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This past Friday evening saw musical parody genius, pop culture icon and now bestselling author "Weird Al" Yankovic come to Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, North Carolina as part of his seven-city book-signing tour promoting his just-released children's tome My New Teacher and Me!...
I arrived at the store about three hours before the signing (incidentally, Quail Ridge Books is a really nice independent bookstore: I'm gonna make it a habit of swinging by there any time I'm in the Raleigh area) and bought a few copies to get signed. I wound up reading My New Teacher and Me! in the interim and found it to be a delightful and well-crafted (and funny) sequel to the first book. I hope Al continues with young Billy's story and gives him at least a trilogy!
Well anyhoo, 7 p.m. arrived and Al Yankovic (that's how he's billed in literary circles, not as "Weird Al", so I'm gonna try to respect that for the rest of this post) came out and began signing and posing for photos. I don't know how many came to Quail Ridge Books on Friday night but there had been over 800 at his previous stop in Cincinnati the day before. If I had to guess, I would estimate at least 400 people and maybe even 500.
It was a little after 8 when my turn came to approach the table where Al was situated. And along with the two copies of My New Teacher and Me! I had something else that I was hoping he could sign: my vintage Yoda vinyl hand puppet, bought all the way back in 1981. I figured that since his big finishing song at the end of every concert is "Yoda" - and since he had the same kind of puppet as a prop in his very first MTV special - that it might have been worth a shot.
Well, as soon as I walked to the table Al saw my puppet standing atop my books and he said "Hey, I used to have one of those!" I gave it to him and he put it on his hand and started playing with it... yes, "Weird Al" Yankovic himself (I know, I slipped from established protocol there but I couldn't help it) started playing with my Yoda puppet!! He put it on his right hand and began talking like Yoda and then he said "Or you could play with him like *this*" and started punching Yoda like a boxer.
This has to be among the top five most kewlest moments of my life...
And yes, he signed it...
Don't even think of asking to buy this from me! You will never, ever, EVER find this listed on eBay. Not as long as I'm alive... and I'm planning on being alive for a heap long time. That lil' Yoda puppet had sentimental value before, and it's got even more now.
Thanks to Al for coming to Raleigh, and thanks to Quail Ridge Books for hosting him! And I heartily recommend My New Teacher and Me!: a fun lil' book for children ages 6 to 600.
I'm writing this on Friday afternoon. It was on Wednesday night that Kristen, Chad, Marissa and I saw "Weird Al" Yankovic and his band in concert as part of his Alpocalypse 2013 tour! I'm still coming down from the high and I think everyone else is too (especially Marissa who was bouncing off the walls so hard during class at school yesterday that she reportedly had to be sedated with Valium). And after seeing Al live for the seventh time I have to say: this was easily the best show I've seen him perform yet! Weird Al and his band were positivalutely ablaze with energy and sheer fun. They were electrified and enthused as I've never seen any performers in a live concert! This is a man who obviously loves his work and that comes across very well. I've also never seen an audience so "into it" as they were at this show :-)
So... wanna hear about it? Of course ya do!!
Al stormed the stage at 8 on the dot with the "Polkaface" medley from the Alpocalypse album. They did another number and then the stage went dark while Al and the band (John "Bermuda" Schwartz, Jim West, Ruben Valtierra, and Steven Jay) did the first of their many costume changes. The intermittent periods are filled with various Al videos, such as his "interviews" with celebrities like Eminem and Umma Thurman, his recent "5-Second Films" series and the "Weird" trailer that FunnyOrDie.com released a few years ago. There was even the "Dirt" documentary!
"A garage band from Seattle. Well it sure beats raising cattle."
When the lights came up it was Al in his Kurt Cobain outfit as he and the band did "Smells Like Nirvana" from the Off the Deep End album. Al gargled water from a red Solo cup during that part of the song then spat it upward and threw the cup into the audience. The crowd sang along after the "...how do the words to it go" while Al feigned forgetfulness. This song's
video is one of the better ones that Al has produced and the live
performance does a fabulous job conveying that same crazy spirit.
From
there it was a series of many of Al's more recent works, such as
"Skipper Dan", "Party at the CIA" (a parody of Miley Cyrus' "Party in
the USA") and "Canadian Idiot" (Al's parody of "American Idiot" by Green
Day). Al and the band were dressed in their finest secret agent finery
for "Party at the CIA" and Al was perfectly resplendent in a
red-and-white maple-leaf motifed jacket for "Canadian Idiot" (the climax
of which saw red and white streamers violently fired into the air above
the audience). My favorite of this set was when Al did "CNR": his
White Stripes style parody about Charles Nelson Reilly. I had a picture
of Reilly loaded up on my iPad and was holding it aloft and waving it
as Al sang! Alas he didn't see me but later it turned out to be a good
thing that I did that (find out why later).
