Month: May 2001

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Reporter

CREDIT: Photo by Rebekah Gleaves

Despite numerous pleas to be allowed onto Memphis Light, Gas and
Water’s publicized SmartPay payment program, Mamie Parker has been told that
her power will be turned off on May 11th if she hasn’t paid the balance of
more than $400 by that date. Parker says that the utility has twice turned off
her power without any notice, though the utility is sending her cut-off
notices now.

MLGW’s chief communications officer, Mark Heuberger, did not
accept or return three telephone calls from the Flyer but instead faxed
a response that read in part, “In order to ensure confidentiality and
privacy, it is MLGW’s policy not to disclose information regarding customer
accounts.”

Parker approached the Flyer because she had asked MLGW
several times to be allowed to pay her bill in installments under the SmartPay
program. Each time she says that MLGW representatives told her that she could
not be put on this program but would not tell her why.

As a single mother of two and the primary caretaker of her 36-
year-old mentally handicapped sister, Parker, 33, has told the utility that
she cannot pay the bill in full with the $600 monthly salary she earns as a
custodian at Rozelle Elementary School. The gravity of her situation cannot be
underestimated. Her children, 2-year-old Keith and 3-year-old Kiara, rely on a
breathing machine to live. Keith, whose asthma is severe, must use the machine
four times a day and has already had to go to the emergency room twice this
month.

The possibility of her power — and the children’s breathing
machine — being turned off worries Parker. She fears that this winter’s high
gas bills may cost her children their lives or that a loss of oxygen to their
brains could leave them mentally handicapped. She has asked the utility if she
could have a separate power line installed exclusively for the breathing
machine so that it would remain on and has been told that the utility would
not do this.

“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them. I
guess I’d have to sue MLGW or something,” says Parker.

Even if Keith or Kiara were injured as a result of the power
being turned off and the breathing machine not functioning, Parker’s legal
recourse against the utility is limited. The Tennessee Governmental Tort
Liability Act prescribes that governmental entities, in this case MLGW, enjoy
relatively low liability caps.

After the Flyer reported in April that MLGW charged
its customers 25 percent over the overall national average for gas this
winter, a number of Memphians contacted the Flyer to inquire if
there would be a class-action lawsuit against the utility. This paper
contacted several attorneys and learned that the aforementioned act limits the
utility’s liability to $130,000 per person or $350,000 per incident. These
liability caps became particularly controversial when a study conducted two
years ago showed that the state could increase the liability limit to $1
million without adversely affecting the state’s insurance premiums.

The study was conducted as part of a Spokane, Washington,
couple’s effort to have Tennessee lawmakers change the cap. The couple, Don
and Irma Wilson, were tourists in Nashville when an electric transformer
exploded and badly burned both of them. The blaze also injured Ben Holt, a
construction worker, and killed Michael Jay Hickman, a painter. The Wilsons,
whose hospital bills topped $1 million, lobbied the legislature unsuccessfully
to modify the liability cap so that Nashville Electric Service (NES) would pay
their hospital bills. Two years later the legislature did pass a measure
allowing NES to pay the Wilsons’ medical bills but did not pass a bill
generally increasing liability for city-operated utilities.

Unfortunately, Parker now finds herself in a position not
dissimilar to the Wilsons’. If Keith or Kiara have an asthma attack while the
power is turned off and cannot get oxygen, the $130,000 to $350,000 MLGW could
be held liable for would hardly cover the cost of caring for the children.
It’s a bleak reality that Parker must face.

In the meantime, she says she hopes and prays for a break from
MLGW.

“If they would just let me pay about $50 a month, I could
pay on these gas bills until I could pay it off. I’ve asked them about that
and they keep telling me that there’s nothing they can do and that they’re
going to cut me off on the 11th if I haven’t paid the whole bill. I can tell
you right now, I can’t pay the whole $400 bill. I only get $300 every two
weeks.” — Rebekah Gleaves

ILLUSTRATION
COURTESY RIVERFRONT DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

Land Bridge May Be In Memphis’ Future

In the past few months, the Riverfront Development Corporation
(RDC) has publicized plans for reshaping Memphis’ Mississippi waterfront. The
most startling change — as well as the most controversial — is the
construction of a land bridge between Mud Island and the city. That land could
be used as developable property and would create an inland lake to its north
and an inlet marina to the south for the docking of rivercraft (see
illustration at right).

While the land bridge may be in the future, RDC president Benny
Lendermon says there is much to be done now to pave the way.

“You would start on the land side first, on the available
property,” he says. “You would clean up, preserve, restore the
cobblestones. You would build a docking facility for long-excursion boats to
New Orleans. You would be seeing development occurring because of that. At the
same time, you start to do all your permitting, all your funding issues for
the land bridge itself. Because they are pretty significant. All those things
are happening simultaneously.”

The development on the land side will create revenue that will
pay a chunk of the taxpayers’ cost.

“We just want to make sure we have enough development on
public land to pay for the infrastructure,” says Lendermon.
“Otherwise you can’t do any of this, without taxpayers paying for it
all.” That development could take up to four years to complete before the
land bridge is ready for construction.

A land bridge could add “in excess of 70 acres of land that
is useable. [That’s] in addition to the existing land that may be available
[such as northern Mud Island]. That land all becomes developable for some
purpose.”

Lendermon says that the development of the new land would happen
“under a very controlled environment” and that the leasing of the
properties would have to be “for appropriate uses. We define what the
appropriate uses are and have a very public advertising and try to get a best
fit for that piece of property that will generate the most revenue.”

Lendermon says that while there has been enthusiasm expressed for
the land bridge, many Memphians are cautious about its actual
construction.

“A majority are scared of how you do that formation
process,” he says. — Chris Przybyszewski

Investigation Continues Into Downtown Stabbing

An ongoing police investigation has yet to reveal why Robin
Elizabeth Yevick was stabbed to death in downtown Memphis on Sunday, April
29th. According to officer LaTanya Able, the public information officer for
the Memphis Police Department, investigators are “working diligently to
solve the case but no new information has been discovered.”

