a healthy dose of local bands.

Even though local bands sometimes suck at promoting their shows—whether humility or laziness—they do play often enough that, if you’re looking for live local music, by now, there are no good excuses not to have seen Floco Torres, Citizen Insane, Trendlenberg, Rolybots, Al K!NG, Oh Dorian, Abby Owens, Magnificent Bastard, City Council or the dozen others I could name.

UNLESS… A#1) you’re scared to frequent the venues where they play, or B#2) you don’t actually like music enough to go see someone that doesn’t already have an album on a major label.

So now the question is: Do you REALLY want more “interesting and experimental” bands? If so, forget about learning an instrument and starting a band, as Brown suggests, just be “interesting and experimental” yourself. Be adventurous enough to see what already exists.

Folks like to compare Macon to cities with a thriving scene, but they forget one of the most crucial elements: FANS! In places like Athens and Atlanta, people will go see music for the sake of seeing music. And then… then the bands have to work to steal attention away from other bands. Our bands compete against prime time TV and the hordes that only go out to get drunk and get some booty.

Brown asks: “So how to fix this problem?” My response is stop being a part of the problem. If you look for good local music, you’ll find it. You’ll become a patron of the Hummingbird and the Capitol where regional and national acts play. You’ll know that the biggest strides in the local music scene haven’t been made by The Refuge (though I love JJ Weeks and his crew) or at Jittery Joes (where I sit typing this). It’s in the cracks and crevices downtown, like the Golden Bough, the Macon Venue Project, Envy and the 567 Cafe, or even uptown at Rivalry’s, the Shamrock and CJs.

Honestly, I don’t even like all the music here, but I don’t have to. I support what I like and try to be nice to everybody else. There is enough going on here that that’s all you have to do. It isn’t a charity. It’s like anything else, you might suffer through some crap to get to the good stuff, but regardless of how well it matches what you like, there is plenty to choose from—far more than most think.

I’m not trying to invalidate everything Brown wrote or even to take jabs at him, but I believe there are some serious issues to address before the blame is aimed at a supposed dearth of musicians or venues. Remember, we’re all still driven by very simple market realities: supply and demand. There is a dearth of demand. That’s what must change next.

Or maybe we just need to admit we’re not really THAT interested in local music, that we just want bands like The Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie to play Macon so we don’t have to drive to Atlanta. If that’s all this is about then we’re just displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of music business, and the problem remains the same. Those bands don’t play here—not because there aren’t local bands to open up (see who’s opening for Gym School Heroes and Chester French) or because there are no venues (we have spaces so small they only fit 30 to those big enough to hold thousands)—but because they cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars for a performance.

And really, that’s only a problem because “no one” pays to see live music here. Ludacris didn’t sell out the Coliseum and Dwight Yoakum couldn’t even fill the much smaller City Auditorium. Our problem is the absence of real music fans, and the money they generate, which funds it all.

I used to think like Eric Brown (and scores of others)—it’s Macon, not me. Then I became the nightlife writer and later the editor of The 11th Hour, and watched what happens here. I'm now the publisher of Georgia Music Magazine, which is housed by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, a tourist destination that should be treated like a blessing to this city but is, instead, ignored by locals and the officials they’ve elected.

But it isn’t all bleak. For the past three years, I've been on the board for Bragg Jam, a music festival which is hitting its stride. I’ve been a part of the Bearstock selection committee for the past two years and think it’s about to cement its place in the community. More people are warming up to live music here.

To push it more, I helped start The Local 478, which tries to facilitate growth in local music scene with showcases and concerts. With the help of local musicians, I'm putting together Monkeywrench Music Club, a multifunctional space where bands who can't get booked elsewhere can play, where bands who have nowhere to rehearse can rehearse, where they can get their mail, copy flyers, burn CDs and meet other musicians. This summer, we're going to release the first wave of albums on Random Family Records, a record label whose roster is entirely made of local talent.

You can see why I might be a little sensitive about this, but beyond my obvious bias, I hope you see the much deeper lesson: if you’re looking for good local music, you can find it. I have. And with that, I’ve found a lot of great people, crazy stories and the kind of fun I never thought possible here. All I had to do was look.

I agree with Brown when he writes, “By creating a closer community of bands in the Macon area, you can guarantee a better music scene…” I agree because I’ve been watching it happen for the past couple of years, and I hope that now that you all know it exists, you’ll support it. That’s the piece we’re really missing now.

To that end, I would be honored to introduce Eric Brown and the Cluster editorial staff (and anyone else who is interested) to a wide spate of the talented musicians ranging from indie rock to hip-hop and all sorts of stuff I can’t begin to classify. We’d love to see you be a part of building this music scene because I truly believe that history is about to repeat itself in Macon, that there are some names in the lineups around town that will eventually join the list of celebrated Maconites.

See it for yourself. Come out to Rivalry’s this Friday night to check out three of the best bands in Macon, swing by the show at Monkeywrench on Saturday, April 11, or wait until Bearstock and see even more in action. If you still feel like the scene is “far away” then it’s just a matter of your taste being bad. (Just kidding… no I’m not.)

Let's all move to Easton!

Since I've already upset the Macon-Bibb Convention and Visitor's Bureau this week, I figure I might as well just go off some more.

(No, I do not hate the CVB, nor am I picking on them. They aren't the problem in Macon -- several bear that responsibility. Plus, I happen to LOVE Ginny, Ruth, Janice and all the other lovely ladies, but I'm pissed right now about the leadership and direction of Macon, and I'm about to tell you why. )

My interests sometimes swing wildly between opposite ends of the spectrum. Every spectrum. I'm a man of extremes, an ADHD-addled human pendulum. Right now, I want to move to Easton, PA. And I want you to move with me.

Here it is in a nutshell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easton,_Pennsylvania

If you knew me a few years ago, you know that I fell in love with Bulgaria and wanted my friends to set up a colony of Macon expatriates. Having been devastated financially by the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union, Bulgaria is a bastion of cheap booze, cheap smokes, cheap rent and cheap eats. It's also really pretty in springtime (and frigging cold in the winter). It was not really a noble daydream.

Well, my fiancee was an undergrad at LaFayette College, on the hill overlooking downtown Easton, which is why we were just there and how I fell for the place. In the last Census, the city (it's three townships and three boroughs) totaled a population less than 30,000 people.

Despite the much reported dwindling population, Macon (just the city, not including unincorporated Bibb) claims more than three times that number: 97,000.

Easton never abandoned its urban core. Even in the harsh economic reality of this recession, they only had a handful of empty storefronts or residential spaces open between the bustling and VERY historic downtown and its neighborhood on "The Hill".

And there's this: New York City is less than an hour and a half away. It's a $19 bus ride. Philly is about 70 miles away. Plus, Easton's homies in the Lehigh Valley, separated by about 30 minutes each, are Bethlehem (founded by Moravians, home to two colleges, and was the birthplace of The Rock, so you know it's cool) and Allentown, which is bigger than both.

It takes as long to get to Atlanta from Macon, and almost three hours to Savannah. Hardly the same, plus you pretty much have to drive because public transportation just isn't a priority in The South, so once you get to Atlanta or Savannah by bus, you'd be stuck. Not to mention it costs $32 bucks each way by Groome, which only takes you to the airport. A Greyhound ticket, if you feel like braving that bus station, is $27.

