Chris Graham: Bully
Not me. The other guys. I was the bullied, if that’s an apt description.
Skinny as a rail, my head always stuck in a book, I grew up, you might say, in a rough neighborhood in about the worst way that one could.
I knew from an early age that I wasn’t like the other guys. I didn’t go hunting with my dad. (My dad didn’t hunt, for one thing. He wasn’t around much, for another.)
I wasn’t into cars. I played sports every waking minute that I wasn’t reading a book, but not football. (I preferred basketball. Shot literally tens of thousands of jump shots out on the backyard hoop, usually by myself.) Read more
Chris Graham: Out of the closet, and back in
“Yeah, sure, why not?”
This was the typically noncommital response of my friend Eli to the question of questions at a family and friends gathering over the weekend.
Namely, Are you guys, you know …
“We get that all the time,” said his longtime roommate, Mordecai, confirming … what, exactly? Read more
Chris Graham: What will Warner do?
The short answer: I don’t know any more than anybody else. Not that this stops me from having some strong thoughts on the subject.
Spending a day with the frustrated junior senator on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago, well, I kinda gave myself away there, calling him frustrated. It was clear to me that Warner could do without being forced to be the guy to bang the gavel to open and close the Senate on Mondays and Fridays so that other members can make speeches on C-SPAN that nobody will watch, among other things. Read more
Chris Graham: A new look at Tebow Time
He’s such an athlete. So physical. Look at the guy.
OK, he might not make a good NFL quarterback, but you’ve got to figure a way to get him on the field.
How many black college quarterbacks have we heard that said about over the years?
Except that now we’re saying it about good ol’ Tim Tebow, who apparently is going to serve as everything from Wildcat gimmick QB to H-back and fullback to personal punt protector for the New York Jets. Read more
Chris Graham: Somebody needs to be the grownup
The ongoing state budget stalemate is going to continue to be ongoing until Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other come to the realization that somebody needs to be the grownup.
And yes, it’s both sides that need to come to that realization. The nonsense that you hear from Richmond from Democrats blaming Republicans and Republicans blaming Democrats is nothing more than a sign that we’re still in the political-posturing phase of this budget battle. Read more
AFP publishes first ebook
Augusta Free Press editor Chris Graham’s fourth book, Ridin’ the Pine, a collection of literary short stories, is also the first ebook from Augusta Free Press LLC.
Ridin’ the Pine features three short stories from Graham, the author of Judge Not, a political thriller, and Stop the Presses, a collection of humor columns, and the co-author of Mad About U: Four Decades of Basketball at University Hall, a book chronicling the history of University of Virginia men’s and women’s basketball. Read more
Chris Graham: Say yes, then figure it out
“So, Chris, can you produce videos?”
“Um … sure.”
I mean, I had produced videos, kinda, sorta. If you count pointing a Flip camera at myself and ranting and then figuring out how to get the result onto YouTube so that people could comment.
“Yeah, definitely.”
I learned a lesson a while ago from a friend in the entertainment business, Larry Vickers, who decided as a teen that he’d one day be a Broadway dancer. It didn’t daunt him at all that he’d never taken a single dance class. He was convinced … it was going to happen.
His debut on Broadway literally a couple of years later (yeah, it’s a helluva story) was delayed because he turned his first Broadway gig down. Naive as he was at the time, he’d already taken a job on a summer-stock production, so when the casting director offered him a slot on an upcoming Broadway show, he turned it down, not realizing that union rules would allow him to back out of his summer-stock contract without any repercussions.
That occurred to him later. As he walked away from the casting director having turned down the job, another dancer berated him.
“Next time don’t be stupid. Say yes, then figure it out.’
So that’s my mantra. Say yes, then figure it out. And we’ve figured out a lot in terms of video production since the day literally a year ago that I was asked if I could handle video production for a small pro-wrestling company with big, big dreams.
A series of videos that I produced helped build big-time interest in the company, to the point where demand for our product pushed us onto TV. And now I shoot and produce TV commercials for several clients, in addition to delivering sophisticated web-video products for a bigger list.
And last night, I entered a new realm – DVD producer, piecing together footage from the big wrestling show put on by Awesome Wrestling Entertainment last fall into a two-disc DVD set that will go on sale April 1.
“So, Chris, can you produce videos?”
Turns out that I was right when I said yes, even though I didn’t know that for 100 percent certain at the time.
More online at www.TheWorldAccordingToChrisGraham.com.
