Month: March 2003

The Last Round-Up

Post author By Chris Gadd
Post date March 30, 2003

His footwork was phenomenal, considering that Chris Massie’s listed 6’9″ frame carries an easy 260 pounds. And Massie’s hands were arguably the strongest yet softest pair in the collegiate game. His voice was equally soft — except for flashes of on-court emotion — and usually completely muted when members of the media neared.

But, according to U of M head coach John Calipari, those three Massie talents never worked better in unison than they did Thursday night in Oklahoma City — following his 20-point, 13-rebound effort in the Tigers’ 84-71 first-round loss to Arizona State.

“As I turned to walk, he jumped up, took three steps, grabbed me and said, ‘Hey, coach, thanks for letting me come back,'” says Calipari about their post-game exchange on the team bus. “And then it really got emotional while all of us were in there.”

Calipari had just finished delivering his final post-game speech of the abruptly completed 2002-03 season. “It got emotional,” Calipari reiterates. “You start getting emotional anyway, because it’s the last time you’re going to see these guys and be in that situation with them. You had guys crying and you had guys that were in an almost depressive state.”

Massie snapped out of it long enough to provide one final assist to Calipari. “That just shows how far the kid has come and how appreciative he is of opportunities,” Calipari says. “It has taken him a year and a half to get that way. That’s why I said that it is disappointing how things are sometimes portrayed.”

The “portrayal” Calipari referred to was a March 19th Commercial Appeal story detailing Massie’s unconventional road to joining the Tigers. Calipari said the story negatively affected the Tiger senior and his immediate family. Chris’ mother, Bernice Massie, was reported to have called her son crying, upset and incensed about the article. The coaching staff questioned the late-season timing of the story and also wanted to clarify that the then-19-year-old Massie’s criminal trespassing charge was a misdemeanor he received for jumping a fence to go fishing.

Tony Burlingame, an Elkins High School basketball coach and once Massie’s world history teacher, said via e-mail that his quotes describing Massie (who passed 21 first-semester hours in 2002 to gain eligibility) as a “thug” were taken out of context.

Burlingame added: “I was led to believe that the article was a tribute praising Chris for overcoming so many obstacles that he faced early in life to become a tremendous asset to [the Memphis] community and university. We should be praising him for his accomplishments in the present day rather than digging into his past.”

In the CA‘s defense, story sources often read their attributed quotes and then deny them, even when they’ve been recorded. Perhaps that’s why Massie chose his words so carefully this season, speaking only when his words mattered most.

n Due to the Wednesday night declaration of war with Iraq, fans’ emotions were somewhat subdued in Oklahoma City’s Ford Center — the NCAA Tournament West region site and Memphis’ draw — in the days and hours leading up to the Tigers’ game. Providing a brief respite from news of troop movements and air strikes thousands of miles away, the Tigers prepared for their game with the Sun Devils, played just blocks from the Oklahoma City National Memorial, site of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The U of M staff decided to forego the 20-minute shoot-around scheduled for all teams and instead practiced at an undisclosed location. But as tip-off approached, the large contingent of blue-and-gray-clad fans crammed through the gates, displaying face paint and optimistic smiles.

n As for the future of Tiger basketball, New Jersey native Sean Banks, the recently maligned Top 15 Memphis recruit, played his final prep game for Bergen Catholic March 16th, losing 45-44 to Camden Catholic in the Parochial A state championship. According to Bergen Catholic’s school newspaper, Banks, who scored two points in 12 minutes, sobbed after the game and spent an extra three minutes on the bench and 30 minutes in the locker room. He had been allowed to return to his team March 8th after a February 18th arrest for a “disorderly persons offense” when a car he was in tried to elude police. Memphis assistant coach Tony Barbee said it would not affect the university’s decision on Banks.

“We are still behind Sean 100 percent,” Barbee said. “We have plans on him being here. It’s unfortunate that sometimes we get lumped in with people we sometimes associate with. He wasn’t driving. Those people picked him up from practice and were taking him home. Somebody else may have had an issue, but that has nothing to do with Sean.”

Editorial Opinion

The Next Horseman

Post author By Editorial
Post date March 30, 2003

“Events are in the saddle,” Napoleon once said as his armies swung into action, and so too are they this week. Gulf War Two has begun, and an unfamiliar stallion — one most of us have rarely seen in our lifetimes — is galloping toward an uncertain future.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom” has been launched, and, hawk and dove alike, Americans everywhere find themselves praying for the success and safety of our troops, the quarter of a million mostly young Americans whom President Bush and Congress have committed to battle in a faraway land.

