Interviews | John-Henry Doucette

Aug 17 2011

Interviews, Journalism, The Virginian-Pilot, Uncategorized, Writing

Journalism: Q&A with Frank Batten Sr. biographer Connie Sage

NORFOLK, Va. — Connie Sage, a former writer and editor for The Virginian-Pilot, has penned a biography of the late Frank Batten Sr., founder of The Weather Channel and known in these parts as the man who led The Pilot through some of its greatest journalism triumphs.

Batten became The Pilot‘s publisher in 1954 and chairman of Landmark Communications in 1967, serving until he turned the reins over to his son, Frank Batter Jr., in 1998. Frank Batten Sr. died in 2009.

Sage will discuss and sign copies of Frank Batten: The Untold Story of the Founder of the Weather Channel on Thursday, Aug. 18, at Prince Books downtown. In addition to her time in The Pilot newsroom, the Edenton, N.C., author also worked for the staff of Landmark Communications.

The following conversation took place Monday. It has been edited for clarity and length. For those readers who don’t know, I’m a former Pilot reporter. Full disclosure.

Again, the talk and signing is at 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 18, at Prince Books, 109 E. Main St., Norfolk, Va. Admission is free. There is metered street parking, nearby garage parking and a surface lot behind building with limited parking.

You should go, but please don’t park in in Pete Decker’s space unless you are Pete Decker.

Q: I hoped you could talk about your career as a reporter moving up to editor, and how you joined the corporate side of things.

That’s going back a ways. I started out as a reporter in December of ’77 in the Portsmouth office and then worked for several years in Portsmouth, Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Then when The Pilot and (the now-defunct evening paper) The Ledger merged, I went out Chesapeake when we started The Clipper (a community tabloid published within The Pilot) office out there, and I was the assistant city editor working with Ron Speer, to whom the book is partially dedicated.

From there I came back into Norfolk. I was the commentary editor and then the metro editor, and then was the staff development and training director under (former Pilot editor) Cole Campbell. I kind of figured since I had one foot out of the newsroom, when they had set up their first communications director position, the first corporate communications position they had in many, many years … that I would take the elevator up one flight.

Q: Could you talk a little bit about your job there?

I was director of corporate communications. We had Landmarks Magazine, which was the first magazine the company ever had, that went throughout the whole company, and I did a news of the week and press releases and whatnot. … After that, I was still doing that, but then I shifted over to a staff development and training role where I was recruiting both journalists and sales people. I retired in 2004.

Q: When I was a reporter starting out, I had a much different view of the folks running the show than maybe I did later at The Pilot. I wonder what were the impressions of Mr. Batten when you were first starting out? If you had any interaction with him?

Not much interaction. No more than most of us had. He was always a friendly person. You’d see him in the elevator in the Norfolk office. You rarely saw him if you worked in one of the bureaus. But he was always very easy to talk with.

When I went I went up to corporate it really was eye opening because I think many of us, or at least speaking for myself, as reporters, unless you’re covering business, I didn’t think much about the business side of business, and the business side of the media business, and, in particular, ours.

Q: I take it you got to know him a little bit more up there.

Yes. He had a wonderful sense of humor, very self-effacing, incredibly humble. His door was always open. You really could just walk in. I don’t think that’s the situation these days, but, then again, I haven’t been around in several years. Of course, he had some protective secretaries, but you could always just walk right in and if he wasn’t on the phone or something he’d be more than happy to talk with you.

I think he was an unusual person in that he believed leadership was the most important quality for business, and that you had to have the ability and the instincts and the desire to lead. You had to have a desire to win and you had to do the right think by setting a standard for ethical business practices. I wrote down a list of things that he had talked about, and unfortunately a lot of that got cut from the book. I’m going mention that in my talks.

He said a leader needs to have integrity, clarity of vision, a purpose you could understand and communicate, strong values, a strong team – and that means picking the right people and creating an environment where they can succeed, developing them, and letting them make mistakes. He was really one who could not abide by backbiting. … He was really big into trust, which he got from (his uncle and local newspaper magnate) Col. (Samuel) Slover. He was a sincere person. He was authentic. He had high integrity.

Q: He really built a paper that really reflected and led the community.

Absolutely.

Q: At what point did you realize that was the culture of The Pilot? What were his thoughts on why that was?

I think all papers strive to be. I just think it’s something that, the Landmark culture – and you and I don’t know what it’s like today. When I started writing this book, one of the things we started talking about – not with Frank, but within the media community – was that Landmark never had had any layoffs. And now all that’s changed, of course, with the economy, but it was a culture that I think was inculcated in us the minute we walked in the door.

Those who didn’t fit into that culture left on their own. Well, some may have lost their jobs or gotten fired, but most of them, if they didn’t fit in, left. And that might be maybe not being as competitive as some big city newspapers, but there was a sense of collegiality. …

It was kind of in the air. I don’t know if you felt it.

Q: I did.

And I think from talking to people, particularly when I was recruiting journalists really and the salespeople, it wasn’t that way other places. … It just seemed there was a higher calling. …

If there was one fault it was it was too paternalistic. It was too family oriented. By that I mean, dead wood was kept on when it shouldn’t have been, because it was Frank’s belief that trickled down through all the managers, I believe, that you took care of your people and you made it work. And he regretted that to a certain extent. He knew that was a mistake he had made by keeping some people on longer than he should have. Of course, that was at the top ranks. But he moved people around, senior managers, senior newspaper executives, and gave them different jobs. Which was helpful for them. No one was ever pigeon-holed into a spot. Again, because Landmark never grew hugely like the major newspapers. It was a medium-sized, privately-held company, and I think that’s another distinction. …

There weren’t a lot of places for reporters, editors or senior managers to move up to. You might go from a community newspaper to a Roanoke (The Roanoke Times, Va.) or a Greensboro (The News & Record, N.C.), or from a Greensboro or a Roanoke to The Virginian-Pilot. That was it.

Q: The Weather Channel changed things a bit as far as the size of Landmark. I haven’t read the book, but the sense is he went into that venture with a kind of faith in what it might be. That success … did that change the culture at Landmark at all? I imagine it took some of the focus away from the flagship newspaper.

I don’t think it did. … That same culture permeated throughout The Weather Channel. I for one was always excited to say I worked for the company that owns The Weather Channel. Unless you were talking to somebody in the newspaper business that knew of paper like The Pilot … not that many people knew what Landmark was.

Frank Batten’s belief in bringing on the best people continued to The Weather Channel with Decker Anstrom, who he hired to run The Weather Channel and then brought him to be CEO of Landmark – that was under Frank Jr. …

I worked for the Syracuse newspaper, I worked for a trade newspaper in New York City, I worked on the Hill as a press secretary for a year – and it’s a lot different at other places.

Q: One of the things I have wondered is what The Pilot might look like now were Mr. Batten still in charge. Do you think we would have seen all of the layoffs and the reductions? Or is that too hard to tell?

It’s difficult to say. Possibly, just because no one has seen a combination of factors like we’re seeing now. It’s not just the downturn of the economy. It’s the whole ‘how do we make money when we’ve lost so much classified advertising’ and with the advent of the Internet.

Q: What do you think the big difference between his leadership and Frank Batten Jr.’s has been?

Frank Sr. was much more hands on. Frank Jr. is a delegator. Frank Sr. was passionate about the business. I don’t think Frank Jr. is, which doesn’t mean he isn’t a good businessman. I think what I saw was that, their personalities are opposite, but Frank Sr. was very outgoing and Frank Jr. is not. He’s more of an introvert.

But what Frank Jr. brought to the table that Senior did not, as you recall, was the whole adaptation of the Internet culture. Remember when he bought the Red Hat (stock), the famous quote about he tried to get his dad to buy some stock either for himself or for Landmark, I think it was for Landmark, and he did not. Frank Sr. said, ‘He got the Red Hat, I’ve got the red face.’

Frank Jr. was much more adaptable to the changing times. Now, would Frank Sr. eventually have been? It’s hard to tell. … They are very different, and the paper’s different for a lot of reasons.

Q: Where do you see The Pilot in five years?

Personally, I think there will always be a niche for community newspapers because people are still going to want … to see their kid’s Little League picture in the community newspaper. So I would think there will always be room for those. Now for dailies? Hard to tell. It may be what you and I both read that somebody will just want business pages sent to them. And will that be electronic? Who knows? The biggest problem for everybody is how do you make money now.

Q: One of the frustrations I have is I often talk to people who say, “Well, I get all of my news online.” I say to them, “How is TMZ covering the Norfolk City Council? I mean, how is TMZ investigating whether subdivisions in Chesapeake are built near fly ash?” And they don’t really think of that. The issue that I see coming from technology is it’s not that we need a local newspaper to write movie reviews. We need a local newspaper to go to the meetings and to do the stories about our community. Do you see something like that emerging from this?

It could be. I’m just going by what I read, the annual reports from news centers and whatnot. I mean, I read Poynter Online every day. I use myself as kind of an example. I’ve been, even though I’m pretty much at my house in North Carolina in Edenton, I’ve been living on a boat off and on for the last year, and we’re going to do it for another year. Backtracking, they stopped circulating The Virginian-Pilot where I live, and so the only way I can see The Pilot is online. And since I’m not here to get a physical paper – I was getting The Wall Street Journal – everything I read now, all the news, is online. We don’t have much access to a television, so all my news is coming from online. Do I prefer a newspaper? Absolutely.

Q: I think the legacy of Frank Batten Sr. in Hampton Roads is the newspaper. Nationally and internationally, of course, it’s the Weather Channel, and to people who are interested in business. … But The Pilot is the Slover family and the Batten family’s legacy here. I wonder what becomes of that legacy if we don’t have an outlet that can cover local news?

I would disagree with you about the legacy.