Yevick, a 38-year-old resident of Hot Springs, Arkansas, was
found dead just before 3 p.m., lying on Gayoso Avenue between Wagner Place and
Front Street. She had apparently been stabbed in the throat several times. She
had with her a black travel bag containing makeup and two small plastic
bags.

At press time, Memphis police were looking for a female suspect
described as being a heavyset black woman with shoulder-length hair, standing
about 5’7″ to 5’9″ and last seen wearing a blue shirt, blue pants,
and white tennis shoes. Police were also looking for a man who may have
witnessed the crime, but no description of the man was available.

Anyone with information on this crime is asked to call Crime
Stoppers at 529-CASH. — Rebekah Gleaves

Parents Want Changes To Open-enrollment Process

Devoted parents may want to camp out at the Mid-South Fairgrounds
for five days to get their child into a certain school, but how feasible is
that with jobs and children?

That’s why over the years a group of Memphis City School parents
have devised a waiting list for the system’s open-enrollment process. While
not officially recognized by the district, the list includes written rules,
roll calls at specific times, registration cards, and numbered badges — all
designed as a place keeper so parents can go about their daily lives.

But in April, that system broke down when district security told
parents that the board didn’t honor that list. What resulted, said several
concerned parents who came before the board Monday night, was a few parents
pushing, elbowing, and shoving to cut in line.

“What we witnessed shouldn’t be tolerated or accepted, much
less rewarded,” says parent Dorothy Melonas.

The parents repeatedly asserted that the first-come, first-served
system does work — they just want the board to set a policy to honor the
waiting list.

“Next year, will there be violence?” asked Phillip
Erickson, whose family manned the list for more than 80 hours. “Now is
the time to determine what will happen in the future.”

Superintendent Johnnie Watson said that he and the staff would be
working out a procedure for the open-enrollment process and hoped to present
it prior to the new school year.

“Much of what we heard tonight is what I’ll be recommending
to this board,” said Watson. — Mary Cashiola

Memphian Named To Volunteer Top 10 List

Charity race director Caitlin Steiger didn’t have to lace up her
running shoes to win her latest award; all she had to do was write lots of
letters, make a ton of phone calls, and raise almost $50,000.

Steiger, the 17-year-old who founded Help for Hope House 5K two
years ago, was named one of America’s top 10 youth volunteers Monday.

Nearly 23,000 students applied for the national Prudential Spirit
of Community Award, with 104 state winners converging on Washington, D.C.,
this past weekend. The White Station junior was one of five high-schoolers in
the country to be awarded the top honor. The other five recipients were in
middle school.

“I’m completely overwhelmed,” says Steiger, “I was
totally caught off-guard.”

Steiger decided to found Help for Hope House 5K after she learned
of the organization through a White Station Middle School service club. Hope
House is a daycare for underprivileged children infected or affected by
HIV/AIDS. Started by the Junior League in 1995, the organization picks up the
children in the morning, cares for them, and feeds them two meals a day.

Steiger’s first 5K raised about $23,000; the one last November
took in about $25,000.

In Washington, the state winners were honored at an awards
ceremony with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

“Everyone here deserves an award,” says Steiger.
“I can’t say enough about the people I’ve spent the last couple of days
with.”

Each of the state winners received $1,000, while the 10 national
honorees were presented with an additional $5,000. Steiger will also have
$25,000 in toys and clothing donated in her name to local children by Kids In
Distressed Situations, Inc.

Last fall Steiger decided that she would be too busy applying to
colleges to direct the Help for Hope House 5K and passed the reins onto three
other teenage girls. This summer, she will be a counselor at Camp Dream, a
camp that provides 24-hour care to special-needs children.

After that, though, who knows?

“This weekend has reinforced that there are a million and
one amazing causes and a million and one things that you can do,” Steiger
says. — Mary Cashiola

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Passing the Plate

We have not yet reached the halfway point of 2001, a specimen of the one
year in every four that is politics-free in the election calendar of these
parts.

But merely ask the deep-pocketed ones among us whether politics
is at a standstill. Fund-raisers abound for the political hopefuls of Campaign
Season 2002.

Among the notables who’ve had them around town of late are: U.S.
Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (beneficiary of a $500-a-head version at the Plaza
Club at AutoZone park, an increasingly sought-after venue); U.S. Rep. Van
Hilleary, Republican of Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District, who’s
slipped in once or twice for big-ticket affairs; Shelby County Trustee Bob
Patterson, who engaged a prize-winning barbecue team to cater his, at
Kirby Farms; Circuit Court Clerk Jimmy Moore, at the Collierville home
of developer Jackie Welch; and county Probate Clerk Chris
Thomas, who had his affair at another increasingly popular venue, the
Union Planters Bank building on Poplar Avenue.

(For the record, Moore is still considering a run for sheriff
next year instead of one for re-election.)

State Rep. Carol Chumney, who’s gotten off to an early
organizational head start on her Democratic rivals for next year’s nomination
for Shelby County mayor, is unable to hold a fund-raiser by virtue of a state
law forbidding same for legislators while the General Assembly is in
session.

But she did the next best thing — holding a reception last month
at a Germantown supporter’s residence. She, like state Senator Jim
Kyle, a declared party rival for the mayoral post, have to be yearning a
little bit more than the rest of their colleagues for an end to what may turn
out to be another marathon session, like last year’s. (What’s holding things
up, of course, is the legislature’s continued failure to find a solution to a
threatened budget deficit whose dimensions could reach as much as $1 billion
by next year.)

Kyle, by the way, is secretly thankful for Governor Don
Sundquist‘s recent veto of a Kyle-sponsored bill to place a lower limit on
retail gasoline sales. The measure, passed several weeks ago before the latest
dramatic price hikes, is at least off the table now — although the senator
knows to expect gigs from his mayoral rivals.

Down the line

n The Shelby County Democrats don’t have a date fixed yet, but
Chairman Gale Jones Carson announced that the keynote speaker for the
party’s forthcoming Kennedy Dinner will be former Atlanta mayor and noted
civil rights activist Maynard Jackson.