But there are a few bad omens. The Bush administration embarked upon this new war against significant opposition inside the U.N. Security Council, in cities around the globe, and on the streets of America as well. The onset of war has done little to temper that opposition. Indeed, the past week’s hostilities have further inflamed anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, raising serious concerns for the long-term stability of pro-U.S.A. governments in the Middle East region. Meanwhile, the emerging shape of our march toward Baghdad — with sandstorms and surprisingly stiff resistance offered by Iraqi “irregulars” — makes us all a bit uneasy about what will happen next.

“Necessary as it may have been,” wrote two New York Times reporters Monday about the fierce combat around Nasiriya, “today’s battle was hardly the sort of warfare that American commanders had envisioned to persuade the Iraqi population of America’s good intentions. For American commanders, winning the war means destroying the Baghdad government, but it also includes a concerted effort to avoid the kind of urban fighting that might enrage the Iraqi people.”

Perceptual problems are nothing new for the Bush administration. For months, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. clung to their own unique view of Iraqi political reality. They demanded Saddam Hussein’s removal from power by immediate military action — a course not urged by most U.N. Security Council colleagues, nor by the U.N. weapons inspectors charged with determining whether indeed Saddam had WMDs. Faced with staunch U.N. opposition, President Bush chose simply to ignore it, making his government’s perception of Iraqi reality, in the process, a geopolitical fact of life. How real is it now? As real as body bags and POWs.

Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot. What counts now, whether President Bush realizes it or not, are not his views and opinions but the perceptions of the Iraqi people. The American government can offer aid; it can promise democracy; it can talk whatever game it likes. But Operation Iraqi Freedom could become inoperative if the Iraqi people think otherwise, if the five million citizens of Baghdad perceive our troops as foreign invaders rather than heroic liberators. If even a small percentage of Iraqis decide we are the former, this war could turn out very badly.

Time will tell. Events are indeed in the saddle. Only this time, when the fighting stops, the people of Iraq — not George W. Bush — will be the ones getting back on the horse.

Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Post author By
Post date March 30, 2003

If you like countrified soul-punk like the Gories used to play it, then you’ll be way into a little group called The Detroit Cobras, who’ll be ripping things up at the Hi-Tone on Friday, March 28th.

Fronted by the manic and maniacal female singer Rachel Nagy, the Cobras lean toward the spookier end of the garage spectrum, and their raunchy guitar sound is defiantly aimed to hit you below the belt.

If, on the other hand, you’re more interested in countrified soul-punk the way Memphis’ own Lucero used to play it, you’ll want to go see them at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, March 29th. Ben and the boys don’t play their hometown as often as they used to, so catch them when you can.

Of course, the must-see show of the week is a record-release party for Memphis’ legendary singer and songwriter Sid Selvidge at Earnestine and Hazel’s on Friday, March 28th, from 6 to 8 p.m. Selvidge, as the popular story goes, learned his critically acclaimed guitar chops from such blues masters as Furry Lewis and Mississippi Fred McDowell. But to call Selvidge a bluesman would be inaccurate. Selvidge can yodel like Jimmie Rodgers and moan an Appalachian murder ballad like some ghost from the Civil War. When he joined with Jim Dickinson, Jimmy Crosswaith, and the late Lee Baker to form Mudboy & the Neutrons — the group Bob Dylan once described as “the band nobody can find” — Selvidge proved he could also rock with the best of them. His latest recording, A Little Bit of Rain, released on Archer Records and produced by Jim Dickinson, is an eclectic mix of American folk styles showcasing Selvidge’s smooth tenor.

His cover of Little Brother Montgomery’s offbeat boogie, “Mama You Don’t Mean Me No Good,” is flawless, and his version of the folk standard “Long Black Veil” is nearly as creepy as Lefty Frizzel’s. But it’s the cover of “Every Natural Thing,” written by a gravel-voiced Muscle Shoals musician named Eddie Hinton, that really shows off Selvidge’s ability to tell a story with a song. It’s a classy record from a class act that just keeps getting better with age. So go to E&H, get a Soul Burger with all the trimmings, and enjoy. And if you can’t catch Sid this time around, he’ll be appearing on the Porch at Shangri-La Records on Friday, April 25th.

