I’ve been on a real documentary kick as of late and here are a few that should be mandatory viewing for anyone who calls Louisville, Kentucky home.

When We Were Kings – Muhammad Ali vs George Foreman

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he was and is the product of both the racial tensions and the revolutionary times and no film shows all of those sides better than When We Were Kings. Ali has become a transcendent figure in his old age – but at the time of the Ali/Foreman fight in 1974, he was still a divisive figure. He went to jail because he refused the Vietnam draft, he joined the Nation of Islam, and to top it off he was a gregarious civil rights activist. But at the core of his being, beneath the pride and the talent was a man who cared deeply about where he came from, who he was and what he and his people could achieve. And all that from a dyslexic street kid from Louisville.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson

Like Ali, Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville and took his natural talent and revolutionary thinking and helped to transform the world. Ali and Thompson ultimately shared a similar fate – crippled by the sport they entered into – Ali crippled by Parkinson’s and Hunter S. Thompson’s drug abuse. Their heydays were amazing shows of force and talent spawned by unbelievable creativity, and their slides into the autumns of their lives are terribly sad.

Harlan County USA

While I might live in Kentucky, I love the rest of the state, from the mines in the east to the lakes in the west and the horses in the middle. And while the people in between might not share the same values that I do here in the “big city” of Louisville, they are nonetheless my people and people that shaped the person who I am today. Harlan County USA is a fascinating snapshot of life in a mining town in Harlan County, Kentucky in the early 1970s. An gripping tale of workers and the machine – and what happens when a people have so few options to survive.

Great new Louisville ad made in town by a Doe-Anderson, Red7E and Guthrie Mays. Yes, I know, I work at Power Creative, but this ad is fantastic. It’s got some teeth (which are usually left on the cutting room floor). It’s part of a new branding initiative from Greater Louisville, Inc. Visit the website: ShareLouisville.org, or visit the original Louisville fan-club, Why Louisville. Why Louisville has a Beer Wolf. Share Louisville does not. Why 1 – Share 0!

via MoreThanDerby

Those of you who knew me when I was younger knew that I worked at the Dairy Queen in Middletown for most of my college years. Working at a restaurant offers interaction with a good number of people – but there are always a few that stand out, the regulars. One of my favorites was Carroll King. He was a man who did odd jobs for us on occasion or sometimes just sat in the back booth sipping coffee, always ready with a “hello” and a too-good-to-be true story. He was a bow-legged story teller, always dressed in black. He was a good man, but deeply flawed. Carroll died on January 4th, 2007 in a wooden shack in Middletown, Kentucky.

Carroll was a man about Middletown. He was known by all and was as close to a fixture as Middletown has ever had. Carroll was also homeless by choice and an chronic alcoholic. You could make reference to the loveable Otis the Drunk from TV’s Mayberry, and you’d be about half-right. Carroll, like Otis, was harmless and had a heart that, while weathered like the wrinkles on his face, was still good and true. But to romanticize him would be overlooking the crippling addiction that Carroll faced day-in and day-out. He was unapologetic in his poverty, and squandered much of what he received on alcohol. He seemed to accept his lot, and turned away offers for a place to stay. He was wild at heart. He won’t be missed by some, but he will be missed by many.

He was, in the end, a bridge to a lifestyle and a disease that no one would ever normally wish to associate with, but he managed to do so without force with so many people in Middletown that he had become part of Middletown.

Article: Homeless man had a place in friends’ hearts


Gallery: Memorial for Carroll King


Video: Carroll King’s Memorial Service


Obituary: Carroll M. King

Election day (November 7th) is five days away, and the House race for the 3rd District (Louisville) of Kentucky is still in contention, though it is leaning more to the left than it was even 2 weeks ago.

On Sunday, the Louisville Courier-Journal reversed their endorsement from two years ago (when they went for Northup) and endorsed John Yarmuth.

Today, SurveyUSA has released the results of a poll showing Yarmuth ahead of Northup by 8 points. Compared to the neck-and-neck poll results from 2 weeks ago, you’ve got to assume that Yarmuth is pulling ahead.