His legacy – it’s in the book – will be something called the Slover Trust, which was started with his aunt’s death. This is something started with his Aunt Fay Slover’s death. … We’re looking at 50 to 60 years from now, that money will begin to be distributed by the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. Depending on what happens with the economy and the world and the stock market, it could be worth billions and it could very well be the biggest in the country. Frank Batten Sr., because he was so self-effacing, he always said that was something the Slovers did, but that’s not really true. (I)t was Franks money that grew it.

That will be the legacy. It won’t be The Pilot. Just like all the other newspapers, television stations in town, they change. The names change. The Pilot’s been around a long time through the mergers and whatnot, but that will be the real legacy. That will be huge.

Q: I think about the future of local newsgathering organizations like The Pilot because TV stations don’t compare to what The Pilot does.

No. They sure don’t.

Q: I mean, is there a way to endow that? Or to kind of protect that core news gathering capability?

Boy, I don’t know. I agree with you about television stations, particularly in our area, though I don’t see them anymore. Landmark has two TV stations, as you are aware, one in Vegas and one in Nashville, and they are kick ass stations. Incredible award winning investigations that they do. And the future of The Pilot, look at Hamilton, 9½ years. (Former commonwealth Del. Phil Hamilton recently was sentenced on and extortion and bribery conviction, as discussed oh-so poetically here.) And all that’s because of (veteran investigative reporter) Bill Sizemore’s stories. Even though the staff is probably half of what it used to be when we were there, or whatever the proportion is, and the resources have shrunk, and the paper’s smaller, we still have at The Pilot and, I guess, throughout the rest of Landmark, that sense of duty to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I’m really proud of what The Pilot‘s doing. It’s wonderful.

And the stories that Corinne Reilly has been doing are just phoneomenal.

Q: Oh yeah. They’re great.

Where did she come from?

Q: Don’t know her. She came after I left, but she’s terrific.

Joanne Kimberlin. There’s some fabulous writers.

Q: Absolutely. So how did this book project start?

I was getting ready to retire early to write another book I wanted to do, and Dick Barry, who was working through Landmark historical, asked me if I wanted to do this. And I thought, ‘Well sure.’

It took a lot longer than I thought it was going to. It took a long time to interview Frank because of his limitations with his laryngectomy. Sometimes we’d meet three days a week for three hours at a time, or a couple times it would be with a couple weeks in between.

Q: Was he interested in the project?

Yes. He never saw it, intentionally. Never asked to. I might have run one or two things by him for accuracy, but the upside of that is I truly believe that because he was not one to – I mean, everyone has an ego – but his was so self-effacing that I think he would have changed a lot to give other people credit when the credit was really his. On the other hand, if there are errors, they’re not caught. He never asked to see it. I really enjoyed getting to know him as well as I did. He was really just a very lovely man.

One of the interesting things to me is he was a very closed person. At least with me … he certainly was never a raconteur, never volunteered stories. A lot of the answers were yes-no. (Laughs.) … And so it was just pulling things out of him. And I would ask him about how he felt about things and for the most part – except for The Weather Channel sale, which I really think did break his heart – he would say, ‘I can’t go that deep into myself.’ He could not or would not.

Where I’m coming full circle is that when I did see him being very profusely exuberant about something was about their dog. When he almost died, I think it was in 2000 he was in a coma, the daughter in California brought out a little black Scottish terrier. Well, this dog was the apple of his eye. He just loved this dog. … It was so interesting to see that side of him.

Q: So I’m clear, this project was funded through Landmark?

No, it was not. It was funded through the Norfolk Historical Society. I think there were contributions from Landmark people, but it was not a Landmark project. I have not been paid anything.

Q: That’s a big investment of time.

It was, but I wanted to be published, and it was a foothold to learn how to write a book. Because boy was it hard. I would have been lost without (former Pilot reporter and editor) Earl Swift.

Q: How do they feel about the final product?

I don’t know. … I think they’re okay with it. What I did not have access to were Frank’s personal papers in the house. And I don’t know how many there were. He was, and I probably should have put this in the book, he was disappointed, Frank Sr., that he never kept his own papers. There were a lot of boxes in The Pilot vault, and I would dig through those. That’s where I found some of the what I thought were the aha moments, like the letter from (the late publisher of The Washington Post) Katherine Graham, but his papers don’t exist. And if there’s any personal stuff at his house, I didn’t have access to it.

Q: What do you want readers to come away with when they read this book?

I think I want them to come away with what a virtuous man this was and how unusual a man it was, a business man, in this kind of climate and culture. …

What set him apart was his legacy, and that’s being an entreprenuer, being a leader, and of course you have to look at the Civil Rights movement in the area and how he took a lead on that … how unusual that was. How he took the lead in getting a four-year college in Norfolk, and became its first rector for two terms. And then secondly I would want people to know that here was a man who could have sat back, rested on his laurels … Even though he was this successful, he never stopped trying to prove himself to his uncle. Never. …

Because of several factors. Because his uncle (Slover) was so revered, so successful. He didn’t have his own father, and her was his uncle who was his father, his grandfather he was 54 when Frank was born; he moved in with him when he was one year old — he was his montor, as Frank pointed out. He used those terms. He was always trying to live up to him, just as I suppose Frank Jr. had to try to live up to Frank Sr. and try to fill those shoes.

Q: What are you working on next?

Well there’s kind of an esoteric one I want to work on. It’s about a 14th Century mystic named Julian of Norwich.

Visit this link for more information on the event at Prince. Information on Sage’s book can also be found at the University of Virginia Press site here at this link. And here’s a link to piece by Margaret Edds in The Pilot on the book.

And if you are interested in The Pilot, which still is an important paper despite all the challenges newspapers face, you might want to read The Pilot‘s ethics policy, which includes words from Frank Batten Sr. from the 1970s, in a statement called “The Duty of Landmark Newspapers.”

Among my favorite lines:

Newspapers live entirely on the bounty of the public. The ability of journalists to report and to comment is based upon a unique grant of freedom from the public. Thus our duty is clear: It is to serve the public with skill and character, and to exercise First Amendment freedoms with vigor and responsibility.

Our news reports should never be influenced by the private interests of the owners or of any other group. Our editorials should exhibit vigor and courage, always respectful of contrary opinion, never tailored to the whims of the editor or publisher.

And:

A great newspaper is distinguished by the balance, fairness and authority of its reporting and editing. Such a newspaper searches as hard for strengths and accomplishment as for weakness and failure. Rather than demoralize its community, the great newspaper will, by honest and intelligent journalism, inspire people to do better.

Tagged biography, connie sage, frank batten, frank batten jr, landmark communications, newspapers, norfolk va, prince books, virginian-pilot, weather channel

Jul 26 2011

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Fiction, Interviews, Writing

Writing Craft, Vol. V: Novelist and short fiction writer John McManus

I spoke with Norfolk, Va., fiction writer John McManus earlier this week for a Belligerent Q&A. This is a follow up with some of his responses to questions emailed earlier this summer.

A full disclosure reminder: McManus is one of my professors in the Old Dominion University MFA Creative Writing Program.

In addition to being a wonderfully wise, insightful and encouraging educator, McManus is the author of a novel, Bitter Milk, and the short story collections Born on a Train and Stop Breakin Down.

McManus is one of the core contributors to “If You Read The Paper,” a terrific feature at AltDaily. Worth checking out, especially on Fridays when McManus is writing the column.

And you can read more by and about McManus at his site via this link.

Without further ado …

Q: I hoped to focus on one story, “Mr. Gas,” before asking some more general questions. Generally speaking, the story deals with a teen’s relationship to his homebound mother and a relationship with a boy who works at the Mr. Gas, where he buys milk for Mama. This originally was to be a larger work. What did you originally envision the story to be?

The story is all that remains of a terrible novel draft I wrote in the winter and spring of 2000.

Q: What led you to reconsider “Mr. Gas” as a short story? How did you refocus the story?

In March 2001, when I sat down to revise the novel, I started deleting the parts that made me cringe to read them. After two weeks I was left with about ten pages. As I recall, I had the Radiohead song ‘Nice Dream’ on repeat during this process, which helped in my effort to refocus, if not to focus.

Q: There are a number of images that strike me in the story, but one of my favorites is Jason’s journeys to get milk for his mother. Given the apparent roles in their relationship, this simple mission, undertaken for various reasons, really resonated with me. Would you talk about how you develop images that are both concrete and how you find them within the story, if that is the case?

I hope you won’t think me disingenuous for saying I can’t talk successfully about how I developed images in ‘Mr. Gas,’ because I don’t seem to have conscious memories of craft choices I made while writing it. In general I’d say I try to enter a meditative state where I can just stare semi-absently at things until the solutions strike me, and then do that again and again until finally, if the story ever comes to feel right, some metaphorical systems will have magically developed that function together properly in a way that makes both literal and figurative sense. Since this lucky process happens once in a while when I write stories, I’ve wasted time in the foolish hope that it might occur in a novel as well. But novels turn out to be a different deal.

Q: There’s a real history to the characters, especially Mama and Jason, that comes across seemingly effortlessly and informs the events and certainly informs the events of the story. Sometimes I struggle with making the past of characters come across. How are some ways you address that issue without engaging in large stretches of backstory?

I think I tried to make the characters’ pasts implicit in what they desired and lacked and yearned for and wished had happened and dreamed.

Q: I’ve struggled with whether to discuss the ending, because I hope people will find the story. Safe to say, there was a bit of surprise to it in how it explores what Jason seems to want or has been programmed by to want and fear – so even that possibility that an object of desire might have feelings back, something that simple becomes a revelation and a source of conflict. When I say “surprise,” that may not be the word, because groundwork is within the narrative, but it was presented in a way I had to think about. It’s not simple, which, of course is a point of literature compared to, say, a potboiler. Do you work toward that kind of complexity going into it? Does it come about naturally?