— Chris Davis

Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date March 30, 2003

Transplants

Transplants

(Hellcat)

There probably aren’t a lot of music fans who would ever admit to recoiling in horror at the punk-rock “revolution,” but it must have happened; otherwise, the Ramones would have been instant millionaires.

So take a ride on your back-in-the-day-cycle and imagine just how wrong punk rock must have sounded to so many ears when it first gained momentum and credibility in the late ’70s. Imagine seemingly incompetent singers fronting seemingly incompetent bands that only held about a half-hour’s worth of live material and played up ugly sound and ugly looks as the new beautiful tomorrow for the nonexistent future. Imagine audiences spitting on a band as a sign of approval. Imagine the scandal when rock singers took shots at the Queen!

Today, the shockwaves of punk rightfully belong to a time made simple by loss of detail. But the best thing about Transplants is the way in which its Frankenstein’s-monster music improbably evokes the scattershot psychosis of early punk.

A mini-super-group, the Transplants take punk rock for a wild ride that’s equal parts tune and attitude, throwing everything into the mix and coming out like avant-garde geniuses. Rough edges stick out all over. Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker’s percussion races off in every direction. Rancid’s Tim Armstrong marshals synths and some Bob Stinsonian guitar-scribbling behind the piano samples, organ intros, and Beach Boy choruses that buoy the hardcore and make it go pop. And singer Rob Aston scream-raps beery profundities about hard living and untimely death.

If the record has a flaw, it’s Aston’s relentlessly shrill hip-hop vocalizing and hard-ass posing, which steamroll even his wise and tender outreach on “Sad But True.” If the record has a hero, it’s Armstrong, who co-wrote and produced everything and whose slurred crooning is so far beyond speech that it becomes as lovable as the howling of a neighborhood mutt. As de facto boss, he also gets to “articulate” the communal theme of the enterprise by gurgling “This is for the misfits, the freaks, and the runts.”

Join the party. — Addison Engelking

Grade: A-

The Delgados

Hate

(Mantra/Beggars Banquet)

It takes a lot of cheek to title a track “All You Need Is Hate” — not a one-joke Beatles parody either, but an invigorating piece of pop music: a dark, comically cynical song with a sing-along chorus — half pop hook, half pub chant — that bristles against the song’s hateful sentiment like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Not only does the Scottish band the Delgados have the nerve to write such a slyly pessimistic song, they’ve also named their third album after it. Hate is a mixture of similar contradictions: Fronted by Stewart Henderson and Emma Pollack, the band manages, thanks to and in spite of producer Dave Fridmann, to sound simultaneously heavy and ethereal.

The opening track, “The Light Before We Land,” begins with soft strings before blasting in with heavy Bonham-style drums. The lilting melodies that mark each song — more focused and clear than on their previous album, The Great Eastern — shine through a filter of manic production, noisy feedback, and ambient sound effects, so much so that at times it feels like Henderson and Pollack are trying to sing above the din Fridmann has created.

But together, the two principals are the biggest contradiction on Hate. Pollack’s introspective lyrics and vocals are edgily detached and dryly self-assured, many years’ worth of hurt and tragedy affecting her voice. Henderson, on the other hand, sounds alternately self-lacerating and drunkenly bemused: In one song, he sings, “How can I find what’s right/The truth is our lives were shite,” but later claims, “I had hope now where I keep my doubts.” This small admission of hope, albeit long gone, sounds like his greatest triumph in life –he may be under the table, but he can still see a little light.

Both personalities inform the Delgados’ music, making Hate a vivid, textured album, a monument to sarcasm, irony, and hope in the face of all life’s pain. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

The Best of Morphine

1992-1995

Morphine

(Rykodisc)

The career of Boston three-piece Morphine effectively ended on July 6, 1999, when bass player/vocalist Mark Sandman collapsed and died from a heart attack at the age of 47 onstage during a performance in Palestrina, Italy. After his sudden death, the surviving members did a farewell tour as Orchestra Morphine with guest vocalists and released an album, The Night, which the group, with Sandman, had completed before his death.

Morphine was not your usual three-piece band. For starters, the group consisted of saxophone, drums, and two-string bass, with only Sandman on vocals. This allowed them to play modally at times, since they were not shackled to a guitar as the only melodic instrument. Sandman, with his vocals and swooping two-string bass, along with saxophonist Dana Colley carried the main melodic lines in very unusual ways. What sounded on paper like your usual willfully obscure, unlistenable, avant-rock lineup turned out to be a tuneful, almost mainstream-sounding (well, at times) thinking person’s pop group with R&B overtones.

