The Near East Side has become one of the trendier places of Columbus in recent years. However, it was only a half-century ago this month that the Near East Side had a completely opposite story to tell. A story that has helped give the neighborhood a negative perception for decades. The Near East Side of 2019 is a long cry from the Near East Side of 1969. Or is it?

The day was Monday July 21, 1969, the day after the historic Apollo 11 Moon Landing.  David Chesnut, a 69-year-old white businessman on 832 East Main Street fatally shot Roy Beasley, a 27 year-old Black sanitation worker for the City of Columbus who lived in the home directly behind Chesnut’s dry cleaning business, The Pad and Pillow Place, when the two got into an argument over Beasley’s three children playing on Chesnut’s property.

Against my better judgment, in a couple of weeks I’ll be taking a trip up to Put-In-Bay with the family of one of my daughter’s friends. I say better judgment, because the last time I went there I ended up spending nine boring hours with some guy named Mitch, who owes me money. Ah yes, island culture. Boating culture. Buffet Culture.

When I was 18 I had a job bussing tables at a place up at Crosswoods called Cantina del Rio. On Fridays and Saturdays they would have live acoustic music at the bar. The acts differed, but it was always more or less the same set. The only real question was whether they would open or close with Margaritaville. 

In college one of my friends got free tickets to see some guy named Pat Dailey play at Promo West and I got dragged along. We knew nothing about the guy. This local college rock band opened up and played a song about being too stupid to effectively communicate in a relationship, or something equally insubstantial.* They had like nine guitar players, and there was this weird scene where this gigundus band tore down and was replaced by just one guy with an acoustic guitar.

At the end of June, our corporate media overlords blessed us with the most inclusive political debate in American history. Twenty candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination made their case to voters over the course of four hours on television – to get on the stage, they only needed a minimum of 65,000 unique donors, regardless of how they were polling in the primary race. Thanks to these requirements, voters were able to hear from a diverse field of qualified (and unqualified) candidates.

As a former third party candidate for office myself, I found this inclusion of twenty candidates particularly interesting. For years I was told that media outlets were unable to include more than two candidates in a debate unless they were polling at a specific number, despite the fact that these polls and polling methods were never exactly disclosed. In fact, every two to four years when partisan elections take place in our country, it doesn’t matter if third party candidates are running on a local, state or national level -- we’re always somehow kept out of the debates because of our “low” polling numbers.

The true story of British whistleblower Katharine Gun is public. The new movie dramatizing that story, with Keira Knightley in the starring role is called a thriller. And that it is.

How can a known event be made into a suspenseful thriller? In part this is possible because the story is a complex one that few know the details of, and in part because most people don’t know anything about anything. There’s too much information in the world, and most of it is useless or worse. The story of a whistleblower who took great risks to expose the greatest possible crimes by people holding the most power in the world is not the bit of information that has been most repeated over the past 16 years since it happened. In fact, it’s hardly been mentioned at all in corporate media.

I recommend not reading anything about Katharine Gun until after you see Official Secrets. And what I write about the movie here will avoid revealing much at all.  But feel free to go watch the movie first and then come back to this.

One of the best feelings in the world is seeing a hot band in a cozy club playing a show so unforgettably on that you're sure – absolutely sure-fire sure – the best rock'n'roll anywhere on the planet that night is being performed right in front of you raw and in the flesh.

Seeing how the Stones had the night off...

... it's a no-brainer: NRBQ at Rumba Cafe was the greatest rock'n'roll anywhere on our funky blue spinning ball the last Saturday in June. Stupendous they were, 120% stupendous.

My clogged chakras got an energizing purge so bold-as-love they're still a-tinglin'! Like musical super concentrated high-voltage Liquid Plumr – the Q straightened my spine and blew my mind, left all my troubles behind. I can't booze it up and dance to just any old band. They got to know how to play and to slay and brother, when it comes to the Q, well, that's my church of the holy soul jelly roll. They stoned me. They owned me. I'm going to leave them everything I got in my will.