Month: August 2003

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Point of No Return

And so in Iraq, the hits just keep on coming. The horrific car-bombing Tuesday of the U.N. compound in Baghdad and the senseless human carnage it produced — including the death of a true man of peace, U.N. Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello — demonstrates yet again how the Bush administration has bitten off way more than it can chew in Iraq.

The neoconservative cabal that convinced President Bush that the United States needed to wage preemptive war against Saddam Hussein last March may or may not have been guilty of lying to the American public about the seriousness of the threat posed by the Iraqi dictator. Time will tell on that score. But one thing is already certain: The administration has been guilty of what may well turn out to be the most ill-conceived and incompetently executed war strategy in American history.

Since President Bush, in his now-infamous flight suit, declared “victory” on May 1st, Iraq has become for its American occupiers a quagmire of the first order. Virtually everyone on the ground in that country — hawk, dove, or sparrow — agrees that our “window” for getting things right in Iraq is rapidly closing. If present trends continue, and we cannot provide for the basic human needs of the Iraqi people, this quagmire could quickly become an even bloodier debacle.

Already, most military leaders outside Donald Rumsfeld’s inner circle realize that we simply do not have enough troops on the ground in Iraq to maintain a semblance of order, let alone oversee a smooth transition to an independent government.Perhaps the only voices in the Bush administration saying anything different are the neoconservatives whose wrong-headed view of how to use American military might to effect change got us into this mess in the first place.

So what does President Bush do now? His options seem limited. The administration seems unwilling to touch the political hot potato of sending additional troops into the fray.In fact, many military experts suggest that we cannot send additional troops to the region, as our military is already stretched dangerously thin. Perhaps the Bush administration will reinstitute the draft? Don’t count on it, since that approach would surely turn a host of armchair Republican saber-rattlers with children of draft-age into rabid Howard Dean supporters.

That leaves just two options: soldier on as we are now, or give real authority to the United Nations. As pipelines and water supplies are sabotaged and our troops are ambushed daily, the “steady as she goes” approach seems perilous to the extreme. And ironically, just last week, the Bush administration abandoned the idea of giving the United Nations more of a role in the occupation of Iraq as sought by France, India, and other countries as a condition for their participation in peacekeeping there. “You can make a case that it would be better to do that [involve the U.N.],” an administration official told The New York Times, “but right now the situation in Iraq is not that dire.”

Perhaps that official thinks differently today, with the U.N. itself having paid a direct human price for the astonishing hubris of Rumsfeld and the neocons. The man who scoffed at his own army chief of staff’s concerns that too few troops were being sent to Iraq continues to believe that all this is some kind of minor rearguard action involving “Hussein loyalists” and “foreign al Qaeda operatives.” Those elements may well be involved, but Rumsfeld et al. never seem to have considered that the killing of thousands of civilians with “shock and awe” tactics doubtless created tens of thousands of Iraqi “terrorists” determined to avenge their personal losses and thwart American occupation of their homeland.

We have reached the point of no return in Iraq. The United Nations must be given complete authority over the occupation of that country as soon as is practical. There are no other alternatives as long as this administration and the American public are unwilling to increase our military commitment. Moreover, President Bush needs to demand some accountability from the bumbling incompetents whose reckless and irresponsible actions with regard to Iraq have created a foreign policy disaster of unprecedented magnitude.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Hurts So Good

The Pernice Brothers hail from Northampton, Massachusetts, a smallish New England town with a colorful history and a thriving bohemian arts scene (see Tracy Kidder’s 1999 book Home Town for a look at life in Northampton during the final decade of the last century). Joe Pernice, the band’s main songwriter and singer, writes tunes that have a very identifiable geographic context and feel. His previous combo, the Scud Mountain Boys, even named one of their recordings simply Massachusetts. What the Band did with a certain notion of rural American life on their second, eponymous, album, the Pernice Brothers more or less do with the subject of poisoned romance in a small New England town: illuminate their subject with songwriting that is at once universal in theme and yet regionally specific.