Also unusual is Rykodisc’s releasing only a partial best-of package on Morphine, covering the band’s early years, 1992-1995, and drawing on the albums Good, Cure for Pain, Yes, and a handful of unreleased tracks. If you’re looking for a taste of Morphine or a starting point, get The Best of Morphine, but you’re likely to want the rest afterward. My advice is to start with Cure for Pain or The Night.

Great band, wonderful music, cheesy package. — Ross Johnson

Grade: A-

Opinion

Body of Evidence

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date March 30, 2003

There are 20 black-and-white photographs hanging in Jay Etkin’s main gallery on South Main. The artist, Jonathan Postal, calls the collection “State of the Union.” That’s a pretty bold move considering the uncertain state of this union, when America is torn in half by a controversial war overseas that has cost us our standing among longtime allies; a union battered by economic woes and ongoing battles over religion and culture on the home front. Could it possibly be defined in only 20 pictures? Could it be defined in 20,000? It seems unlikely, at best.

And yet in Postal’s case the answer is a qualified “yes.” While his shots may seem a bit too exotic to express the mundane concerns of the heartland, and too for lack of a better word isolationist to address global concerns, he has managed to capture a post-9/11 America as reflected in a funhouse mirror. He finds danger in our most seemingly innocent pastimes, potential tragedy in pictures of happy families, and expressions of faith everywhere. It is a magnificent show, put together by an artist working at the top of his game. It is, by turns, upsetting, whimsical, and uplifting.

“I think it’s good if you have to look at a photograph more than once to see everything that’s there,” Postal says, referencing a picture of a young couple sitting on the grass with their newborn child. “You see this picture and you see the parents and the kid, but you might not notice the first time how young the parents are. I’d seen the father the day before riding around on a BMX bike and figured he couldn’t be more than 15 or 16. The girl couldn’t be over 14. But you might have to look at the picture several times before you really see the baby. Before you see how old the baby looks. It’s almost like it’s looking right at the camera and saying, ‘I’m going to have to raise my parents, you know?’ But it’s not all bad either, because you can tell there is a lot of love there.”

Postal, who studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the San Francisco Art Institute and has taken pictures for such publications as Vogue and Rolling Stone, subscribes to an almost journalistic school of social landscape photography. It’s a way of using the camera to invade a space and capture elements that might seem too mundane for the front page. In Postal’s work, formal concerns are as important as the subject matter.

“There are times,” Postal says, pointing to a blurry background figure in one shot, “when I look at a picture and I wish I could erase part of it. And it would be so easy for me to do too, now that everything is digital. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I still think of photography in terms of ‘evidence.’ What you see in a photograph should be exactly what the photographer saw at the time he took the picture.”

And what you see in a Postal photograph is exactly what the photographer saw at the moment he was taking the photograph. Postal shaves the negative carrier off his cameras, which leaves a hard black line around the edges of his shots, proving that they have not been cropped. He composes with his eye, in the moment, and gets his shots the first time.

“There was a time when I might look at a picture in a magazine and think, Wow, what a great shot that is. But not anymore. Now if I see a shot of a lion running, and there is a mountain in the background and a big sky with lots of clouds I think, Okay, someone took a pretty good picture of a lion. Then they went through their photo files and digitally added the perfect picture of the perfect mountain, then they dropped in the perfect picture of the perfect sky and maybe they added some orange to it. Nobody actually took that picture. Nobody has ever seen that actual picture in nature, because it didn’t exist.”

Postal is a veteran of both the East and West Coast punk movement of the 1970s. As the bass player for Penelope Houston and the Avengers and frontman for the Readymades, Postal had access to such seminal music figures as Devo, Blondie, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, the Clash, the Dead Kennedys, and the list goes on.

Even now, some of his best photographs are of musicians in action. There is only one such picture in this collection, but what a shot it is. In Joe Buck, a young hillbilly singer who owns and operates the Bluegrass Inn, a honky-tonk on Lower Broadway in Nashville, holds his bass like a weapon. The look on the singer’s face is rather aggressive and mean. His toothy mouth is stretched to its limit in what might only be described as a roar. But these are perhaps the second things you notice about this picture. Joe Buck is a traditionalist. He dresses like a country star from the 1940s, and the first thing you wonder isn’t where but when the picture was taken.

It’s a quality that runs throughout Postal’s work. In fact, gallery owner Etkin claims that at one of Postal’s previous shows an elderly woman wandered in off the street and claimed to have dated a man in one of the photographs in 1943. The shot had, of course, been taken in the 1990s.