At its last steering committee meeting, the party also formally
voted to petition the Election Commission for a countywide primary next
year.

n Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove told Memphis
Rotarians Tuesday that the NFL’s New Orleans Saints are flirting with a move
to his state’s Gulf coast.

Outside the Box

As no one needs to be reminded, much attention of late has been
focused on the hows and whys and whethers of building an NBA-worthy arena to
house the putatively transplant Grizzlies of Vancouver.

John Q. Public has weighed in on the subject with us, as with the
other paper in town. Following are two excerpts from two unusually pointed
responses to the issue:

“Whenever the subject of securing a professional sports
franchise in Memphis arises, I am reminded of the expression ‘if you can’t run
with the big dogs, stay on the porch.’ In matters urban, the acquisition of a
pro sports team confers ‘big dog’ status like few other things, and Memphis
seems to be a Chihuahua that spends a lot of time barking from behind the
screen door …

“As the ex-wife of an All-American in football and the
mother of two teenage sons who were swinging a baseball bat before they could
read, I understand the importance of sports. As an alumnus of the University
of Memphis, I can attest to the tremendous sense of pride that comes with
having a team bring national attention to our city.

“And I am as weary as anyone else of hearing people complain
that Memphis would be great if only we had a professional team. But if Memphis
is not a viable venue for pro sports profits without taking all the financial
risk, could it be because the economic underpinnings of this city are
fragile?

“Might we be better off trying to solve the problem of an
undereducated work force that depresses our per capita income, which in turn
keeps commerce and pro sports from chasing us? If we improved the economic
foundation of Shelby County first, maybe we could become big dogs without ever
leaving the porch … .” — Ruth Ogles (free-lance writer and 2000
candidate for the Memphis School Board)

“At some point Memphis is going to build a stadium, a
structure budgeted at 250 million dollars, which means that it will probably
cost upwards of $275 to 300 million dollars. With such an expenditure of
money, we might ask how the citizens of Shelby County can best be served this
appropriation, and how we can get the most bang for the buck. Considering the
fact that major league sports teams have become Gypsies, and an NBA team could
well move out of town within a half-dozen years, the new stadium should be
something that will continue to serve even if the NBA team decides to move
on.

“With all of these factors in mind, there really is only one
logical building option: a retrofitted and domed Liberty Bowl. This would be a
multi-sports arena which would also benefit the University of Memphis, the
Liberty Bowl, and the Southern Heritage Classic, all of whom play their
football games there.

“Today all it takes is a threat of rain, or a temperature
drop of 10 degrees to cut attendance by as much as 50 percent, which is a
small fortune at $20 per ticket or more … .” — Larry Moore
(University of Memphis law professor)

Categories
Book Features Books

Witness For the Prosecution

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

By Christopher Hitchens

Verso, 150 pp., $22

Exactly who and what is Dr. Henry A. Kissinger? Key expert in
government at Harvard in the late 1950s? Key instrument of Republican Party
politicos in Indochina in the mid-’60s? National security advisor under Nixon
and Ford? Secretary of state under Nixon and Ford? Engineer behind Nixon’s
trip to China in 1972? Nobel Peace Prize co-winner in 1973? The answer, of
course, is all of the above, and all of the above, of course, is on the
record.

But, off the record, what manner of man is he? “An odious
schlump who made war gladly” was novelist Joseph Heller’s
assessment of Kissinger in Good as Gold. “A mediocre and
opportunist academic” intent on becoming “an international
potentate” is Christopher Hitchens putting it mildly in The Trial of
Henry Kissinger. Putting it not so mildly he also calls Kissinger (in
short) “a stupendous liar” and (at length) “a man at home in
the world and on top of his brief” but a Candide too: “naive, and
ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events,” a man whose writings and
speeches “are heavily larded with rhetoric about ‘credibility’ and the
need to impress friend and foe with the mettle of American resolve” but
one who, “in response to any inquiry that might implicate him in crime
and fiasco, … rushes to humiliate his own country and its professional
servants.”

Humiliating country and countrymen may mark Kissinger the man,
but Hitchens means to mark Kissinger a master criminal, which, if you follow
the complicated paper trail that Hitchens documents in this book, could and
should land the good doctor in an international court of law. The crimes,
according to Hitchens, are these:

1) Kissinger’s deliberate sabotaging of Johnson’s Vietnam
peace plan in Paris in order to get his own man, Nixon, elected in 1968. Four
years later, Nixon presents the same plan and ends the war, and an additional
31,205 American servicemen and 475,609 of the enemy forces lose their lives.
In that same period, more than 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian
civilians are unnecessarily killed, injured, or rendered homeless.
(Congratulations, Dr. Kissinger, on that Nobel!)

2) Kissinger’s tacit approval of: A) Pakistan’s takeover
of Bangladesh in 1971 and B) the kidnapping and murder of Bangladesh’s
democratically elected leader. The “secret diplomacy” that kept the
country destabilized for the following four years — four years during which
somewhere between half a million and 3 million Bengali civilians (estimates
vary) were killed — had two aims: U.S. interest in a Pakistani intermediary
who could speed a possible détente between the U.S. and China;
America’s interest in showing China that we stand by our friends and Pakistan
is a friend. (Screw India.)

3) Kissinger’s “direct collusion” in the U.S.-
financed and U.S.-armed 1970 kidnapping and murder of General René
Schneider of Chile, who opposed any military interference in the free election
of Salvador Allende as president. Hitchens calls this act, plain and simple,
“a hit — a piece of state-supported terrorism” designed to
destabilize the democratic government of a country with which the U.S. was not
at war. (Good going, General Pinochet!)

4) Kissinger’s advance knowledge of a plan to depose and
kill Cyprus’ president and overthrow its democratic government — this in
order to satisfy the territorial hunger of the dictatorship in Athens and to
protect U.S. air and intelligence bases in Greece. The coup in 1974 led to the
deaths of thousands of civilians and the uprooting of almost 200,000 refugees.
(Sorry, Cyprus.)