The Band comparison may be a little misleading: The Pernice Brothers are anything but artful rustics playing with a 19th-century farmhand persona (although the Scud Mountain Boys got lumped in with the new sincerity/alt-country/Americana thing in the mid-’90s). And the Pernice Brothers don’t really sound that organic, either. Like the Band, they have created a hybrid that finds few comparisons or competitors. But where the Band blended traditional country, folk, R&B, rock-and-roll, and obscure strains of American popular music to make a sound quite familiar but also singular, the Pernice Brothers draw their sound from less vintage sources: British Invasion rock, the Grassroots, ELO (a heavy dose), the Smiths, New Order, Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson (who doesn’t these days, right?), and even the crybaby emotionality of Mark Eitzel’s American Music Club. And they take these disparate influences and blend them into a style with surprising emotional power and impact. It’s as if that crafter of ’60s radio hits, Jimmy Webb, got locked into a recording studio with Robbie Robertson and crew and said nobody could leave until they completed an album of great pop songs.

The Pernice Brothers’ latest, Yours, Mine & Ours, is that album. “The Weakest Shade of Blue” starts things off with a chorus that features a hint of Lou Christie, the master of high-pitched ’60s teen screech. (I say you can’t go wrong with a spot of Christie on the vocal side.) “Water Ban” sounds like Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs with some Turtles-style singing on the chorus. “One Foot in the Grave” is Smiths territory marked by Johnny Marr guitar. “Blinded by the Stars” is pre-disco Bee Gees (before Miami, before Travolta, before excessive amounts of hairspray, before wigs) — pretty and desperate. “Waiting for the Universe” is heavy ELO with a dash of Furs again. “Judy” is Chad & Jeremy with a hint of Peter & Gordon. (Say, weren’t they the same act when you get down to it two Brits with Beatle cuts and Everly Brothers harmonies?) “Sometimes I Remember” is as modern as the Pernices get, with a New Order rave-up featuring a Pete Hook kind of lead bass line.

Joe Pernice is definitely the focus here (he’s a bit like the Band’s Robertson in being the group’s prime mover, but, unlike Robertson, he has a great voice and a sense of humility that finds expression in almost all of his original tunes), but the band isn’t just a one-man show: The rest of the group contributes just the right accompaniment at every juncture. The Pernice Brothers are masters of dynamics, their sound swelling or fading expertly whenever a song arrangement dictates. But the depth of their music still derives primarily from Pernice’s vocals and lyrics. Those vocals are often just a husky whisper, Pernice’s voice controlled and dry-sounding yet wildly emotional and expressive at the same time. Joe Pernice is that unlikeliest of creatures: a “soul singer” who never breaks a sweat.

And his lyrics: Well, I’m a tough crowd considering that I despise most original rock lyrics since about 1966. In my mind, Joey Ramone was a great lyricist who sometimes veered toward the pretentious, so I pretty much loathe the “poetry of rock.” Given a choice between listening to instrumental or vocal music, I’ll almost always opt for music without intrusive human voices. But there are exceptions to this blanket dismissal, and Joe Pernice is one of them.

Pernice earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is a published poet/author. He’s as caustic and brilliant as the late poet John Berryman, but Pernice’s obsessive demon is not booze or the siren song of suicide (though he does sell a Pernice Brothers T-shirt emblazoned with “I Hate My Life” at live dates; I plan on buying one at their Hi-Tone show). It’s the curse of romance or, more simply, the existence of “the other” that troubles him. There are people in this world, women mostly, who cause him a ton of aggravation and hurt. His original tunes are not really love songs as such but more like superbly crafted paeans to romantic misery. Pernice is a master at hiding his closet romanticism with barbed contempt. The nasty, eviscerating one-liners in his songs serve to distance him from the raw pain and yearning he feels in a relationship. He’s a brainy romantic who hides behind a facade of cruel words — but what words! Thanks for suffering in such an articulate way, Joe: Your pain is the listener’s gain.

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

Like the soundtrack to a faded, ancient scrapbook, the music on Vending Machine‘s latest, 5 Piece Kit, conjures up hundreds of images, thoughts, and memories. The gently strummed guitar notes of “I Know, We’ll Last” ring out like the last kisses in a forgotten romance, vocalist/instrumentalist Robby Grant building on the Chris Bell/Alex Chilton foundation of songwriting on the exquisitely bare track. “Spinning Chair” melds a clanging drum beat with piano runs and the sounds of summer; as frogs croak, owls call, and cicadas chirp, you can almost picture a group of neighborhood kids rallying for a final game of kick-the-can before dusk.

Even the name Vending Machine sounds evocative, like an invention in a Haruki Murakami story that spits out songs for thirsty commuters on a Tokyo subway platform. Insert coin, select memory, receive three-minute tune. Questioned about the moniker, Grant demurs, insisting that its origins are “nothing fancy. This was off the top of my head, and I just kept it,” he says.

