Month: April 2001

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Spring Game Is Offensive

Was new University of Memphis coach Tommy West just trying to sell season tickets? How else to explain the performance in the annual Blue-Gray scrimmage by a new Tiger offense which threw on first down, operated without the benefit of a huddle, scored the first time it had the ball, and generally ran circles around the usually ferocious Tiger defense.

Behind quarterbacks Travis Anglin and Danny Wimprine, the offense scored five touchdowns during the two-hour scrimmage. When Anglin or Wimprine were not passing the ball effectively, they were handing it off to running backs Sugar Sanders, Aaron Meadows, and Jeremiah Bonds. Anglin had two touchdown passes and ran for another, while Wimprine threw for one and ran for a second.

Afterward, coaches and players alike expressed enthusiasm. “How did you like that?” one assistant coach asked after the scrimmage.

“This is the most excited I’ve ever seen our team,” said junior receiver Tripp Higgins. “Our defense even gets pumped up because of the tempo of our offense. They like seeing us do good.”

“We’re pleased with what we’ve accomplished in 13 practices,” West said after the scrimmage. “I think they’ve really come a long, long way. Our offensive players have an attitude right now that you want. They realize that they haven’t been very good; they haven’t been very productive. They’re listening to the fundamental coaching.”

West admitted that there were some areas that still need work, and he had some blunt words for his quarterbacks.

“We had some miscues at quarterback where we got people open. That’s not good enough to play quarterback here,” he said. “When we’ve got people wide open, we have to hit them or you can’t play Division I college football. That’s the way it is.”

The Tigers will go into August without a number-one quarterback. “I really don’t think we have a quarterback who deserves to be number one. I don’t think anybody is playing to a level that we’ll have to play to win games,” West said. “I think we’ve got some good competition and I don’t want to cut it off. I’m going to carry it into August.

“I think Travis has done some good things. He needs to improve in the passing game, but he certainly is a threat running the ball,” West continued. “I think he has improved throwing the ball. He has improved his accuracy. He is certainly in the mix.”

Wimprine said he welcomes the battle. “Competition only makes you better,” he said. “Hopefully, all the quarterbacks will get better from this situation.”

Excitement was the word of the day.

“We’re all excited about the new offense, it’s explosive,” said Trey Erye, who is competing for the starting right guard position. “The best thing is that it makes everybody accountable for themselves. Today we had a lot of good things happen.”

“Coach West and his staff have done a great job of installing a new offense. It makes it fun,” added Higgins. “The defense does not have as much depth as we do now. We just got a lot better. Not to take anything away from them, but we did a lot of things good today.”

TIGER NOTES

· Defensive back Bo Arnold is improving after being in a serious one-car collision near his home in Georgia. Arnold received facial injuries in the crash and has had to have his jaw wired, according to school officials.

· A third quarterback, senior Neil Suber, played in the game but was ineffective. Scott Scherer, who was the starter at the end of last season, sat out the scrimmage. Scherer took a vicious hit at practice a few days before and was held out of the game. Scherer’s mother, Michelle, attended the game, but his father, former head coach Rip Scherer, was out of town.

· Senior defensive end Tony Brown, who had to sit out his freshman season because he didn’t qualify academically, says he is hopeful of getting another year of eligibility by graduating in 2002. “It is looking like I will be, with all the classes I’m taking,” Brown said. He and Andre Arnold, the other starting defensive end, make up the most experienced part of a line that suffered heavy losses to graduation.

· West doesn’t know what the NCAA will do with the university’s appeal to have defensive tackle Albert Means, a transfer from Alabama, declared eligible immediately. “He can help our team,” West said. “I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope people do the right thing and restore his eligibility. I don’t think we will know anything till mid-summer. There really has never been a case like this. I don’t know what is going to happen.” Means found himself at the center of a recruiting scandal after a Memphis high school coach claimed that an Alabama supporter gave Means’ high school coach $200,000 to have him sign with the Crimson Tide.

· Wimprine made the most incredible play of the game when he ran down speedy defensive back Quincy Stephenson who had just intercepted a pass and returned it 49 yards. Wimprine, who missed some practice time because of academic problems, says not to worry about him. “I will be fine,” he said. Both of his parents attended the game, traveling from their home near New Orleans. His mother is a frequent poster to the message board at the Web site Tiger Illustrated. She uses the screen name “Dan’s Fan.”

· Offensive line coach Rick Mallory says former tight end Wade Smith‘s move to right tackle has worked out well despite the ego adjustment involved. “I went through it and a lot of guys I know in the NFL went through it. It’s always a shock to your system, to your ego,” Mallory said of the transition. “But Wade sees the wisdom behind it. He is a real athletic guy and he’s going to help us a lot.”