Other timeless pictures in “State of the Union” include Burlesque Girl, a pair of shots depicting a dancer backstage taking a less-than-smooth shot of Seagram’s 7 from the bottle; a weathered street person standing underneath a sign reading, “Jesus Saves”; an elderly clown applying makeup in a mirror; a trio of African-American children diving off a bridge on a summer’s day; a woman walking in a hurricane in vintage clothing with an antique umbrella; and a pregnant couple done up rockabilly-style in front of an antique car. Unless you knew that these photographs were all grouped under the title “recent work,” there would be no way to identify the year they were taken.

And then there are images that bend time, bringing disparate eras into the same frame of reference. One print catches Elvis Presley in blurry profile, but in the center of the frame we see a shot of an Elvis impersonator checking his hair in a mirror. We know this is a picture of an Elvis impersonator, but we can’t help but wonder if this isn’t exactly what Elvis saw the last time he looked into the mirror. Shots of Elvis and Elvis impersonators are too easy and too readily available. Elvis’ icon status makes any image of the King into instant art, and lazy artists take advantage of that fact all too often. But Postal moves into too-familiar territory and finds imagery that is unique and compelling.

“The two things I wanted to focus on in this show were faith and combat,” Postal says, leafing through a pile of photos. There are shots of sweaty boxers and professional wrestlers, shots that didn’t make it into the show. “I could have easily done a whole show on combat,” he says. He shows a photo of a shirtless boy not more than 10. He is holding a giant pistol. It would have made an interesting addition to the show, but it was too obvious.

Postal’s images of combat for “State of the Union” are subtle and powerful. In one, a pair of arcade combatants stand with toy guns outstretched, their eyes as cold and dead as a mafia hit man’s. You have the sense they are in training for something that lies ahead.

But the most telling and terrifying image in the show is a simple portrait that combines faith, combat, and entertainment. In it, a couple expresses pure rapture. The man’s eyes and mouth are open so wide you’d swear he had to be singing the finale of a Broadway show. The woman stretches one arm to heaven, her eyes closed in ecstasy. You would think this shot, like so many of Postal’s other ecstatic images, was taken in a charismatic church, a document of two people high on the Holy Spirit. But it’s not. According to Etkin, the picture was taken at a wrestling match.

“Jay wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” Postal says. “That was supposed to be a secret.”

“I know,” I tell him, “but sometimes it’s good to know these things.”

Postal captured an image of joy, verging on religious ecstasy, generated by a violent act disguised as an entertainment. Had Postal chosen to show only this one image and call the show “State of the Union,” it would have been a success.

Opinion Viewpoint

Is Dissent Un-American?

Post author By
Post date March 30, 2003

Is patriotism synonymous with unquestioning acceptance of the decisions made by our elected officials? Is it un-American to criticize the Bush administration for “failed diplomacy” or to argue that the decision to launch a preemptive attack on Iraq was a monumental blunder? If you think the war should not have been started, does this mean you want Saddam to win, that you don’t support our troops, that you actually hope that there are American casualties? If you are still praying for peace instead of war, does this mean you are an idiot, moron, nutcase, and/or commie? If you think President Bush has done a terrible job, does this mean that you hate him? In the bizarre world of right-wing talk radio, the answers to all of the above questions are: “Yes, you #*%*&# liberal!” By this standard, millions of Americans are traitors, or worse.

We have come to expect this sort of garbage on right-wing rant radio, but similar malicious rhetoric and insinuations are beginning to appear in print and even in comments made by some of our elected officials. George Will (Rush Limbaugh with a bow tie and a much better vocabulary) recently claimed that Democrats who opposed the war were “unhinged” and “deranged.” House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert asserted that Senator Tom Daschle came “mighty close to giving comfort to our adversaries” (i.e., committing treason) when Daschle complained about the failure of Bush’s diplomatic efforts. Even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who usually thinks before he speaks, claimed that any criticisms of the president’s decisions at this point would be “irresponsible.”

One of Mr. Bush’s heroes, Teddy Roosevelt, famously argued that “to announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” And it is beyond surreal for right-wingers who criticized every move made by Bill Clinton to now claim that any criticism of a Republican president is “irresponsible,” much less treasonous. The far right does not have a monopoly on name-calling, of course. Comparisons of George Bush to Hitler or Saddam Hussein are nonsense, and dismissing Bush as a moron is to sink to the level of the Clinton haters.