"You're absolutely perfect. Don't speak now you might spoil it. Your eyes are even blue-er than the water in my toilet."
Then Al
hurried back for another costume change while we were treated to more
video clips and when he came out it was with a song that truly has
become one of the most anticipated of his live shows: "Wanna B Ur
Lover". It's a style parody of the kind of music that Prince/The Artist
Formerly Known As Prince/whatever is known for. This song is from
2003's Poodle Hat album and when he does it live Al comes out in a
Prince-esque outfit while carousing among the crowd and serenading
ladies in the audience (unfortunately we were close to the front but he
didn't come down our side of the auditorium... and Marissa was seated
right on the aisle! Lord only knows what that girl would have done if
Al had chosen to sing that to her :-P)
I'm just
gonna post a couple more pictures of Al doing "Wanna B Ur Lover" even
though they can't do the live performance any true justice :-)
Is Al channeling Gene Simmons??
"Anyone ever tell you you've got Yugoslavian hands?"
"Grab yourself an egg and beat it!"
Following another costume change/video intermission (one of these was "Wheel of Fish" from Weird Al's movie UHF and of course the whole audience had to scream "STOOPID!! YOU SO STOOPID!!"
along with Kuni), Al and his band did "Money for Nothing/Beverly
Hillbillies" then a medley of some of his other songs, like "Whatever
You Like", "Ode to a Superhero" (Al's parody of Billy Joel's "Piano
Man") and of course no "Weird Al" Yankovic concert would be complete
without Al putting on the red Michael Jackson jacket and going into "Eat
It"! Hey, that's the song which not only fired his career into the
outer stratosphere, it's what for many of us was the very first Weird Al
song we ever heard... and we're still tuned into him almost thirty
years later (but more about that in just a bit :-)
"As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain..."
"Eat It" wrapped up the medley then it was another costume change... and when the lights came up there was Al "looking plain" in Old Order Mennonite garb. Of course it was time for "Amish Paradise"! Some consider this to have been Weird Al's best music video ever (from what many already believe is his best album, Bad Hair Day from 1996) and the first several seconds of it synced up perfectly with Al's on-stage persona. This is one of his songs that the audience really "gets into": everything from waving the hands to some people even whipping out black hats. Who'da thought that a song about Amish would be such a hit crowd pleaser?
HE is the Lizard King!
(Who would have also thought that a live concert would feature the word "uvula" not once but twice?! Only at a Weird Al show... :-)
Another costume change and then it was Al looking like Jim Morrison and all the rest of the band as members of The Doors for "Craigslist". This was originally part of Al's "Internet Leaks" series from the summer of 2009 and then appeared on Alpocalypse. It has become one of my favorite songs of his for some reason or another. Instead of "the Coffee Bean" Al changed the lyrics so that they were about a Raleigh-area cafe. He did that at the Charlotte concert we attended in October 2011 as well. Gotta love when an artist goes for the local flavor like that :-)
(As an aside, I finally understand what the Indians and car wreck scenes in the "Craigslist" video are about. Chad told me about Morrison having seen a car crash on an Indian reservation when he was very young and how it affected him. It's not a big thing but that level of detail is something that makes Al not only entertaining but educational as well!)
Donny Osmond and Minesweeper. Only at a Weird Al concert!
Another costume change: Al in a peacock getup while various members of the band wore likewise outrageous outfits (Ruben Valtierra with a beehive on his head, Jim West wearing cheese etc.) for "Perform This Way": Al's parody of "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga. It woulda been kinda cool if Al had wrapped his intestines around himself while being set on fire but I guess there's only so much that can be done without the CGI effects of a music video, huh? Maybe someday he can wear raw meat and throw chunks of it at the audience! Hey I'd fight for some of that :-)
After "Perform This Way" it was another brief intermission and several seconds later it was "White and Nerdy" time! Al's rendition of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" is another of Al's recent songs that became an instant classic Al arrived on stage riding a Segway while a crazy montage of clips played on the screen behind him. We'd forgotten about how much Donny Osmond was in the music video... and there's even MORE of him in the concert edition!! Another song that the audience can't help but get themselves involved in :-)
Al and the band had performed a hefty number of their tunes for our pleasure, but of course they weren't going to let the evening end without "Fat": Al's parody of Michael Jackson's "Bad". I've heard that it took Al four hours to get into makeup and costume for the music video in 1988. The live concert version takes him something like forty seconds! Is this guy a show-business beast or what?