· Deep snapper Jarred Pigue has quit the team. He told coaches he wants to transfer to Tennessee. ·

You can e-mail Dennis Freeland at freeland@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

The First Time

In its first season of fireworks, cheerleaders, and the occasional highlight reel, the Memphis Maniax have — at the very least — entertained the 100,000-plus fans who came to the Liberty Bowl. Ironically, the league that was supposed to challenge the networks because of its production savvy instead impressed with its ticket sales, averaging over 24,000 viewers per game per city, drawing more than 1 million people.

But putting butts in the seats, entertaining the home crowd, and playing (mostly) quality football really isn’t the point. The XFL, in its television incarnation, underperformed. While network execs promised advertisers a Nielsen 4.5 share, the XFL has struggled to produce a two-point rating, sometimes falling below that.

The result is a threat from co-owner NBC to pull the plug on the Saturday prime-time broadcasts. Another result is the XFL is expanding to new markets sooner than planned in order to build its TV base.

NBC’s involvement provided the league and its founder — the always-ambitious Vince McMahon — too much hype before anything happened on the field. The first week’s rating of 10.3 on Saturday night only accelerated that process. Look for the league’s other TV partners (UPN and TNN) to provide the focal point for the second XFL season.

That the XFL will most likely leave primetime is in some sense appropriate in light of its anti-network persona. The XFL has been up-front about its mistakes. The public has never before been exposed to the inner workings of big-league sports productions. Coaches talk about league meetings and rules they don’t like. Players talk about officials and don’t get fined. Game announcers denounce the media openly and grit their teeth menacingly at the assured backlash. This is revolutionary. No one will ever look at the game of football the same way again.

That’s not to the say the league’s legacy is secure. For one thing, it’s impossible to say what this league is about. Early in the season we got vignettes with cheerleaders and players, then some football, then a rivalry between — of all things — an announcer and a coach, then we got cheerleaders in locker rooms, then we got some football, then what? If you asked a car salesman to describe his brand of car and he said, “Well, it’s like a Porsche, but more like a station wagon, with some SUV features” you would probably walk off the lot.

Another issue is a fundamental confusion about who the real players in this game are. Attention is divided between owners, announcers, cheerleaders, coaches, and (oh yeah) the guys with the uniforms. It’s difficult to know where to focus. While multiple storylines and characters may serve a wrestling show, in the sports world some depth is needed.

One notable exception from this is the league’s best facet — the coaches.When goaded by the governor of Minnesota, New York/New Jersey head coach Rusty Tillman sent a clear message: He is a football coach and his game speaks for him. Even with a 0-4 start, his team was in the playoff hunt until the last weekend.

Maniax head coach Kippy Brown disappointed but still represented himself, his team, and the league well. Though he was not able to coach his talented but underachieving team past a 5-5 record, he at least admitted what he did wrong. At press conferences, he would address the mistakes he seemingly couldn’t coach out of his team and what he was doing to improve.

Do not doubt Brown’s honesty with himself or others. When the Maniax were still in contention for the playoffs, Brown said of their chances, “If I were a betting man, would I bet on us? No. Because our M.O. has been not to be able to finish [ball games].” How’s that for coaches more worried about pissing off star players than saying what’s on their minds?

Look at Brown if you want to see this league’s potential. He’s an inexperienced head coach learning as he goes, trying to tune his athletes who have everything to prove and literally nothing to lose. If the XFL becomes the premier minor league of football, it will be because of coaches like Brown who have shaped their clubs from the ground up, creating teams that wouldn’t be possible in the NFL because of player salaries, egos, and intruding owners.

As for salaries, everyone gets paid on a scale, though that model might bend next year for certain players on a case-by-case basis. Also, each player is on a yearly contract, necessary for a league filled with players who would run to the NFL on a moment’s notice. The coaches, on the other hand, have extended contracts and are presumably paid more than even quarterbacks, though no salaries have been divulged publicly. That means that the stabilizing factors in this league are the coaches.

And this might come as a shock, but apparently McMahon listens to the coaches and has accepted many of their suggestions. One example is the bump-and-run rule dropped at mid-season. Expect further rule modifications, like the point-after conversion and the rule allowing forward motion — all because the coaches asked for it. How refreshing is it to see changes happening in the game made by those who know the game rather than those who own it?

Coaches are also going to factor heavily in the off-season as the league drafts rules on player recruitment, player swaps, and the XFL draft, which will next year include college players. Since this is the league’s first off-season, it is unlikely that the coaches will be told what is happening rather than giving significant input.

In many ways, the XFL’s first season was the anti-cheesy summer movie it prophesied itself to be. There is no glory and only the minimum of satisfaction. There is also the attitude that a serious amount of work needs to be done. Luckily for the league, that work is in the hands most capable: the coaches. ·

You can e-mail Chris Przybyszewski at chris@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

“Have you heard about the roll The Subteens are on?” I was asked at the Premier Player Awards. I had. Go-go dancers. Nudity. Drunken debauchery. So off I went to a sushi bar (!) in Oxford, Mississippi (!!), two nights later where the Subteens were capping a MADJACK Records showcase. No go-go dancers, unfortunately. But what I did see was one of the best (if not the best) punk-pop bands in town having gotten a little bit better than any other time I’ve seen them, with a second guitar player a nice addition to the mix. I saw a healthy crowd even more excited for them than they had been for Lucero, or the Pawtuckets, or Cory Branan. Have you heard about the roll the Subteens are on? See for yourself when they join Wesley Willis (see below) at Last Place on Earth on Thursday, April 12th. It doesn’t seem quite right to send you out on a Friday the 13th with nothing to do, so how about Earnestine and Hazel’s, which boasts the promising triple bill of American Deathray, Palindrome, and The Knaughty Knights?