5) Kissinger’s (and Gerald Ford’s) full knowledge and
support of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, during which a
combination of mass slaughter and deliberate starvation resulted in the
deaths, according to Amnesty International estimates, of 200,000 people.
(Congratulations, General Suharto!)

6) Kissinger’s personal involvement in a plan “to
abduct and interrogate, and almost certainly kill,” a Greek journalist
working in Washington who vocally opposed his country’s authoritarian regime
and who vocally reminded readers of that regime’s financial ties to the Nixon
White House. (So sorry, free press.)

Is this sordid stuff really only the stuff of realpolitik,
whatever the world hot spot, whoever the U.S. head, wherever the goon squad?
Or are we talking here, when we talk of Henry Kissinger, about a clear and
still-present danger? About crimes against humanity, crimes beneath the
heading “business as usual” (aka “diplomacy”) as enacted
by a pudgy man with a zombie countenance but a man with (Hitchens’ words)
“the authentic touch of raw and unapologetic power”?

You be the judge because someone has to be and because it won’t
be, officially, the United States, which believes itself immune from the truth
and reconciliation commissions being conducted by “lesser” nations
today, immune from international human rights laws, immune from international
criminal law, and immune from the law of civil remedies, a country only too
happy to continue dressing Kissinger up in what Hitchens calls “the cloak
of immunity that has shrouded him until now.”

“Until now” because Hitchens, who treats this material
with none of his easily digestible,Vanity Fair brand of broadside,
means to dress Kissinger seriously down, whether you can or cannot keep up
with the chronology of events Hitchens describes, can or cannot keep tabs on
Kissinger’s highly profitable and private, big-business deals, can or cannot
decipher the damaging evidence in the often heavily redacted CIA cables, White
House journals, declassifed documents, and memorandums he heavily quotes, can
or cannot keep count of the shady doings of the Kissinger-headed “40
Committee,” or can or cannot distinguish between an already-seedy
“Track One” line of diplomatic skullduggery from the even seedier
parts one and two of “Track Two.”

Henry Kissinger has deeded his papers to the Library of Congress
on the stipulation that they not be examined until after his death. If
Christopher Hitchens doesn’t do the doctor’s reputation in, time can tell and
just maybe justice will. — Leonard Gill

Monstruary

By Julian Rios

Knopf, 225 pp., $25

Imagine for a moment that through some strange rift in reality you
have been physically transported to the absurd, unnatural, and harrowing world
of a Hieronymous Bosch painting, but you’re blindfolded. Providing narration
for every terrible and nonsensical sight encountered is your disturbingly
alliterative and alarmingly articulate guide Julian Rios, author of
Monstruary.

Rios’ most recent book, masterfully translated from the Spanish
by Edith Grossman, is nigh Joycean in its labyrinthine linguistic complexity,
though you most likely can decipher its prose — unlike some of Joyce’s
— albeit a bit dense and breathless.

Monstruary is the tale of Emil, our
writer/artist/narrator, and his exceptionally gifted cadre of friends and
acquaintances, who are all caught up in a world of high-octane art and bad-
luck love. The title of the book comes from Emil’s friend Mons’ painting-
series-in-progress, a number of works with many different recurring themes but
one thing in common: chilling imagery.

It seems Mons must first have a drunken nightmarish vision a la
Bosch before his brush touches canvas: “Ill-assorted multitudes of human
figures with the heads of animals and all kinds of beasts and insects with the
heads of men and women. … A tightrope walker with the head of a goldfinch. A
carp with the head of a duck.”

Admittedly, this is a very odd book. While we learn the details
of the characters’ lives and loves, we’re intermittently taken on descriptive
roller-coaster rides regarding paintings and sculptures, the life of the mind
of several artists, mysterious journals full of automatic writing penned by
unaware mediums of dead wives (each almost indecipherable phrase rife with
possible meanings), et cetera. And this roller coaster starts on page one.

Somewhat pretentious is the narrator’s ubiquitous plays on words,
obscure puns, and alliterative phrases — that poor exhausted translator! —
of which there have to be at least 20 on every single page. (Every character
is a latent linguist.) No phrase is left unskewed by double entendre, no pun
is left unpunned, and rarely is a sentence left in which every word does not
echo another with the same sound or series of letters. Chew on this:
“That delirious architecture seemed to spring from the opium visions of
De Quincey and Coleridge, semisymmetries in a chaotic kaleidoscope where
dromedary domes rose beneath the cupola of night, mad truncated caracole
staircases against unsalvageable walls, lofty basalt rising over the abyss,
pilasters soaring to the stars and splintered plinths and prostrate rostrate
columns, the sharp beaked peaks of their rostrums earthbound, and alligators
astride astragals in the black sun of melancholy.”

For many readers this will be too much to deal with. They’ll lose
interest immediately, or, if intrigued, will simply be worn out by the
sentence strata they have to constantly dig through to get at meaning. But
there are plenty of masochist members of the intelligentsia who relish a very
challenging book like this, obstinately difficult in its narrative bent. You
just have to be a word junkie. You have to enjoy it like others enjoy puzzles.
The meaning’s there, but you’ve got to know what to look for to get it.

Don’t get me wrong. I recommend Monstruary, especially if
you love art and literature. But don’t eat too many pronto pups and cotton
candy before you get on the ride, and for God’s sake keep your hands inside
the car at all times. — Jeremy Spencer

Categories
News News Feature

Fast Food

If you live in the suburbs long enough, you’re going to regret eating fast
food.

No, I’m not talking about those times when you inhaled a quick
burger at 10 p.m. and then had your cramping stomach wake you about six hours
later and force you to make an ape-like dash toward the commode.

I’m not even talking about how your teenaged daughter affirms
that certain of her male friends really do whiz in the lemonade when they get
really hacked off at management for, like, making them mop up and all, you
know?

No. The regret I’m talking about is altogether more profound.
This regret will slap you in the face when you read Fast Food Nation, a
recent bestseller by Eric Schlosser, a correspondent for The Atlantic
Monthly, and a book that will not merely activate your gag reflex but will
inform you of the ways our cultural worship of expedience and haste has
frazzled our souls and endangered our well-being.