There is only one major celebrity from Easton, boxer Larry Holmes, and he still lives there. (Writer Stephen Crane is a LaFayette graduate, I'm told.) The community reached out to him and he's stayed invested, financially and in terms of marketing.

We have oodles of famous people from Macon, and none of them live here--nor can you imagine them doing so. Gregg Allman is in Savannah and Little Richard chose a little town in Tennessee. Someone is just now doing something with the Allman Brothers Big House (the non-profit Big House Foundation), it took about thirty years for an Otis Redding statue, and NO ONE HAS DONE SHIT with Little Richard's house, which is still standing. I dare you to find any other modern American legend who has been so ignored by his hometown. Find ONE thriving town and/or tourist location that hasn't marketed the hell out of their famed alumni.

Meanwhile, you'd think the only thing that's ever happened in Macon is a Cherry Blossom Festival. (Not to say it should cease but that there needs to be a major recasting of our image. SERIOUSLY. There is no place that can claim what Macon can claim from Sidney Lanier to Emmett Miller to Little Richard, James Brown, Otis Redding, the Allman Brothers, Mike Mills and Bill Berry of REM, Lucinda Williams, Lena Horne, Jimi Hendrix, as well as guys like two-time Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglass or acclaimed music writer Stanley Booth.)

Let me tell you what the heart of my hopelessness is: The majority of the things that we all like about Macon has been propped up by the private sector. The culture of this town has been heralded by? The 11th Hour, Bragg Jam, MaGa and a handful of other loose screws. The music heritage has been showcased by? Mostly by the above and the Ga Music Hall of Fame, which we're in SERIOUS danger of losing because our local officials won't fight for an institution that has 30,000 visitors a year (aka - enough to exceed the size of Easton, PA). The downtown area and all its charm? Kept alive by Mercer University, developers and non-profit organizations like Historic Macon, the Peyton Anderson Foundation, the Knight Foundation and NewTown Macon.

What has our city leadership been waiting on? Why are they so content with just REACTING to situations that arise instead of proactively looking for ways to improve our city? What vision do they have for Macon over the next five, ten, fifteen years? Do they even have ANY vision for it?

I know the private sector does. And it only took two days in tiny Easton for me to see that they have a vision for themselves. They know their resources, what they can be and what they want to be, and they've gone after it.

No, from what I can tell, their artists, musicians and other creatives aren't as edgy and interesting as Macon's. They have no real art or music scene to speak of. But remember that these things for Macon have developed of late, and quickly, and in spite of leadership that doesn't care, doesn't get it or doesn't want it. Plus, if you all move there with me, they'll have a killer scene!

Frankly, I love Macon and I don't ever want to leave... but only if I have enough reason to stay. I want to want to stay, and the powers-that-be aren't doing a real good job of making that happen--for me or anyone else. As I think about starting a family, I realize I'm not responsible just for myself. I'll be thinking about my wife and my kids. If things continue as they have, we will be faced with a situation where we won't be able to stick around waiting any more. We'll be deciding between struggling for change in Macon or going to a city that actually wants us.

That's what has me so mad.

the real reason why I left the 11th Hour

It's exactly as I said in the paper: needed more time with my family and wanted to try something new. When Mike Donila agreed to come aboard, I figured it was a good time, just because I knew they'd have a great guy with tremendous talent.

What I'm doing next?

Don't know exactly. I'll report back when I do. In the meantime, I plan to get my soapbox fix here, just like it was before I got in with the paper, regardless of whether or not anyone is reading. It'll give me something to do until I get busy again.

Sitting at Jittery Joes, I picked up the Telegraph and a familiar feeling swept over me: anger and hopelessness. (That's a wee bit of an exaggeration.) The lead story is a good one about the service delivery strategy, which I firmly believe is an issue with greater importance than most folks would suspect, though the headline itself is stupid. Next to it, a national story--like just about any you can find on Yahoo or Google--about Obama's reversal on stem cell research.

Below the fold, which is a weird no man's land since it is the front page but on the half most folks ignore when they're weighing whether or not to buy it, a story about how the Macon Police Department and Bibb County Sheriff's worked together with several other agencies to crack a meth trafficking ring. THAT IS FUCKING HUGE!

But because it's the (nee' Macon) Telegraph, it goes below the fold. That way, people can keep bitching about how the police don't do anything, going on about how bad crime is here and all that. It goes below the fold, beneath a national story that--while important--has less impact on our daily, local lives.

If the next biggest local story was about the birth of 39 puppies, instead of 39 arrests made in conjunction with the drug ring bust, I could see it below the fold.

Bah.

I said it was familiar, and I mean more like de ja vous. Before I started writing for the 11th Hour, I was upset by an issue of The Telegraph that put a headline about Wesleyan's endowment above a story about the way in which poor folks were gonna get screwed by state tort reform.

But, Chris, one is very local, and the other is a statewide issue. Yeah, but in this case, the tort reform law sort of flew in without much notice--or at least much ruckus from poor folks who would no longer be able to sue doctors beyond a preset limit, etc--and it seems like that would be the story you want to roll with. Wesleyan, which is a fine institution and all that, only has a few hundred students. There are THOUSANDS of broke people in Macon.

Do you see where I'm going?

Well, you will. Because I'm gonna bitch and moan for a while. (Just not all of it today.)

Mesmerized by the Dressy Weiner

Mesmerized by the Dressy Weiner
(or, The Heart of Rock n Soul is Still Beating)

Today, after a homemade dinner of beef curry and rice, my Mammaw said, "You look like you feel like dog squeeze." I mention it because my answer was affirmative, and because I'm now trying to better incorporate "dog squeeze" into my vocabulary. I'd appreciate it if you did the same.

Despite a history of late nights and binge drinking, I'm actually just a little sick right now. Coughing, fever, achy muscles and such. Perhaps shouting for six hours in a smoky bar wasn't the best way to get over my cold. But it was the most fun way to ignore it.

The second gathering of the Associated Creatives and Eclectic Malcontents for Productive Deviance, Local 478 (sponsored and supported by The 11th Hour) was fan-damn-tastic.

I'll just start at the end and work my way back. Perry Valentyne and Jubee—collectively called City Council—got together with some of the members of Citizen Insane—namely Jesse, my new favorite guitarist, and Shawn, my new favorite funky drummer—as well as special guest bassist, Travis Something Shirt-n-Tie, and Matt (bka – One Bad Catholic) on the ones (no twos), and they made beautiful party music together. In a week's time, they learned four songs together. It was, as Stephanie "Freakshow" Furst (of Under the Gazebo) awkwardly said, "Off the chain." On the last song—the already awesome "Thru the Blinds"—Willie D of Nomenclature hopped on stage. It was live. I don't think I was alone in hoping it'd keep going.

And maybe they're psychic because after I said thanks and y'all be safe getting home, I noticed Shawn, Travis, Jesse and Matt were still going. They hadn't stopped. And if Vic hadn't kicked us out, they might still be playing now. Jubee and Perry took turns freestyling. Then Floco Torres and Al King took their shot. Then Jubee again.