Our Founding Founders would be turning over in their graves to learn that many conservatives believe the way to honor them is to become a “Dittohead” who supports all presidential decisions no matter how bone-headed — at least during a Republican administration.

The flap over the recent comments made by Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines is instructive. Right-wing radio and Internet sites like the Drudge Report and Freerepublic.com helped make a mountain out of a molehill. Last summer, Maines infuriated some right-wingers when she criticized the (embarrassingly bad) Toby Keith song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” for “making country music sound ignorant.” When, during a recent London concert, Maines stated that “we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas,” there was little or no immediate reaction, but a concerted effort by right-wing Internet-based groups eventually succeeded in making it into the latest cause célèbre for talk-radio hosts.

Callers to country stations subsequently managed to persuade some of them to temporarily stop playing Dixie Chicks songs, but the group’s concerts are still selling out and their latest CD is still number four on the charts. In the long run, the Dixie Chicks will sink or swim based on their music, not their political views.

There’s plenty wrong with America. (If you don’t believe me, listen to talk radio for five minutes.) But we’re still the greatest country in the world because we value liberty and freedom. If our citizens (including, for better or worse, our celebrities) are only allowed to speak up when they support the actions of our government, we might as well be in Iraq.

B. Keith English, M.D., is a professor of pediatrics at UT Health Science Center.

Film Features Film/TV

Rats!

Post author By Bo List
Post date March 30, 2003

The remake of Willard is weird. It starts weird, with dark, morbid funhousey opening credits a montage of images to come in the film and ends weird, with Crispin Glover singing the movie’s love theme, the Jackson 5 hit “Ben.” If you are not a rat-o-phobe and end up seeing this movie, I hope you stay for the closing credits to hear Glover’s bizarre, almost pretty take on the song, but like many in the audience the night I saw the film, you may pack up and leave before it’s over, never mind the credits.

Comparisons to Norman Bates are inevitable. Willard is a thin, awkwardly handsome young man living in a strange, huge Gothic old house with his strange, Gothic old mother. Mother is the scariest thing in the movie and solicited the most gasps when she was onscreen. She is the embodiment of our fear of age: sick, weak, thin, frail, senile, ugly. She looks to be somewhere between 70 and 1,000, so it is difficult to know exactly how old Willard is, because at 38, Glover is chronologically ambiguous forever Back to the Future‘s George McFly. He could be 25; he could be 45.

When Mother hears rats in the basement, Willard slavishly investigates. Sure enough, there are holes eaten out of everything. Conventional mousetraps don’t work. The rats are smart enough to eat the cheese and spring the trap without becoming prisoners. Glue traps catch a singular white rat. Willard becomes instantly fascinated and cannot bring himself to kill it. Tenderly, he frees the rat and names it Socrates for being so smart. Socrates does nothing particularly smart in the movie, though, and eventually finds himself in unalterable trouble, so it is puzzling that Willard perceives particular intelligence in this rat.

The smart rat of the film is Ben (named after Big Ben the clock, because this rat is huge a one-footer) who snorts and oinks and makes tiny pounding sounds when he walks to let us know that he is a big rat. Ben is jealous of Willard’s love for Socrates, and while an uneasy truce is declared between them, it is only a matter of time before Willard’s rejection of Ben in favor of Socrates gets the better of all. Willard loves Socrates, and there is a fine line between friendship and romantic love, since they sleep together and Willard is in a constant state of caressing, kissing, and holding Socrates. As my dear friend Cliff would discreetly suggest, “Those two don’t walk like buddies.”

Willard, by the way, is a loser at work. He is meek, a tad sniveling, and shows up late every day. There is a romantic interest for Willard in the office (Mulholland Drive‘s fragrant Laura Harring), who persistently tries to care for Willard but is persistently turned down in favor of his rodential yearnings. His boss, Mr. Martin (Full Metal Jacket‘s R. Lee Ermey) is a drill-sergeanty bastard who has always wanted to get rid of Willard, but since Willard’s father helped found the company, Martin has been contractually obligated to keep Willard around. This doesn’t prevent constant, public beratements and insults, however. Soon, Willard discovers that his rapport with rats is useful in revenge, and his plots quickly move from mischief to menace as Martin’s injuries against him multiply.