Subtitled “The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,” you
pretty much know what you’re letting yourself in for when you crack Fast
Food Nation‘s covers. The book is divided into two main sections, the
first of which details the etiology of the fast-food epidemic. More on this in
a moment.

By far more intense, though, is the second section of the book.
It’s the section that examines …

Unfortunately I can’t tell you what it examines, because I
couldn’t read beyond page 150 or so, where Schlosser starts looking at just
how the food is grown, processed, prepared, and distributed.

Artificial flavorings, megatons of potatoes, grease, cows, pigs,
chickens, growth hormones, slaughterhouses. Oh, my God, the slaughterhouses.
Schlosser goes behind the doors at one modern “meat processing
plant” and describes the efficiency with which animals are dispatched and
transformed into food. This productivity is echoed in the job titles along the
processing line: Knocker, Sticker, Shackler, Rumper, First-Legger, Knuckle-
Dropper, Navel-Boner, Feed Kill Chain.

It gets worse. I’m not talking about rumored ingredients like cow
nostrils or pig scrotums that are purported to be in modern fast food. I’m
talking about little killers like E. coli and salmonella, to name just
a couple of the microorganisms that are widely spread by high-volume meat
processing. Schlosser devotes a whole chapter to these pathogens, noting that
“the federal government has the legal authority to recall a defective
toaster oven or stuffed animal — but still lacks the power to recall tons of
contaminated, potentially lethal meat.”

As a die-hard suburbanite, I have an obligation to eat fast food.
It’s in my blood, literally, floating around in there on glops of cholesterol.
True, fast food is ubiquitous as all get-out, but it’s still a suburban
stepchild, and those of us who live in Burbland share a common ancestry and a
spiritual kinship with all foods and beverages that are bestowed upon us via a
transaction at a drive-thru window.

And I’m mighty grateful to Schlosser for helping to define this
bond, for tracing the development of the fast-food phenomenon, which he does
admirably in Part One, the section of the book that I actually could read
without my face turning the color of guacamole.

Here, Schlosser covers the beginnings of fast food, and notes
that the postwar “car culture” of the late 1940s gave rise to fast-
food franchises like McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Kentucky
Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut — the whole mess of them. This nascent car culture,
spurred by Eisenhower’s development of the interstate highway system, led also
to suburbia, motels, malls, smog, and all manner of other modern afflictions.
A perfect synergy was thus established: We now had a culture with no time to
stop and eat, fed by an industry that practically required that its customers
eat without stopping.

Fast Food Nation looks at the industry’s transient work
force, most of it made up of teenagers or minorities who work for minimum wage
or less. And the author addresses “branding” and marketing schemes
that begin catering to customers barely old enough to chew solid food.

But Schlosser’s main contribution is to point out the many ways
that fast-food culture has become American culture — and vice versa. As a
logical extension of fast food’s marketing prowess, Schlosser suggests that
spreading the gospel of fast food around the world has almost single-handedly
created what we have come to call “globalization.”

As Schlosser is quick to remind us, we are indeed what we eat.
I’d like to add that we are also, to a large extent, what we read. Give
Fast Food Nation a thorough scan, but please remember what I said at
the beginning: You will regret it.

Now, somebody please pass me that squeezy thing of ketchup, will
you?

You can e-mail David Dawson at letters@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Getting Game

As any veteran basketball fan can tell you, many an important game is lost
in the last quarter, when nerves or a loss of focus or maybe just an imperfect
game plan can do a team in. At this writing, only weeks remain before the
National Basketball Association and Vancouver Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley
will make a decision on whether or not to relocate the Grizzlies to Memphis
for next season. We’re in the last quarter, all right.

It is impossible to say how Memphis’ latest quest for a major-
league sports franchise will come out, but the local would-be owners’ group
and its associated booster organization, NBA Now, are making the kind of
adjustments that could end up putting enough points on the board to build a
new arena and bring the Grizzlies here.

For one thing, the local pursuit team’s principals, notably
including its tireless spokesperson Gayle Rose, have opened up their game a
bit, practicing candor with the news media, local government bodies, and the
community at large. We, all of us, now know a good deal more then we did about
the separate funding sources proposed by the ownership group and Mayors
Herenton and Rout and how they’re intended to generate a revenue stream for
the arena.

We know enough, in fact, to be reasonably certain, as we
suspected in the first place, that some substantial private money is going to
be needed to defray the costs of building a new arena from scratch. Enough
static has come out of Nashville, where the General Assembly has so far not
even decided on revenue sources to meet the state’s basic needs, that the $40
million the ownership group was hoping to get from the legislature now seems a
remote possibility at best. At least $20 million, and possibly more, will have
to come from as-yet-unknown sources to flesh out the entire $250 million
package.

We therefore welcome the announcement this week by one of the
principals, J.R. “Pitt” Hyde, that the ownership group is
“trying to put something together” that would cover the expected $20
million shortfall with private funding. Hyde was just a mite coy about it —
suggesting various solutions short of an outright commitment from himself and
other members of the ownership group to put more money in. They’re already
investing generous sums to acquire equity in the team, but this money stays in
the family, so to speak, and doesn’t filter directly back into the community.
The proposed arena would become a tangible asset, an enduring part of the
city’s infrastructure, and the need for private money there is not just a
financial reality, it is a symbolic one.

Some doubts remain about construction of a new NBA-worthy arena,
not just in the councils of state government but in those of city and county
government as well. Many citizens still need to be convinced of its value, and
virtually everybody who’s looked into the matter is somewhat suspicious of the
arena’s price tag, wondering if the costs can’t be lowered a bit.

But, on the evidence of the last couple of weeks, the proponents
of an NBA franchise are keeping their heads and making some right moves. They
have a far better chance of both success and community support than they
started with.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Memphis Blues

What a weekend, right? Here is some fresh prose commemorating it, of
special interest to us Memphians:

“There’s only one Bob Dylan.

“The singular place in history of the great folk-rock
singer-songwriter, who’s riding a crest of popularity as he nears his 60th
birthday, was one of the driving forces behind last night’s huge turnout at
the …

“Nashville River Stages festival.” ?!