That was just the end of the night, like from 12:45am until close. The whole night had been crazy, a constant crowd that easily doubled the turnout for the first Local 478. Word's getting out, and the early reviews are all positive.

I'll be honest. I thought I'd over-reached with this one. I thought I was pushing it because I had the Freedom Jazz Trio starting things off, and nothing about jazz seems like the Hummingbirdon a Saturday night. But that big 9 o'clock crowd didn't flee. They dug it. The reincarnation of the cool, y'all.

But then panic struck when Freedom Jazz was almost done and I couldn't find 9fh Gutta. In a pinch, I turned to Floco and Al who agreed to rock out without any rehearsal. Despite being on the spot, they didn't disappoint. They never do. In fact, I had some folks asking why I didn't let them go longer. They're each stars in the making. No joke.

One of their new fans is Interscope/Myspace recording artist Meiko, a Roberta-native and former Macon resident who has been making waves all over the country, touring with Katy Perry, Sara Barelles, Mat Kearney, and several others. She's had her music popping up on TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, was an iTunes featured performer, a former 1 download on iTunes, and her self-titled album just cracked the Billboard Hot 200, a pretty impressive feat considering she peddled it herself for about a year when she was just an indie. Anyway… I'm a fan, yes.

(The Local 478 is doing a very special Christmas show with Meiko at the Cox Capitol Theatre on Tuesday, December 23. She's hooking up with Sonia Leigh, and we're working on a surprise local act to put in the mix, so stay tuned. {It'll be a good way to get worked up for the next Local 478 show on Saturday, December 27—the perfect way to blow off steam after Christmas.})

So, with Guttz still nowhere in sight, Floco and Al introduced Roxy Love for her Hummingbird debut. She only did one song, but she's already building a fan base. Her voice is hard to describe. You really have to hear it yourself.

One of my favorite things about last night was that we had some hardcore punk rockers in attendance, mixing easily with our hipsters and hip-hoppers, the oddballs and the squares alike. I've known some of the guys (and fans) of The Intoxicated for a while, and I loved having them side-by-side with folks like Gutta, who finally showed the fuck up. (He says he had car trouble so I'll give him a pass.)

With some help from Synister Sounds and Hymajesty Ace, Gutta brought his enlightened Dirty South sound to the stage. As hard and heavy as he was, it was the perfect set-up for The Intoxicated, who came screaming straight out of the slums of Crap Country. Wouldn't mind seeing them work on something together...

As this thing goes forward, I want to hear more from folks about what they like and don't like, about what they want to see and what they've seen enough of. It's always going to be a work in progress and I've learned some lessons already. But I'm always open to new suggestions (that doesn't mean I'll use them all, or immediately). So far, the consensus is that Macon has done this homegrown music thing before and we're close to seeing it jump off again. Regardless of the outcome, we're having fun trying.

Thanks to everyone who was a part of it. See you real soon.

(When you get the chance, peep this soul-affirming blog by the one and only Lady A-1 Sauce!)

Design Matters

{Note: this is a preview of an article going in tomorrow's paper because the public meeting is tonight and you really ought to be there. Newton Chapel at Mercer, 7pm}

Design Matters: Interface is all in yo face!

by Chris Horne

"Macon is an amazingly beautiful city," Scott Page says. And he doesn't seem to be blowing smoke just because he and his company, Interface Studio, are responsible for the master plan that will guide the College Hill Corridor into its early golden age.

"I work in a lot of tough neighborhoods. I work in a lot of neighborhoods that haven't seen investment in decades, in cities that are 60% vacant. Those are the kind of problems we're used to," he continues. "Macon certainly has its challenges, but considering what there is to build on, Macon has a lot more than a lot of other small cities."

From its introduction, the College Hill Corridor Commission (CHCC) has threatened to change the scope, feel, function and coolness factor of downtown Macon by reuniting it with its closest student body, Mercer. On Wednesday, November 19, Interface will have a big public meeting where they promise not to reveal much of anything.

Why? They want to hear from the community before they set their plan in stone.

"When people did a master plan in the past, it showed the city from 3000 feet up and it showed where everything was built and it was very, very rigid," Scott says. "Those were also the days when you had a mayor—or a king, in some cases—lording over the landscape. These days you've got neighborhood groups and banks and foundations all over the city who have their own agenda."

Those agendas are good things too, especially as he means it, because they reflect the involvement various community members and organizations have taken in the improvement of the downtown district as well as its Intown brethren. There are some in the city affectionately calling downtown "everybody's neighborhood", and that's starting to grow from slogan to reality.

That said, it's going to be a chore trying to balance all the wants and desires that we (the people) have accumulated for this city and in particular this area. But at this public meeting, they are inviting the community to further overwhelm them with even more of that very input. That's how they're going to build their plan.

As Scott says, "Our objective is to put together a living document that everyone can get behind with some pragmatic short-term ideas as well as long-term ideas to get people talking."

They aren't drawing up plans for one big home run idea or multi-million dollar project. There will be suggestions in the master plan—which isn't due until January—that can be implemented immediately. They're building this plan believing it'll actually be used in the very near future. That's pretty bold considering the stacks of unused plans collecting dust in non-profit and government closets all over the city.

"We want to keep momentum going," Scott says. "Cities have always evolved. What we try to do when we put together a plan is remember it is a set of ideas for one point in time. We're building on the things that have been done in the past and we're planning for a hopeful future—but, in five years, the plan should be re-evaluated."

They believe the Corridor can draw in young professionals and the creative class, as well as retain (and get more out of) the people that are already here. According to the Interface website, they're lending their vision to a master plan of the Wicker Park/Bucktown area of Chicago, which is—if you don't already know—very hip. One element of "the city" that they hope to enhance with the help of Land Strategies is to make the Corridor friendlier for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

"The entire community seems to be behind becoming more walkable/bikeable. Before (the gas price spike), you'd hear a lot of lip service about making cities more walkable and bikeable, but now it's gotten easier to convince people to restore priority to peds and bicycles," Mark says.

Doing so in Macon would physically connect downtown with the area to and around Mercer, which then could be developed with specific stopping points along the way. To hear Scott and Mark talk, one of the biggest obstacles they usually face was taken care of before they even stepped foot here. That is, getting the community—its leaders and affected citizens—to buy in. If this continues, the chances of their ideas becoming realities increases greatly.

"We're looking at this with fresh eyes. I think not being from Macon gives us that perspective," Scott points out. Then asking if we're responsible for the Thriller Dance that he saw on YouTube, he admits he showed it around the office to which his co-workers remarked, "Macon's so cool!"

With any luck and their help, that just might become our motto.

the Watercooler: Post-Electoral Fallout Shelter

Post-election thoughts

I didn’t know ANYTHING about the constitutional proposals for forest preservation through property tax reduction (passed with 68%), school districts using money for community development (barely passed with 51.5%), and the creation of special Infrastructure Development Districts for underserved areas (barely failed with 48.4%). Since you can’t research these things in the voting booth, you have to go on the wording, which is why I imagine the forest thing passed (“tax reduction”) and infrastructure development districts failed (“underserved areas”). It’s a bummer because I imagine there were millions who made their vote that way, or worse. Second place for Most Discouraging/Disgusting goes to the fact we had several major officials who ran unopposed. Of the 56 districts up for election in the Georgia State Senate, only 19 of them were contested—two by write-in candidates.