— Chris Herrington

Wesley Willis is 6’5″ and 300-plus pounds of paranoid schizophrenic. He spent a great deal of his life homeless on the streets of Chicago where he played, well, schizophrenic songs on his keyboard for, and sold his undeniably cool line drawings to, whoever might be passing by. Now he has 20-odd albums and probably 500 songs to his credit. It’s an amazing story. On the other hand, while Wesley’s songs can be amusing, his backing band, the Fiasco, isn’t particularly interesting. It’s all sloppy, medium-energy thrash, but Wesley’s naive, funny, and often twisted lyrics make it all seem a whole lot better than it really is. Too bad the atmosphere of a Wesley Willis show is more like a freak show than a concert, because I’ve got a soft spot for lyrics like, “This beast killed as many as 100,000 people/Its wings can flap like a bird/It can break a glass/It can also stab you in the ass/The chicken cow/The chicken cow/The chicken cow/The chicken cow” and “Before I got fat I was slim/That was this time when I was eating McDonald’s/I kept eating McDonald’s for five years from 1987 to 1991/That’s when I became fat/A year later, I’m doing something about it/I’m sorry that I got fat/I will slim down.” The most excellent Subteens, who not so long ago wound up rocking on stage bare-assed naked, surrounded by a bevy of similarly dressed go-go girls, share the bill. Though I’m not much of a Wesley Willis fan, there is no doubt that when he and the Subteens unite at Last Place on Earth on Thursday the chances for divine weirdness will be large. Extra large. — Chris Davis

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Camelot and Other Fairy Stories

No one has done more to show how Americans have fetishized the Kennedy administration than a British author named J.G. Ballard. In his short rant, A Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Seen as an Uphill Bicycle Race, he had the audacity to claim that men get tremendous erections while viewing photographs of the car Kennedy was riding in when a bullet tore through his head. He created a not-so-fictional world of media saturation where the rising and falling of Jackie-O’s hemline could drastically affect international markets. Using the blackest of black humor Ballard held a mirror up to one of our most sacred national obsessions, showing us the horrible psychological scars we suffered when Camelot exploded in front of our very eyes.

After Ballard was through there was little left to say about this particular phenomenon. Then along comes House of Yes, an odd little play that was turned into an equally odd little film starring Parker Posey and Genevieve Bujold. In a number of ways, House of Yes picked up where Plan for the Assassination left off by showing us a family that embodied many aspects of Ballard’s dark diatribe. Though House of Yes employs a decidedly Hitchcockian brand of suspense, it is, at heart, a sex farce. While the film has a lot to recommend it, the play is fraught with problems, and though Theatre Memphis’ production is an admirable one, it can’t entirely overcome the fact that when the play turns serious it becomes unduly repetitive, the dialogue disintegrates, and the narrative all but disappears. In fact, if House of Yes starred Andrew Stevens and featured a few bare boobs, it might pass for a live version of the kind of erotic thriller you can find on Skin-o-max every Friday night. It has the appearance of substance, but it’s really just a dirty joke. Not a bad dirty joke, mind you, but a dirty joke nonetheless.

Outside the Pascal home a hurricane is blowing. The world is being turned topsy-turvy by an awesome force of nature. Inside the Pascal home another no less awesome force of nature, Jackie-O, called so because of her fascination with the storied first lady, anxiously awaits her twin brother Marty’s arrival. When Marty arrives with his new fiancée in tow it is Jackie-O and not the hurricane who begins to blow the house down. You see, Jackie-O and Marty like to do it. They like to do it weird. Jackie dresses up like Mrs. John Fitzgerald Kennedy in a smart pink suit and a pillbox hat. They re-enact the assassination (without once mentioning a grassy knoll, thank heavens) and then they get busy. Marty wants to end this unnatural affair, but Jackie- O isn’t about to let that happen. She’s had a history of mental illness and she’s ready to kill if she has to. From the onset it looks like she has to.

The entire Pascal household appears to be possessed of an off-kilter sexual permissiveness that may or may not reference the pre-AIDS sexual revolution that Aquarians are so fond of bragging about. Mrs. Pascal (dryly, sometimes wonderfully, played by Louise Levin), an encyclopedia of acerbic one-liners, claims not to truly know who fathered her children. Anthony Pascal, Marty and Jackie-O’s sweet but somewhat dim younger brother, is obsessed by the idea of sex with Marty’s fiancée Lesly. While reluctant to give in to his seemingly stunted desires, Lesly, a plain and simple girl who works in a donut shop, finds it difficult to say no to the boy. It’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as only the Marquis de Sade might imagine it, and Puck’s magic ointment has been replaced by the precious blood of JFK.