In general I tend to structure a story somewhat like this: the main character, in this case Jason, wants something, maybe wants it so desperately that it seems downright out of the question. Various types of conflict bear down on him to prevent him from getting the thing he wants. He struggles forward anyway, dealing with more and more kinds of conflict (as well as more and more of those kinds of conflict) until it seems impossible to proceed. At this point the climax has to happen in a manner that answers whatever question the story has been asking (the question typically being ‘will the character get the thing he wants?’). For the climax to be satisfying, it has to seem both surprising and inevitable. One way to do this is for a thing that has seemed inevitable to happen in a surprising way. Another way is to show that the character has been believably blinded to the inevitable until a climactic moment when the thing that has blinded him somehow vanishes like an evanescent fog.

Q: I love the idea of writing down the opposite of what happened in a journal, and the idea of multiple truths, and how this comes back so organically in the story. Did you have that idea early on or was that something you found in the process of writing?

The opening line, about Jason’s mother telling him the way to keep a journal is to write the opposite of everything that happened, sounded good to me at the time, but now I look back and find it cloying and trite. I’m glad you love the idea, but it makes me cry inside to think about it, as it does to look back at almost anything I wrote this long ago. At least you chose a story from Born on a Train. My first story collection, Stop Breakin Down, seems no better than juvenilia to me now, and if you ever read so much as one story from it, there will be no old-timey photo booth and no Dippin’ Dots.

Q: You tell your students to write every day. Why is this so important? How do you make time?

If you’re not currently working on a project, it might not be so important to write every day; you could take six months off and come back and start anew and that would be fine. But if you’re writing a novel or a story, its setting and mood and style and plot are things you’re teaching yourself fluency in, the way you teach yourself fluency in a language. With any language you’re studying now or that you attained post-adolescence, you’ll start to forget it little by little after just a single day of not speaking or thinking or reading it.

Q: Where do you prefer to write? For example, I can write just about anywhere but I despise interruptions and certain kinds of noise. It can be tough for me to focus.

In October I bought a house in Colonial Place, and I use for my office an upstairs spare bedroom through whose windows I can see crepe myrtles, pine trees, the sunrise, the street, Haven Creek. This is far and away where I prefer to write. For two years in Norfolk I lived in houses that for various reasons weren’t conducive to serious creative thought, and so I sought a cafe where I liked to work. Nothing felt right. There are some new coffeeshops that might have served me well in 2008 and 2009, although you’re right that in public noise can always be a problem; these days I like to write in silence.

Q: I tend to play with dialogue, hoping to find characters in exchanges, and I practice writing full paragraphs. Do you still do writing exercises? How do you experiment?

In the early stages of writing a novel there’s plenty of exploratory writing during which I let characters think things or do things that almost certainly won’t wind up in the final draft.

Q: Who are you reading?

Today I finished The Literary Conference by César Aira, an intriguing little novella about a writer and mad scientist whose quest to clone Carlos Fuentes goes desperately wrong and threatens to destroy the city of Mérida, Venezuela, and probably the world. In my backpack is Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron, which I’ll start reading when I finish answering these questions. My favorite new novel so far in 2011 is Open City by Teju Cole.

Q: What are you working on now?

I’m close to finishing a novel that I’ve been rewriting steadily since May of last year, at which time it had lain untouched since 2006 in the form of a sprawling, baroque, and semi-unreadable 700-page draft. Today it’s a svelte 370 pages. When it’s truly done, I’ll turn my full attention to Cooch: The Musical. Also I’ve got about five stories left to write or revise in a new story collection. One of those stories, ‘Blood Brothers,’ will appear this fall in the anthology Surreal South ’11. You can read a slightly different version of it in Rusty Barnes’s excellent Appalachian literature blog “Coffee and Fried Chicken.” Another story called ‘The Ninety-Sixth Percentile’ came out in The Harvard Review this year.

Q: One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the MFA program is reading and critiquing the work of other students. I learn a lot by considering other people’s work, and by hearing their responses to my work, in addition to critiques from professors. Do you share work with peers? What do you look for in criticism? What do you dislike?

It’s been a while since I’ve shared work with peers, but I’m preparing to show my novel to a few friends. I guess at this stage the criticism I’m looking for most would regard what’s missing, unclear, tedious, implausible, lugubrious, or overly obvious.

Q: You are one of the organizers for this year’s literary festival. Is there anything you can tell us about the lineup or the theme at this point?

The theme is ‘The Lie That Tells the Truth.’ The schedule is online. Guests include Megan Stack, Joy Williams, Billy Collins, Naomi Shihab Nye, Young Jean Lee, Porochista Khakpour, Yola Monakhov, and Scott Heim.

Q: I’ve written about my regard for the work you are doing as a contributor to AltDaily. Why do you continue to take the time to contribute? Why does it matter to you?

I appreciate what AltDaily is doing for Norfolk. When they perceive that something’s missing in social or civic life here, they immediately go about filling in the hole. They’ve completed so many successful projects in 2010 and 2011 that I feel exhausted just pondering it. I contribute each week because I want AltDaily to succeed and because they let me write uncensored about whatever I want and because I admire many of their writers and because the weekly column lets me feel like I’m no longer wasting my life by spending hours on end reading political blogs.

Q: Is there anything else I should have asked but didn’t? Or that you’d like to discuss?

I wish that you had asked me who I think you are.

Tagged altdaily, belligerent q&a, bitter milk, born on a train, fiction, john mcmanus, mr gas, norfolk, norfolk va, odu, odu literary festival, short story, stop breakin down

Jul 25 2011

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Fiction, Interviews, Uncategorized, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol X: Novelist and short story writer John McManus

John McManus is reading in this photograph. Courtesy photo.

Norfolk, Va., novelist, short story writer, educator, and columnist John McManus visited France earlier this summer, dealing a crushing defeat to my dreams of getting this Belligerent Q&A posted in June 2011.

In America, we don’t look backwards, even if it’s only a month or so. We can’t get within 1,000 meters of a month or so, I think, because we don’t use the metric system. Or, say, go back to 1799, when France adopted it. Philosopher Concorcet once said: “The metric system is for all people for all time.” A prediction that was only off by an inch or so.

Let me note I was surprised to learn practicing one’s chosen art in the French countryside is more enjoyable than answering a series of foolish questions emailed by one’s student (well after the semester ends, granted ) for said student’s blog.

C’est très choquant!

And that’s right — McManus is one of my professors in the Old Dominion University MFA Creative Writing Program.

This is necessary full disclosure, but if you read this blog regularly (1) you are my Mom, suddenly computer literate, and (2) you already know I have more conflicts with these interviews than the Catholics had with the Huguenots from 1562 through 1598.

Zinged you there, France. (The Google translate function is giving nothing French for “zing.”)

Point being, McManus is the author of a novel, Bitter Milk, and the short story collections Born on a Train and Stop Breakin Down, and he earned the Whiting Writers’ Award in 2000.

Félicitations pour cet exploit!

And McManus, as I have written for TReehouse Magazine, is one of the authors of “If You Read The Paper,” a terrific feature at AltDaily. Every Friday, at least, you should check it out.

And, look, I don’t want to overhype this, but this Belligerent Q&A is for all people for all time.

Et maintenant sur avec spectacle …

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

This question has stymied me for weeks. My three examples of not knowing who I think I am: (1) the weeks I’ve spent unable to answer it, (2) Being and Nothingness, (3) my responses below.

Q: You are an award-winning fiction writer, an educator, a world traveler, and an AltDaily columnist. Do you consider yourself the less self-referential James Franco of Hampton Roads?

Scanning down to this second question before answering the first would have taught me who I am, although I would argue that a difference between Franco and me is that he wants to obtain a PhD whereas I do not.

Q: Your storied appreciation for the work of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has popularized a nickname, “Cooch.” I often dream that you and the attorney general will star in a by-the-numbers buddy cop show/procedural on CBS. What would your nickname be and why? What crimes would you like to tackle?

If, after my writing partner and I produce our forthcoming musical about Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general remains willing to star with me in a buddy show, I’ll deem our musical to have failed. Let’s refashion the cop show in the iconoclastic-loner vein of cop dramas a la Dexter, although I’ve never watched Dexter and so could be wrong to assume that’s what he is. My character would be a forensic expert in an ancient Rome where forensic analysis is as advanced as ours albeit with mechanical equipment. The show would be filmed on location so I would move to Italy. Nickname: Rullus. As I contemplate this, I realize how much I’d like for Cuccinelli to play a character who worships pagan gods of antiquity, so I retract my earlier answer. There’s a role for him as a leery, superstitious coroner who spends his off-hours in the city’s many temples, making offerings to god after god.

Q: When two vowels go walking, which one does the talking?

Earlier I was listening to The National’s album Boxer and remembering how for years the LP was tainted in my mind by my belief that Matt Berninger was singing ‘your mind is racing like a pronoun’ rather than the real lyric, ‘racing like a pro now.’ That misheard lyric irritated me so much that I listened rather apprehensively to their 2010 album High Violet, waiting for similarly irksome lyrics. If I were to answer this question, someone might read my response and think thoughts about me that are similar to ones I thought unfairly about Berninger.

Q: When you take over for retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, what will be your first three agenda items?

Taking down the gigantic pictures of Pat Robertson at the Norfolk Airport.

Taking down the ‘No Right Turn’ sign on southbound Llewellyn Avenue at the approach to Delaware Avenue. (Was there ever a more absurd ‘No Right Turn’ sign?)

Abolishing the electoral college.

Q: Why won’t The New Yorker publish my PBS NewsHour fan fiction?

When The New Yorker rejects a story of mine, I resubmit it as work of a different genre (e.g. dance critique, slice-of-life sketch, cartoon) and sign the cover letter ‘Malcolm Gladwell.’

Q: You are co-directing the Old Dominion University literary festival this year. How many days will be dedicated to Tami Hoag’s thriller Night Sins? And what else can we expect?

