Birmingham Blues

Well, sort of…

Our new granddog, Nestlé, came to visit today. Isn’t she adorable?

Prissy is not too sure what she thinks about the new niece-dog.

Okay. So I put a Kevin Bacon movie called Stir of Echoes on the Netflix list, because I read somewhere that it was better than Sixth Sense. Watched it last night, liked it fine. Kevin was great, other leads were great, and—something I keep noticing lately—every bit of supporting acting was great, too, right down to the checkout girl with one line who only showed up in the outtakes.  Plot: Kevin Bacon and his son See Dead People. Or rather, person, a teenage girl who went missing from the neighborhood six months ago.

 Anyway. There was something called “Searching for the Paranormal” (or something like that) in the special features, so I watched it. It cut between interviews with the author of the book (the movie is based on a Richard Matheson novel that David Koepp found in a used book store) and some modern kind of “ghostbuster” guy, who claimed to work with a team of clairvoyants to help police solve crimes. They showed a building with wrought-iron balconies and I thought, huh, that looks like either Mobile or New Orleans…and sure enough, the guy starts talking about how he helped this woman who was a Katrina refugee (can that be right? The movie was made in 1999. I’ll have to watch again) and her daughter had been murdered by skinheads, blah blah. He of course “saw” the whole thing and put the police on the right track. Well, to bolster this real-life paranormal account, they kept flashing pictures of newspaper stories with headlines like “MURDER STILL UNSOLVED” on the screen. Stories from that well-known newspaper, The Mobile Post.  (Note to non-Mobile-residents: No such paper. Never was. I don’t remember any story about a skinhead murder, either.)  My jaw dropped.  I mean, okay, it’s a movie about ghosts. Am I naive to expect that an added feature that presents itself as a legit interview with a real-life paranormal investigator wouldn’t be, well, completely and totally made up, with presumably an actor playing the investigator, and other actors playing the “team of clairvoyants” we see on what are supposed to be amateur videos of their various investigative sallies?

I guess I am. Boy, do I feel stupid.

UPDATE: popped it in the machine again and there is no mention of Katrina (our brains do such funny things to us!) only that the guy was in N.O. and the grieving mama drove over from Mobile to speak with him.  He seems to be “genuine” enough in that I don’t think he’s an actor - his name is Larry Montz (holder of a PhD in parapsychology!) and I’m not the only one to doubt his creds.

 Also, and this is weird too, all the internet reviews I could find of the DVD didn’t list this in the special features - in fact, they mostly commented unfavorably on the paucity of same. So, did they cobble this thing together and throw it on for a re-release of the DVD? Would they even bother?

Ghosties. Hmmm. A woman I know lives next door to a house whose previous owners had such a poltergeist problem they actually called in a “ghostbuster” group (I think these people have some kind of a conference in Mobile every year around Halloween). The investigator gave her very matter-of-fact advice, including telling her that her teenage daughter was the target of most of the unrest (they already knew that) and to just forget the attic reno they had planned, because that was the—what? Most infested?—place in the whole house. They moved eventually, and I don’t think the new owners have had the same problems. There are more things in heaven & earth, Horatio, etc. But “Dr.” Montz ain’t throwing no light on any of it, I don’t believe.

Go read The Sticky, Sticky Truth. Not, as I said below, like it matters.

[I just fixed a typo.  The headline originally read "People Who Love Outside the City", which would make the title of Kyle's article even more evocative.]

Former Birmingham City Councilor Don McDermott, who was indicted on federal child porn charges in September, pleaded guilty this morning to receiving and possessing child pornography. No sentencing date has been set, but one of the charges carries a five-year minimum.

City and federal agents seized computers, hard drives and other materials from MacDermott’s home in August. They found 129 pornographic photographs and four short videos, all depicting girls.

The defendant, who faces heart surgery later this month, was allowed to remain free on bond until he is sentenced. Coogler ordered him not to be alone with minors and to stay at least 500 feet away from schools and day care centers.

MacDermott also faces a related state child pornography charge, but has not been indicted.

A commenter at al.com asks, “Wasn’t MacDermott a very conservative, Christian Coalition candidate? What happened to him?” My response: “What else is new?”

Patrick Cooper is continuing his challenge of Larry Langford’s mayoral election despite losing in circuit court. He’s appealing to the Alabama Supreme Court, and the case could be heard as early as January. Allwyn Horn, the judge who ruled against him locally, has ordered an expedited deadline for preparation of the court transcript and records so they can be filed with the appeal.

So, is Larry’s, um, questionable claim to Birmingham residency just a technical violation, generally overlooked unless someone really, really doesn’t like the winner (à la the contest of Patricia Todd’s election victory, although in that case dissenters were trying to enforce a party rule no one followed because it had been superseded by state law), or is it just another indicator of his willingness to play fast and loose with the truth and the numbers in order to get what he wants?