Considering that it's "Fat", here's Al in an extra-wide photo...
"You know I'm FAT, I'm FAT, you know it!"
Then Al introduced the band members and thanked the audience and said "Good night Raleigh!"
But as any veteran of a Weird Al concert knows: this is NOT the end of the show...
A few minutes later Ruben came on dressed as Darth Sidious from the Star Wars movies. He played a spooky organ interlude as a Tusken Raider, several Stormtroopers, Boba Fett, Chewbacca and Darth Vader himself (all courtesy of the 501st Legion) paraded onto the stage. They were followed by Al and the remaining band members dressed as Jedi Knights. And so it was that Al did "The Saga Begins": a parody of "American Pie" so spot-on that Don McLean complained that for awhile he was singing Al's song instead of his own!
There was one final song to perform. Not just a "song", but a transcendental experience unlike any other. You see, "Yoda" is far more than a Star Wars-inspired parody of "Lola" by the Kinks. It is several minutes' worth of communion with the inner geek we all share. The culmination of which is the very, very strange, wildly surreal and unbelievably coordinated "Yoda Chat" that Al and his band go into. How it began and how the guys practice it will likely always be a total mystery but the Alpocalypse 2013 version is certainly the longest Yoda Chant they have done in all my years of attending Weird Al concerts!
Then Al and the band said their final goodbyes to the audience and we all got up from our seats happy and content and totally, totally exhilirated from an evening of pure undiluted WEIRDNESS. And a few seconds later we got a surprise: our friend Eric and his two sons were in the audience behind us! They had come all the way from Charlotte for the show and he'd wondered if he would see us there. Turns out that my waving around Charles Nelson Reilly's pic on my iPad during "CNR" was spotted by Eric and he knew where to find us after that. Gotta love how things turn out like that :-)
But of course, we were NOT going to go home without attempting to meet Weird Al. Fortunately there was a small line waiting at his tour bus and he graciously spent several minutes greeting his fans and signing autographs! He signed my copies of When I Grow Up and Weird Al: The Book (Kristen got that for me for Christmas). Then he let us get photos with him. Here is life-long best friend Chad and I with Al. This really meant a lot to me, since Chad is the one who first introduced me to Weird Al's music all the way back in March of 1984! This was his first Al concert. Somehow, it seems like there's a sense of completion at long last...
Me, Weird Al, Chad
Is Weird Al putting the moves on MY girlfriend?!?
And there is Weird Al, Kristen and me. We even got to tell Al about how his music was one of the things that we had in common with each other when we first met and how it has become one of the bigger parts of our relationship! He seemed rather fond and appreciative of that :-) Before the show we met a couple and the lady was extremely pregnant. I told her that my girlfriend thought she looked so beautiful the way she was cradling her unborn child and how wonderful they were to be introducing the kid to Weird Al music already! Lord willing, that will be Kristen someday and if they coincide we will CERTAINLY take him/her to an Al concert before the decanting takes place!
So the four of us and Eric and his two boys all got to meet Al and tell him and the band that it was a terrific show. One that if you can, you really should try to see sometime during this tour! It really was the best and craziest and funniest that I've ever seen Weird Al do in live performance. It was also the best audience that I'd ever witnessed for an Al show. Like Kristen and I were discussing yesterday afternoon: this world would have been far less interesting and much poorer if it weren't for "Weird Al" Yankovic running loose in it :-)
Just a friendly reminder that if you want to meet the blogger/proprietor of The Knight Shift in person and you're going to be in the Raleigh/Durham today, that you're in luck!
I will be at Artspace, located at 201 East Davie St in Raleigh at 5:45 p.m. this afternoon during the filmSPARK track of SPARKcon: a grassroots-organized four-day festival celebrating individual creativity around the Triangle area and throughout North Carolina. This will be the fourth annual event and this year SPARKcon will be held September 17-20. I'll be speaking about the bizarre "copyright infringement" situation that happened between Yours Truly and Viacom on YouTube two years ago.
The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker's Story
EVENT LOCATION Artspace
EVENT DESCRIPTION Meet North Carolina filmmaker Chris Knight, a.k.a. "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom". In 2006, Knight made a campaign advertisement to help promote his running for a seat on Rockingham County's Board of Education. Knight did not win a seat on the board, but he did win some internet and media fame as his commercial was featured in The New York Times, on the Fox News Channel, every major newspaper in the state, on National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, by the Heritage Foundation, VH1's show "Web Junk 2.0", and E! Entertainment Television's show "The Soup". The major attraction of Knight's commercial was his creative use of Star Wars as an allegory for his strong commitment to reforming education practice. Life was good for Knight, until he loaded a few clips of his infamous commercial's featurette on "Web Junk 2.0" onto Youtube and was slammed with a copyright infringement claim. Come here the details of Knight's battle tonight as the filmmaker recounts his battle with Youtube and VH1's parent company Viacom firsthand.