With apologies to Orson Welles’s 1970s-era Carlsberg beer ads, the ODU literary festival is probably the best literary festival in the world. Tami Hoag isn’t on this year’s schedule, but as you know I co-direct the festival with Michael Pearson and so I don’t have autonomy over these matters.

Q: If I make it through the ODU program and earn an MFA, will you and your fellow professors Janet Peery and Sheri Reynolds take me to one of those old-timey photograph places on the Virginia Beach strip? What costumes should we wear? Then can we go to Dippin’ Dots afterwards, please?

Yes. Shackleton and other Endurance crew members. Let’s play it by ear.

Q: France, huh?

In May I was in residence at the Dora Maar House in Menerbes, France, a hilltop village in the Luberon Valley about halfway between Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. The only non-wonderful part of this fellowship was having to leave at the end.

Q: By the time you come back, there may be a Chipotle in Ghent. Will you be extending your trip?

This question reveals how pathetically long it’s taken me to answer your questions.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground here. What else would you like to say?

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than that I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

In the next few days, I’ll post a more serious craft discussion with McManus here at the blog.

À la prochaine.

Tagged altdaily, belligerent q&a, bitter milk, born on a train, fiction, john mcmanus, norfolk, norfolk va, odu, odu literary festival, stop breakin down

Jun 16 2011

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Community, Interviews, Writing

Writing Craft, Vol. III: Playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran (Part 2)

This is the second and final part of a craft conversation with playwrights Jeremiah Albers, theater critic at AltDaily, and Brad McMurran of The Pushers comedy group.

They have collaborated on Wanderlust, part of the Dog Days Festival at the Generic Theater Down Under Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, Va. It premieres Friday, June 17, at the Generic, 215 St. Pauls Blvd., Norfolk downtown. The run is from June 17-19, 23-26, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $10. For more information call (757) 441-2160 or visit the Generic’s online reservation Interbot thingy.

This has been edited for length, clarity, and, in cases that should be fairly apparent, language. This part of the talk discusses comedy writing, criticism, playwriting, and stereotypes in comedy. And some links and a video in this post contain adult language and probably are not safe for work.

Additionally, there is some discussion below of a local theater production that was given a negative review by Albers at AltDaily last year. As I mentioned in the recent Belligerent Q&A with Albers and McMurran, the director, Philip Odango, rebuts Albers review in the comments section at that link. There is some back and forth between Albers and Odango. It is lively, to be sure.

The first question, again, is to Albers.

Q: You’ve done theater criticism, and I think it’s been good criticism. This is bias, but sometimes I have an expectation that local theater criticism is a little soft.

Albers: Yes.

Q: I think you’ve said some tough things about friends. Can you talk a little bit about what that process of working as a critic has been?

Albers: When I decided that I wanted to start taking that on, the reason I did it really was we need to create a dialogue about the quality of the theater in this area if the theater in this area is ever going to really matter to this area. Part of doing that is having someone there who is willing to call BS. And it wasn’t easy, and I probably made a lot of enemies, I’m sure.

McMurran: I don’t think you need the word probably.

Albers: Okay. We’ll omit the word probably. I think it’s important. We need a dialogue. I think that whatever happened after that one review I wrote –

Q: Which review?

Albers: Equus.

Q: It was a tough review.

Albers: Yeah, but it was also a tough show to sit through.

McMurran: I never saw the show, but it was the most seething review I ever read.

Q: You reviewed one of the director’s later plays and gave it a much more positive review.

Albers: Yeah. His production of Agnes of God was outstanding. And Philip’s great. I have no beef with Philip. Part of the reason I did that is I think Philip has genuine talent. … Art is an educational process. You never stop growing and you never stop evolving. It’s never done. This work is never done. It’s important to create this dialogue, and, I think, in some ways it has had an impact. You are finding the theaters being a little more careful about the shows that they are choosing. LTN (Little Theater of Norfolk), I have to give them props. Under Brendan Hoyle, this new guy they have as artistic director, the professionalism and quality of that place has gone up a hundred fold. I can’t take credit for that, but I think that dialogue, that little growing pain the local theater community had as a result of that, was how I did (help). … I really do go in there and try to be objective. … It’s not personal. If you don’t want to be a public spectacle, get off the stage.

McMurran: After he’s written these reviews, we’ve got a big target on our head. (Laughs.)

Q: Who is going to review it for AltDaily?

Albers: I don’t know.

Q: Not you?

Albers: No. Not me.

McMurran: That would be awesome.

Albers: I would just be like, “It stinks.” (Laughs.)

Q: Did the process of really having a look at what other people are doing and thinking critically about it … did that help you in the writing process?

Albers: Yes, it helps me in every process. I had a college professor and one of his big mantras we used to laugh at because we were kids and we didn’t really understand, but he used to say, “Theater is important, but bad theater is more important.” And we were like, “Whatever, that play sucked.” … Watching theater, I learn all the time. I see stuff in shows that I know I’ve probably stolen and, you know, taken my own way. Or I’ve seen stuff and said, “Okay, there’s a million things wrong with that. What’s wrong with that? Well the pace is wrong with that. Well, the joke isn’t funny.” … It helps you understand the mechanics of structure and of technique. Because there really is a craft to writing. … There really is a craft to directing plays. It’s not something everyone can do well even though they think that they can. The more you look at things that way the stronger it’s going to make you.

McMurran: I’m just glad we’ve had so many big words.

Q: I saw that Hump N’ New York video. (For The Pushers.)

McMurran: Yes. It’s one everybody goes back to.

Q: Would you talk about how it came about?

McMurran: There was what we call a skeleton. There was one objective – he couldn’t find his girl. Tracy. The fact that he runs the streets of New York on New Year’s Eve, that just was his obstacle. My favorite thing that ended up happening in that video is the girl behind us … that would help us with mikes and stuff, she was from New York. She said she had never seen more New Yorkers smile. I stayed in character (almost) the entire day. I can’t tell you how many people followed us into the subway.

Q: There are a couple of times where there are jokes, but it’s about somebody who can’t get what he wants.

McMurran: Never does.

Q: And he goes to the big city and he’s looking, and there’s all this spectacle, and he compares it to his hometown and then there’s the part I love with Morgan Freeman (or a likeness), where everybody’s crowded around him (or it). Was that just kind of found?

McMurran: It was literally a found moment. And the only thing that came into Hump’s mind that day was the movie Seven where he kept asking “What’s in the box?” (Laughs.)

Q: Which actually, thematically, is a pretty great line.

McMurran: (Laughs.) “What’s in the box?” When I first started chanting it, it was like, what’s this guy in an egg suit and his tighty whiteys doing? But then it began a chant all the way down the street. (Laughs.)

Q: Was (Freeman) whisked away by security?

McMurran: The funny part is I didn’t know it was him. … It was either Morgan Freeman or the best wax museum guy that ever existed.

Q: I remember I saw Hump about five years ago.

Albers: It was the first sketch that came in.

McMurran: It was a mistake. I used to do standup and … the Zoloft commercial. To me I thought it was an egg that would walk into these parties and no one would talk to him. I was like, “Of course they won’t talk to you, you’re a freaking egg.” And he was all about depression. I did this in stand up and had this voice and character. It wasn’t until I got off stage that night that someone said, “You know, those are tears in the Zoloft commercial. That’s not an egg at all.” I’m like, “Oh (numero dos).” (Laughter.)

Q: (Hump) is a really sad character.

McMurran: Absolutely. His father’s very mean to him.

Q: What do you think when you’re writing a sketch where the character is very sad and people are supposed to laugh at it? Or you’re writing a sketch where there’s a dad who wants his son to be gay? … What do you want to happen from that sketch?

McMurran: Well, that’s two different questions. On one end, it can do a lot of things. … (H)e became this underdog that the audience really rooted for, even when they shouldn’t have rooted for him, when Hump would go to some extremes. … As far as your other question … The one thing I learned in the last three years that I did not know when I first started doing comedy is just how when an actor would come in and say, “How do you want me to play this? Comedically or dramatically?” And we’d be like, “Next. I don’t want you at all.” Because there is no difference in how you play it. That’s all in writing. … I think that’s what made that scene funny. I still use the word think because you never know, but as far as having a dad that wants you to be something else, you nailed it. The dad wants you to be something else, it’s just ridiculous in the fact that he wants you to be something that’s not a social norm, necessarily – I don’t want to say being gay is not a social norm. You know, it can be perceived that way.

Albers: Wanting your child to be gay is certainly not a social norm.

Q: Right. Well, that’s interesting. And I’ll try to ask this as artfully as I can. Sketch comedy can be misogynistic. And it can be homophobic sometimes –

McMurran: Well, you guys come to a show. You’re right.

Q: Do you worry about putting out that kind of comedy?

McMurran: Not at all. And I can answer that very … We had every race, creed in this show at one point in time. Homosexual, not homosexual. One thing we believe – we’re in a PC world now. And that there’s nothing more cathartic than being able to go in and laugh at things you’re not supposed to laugh at. I think that actually is, and this is one time I’ll actually get serious about this, is I think that’s such a release. To be able to go in, you know: “You can’t say that, you can’t do that. Laughing at somebody that falls down is bad, especially if they’re old.” Well what if it does make you laugh? Are we supposed to repress that? I don’t believe we should.

Albers: There will be people who get touchy. There will be people who, when you go there, will get up and walk out of the theater. And, you know, okay, fine. … You can’t please all of the people all the time. You shouldn’t censor yourself for fear of offending.

Q: I guess that’s not what I’m saying. I mean, do you think about what you’re putting out when you’re writing it?

McMurran: Yes.

Albers: Yeah.

Q: I’m not saying that you’re misogynistic … When you talk about that material, I mean, that’s something people might think about.

McMurran: They do. I think it’s a great question if you want to know the truth. You’re hitting on something that’s much deeper than – Really, I actually love the question. There is a line, and when you find it, it’s very dangerous because you have to straddle it, and when you straddle it poorly audiences will tell you.