Nope, no misprint. During the same three days that Memphis was
engaging in its annual three-day riverfront music festival, Nashville was
engaging in its three-day riverfront music festival. There may be only
one Bob Dylan, but there were two places for him to hang out and stretch his
legend last weekend.

In Nashville on Saturday night, as writer Thomas Goldsmith noted
in The Tennessean, Dylan made sure to do songs from 1969’s Nashville
Skyline (and a selection from Roy Acuff as well). In Memphis on Sunday
night, Dylan made sure to do “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis
Blues Again.” No problem: Like Walt Whitman, Bob Dylan is large. He
contains multitudes. There’s enough of him to go around.

But why should Tennessee’s two major cities be competing on this
brand-new front? Or is this to be regarded more as the proverbial
embarrassment of riches? The Beale Street Music Festival, as we know, was sold
out for its three-day run and set all-time attendance records. And we have
Thomas Goldsmith’s word for it that the turnout in Nashville was
“huge.”

Sporadically, over the years and over the past few weeks,
especially, as Memphis seemed about to gather its political and civic wits in
an effort to draw even with Nashville on the big-league sports front, I have
observed the unusual sense of rivalry that seems to exist between the two
Tennessee towns.

Rivalry, hell! Sometimes it looks like pure detestation, as when
my friend Larry Daughtrey, a distinguished political writer for The
Tennessean and normally the very model of analytical decorum, got off
some roundhouse shots at Memphis a few weeks back. I have previously quoted
these a place or two; not to overdo, he used terms like “perpetual
inferiority complex,” “simmering mess,” “racial
conflicts,” “nagging poverty,” “substandard schools,”
and “sweltering August heat” by way of characterizing our town and
its alleged envy of — and hatred for — Nashville.

A word apropos (which I have also uttered before, more or
less): Memphis does not “envy” Nashville, much less “hate”
said catch-up sister city, and any resentment that comes along with the
relationship is better characterized as a kind of annoyance with the fact that
Nashvillians seem to expect some sort of envy as their due.

Does the boogie “envy” the two-step? Give me a
break!

As for that Tennessean sportswriter– one A.S. (for
“Social”) Climber, as I recall — who characterized Memphis as
“Newark” to Nashville’s “Manhattan” a few seasons back,
we’ll take our North Mississippi Allstars (William Faulkner, Shelby Foote et
al.) over your Fugitives (Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and company);
our Esperians and Piazzas over your Dinah Shores; and our Mississippi over
your Cumberland. Just for starters. As for impact on popular culture, music,
especially, c’mon. Music Row’s is a mile wide; Sun/Stax/Volt’s is a mile
deep.

But I rove. No need for these back-alley measuring contests.
There are treasures in both towns. Ask Bob Dylan. As for the eternal question
— Oh, Mama, can this really be the end? — the answer to that one sort
of depends on which town you’re stuck in on a given weekend night. And which
way you’re headed next on I-40.

Flyer senior editor Jackson Baker covers state and local
politics and often heads both ways on I-40.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Malaco recording artist and blues legend Little Milton will
bring his band to the Center for Southern Folklore on Saturday, May 12th.
Advance tickets are $20, $25 at the door. This is the most high-profile show
at the center since reopening at Peabody Place last year, and center regulars
The Fieldstones and The Daddy Mack Blues Band will open
the show to make it that much more special.

There’s more than enough in this issue about the Guided By Voices
show this week at Last Place on Earth. But openers Creeper Lagoon are a
damn good reason to show up early for the May 15th show. This San Francisco-
based alt-rock band released their sophomore album, Take Back the Universe
and Give Me Yesterday, a few weeks ago, and it finds impressively sunny
middleground between the noisy indie rock of Pavement and the spirited arena
rock of Everclear.– Chris Herrington

The names of the clubs have changed, but other than that it feels
exactly like 1995 all over again. The Clears’ eccentric geometrist Shelby
Bryant played the Hi-Tone Café last Sunday, and Bob Pollard, the pop
bard of beer, bongs, and imaginary avionics, is bringing the never-ending
Guided By Voices rockathon to Last Place on Earth on Tuesday, May 15th
(see feature, page 54). Situated in between shows by these bright lights from
the heyday of indie rock are The Grifters, who will be playing Last
Place on Earth, Saturday, May 12th, with Califone.

Now you might think that there is nothing that we can say about
this group of art rockers (with the emphasis on rockers) that hasn’t been said
both before and better by former Flyer scribe John Floyd during the
group’s most productive, volatile, and amazingly influential period. And up
until this particular point in time you would have been correct. But in
addition to playing hits like “Bronze Cast” and “Get Out of
That Spaceship and Fight Like a Man,” the Grifters will be using this
show to test out a whole new body of original material. Jared McStay, the
driving force behind the Simpletones (Simple Ones, Simple One, etc.), will be
joining the band on guitar, allowing co-front man Dave Shouse to take on
keyboard duty. In other words, if you didn’t think it was possible for the
Grifters sound to get any bigger, well, you’ve got another think coming.

If you are interested in seeing a group of truly inspired folk-
punks whose oeuvre owes much to the Clash but in the end makes those angry
Brits sound like a bunch of sullen fussbudgets, then This Bike Is a Pipe
Bomb is the band to see. The last time This Bike was in town the group
befriended the boys from Lucero and they ended up playing an impromptu show
together at the Buccaneer. This time around they’ll be at the Map Room, their
regular Memphis venue, on Thursday, May 10th, with Pezz. But that may
very well turn out to be merely the first show of this hard-working band’s
evening. — Chris Davis

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Catawampus

I wouldn’t help but overhear an elderly lady seated behind me, since she
was forcefully projecting her full, drawling baritone with more gusto than
your average actor. “It must mean something,” she declared with
winsome disdain and fragile finality, adding, “I hope I get it.”