Director Ed Tatum has done a fine job building the suspense, but the show gathers very little momentum as it creeps toward its obvious and unsatisfactory conclusion. This is largely because each cast member employs a different acting style. Levin and Jesse Klenk (Marty) take a stiff, somewhat formalized approach to their work with decidedly Stepfordian results. For this to work, everyone else would have to be doing the exact same thing and the pace would have to quicken. Unfortunately, and in spite of the fact that they are doing good, Levin and Klenk seem disconnected from everyone else in the play. Kyle Barnette (Anthony), who is rapidly becoming my favorite actor in town, and Laura Anne Otts (Lesly) take a simpler, more realistic approach to their roles, but in the end they too seem disconnected. Jenny Hollingsworth, who has proven her skill and range time and time again, falls a bit short of the mark as Jackie-O. Hers is a grating two-note performance with lots of smirking and eyebrow-lifting. The urge to play stark raving crazy has superseded the fact that Jackie-O’s condition stems from what are, to her, very real needs. She misses every opportunity for subtlety and slyness and overindulges in loud caustic bitchery.

A wonderfully executed set by T. Reid Parker sets the perfect tone for House of Yes. A black and blue checkerboard floor is flanked by two vaguely Asian door frames that have been given a Caligariesque slant. A revolve makes set changes fast and painless. It’s too bad that the suspended round window frames weren’t better used. If they had been positioned and lit a little more carefully, a shadow resembling a rifle’s crosshairs might have fallen on the area where the characters make their illicit hay, adding to the show’s expressionistic feel.

House of Yes is at the Little Theatre, Theatre Memphis through April 15th.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Unforced Error

Drumroll, please.

We screwed up. Last week’s cover story, “Prescription for Disaster,” asserted that the taxpayers of Shelby County had paid out more than $40 million to settle lawsuits filed by inmates at the Shelby County jail since 1996. This is incorrect. The county has only paid out around $7 million to settle lawsuits from all departments since 1996.

In point of fact, pending legitimate lawsuits totaling much more than $40 million have been filed by inmates, but these have not been adjudicated yet. The reporter made an error and the editors failed to catch it. The buck stops with me.

This error became “news” when county commissioner Cleo Kirk raised questions about the story at the tail end of this week’s commission meeting. In an attempt to clarify the situation, Flyer senior editor Jackson Baker — who was covering the meeting — told the commission that the paper had been apprised of the likelihood of error and would not hestitate to take whatever corrective measures proved necessary. A Commercial Appeal reporter then filed a story on the incident, which became top-of-the-page news in last Tuesday’s CA. Rather than simply running a “correction” in this week’s Flyer, as is standard practice for newspapers, I felt that the added coverage of our mistake warranted a fuller explanation.

The most unfortunate aspect of this affair is that the solid reporting in the rest of the story has perhaps now become overshadowed by the error in its lead paragraph. Correctional Medical Services, the company hired by the county to provide health care to downtown jail inmates, has had more than its share of troubles across the country — and now here in Memphis. Inmates and their families have filed hundreds of suits against the company totaling millions of dollars nationwide. It’s a story that had not heretofore been told locally.

Our reporter documented CMS’s hiring of doctors with questionable backgrounds — including sex offenders and drug abusers — doctors the company could get to work for the $55 an hour it pays physicians. In Shelby County, CMS’s director of inmate services — John Perry — is called “Dr. Perry” even though he only holds a master’s degree in administration and psychology. We also reported on the eight suicides at the jail since 1993, which included two 16-year-old boys. Suicides that could have been prevented if the jail had been run better.

There are huge problems with the jail, problems that don’t seem to be getting better, as we’ve reported over the past few months. Federal judge Jon McCalla has ordered the Sheriff’s Department to come up with a plan to reduce crowding or be held in contempt. Gangs have ruled various aspects of the jail, even going so far as to stage mock gladiator-style fights between hapless inmates. Wrongful deaths, assaults, and rapes have occurred far too often. The citizens of Shelby County are already out millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements due to problems with the Sheriff’s Department and the jail. We will all keep paying until the problems are fixed.

The mistake in last week’s Flyer can be, and should be, publicly corrected. The mistakes being made down at 201 Poplar are going to be much more difficult and costly to fix.

And you can take that story to the bank.

Bruce VanWyngarden is the editor of the Flyer.

Categories
Art Art Feature

THE ANTI-NOVEL?

This is Not a Novel

By David Markson

Counterpoint, 190 pp., $15 (paper)

In the library of the world, the reader who suppresses the prejudice of taste (to go beyond a favorite genre and explore those countless books of every kind that sit still unread on the shelves) is the reader who inherits the greatest riches. With a wide-open mind, she stuffs her head with works from the entire spectrum of the written word. When her field of reference has become a fruited plain stretching to the horizons of her mind, she will enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that she did her best to wring a greater understanding out of the collective consciousness of humanity.