Let gay people marry

In solidarity with protests in 50 other states, gays and straights came out Saturday afternoon for a rally on the steps of City Hall. It’s a shame they had to. It’s hard to believe that this country continues to blindly stumble down a path of civil rights mistakes (e.g. – treating blacks, women and gays like they aren’t as human as white men, etc) but I suppose as long as we can find a scapegoat for our disappointments, we’ll keep it up. As weird as it is, I can’t think of a more compelling argument than that posed by a former Sportscenter anchor. If you missed Keith Olbermann’s comments on his MSNBC show, just go to YouTube, especially if you support the ban.

Honky paranoia

Well, “the blacks” didn’t riot. But, wasn’t Cecil Staton staffer/provocateur Zach Johnson just trying to be pro-active? Maybe but he was buying into paranoia and fear, not reality. One conservative blogger, a Johnson defender, wrote: “We all know half of America will burn if Obama loses, see e.g. O.J. Simpson verdict, Rodney King verdict, major sports team wins throughout America, etc.” Half the country?! That’s clever but false logic. For starters, referencing damage after the Ellis election, Johnson’s email reflected concern that the riots would come in victory or defeat. Secondly, the context for the Rodney King verdict is totally different. Oh and there were no riots after the OJ Simpson verdict.

No one was worried that McCain’s supporters would riot if he lost, though during his boo-laden concession speech, it certainly seemed like a possibility. Look at Denver, CO. In the late 90s, the city erupted after their sports teams brought home four championships in football and hockey. Their population is 70% white and 5% black. Black people, like all people, have more than one reaction to major news, good or bad. I mention it now because I’m hoping hindsight teaches us something.

Krok Floats

While I’m banging on conservative commentators… I received an email about a video of 940AM’s vocal yokel Chris Krok at a pro-immigration candle vigil. In the video, Krok makes an ass of himself squirting candles with a super soaker yelling something about his water being justice. He is, not counting the cops there to keep him from a beating, alone in the video.

Progress…

We’ve had proposals for curfews and requests for the National Guard. The Mayor has convened with the pastors of black churches, with law enforcement officials, with anyone who has a stake in the community and half an idea about solving the violent crime problem facing Macon. And we’re still having a couple shootings a week, coupled by home invasions and carjackings. Now, the City of Macon is partnering with Campus Clubs and Upward Unlimited for a basketball program. As “an athletic outlet” and “a safe and secure environment”, this is the first promising move I’ve seen thus far.

Lighter notes

• According to the Telegraph, because the Cherry Blossom Festival doesn’t send me press releases, the 2009 CBF Queen is Rachel Cozart, a Westside High senior. Liz Fabian writes, “Cozart will reign for the next year with her court of four princesses who were named as runners-up in the contest that judges the girls on the basis of poise, beauty, interview skills and knowledge of the festival and local community.”
• Did you know that there’s a Georgia Commission on the Holocaust? Well, there is and this is the 14^th year that they’ve held a statewide art and writing contest called “What are the Lessons of the Holocaust?” It’s open until March 19, 2009.
• Not only has the Mercer basketball team upset the University of Alabama, but the Mercer student body has a “more engaged educational experience than students at its peer institutions and at Georgia’s public universities” according to the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement. No word yet on where local colleges rank (or totally don’t rank) on Playboy’s list of party schools.

And…

On Tuesday, November 11th...

Al Tillman was elected as the next Macon-Bibb NAACP President.

1st Vice President: Gwen Westbrook

2nd Vice President: John Thomas

3rd Vice President: David Booker

Secretary: Linda Flagg

Treasurer: Gloria King

my weakness is Kentucky Muscle

It never dawned on me that I'd need to do a follow-up to this Louisville trip—nothing more than a wink and a nod in that direction—but I never thought I'd encounter something like Kentucky Muscle.

After my last blog, milady and I went for a walk. There in the middle of a park, in 50 degree weather, a clean-cut muscular white guy who was so artificially tanned that he looked like C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man stood shirtless and flexing. Two women in matching black outfits chit-chatted with a bystander. C. Muscle Howell smiled and laughed, taking his time putting the shirt back on. I couldn't figure it out. Several scenarios raced through my head, but none fit. Not even the suspicion that it could be the Louisville version of bum fights.

Well, an hour or so later, once we'd finally found a place to eat—that city was three times as big and almost as dead as Macon on a Saturday afternoon—we enter the convention center next to our hotel. Louisville has a system of skywalks that run through its hotels and parking garages, the Louie Link, and given the dropping temperature, it seemed like our best bet.

That's when we saw this poster for Kentucky Muscle.

My brain went off like that closing montage in The Usual Suspects. Everything made sense in the confines and contrived logic of bodybuilding, starting with the shirtless dude and leading through all the super bulked-up guys I'd casually noticed but not noted out around the city. We peeked into the auditorium where they were setting up for the night's events, like peering behind the Wizard's curtain... or, into the Ultimate Warrior's dressing room. A huge black dude stalked the sidewalk with a leather backbrace belt thrown over his shoulder, like he might need it at any moment for a spontaneous lifting competition, like he might have to pick some motherfuckas up.

I soon traded my girlfriend for the college football-loving mathematician that rode up with his girlfriend and us to this conference. We went to a sports bar to watch LSU eventually lose to Alabama. Along the way, I intentionally lead us back to the convention center so I could see what Kentucky Muscle was up to then.

Competitive Arm Wrestling. It was like TV, but live. It was like Sly Stallone in Over the Top, but better. One match was stopped three times because the two dudes couldn't stay clasped together. So the ref brought out "the strap" to bind their hands in mortal combat. Oh, man. Talk about exciting. I looked at The Math Guy and back at myself. We were each wearing sportsjackets and didn't fit any weight class there. Dudes were either hopelessly scrawny and dorky (observers) or massive and titanic (the bodybuilders and their peers). It'd only be a matter of time before they figured us out.

As we exited, a woman walked by in a short skirt. She was pretty and pretty normal looking except her thighs were enormous slabs of ripped meat. Rocky couldn't have boxed those sides of beef. She reminded me of the line Jean-Claude Van Damme had on SNL a few years ago: "I can crack a walnut with my butt."

(Speaking of Van Dammage, check out this trailer for his new movie, JCVD. Got to see that shit.)


Finally, when I went to find the poster for Kentucky Muscle so I could post it, I also stumbled on a page with pics from the "after party" they had. Wow. I don't think Heather Gore is related to Al.

Louie, Louis: a retrospective of on-going events

There's a guy behind me who reminds me of the line that Bob Goldwaith had in Scrooged about the flatulating butthead. I wish he'd shut up. He has a voice like the host of Inside the Actor's Studio, and he knows it, so he's giving a memorial pontification about how time marches on and you lose touch with people. I'm going to poke out his eyes and see if he wants to tell me about that.

Sorry. He just said the word "magnesium" and I almost lost it.