In the end, I doubt the Supreme Court will overturn Judge Horn’s ruling. But we will get an answer to my question, somewhere along the way.

Good God, how sick does someone have to be to skin a dog alive? I heard about this last week, but I thought it best for the sake of my own mental health to pretend it didn’t happen.

Authorities in Cullman County are investigating a shocking case of animal cruelty. Police said a Vinemont family’s beagle was skinned alive and had to be euthanized, but a second beagle escaped with minor lacerations.

Neal Rodgers said he had let the family’s two beagles run loose in a rural part of Vinemont located on Cullman County Road 1428 last weekend. He said he first thought his 3-year-old dog named Anne had been hit by a car, but after a closer look it was clear someone skinned his dog alive.

Now several private citizens and animal groups have donated or pledged over $35,000 in reward money. My knee-jerk thought was, “$35,000 for a dog?,” but then I remembered that animal cruelty is one of the indicators of a future serial killer. Maybe serious intervention now can prevent more tragedy later. Anyway, I hope the police catch the cretin(s) who did this and insist on both serious punishment and intensive therapy.

Wow, there has been so much going on the past week or so. I’ve been watching and reading — but not writing. Fortunately, others are more diligent.

Steven Benen at The Carpetbagger Report kindly put together a chronology of Rudy Giuliani’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. While the press focused on, and in some cases laughed off, Rudy’s tryst fund, I’m more concerned about his business ties to terrorist-protecting Qatar. Not sexy, I know, but it does shed a new light on Mr. 9/11.

Despite some well-founded concern last week that the media, and therefore the voters, would let Rudy slide, Rasmussen’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows his support has fallen significantly, while Mike Huckabee has, excuse the expression, surged. Rudy, who on November 27, claimed the support of 23% of those polled — in contrast to 15% for Romney and 13% for Huckabee — now finds himself down to 18%, in a dead heat with Huckabee.

Speaking of sex scandals, Larry “Let Me Be Clear; I Am Not Gay; I Never Have Been Gay” Craig was back in the news, as several men stepped forward to say that they had had sexual encounters, ranging from “unusual attention” to doing the deed, with Sen. Craig. Not to worry, Larry’s still not gay. He’s just similar to this guy (h/t, Del).

Of course, I can’t blame Larry Craig for denying his sexual orientation, given how his party and its supporters treat LGBT citizens. Michael Guest, an openly gay man who was appointed Ambassador to Romania by George W. Bush in 2001 (stunning, I know) recently retired after a quarter of a century of service as a career diplomat — and he didn’t pull any punches about why he was leaving:

“For the past three years, I’ve urged the Secretary [Condoleeza Rice] and her senior management team to redress policies that discriminate against gay and lesbian employees. Absolutely nothing has resulted from this. And so I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family — and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership and a shame for this institution and our country,” he said.

Among the inequities cited by Mr. Guest and other gay diplomats: unlike heterosexual spouses, gay partners are not entitled to State Department-provided security training, free medical care at overseas posts, guaranteed evacuation in case of a medical emergency, transportation to overseas posts, or special living allowances when foreign service officers are assigned to places like Iraq, where diplomatic families are not permitted.

In local news, Birmingham’s new mayor, Larry Langford, expressed his concern for the negative impact of his proposed one-cent sales tax increase on poor citizens thusly: “If a penny’s going to break you, you’re already broke anyway, so don’t worry about it.” Larry himself is unconcerned that the numbers he’s throwing around in his “if we build it, they will come” dome scheme just don’t add up, and apparently the City Council isn’t worried either — Langford’s plan, which will increase total sales tax in the city to 10% and double the cost of business licenses, passed with almost no dissent at yesterday’s meeting. Councilor Miriam Witherspoon showed characteristic nastiness toward citizens who expressed concern about the sales tax increase:

During the meeting some council members, including Witherspoon, lashed out at some critics of the plan, including Birmingham auto dealers who said the tax increase would kill their ability to compete with neighboring communities. The council heard those complaints Monday evening and rejected calls for a lower sales tax increase on automobiles.

“If you leave, someone else will come,” Witherspoon said. “If you sell your dealership, we’ll find someone else who will buy it.”

I have it on good authority that Langford spent the meeting wielding a conductor’s baton, said baton even lulling the notorious “Dr. No” Joel Montgomery into voting for the sales tax increase. No wonder that one speaker referred to Larry as “Mayor Harry Potter”. Roderick Royal’s tortured metaphor doesn’t really make me feel any better about this roll-over-and-play-dead Council: “The council will maintain its balance as the check of any and all initiatives.” In the immortal words of — well, me — “Huh?”