For the former Big Ass Truck guitarist, the evolution from party mainstay to low-fi creator came naturally. “Robert [Barnett, Big Ass Truck’s drummer] was playing with Alicja Trout in Mouse Rocket, and he invited me to join that band. Alicja got busy with the Lost Sounds, and so one November, I opened up for the North Mississippi Allstars by myself. Since then, I’ve gone through a couple different iterations of the band,” Grant explains.

Even while he played in Big Ass Truck, the idea for Vending Machine was germinating. “A lot of the songs I was writing wouldn’t really work in that band,” Grant says. “When we came home off tour, we were sick of seeing each other. I started working on my own for obvious reasons: I get complete control and don’t have to ask anyone else’s opinion.”

Grant recorded a single (a split with Brad Pounders) and an album (The Chamber from Here to There) on his own, before, as he puts it, “I realized how much fun it is to hear other people play.” His brother, Big Ass Truck bassist Grayson Grant, cellist Jonathan Kirkscey, guitarist Yazan Fahmawi, and friends like Trout and Paul Ringger Jr. all make appearances on 5 Piece Kit.

Although Grant makes it clear that Big Ass Truck is on “permanent hiatus,” he’s returned to making music with the musicians from the group. Barnett, Grayson Grant, DJ Colin Butler, and guitarist Steve Selvidge show up for the bubbling rock number “Shoulder Tap,” which takes listeners on a Money Mark-inspired excursion midway through 5 Piece Kit.

Barnett, Ringger, and Quinn Powers will anchor Grant’s ethereal sounds next Sunday, August 31st, when Vending Machine performs at the Hi-Tone CafÇ alongside The Bloodthirsty Lovers and comedian (and Flyer contributer) Andrew Earles. “It’ll be Steve Selvidge’s first local appearance with the Bloodthirsty Lovers,” Grant notes. Big Ass Truck fans — or any pop-music aficionados — shouldn’t miss it. For more information on Vending Machine (or the upcoming show), go to ChocolateGuitars.com.

While the first two episodes of the original musical documentary Keeping Time: New Music from America’s Roots have already aired on the Sundance Channel, locals will want to tune in for Buy This Record, the third program in the series.

Keeping Time takes a look at traditional American musicians, including country-folk singer Gillian Welch, bluegrass band Nickel Creek, and Native American trio Ulali. In Buy This Record, Grisman concentrates on four independent music labels, including Memphis’ own MADJACK Records and Oxford’s Fat Possum.

Rousing commentary from bluesman T-Model Ford dominates the Fat Possum story, as the camera follows him on the road and into the studio (“I think I’m about 20 years old sometimes,” the elder statesman notes gleefully); other interviewees include label founder Matthew Johnson (who laments that “it’s still an uphill battle” for independents), producer Bruce Watson, and blues-rock duo The Black Keys.

The MADJACK segment features an impromptu concert by Andy Ratliff and Eric Lewis before the camera follows Cory Branan to New York for his Late Night with David Letterman appearance. “It was like New Year’s Eve,” label co-owner Mark McKinney crows onscreen. The documentary includes fascinating behind-the-scenes footage of Branan’s rehearsal with bandleader Paul Schaeffer.

Back in Memphis, the powers that be at MADJACK furiously work the phones and faxes, doing whatever they can to broaden that window of opportunity into a full-fledged door. When it comes to promoting a record, “a major [label] only has six weeks,” McKinney’s partner Jeff Jenson tells the camera. Pointing to MADJACK’s long-term commitment to Branan’s full-length debut The Hell You Say, which was released locally in 2001, Jenson explains that “we can take as long as we want.”

Buy This Record will air locally at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 21st. Check listings for repeat broadcasts, or go to SundanceChannel.com for more info.

You can e-mail Local Beat at localbeat@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Back to School

Board Out of Their Minds

More and more large urban school districts are going to an appointed school board. Will it work in Memphis?

by Mary Cashiola

Ten years ago, Cleveland’s school system was in shambles. Because of fiscal and academic problems, a district judge stepped in, removed the elected school board, and placed the district under state control. Two years later, in 1997, the governor and the state legislature approved a mayor-appointed school board. A teachers’ union went to court to fight the decision, and polls showed that voters opposed the appointed boards.