Albers: And you can do that but it is –

McMurran: You have to do that.

Albers: It is having the taste and the basic decency to not put your toe too far over the line. You’ve got to know where the danger zone is, and how to stay out of it. And you don’t always know that. …

McMurran: After doing 200, 150 shows, however many shows we’ve done over the years, if we have 10, two are going to be flirting with that. If not, in every one there might be one that flirts with that. … I will be a little arrogant here. In the last three years, craft has become a much more important thing, where it’s not just about shock. And I don’t like shock any more. If you want to know the truth, if we get a script or a sketch in that’s scatological or blue … we won’t put it in now where back then we put it in.

Q: I just wonder how do you negotiate that kind of line between being Pushers, and pushing the edge and the envelope, or just going for, “Hey, we just need to have something that at its core is funny and relatable.”

McMurran: I’m more about what I find funny. … If it’s funny, it goes in. If it’s funny and it has a social message, it’s definitely going in. If it’s crossing a line and it’s borderline funny, it still may go in depending upon what the statement is. Sometimes it’s – We’re not a political group, by any means, I think, on paper. But I think behind the scenes if you scratched us you’d find something. I love the question because I can’t honestly give you a full answer.

Albers: You find it as you’re doing it. I mean, really, it’s a trial and error kind of thing, and in sketch comedy you don’t have a lot of time to correct it. In a play, you’ve got five weeks, six weeks, so you know you can tweak this, change that, and maybe that needs to get cut. … You find it through doing it.

Q: Anything I should have asked but didn’t?

McMurran: I want people to come out, see this and honestly give what they feel about it. I know that everybody says that, but – It’s sexy. One thing we haven’t talked about in this is it’s a really sexy show. We have an incredibly sexy cast.

Albers: And we did that on purpose.

McMurran: This is the sexiest cast that has ever been cast in this area.

Albers: I will back you up on that.

Q: Other than the pretend cast I have in my head.

Albers: Exactly. But this is kind of our idea to kind of reinvent the local theater for Hampton Roads rather than the Hampton Roads theater serving itself.

McMurran: Love it.

Albers: Because that’s what it kind of has been for years. … We need to get some new ideas and some new work.

McMurran: Why aren’t there more local writers doing things like this?

Tagged brad mcmurran, comedy, comedy writing, dog days festival, generic theater, generic theater down under chrysler hall, jeremiah albers, playwrights, the pushers, wanderlust

Jun 14 2011

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Community, Interviews, Writing

Writing Craft, Vol. III: Playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran (Part 1)

This conversation in two parts deals with comedy writing, reading, inspiration, criticism, and making an audience laugh.

And a new play. Can’t forget that.

Wanderlust, premiering Friday as part of the Dog Days Festival at the Generic Theater Down Under Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, Va. is the first play written and by the team of Jeremiah Albers, theater critic for AltDaily, and Brad McMurran, one of the leaders of The Pushers comedy group. Albers, too, did his time with The Pushers.

Readers of the blog probably caught the recent Belligerent Q&A with them. If not, give it a try. They bring the funny.

Albers and McMurran also directed the play. Again, it opens Friday, June 17, at the Generic, 215 St. Pauls Blvd., Norfolk downtown. The run is from June 17-19, 23-26, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $10. For more information call (757) 441-2160 or visit the Generic’s online reservation Interbot thingy. Patron under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a “responsible” adult.

This is Generic’s standard, not mine.

The playwrights met while studying in the Old Dominion University theater department before working together in The Pushers.

We spoke at the Colley Cantina in Norfolk for about an hour, and I had to make some hard choices about what to keep in these posts. I leaned toward questions about writing, as this is the supposed thrust of the blog. Point being: thas been edited for length, clarity, and, in cases that should be fairly apparent, language.

One link to/embedded video below contains adult language and probably is not safe for work.

This starts with a question to Albers about joining The Pushers.

Q: You had a dramatic background, but had you done improv?

Albers: No. No improv.

Q: So why did you want to do comedy?

Albers: It just seemed like an interesting thing to do. It was something I hadn’t done before.

McMurran: He turned in probably … in my opinion, one of the finest scripts we had the first season. What we’re doing now, compared to then, is a lot different, because we didn’t know what we were doing. He turned in a beautiful parody of The Vagina Monologues. … It was written by somebody who certainly knew that play. You know, it plays every ten minutes in Hampton Roads.

Q: I think people hear improv and think you get up on stage and make up whatever you want. When I went to my first Pushers show – One of my favorite skits, as I told Sean (Devereux, head writer and producer of The Pushers), was “Justice Crusaders.” It’s just great. It’s written –

McMurran: That was certainly a sketch. It wasn’t until the second year of The Pushers that I went up to Upright Citizens Brigade and went through the whole program up there, and came back and started implementing that into shows. We also used that for writing. Still are. … We found something in New York that I think we instinctually knew, but to put vocabulary to it, “game.” (Finding “the game of the scene,” for example; Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre defines “the game as the single, specific comedic idea that makes a scene funny.”) … I started to notice the pattern of a game. It makes your scene so much better. That’s something that’s gotten a lot better about writing and doing improv.

Q: There’s a really clear pattern of reversals, and not just reversing the expectations of the characters but what the audience expects, and that makes it funny.

McMurran: One of the first things you learn about comedy is one of the funniest things you can do is the unexpected. That’s game. If you’re leading an audience down a pathway to where they think it’s going somewhere and then you – (claps) – flip it on them? They love it.

Q: Particularly the sketch where (Albers) plays Aquaman trying to join the supergroup in the kid’s bedroom or basement or whatever –

Albers: Yeah. It’s kids with a superhero club.

Q: But you play it straight. It’s a tragedy for Aquaman. … Did you have a part in writing it or did Sean write it?

Albers: Sean wrote that one, and he brought that. The key to really successfully acting in comedy is you have to believe it. You have to play it straight.

McMurran: If you don’t play it straight, it’s not funny.

Albers: If you don’t believe it, nobody else will either.

Q: (Albers) left the group. You’ve done some plays. You did a play with CORE Theatre Ensemble.

Albers: A few actually.

Q: And then you’re doing reviews as well. What was it that made you want to write a play?

Albers: It’s something that we’ve been talking about doing since probably the beginning of The Pushers.

McMurran: Believe it or not, this is our fifth idea. We have four other ideas that we want to do. The original idea that we had … is we wanted to write a comedy around Elizabeth and Bloody Mary as sisters, where what that would have been like growing up in that household between the two, but done as a pure comedy. We, ah – we bailed on that project. (Laughs.)

Q: When did you start writing this project?

Albers: March.

McMurran: A little before that.

Albers: February? February.

Q: And when did you have a script?

McMurran: Yesterday. (Laughs.)

Albers: Ask me on the 17^th. (Laughs.) No, we actually had a second draft of the script by the beginning of May. We had a rehearsal-ready script. And, of course, we’ve been revising and changing and rewriting as we’ve been going through rehearsals.

Q: What was your process? I haven’t seen the play or read the script. I made the assumption that it’s based (after its inspiration, Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde) on a circular –

Albers: It is. One character from each scene moving to –

McMurran: Yes and no. We have an argument about this.

Albers: It is the same model.

McMurran: I learned La Ronde as an improvisation. It’s actually one of my least favorite improvisational games. However, the crowds love it. It’s something we’ve implemented in The Pushers. The crowds love it. I thought this would actually be genius to write this as opposed to improvising it.

Albers: It was a likely first play for us to write because, I mean, we have experience working together in sketch comedy and so here we have this fully integrated complex play but it’s still done in manageable chunks. From a writer’s perspective, it’s easy to handle that. We have these two characters. Each character has a two-scene arc. Everything is very contained in this model. It’s very compartmentalized, and that has made it very easy us to find our feet as (writers) because it’s not like we were trying to write some complex farce where if we find out we have a problem the whole second act collapsed.

McMurran: I think some of the coolest moments we had were how many natural patterns showed up. Some we intended. Some we didn’t.

Q: One of the things that can happen when you have characters who aren’t on stage for a long time, and have a very limited arc, is they can become types. Is that something that you fought against or embraced?

Albers: Every character in the play is identified by their job. You have a housewife and a newscaster and a squid and a waitress, and the idea is you introduce them as these labels, and you peel that label away.

McMurran: It also becomes our thesis in the play, at the end of the show.

Albers: Yeah. It’s really the main thesis of the play.

McMurran: Are we our jobs?

Q: Why did you set it in Hampton Roads?

McMurran: Write what you know.

Albers: I really philosophically believe that theater has to exist for community that it’s in, and what better way to do theater for your community than to do theater about your community. People are more likely to respond to this than they are to, you know, Twelfth Night. That’s just true.

McMurran: We hope. (Laughs.)

Albers: Although I like Twelfth Night. (Laughs.)

McMurran: I like Eleventh Night better.

Q: There might be expectations for fans of The Pushers that the play will be a certain kind of (humor). What do you think their experience will be?

McMurran: You’re not going to get a play by (us) where comedy is not involved. He tried to fight against me on that a lot. “Brad, this is not a sketch show.” I’m like, “It should be.” (Laughs.)

Albers: The idea is kind of a play for people who don’t see plays. I’m hoping to get that audience because I think they will be surprised by what they get, but hopefully they’ll like what they see.

McMurran: This might be controversial. I’m so tired of going to plays where it’s people playing for their friends. I would love to get a different group coming in, much like we do with The Pushers. … We went away from the theater crowd. It was one of the best moves that we made, when The Pushers left theaters and went into bars.

Q: Can you describe the change for you?

McMurran: When you go out and play for people who are in the business or in this local Hampton Roads area – and I have a lot of respect for actors in this area, please don’t confuse that, and groups such as CORE; I love CORE – but it becomes more of Our Gang, where we’re going to put up our play, and they put up their play. I had guys who have never seen any live theater come up to me after a show and say, “I never knew it could be this fun.”