Once again, I am compelled to note that I am very thankful to Nene Kalu, Kathy Justice and the rest of the good folks organizing the filmSPARK track for inviting me to take part in SPARKcon. Check out the SPARKcon website for more information.
That commercial is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, isn't it? :-P
SPARKcon is a grassroots-organized four-day festival in Raleigh celebrating individual creativity around the Triangle area and throughout North Carolina. This will be the fourth annual event and this year SPARKcon will be held September 17-20. And I've been invited to speak that Friday night about the very crazy situation that happened between Yours Truly and Viacom two years ago.
The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker's Story
EVENT LOCATION Artspace
EVENT DESCRIPTION Meet North Carolina filmmaker Chris Knight, a.k.a. "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom". In 2006, Knight made a campaign advertisement to help promote his running for a seat on Rockingham County's Board of Education. Knight did not win a seat on the board, but he did win some internet and media fame as his commercial was featured in The New York Times, on the Fox News Channel, every major newspaper in the state, on National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, by the Heritage Foundation, VH1's show "Web Junk 2.0", and E! Entertainment Television's show "The Soup". The major attraction of Knight's commercial was his creative use of Star Wars as an allegory for his strong commitment to reforming education practice. Life was good for Knight, until he loaded a few clips of his infamous commercial's featurette on "Web Junk 2.0" onto Youtube and was slammed with a copyright infringement claim. Come here the details of Knight's battle tonight as the filmmaker recounts his battle with Youtube and VH1's parent company Viacom firsthand.
I'm really exciting about doing this, and I'm very much thankful to Nene Kalu, Kathy Justice and the rest of the good folks organizing the filmSPARK track for inviting me to take part in SPARKcon. Check out the SPARKcon website for more information and hey, if you're gonna be around that evening I'd love to meet ya! :-)
What? An orchestra playing a concert of music from a wide variety of video games? That's exactly what PLAY! A Video Game Symphony is.
And it's coming to the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area this Saturday, July 11th, courtesy of the North Carolina Symphony and the Concert Singers of Cary. The performance will be at the Koka Booth Amphitheater.
Here's the e-mail that I received this afternoon from Lauren Trojan:
Hi Chris,
I read your recent post about the “Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer,” and thought you might be interested in another never-before-seen event in Raleigh. For the first time, Play! A Video Game Symphony will be presented by the North Carolina Symphony at Koka Booth Amphitheatre on Saturday, July 11, 2009. Since this is a non-traditional Symphony concert and would be of interest to your blog following, I hope you will consider mentioning the event on your blog.
PLAY! is a symphony world-tour showcasing tunes from classic video games such as Super Mario Bros. and Sonic The Hedgehog, as well as new favorites Halo, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and SimCity 4. Andy Brick, PLAY! associate conductor and award-winning film and video game composer, will lead the Symphony and the Concert Singers of Cary as an array of video game graphics are projected onto video screens above the orchestra.
Below, I’ve included links to the PLAY! Web site and North Carolina Symphony Web page for the event, as well as the concert media alert, which has some great general information in one doc. Please let me know if you have any questions, or if you are interested in more information about the concert. Thanks Chris!
North Carolina Symphony to Perform Award-Winning Video Game Tunes at Summerfest Concert Series
Koka Booth Amphitheatre to be filled with sights and sounds of blockbuster video games
WHAT: The North Carolina Symphony presents PLAY! A Video Game Symphony, a concert showcasing the sights and sounds of new and classic video games. Accompanied by the Concert Singers of Cary Chamber Choir, the Symphony will play music from a catalogue of blockbuster video game titles, as memorable scenes are projected onto large video screens above the orchestra.
For the first time, PLAY! will feature music from SimCity 4 and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Guest conductor Andy Brick, SimCity 4 composer, will also lead the Symphony through the music of other popular video games including, Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros., Sonic The Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, Halo and World of Warcraft.
