I made it to Richmond!

Yay! Richmond... the capitol of the Confederacy, the capitol of the Old Dominion, the capitol of sitting on a Robinson Street bar stool getting drunk! My folks picked me up from the airport last night--actually it was my father and my brother, actor Jay Fontaine--and drove me back to my parents retirement condo in the fashionable West End of Richmond. I was still on West Coast time last night so I stayed up almost all night tweeting! Yee-HA! Then I woke up and went to Trader Joes with my father. I knew that when Richmond got a TJ's, it would be some kind of milestone, like when "Two-buck Chuck" went up to $3.25... as I took a tour of West Broad Street from Gaskins Road to Short Pump, I noticed that the chains had all landed--Dave-N-Buster's, Home Depot, Michael's, big box stores, and small national chains like Omaha Steaks; Petco, and then your restaurant chains--P.F. Chang's, Appleby's, Chili's, etc... When I left, some 13 years ago, this was all woodlands and cow pastures. Short Pump was a crossroads from colonial times that had an actual short-handled water pump at a long-vanished inn. Now, the place is unrecognizable from any other suburban landscape in the United States. If I didn't know better, I could be on Shaw Avenue in Fresno, or in Paramus NJ, or northern Virginia (Alexandria, Fairfax--take your pick). It was a weird feeling of familiarity, but difference. Well, I got 2 weeks of this to digest. I think I'm gonna go down to see my old guitarist Scott, and work on some tracks for the long-awaited (15 years) Just Because album! And sit on a Robinson Street barstool and get drunk!