Why? Hard to say. Northup is still leading in the media-saturation column. Kelly and I have received at least one printed piece of mail from or supporting Northup every day for the last two weeks (sometimes more!) and her commercials are running at every blink. Could it be that her sour tone and base-thumping ways have turned away voters? Maybe. Yarmuth has been getting support late in the race in the way of money for ads, too.

I won’t be happy until there is at least a 10 point lead over Northup. Knowing how the Democrat base stays away from the polls and how reliable the right is in the same regard, we need a good head of steam to win it on Tuesday.

The ol’ gallery has been a little silent in the past few months, but I have been busy:

2006.08.18 – My 28th Birthday

2006.08.25 – Kentucky State Fair

2006.09.04 – Mayor Jerry’s Hike & Bike

2006.10.14 – Huber’s and Holly’s Birthday

Cameron Crowe’s latest film, Elizabethtown, will rock for more than a few reasons:

• It was shot on-location in E-town, here in Kentucky.
• There are ear x-tacy bumper stickers.
• My Morning Jacket not only plays in the movie, but some of them have speaking roles (and allegedly they play “Free Bird”)
• Cameron Crowe is awesome.
• Mary Jane from Spiderman is in it!
• Legolas is in it!
• And finally — any movie that has any of the characters sporting an Ale-8-One t-shirt meets with my HIGHEST of approvals.

You can check out a 7-minute “first-look” preview here: http://www.elizabethtown.com/video/firstlook/InternetTrailer.mov.

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So, I’ve had a billion things to post about over the last couple of days — I went to California for the first time last week (Mo, Tu, Wed) and experienced Hollywood proper. At the same time I was reading On the Road which is just the proper book when bouncing from coast-to-coast. Many thoughts which may become a singular entry at some point in the near future.

Second, I’ve been listening to Sleater-Kinney’s latest album The Woods OVER AND OVER. I’ve been a fan of them for many years, but not a huge fan. This album may very well upgrade my fan status. In the past I’ve found some of their music a bit too staccato or downright shrill for repeated listenings, but on The Woods they have really honed their rock skills to produce songs with awesome hooks and a lot of dynamic power. Get it now!

Finally, I highly recommend you Louisville-lovers out there to patronize the brand-new WHY Louisville (What-Have-You Louisville) store in the Highlands. Created by the same gents who brought you LebowskiFest, it is sub-titled as a “Fan Club for the City”. At the moment, they peddle a number of Louisville-related t-shirts and knick-knackery as well as the Lebowski-related materials. Personally, I picked up a “Louisville – It’s Not Kentucky!” t-shirt and a pair of fleur-de-lis vinyl stickers. Jason “Fluffy” Clark from krack.org tells me they’ll be expanding their inventory soon — they were rushing to open for the LebowskiFest 2005 ticket sales.

A co-worker of mine, who dresses fabulously informed me that local Italian eatery Melillo’s is considering starting up a bocce league of some sort. It’s sort of gelling right now — and I’d say the time is nigh for such developments! Melillo’s already has a bocce pit behind their restaurant, so why not start a league there?

I don’t know why bocce hasn’t “caught on” around town – it really is a “sport” that can be done anywhere. Cholly and I regularly play in the gravel parking lot here at work! Also, it is a sport conducive to drinking (after all, the Italians did invent it). Bocce ball in one hand, glass of wine or pint of beer in the other! Fantastico!

There is a thread on the Louisville Hot Bytes forum entitled “bocce ball league“. If interested, check it out.

Before the election, and before the overwhelming win for the Kentucky Gay Marriage Amendment, our local super-church, South East Christian helped to support this amendment with their “One Man, One Woman” campaign. This campaign involved numerous billboards and mobile advertising and through their weighty clout and coffers, I think they helped to steel conservative opinion around Louisville at least, where the measure passed 60% YES / 40% NO 20-point margin. The rest of the state voted 75/25 YES/NO. Certainly a win for SouthEast and their campaign, and it could be said for Christians state-wide.