I thought, not liking rats, that I would be a basket case during the screening of Willard. Not so. Like I said, there is nothing in the film as frightening as Mother, and when the film focuses away from her at the halfway point, there is nothing more to fear. Being a movie about rats, I expected more grossness more poop, more gnawing, more filth. These are clean rats and very purposeful, as Willard (or Ben, once he seizes control) always has a job for them. And since this is kind of a horror movie, I expected more gore. The body count is low, and the camp is high save for Glover’s play-it-straight performance. His dedicated stare alone may make up for whatever heebie-jeebies are otherwise lacking. Fans of high terror may want to seek it elsewhere, but aficionados of rat-flavored fun will feel right at home.

News News Feature

ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION SOURCES ABOUT THE WAR

Post author By Frank Murtaugh
Post date March 29, 2003

FROM

Beyond the funhouse walls

Geov Parrish – workingforchange.com

03.26.03 – One of the most frequent requests or questions I receive is for suggestions as to where to go to get better or a broader spectrum of information than what America’s mainstream networks and big dailies specialize in.

As most readers of this site have already likely concluded, especially during time of war, what we get from our entertainment-driven media isn’t usually the whole story. In the past few weeks and especially since the invasion of Iraq began last week, even that characterization would be a kindness. American network TV’s emetic fare doesn’t just resemble government propaganda; it is propaganda, taking current events and burying them under a fact-free blizzard of emotionalism, jingoism, and generous use of the first person plural (“Which sites did we bomb today, General?”). Repeated in endless variations, the cumulative effect, and the intent, is to rally the home front. Predictably, it’s working — more effectively than anything on Iraqi state radio ever could, because even beyond the whiz-bang technology and psychographic refinement of the American networks, Iraqi audiences are under no illusions about the biases of their government-run media.

However, technology doesn’t just help the Pentagon build bigger bombs and enable TV “news” programs to glorify the notion of pain-free, cost-free, rationale-free military invasions. It also enables more inquisitive folks to escape the funhouse. Via the Internet, Americans (and anyone else) can sample media coverage virtually anywhere of fast moving events — from Iraqi deserts to the streets and conference rooms of the world’s capitals — in a

way never before possible during wartime.

As with last year’s Israeli Easter offensive and 2001’s Afghan invasion and 9/11, the news that audiences in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America get — both of the invasion of Iraq itself and of global reaction to it — is very different than what we’re seeing here. The gulf, both in public perceptions and in the resulting policy decisions, seems to be widening; about that, more tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s a short and necessarily incomplete list of sources I’ve found helpful for coverage of this invasion.

(eds. note: At publication time, not all links in this list were

operational. All URLs are believed to be correct.)

(listed in alphabetical order)

FROM THE ISLAMIC WORLD:

English language versions of Islamic newspapers:

www.ahram.org.eg/weekly : Al-Ahram, Cairo,

state-owned;

www.dailystar.com.lb : Daily Star, Lebanon;

www.gulf-times.com : Gulf Times, Qatar;

www.jang.com.pk/thenews : Daily Jang,

Pakistan, excellent reporting on Afghan war.

Other sources for regional news:

www.al-jazeera.net : Al-Jazeera, the now-notorious Pan-Islamic Qatar TV station; in Arabic, but until the U.S. bombs all of their reporters and facilities, the pictures alone can tell lots that we don’t otherwise see or hear about both the news stories and Islamic news priorities. As for critics that claim Al-Jazeera’s coverage is propagandistic because it favors one side’s view: they should look in the mirror. Al-Jazeera has shown Americans in a humane light far more often than American TV has shown — well, any Iraqis at all, actually;

www.allafrica.com : AllAfrica Global Media, good

news coverage of Islamic Africa;

www.haaretzdaily.com : Ha’Aretz, left-leaning daily Israeli newspaper, good for domestic Israeli news and a spectrum of opinion on the occupation of Palestine and other Middle Eastern matters far broader, actually, than what passes for debate on Israel/Palestine in mainstream U.S. media;

www.irna.com : The Islamic Republic News Association, based in Teheran, tends to be a fundamentalist viewpoint;

www.islamonline.net/english :

IslamOnline.net, an impressive pan-Islamic site (Arabic & English) of news,

opinion, and culture;

www.memri.org : Middle East Media & Research Institute, translates articles from Farsi and Arabic media.