The woman and her friend were discussing the slickly designed
deco set for Playhouse on the Square’s odd, off-kilter take on Hay
Fever. Noel Coward must have been busting a gut in his grave since his
superficial-by-design peanut-butter parfait of a play is anything but
meaningful. As Sorrel, the bratty young bohemian, says somewhere in Act Two,
“We don’t, any of us, ever mean anything.” But you can’t really
fault the lady for assuming that any set which calls as much attention to
itself as this one does must contain some sort of hidden message. The colorful
and finely executed backdrop catches the eye but not the imagination, and the
chunky furnishings and odd but innocuous objects of art fade into the
woodwork. The smart, white deco screens that make up the set’s walls are dandy
indeed, each crowned with a green dot the exact color and shape of a dried
wasabi pea. But even as attractive as they are, they aren’t worth wondering
over for very long. What sets this extra-artificial environment apart is that
the stage is built on a ridiculously steep angle. It’s more like a skateboard
ramp than a stage. The furnishings — sofa, chairs, and baby grand, each
shimmed up to square with a pile of books — all stay put, it seems, out of
sheer force of will. It is a world fallen horribly out of balance and perhaps
more appropriate for bringing to life the absurd imaginings of Eugene Ionesco
than those of the merely whimsical Coward. Above all, it appears to be deeply
meaningful, and yet it is not. It is the principal sight gag in the giddy
parade of sight gags which make up this hammy, fast-paced, and generally
delightful production.

Hay Fever‘s premise is so sketchy one would swear it had
been written by committee, though the script does gain a bit of complexity by
the sheer lengths to which its already thin plot is stretched. Each of the
four egomaniacal members of the Bliss household has, unbeknownst to the other,
invited a potential romantic interest to come and stay for the weekend. Once
the guests arrive, the various family members, who delight in the sheer
meanness of playing overly theatrical head games, begin a process of wooing
that might very well be considered harassment by modern standards. And then
they all switch partners and woo some more until the guests have no choice but
to run for their lives. No doubt the revelers from Richard O’Brien’s Rocky
Horror Show, as perverse and extreme as they are, take their cues from
Coward’s Bliss family, which at times appears to be from another (sexually
dysfunctional) planet.

Ann Marie Hall plays Judith Bliss, the aging actress, earth
mother, and flirty-now/icy-later seductress-like a woman who really, really,
really wants to thank the academy. No gag spared, no scenery left unchewed.
Though she is perhaps overshadowed by the set and certainly informed by Carol
Burnett’s Nora Desmond, Bliss is Hall’s most boldly drawn character since
As Bees in Honey Drown, and except for a few strained moments it is an
absolute delight.

Guy Oliveri, as Simon Bliss, scampers about the stage like a
helium-filled gibbon. Gravity is meaningless, and his use of furniture in lieu
of stairs gives the play an edgy Escher-like vibe. Nora Ottley Stillman is a
bit more commonplace but no less effective as Simon’s sister Sorel. While Dave
Landis’ take on the family patriarch is loud and less nuanced than it could be
he gets the job done well, and the stylized posturing of Renee Davis as vapid
flapper Jackie Coryton strikes a perfect balance between overacting and
understatement. It’s as if she is constantly posing to have her portrait
painted on a cola tin. As Carla, the dresser turned housekeeper, Karin Hill
comes off like a limey Ann B. Davis.

The costumes are all garish takes on flapper-era chic and
painstakingly detailed. Kim Justice, as Myra, who may be the closest thing the
play has to a conscience, is so done up in spangles and spit-curls she looks
as if she might shatter like an antique porcelain doll if you even looked at
her harshly. It makes her foot-stomping tantrums that much more
satisfying.

Director John Fagan has created giddy choreography for every
moment of Hay Fever and set a breakneck tempo for the show. It’s the
kind of relentless romp you seldom see anywhere other than in a Marx Brothers
film, and it’s tasty. But a jot less whimsy and a little more work on
establishing relationships could have made it even better. n

Hay Fever at Playhouse on the Square through May 20th.

Diary Of a Madman

When Spurt of Blood opens at TheatreWorks on a double bill
with E.E. Cummings’ Santa Claus Friday, May 11th, Memphians will have
an incredibly rare opportunity to see a work by the 20th century’s most
significant yet least performed dramatic artist. Plagued by mental illness,
poet, playwright, and theorist Antonin Artaud spent his entire life in and out
of asylums. It is only fitting that Our Own Voice Theatre Company, an
organization dedicated to the creation and performance of original dramatic
material by mental health-care consumers, would choose to mount Spurt of
Blood, Artaud’s seemingly unstageable combination of ritual and
poetry.

Over the past decade, this ridiculously unappreciated group has,
under the guiding hand of artistic director Bill Baker, applied the thinking
of progressive theorists like Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal to create
original works such as the screamingly funny send-up of the local theater
community Ephemera, the bizarre yet poignant This Is Not An
Outlet, and the only rock opera in existence that really rocks
Supergroups A+. In short (and in spite of the group’s perennial lack of
trained actors), Our Own Voice makes the most consistently innovative,
interesting, and complex theater in Memphis.

The foundations of Artaud’s theories are really quite simple, if,
in the end, their application seems close to impossible. “It has not been
definitively proved,” he wrote in his book The Theatre and its
Double, “that the language of words is the best possible language.
And it seems that on the stage, which is above all a space to fill and a place
where something happens, the language of words may have to give way before a
language of signs whose objective aspect is the one that has the most
immediate impact on us.” The goal was to create “a directly
communicative language”: aural and visual pheromones, if you will. He
believed that the world was diseased and, as a result, humanity was diseased.
His Theatre of Cruelty, which is not so much cruel as it is jarring to the
senses, is, holistically speaking, the great panacea. Informed by the art of
the Mannerists, who often lumped dozens of disparate subjects and actions into
their intensely symbolic paintings, Artaud’s vision for the theater was not
entirely unlike hypnotism. It was designed to possess the audience and control
them utterly — but for their own good. This aspect of Artaud’s work led
British innovator and one-time Artaudian advocate Peter Brook to claim that
the Theatre of Cruelty was, at its core, flawed by fascism. By Brook’s
achingly liberal definition, a roller-coaster ride would likewise be a fascist
event.