Five years later, the electorate got their chance to have a say on the issue. The surprise was that they overwhelmingly voted to keep the mayor-appointed board.

Could this happen — or work — in Memphis?

The Memphis City Board of Education is like the pregnant girl at the prom — plagued by a bad reputation, but she’s not the only one to blame. It was clear, from the very first lawn chair in the administration’s front yard not even 24 hours after the board tried to buy itself new chairs, that the community is ready to vent its frustrations over the way the city schools are being run. In this type of atmosphere, an appointed board begins to look like a good idea.

“When a board has trouble with decades of poor systems and inadequate oversight, there’s a lot of public frustration,” says National School Boards Association executive director Anne Bryant. “That’s when a mayor or a state legislature steps in.”

Memphis mayor Willie Herenton proposed just that at the beginning of the year, but legislators weren’t keen on changing the law and Herenton dropped the idea to renew his fight for a consolidated school district.

Even MCS board members express frustration with the marathon meetings and confusion-riddled debates under president and 30-year board veteran Carl Johnson. Twice, board members publicly threatened Johnson with impeachment before moving on the issue in March and voting to keep him 3-2 (members Sara Lewis, Wanda Halbert, Patrice Robinson, and the late Lee Brown passed or abstained). The board and staff are also often at loggerheads, most notably resulting in current Superintendent Johnnie Watson filing a formal complaint against board member Lewis last year.

Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, candidates for school board seats are scarce and incumbent members almost always win reelection. Maybe Herenton’s proposal was scrapped too soon.

Bryant and the National School Boards Association don’t advocate one form of school district governance over the other. There is no research to show that one works better than the other, and, because several states have recently enacted laws against appointed boards, the national trend is toward elected boards. Among urban school districts, however, that trend is starkly reversed.

In recent years, school boards have been appointed in New York, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, and Chicago.

“We’ve seen wonderful progress made when a good process is put into place and a board switches from elected to appointed,” says Bryant. “One great example is Cleveland. There are other examples, like Providence, Rhode Island, where the mayor was corrupt and shown to be so, and the appointed board wasn’t very good. If you have a high-caliber board, you get good results. If the mayor appoints his cronies, you won’t.”

The mayor of Cleveland at the time — Michael R. White — did not directly appoint the board. Instead, he appointed a nominating committee. The nominating committee then decided what skills they wanted to find in board members and encouraged anyone in the community to apply. “It was so effective that [the citizens] voted overwhelmingly to keep the appointed school board,” says Bryant.

This is not to say that the appointed board is a magic bullet. It doesn’t instantly solve all problems, a fact that Michael Usdan, senior fellow with the Institute of Educational Leadership, is quick to point out.

“It seems to have provided a little stability to districts that haven’t had that in a while,” he says. “There’s such turmoil in urban districts. Mayors are getting involved for the same reason governors and presidents are becoming involved in education. The mayors are saying, if we’re going to get blamed for schools’ performance, we want a little more authority and influence over them. There’s a growing trend toward more mayoral influence, and it’s played out to more mayoral-appointed school boards.”

Usdan says appointed boards create a direct line of accountability to the mayor, while with an elected board system, accountability is diffused among the board, the staff, and the superintendent. Everyone’s to blame and no one’s to blame. “For many years, mayors wanted nothing to do with schools. There were too many controversial issues,” says Usdan. “Because of the economy, they’ve become more and more proactive. They understand that their cities’ economies are tied directly to the effectiveness of the school system. One thing city mayors can do is pull things together.”

The Memphis board includes only one member with a background in education. Other board members work at MLGW, FedEx, and for the county. In Cleveland, at least four of the nine appointed board members must have significant expertise in education, finance, or business management. Additionally, the presidents of Cleveland State University and Cuyahoga Community College are nonvoting ex officio members. In Boston, members include a professor of social sciences, a retired president and chief operating officer of John Hancock financial services, and the executive director of the Urban Law and Public Policy Institute.

Liz Reilinger, a former associate dean at Boston University, is the chairman of the Boston School Committee. The committee was first appointed in 1992, and, as in Cleveland, the city held a referendum in 1996 to ask the electorate whether they wanted an appointed or an elected board. They also voted to keep the appointed board.

“We had made considerable progress,” says Reilinger of the vote’s outcome. “We were using clearly documented goals and meeting them and that hadn’t been the case before. We targeted all our work toward student achievement.”