Now, while SouthEast claims that “The same-sex marriage controversy is NOT ABOUT… homophobia, [or] whether homosexuals are nice people, good citizens, loving parents, loyal friends or helpful neighbors”, they forgot to mention that this amendment not only bars gays from “marriage”, but also from the lesser charge of “civil unions” which grants them the same rights as a “wedded couple” which includes any number of legal rights, including inheritance, life insurance, medical decisions, etc. Oddly enough, South East has left this out of their website, on any page dealing with “gay marriage”. However, on a funny ha-ha sidenote, they do reference a number of scientific studies in their defense of marriage. To quote:

The recognition that marriage is the union of male and female has never been seriously questioned in America until the past decade. During that time, activists were busy promoting their own private social revolution, and scientists were busy studying the institution of marriage and its affect on the participants and on society.

The results of hundreds of scientific studies and years of sociological research is undisputable. There is a mountain of evidence demonstrating the rewards to society as well as to individual families of marriage.

This is not an indictment of single-parent families; it is a scientific understanding of the dynamics of family structure.

Wow, hey! While you’re thumbing through scientific reports, why not read up on evolution as well! It’s just a letter away from “faggotry”.

I respect SouthEast’s opinion and the opinion of the lawmakers who support this tripe, but did the lawmakers have to go and completely ban even civil unions? I guess they figured that if they hooped and hollered about marriage enough that they could squeak in some verbiage about civil unions and just really kill the whole thing once and for all. That is some pork-barrel baby and the bath water sort of shenanigans that I really hate to see. To bar marriage from homosexuals is one thing, to categorically and systematically bar them from the rights regarded to any other wedded — or joined — couple is just ridiculous. This is a major setback for a very large and very real segment of our society that is not going to “go away”. Well, I take that back — if you wanted to rid the state of gays, well, you’ve made a step in the right direction, Kentucky!

That, of course, brings me to my final point — Kentucky is attempting a branding initiative that will create a singular, unified logo for the state. You, citizen, can even vote for your favorite logo. (On a side note: the agency that got the state’s business is New West, and according to a little bird New West is shipping a great deal of the some $14 million state ad budget down South to Atlanta in the form of contract work! Thanks Gov. Fletcher! Keep it in the state, man!) Anyway, I figure that at least this time the state is giving the public some choice in what logo will represent the state, rather than foisting some candy-assed design on us. Hey! Kentucky — It’s That Friendly (except to gays). Well, in that spirit of public consideration and contribution, I submit my own Kentucky logo:

jine: antiquated and poetic version of “to join”, or perhaps “to agree with”. Note usage here in this old Civil War bar shanty.

This is the text of an email from a friend of mine (who is gay) in reaction to the Kentucky Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment which passed this last Tuesday…

Friends:

As most of you are probably aware, the majority of voters in Kentucky, along with 10 other states across our fine nation, just placed a ban on same sex marriage into the state constitution, effectively endorsing discrimination as a model practice. I am sitting here very nearly in tears right now because what this means is that the state that I was born in, and spent the first 24 years of my life in, has decided that I am not entitled to the same respect or the same sense of basic human dignity that 90% of the country’s population is automatically accorded. What this means is that my monogamous relationship with my boyfriend of three years is worth less than my father’s less lengthy relationship with a woman from another country; it is worth less than the second marriage of my mother; it is even worth less than a 55 hour practical joke perpetrated by Britney
Spears. It is, in fact, worth nothing in Kentucky.

What this means is that I cannot, and will not, ever be a resident of Kentucky again.

Maybe this seems a bit extreme to some of you, but I’d ask you to try to see this from my perspective. The state I have spent the vast majority of my life in, the one that educated me and collected my tax dollars, has now decided it knows better than I do when it comes to my relationship. All I can think is “What right do you have to tell me who I can marry? What right do you have to determine that my relationship is worth less than your own? What right do you have to presume to speak for God?”

Many people, maybe some of you, think this fight was about giving special rights to gay people. This could not be further from the truth. It was, and is, about affording equal rights to every tax-paying citizen of this country. In fact, the only people with “special rights” in this respect are heterosexuals: straight people have the right to marry, gay people do not. Straight people have the right to inherit property from their significant other, make medical decisions for their significant other, take care of the person they love most in the world; gay people do not. I do not. I am not equal.

So, it’s time I drew a line for my basic sense of self-respect, and sadly for me, that line must be abandoning the state I once considered my home.