Now, if you’re not of my ilk and you don’t consider it your duty to gorge your head on the offal of 10,000 other minds, don’t listen to me. Read whatever the hell you want to read. But if you are of my ilk, then I suggest you pick up David Markson’s latest book, This is Not a Novel, which is one of the most edifying works I’ve ever encountered.

Markson’s is a mind stuffed, a mind comprising a vast field of reference, a sated, rich mind. The title is apt. The book is more of a meditation than a novel, though it does fall into the category of highly experimental fiction (self-referential metafiction particularly). There is a narrator, called only “Writer,” who tempts you down the winding yet circuitous path of his tale, which is, if anything, a fragmented monologue, the outpouring of a mind not just steeped but drowned in the literature, history, music, and art of the world.

If you asked me to simply state what the book is about, I would say: the arts, fame and “immortality,” and the cold hard fact of impending death, all delivered in anecdotal form. But the novel is not dark at all. On the contrary, it shines brilliantly, “plotless and characterless yet seducing the reader” (to quote “Writer”) with details from the lives (and deaths) of artists of every kind: musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, et cetera.

Every page is filled with brief paragraphs throwing out ideas for contemplation. Each piece of the “story” sometimes implies much more than it says, rendering these tidbits expansive upon consideration. As you go along the ideas and information begin to accumulate and allude to other works and other points set down in the narrative before. You will find yourself learning delicious details about names you know all to well and jotting down names to pursue further, myriad creators lost to all but the most encyclopedic minds. To give you a better notion of the form used throughout, here are some excerpts:

This morning I walked to the place where the streetcleaners dump the rubbish. My God, it was beautiful.

Says a Van Gogh letter.

~

When I was their age I could draw like Raphael. But it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like they do.

Said Picasso at an exhibition of children’s art.

~

My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them, I devour them with fury.

Wrote Liszt at twenty.

~

Greater than any of us, Yeats called Rabindranath Tagore.

~

The greatest lyric poet Germany ever knew, Gottfried Benn called Else Lasker-Schuler.

Who at sixty-four was beaten with an iron pipe by young Nazis on a street in Berlin.

~

Fray Luis de Leon, returning to his Salamanca classroom after five years of imprisonment by the Inquisition:

As I was saying…

~

Donatello, at work on his Zuccone, heard muttering at the stone:

Speak, damn you, talk to me.

Peppering these anecdotes throughout is the narrator’s forthright, even self-deprecating, thoughts on the writing itself. He is weary of making up stories. He wants to relate those he’s already heard. He’s sick of characters, plot, theme, setting, all the trappings of the novel, yet he’s his own character, pared down to only a voice. He can speak of nothing but the creative life and the inevitability of tragedy, but nothing ever gets too heavy. It’s all leavened by the capricious glee of the narrator’s tone, his wit poking through just when needed to break any tearful tension.

Is This is Not a Novel a compendium of quotations and hearsay or is it a book that would only interest a writer? It’s a fine and compelling read is what it is.

Categories
Music Music Features

CHOOSE ANI

So, who’s your pick? That dude from Cypress Hill or Chuck D.? The Ruler of the Funky Buddha or The Mouth That Roared? I’m talking about who the new lead singer for Rage Against the Machine should be, of course. The highest-profile radical rock band in the land needs a new mouthpiece, and those seem to be the prime names being bandied about. I wish I could say I’m surprised that no woman’s name has come up, though it’d be a much more radical move to let a femme voice (and perspective) harness the phallic power of Tom Morello’s axe than another Boy Acting Serious and Important. Like Public Enemy before them and like many other great agit-rock acts, Rage’s rage seemed as much about macho posturing as inspiring a livable revolution, and incorporating a little girlie action into their Godzilla-like roar might be a refreshing new direction. All of which is a roundabout way of offering my own suggestion for a new lead singer: Ani Difranco!

Why not? Difranco could use the commercial boost after watching her cult diminish over the last few years, and Rage could use someone with the ability to connect their political sloganeering (and the power of their Molotov-cocktail music) to the physical and emotional realities of everyday life. Sounds like a match to me.

For those outside her core demographic — (very) young, smart, left-leaning (white) women — Difranco can be an acquired taste. After dismissing her for years, like so many others have, as a strident feminist folkie (and “folkie” is the bad word here, not “feminist”), Difranco finally won me over in 1998, when I stumbled onto “Fuel,” a cut from her Little Plastic Castles album. Righteous and caustic, funny and quirky, down-to-earth but with an unexpectedly visionary twist, “Fuel” still sounds like the “protest” song of the decade to me. The song begins with Difranco walking by a Manhattan construction site where a slave cemetery has just been found (“May their souls rest easy now that lynching is illegal/and we’ve moved on to the electric chair”), a sight that triggers a personalized, stream-of-consciousness State of the Union address that encompasses everything from bankrupt politics to crass corporate culture to our isolated citizenry — all conveyed in a thrillingly conversational, everygirl voice. Then Difranco snaps back to real time, still standing over the unearthed cemetery, with a desire to dig even deeper: “down beneath the impossible pain of our history/beneath the unknown bones/and the bedrock of the mystery” to a place where “there’s a fire just waiting for fuel.” Morello’s quicksilver guitar could be the sonic match needed to ignite the blaze.