Santa Claus (Spurt of Blood) at TheatreWorks May 11th-
13th.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Moment of Truth

Piston Honda is an alternative metal band — taking the heaviness of
metal and giving it more of a post-punk twist with weightier, more thoughtful
lyrics (judging from what little I could make out) and less visual and musical
excess. From their clean-cut looks to their lean, hard sound, Piston Honda is
atypical of the post-Korn brand of heavy bands, instead evoking more hardcore-
oriented, early-Nineties bands such as Helmet and Quicksand, bands that Honda
lead-singer/guitarist Jake Cook expresses admiration for.

According to Cook, the band formed in 1998 with the moniker
Further, changing to Piston Honda (the name of a Japanese competitor in the
video game Mike Tyson’s Punchout) in 1999. The band consists of Cook,
22, a Rhodes student; guitarist Jason Babin, 22, a CBU student; bassist
Patrick Umstad, 22, a U of M student; and 18-year-old drummer Austin Morlan.
The band has played out-of-town sparingly so far, which Cook says is a result
of the band members’ academic commitments. But they have been in the studio:
Piston Honda released their debut album, Paradigm Shift, last December.
It was recorded locally at Nustar by Robert Picon and Justin Short.

At a recent show at Last Place on Earth, the band was a mixed
bag. Honda proved to be a tight, unflashy hard-rock band whose music seemed to
be based on emotional commitment rather than commercial calculation, and they
employed stop-start dynamics to nice effect. The standout this night was
Morlan, who is a powerhouse of a drummer. Unfortunately, the band’s songs
tended to run together, lacking both strong melodies and hooks and the grab-
you-by-your-throat aggression of the best punk and hardcore — though I guess
I could make the same complaint about the genre itself. It may have been an
off night, but though Piston Honda came off as a serious and solid band, an
already sparse crowd just got sparser as the set wound down. — Chris
Herrington

To schedule your group’s Moment of Truth, call Chris
Herrington at 575-9428 or e-mail him at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News

The Red-eye Flight

CREDIT: PHOTOS BY PAUL

When I was dropped off at the airport in Oregon, it was 11 p.m., 47
degrees, and drizzling. I was wearing long pants, a sweater, and a wide-brim
leather hat, but in my carry-on bag were a pair of shorts, sandals, and a T-
shirt. With cool rain dripping off my hat, it seemed beyond reason that when
the sun came up I would be in Texas, and by noon I would be in the
Bahamas.

Standing in line to check in, I wondered what ever happened to
the pre-trip buzz. I used to spend days in a giddy state, counting the hours
until I would leave. Now, even on departure day, you can hardly tell I’m
leaving. I packed for 10 days in the Caribbean in less than an hour.

We left Portland at midnight, and I was asleep before the drink
cart came by. The pilot had his speaker turned up to about 100 decibels,
though, so when he came on to welcome us and say, “Sleep well,” he
woke everybody up.

I’ve never fully processed the fact that while I sip ginger ale
and do some reading, we cross the Rocky Mountains. I catch a few winks, and
the Great Plains go by. When I ask for a cup of coffee at 5:30 a.m., I can see
the lights of Dallas-Fort Worth. And soon enough we step out of the metal tube
and into another airport/mall, just like the one a few hours ago, only this
one is thousands of miles away, beside the Gulf of Mexico instead of the
Columbia River.

Walking across the, ahem, Houston George Bush Airport, I saw ads
for Christian magazines, overheard a guy in a cowboy hat say, “one tough
sumbitch,” and saw a father-son pair wearing identical Astros hats. Other
than these details, I might as well have been in Vancouver. And this: At 6
a.m. in April, Houston was 74 degrees.

I’m always reminded of an NPR story, years ago, about a 90-year-
old woman who flew from San Diego to St. Louis. This was newsworthy because it
was the first time she had been back since going out West in a covered wagon
in the 1890s. It took her four months at age 5, four hours at age 90.

The technology of transportation is staggering, but I think
something has been lost. Along with telephones and e-mail, the airplane is
eliminating the spaces that exist between us. That has advantages, of course,
but the spaces between are, in many cases, definitive of the journey. Somehow
getting out West without even seeing the mountains doesn’t seem like going out
West. One should reach Texas by crossing vast, sun-baked plains, not while
sipping and reading and trying to sleep.

(Speaking of sipping: At the bar near my gate in Houston, a guy
was asking what time they start serving beer. This was at 6:50 a.m.)

Back into the metal tube, a bad breakfast in a box, and “to
your left is the mouth of the Mississippi River.” Most people didn’t even
look up from their newspapers or laptops. Two hours later we disembarked into
another mall, this one apparently in Fort Lauderdale. Everybody was in shorts
and flower shirts, showing off either their brand-new tans or their pasty-
white Northern winter skin.

My flight was in one of those wonderful six-gate waiting areas,
where at any given moment two announcements are being made and three ticket
agents are being yelled at. The whole place was filled with people from
Boston, New York, Hartford, and Philadelphia — cities where, to judge from
their ambassadors in Florida, no one is ever happy. I overheard stories of
previous airline incompetence, interrupted by spouses arguing pointless
details. “No, Frank, that was in ’92, not ’93, and it was Joanie who
picked us up at La Guardia, not Francine.”

An hour before departure time, with no agent at our desk, two
dozen people stood in line to check in. Everybody was in a nervous rush to get
there and relax.

When we finally walked outside and boarded the 18-seater for the
Bahamas, it was sunny and in the 80s, and I was wearing my shorts and sandals.
The amount of time that had elapsed since sweater and drizzle was a typical
night’s sleep, but I was beginning to feel the buzz. It was finally dawning on
me that I had left home and was on my way to a vacation. I had a little strut
in my step as I crossed the tarmac.

We took off over the beach — the other side of the continent —
and in an hour were descending to the landing strip in Marsh Harbour, over
clear ocean and under a cloudless sky. I leaned back in my seat, let go of the
nervous Easterners, thought of the ocean swim to come, and decided that near-
instant travel wasn’t such a bad thing after all.