Q: One of the interviews I read, you had talked about Tim Conway. Can you talk about him, and … some of the writers, either comedy or dramatic, who influenced you?

McMurran: When I grew up there were two names in my household, Tim Conway and Bill Murray. Tim Conway … I never heard my parents having such fun. They would be losing it, you know? … I didn’t understand the concept, of just watching this little guy get so carried away in these scenes. Just thinking about him in any sketch just makes me laugh. Certainly, probably the first sketch that comes to mind is the one where he’s the old man. No, I take that back. It’s the dentist. The dentist, where he keeps hitting himself with the Novocaine. It’s all physical comedy. … Bill Murray, I think everybody at this table knows I have an unnatural man crush on him.

Q: What they might have in common is there’s pain in their comedy. Especially Bill Murray, there’s a sadness.

McMurran: He’s a very subtle actor. There’s so much more behind the eyes than the normal comedian.

Q: What kind of writers did you emulate or study?

McMurran: I’m a classics guy. When I got put on restriction … I was on restriction every day. I went to Episcopal church in Portsmouth and every Sunday I would do a pratfall after communion. … I’d be put on restriction. My restriction at the McMurran household was you had to go and read classics. … Herman Hess’ Siddhatha is a book I read two or three times a year. And I know I’ll get dogged on this, but I do love The Old Man and the Sea. It’s one of those books that I go back to. And the last one I will have to put on there is The Razor’s Edge.

Albers: I read a lot of plays. Plays are easy to read and it’s kind of an occupational necessity to be familiar with a lot of them. I love all kinds of stuff. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. More modern stuff, I love David Mamet, sometimes. (Laughs.) I will add that caveat: sometimes. Sondheim. I’ve always been really interested in playwriting as a craft because really when you’re acting in a play, which I have a lot of experience doing, you are given this information in front of you and it’s your job to kind of unravel it and get the information out of it that you need to do what you need to do. So I’ve always kind of been fascinated with word choice. I think the best person writing in the theater today, although he’s not really writing anymore, is Sondheim. Even though he’s a music guy, you look at his lyrics and how compact they are, and they’re so clever and they have these crazy rhyme schemes to them, but they’re also brilliant dramatic writing. If you you unfurl them and put them as lines in a play, you could play them as a scene. And I’ve always been really enamored with that idea.

McMurran: One of the writers who has influenced my life is in this play – John Keats. … “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is the (poem) in this play. I’ve never fallen in love with a poet more than I did him. My father turned me on to him. He said, “Hey you ought to read this guy.” I said, “I don’t want to read this flowery guy.” And next thing you know I read that specific poem.

To be continued in part two, which should be posted by early Friday morning.

Tagged brad mcmurran, comedy, comedy writing, craft, dog days festival, generic theater, generic theater down under chrysler hall, jeremiah albers, playwrights, the pushers, wanderlust, writing craft

Jun 12 2011

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Community, Interviews, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. IX: Wanderlust playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran

Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran, playwrights of Wanderlust. You'll just have to pretend this cutline is funny. Try harder. Yeah. There you are. Photo by John Doucette.

This edition of Belligerent Q&A, to a point, deals with the new play Wanderlust, premiering Friday as part of the Dog Days Festival at the Generic Theater Down Under Chrysler Hall.

Wanderlust is the first play written by the team of Jeremiah Albers of AltDaily and Brad McMurran of The Pushers comedy group. Albers, too, did his time with The Pushers. No surprise then that it’s billed as funny. Word is it’s a bit sexy, too.

Before we get going here, please know that there are some adult exchanges to follow. This Belligerent Q&A is the first sit-down interview I’ve done for this feature. It has been edited for length, clarity and, in spots that should be apparent, language.

Additionally, there is a reference below to a Hampton Roads theater production that was given a negative review by Albers at AltDaily last year. The director of the play rebuts Albers review in the comments section at that link, if you are interested in such things.

Anyway, on with the show …

THE PLAYERS

JEREMIAH ALBERS: A playwright, 33, of Virginia Beach.

BRAD MCMURRAN: Also a playwright, 35, of Portsmouth.

Q: A hapless belligerent interviewer, 37, of Portsmouth, who hoped to author a concise blog post before things went a bit off the rails, let’s say, after the second question.

SCENE ONE

(The Colley Cantina, an eatery and watering hole in Norfolk, jewel of Commonwealth of Virginia’s crown. Q, ALBERS, and MCMURRAN sit down for a Belligerent Q&A, a very disreputable sort of interview. Q aims to supply the Qs. ALBERS and MCMURRAN aim to provide the As.)

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

MCMURRAN: I’m the King of Portsmouth. I have close-knit ties with hipsters on Granby Street. And I think it’s safe to say that I am a lovemaker.

ALBERS: I guess that makes me the Archduke of Virginia Beach. I am somebody who really doesn’t like tourists very much. And I am an excellent ballet dancer.

Q: You have written something called a play. Is that the one where it’s just like TV, but you have to put on clothes, go somewhere, and once it starts you can’t pause it?

ALBERS: Yes, but you don’t have to wear any clothes.

MCMURRAN: And actually this play, you can pause it. We added a TiVo feature. Only during the naked scenes, like when you were 13. It’s kind of like Trading Places, when Jamie Lee Curtis took off her shirt.

ALBERS: It’s like the old VHS tape where you even put in that part where the movie looks worn from having been paused so many times.

Q: How difficult was it for you to bring to the boards a star-crossed tale of a Christian broadcaster who, through charitable activities, faith, and an association with the 22nd president of Liberia, falls in love with mining African diamonds?

ALBERS: I’m going to say it was pretty easy. That play writes itself.

Q: The venue is the Generic Theatre Down Under Chrysler Hall. Is it on the same level as the (Norfolk Mayor) Paul Fraim clones?

MCMURRAN: Yes. I saw them yesterday, and I made out with one of them. … And I’ll be quite honest with you, Paul Fraim is a big part of this show because, if it weren’t for Paul Fraim, we wouldn’t have really good jokes that are mentioned, I think, one time in the show. … Well, we having dancing Paul Fraims that come out.

ALBERS: That’s true.

MCMURRAN: He comes out and is like, “I’ll take your money and spend it on useless (stuff).” One of my favorite parts of the show. Please come out and see that.

ALBERS: I would just like to add that does turn in to a pas de deux with a mermaid.

Q: (Wanderlust is inspired by “La Ronde” by Arthur Schnitzler.) Presumably using scenes in which a revolving combination of characters interact, with one character’s placement in the following scene creating the thread with which you stitch a circular mosaic of love, longing and humor, you explore the secrets of humanity through the local lens of Hampton Roads. What does that thing I just told you mean?

MCMURRAN: I think it’s better than what we wrote. It’s definitely more well thought out.

ALBERS: I think it means somebody read their CliffsNotes, and maybe actually pasted them verbatim into that question.

Q: How does Portsmouth come off in this thing? We’ve been hurt before.

MCMURRAN: I will speak to this, knowing that I am the King of Portsmouth. It comes off swimmingly. There’s never a punch line about crime. There’s never a punch line about being stuck in Portsmouth. I think Portsmouth has always painted itself in a light it should be painted in. It’s pretty much the King of Hampton Roads, don’t you think?

ALBERS: Yeah. They’re number one.

MCMURRAN: I am from Portsmouth. I am going to say that. So if anybody comes in here and jokes Portsmouth besides us, I’m probably going to put a cap in their (caboose).

ALBERS: But Portsmouth is crime free.

MCMURRAN: Watch yourself.

Q: Did the Chamber of Commerce have any notes?

ALBERS: Well, they did blockade us out of the theater that one time.

MCMURRAN: They know we’re going to be a big money maker for them. … I feel we’ve really gotten a little more support than you’re giving them credit for. Wanderlust is pretty much like the new Elizabeth River Ferry. You know, something you ride back and forth.

Q: I saw the publicity photo of the sailor character. Did you know the Navy gives you a whole bunch of shirts?

ALBERS: Yes. Yes we did. But, you know. Who needs it?

Q: Wanderlust promises theatre patrons “a voyeuristic peek inside the bedroom of your neighbors.” Some kind of furniture thing, I assume. Who has the most tasteful nightstand. Look at the storage capacity of that armoire. That sort of thing?

ALBERS: Yes. Pretty much. The whole thing is being sponsored by Haynes. We’re really excited.

MCMURRAN: And Posturepedic.

ALBERS: Yes. Sealy Posturepedic. It’s been really great for us. Every room is like a showroom at Haynes. And at the end of the show we’re having a silent auction, so you can bid on the furniture.

MCMURRAN: You can bid on the used bed.

ALBERS: Yeah. But it is a Craftmatic. Old people will be comfortable.

Q: Regarding a “voyeuristic peek inside the bedroom of your neighbors,” the scene on my street is a little played out. Could you please help me get a peek inside the bedroom of someone else’s neighbors?

MCMURRAN: It depends on what neighborhood you’re in. Say if you’re down in Virginia Beach it’s going to be a … more heavy neighborhood. I don’t know if you’ve seen how spread out in that area it is, but the only thing there is to do is to go to Wendy’s and go to the beach in a Speedo. If you go to Portsmouth, you’ll probably have to duck from the bullets whizzing overhead. And as far as Norfolk, well you’ve just to get some of those big glasses and fit in with the hipster scene I guess.

Q: What I like is that you’re not trading in stereotypes.

MCMURRAN: Come see this play. There are none in it.

Q: Anything to add?

ALBERS: No. I think he hit it. I don’t want to see my neighbors, either.

MCMURRAN: Plus I think there is a law against being a peeping tom.

Q: That’s good. We’ve learned something.

ALBERS: Knowledge is power.

Q: In a cast photo, two members of the company are locked in a passionate embrace outside the Scope, while a quartet of fellow thespians looks on. What did the four spectators do wrong? And what did the other two do right?