Boston’s court-ordered school desegregation in the 1970s was a painful process for the predominantly white Irish-Catholic city. There was massive white flight out of city schools and a declining enrollment that continued into the 1990s.

“There was the sense that we had a revolving door of superintendents, as well,” says Reilinger. She joined the committee in 1994, when the group terminated the superintendent and held a national search to replace him. Thomas Payzant, recognized as one of the top three superintendents in the country, was hired and has been in Boston ever since.

“He’s on the eighth year of a 10-year contract,” says Reilinger. “I think he’s the longest-serving urban superintendent in the country. Part of that is that the relationship between the board and the administration is not adversarial. Often, elected boards need to sit aside and distance themselves from the administration so they look like they’re in control.”

For Reilinger, the main advantage of the appointed-board system is that it takes politics out of education. Board members don’t have to worry about serving a particular constituency and can focus instead on what’s good for the entire community. To put it in Memphis terms: Board members don’t have to worry about keeping Manassas High School open even though enrollment is minimal. They can make the hard decisions.

“In a lot of communities, election to the school board is the first step to other elected offices. There’s a feeling that appointed boards close the door to that step, but I have to ask: What is your primary agenda?” says Reilinger. “I think one thing boards really need to understand is their role as a governing body. Because the operating role is more visible to constituents, there’s a tendency to try to take that on. Most elected members don’t have a background in education. It’s not a full-time job for them. Monday morning quarterbacking is great, but it’s not very effective.”

Going to an MCS board meeting is like watching a fight in slow-motion: It’s painful and ugly, and, though you can see where the punches should land, they just don’t get there fast enough. Board president Johnson places a high premium on parliamentary procedure, so high, in fact, that it threatens to stifle the board completely. Board members will ask simple questions, wanting yes or no answers, and instead will get a 10-minute discussion on whether it was the appropriate time to ask the question. A look back at the board’s minutes since January shows that the average meeting lasted just under four hours, with the longest one starting at 5:30 p.m. and ending at 11:50 p.m.

In roughly 50 hours of official board meetings, what’s been done? The board’s functions are to approve budgetary items, hire a superintendent, and set district policy. They’ve hired a superintendent, but that mostly took place at committee and specially called meetings.

Board members frequently say they want to focus solely on student achievement, but their record is spotty. They’ve introduced and approved resolutions to create a break-the-mold school and an after-school intervention plan. They’ve also introduced and passed resolutions having to do with an audit committee, retired teachers and their FICA deductions, and building a new school in the Douglass community.

Usdan and Bryant say that persuasive arguments can be made for either school board system — appointed or elected.

“The elected boards come from the community,” says Bryant. “The community feels connected to them. They’re seen as more easily accessible and, usually, they’re more like the community.” The appointed board, on the other hand, is sometimes seen as apart from the community, elitist, and a deprivation of democratic rights.

Usdan says it’s simply a matter of the problems being so large that people are looking for any way to fix them.

“The problems in cities are more acute: the fiscal problems, the poverty problems, the lagging achievement levels — they’re all more acute. There’s disaffection with the schools — not just among the citizens, but with the business leaders and politicians. Everybody wants to shake up a system that they don’t think is working very well,” he says. Even some smaller communities are beginning to look at the appointed-board option because they see their system as nonproductive. But Usdan cautions communities to be wary:

“Just because you rearrange the deck chairs, it’s not going to solve all the problems. You’re still going to have the basic problems of money, race, and performance.” n

Who’s

On Board?

District 1: Currently Open

After the death of Dr. Lee Brown, this spot is empty. A special election will be held October 9th to fill the vacancy and candidates who have filed to run include J.M. Bailey, county commissioner Walter Bailey’s son.

District 2: Deni Hirsh

The newest member on the board and one of the most astute, Hirsh’s driving platform is the annexed area in Cordova, but she also has tried to facilitate City Council/board relations as the board’s liaison to the city.

District 3: Patrice Robinson

Robinson believes that with enough policies and procedures, the administration and the board will function like a well-oiled machine. One of several mothers on the board, the MLGW employee wants to see the district run more like a business.

District 4: Michael Hooks Jr.

Once called the hip-hop commissioner, Hooks has matured into a voice of common sense, cutting through needless dialogue and off-topic discussion. The son of county commissioner Michael Hooks, Hooks recently worked on an after-school intervention program for low-performing elementary schools.