Exclusive to the North Carolina Symphony’s presentation of PLAY!, world-famous guitarist Carlos Alomar will accompany the orchestra for songs from Silent Hill and Chrono Suite. Alomar, a pioneer in the field of guitar synthesizers, has worked with a number of famous musicians including, David Bowie, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen
6:00 p.m. – Gates open at Koka Booth Amphitheatre 7:00 p.m. – Instrument Petting Zoo for kids begins 8:30 p.m. – Concert begins
WHERE: Koka Booth Amphitheatre at Regency Park 8003 Regency Parkway Cary, N.C. 27518
OPPORTUNITIES: Media is invited to attend the concert and enjoy the experience with local families and video game enthusiasts. Media is also invited to attend the rehearsal on Friday evening at 8:30 p.m. Interview opportunities are listed below:
Scott Freck: Available Wednesday, July 8 – Saturday, July 11. Andy Brick: Available Thursday, July 9 between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. and Friday, July 10 during the morning. Jason Paul: Available Friday, July 10 – Saturday, July 11.
WEBSITE: For more information on the North Carolina Symphony’s presentation of PLAY! A Video Game Symphony and other Summerfest Series concerts, please visit Summerfest 2009.
Sounds like a heck of a show!! I'm definitely planning on attending :-)
But in reality, something slimy and ominous is lurking in the sluiceways of the capital of North Carolina.
Behold the horror that was recently discovered by a maintenance "snake camera"...
This video has gone viral bigtime in the past day or so, with some speculating that there might be an alien organism breeding beneath the streets of Raleigh. Personally, I thought it looked a lot like something out of the video game Dead Space, or maybe the insides of that giant worm from Gears of War 2.
A trusted source in the Raleigh/Durham area here in North Carolina called to let me know that the price of regular gasoline there is now $4.89, with premium at more than five bucks and a lot of stations limiting purchases to ten gallons. It's also been reported that at many stations the cars are lined up to the streets.
Also, I'm now hearing that this now how gas is going for this afternoon in Greensboro (about a half-hour south of where we are) and that some stations have already run out of the precious juice.
(If you're one of this blog's many foreign readers, this is more or less related to Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico, although how much of this is serious distribution shortage and how much of this comes from speculators going nutzoid on the oil markets, is anyone's guess.)
I hope this doesn't turn into another thing like what this blog went through with Katrina three years ago. As I said the other week, I'm still burned-out from that experience...
"Trees will tap dance, elephants will ride in the Indianapolis 500, and Orson Wells will skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner before State finds a way to beat Houston."
-- Dave Kindred writer for The Washington Post April 4th, 1983
It became, and remains to this day, the defining sports moment of the modern era.
It was twenty-five years ago tonight, on April 4th, 1983, that North Carolina State won the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, in what has become regarded by many as the single greatest basketball game ever played and one of the biggest upsets in the history of athletics.
It also produced some of the most memorable sports images to be ever televised or photographed.
What can be said about that game that hasn't already over a quarter-century? Nobody was expecting the Wolfpack of NC State to take down Houston. Guy Lewis's Cougars - dubbed "Phi Slamma Jamma" - boasted Hakeem Olajuwon and Clive Drexler. The entire team was already playing like NBA pros. They were ranked #1 in the nation. And after crushing Louisville in the semifinals of the 1983 NCAA Tournament, the Houston team was practically being laureled by most sports reporters as national champions even before tipoff. Writers like Kindred of The Washington Post were stepping all over themselves trying to describe the inevitability of Houston taking it all.
But nobody cared to tell any of this to a scrappy team from Raleigh, North Carolina that had been nicknamed the "Cardiac Pack". Nor did it seem that anybody thought to pass the word along to a cetain Italian kid from Queens.
Long before the start of the 1982-83 basketball season, North Carolina State's head coach Jim Valvano was telling his players that they possessed a lot of talent, and that they had the potential to bring home a national championship. Valvano believed it. The team believed it too. In spite of a rough regular season, the Wolfpack persisted and won the 1983 Atlantic Coast Conference championship.
And then NC State went to the Big Dance. The Wolfpack kept winning. Against Pepperdine, UNLV and Virginia the 'Pack achieved victory only within the last minute of each game after trailing for most of the time. And it wasn't long before everyone started to stand up and take notice of NC State and its sensational coach...
So it was that events converged on a showdown in Albuquerque, New Mexico - appropriately enough at The Pit, legendary for its hostile design - on the night of April 4th. Jim Valvano's North Carolina State versus Guy Lewis's Houston. Cardiac Pack against Phi Slamma Jamma. Irresistible Force meets Immovable Object.
The whole world was watching. Including a certain young boy in north-central North Carolina, who had been cheering for State since he could remember and was tuned-in to the game on WFMY along with his family. And truth be known, as much as we have always been faithful NC State fans, we were wondering how they could pull this off, too.
