Tastes great, less sucking

Cleveland rocks, Richmond sucks will move to www.chrismartin.name/joomla which has a blog but also the features of a web site, something Blogger doesn't do well. But it will probably take a while to figure out the interface and how to add content. In the meantime, I will continue to revise the material here and add to it as whimsey dictates. You should also reach us at www.richmondsucks.com. as soon as I can get Yahoo's URL redirect to work.

And they're off

The campaign to remove the Confederate monuments from Monument Avenue, rename the avenue Soul Street, and replace the old monuments with statues of seminal figures from soul, blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues with artists like Miles Davis, Etta James, and John Lee Hooker, has begun.

Update: a member of the rap community has approached me about adding rap to the mix in general and Tupac specifically. Of course - I'm partial to N.W.A. myself. My bad - it only shows how old school I am.

Update: if the Richmond City Council can take a month off in August, so can I.

Update 7/22/2006: I was flying a sign quoting Jesus about a prophet without honor in his own country this morning when a jogger passed by the Stonewall Jackson statue and called out, "You're doing nothing." I yelled at the top of my voice, "Hey, asshole, you're wearing an American flag on your ass. Fuck you. Come back and get some." He declined the offer. I hate these consymps (Confederate symphathizers) and dirty little atheists. Possibly my birthday present from Janeane Garofalo. The woman has a perverse sense of humor. There's something wrong with her limbic system. As I said, I hate these consymps and dirty little atheists.

Update 8/04/06: Even though I have been integrating Richmond public transit since the early nineties, some of my best acquaintances are black, and I am an African-American myself, I occasionally feel guilty about my failure to mix it up. My aim is true, but I'm not hitting the target. Now, thanks to CVS, I have two prospects. They are smart, attractive, ambitious, young - best of class, which seems to be the type of woman who is attracted to me, and vice versa. Hips don't lie. No fighting. There are better uses for fists. If the glove fits, you must...

Mark my words, I'm making progress. Get me to the church on time.

Update 8/07/06:I was flying a sign saying, "Richmond: number one in horse's ass" in front of the Stonewell Jackson statue today when the sign became a self-fulfilling prophecy. A guy in a pickup truck lost it and crossed over from the right side, clipped a car, and then slammed into a building on the left side. I was standing in the median waiting for an officer to take my account when a taxi driver passing by said I should be in a comedy club.

One of the investigating officers said I couldn't display a sign on the statue base or the median because it was a traffic hazard. I was standing with my sign on the median at the time he told me this. The reason I was standing on the median: a police officer told me to do so. To do so on the statue was even worse than on the median, according to the officer. By the same logic, people couldn't have bumper stickers because people would get distracted reading them. This is what passes for Richmond Police Department logic since the sign itself is a traffic hazard. It sits right in the middle of the flow. This is suspicious because I've been doing this for weeks and dozens if not hundreds of police officers have passed by without mentioning this. If true, this suggests the department is negligent or culpable - surprise, surprise - or afraid to tell little ol' me I'm breaking the law. Take your pick. This is what may be what passes for a mild prank in the RPD. The more severe involve backshot suspects "resisting arrest." He asked me what was wrong with the statue, which is what passes for humor in the Richmond Police Department. I told him the fact that he had to ask told me what he was. He may have assumed horse's ass. I meant ignorant cracker. I told him there were a lot like him in the department.

I told the commanding officer on the scene that I was not his officer's "buddy." Overwhelmed with an urge to do the right thing, I confessed to having publicly urinated on the statue base Sunday morning. He declined to take my confession, however. Actually, if it turns out to be true, standing on the street corner would mean standing in front of my former landlord's mansion - and he is a horse's ass, and a greedy one at that, or the First Baptist Church, whose pews are filled with asses on Sunday.

So what have we learned from this: the driver needs to go to traffic school, I need go to a comedy club, and the officer needs to go back to the police academy for a refresher course in customer relations.

Update 8/08/06: Precinct vice commander (I'm more of a vice demander or provider myself) Jim Peace of the Richmond Police Department tells me yesterday morning that while he respects my constitutional right to free expression, it is his interpretation of the traffic law that standing on the Stonewall Jackson statue base with a sign is a violation. Why does the statue have a walkway on it, then? Why was the statue built with room for someone to stand on it? Flying a sign on the statue base is hardly the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a movie theater. What Jim is saying is that he is really, really pissed at my criticism of the RPD and my challenge to their legitimacy and authority. To paraphrase Academy Award winner and recent Hollywood Walk of Famer Jamie Foxx in "The Truth about Cats and Dogs," he's letting his emotions do his thinking. Shoot the messenger, I believe it's called. Or arrest the messenger. The next time I go on the statue base, he will arrest me, he says. I point out that a police car passed by me 15 minutes ago and the officers didn't say anything. He confesses that not all police officers are as energetic and as knowledgeable about the law as he. (The RPD maybe less than thrilled to learn from Monroe Park snitches Sunday that I plan to strut around the statue as a chillingly realistic version of Adolph Hitler - are there any statues of him in Berlin? As Albert Ellis says, same hearse, different license plates.)