District 5: Lora Jobe

A nurse, Jobe is probably the most soft-spoken member of the board. However, she is the only board member to routinely stand up for the superintendent and the staff in the face of harsh criticism from other board members.

District 6: Carl Johnson Sr.

The board chairman seems obsessed with parliamentary procedure to the point of stretching meetings into five-hour marathons, frustrating board, staff, and spectators. He did not attend any of the superintendent search finalist interviews then told other board members at the meeting held to vote on the finalists that he did not understand the process. He has been on the board more than 30 years.

District 7: Hubon “Dutch” Sandridge

Sandridge is a straight-talker and has little regard for others’ personal feelings or politics. The reverend from the Thomas Chapel M.B. Church doesn’t hesitate to bring his fire-and-brimstone style to board meetings.

At Large, Position 1: Wanda Halbert

Halbert joined the board as a parent crusader and found problems with the board’s transportation contract. Distrustful of the administration, Halbert harshly questions many of the staff’s decisions.

At Large, Position 2: Sara Lewis

A former principal and associate superintendent, Lewis is the most visible member of the board, frequently using colorful phrases and doing television interviews. With her long history with the district, Lewis has a lot of opinions and information — and shares them freely. n

Reconstructing

Construction

Memphis brings it all in-house,

while Shelby County farms it out.

In an effort to pinch Pennies, city and county school districts are making changes to their construction programs. The city system is enacting more control, while the county system has decided to contract out construction on an as-needed basis.

The city board hired its own construction consultant this year and has recently begun drafting policies members hope will help them get a handle on construction costs, including how to select school sites, contractors, and design professionals.

“It’s really a road map,” said board attorney Dedrick Brittenum. “A step-by-step guide to take the project from A to Z. The facilities planning department needs to be organized. [The] Parsons-Fleming [company] was heading that function, but now that it’s back in the school system, it needs some guidelines.”

In February 2001, the city board had to approve an extra $2 million to remove contaminated soil at the downtown elementary school site. An independent study presented to the board around the same time found that city schools were costing almost twice what it cost the county to build its schools.

The county still expects to build its schools as affordably, but as a result of this year’s budget cuts, the four-person facilities planning department has been eliminated. In all, the district eliminated 97 positions, but those included jobs that had not yet been created, as well as retirements and resignations.

“We’ll just have people working that much harder,” said Shelby County spokesperson Mike Tebbe. As for the dissolved facilities planning department, Tebbe says he doesn’t expect the district’s schools to be affected.

“We’ll simply contract the work out on an as-needed basis. In the long run, we’re saving the taxpayers money,” he said.

Meanwhile, MCS has also begun developing its own contracts, as most government entities do.

Brittenum said it’s only been in the last two years or so that lawyers have begun looking over all the contracts for the district before they are signed. Lawyers for the district are still in the process of reviewing all construction contracts. Brittenum said that by drafting their own contracts, “MCS will have a better sense of what they’re getting into.”

It’s a step that can’t come too soon for Commissioner Patrice Robinson. As head of the district’s construction committee, she’s been asking for almost nine months for more policies and procedures.

“From my perspective, I’ve never worked with a group of people who act like we’re at the mercy of the vendors,” she said. “We’re the ones with the money. When I’m spending my money, I’m not at the mercy of any vendors. But we’re changing.”

And after late deliveries of two dishwashers held up construction on new schools, the construction committee also talked about keeping a record of vendors’ performances.

Brittenum called the move “critical.”

“The school system is not required to go with the lowest bid but the lowest and best bid,” he said. “If we can build a record of vendors with poor performance with us, we have a reason we can use to reject a bid.” n

Eleven Minutes With

Carol Johnson

Dr. Carol Johnson, recently selected as the superintendent of the Memphis City Schools, has grand ideas about education. She says she thinks the way America’s founding fathers and mothers did: that education is the key to liberty.

Currently the superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, Johnson came to town last week for the first day of school. She visited three schools and had lunch with current Superintendent Johnnie Watson to discuss the district’s $32 million budget deficit, the MGT study, and the district’s organization. In between, she took an hour to meet with the press. Here’s what we gleaned from our time with her.

Flyer: You recently told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that school boards hire superintendents to be either an agent of change or continuity. What do you see as your role in Memphis?

Johnson: I think the board wants a little bit of both [laughs]. Today, I visited Snowden and Ridgeway. They don’t want those things changed. If anything, they want continuation and an expansion of those things.

