On “Enough: What’s fueling the city’s gun violence epidemic”
Read it. Bookmark it. Read it again. —Nancy Stephen, Dec. 17
On “Enough: What’s fueling the city’s gun violence epidemic”
Thank you for addressing the issue and helping to show a different perspective.
—Chea K. Woolfolk Radio Personality at Truth Network, Dec. 17
On “Louisville graffiti scene rallys for a fallen friend”
MT @leoweekly: #rip2buck [Your] art was a bright light in the East End blight when I commuted from my folks’ place.
—Virginia @CyberV
on “Louisville Graffiti scene rallys for a fallen friend”
May my little brother paint the walls in Heaven. I miss you Jon so much, no one will ever know the loss my family has suffered.
—Danielle Brown, Dec. 18
on “Louisville Graffiti scene rallys for a fallen friend”
Tired of gray concrete walls? Want color? Support free walls. There is beauty behind graffiti art, if only others could see it.
—Carol Brown, Dec. 18
on “The Winter Soulspit slam”
That moment when you realize something/someone has grown and touched others just because you loved them.
—Christopher Michael, Dec. 17
on “Red, white and bluster”
Totally agree. McConnell never fails to represent the dirty and violent side of every issue. We need a responsible replacement for him and Sen. Paul. Keep passing the word. Thanks!
—Dave Collins, Dec. 17
on “Red, white and bluster”
You say Mitch is 73 years old … Hmmm, there is hope yet.
—Robert Vetter, Dec. 17
on “Star Wars Saved My Life:
Navigating local tributes and overarching themes on opening weekend of Episode VII”
Thank you for touching on the collaborative nature of “Star Wars” fandom. Anything that excites the imagination is going to inspire people to press out past the envelope of the source material and start telling their own stories in that setting. I suspect “Star Wars” does that as well as any other fictional universe ever made. The only question is whether [George] Lucas did that by design, or if it is just a side effect of a story that consciously follows the path of the hero, and also worked so hard from the start to build something with fetishist levels of visual detail. To that end, I cannot recommend the current crop of “Star Wars” RPGs from Fantasy Flight enough to my fellow fans. They feel like your very own “Star Wars” adventure.
—Geoffrey Runge, Dec. 20
RIP! Samurai Brown: Putting an urban legend to rest
Hey, we all make mistakes, right? Whether we wait tables, bag groceries, practice law, play the stock market or count beans dressed in accountant clothing for “The Man,” we all make mistakes. My most recent mistake was not having my computer up and running to fact check the glorious article “The Plain Brown Rapper,” which appeared in the 25th Anniversary Issue of LEO (Nov. 18), written with beauty and skill by chief chess archenemy Michael Jones. Had I fact checked, I would have caught it.
Face it, three errors in a fact-crammed yet mere 500-word piece is not so bad. But for reasons noted below, the mistakes were significant and must be explained.
Firstly, I did not stalk Central Park with a samurai sword on the Ides of February, 1983, seeking retribution against Mitch the little bitch or minions. Had this been the case, it more than likely would have been picked up by The Curious Journal.
The right hand punk of the Dishonorable Judge/Executive Addison Mitchell Jr., Dave Huber (later to become a U.S. Attorney — the guys that always imprison me) told the press I had impaled the sacred door of the county courthouse with a samurai sword. The Courier put the lie to it.
Never happened.
So, here we are 32 years later … and this is getting pretty old, folks. Almost as old as the outrageous folk legends that I (1) Ran naked through Central Park; (2) Attacked an old man; (3) Attacked a small dog; and my favorite — (4) Was stripped naked by cops, tied to a tree and buggered by their billy clubs.
Jeez, when the hell does this gross, and I must say rather unfair if not downright defamatory, urban legend bullshit stop? Must I wait for some invisible statue of limitations that hits in 2033 — a full 50 years from my celebrated Day of Rage?
Whatever.
Secondly, I never meant to mislead Messer Jones, who in my own damn opinion is the hands-down best journalist in this so-called Possibility City, but somehow he came to believe Mitch wiretapped me on behalf of my good political friend and former “C” District County Commissioner Daryl Owen.
Hell no.
If it happened (and it did, true fact) McConnell did it for his own evil and nefarious purposes. In fact, it is more than merely noteworthy or coincidental that both times I was slammed in federal prison, it just so happened to be the two years I sought to return to politics in a big way, running for office (U.S. Senate in 1986 and Jefferson County Commissioner in 2000.)
Do you believe in coincidence? Are you such a fool?
FYI, in ’86 Mitch’s U.S. Attorney and F.B.I. henchmen pulled my girlfriend, Dawn, out of a soap line twice before she played ball with the law, and I was set up like a bowling pin in a four-ounce marijuana deal. They tracked me all the way to Key West. The federales threatened Dawn with taking her kids away. These thugs play rough.
Me too.
Keep reading LEO fans and foes alike. You may learn why that famous poem ends with the lines “and in Kentucky, the horses are the fastest, the women are the prettiest … and the politics they are the damnest.”
The paper tiger we know as The Republican Leader of the U.S. Senate will not fare well in the very prisons (seven for me) in which I had served out my time.
I grew stronger. He will be crushed. In his biography “Republican Leader: A Political Biography of Senator Mitch McConnell,” McConnell is quoted as saying, “If someone throws a pebble at you, hurl a boulder back at them.”
A heads up, chump. (I know first hand from some of his disloyal staff he always reads my columns.) Hurl enough boulders and sooner or later the mountain collapses on you. And everyone you step on going up the ladder has a stiletto waiting for you on the way down. And Mitch told me this ladder advice personally. Ironic, huh?
Thirdly and most importantly, Michael said my “best 51 out of 100” chess win tally was always a few games off.
The bastard!
Never, never, never, nein, nein, nein! I take but seven things seriously while serving out hard time on this spinning mud ball called Earth: chess, country, love, martial arts, God, friends and writing.
And Michael, you’re ahead 3-0 in our series.
But, anyway, I’m Carl Brown, Louisville’s Reaper, and that’s just my solid fact-based opinion. If you don’t like it, sue me. Just google this first. Cool that? —Carl Brown