Au contraire. I conclude that the many, many police officers in Richmond, the dozens and possibly hundreds, who kept on driving without saying anything in the previous weeks are a lot smarter and more knowledgeable about the law than Jim Peace. Either they are survivors or they are Constitutionalists. Anyone who enforces the Richmond traffic code over the Bill of Rights is a dangerous man with a dangerous mind and should be put down like a mad dog - quickly and dispassionately. (When I say put down, I mean in the pejorative sense rather than the shoot him in the head during a routine traffic stop and hang him by his entrails from the statue as an warning to others sense - don't get excited, that's just an example of police humor.) Jim, I suggest you move to Germany because you would make a good German. With your literal mind, perhaps you could get a job in the Wehrmacht as a file clerk. As preparation, I suggest you read Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. It should be required reading for all police officers in America and all file clerks in the Wehrmacht.

Chilling analysis of how a typical unit of German police actually operated during the Holocaust, by Browning (History/Pacific Lutheran Univ.). In March 1942, some 75 to 80 percent of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive. Eleven months later, 75 to 80 percent were dead--the result, Browning says, of ``a short, intense wave of mass murder,'' centered in Poland. During 16 months, Reserve Police Battalion 101, a unit of just over 450 men from Hamburg, was responsible in Poland for the shooting of 39,000 Jews and the deportation to Treblinka of 44,000 more...

What sort of men were they? Browning bases his answers on the judicial interrogation in the 1960's of 210 men from the battalion. They were ordinary men, he finds, on the elderly side, drawn from the lower orders of German society, and few had an education above junior-high-school level. And after examining studies dealing with this phenomenon and evidence of such conduct in other wars, Browning determines that it's not just Nazism or Germans that produces such men: There were American units in the Pacific that boasted of never taking captives. ``If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances,'' he writes, ``what group of men cannot?'' It is the care with which Browning examines the evidence, as well as the soberness of his conclusions, that gives this work such power and impact. - Kirkus Associates,

Sometimes, it's important for officers to know when to enforce the law and when not to. All those other officers - with the exception of one other - passed the test. You failed, Jim. I will do my best to see that that is a career-ending decision on your part you that you will never work in law enforcement in this country again.

Vice commander Peace suggests I might be a test case for the ACLU. I say that David Baugh is too busy defending KKK cross burners and Arab terrorists to take my case. He says he admires David Baugh, which is reason to believe that Jim Peace is also that most dangerous of men - an idealist. I say I don't admire Baugh and that the reason David Baugh defends the KKK is that he hates his own people. The reason he defends Arab terrorists is that he hates America - which I understand. If I were a black man in America, I might hate America too. The miracle and the testimony to human generosity and forgiveness is that the vast majority don't.

Someone gave me some crackers for lunch today, which is strange, because I usually eat crackers for breakfast.

This morning, I stand on the sidewalk in front of my former landlord's mansion instead with a sign that reads, "Tear this statue down, Doug Wilder." Too late, I realize I have made an awful mistake and signed the death warrant for my former landlord's beautiful home. Because Richmond city government is a cesspool of incompetence, one day my former landlord will watch in horror as city work crews tear his house down by mistake. All the paperwork will be in order, of course - perfectly legal. And may I see your papers, please...

Update 8/09/06: If I'm going to be arrested on the base of the Stonewall Jackson statue, it's not going to be for displaying a punk-ass sign but for burning a Confederate flag. Of course, I have to wait until the no-burn season ends. Firemen with hoses can be brutal. And of course, things have to build up to an appropriate fever pitch with accompanying media hype. Right now, we're in the phony war phase. Probably what I'll do is buy several flags, start burning them, and then call 9/11 to report a case of symbolic arson at the intersection of Monument and Boulevard. At which point, the dispatcher will ask for the street address since he or she won't know where it is because all 911 calls are now being handled by a computer help center in Benares, India in order to save money. After providing a street address, the dispatcher will ask for the USGS map coordinates. Ten minutes later, Jim Peace will be on the scene and can arrest me. You'll be the hero of Confederate Nazis everywhere, Jim. I don't question you integrity or courage, Jim - just your wisdom. That assumes Jim will still be around which is a safe bet since the mayor and the council except for Martin Jewell are cowards. What else can you can say of someone who's afraid of a country that hasn't existed for 142 years? In any case, such an arrest would be a resume enhancer.

For those of you who want to keep the statues for the tourists, having hung around the statues for weeks, I have only one thing to say: what tourists?

My thanks to Janeane Garofalo, who rocked my world, Red Bull (I was going to give up sugar, but maybe there's room for a Red Bull every once and a while), Dominion Power, for world-class customer support (hey, all those casino lights use a lot of power), CVS (loyal customer since 1965) Walgreen's (loyal customer since 1967), Starbucks, the cashiers at Target and Mr. Lee, for trying to get me off sugar, Jessie at Can Can for helping me eat right, XM Satellite Radio, Richmond Performance Modifications, Harold Durant & crew, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, and the Richmond Outreach Center.