Right now, I'm in a Borders in Louisville, Kentucky, an otherwise happy fourth wheel at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference. This is what your professors do when you aren't looking. They leave the state and talk to other professors about the minutia that they've spent years studying. And frankly, I love it. These folks spend all their free time thinking and learning and debating stuff so I can get the 30-minute version in a panel or lecture. It's a great system. It is America at its finest. (Thank you, Barack!)

At the Baylor University Press table, they're hocking books like, Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen, and Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth. AND… there's a 40% for being at the conference. Those are easy to like—who wouldn't?—but I got all hot and bothered when I saw Quoting God: How Media Shape Ideas about Religion and Culture. I swear, y'all, if I had the funds… While that's rad and all, dig on some of the lectures going on here.

Love and Failure in the Rough South of Larry Brown.

Gothic Pleasure: Joanne Baille's "The Moody Seer" and John Keats' Lamia.

Defining the Margin as Affirmation: An Example of Empowering Cultural Difference and Effective Learning.

"Yon Fart Doth Smell of Elderberries Sweet": South Park and Shakespeare

"You Taste of America": Talledega Nights, Deliverance, and Southern Studies

"For the Sake of the Song": Townes Van Zandt and the Ballad Tradition

Bootlegging Narratives in the LAWS Corpus

A Sorority Girl Gone Bad, Bootleggers, and Thieves Like Us: 1930s Southern Noir in Print and Film

The Artist's Coda in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

And… Everyone Poops: Children's Literature and the Bathroom

Some of these I've already missed and can't experience, but the rest are pretty much on my agenda. Though just barely. See, Louisville is not only home to the University of Louisville, but also a beautiful River Walk and magnificently restored historic buildings in their downtown area, which happens to be exactly the area I'm in right now. Though I haven't found a copy of the LEO (the Louisville Eccentric Observer, their free paper), I can tell they've got plenty to write about. According to their website, they were a bi-weekly for the first three years of their life and then went weekly. We're in our sixth year, but we're not in Louisville, either. Wow. We're not in Louisville. Never would've thought I'd make that comparison. (It ain't that big a place, y'all.) There are blocks of new construction, like Fourth Street Live! which is some hellish food court/mall thing, that must be pretty appealing to tourists. It's not that bad, I guess. The two-storey Borders is cool.

Anyway. We stopped in Nashville, my first non-Macon love, and had dinner at Rotier's. It'd been about two, maybe three, years since I had one of their famed grilled cheeseburgers and an order of hot fingers. Milady correctly noted the hint of lilting nostalgia in my voice as I pointed out some of my favorite things. Lord have mercy, what a place. And then we moved along.

By the way, the Hyatt sucks ass. That's where we're staying. It costs for Wi-Fi. A single liter of water costs $4.75. Not Fiji or something nice. Fucking Pepsi Co-Aquafina bullshit. And for a bowl of seasonal fruit? $9. They're charging $7.50 for a pot of coffee and $13 a day to park. Meanwhile, there's an Econolodge down the street with more amenities. I know because I'm picking up the free Wi-Fi from them right now.

Oh hell no. That's it, bubba! He just said, "To the winners go the spoils." Where's my fucking spork?

the Plight of the Running White Devil

The Plight of the Running White Devil

(or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Obama)

Not even five full minutes after NBC projected Obama as the winner of the presidential election, a fire truck's siren screamed down an adjacent parallel street. Before McCain could hush his booing crowd for the umpteenth time, we were out the door and headed for safety, our emergency supplies packed days earlier. Though I won't tell you which abandoned building's bomb shelter basement we've chosen tonight, I can tell you that we've got enough food and water to last for weeks. We won't be here that long; I've already contacted allies in 'the network'. We'll soon be headed to more friendly borders… some place overwhelmingly blue.

It's hard to believe more people weren't prepared for this. Yes, there was a lot of talk, especially in private circles, about what kind of rioting black people would do—in celebration or destructive defeat—but where was the conversation about stodgy, old whites running amok, tearing at their cities like mourners shredding their threads? Yes, there were people like Zach Johnson, the Cecil Staton senate staffer who urged the Macon city government to beef up security in case of potential of black unrest, recalling the damage done to downtown after Jack Ellis was elected (for the record, Zach, nine years ago, those buildings just looked like that; no celebratory damage needed). But who would be the voice of the young, hip, liberal whites, warning us about what our parents might do when the inevitable befell McCain?

Across the country, particularly in these so-called Red States, some of us were ready, having first joked about the libelous emails forwarded by conservative loved ones. Now, I feel a little like Noah in the ark, thinking maybe I should have told more people.

The city is burning now and the scent of the air wafting in under the smoldering remains is a nauseating combination of Seagram's Extra Dry Gin, aerosol ironing starch, and Preparation-H. It seems Shirley Hills was the first to go nuts, considering its proximity to downtown's growing young leftist population and the black neighborhoods of East Macon. It won't be long until we see SUVs and station wagons plastered with private school stickers rolling in from Zebulon and Bass Road to Pleasant Hill and Bloomfield. The handful of carpet-bagging transplants who unwittingly settled in the lush environs of Ridge Avenue or Rivoli Woods will likely try to blend in with their retired Republican neighbors by casting off their Obama/Biden shirts and signs, setting fire to piles of books by Al Franken, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. The carnage. The god-awful carnage.

Maybe I was wooed by the idea that these older Americans were mostly harmless, that they "knew better", that they would behave. Maybe I should've listened to the people who had rightly warned me that these were the same people who were crazy enough to believe that a man running for the American presidency could actually be working for terrorists and that only the guy who sent them the email knew about it. Maybe I should've noticed that these were the people who not only recognize their own mortality every time they sneak a glance in the mirror but who now welcome death with open arms, ready to meet their maker with nothing left to lose.

Sitting here among the scurrying rats, the moldly and sulfuric vapors of a backed-up sewage line, the damp and dark—here, I realize my mistake. It was a little thing called hope. Not necessarily the hope born from our president-elect, but hope that the people I occupy this country with actually have its best interest at heart too.

Jimmy Carter will do anything for $200

The only thing standing between me and a giant piece of cake was the poet professor Kevin Cantwell. And he wasn’t really standing in my way, just off to the side enough that I could talk to him and stare at the cake. My landlord, Dr. Mary Wearn, stood on the other side, framing it. As they spoke and I nodded, I wondered if the autumnal brown frosting tasted as caramel as it looked.

As I finished up the cake, which initially barely fit on the little clear plastic plate, my lady meandered over and I randomly blurted out that I’d conned my way into the Jimmy Carter speech at Mercer. A ‘con’ because I was with ‘the media’—and yes, Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin is correct, there is a ‘liberal elite media’ and a ‘regular liberal media’. Kevin even snickered when I said, “I snuck in as the media.”

He tried to cover saying, “I’d love your job. I’d love having your job, but I wouldn’t want to do it.” And I agreed that I love having my job but I don’t like doing it. Then I sort of groaned because that piece of cake was really too big for one man. Even a man like me.