Most of y'all know how this went, and if you don't or if you need a refresher tonight ESPN Classic is running a half-hour special about the 1983 NCAA Championship game. In the final minute Derek Whittenburg and Sidney Lowe brought State within sight of victory by bringing the score to a 52-52 tie (after gaining a comfortable lead at halftime only to watch Houston sap away at the margin). State's Thurl Bailey passed the ball to Whittenburg, who with seconds left in the game threw what became the most televised air ball in history.
The ball was short, and that would have been the end of it for State. Except that sophomore Lorenzo Charles swooped down from seemingly out of nowhere and slammed a dunk with two seconds left before the buzzer.
The final score: North Carolina State 54, Houston 52.
The Pit went wild with pandemonium! To say nothing of what was going on in countless homes and restaurants across the country. Millions of people had watched the impossible: Phi Slamma Jamma had been defeated at its own game.
And Jim Valvano could not control himself: he leaped from his seat and began a frantic rush up and down the court, looking for somebody, anybody, to give a hug to. It has became the most iconic moment in the history of college basketball, and one of the most famous ever in sports.
Here it is, courtesy of YouTube: the final glorious moments of the 1983 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship game... and the first wild moments in the birth of a tradition that would come to be known as "March Madness":
It's hard to believe that it was twenty-five years ago today that all of this happened...
And it's even harder to believe that this month marks fifteen years since Jim Valvano was taken from us at the all-too-young age of 47, after a year-long battle with bone cancer.
Jim Valvano was one of my all-time personal heroes, for more reasons than I can possibly relate in this space. And it's one of the greater regrets of my life that I never got to meet him. Valvano was always larger-than-life and after the Wolfpack won the championship in 1983 he became an inescapable presence. He went on David Letterman's show and even appeared along with friend Dick Vitale in one of the final episodes of The Cosby Show (Valvano was one of the "V and V Movers" in the episode where Cliff is trying to move a grandfather clock). After his time at NC State, Valvano also became a well-respected commentator for ABC Sports and ESPN.
But in spite of all of his new-found fame and the thrill of victory, Valvano never lost sight of the things that mattered most. And his animated personality never diminished, even after receiving the prognosis in 1992: "Hey doc, you forgot to use the flash", Valvano joked the moment he saw the cancerous dark tissue on his x-ray.
It was a humor that Valvano maintained during the length of his battle. During his speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards, he dismissed a teleprompter's notifying him that he had 30 seconds left to wrap things up. "They got that screen up there flashing 30 seconds, like I care about that screen," Valvano said on live televison. "I got tumors all over my body and I'm worried about some guy in the back going 30 seconds?"
The day he passed away, a lot of people cried. Including me. And I've always wanted to go pay my respects to the man and all the good things that he stood for.
So since this is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest moment of his career, yesterday afternoon I set out for Raleigh...
On a good day, it's about an hour and a half's driving time between Reidsville and Raleigh. I like going there, but given how gas prices have been soaring lately it's become harder to justify going out that far. But this is something that I'd made the choice many months ago to do, and as it happened I had some free time yesterday to make a short day trip for this.
I left Reidsville at 12:30 yesterday afternoon. For early spring it has been unusually cool this past week, and I had to wear a long-sleeve shirt and jacket. My route had me getting onto Interstate 40 in Burlington, then heading east toward Raleigh. I stopped at the new Lowes Foods in Burlington (the one near the new shopping center with the Target and Best Buy) and found just what the occasion required: a single red rose, adored with lilies. The girl at the register said that my wife was "going to love this!" I had to tell her that "actually it's going on a gravesite", and I shared with her what I was doing.
"You're driving all the way from Reidsville, as high as gas is? That's sweet!" she told me.
I got onto I-40 just after leaving Lowes Foods. And according to the directions I pulled off the Internet, it would be another fifty miles before I left the interstate. But it turned out that the directions were off a bit, and I ended up bewildered somewhere in Cary (I think it was Cary...). I stopped at a gas station and asked for directions toward Glenwood Avenue, and the guy told me to take a right and keep going and "it's only two miles away."
I never found Glenwood Avenue. But I can't help but think now that maybe it was providential, because I wound up driving through the campus of North Carolina State University. After going through downtown Raleigh on New Bern Street, I stopped at a pharmacy and asked if anyone knew where Oakwood Avenue was.
"Go back down New Bern, take a right onto Raleigh Boulevard, and then a left right there at Oakwood. You can't miss it," a woman told me. She also asked "Are you looking for anything in particular?"
"A cemetery," I told her.