MCMURRAN: That’s pretty presumptuous of you to think that two people did something right to be making love right in the middle of Scope. So I think the four that were in the back did something right to not have to make love in front of the fountain – in front of that wonderful architecture called Scope.

ALBERS: Which is aging so well.

MCMURRAN: To answer your question, they probably – I’m not going to say that. I was going to say they could probably lose a few pounds. They’d be fine with that.

Q: And you kind of, in a back-handed way, did.

MCMURRAN: Yes. Of course, I’m very skinny so I can get away with it.

ALBERS: What they did right, I would say, is that they took a pretty decent picture. What they did wrong is that they auditioned for this play.

Q: Brad, you’ve been teaching improv classes for teens through The Muse. How do you get impressionable young people on the right path? By that I mean, how do you get them to avoid mime and popular musicals?

MCMURRAN: I teach them the essentials of life – to live hard, and party fast. I find that that’s sort of the pathway to religious freedom.

Q: The Muse is going to love that.

MCMURRAN: They’ll be fine with that. I’d love to see if I get fired over this interview.

Q: Jeremiah, you’ve done some fine theater criticism for AltDaily. How much better is your play than the dreck you usually have to review around here?

MCMURRAN: This is my favorite question. This is where we get the bad review.

ALBERS: Yes, well, it’s worse, actually, and we did that on purpose. But the sex in our show isn’t done by two dudes playing horses.

MCMURRAN: Although there’s one scene we’re thinking about adding that. We’re having some issues with one scene. That might be the ending we’re looking for. Who knew this … would give us the ending. Equus II: The Return of Love. We’re going to be popular folks. “Come see Wanderlust; they’re haters.”

Q: You both are known for your work with The Pushers. Will Donald Trump’s decision not to run for president put comics and improvisational troupes out of work in 2012?

MCMURRAN: That’s an easy improvisation. Yes. And that is the end.

Q: Anything to add?

ALBERS: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Although I think that some wig companies might be a little sad.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground here. What else would you like to say?

MCMURRAN: Before Wanderlust, I wasn’t a man. This is sort of my turning into a – It’s sort of like Perseus, when he had to go and find his fate. This was that time.

Q: Is that what he did? Found his fate?

MCMURRAN: It depends which way you look at it. Fate sort of found him I guess. Wanderlust sort of found me, too. Although I’m still digging this Equus idea.

ALBERS: Sandy Duncan for president, 2012. Her glass eye will rule them all.

(According to IMBD, Sandy Duncan does not really have a glass eye.)

END SCENE

A (somewhat) more serious craft talk will follow in the near future.

Wanderlust premiers on Friday, June 17, at the Generic, 215 St. Pauls Blvd., Norfolk downtown. The run is from June 17-19, 23-26, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $10. For more information call (757) 441-2160 or visit the Generic’s online reservation Interbot thingy. Patrons under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a “responsible” adult.

Tagged belligerent q&a, brad mcmurran, dog days festival, generic theater, generic theater down under chrysler hall, jeremiah albers, norfolk, norfolk va, playwrights, the pushers, wanderlust

May 27 2011

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Community, Interviews, Journalism, Uncategorized

Brightening up a special place for kids

Artist Angelina Maureen shows her mural, then in progress, at The Dwelling Place, a family shelter in Norfolk, Va.. Photo by John Doucette.

Volunteers painted the rooms this past weekend at one location of The Dwelling Place, a family shelter program in the Norfolk, Va., area.

Eunice Harps, the house manager, stopped out back to see how the painting was going. Several volunteers were painting trees and books and a cityscape. She said:

I thought you were just painting. You’re doing art work.

The volunteers made murals at the shelter location, one of two run by The Dwelling Place.

Dana J. Braxton, volunteer coordinator for the shelter, said:

They’re painting murals for our child center annex.

She said it would be a safe haven for the children – and added that the shelter could use donations of books, especially those for teens and preteeens.

The Dwelling Place also needs other kinds of donations, and they won’t say no to money, either.

Donate via this website or reach them by calling (757) 624-9879.

Angelina Maureen, a visual artist who I recently met through Kerouac Cafe, where she is the artistic director, was among the volunteers working at the shelter.

Her mural was still in progress, but it showed a young girl reading a book.

The girl in the mural seemed to rise above a city street like a tower.

In-progress murals at The Dwelling Place.

Tagged angelina maureen, art, homeless, norfolk va, the dwelling place, visual art, volunteer

May 18 2011

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Interviews, Journalism, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. VII: Vivian Paige of All Politics is Local

Vivian J. Paige, left center, and members of the Virginia Democratic Intramural Coed Soccer Team form a wall to block a free kick by Commonwealth Republicans United. Boy, these guys get happy when it comes to blocking free kicks. Courtesy photo.

Vivian J. Paige started her blog, now called All Politics is Local, five years ago with an eye toward Norfolk, Va., politics. She’s got experience in the matter, having run for local office. Paige is also a co-founder of Norfolk United Facing Race, a non-profit that hosts honest dialogues on race, and has been in leadership and advisory roles in many organizations, including the Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement.

Plus, a day job – president of the accounting firm, founded in 1986, that bears her name.

Point being, she’s busy.

Her blog covers a lot of ground, due to Paige’s interest in a wide variety of social and political issues, and also due to the inclusion of a relatively new stable of contributors – The Virginia Gazette’s Steve Vaughan, Norfolk City Councilman Tommy Smigiel of the 5th Ward, and Navy vet and retired land surveyor Mark Brooks.

Paige is among a small handful of bloggers who set the standard in these parts, and her thoughtful and passionate prose can also be found in The Virginian-Pilot’s op-ed pages. So I’m thrilled she agreed to lower herself to my level for a few silly (and a few not so silly) questions.

Before I launch into our email exchange, I’ll quote from a blog post from 2006, when she wrote about a “debate” on the so-called “marriage” amendment that ultimately passed in Virginia. She pulled no punches. An excerpt from “Bigotry ” follows:

It was like a KKK rally, only the folks under the hoods were black.

Blinded by bigotry, these folks used the Bible as justification for their position. I see absolutely no differences between the claims made by these black bigots and similar claims made by white bigots to justify discrimination against blacks. Of all the groups who should just get this, it should be blacks. After all, it is not as if gays are unknown to the black church. In my home church – the one where my father was ordained in 1946, the one that I grew up in, the one that my family still attends, where my brother-in-law is a deacon and my sister a deaconness and a member of the choir – every prominent family had at least one gay member.

Blinded by bigotry, these people are unwilling to acknowledge the effects of this amendment on their own families, on their friends, on their co-workers. Blinded by bigotry, these people would rather focus on running gays out the state than worrying about things such as the breakdown of the black family, the crime in black neighborhoods, and the high unemployment.

‘Protect marriage,’ they say. From what?

Powerful stuff. On to the Q&A:

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

A lifetime constituent of President Bartlett

A washed up Julie London wannabe, and

Mom to Tommy and Fluffy (and Kelly, Rupert, Sweetness, Samatha, Junior, and Lucy, of blessed memory)

Q: Did you have “found guilty of extortion and bribery + will appeal according to lawyer” in the former state Del. Phil Hamilton Federal Trial pool? I had “jurors and alternates hit by comet + reanimated dinosaur eats incriminating emails resulting in mistrial,” which would have paid out at 1.3 billion to 1. You know, I liked my odds until the other thing happened. Discuss.

Actually, I did have the “guilty + appeal” in the pool. It really was a no-brainer once the emails became public and Old Dominion University officials were granted immunity to testify against him. I suspect Hamilton will get a long sentence – with most of it suspended. The Justice Department seems to be looking to make an example of him. And I predict he’ll lose his appeal, but that’s a long way off.

Q: You’ve offered up prime real estate your All Politics is Local blog to other contributors, including a member of Norfolk City Council. Are you worried the council will try to build a virtual pro hockey stadium there now that they have an in? A bit more seriously, will you make any considerations, such as offering “equal time/space,” to anyone who runs against Smigiel?

Pro hockey? Um, no. But if they offered a virtual pro football stadium, I’d probably give them all passwords.

As for equal time for a challenger to Tommy – no. While Tommy and I don’t agree on everything, he has my support. And I can’t imagine that a challenger would ever earn that.

Besides, for the low, low cost of $0, anybody can start a blog at WordPress.com.

Q: Why would anyone want to be vice mayor of Norfolk?

To preside over events – like ribbon cuttings – when the mayor can’t? That’s about the only reason I can think of.

Q: You’ve written extensively about how citizens can track campaign finance and the redistricting process and other issues, including gay rights matters such as the so-called “marriage” amendment/legislative efforts. The vast majority of people, however, just don’t seem to get involved with (a) local government or (b) critical thinking on how certain processes work and/or affect others? Why do you bother?

Because it is important. We can’t get better government at the top until we get better government at the bottom. And we have such tremendous influence at the local level, far exceeding any we will ever have at the national level. Besides, a lot of those folks we see in Washington started out in their local offices. The chance to get to know them – and help them develop into better elected officials – is much greater at the local level.

Q: So what you’re saying is you’re in it for all the sweet blogging money, yes?

Ha! Blogging costs me money, not the other way around. Thank goodness for the day job.

Q: Will you run for office again?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Q: I’ve been interested in the evolutions of outlets such as AltDaily and Veer, as well as established local blogs such as All Politics is Local and Bearing Drift. What news sources do you follow in addition to the local newspapers? And who do you avoid reading?

I’m a Twitter addict. More than three or four hours away from it and I’m going through withdrawal. I follow about 400 Twitterers, a lot of them news outlets, both local and nationwide. If I avoid any, it’s Fox News and the Huffington Post.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Just one thing: when are you going to grace us over at All Politics is Local with one of your awesome articles?

Uh, I’ll get back to you.

Right now I’m tied up with the hack stuff.