Sitting in the Willingham chapel at Mercer, next to friend and former editor/occasionally-current editor Jessica Lanier Walden, I listened to Jimmy Carter speak, as I thought to myself, “Holy shit! That’s Jimmy Carter!” Off and on, I had other thoughts, but it usually went back to the whole, “Like whoa! Jimmy Carter!” feeling.

Jessica’s dad and uncle helped get Jimmy Carter elected with a big assist from Southern Rock, which was the musical equivalent of Jimmy Carter. That is, as Jimmy represented a progressive South both proud of its culture and embarrassed to the point of change of its bigotry bands like the Allman Brothers represented a turn from the politics of prejudice as they embraced their storied roots. Like it or not, there was no throwing the baby out with the bathwater in the South, and because of that delicate little bridge, guys like me can wear the snap-button western shirts of our fathers and not be ashamed.

While this prodigal former president basically gave the abridged “History of Jimmy Carter” (like a thoughtful, narrative resume), the most important thought to cross my mind is how overvalued something like experience is. And conversely, how overlooked something like tone is.

The best thing a great leader ever does is with the strength of their personality, not necessarily their brains. Boil it down, the most beloved leaders of any time were really just mascots that we looked up to. Granted, in many cases, it has something to do with their experience and their smarts, but to lead well means setting a tone. It means saying, “We’re going to end racism,” or, “We will be a peace-building nation,” or whatever—not necessarily, “This is how we’re going to end racism,” or, “This is how we become a peace-building nation.” It is about projecting an idea before plans.

I’m not trying to be an advocate of style over substance. I just think that the reason we, the people, pick leaders—elected and anointed—is that we want someone to look up to, someone who’ll help us know what to feel and how to act. And truthfully, there are so many people who know how shit works that it doesn’t take a genius to be president (e.g. – 2000-2008); it just takes someone who knows how to pick (and listen to) smart, stable people with whom they can be surrounded.

That said, Jimmy Carter probably is a genius. Driving away from his speech, I again took note of the dropping price of gas, rejoicing in that way about the next time I need to fill up—almost excited by the prospect now that it’s well below $3/gallon. Then I remembered the stupid Myspace bulletin/email forward that went around accusing gas companies of inflating the price to a point when people would consider the mid-$2 range cheap. It made me think I’d fallen for something, especially when I thought about the energy crisis Jimmy Carter presided over.

Back then, he made predictions and proposals that could’ve kept us out of this, instead, the price of gas dropped again and people kept driving like there was no tomorrow. That was during a time when the suburbs were really about to flourish because people could afford to drive an hour, if they wanted, to and from work. That’s one reason our communities devolved into satellite pockets of paranoid people revolving around an abandoned core. If gas had stayed high, we’d be driving electric cars by now. Maybe the same has happened here. Gas is still expensive—more than 2.5 times higher than when I started driving 14 years ago—but it doesn’t feel that way because it sat so close to $4 for so long. So, we’ll pile back into our SUVs and shit soon enough. But the hybrid kind, just in case, right?

My favorite portion of Jimmy’s visit was the Q&A at the end. Though pretty much every question was good and thoughtful—the first one was a personal request for guidance in resolving tension between a student’s Muslim friends and her friends in the armed forces—there was one question that seemed capable of derailing his charm as the “cute”, liberal grandfather figure. (*Note: I heard more than one female gush at how “cute” Jimmy Carter is.)

Echoing Carter’s Jesus name-dropping, a gentleman stood up and said, “I’m asking this as a practicing Christian”—and you knew it could mean trouble. It’s so easy to like Jimmy Carter because he’s a walking contradiction—at least in accordance with our modern stereotypes—as a Southern, evangelical Christian liberal. Anyone who has read his memoir-heavy books—or old, white, Baptist civil rights activist Will D. Campbell’s “Brother to a Dragonfly”—should know that the social history of the South isn’t as cut and dried as folks like to make out to be. For every bloodthirsty clan member, you had someone like Carter’s mom who crossed over racial taboos “with impunity”. Well, most liberals like him as long as they don’t have to think long about him being an evangelical, and most evangelicals like him when they don’t have to think long about him being a liberal. And that’s why I liked the way he handled this particular question.

To paraphrase the question: “I, a practicing Christian, want to know how you can justify all the attention you give to saving the 300,000 kids who die from starvation and disease a year when abortion has killed millions of babies.” It was poised in a way that would either make Carter a hypocrite, or would ruin his rep with one of the aforementioned groups. For me, it just cemented the high opinion I have of him.
He said, in essence, that he doesn’t like abortion—never has—and he doesn’t think Jesus Christ would either, but as president he obeyed the law and instead decided to focus on reducing the demand for abortion. That’s why we have WIC. He figured a pregnant woman in dire straits would be less inclined to abort a child, in order to avoid bringing a baby into a bad situation, if the government made it easier for the infant to be more properly nourished. Basically, he viewed abortion the right way: recognizing it as a choice that no one makes for fun and trying to eliminate the reasons for using it. Having explained it that way, I loved him even more.

It is not that hard to find Southern Christian radicals, but it’s getting harder to find them in my generation or younger. The progressive Christians are too “Christian” to be radical. The radicals are too liberal to put stock in a faith tradition. And Southerners are being simultaneously assimilated into the larger culture, or dumbed down in the effort to financially capitalize on the resistance of some to be homogenized. In other words, most Southern folks who are too smart to fall for Larry the Cable Guy are eschewing their accents to avoid being associated with dumbasses, and for some of the dumbasses, being educated means having outgrown your raising. There aren’t many choices in between for the native of the American South now that fewer choose the path that Jimmy, the Walden brothers, Dr. King, and Will Campbell took.

I don’t know how to end this tirade, so I’m just going to say that I’m getting ready to attend my first Lamar Memorial Lecture Series talk. It’s something Mercer has done for ages, bringing in an academic who talks about the South. I’ve been collecting the books from it for about three years, but now I get to be at one. Monday and Tuesday, November 3 and 4, Paul Harvey, Ph.D.—not that Paul Harvey… Good day!—will be presenting his lectures around the theme “Moses, Jesus and the Trickster in the Evangelical South”. And I am stoked about that. It sounds so interesting. One of his talks will be “Religion, Race and Southern Ideas of Freedom,” and the other will be “Jesus of the South.” This is so up my alley that it isn’t funny.

And neither are balloons, but that’s for another time.

Chris Horne will do anything for $200

Within reason, and the vast majority of the time, I enjoy it so I just feel guilty for getting paid. Like the Arts on the Riverdale. I'd heard about it ever since I moved back to Macon, but somewhere along the line I'd decided that it wasn't something I'd be interested in experiencing. Like how I've totally written off cocaine. After this Arts on the Riverdale experience, I might start rethinking that whole narcotic drug use thing.

So I'd been asked to emcee and they agreed to pay me handsomely. I agreed handsomely, and went not knowing what to expect. Thing is, stuff like this never crosses my mind. I'd gotten up a little late because I'd spent the night working on a flyer for the Local 478 showcase deal I'm helping put on at the Hummingbird, starting this Saturday, October 25, and I got some coffee and chatted through the grogginess until the caffeine kicked in. Then I got dressed and went. My only regret was that I'd miss the Georgia game. Actually, I figured someone would have the game on somewhere and would invite me to enjoy it between stints on stage.

