Jamie Parker Debuts with Angela Hayes Quartet

Drummer Jamie Parker at the Village Green in Vienna, Virginia, 16 July 2010

Richard Morris and Cologne No. 10 for Men

A long time ago I promised I would never write a review for a friend's book. It's dangerous territory - akin to either taking a bribe or being a traitor. But sometimes you have to draw the line and attempt to explain yourself. I've only known Richard Morris for two years so that's hardly time to really call him a friend. Let's just say that Richard and I have a lot of mutual associations that go beyond the Facebook-2010-internet-academic-artsy fartsy-Washingtonian Magazine - variety of what people profess to be relationships in this latest decade. Richard Morris and yours truly are mainly connected through the Memorial Day Writers' Project of Washington, D.C. and for a full explanation of what that Project does you can easily google the name and find out for yourself. So I ran into Richard Morris two years ago when he was performing his music before an audience at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and I was immediately floored with gut-painful laughter when I heard his songs - war songs set to a bizarre mixture of disco, lounge lizard styling, and schlock broadway musical. It was all very deranged, and very, very funny - because that's what war is.
There has always been the tradition of glorifying the inglorious - but it was amplified in western literature after the end of World War I. There's also a human need to report upon the humorous dark side of our nature and that was also a product of post-World War I literature. Some of the most terrifying and some of the funniest things happened to me when I was in Vietnam. Chalk them up to those youthful experiences we all lived through - well, some of us Boomers, any way. I can't speak for the uninitiated. We drew lines in the sand and made our personal choices. I'm living very happily with the choices I made. How about you? Still feeling that pang of guilt? Still asking yourself "What if . .?" You can always sign up for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan and find an answer to those questions that are haunting you. It could be arranged today at your local Recruiting Station. Of course I say this humorously, the kind of humor that I or Richard Morris or countless other Vietnam veterans out there would understand.
And now Richard Morris wants to share the joke with his reading audience. What if the idea of war and conflict were turned completely on its head? What if the war in Vietnam was suddenly and completely taken over and controlled by the newest and lowliest lieutenant? This is the situation that the main character of the story Lt. Wilfred Carmenghetti, USA, finds himself in.
The answers hold a lot of surprises for the reader. There are all the usual Vietnam War cliches, political statements, and snippets of dialogue you've read in a hundred Vietnam stories or seen on the screen in any good or bad Vietnam War movie. But the difference for this reader was the way in which Morris weaves his material into something fresh, new, and more important, - interesting.
The author's writing ability shines when he's describing combat - not an easy thing to do. He's also very good at fabricating a basic story line and set of characters. Sometimes the dialogue falls flat, but this is a minor personal complaint of mine. In the end I found the whole experience enjoyable and well worth the purchase price of the book.
I'm in touch with a constant stock of writers, film makers, and documentarians. They all tell me the same thing - their publishers and producers keep telling them 'they don't want, will not accept, or want to have anything to do with the Vietnam War any more.' If it's the truth, it's a sad commentary on our times. Published in 2007, Cologne No. 10 for Men is a testament to the fact that there is still a lot of good stuff out there, that we haven't read yet, haven't seen up on the silver screen, or viewed on a DVD.

Available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Contact Richard Morris at richardmorrisauthor@gmail.com

Darren Beachley and the Brunswick Fundraiser (No. 2)

Bill Yates and Darren Beachley in performance, July 10, 2010

It's real tempting to throw around a lot of superlatives. It's real easy to take the accusative route and say, "If you weren't there, too bad, you missed THE performance of the season." So it was at Brunswick Highschool last Saturday night for the 2nd Annual Brunswick Junior Baseball League fundraiser, produced once more by League member Jill Hossler, with the help of her family and many other League members. I feel very fortunate - we happened upon a notice for this show last year while the Lucketts Bluegrass Season was in full swing. Last year's show (July 2009) was headlined by none other than Darren Beachley and the Legends of the Potomac and Kenny Ray Horton and Friends. I thought to myself: What? Darren Beachley is showing up in Brunswick, Maryland?
It all made sense. Darren calls Brunswick home, and his family is a big supporter of the Junior Baseball League. Enter Jill Hossler, who threw her whole heart into making it a magnificent (and downright inexpensive,) night of entertainment. It was no accident that when the word went out about this first bluegrass fundraiser, bluegrass fans from a hundred mile radius showed up for the 2009 show. I talked to them, took my own personal survey of how far they had traveled and made note of it. They were all Darren's fans who had been closely watching his career since he had established the Legends of the Potomac. So the first Brunswick Fundraiser was a strange coalescence of baseball moms and dads and bluegrass cognoscente. Then came the much anticipated release of the Legends' first CD, Take Off. The rest of the story is history as they say, but not really. Darren Beachley continues to be a 'statement-maker' in the field of bluegrass artists. It's not easy to mount a stage and say "Watch me - and watch and listen to what these guys can do!" but that's exactly what you get when you go to a Darren Beachley performance. He's surrounded himself with some of the best musicians in the business. More on that in a later blog.
This year's show included the addition of Bill Yates and the Country Gentlemen Tribute Band, after Kenny Ray Horton had to bow out due to his U.S. Navy commitments. What ensued were two and a half hours of solid good music and interesting stage camaraderie - all these guys know and respect each other, having all played together in different configurations and there was an ample amount of 'legend' status to go around. Missing was Tom Gray, who was obligated to attend an important family function. Todd and MaryFran Stotler once again provided excellent sound engineering for the evening's music. Even while the show was in progress there was already rumor of a "Year-Three" fundraiser, possibly later in the year so that more people could attend and there wasn't so much competition with the summer sports activities. We'll watch this closely and see how it unfolds. It's a good idea to get your tickets early! Jill Hossler is wonderful about sending out early notices concerning upcoming fundraisers.