Tagged all politics is local, belligerent q&a, blogging, norfolk, norfolk va, politics, va, vivian j. paige, vivian paige

Apr 19 2011

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Interviews, Journalism, Pop Culture, Uncategorized, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. V: Three People Who Have Not Seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail + One Who Has

Dozens of Americans cannot calculate the airspeed velocity of unladen swallows, identify witches beyond the shadow of a doubt, or deal with the French.

They live with a secret shame – they have never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Some of them will even try to hide the secrecy of their shame by talking about it when you ask them to do that.

To prepare this very special Belligerent Q&A, I traded emails and Facebook messages with three people who have never seen the movie. To ground this live wire of an endeavor, I also questioned one person who has seen this film.

Q. Who would cross the bridge of death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he (or she) see. What is your name?

My name is Judy.

Q: What is your quest?

I’d love to find our missing iPod Touch.

Q: What is your favorite color?

My favorite color is green.

Right. Off you go.

When Judy Le of Norfolk, Va., isn’t successfully crossing the Bridge of Death and thus avoiding being hurled into the volcanic gorge below, she is the assistant director of presentation overseeing joint ventures at The Virginian-Pilot, the finest newspaper in the great Commonwealth of Virginia. She noted:

I haven’t seen the movie because I don’t have a good sense of that kind of humor.

Next …

Q: What is your name?

Elisabeth Anne.

Q: What is your quest?

My quest, my quest, to find the Holy Grail/and this, and this I shall not fail.

Q: What is the capital of Assyria?

(Overly expressive language omitted.)

Q: What is the capital of Assyria?

Sigh. Bassyria, seriously.

Elisabeth Anne King, who taught second graders for 10 years, now runs a daycare center. She lives in Westerly, R.I., when she is not being hurled into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

Would have accepted Assur. Also Ninevah. Possibly Nimrud. Shubat-Enlil is pushing it. So are Kalhu (the ancient name of Nimrud) and Dur-Sharrukin. But there were options, you see.

Q: Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he (or she) see. What is your name?`

Andrea. Is that it?

Q: That’s just the first question. What is your quest?

Worldwide women’s freedom of oppression.

Q: What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

That is not an important piece of trivia I would know. However, I would guess 30 mph.

P.S. That question is weird.

When not being hurled into the gorge, Andrea Wells Latham of Virginia Beach, Va., is co-owner of Ice Art Inc.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, introducing David Kidd, a scholar from Norfolk, Va.

Q: What is your name?

I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Or you can call me David, beloved of the LORD. Doesn’t get much better than that for epithets.

Q: What is your quest?

I seek the faulty Brazil – or whatever other cool mistake auto corrections can give.

Q: What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

(A long period of Facebook silence follows; Kidd is dealing with his kids.)

Q: Dave?

Wha – An African swallow or a European swallow?

Q: I don’t know — (Thrown into gorge.)

Le, King, and Latham, will receive a DVD copy of a film they obviously need to see – Places in the Heart, starring Sally Field, Danny Glover, Ed Harris, and John Malkovich, who acts with his customary subtlety and grace as Mr. Will.

Just kidding. Monty Python and the Holy Grail it is. And just in the nick of time.

Kidd, meanwhile, will have the glory of second-hand quotes to keep him warm.

Tagged belligerent q&a, john-henry doucette, monty python, monty python and the holy grail, movie quotes, pop culture, the holy grail

Apr 16 2011

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Alternative, Interviews, Journalism, Writing

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. IV: Jeff Maisey of Veer Magazine

Despite any impression given by this image's bright lighting, Veer publisher and editor Jeff Maisey is not a being comprised of pure energy and power. Yet. Photo by Kathy Keeney.

Norfolk, Va., publisher, editor and writer Jeff Maisey started Veer Magazine, a monthly alternative publication and website serving the Hampton Roads region, two years ago following the death of PortFolio Weekly.

Veer, while carrying the name of another former local music zine, also carries a bit of the feel of the defunct PortFolio – not to mention some of the pub’s strongest contributors.

An online shell of PortFolio lurched along until December, when a note was posted about what its author insists on calling a “digital double” of the print edition. Saying it don’t make it so. Because nothing says so long alt weekly like a note from a “staff” gutted years earlier, and what appears to be stock art.

At least we’ve got Veer and AltDaily, two alternative outlets with their own voices, rather than an “alternative” published by the dominant media source.

Maisey had edited PortFolio until its demise as a free weekly in early 2009, and quickly put the nuts and bolts in place to launch Veer. Among the Veer contributors who should be familiar to folks around here are Jim Newsom, Leona Baker, Larry Bonko, Kristen de Deyn Kirk, Montague Gammon III, and Patrick Evans-Hylton – not to mention longtime PortFolio editor Tom Robotham, Maisey’s predecessor in that gig.

About a year ago, Maisey told me his research with advertisers showed they would back a version of PortFolio without the political tone for which it was known under Robotham. That said, Veer for some time now has had Robotham batting lead-off with an essay that can be reflective or give the pub a little bite. This month he addresses the tension between those that filled the PortFolio void and the company that created the void in the first place.

This past week, Maisey said he has ideas in the works for more publications. He recently launched Afr-Am, aimed at the local African American community, and more may be on the way – including ideas that sound like they will directly challenge a few pubs produced by Maisey’s old employer. We recently traded emails on Veer, light rail, and the quantification of TV news personality hotness.

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

Today I’m a romantic, smart-ass travel addict in need of a fix. That’s three, right?

Q: Veer is celebrating its second birthday. Given the past struggles of other alternative publications in Hampton Roads, including PortFolio, is wishing you another two years in the print business a blessing or a curse in the internet age?

I hope you wish us more than two additional years. Independently published magazines – and I’m talkin’ PRINT – in this region are actually flourishing. We are seeing growth and additional opportunities. I launched a new monthly magazine in February geared to the African American community. What’ll we launch next? A weekly business journal, parenting pub or catalog of apartments? Hmmm … stay tuned.

Q: As a musician and longtime music writer, what is it about the local music scene that keeps you from giving up the legwork and just holing up in your abode and letting iTunes do the heavy lifting for you?

A thriving local music scene is essential to the quality of life in any city/region. The more that can be done to bring attention to it…the better. Plus, who doesn’t like reading about themselves?

Q: The Virginian-Pilot’s Deirdre Fernandes recently reported that extending light rail from the Norfolk border to the Oceanfront could run about $807 million. Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms told The Pilot that “sounds like a lot of money” and also “my gut would question whether the ridership would be there to justify the cost.” Set aside troubling implication that the mayor seems to quantify sums with his ear and gives serious consideration to the skepticism of his gastrointestinal tract. Why so much hesitant language at this point? Should we continue to invest in rail given the road and tunnel situation, economic development potential, etc? Or do we need the time out to consider stuff like “rapid transit” buses?

I penned a commentary on this topic in the April 15 issue of Veer and could talk additional hours over a beer on any given afternoon. For any mass transit system to work it needs to be practical and run efficiently, on-time and frequently. Anything less will result in low ridership. Over 50 years ago Norfolk had an electric trolly (light rail) that extended from downtown, down Granby Street and to Ocean View. Many businesses and residential areas were within a few blocks of the rail line.

Given the updated estimate – which will likely go up to $1 billion – for extending light rail from Newtown Road to the Oceanfront, I’d say the numbers aren’t favorable for a city – Virginia Beach – whose residents have been less than enthusiastic overall on the notion. So if Norfolk’s light rail goes no greater distance than it’ll serve this year, I’m less than optimistic about its long term health. Both end-of-the-lines are pedestrian dead zones. Any real ridership will be confined to downtown and maybe as far as the baseball stadium.

But, again, if the train isn’t convenient to my schedule, it might be quicker to just walk to my destination and save the dollar. And I’m an advocate for rail. As for ‘rapid transit buses,’ on a region-wide scale, it’s just not gonna work for the reasons I previously stated. I’d be happy if the NET bus route was extended to 21st Street and Colley Avenue. BUT it needs to operate more frequently and from 8 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. Needs to serve the 9-to-5 workforce as well as diners, bar hoppers, concertgoers and get Ghent dwellers home safely when the Tides go extra innings.

Q: Veer recently named Laila Muhammad the sexiest television newsperson in Hampton Roads. Did you ask Larry Bonko to watch evening TV until he became suitable aroused, or was there some other methodology?

Nearly 10,000 votes were cast online. That’s enough to get someone elected mayor in this town! Some people thought the subject matter was beneath Veer, but the pickup rate was great and we attracted some new readers, who, admittedly, probably watch an unappetizing array of American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Hopefully, they scanned the other pages within Veer as well.

Q. We’ve covered so much ground here. What else would you like to say?

Good night and good luck!

The new edition hit the stands on Friday. Here’s a link to the places you can pick it up.

By way of belated full disclosure, I used to string for PortFolio and have contributed occasionally to Robotham’s TReehouse Magazine website, including some writing about Veer and AltDaily.

And Maisey and I are both “Survivors of Landmark,” so there’s that. Remember, “SOL” tees are available at this blog’s Merch store.

Tagged alternative news, jeff maisey, john-henry doucette, light rail, norfolk, norfolk va, publishing, tom robotham, treehouse magazine, veer, veer magazine

John-Henry Doucette

Writing, and humble photography.

Category Archives: Interviews

Journalism: Q&A with Frank Batten Sr. biographer Connie Sage

Writing Craft, Vol. V: Novelist and short fiction writer John McManus

Belligerent Q&A, Vol X: Novelist and short story writer John McManus

Writing Craft, Vol. III: Playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran (Part 2)

Writing Craft, Vol. III: Playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran (Part 1)

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. IX: Wanderlust playwrights Jeremiah Albers and Brad McMurran

Brightening up a special place for kids

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. VII: Vivian Paige of All Politics is Local

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. V: Three People Who Have Not Seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail + One Who Has

Belligerent Q&A, Vol. IV: Jeff Maisey of Veer Magazine