Okay — time to cut the crap. Won’t happen, right? Rage’s sound is too monolithic to make room for someone whose rhythms and desires seem so deeply personal. Besides, married and past 30, Difranco’s radicalism knows too many shades of grey to embrace the reckless abandon of Rage’s revolution.

The political genius of Difranco’s art is her ability to demonstrate, without ever seeming too willful, how an ethical outlook and subsequent emotional responses can inform how you relate to a lover and a friend as much as it informs how you relate to your country. With the new, two-disc, two-hour torrent of images and ideas, Revelling/Reckoning — essentially her marriage album — Difranco makes this connection plainer than ever. What Difranco has done in the process — perhaps unintentionally — is leave her kids’ cult behind and craft a great adult pop album — a hard thing to do in a genre clogged with the dispiriting self-regard of people like Sting and Don Henley.

The two records have distinct personalities: Revelling boasts fuller arrangements, making the most of Difranco’s unique jazz/funk-folk. Reckoning is more intimate and introspective, boasting a more captivating group of songs. Each record lives up to its title. Revelling starts off, on “Ain’t That The Way,” with Maceo Parker background vocals and Difranco scrunching up her voice like the “Left Eye” Lopes of funk-folk. The message: “Love makes me feel so dumb.” Difranco restates this theme of romantic happiness a bit more slyly on “Marrow”: “I’m a good kisser/and you’re a fast learner/and that kind of thing could float us/for a pretty long time.”

But Reckoning is the real keeper, with “Your Next Bold Move” starting with this: “Coming of age during the plague/of Reagan and Bush/watching capitalism gun down democracy/it had this funny effect on me.” It’s a defeat song, chastising the ineffectualness of a “left wing that was broken long ago,” but what makes it remarkable is how effortlessly the song’s emotion segues into the more personal skepticism of the following marriage songs, “Reckoning” and “So What.” And so it is with the whole of the record, as the political defiance of a song like “Subdivision” (“White people are so scared of black people/they bulldoze out to the country/and put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets/while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest”) mingles easily with the romantic travails of a song like “Sick of Me” (“The first person in your life/to ever really matter/is saying the last thing/that you want to hear”), making it all sound like part of the same struggle.

So while the job might sound tempting, Difranco probably won’t be too concerned if Rage’s invite never arrives. Judging from Revelling/Reckoning, she’s got more serious battles to wage.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

TIGERS GET OFFENSIVE

The joke in the press box midway through the University of Memphis’ annual spring game was that new coach Tommy West was just trying to sell season tickets. How else to explain this new Tiger offense which under the direction of new coordinator Randy Fichtner threw on first down, operated without the benefit of a huddle, scored the first time it had the ball, and generally ran circles around the vaunted Tiger defense.

Behind quarterbacks Travis Anglin and Danny Wimprine, the offense scored five touchdowns during the two-hour scrimmage. When Anglin or Wimprine were not passing the ball effectively, they were handing it off to running backs Sugar Sanders, Aaron Meadows, and Jeremiah Bonds. Anglin had two touchdown passes and ran for another TD, while Wimprine threw for one and ran for another.

Afterward, coaches and players alike expressed enthusiasm. “How did you like that,” one assistant coach asked after the scrimmage.

“This is the most excited I’ve ever seen our team,” said junior receiver Tripp Higgins. “Our defense even gets pumped up because of the tempo of our offense. They like seeing us do good.”

“We’re pleased with what we’ve accomplished in 13 practices,” West said after the scrimmage. “I think they’ve really come a long, long way. Our offensive players have an attitude right now that you want. They realize that they haven’t been very good; they haven’t been very productive. They’re listening to the fundamental coaching.”

West admitted that there were some areas that still need work and had some blunt words for his quarterbacks.

“We had some miscues at quarterback where we got people open. That’s not good enough to play quarterback here,” he said. “When we’ve got people wide open, we have to hit them or you can’t play Division-I college football. That’s the way it is.”

The Tigers will go into August without a number-one quarterback. “I really don’t think we have a quarterback who deserves to be number one. I don’t think anybody is playing to a level that we’ll have to play to win games,” West said. “I think we’ve got some good competition and I don’t want to cut it off. I’m going to carry it into August.

“I think Travis has done some good things. He needs to improve in the passing game, but he certainly is a threat running the ball,” West continued. “I think he has improved throwing the ball. He has improved his accuracy. He is certainly in the mix.”