EUROPEAN SOURCES:

Daily newspapers & TV:

www.bbc.co.uk : BBC;

www.dailytelegraph.co.uk : Daily Telegraph;

www.guardian.co.uk : The Guardian (until a few

years ago, the Manchester Guardian), Britain’s leading left-leaning daily,

also publishes London Observer on Sundays;

www.independent.co.uk : The Independent, home of the immortal Robert Fisk, the single best English-language Middle East reporter in the world;

www.dailymirror.co.uk : The Daily Mirror, home of John Pilger, who gives Fisk a solid run on both experience and on eloquent opposition to America’s neo-colonialism;

www.ireland.com : Irish Times;

www.MondeDiplo.com : Le Monde Diplomatique, a

separate online magazine published by Le Monde, the prestigious Paris daily. It’s not the daily (that’s only available in French), but still a good source for European perspectives on international issues.

Other Western voices:

www.debka.com : DebkaFile, an excellent Website devoted to Middle East intelligence run by a former Economist foreign

affairs writer);

www.eurasianews.com scores of links to sites on Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Eureasian counties;

www.iwpr.net : Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a British outfit that ranges from the Balkans throughout Asia, but especially valuable for the former Soviet republics;

www.mwaw.org : Media Workers Against War, originally

formed after 9/11 by disgruntled BBC and Guardian employees scrutinizing British media coverage of the Afghan invasion, has since morphed into

becoming, as well, a British anti-war.com, with news on much of the global anti-war movement;

www.estriples.com : European (as opposed to Pacific) edition of Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper of the U.S. Armed

Forces. Not just the military “line” — the Pentagon figured out ages ago that providing an honest reflection of what men (and now women) in uniform care about is in the long run far more useful than printing a house organ that refuses to acknowledge reality. This is war news stripped of the jingoism and feel-good fluff, and from military contractor scandals to battlefield (and, probably, occupation) difficulties, you’re far more likely to read about it here than stateside. Oh, and if you want to support the troops, you can find out what they actually care most about — like getting some toilet paper into Kuwait…

www.wombatnews.com : Wombat International News, A Japanese site with a stunning number of links to news coverage around the world, including heavy coverage of U.S. adventurism.

Wire Services: Try accessing wire service articles, such as Reuters or Associated Press, before they’ve been edited by their local or national newspaper editors. They’re posted on AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and a host of other commercial internet service providers. Because they’re originally written for a wide variety of media outlets (with the same article often running

internationally), the original wire service articles have been miles above

the versions eventually printed in the NY Times, Wash. Post, and other major

daily newspapers: they’re timely, they contain body counts, and they contain

“unofficial” quotes from US military men on the front lines that often

contradict the glowing quotes from Pentagon spokesmen.

ALTERNATIVE U.S. MEDIA:

www.alternet.org : AlterNet: syndicates articles to

newspapers, magazines, and web sites around the country, but also carries a

lot of great original content;

www.anti-war.com : Libertarian-oriented, utterly

priceless source of news and opinion on militarism and the resistance to it;

www.commondreams.com : Common Dreams;

www.fair.org : Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, an

invaluable media watchdog group;

www.indymedia.org : Independent Media Center,

activism-oriented, with links to over 90 local indymedia sites around the

world, including Israel & Palestine (a site which is very good). Can be

stunning in its on the spot coverage of protest, but the open publishing

policies of many of its affiliates can mean its quality varies wildly in

reliability;

www.inthesetimes.com : In These Times magazine,

updated more frequently than the print publication;

www.motherjones.com : Mother Jones’ magazine;

their daily site tends to be harder-edged and not as focused on long

investigative pieces as the monthly print version;

www.thenation.com : The Nation magazine, also with

many features that don’t make it to print;

www.theonion.com : The Onion, an often brilliant

satirical newspaper that’s more painfully truthful than the garbage in your

local chain-owned daily;

www.theprogressive.com : The Progressive

magazine;

www.tompaine.com : Tom Paine;

www.utne.com : Utne Magazine’s site is updated daily

with little of the new agey lifestyle material the print monthly uses to

spice newsstand sales; www.workingforchange.com

: the political site of Working Assets —

you found it!;

www.yellowtimes.org : Yellow Times, like Utne is

essentially a very good clipping service;

www.zmag.org : Z Magazine and ZNet, also with a widely

read European edition. Chomsky’s a close buddy, and ZNet tends to be more

focused on activism and radical alternatives than most of the above outlets.

As mentioned, this is necessarily incomplete, with no slight intended for a number of fine sites not listed here. I’ve run such lists in the past, I’m always looking for more suggestions — and the web generates good new ones far faster than any one person can keep track. Send ’em along and I’ll run a follow-up list as the opportunity allows.