"Okay well you'll definitely see that," she replied.
Finally, at around 2:30 yesterday afternoon, I arrived at Oakwood Cemetery...
Founded in 1869, with a large amount of acreage devoted to thousands of Confederate veterans who are buried there, Oakwood is easily one of the most magnificent and beautiful cemeteries that I have seen in this part of the country. It is also wonderfully maintained, and the staff there was glad to help me find the spot I was looking for. "Jim Valvano is buried up there. Take a left and look for a large black marble marker," one of the groundskeepers told me.
It had already started to rain by the time I approached Raleigh. It had begun to fall even harder. The rain was washing the pollen out of the air and from the surfaces, leaving a sickly yellow residue to drain away. By this time the thermometer in my car was registering an outside temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
And finally, in the Cedar Hill Section of the cemetery, there it was...
The groundskeeper wasn't kidding: Jim Valvano's grave is positively big. But it's not necessarily ostentatious. One of the things that I thought when I saw it for the first time was that even his grave marker, in its own way, spoke volumes about the man that it served to honor.
I took those photos from one of the little roads that criss-cross the cemetery. By the way, if you ever visit Oakwood please be very careful and alert, because the driveways within the cemetery barely accommodate one vehicle, much less two at a time. And the only entrance to the place is large enough for one car at a time, period. So as you approach the entrance on Oakwood Avenue, be aware of any cars trying to leave the cemetery too.
Along with the rose that I'd bought on the way, I had something else that I wanted to leave at Valvano's grave...
It's, I guess it's called a "graveside note": something that I created in Photoshop yesterday morning. At the top of it is a color photo of Valvano surrounded by his players, taken moments after North Carolina State won the national championship in 1983. And then there was something that I wrote that was inspired by Valvano's words at the ESPY Awards, and which are also engraved on his tombstone:
Dear Coach V, You made us laugh. You made us think. You made us cry.
And you made us proud.
On the 25th anniversary of your greatest victory, from all of us who will remember that night for the rest of our lives ...
Thank you.
I then placed the note and the rose on Valvano's grave...
The rain was falling harder by then. I finished up with my personal honoring of Valvano's memory, and then started to leave. Here's one last picture I took...
And then I said my goodbye to "Coach V" and left. I felt immensely satisfied that I was finally able to do this, and honor the memory of the man who inspired so many with both his witty humor and profound wisdom.
I know of no better way to wrap this up, than to post the video of Jim Valvano's speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards, along with perhaps the most famous words he gave from the podium that night...
"To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."
So the past 72 hours here have been... interesting. I'll be able to talk about it more in the next couple of days. Just wanna say for the record though, that I've been a busy dude toward the end of this past week. And I'm about to head out to create some more mischief.
But before I do, I wanna do a bit of a write-up about what happened yesterday, 'cuz it was full of some cool stuff that you've probably still got time to check out if you like.
Yesterday morning, my sister Anita arrived around 9:30. Lisa got in Anita's RAV4 and I followed in my new Camry and we headed out to Raleigh, to see The Polar Express in 3-D on the IMAX screen there (or as I call it, "The Big-Ass Screen").
This was something that Lisa had been wanting to see especially, so I got tickets for her (and then for Anita when it turned out she wanted to see it too). Me? I first saw it when it was released three years ago and since that time The Polar Express has become more... disturbing... in my mind. Everything is great and fun for most of the movie (and that this was Michael Jeter's last movie before he died makes it particularly poignant). But all the same: when they finally get to the North Pole, the movie becomes "Perry Como's Triumph of the Will": the Santa worship, the Stasi-ish way how it turns out Santa watches all the world's children, the Nazi-like field rally with the elves... Lisa and Anita keep telling me that I'm "over-analyzing things" but I can't help it: if you ever have seen Triumph of the Will then you'll probably see these things too. And really, isn't The Polar Expresssupposed to be a propaganda movie for Santa Claus?
Strangely enough, I had a blast watching The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D. The flaws in the movie as a story are still there (and I wrote about those in my initial review) but those are easily overshadowed by how much of a technical achievement The Polar Express is. And in 3-D, on a five-story movie screen... the most fun thing for me wasn't the movie itself, but how all those children who were there to watch it were blown away by the overwhelming spectacle of this movie.
So I gotta report: it was a great experience. And if you want to see it too, it's playing on a lot of IMAX screens right now but we saw it at the Wachovia IMAX Theatre at the Marbles Kid Museum (formerly named Exploris) in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Right now it looks like it's playing on through at least January 10th, 2008.