Wimprine said he welcomes the battle. “Competition only makes you better,” he said. “Hopefully, all the quarterbacks will get better from this situation.”

Excitement was the word of the day.

“We’re all excited about the new offense, it’s explosive,” said Trey Erye, who is competing for the starting right guard position. “The best thing is that it makes everybody accountable for themselves. Today we had a lot of good things happen.”

“Coach West and his staff has done a great job of installing a new offense. It makes it fun,” added Higgins. “The defense does not have as much depth as we do now. We just got a lot better. Not to take anything away from them, but we did a lot of things good today.”

TIGER NOTES:

  • Defensive back Bo Arnold is improving after being in a serious one-car collision near his home in Georgia. Arnold received facial injuries in the crash and has had to have his jaw wired, according to school officials.

  • A third quarterback, senior Neil Suber, played in the game but was ineffective. Scott Scherer, who was the starter at the end of last season, sat out the scrimmage. Scherer took a vicious hit at practice a few days before the spring game and is being held out of the final practices (the Tigers will practice two more times this week). Scherer’s mother, Michelle, attended the game, but his father, former head coach Rip Scherer was out of town.

  • Senior defensive end Tony Brown, who was had to sit out his freshman season because he didn’t qualify academically, says he is hopeful of getting another year of eligibility by graduating next year. “It is looking like I will be, with all the classes I’m taking,” Brown said. He and Andre Arnold, the other starting defensive end, comprise the most experienced part of a line that suffered heavy losses to graduation.

  • West doesn’t know what the NCAA will do with the university’s appeal to have defensive tackle Albert Means, a transfer from Alabama, made eligible immediately. “He can help our team,” West said. “I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope people do the right thing and restore his eligibility. I don’t think we will know anything till mid-summer. There really has never been a case like this. I don’t know what is going to happen.” Means found himself at the center of recruiting scandal after a Memphis high school coach claimed that an Alabama supporter gave Means’ high school coach $200,000 to have him sign with the Crimson Tide.

  • Wimprine, who missed some spring practice because of academic problems says not to worry. “I will be fine,” he said. Both of his parents were at the game. His mother is a frequent poster to the message board at the web site Tiger Illustrated. She uses the screen name, “Dan’s Fan.”

  • Offensive line coach Rick Mallory says former tight end Wade Smith‘s move to right tackle has worked out well. “I went through it and a lot of guys I know in the NFL went through it. It’s always a shock to your system, to your ego,” Mallory said of the transition. “But Wade sees the wisdom behind it. He is a real athletic guy and he’s going to help us a lot.”

  • Deep snapper Jarred Pigue has quit the team. He told coaches he wants to transfer to Tennessee.

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    News News Feature

    FALLING INTO DISGRACELAND

    I moved to Memphis six months ago. I can’t say that I didn’t know a soul, because I knew about seven. Souls, that is. And while those seven came in handy when I was trying to rent an apartment, it wasn’t enough people to constitute a surrogate family or even a surrogate fa. I felt as if my whole life was beginning anew.

    I’m not sure what I was expecting with my “rebirth.” Possibly (and please don’t laugh) enlightenment. Not necessarily spiritual enlightenment, but just enlightenment. Not only was I moving to a new town, in a new state, with new possibilities, but only months before I had graduated college and had been wondering about that mystical place called adulthood.

    My friends at school and I used to joke about becoming “real people” after we graduated. “Real people” were people with careers, not jobs; they had serious relationships, not just flings after keggers; and probably their lives had more excitement, purpose, and meaning than any of ours did. We were just bullshitting our way through papers on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa in a modern day global economy and art projects that required every choice to be made at random.

    What have I discovered about adulthood so far?

    Your ass spreads until it’s the size of the Serengeti. Okay, I take that back. My ass spreads to the size of the Serengeti. I’m not sure whether to attribute it to the millions of hours I sit down everyday, or the hours I spend on the glider at the gym trying to combat the sitting.

    Other than that, I’m not sure how much more adult I’ve gotten. I live in an efficiency apartment. I still don’t make my bed in the morning. I own a puppy (although I got her more as an accessory than anything else. I had this strange delusion that she would just ride around in my purse calmly and lick cute boys on demand. Although she might still be small enough to ride around in my purse, I’m not sure she won’t poop while she’s in there, and I worried about ruining my credit cards, not to mention carrying around a purseful of poop). I’m not dating anyone (not that I’m opposed to the idea, it just hasn’t been proposed recently.) And the other day in the laundry room of my building, I got called on not having blinds in my apartment.

    That was sort of shocking. Because as long as you keep your unmentionables to yourself and don’t steal anyone’s dryer, the laundry room can be a great place to meet people. But on this particular day, not so much.

    One of my neighbors was doing his laundry and I was doing mine and he asked me if I lived in a certain apartment, describing it by where it was in the building. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what he was talking about. But Instead of saying that and asking him to clarify, though, I said no. I don’t live in that apartment.