A Pretty Good Reason to Be Alive

"I left my heart in . . . . ."

Memorial Day - 2010

Marine Corps Color Guard at Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.,

Memorial Day 2010

Finding the Best Six-Dollar Haircut

Ms. Sunny Kim, owner-chief executive of the Bestway Technical College.

Ming Zhang works his magic at the Bestway Technical College

Truth: Men go out and buy things. Women go 'Shopping.' Truth: Men get Haircuts. Women get their hair 'Styled.' Truth: curtains hanging on a window frame are curtains hanging on a window frame. To a woman, it's a 'Window Treatment.' When I need a haircut that's exactly what I want. I began this quest into how our daily parlance changes some years ago when I walked into a local barbershop and asked for a haircut. I especially recognized on that fateful day that what something means to a man might not mean the same thing to a woman. The mystery! I didn't have time to go to my regular barber (note the term - this is an important feature in understanding my story) so I opted to go to a local shop which had just recently opened for business. The first thing that threw me off were the line of black plastic-covered, chrome 'styling' chairs and the fact that I didn't see any barbers in the place - just a few young women, mostly Asian, mostly sitting there gossiping and looking dead-panned.

I was ushered into a chair and asked what I wanted. I said I wanted a haircut, make it short, and that I didn't have a lot of time on my hands and had to be somewhere. Snip by tiny snip, here and there, and all about my head with little scissors and a big 'styling' comb caused my frustration to build, but the girl was young and I figured she didn't have much experience. I kept telling her "More, more," and the more time she took. I said, "Look. I want a haircut. Cut my hair. Just cut the damned stuff!" Just then, an older Korean man came out of a back room and having overheard my pleas, told the young miss to step aside. "I know what this man wants," he said, "Here . .Let me take over." He attacked my head with the electric clippers and finished the job in about twenty minutes. It was one of the finest haircuts I had ever received and I thanked him (and tipped him big-time) for his aggressiveness. It ended up he had been a barber in Seoul and had cut a lot of American G.I. heads in his younger days.

Suffice it to say, I never went back to that shop - especially after learning that "Haircuts" were no longer 7 to ten dollars, but were fast approaching 12, 15, even 25 dollars in the new "styling shops." And this was some years ago that I'm talking about. Not today's market in 2010. When I see a friend who obviously has just gotten a haircut, I never fail to ask him, "Hey. Where did you get the haircut and how much did you pay for it?" His answer will tell me volumes about him - his level of vanity or pretentiousness - his level of being suckered into paying for something totally worthless - whether his wife has talked him into going to the same place she goes "to get her hair done" - or whether he continues to go to the same male barber who's probably cut his hair (at a cheap price) for more than a score of years. Take John Edwards for instance. His $400 and $500 haircuts (or in his case, probably 'stylings') were bound to lead him down a path of complete slime-covered shame. Any man who would pay that kind of money for a haircut really needs close scrutiny, and really couldn't be a true male friend to other males. You have to mistrust the judgement of a guy like that, and weren't we right in the end? Good riddance to Johnny. For all you real men out there who want to know the truth, the going rate for a decent haircut nowadays, and probably the Barbers' Union standard, is 11-dollars! Throw in a nice tip for the barber who treats you right and you're probably talking no more than $14 or $15.

Enter the return of the 6-dollar haircut. While Fairfax County (Virginia) slept, the area of Annandale turned into South Korea in what seemed overnight. I mention this as a good thing, because when the Koreans move in there is an explosion of economic development and industriousness, not to mention good shops and restaurants and a sense of order that makes the Prussians pale in comparison. I had to go over to Annandale during the big snow-storms this winter and noticed that three or four more "Beauty Schools" had opened up. Mostly Korean owned and operated, you can walk in and 'trainees' are more than happy to work on your head for a pittance. In all fairness to them, you-get-what-you-pay-for. For this individual, this is the beginning of the same dynamic that worked several years ago here in our area with the advent of the "Chinese Buses" to New York City. Now, the regular bus companies are having to deal with the competition, and they don't like it - they're afraid to admit that our nation's economy was built on competition, new ideas, and working harder than the next guy to build cash-flow. Rest is rust. I don't think Koreans ever sleep - and if you don't believe me, spend some time in Seoul.

Much to my relief (to wallet and mental order) I discovered a Korean-run Beauty School had opened up last year in our town of Vienna. I needed a haircut badly at the end of the third blizzard and decided it was time to try it out. I knew the drill. Go in and for six-dollars let some novice experiment on your head. You are going to get what you pay for. That's the deal. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised at the attention I was given and the haircut I walked away with. I gladly tipped the student who worked on me. They took their time and allowed one or two students to do some clipping so they got the experience. Jae actually did most of the cutting, gently assisted by Ming Zhang, who seemed to have more experience. Hot-Damn! For six-bucks this is such a deal and in the end they gave me exactly what I had come in for. I wanted to meet the owner-manager and the young men and women were happy to introduce her - she's Ms. Sunny Kim, originally from Incheon, Republic of South Korea. She explained the concept of the school and what was expected. I also met some of the students, who are recruited mainly from the Asian and Latino communities. The Bestway Technical College is located at 512 West Maple Avenue in Vienna, Virginia and is open for business six days a week. Put a little adventure in your life - and get a $6 Haircut.

www.btcbeauty.com or info@btcbeauty.com


Phone: (703) 272-3343

Bestway Technical College, 512 Maple Avenue West, Vienna, Virginia 22180

Day-Tripping around New England