But what I'd failed to consider--and this is what I mean about stuff never crossing my mind--is that this whole event is sponsored by the Jazz Association of Macon, that these people like jazz so much that on a Saturday in October, they intentionally closed off a street so they could have a big festival celebrating jazz. These aren't college football fans. If I had to compare it to anything, it'd be like Freaknik on jazz. A lot of people loitering in the street and in people's yards, having a good time--not givin' a fuck--but in this really calm, relaxed way.

I saw some neat art (like someone's 6" x 8" rendition of Heath Ledger as The Joker, which they were selling for $75), and a lot of familiar faces (like Jared Wright who was there with the Ga Music Hall of Fame crew and who I later took a picture of as he stood with a guy who looks like Santa Claus). I'm now at a point where I'm more shocked when I go somewhere in town and don't see anyone know, though that's pretty nice because it reminds me how much bigger Macon is than I think.

Plus, I got to listen to some Dixieland jazz, which I wish there was more of in this world. That's coming from a guy who is dying to be in a jug band, so take it for what it's worth. Just know that if I get a chance to put on a concert with Earle Bennett and the Dixieland Drifters, by god I'm going to do it. The clarinet player was of an "advanced age" and required help up the stairs, but he killed it on the clarinet. Gentleman Jim the photographer leaned over and told me that the clarinet player had been THE bandleader for hot jazz groups when he was in high school, which he graduated from over 55 years ago.

Unfortunately, I didn't win anything in the raffle, which is okay because I was only aiming for two prizes: the $100 gift certificate to Natalia's and the $20 men's haircut coupon. Attaining neither, I remain slightly wounded but not terribly depressed. I'll just go hungry and let my hair grow.

The Jazz Association of Macon, which is made of people I can honestly say are super cool, provided a "VIP lounge" in Dr. Clark's garage with various libations, snacks and treats (including some good Indian food). Well, I downed about six whiskey drinks in no time but then was scared straight when a guy invaded my personal space in a drunken stupor, pushing his expired JAM membership card in my face, repeatedly breathing his hours-old gin into the raspy words "Where to do I get my renewal?"

"Dude, I have no idea." Other people throughout the day asked me where stuff was and I was without an answer in almost every circumstance. I'd been given a very thorough script to work from, but it basically only told me where the bathrooms were, that people should buy more raffle tickets and that the sidewalks should be kept clear in case of emergency. As emcee, I knew surprisingly little. In general, I know surprisingly little.

Like announcing the headliner. It was my last real responsibility as emcee, besides thanking everyone at the very end, and I thought, "I'll really do it up big... lots of energy!" So I did. I was screaming into the mic while the band set up, doing a lot of call and response stuff, getting the crowd so worked up that some of them tore at their clothes and were throwing articles of undergarments on stage. They were in a frenzy, all 2000 of them. Having done my part, I stepped aside to let the band, Bill Prince and the Paupers, ride the wave of emotion that I helped bring to its rabidly foaming crescent. Dr. Prince thanked the audience and they went wild, then he counted down and his band produced the softest, sweetest, prettiest elevator musak jazz you've ever heard. That's when I realized just how dumb I am. You don't work the crowd at a jazz festival.

And that brings me to the water. Once I'd decided not to pass out before sundown, I started rehydrating as much as I could. The only bottled water I could find was in the VIP lounge and it was all marked with--I shit you not--a label from Hart's Mortuary and Crematory.

a dude surfing a wave of lava

A month ago, maybe six weeks ago, I was eating at New China Buffet 8, reading The Watchmen, and contemplating the end of days. Whether it was the doomsday comic or the hodgepodge full belly, I don't know, but I wasn't feeling real swell about my place on the planet. When the check arrived, I snapped open the fortune cookie with one hand and ripped out its lovely guts, a ribbon of white paper sunshine that read: "You do not have to worry about your future."

Instantly, I felt better. Whoever put that fortune in my cookie had done me a service that day. It was the best part of the Sermon on the Mount, without the preachiness, in a simple sentence. Gloom be gone. I was cured. I slipped it in my wallet, where it remains today, and stopped worrying about my future because I don't have to. The fortune cookie made it so.

In the time since, I've been busier than I've probably ever been with the only possible exception being when I had three jobs: waiting tables, working as a youth minister and running an after-school program when my shift at the daycare was done. I was younger then and was ate up with free time because all my friends—including my girlfriend—had moved away, and I hadn't yet moved in with The Establishment, a Scotch-swilling former Marine who joined the National Guard for a reason to keep guns in the house.

Yeah, so for the past month or so, I've been crazy busy. With extraordinary help from Macon State faculty (like, so much help that the word help doesn't seem sufficient for describing what they did)—Drs. Braun, Whiddon and Young-Zook—Macon got its first ever writers' conference. Two weeks leading up to that, I spent three nights at the Georgia State Fair emceeing various events, including the kazoo world record attempt (about which I've already blogged). And of course, we've put out two issues of The 11th Hour, meaning two deadlines which I met with sporadic success. All the while, I had that reminder in my wallet that I am not required--by grand decree of the stars over China--to worry about my future. That was pretty handy.

Having emerged from this period, which really stretches out before Bragg Jam in terms of increased civic activity, without burning out, I now look at things very differently. The same energy I expended at the bar with the intention of forgetting why I was going to the bar is finding another path. Like water does. It has to go somewhere, and this is where it's heading. Somewhere.

This city. It still amazes me. The other day, I saw a guy driving a big honkin' tractor down Vineville in the afternoon. He was wearing purple nurse scrubs.

Tuesday night, I was at City Council again because knowing things has become important to me and there are several things that go uncaptured by the daily or the news stations (or by The 11th Hour). Like the woman who stood up before council to ask that the city government stop harassing and oppressing her. She labeled herself a freedom fighter and a slave. Everything else she said bubbled and spun in waves of non-sequiters and tangents. It was funny for about twenty seconds, and then it was just sad. Earlier in the day, I was reading about the argument between members of the Bibb County Commission on how to help Riveredge Mental Health Facility, who lost $1.5 million from their budget because the State of Georgia is stupid and cruel.

And the more I think about the way the Bibb County government runs, the angrier I get about them. I'm meeting with them all this week whether they're running for office or not. I'm asking them all the same questions to be fair. What I want to know, though, is what good are they for the city of Macon, which contains two-thirds of Bibb County's population. They only seem concerned with the people of unincorporated Bibb, and for too long, the citizens of Macon have been fine with that. Well, it pisses me off.

Then I got a call from a friend who'll remain nameless because I didn't ask if I could make this tidbit public. She went to the Joshua Cup--you know, the Christian coffeeshop that refuses to let our paper in their store because they're so much more like God than we are—and she asked if she could hang posters for "All That Jazz", an event that raises funds for educational programs at The Tubman Museum. The owner balked, saying he'd have to think about it because they have to be careful about what they allow in there and he'd seen that movie about Bob Fosse and he wasn't sure if he approved of that.