After we got back to our cars, Anita went on and then Lisa and I drove a few blocks to the North Carolina Museum of History to check out something that I've been wanting to see since it started in October...
For more than 400 years, one of the greatest enigmas of American history has been that of the Roanoke Colony, more commonly known as "the Lost Colony". 116 English colonists had simply vanished when Governor John White returned to Roanoke Island with fresh supplies in 1590. The only thing left behind amid the ruins of their fort was a cryptic word "Croatoan" carved in a tree.
What happened to them? Were they killed off or did they move elsewhere or did they (as some believe) inter-marry with neighboring tribes of Native Americans... which raises the possibility that descendants of the Lost Colony are living among us today?
"Mysteries of the Lost Colony" is an exhibit of the British Museum currently on display at the North Carolina Museum of History. There's lots of good stuff about the Lost Colony itself, but the real centerpiece of the show is the large number of original watercolors by John White (whose daughter Eleanor would be the one to give birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World). A talented artist by trade before he was appointed to be governor of the colony, White did many depictions of the natives and wildlife of present-day coastal North Carolina. A lot of them have been reproduced in history books over the years, and it was quite a thrill to be able to see the originals, made by White himself. Toward the end of the tour, there's an interactive video with one of the actresses of CBS's CSI shows that lets you vote on what you think was the fate of the colony. When we left, "Killed" had a slim lead over "Absorbed", which is what I've come to believe is what happened to them. Maybe in the next few years the Lost Colony DNA Project will be able to come up with some indication about whether the colonists did indeed become the ancestors of the modern-day Lumbee and other Native American tribes in the state. If you want to see "Mysteries of the Lost Colony", it's on display until January 13th, 2008.
After we left the museum, Lisa guided me to The Cheesecake Factory at Crabtree Valley Mall. I'd never heard of the place before and don't really care for cheesecake... but lo and behold it's also a fancy restaurant with a humongous menu to choose from. We ordered the buffalo wings for an appetizer and then the pepperoni pizza for the main dish. The wings were wonderfully spicy and the pizza looked and tasted like real Italian-style pizza. The place also had great atmosphere and decor. If you're ever in the area of Crabtree Valley Mall and if you like good food and great cheesecake (which Lisa says they do but like I said, I've never had a taste for the stuff), give The Cheesecake Factory a try.
And that was our day yesterday, other than a bit o' Christmas shopping that I was able to get in. Good movie, good history, good food: not too bad eh? :-)
Two stories - both from here in North Carolina - that caught my attention this morning, that illustrate the frustration that I have so often with some who profess to share my faith in Christ...
The first has to do with Good News Independent Baptist Church in Raleigh: its pastor has placed this sign out in front of the church. I could say something about the horrible grammar and spelling ("Christain"?) but that's not the point. What is troubling is that Rev. Gary Murrell is being a very poor witness for Christ in doing this. Does he seriously believe that this sign is going to convince any Muslim to give up his or her religion and embrace Christianity? Because he's gravely mistaken if he does. We are supposed to be convincing people of Christ with our love toward them, and not militant hostility. When Murrell does this, he's really not showing that he's that much different from the Muslims who do kill other people. The hatred and loathing is the same, it's just a difference of extremes to which each chooses to express that hatred.
Here's the thing: I don't believe that the ACLU should be filing these ridiculous lawsuits against local municipalities for how they choose to carry on their public meetings. This is something that's left up to the local community. So I definitely believe that the ACLU should butt-out. At the same time, too many of the people who are most defending this kind of prayer are doing so for the completely wrong reason. They aren't "defending" or "standing up" for prayer for prayer's sake. They are doing this to turn prayer into a public show of force and power... which is something that Jesus expressly taught against. In fact, Jesus said that people who do this kind of public prayer were "hypocrites". Prayer is supposed to be a personal thing between the individual and God, not a public rallying cry against "those evil liberals" or some-such. When it becomes that, then prayer is worthless... and like the story of the church sign above, it poisons our witness for Christ.
The common point in both of these stories is the notion that Christianity should be a "religion" in competition with all the other religions of the world. That is wrong, because that gives Christianity the purpose of accumulating temporal power instead of furthering the kingdom of God for no other reason than it's own sake. Christianity shouldn't even be considered a "religion" at all, anyway. It's about relationship with God, not ritual for God.
We do neither God or ourselves any favors when we use the name of Christ to achieve stature in the eyes of the world.
Maybe if the Christians of this country would realize the dire need for humbleness, and stop trying to dominate the world, then perhaps we would get out of the way and allow God to fix some of the things that we complain about most. But hey, I'm just a guy with a blog: what do I know?