    “Yeah, you do, don’t you live in the one without any blinds?” he replied.

    I froze, holding a small pile of clothes aloft. “Uh …” was all I managed. He had just recognized me after seeing me in MY APARTMENT.

    And because of the large gaping yawn of space in which I was reeling, I think he realized that someone might be freaked out by, again, being recognized after being seen in their apartment.

    “I mean, most of the other ones have shades and I always see your light on…” he trailed off.

    I tried some false bravado, “Yeah, well, you know, I’m obviously not shy. Ha ha.”

    Really I was thinking two things: 1) Damn it, my mother was right. And 2)What has he seen me doing? I try to keep embarrassing activities, such as picking my nose or dancing around like I’m in a rap video, on the down low.

    At any rate, this is all to say that adulthood hasn’t caught up with me yet. I still haven’t ever dated a “real” person or gone to a charity ball. But I’m thinking it will, and soon. I’ve already opened a savings account. I pay car insurance every month. And this weekend, I’m going shopping for blinds.

    Mary Cashiola writes about life every Friday @ www.memphisflyer.com. You’re invited to come along.

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    News News Feature

    FUNDING DETAILS ANNOUNCED

    In a luncheon meeting of city council and county commission members, the NBA pursuit team revealed a majority of its funding plans for a new downtown arena.

    City Mayor Willie Herenton and County Mayor Jim Rout submitted six prerequisites for them to support the construction of a new arena.

    First, the mayors felt that a significant portion of the funding comes from revenue paid by those who attend the new arena for NBA events. Second, the funding should be diverse and flexible, so as to not rely on only one source of revenue. Third, the state’s contribution should compare with the state’s level of participation for Aldelphia Stadium in Nashville, which was built in part with state funds. Fourth, the use of property taxes should be minimized, and fifth, the schools should remain the number one priority of the city and county.

    Working in tandem with that list, Marlin Mosby, formerly a financial executive of the city of Memphis and now a consultant with SMG (the firm in charge of running the Pyramid) representing both the city and county governments, along with other members of the pursuit team, walked the assembled law-makers through an arena package. Below is the 7 point list. [NOTE: The following numbers are cumulative over the next 25 years]

    • Point 1: Sales Tax Rebate from NBA Events: Existing state legislation allows the sales tax from all NBA related sales in the arena to be brought back to the arena. This includes ticket tax, food and concession tax, merchandise tax, and any other revenues. Only NBA events would be included in this.

      Estimated result: 70 million dollars.

    • Point 2: Facility Associated Revenues: The Pyramid has a seating charge of 1 dollar per seat per event. That charge results in Pyramid revenue of 250-500 thousand dollars a year. The pursuit team used this formula and took into account the number of seats in the new arena, the average number of tickets sold per NBA contest, and the number of dates in an NBA home schedule.

      Estimated result: 16 million dollars

    • Point 3: Tourism Development Financing: The Cook Convention Center currently receives incremental tax returns when the revenues of the center as well as the rest of the tourism zone (i.e. hotels, shops, and restaurants in the district) exceed the amount of revenues from its base year. In normal circumstances, the state would allow an area to be a tourist development zone one year prior to the opening of the facility. However, the pursuit team successfully argued to have their first year be concurrent with the Cook Convention Center, thus missing the significant revenue increase that has occurred downtown in just the past two years as its base level. The result is a much higher incremental revenue.

      Estimated result: 35 million dollars

    • Point 4: City Hotel/Motel Tax: The Cook Convention Center actually holds a bond on this tax until the year 2016. However, after that, the arena can use that tax toward its construction.

      Estimated result: 10 million dollars

    • Point 5: Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT): Public utilities usually pay a PILOT instead of a tax. The pursuit team would take those payments on Electric, Sewers, and Gas. They would take the Water payments as well, but those funds are spoken for until 3 years from now, at which point the water PILOT will go to the arena.

      Estimated Result: 30 million dollars [without water PILOT]

    • Point 6: State Funding: The pursuit team is asking for equivalent funding as did Nashville with Aldelphia Coliseum. The pursuit team says that state government has promised the same sort of support. There will be a special briefing of the Shelby County delegation of the legislature on April 9th.

      Estimated Result: 40 million dollars

    • Point 7: 2% Car Rental Surcharge: There is already an existing 5% sales-tax on rental cars by the state but not by the city. The addition of a 2% city tax would put Memphis on the national average for car-rental taxes. This will require a change in legislation via a unanimous vote by the Shelby County State Delegation or upon passage by the State legislature itself, though that would require enactment by the County Commission.

      Estimated Result: 25 million dollars

    Adding the 7 points together results in 226 million dollars worth of public money not a result of property tax revenues. The remaining 24 million dollars would come out of the general funds of the city and state governments. The 24 million is 10% of the total cost of the arena and a contribution equal to the city and county’s contribution to AutoZone park. The construction of the arena would be repaid over a 25-year period without, according to the pursuit team, a change in the city or county’s bond rating.