Yesterday, I stood in the back of the Library Ballroom, a completely restored and absolutely gorgeous historic building that once housed Macon's first public library. At the front, NewTown Macon was giving its annual update on its progress, talking about the millions they've invested in downtown and how it has helped bring millions and millions more in development projects. I left, with my boss Brad, before they handed out their "Partners In Progress" awards because we were pressed firmly against deadline with pieces to our puzzle still missing.

Turns out that Bragg Jam won the "Creating a Sense of Place" award and the praise was directed at Brad. The superintendent of the Bibb County School System, Sharon Patterson, was there to present the award and she said—we watched the video online—"Come on up, Brad, and let us talk about you some." The room was silent; hardly anyone had seen him leave. The camera panned wide, and heads turned right and left, trying to catch a glimpse of this elusive do-gooder to no avail.

Today, I went to pick up the papers for my route, which is significantly smaller than its ever been. No one was at the printer's place. While I waited for someone to show, I drove over to Macon State to deliver the cooler and sandwich board sign that we borrowed for the conference. The Dean of Student Life and the Director of Student Life, from whom we borrowed this, were walking away as I was walking in. I thanked them for their kindness, and the Dean told me that she saw a student this week who said that, because of our lil' conference, she'd decided to become an English major. That was pretty sweet.

After I grabbed my stack of papers, I hit the road. Briefly. Then I went to New China Buffet 8 to eat. It was exactly 4pm and the dude wanted to charge me $3.50 more to eat there whereas a minute earlier he wouldn't have. Fuck them. I went to Golden Corral instead and read from Mark Leyner's "Et Tu, Babe" until it hurt to eat any more banana pudding.

I don't know if I had a point.

a man of (angry) letters

I just received an email from my uncle, David, who used an excellent article by The Telegraph's Travis Fain, which you can find here, to resurrect an argument we've been having since I wrote my first story about the massage parlors in June. The following is my response to his letter, which featured these points:

1) The article references what my uncle calls "a false arrest" at All-American Spa, which is run by his friend Valerie, who was arrested during one of the raids.

2) He correctly notes that there have been "no convictions or charges for trafficking or child prostitution."

3) He claims that the 17-year-old girl I wrote about in my follow-up, who worked at All-American Spa, "mistated her age when she voluntarily applied at that spa."

4) The police never should've been raiding the massage parlors and so it's really good that they are "focusing on real crimes with real victims like the rash of shootings and robberies"

5) Quote: "I think it is time you printed an apology to the spas."

Hey Uncle,

What I noticed first is that if the MPD can't even find the actual owners of the spas, then they probably aren't going to be able to substantiate a human trafficking charge either. That doesn't mean there isn't trafficking anymore than their inability to find the owner means there is no owner. The absence of a legal charge does not equate the absence of a crime. The reason RICO charges exist are to put murderers behind bars when they can't prove the murder but can follow a paper trail to find out that fiduciary laws were broken. Secondly, what I noticed is that there is still plenty of reason to believe that there is or was trafficking in one if not more of these establishments. The fact that some are linked to spas in other areas and several of the owners are believed to be out of the country. The exorbitant rental fees to live in the parlor itself. And then, just this week, someone I've known for a while confessed that she was locked up on a DUI charge the same night that the first raids took place and was in a holding cell with several of the prostituted women. There were three or four of them that spoke no English at all. It's still very hard for me to imagine a woman--a foreign national with no English language skills--wanting to come to this country to become a prostitute of her own free will. I'm still afraid that you're so defiant about the likelihood of this because you formed a friendship with Valerie and feel the need to defend her on a personal level. Further, you feel like defending this is the same as defending your political belief system. I agree with most of your principles, and as I've stated several times before, I'm not concerned with free will prostitution, but I don't believe it exists in the majority of these situations. I think if you spent as much time researching the positions opposing your viewpoints as you do looking for figures to substantiate your claims, then you'd see a different picture. I don't believe that you're wholly wrong, but I certainly don't think you can extrapolate from Valerie's case that ALL the spas in Macon are run like hers is. In fact, in light of the fact that neither Travis Fain nor the MPD can find the owners you said you spoke with, I'm wondering how much you actually know about what goes on in those places. As far as the 17-year-old lying on her application. Every job I've ever held copies your driver's license and social security card when you're hired. Did she have false documents? Further, does her supposed lie mean that Valerie didn't employ a 17-year-old as a prostitute? I have no apology to offer or make at this time, so I'm not going to. That said, as I've said before, if I'm completely wrong about this, I will very happily admit it in a very public forum. It would be an absolute joy to me because me being wrong would me that innocent or misled or abused women were not forced into prostitution and slavery in my hometown. As you might've guessed, I am unbothered by the possibility of being wrong because it would be a good thing. However, if you are wrong about your position, it is a very bad, bad thing. If my cynicism about this situation leads the police and the public to demand proof that girls and women aren't being trafficked, then great because human trafficking is known to exist in this country and it's best not to be blind to that fact. As you surely know, there are many people who have taken after your stance--not only pretending that this is an innocent business, but pretending that this has strained police resources to the point that they aren't able to enforce other laws--do you feel as confident about your example and the possibility that you could be wrong? You could be encouraging people to turn a blind eye to a great evil (I would consider slavery a great evil) when it may have been more appropriate for you to ask on behalf of the people everywhere that the police investigate to the fullest to protect innocent people from this awful treatment. Hell, if your friends in the massage parlors are as good as you claim them to be, wouldn't they want to stamp out any association (which is a real association established by cases all over the globe) by eliminating the idea that they partake in such a heinous practice? If I'm wrong, what's the worst that happens? A few massage parlor owners, managers and workers have to deal with the inconvenience of being observed and arrested. Only five have shut down for good, so you can't say it's ruined so many businesses. If you are wrong then you've stood up for the rights of massage parlor owners over the rights of girls and women forced into prostitution against their will. I'm still much more comfortable with the risk that I'm wrong and you're right. If you think a lawsuit against the MPD by Valerie, the owner of an American spa, is going to justify your position, then you're short-sighted. When I wrote that article, there were nearly 20 AMPs. They've still only raided 11 of them. Of those, five have closed shop. That one--All-American Spa--being a simple, free-will whorehouse does not in any way mean that the obvious potential for human trafficking has been eliminated. All it means is that it isn't happening in that one. There are still about a dozen more. As for the cops focusing on so-called "real crimes"... A1) I am convinced that our police force NEVER STOPPED trying to keep people from shooting and killing other people. B2) I am convinced that it is the MPD's job to investigate the likelihood (based on the fact that in other cities with a disproportionate amount of AMPs also had human trafficking) of the enslavement and trafficking of girls and women is taking place inside city limits. I guess you can see where I stand. If you'd like to respond to me, please respond to the points I've made because I believe I've heard your argument clearly. If not, I'm open to hearing it. All I ask is that you breathe deeply and suppose for a moment that you could be wrong then weigh the consequences. Remember that it can take years to build a case (hasn't the indictment against C. Jack entered its second year?) and to explore the leads (it took the Telegraph months just to learn that it couldn't learn the identities or whereabouts of some of the business owners), so it would be foolhardy to rely SOLELY on your gut feeling from having talked to a handful of people on your visits to these AMPs. Hope you're doing well. Tell everybody I send my regards. Later, Chris