This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 11, 2010 - I've known Brandyn Jones since she was a baby, and when she called up to tell me I'd been chosen as one of a group to win the Kick Ass Award, I admit I was a little suspicious and a lot underwhelmed. I'm somewhat award-phobic anyhow -- sort of like Groucho Marx on clubs: If one of them wants me I wouldn't want to belong. At any rate, the idea of being a recipient of the Kick Ass Award seemed somewhat bizarre. But since, as everybody knows I'm an easy "Yes," why, after all these years, should I start saying "No" to someone about whom I have enormous affection and respect?
The affection part comes easy. Brandyn's parents, Howard and Helen Jones, both artists, figured prominently in my life, and Brandyn, who was so cherished by them, was irresistible to me as a kid and as an adult. The respect comes from the fact that she has spent her professional life involved in government and civic improvement efforts, jobs guaranteed not to make you rich. Nowadays she is working with a massive effort to deal with the epidemic of stray animals who, unless rescued, face almost certain injury and death.
One of my fellow 2010 kick assers is Val Schweickhardt, who works with Brandyn at Metro Animal Resource Services. In introducing her, Brandyn described Schweickhardt as heroic in her devotion to kittens and cats, and extraordinarily skilled in caring for them. Her introduction was -- for anyone who loves animals -- profoundly affecting. What I expected to be a romp turned out to be an evening filled with emotion, both for those who were winning and those attending.
Although on the surface the Kick Ass Award and the presentation ceremony are irreverent and smart-alecky, the substance is neither smart-alecky nor irreverent. In fact, this ceremony puts other, more reverent and anodyne awards and ceremonies to shame simply because it is authentic.
And why is it authentic? Because it serves to commend men and women and organizations that work for the betterment of the region and that's it, except maybe for the purpose of getting together at Joe's Cafe, in Skinker-DeBaliviere, and having a good time. Joe's Cafe, just west of Des Peres on Kingsbury Blvd., is off the charts in authenticity. It was created by artist Bill Christman, who won a Kick Ass Award in 2007 for being an artist, merry-maker and impresario. Although he is pretty passionate about all those activities, he has also worked with neighborhood kids, teaching them to make things and to think of art as alive, rather than pickled in a museum.
And the other attribute that sets Kick Ass apart is it brazenly and unashamedly proclaims what a great place St. Louis is. Huh? What is this? Don't the organizers of the awards program and its winners know about all the bad stuff? Don't they know we wear inferiority complexes around here, itchy and scratchy as habits for some sort of grim, self-loathing religious order?
I'm quite certain all the Kick-Ass Award winners know about our problems: racism and poverty and their spawn, troubled schools, complacency, conservatism. But knowledge, after all, is power, and sometimes that power, once gathered, can be directed toward doing good.
I won the award not because I'm anyone special but because of the Beacon, because four years ago a bunch of out-of-work journalists decided St. Louis needed another source of news, one devoted to public service, and that we were the ones to bring this about.
Others winners took home their distinctive and massive trophies for work done on the web as a way to teach science, for establishing an independent bookstore in a neighborhood that needs one, for starting a business and creating jobs as well as imaginative graphics.
There was a man who dresses up like a knight in the hopes of teaching children badly needed lessons about honor and civility.
There were artists and poets and musicians -- all dedicated to amping up the radiance of St. Louis, and doing it. In other words, kicking ass.
I feel so privileged, so honored, so proud to be in their number, with the Beacon blazing forth with me. I want to say thanks, truly, to all the young men and women who had the vision and the moxie to create this award, Brandyn Jones particularly, but not exclusively.
For a complete list of 2010 Kick Ass Award winners, go to http://kickassawardsstl.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/hello-world/ The surprise winner was Sleepy Kitty, my new favorite name for a business: http://sleepykittyarts.blogspot.com/