But there are schools that are having problems, and this is where the board wants to ensure that we make changes. So I think they want change, but I also think they want continuity of other things.

Now that you’re more familiar with the district, are there any specific strategies you want to bring to Memphis?

I’m not sure I know enough already, but I do think we need to find ways to reach out and connect with parents in meaningful ways. Part of that the parents have to assume some responsibility for, but I think that trying to connect with parents in ways that will help them to do a better job with connecting to their own children is something that [Minneapolis] tried to work on.

We want to go through and look at some of the organizational structure and the systems suggestions that come from the MGT report. I don’t think I want to use the MGT report as strictly as a script of what to do, but I think they do have some valid suggestions. The organizational structure, how to help the zone directors focus more clearly their time on teaching and learning, and student-improvement issues are areas that I want to focus on. There is nothing more important than the quality of teaching, so we want to make sure our teachers are well-qualified in all of our schools and make sure we give them all the support that they need to get better.

You’re coming from a city with a strong commitment to education. Is there a way to promote that sort of interest in Memphis?

Well, I think Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota have always understood the close connection between education and the community’s well-being. Economic prosperity, public safety, all those things that if people are well-educated they can use in productive ways. If people aren’t well-educated, they can’t pay taxes, they can’t be involved economically in a community, and the streets aren’t safe. I think they see that connection.

I think the city of Memphis sees that too. I think part of the work we have to do is rebuild the confidence people have in the city schools. I think some parents I met today have a great deal of confidence. I’ve also met citizens who, instead of congratulating me, are worried about me. I think that what we want them to do is not worry about me. We want them to worry about making sure every child gets the best chance at a good education.

You’ve referenced a scene in Remember the Titans and how we need to change how we play the game. It sounds good, but what does that mean exactly for urban education?

I think that both affluent and poor parents have more opportunites to make other choices. If they don’t think our schools are the places their children will do well, they won’t choose us. So I think we have to think about the work in terms of making sure that when parents think about Memphis City Schools, they think of great places for their kids to learn.

Last May you laid off about 500 teachers …

It was very difficult.

Was there something that helped you make that decision?

I think that there are a lot of difficult choices and decisions you have to make sometimes in urban public education. The important thing is to involve the community and the staff. It helps people understand why we’re faced with the budget challenges and also helps them understand what the choices are. Even if they don’t like the choices, they will understand the decisions because they’ve had the opportunity to give input.

I think these aren’t easy choices because teachers are at the heart of the work and whenever you lay them off, it’s really not what you would choose to do. In public education, so much of your revenue is tied up in people. It’s a people industry. It’s not easy to replace the people with equipment and neither would you want to. You’re not making widgets.

What would you say drives you?

This work is so important. Education is really the key to liberty and freedom and equality and justice. I think it’s about how the American dream actually comes alive. It comes alive because it’s transfered to the children in the classrooms of our schools.

Categories
News News Feature

The Blame Game

It’s the All-American Blame Game! A finger-pointing festival. A perfectly circular firing squad of “told you so.” Bureaucrats perfecting their CYA moves. Politicians jumping on the opportunity to make points against the other guys. And so’s your old man.

U.S. officials quickly blamed a Canadian plant for touching off the mess. Mel Lastman, the clearly sleepless and exhausted mayor of Toronto, replied bitterly: “Tell me, have you ever heard the United States take blame for anything? This is no different.”

It would be a refreshing change, would it not, if somebody just stood up and said, “My fault.”

The early book has the great power outage of ’03 beginning with FirstEnergy of Akron, Ohio. But there has been no shortage of warnings that the grid was elderly, frail, inadequate, could short out, would short out, should short out at any time.

Those regulatory tigers at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the guys who stood by doing nothing while California got ripped off for $45 billion, have in fact presciently warned that the Midwestern grid is a mess. So they get lots of points in the “I told you so” category. Not that they did anything about it.

The Clinton administration, in the person of former energy secretary and now governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, is also in the clear, having tried to “do something” back in 1998, to the usual chorus of boos and jeers from the Republican Congress. This naturally did not stop Rep. Tom DeLay, the Exterminator, from blaming it all on the Democrats as soon as the lights went out.

The Republican theme song is that if only Congress had passed Dick Cheney’s perfectly darling National Energy Plan, this would never have happened.

Since the Cheney plan, hatched in secret with lobbyists from Enron and other players, is all about producing more power, not transmitting it safely and reliably, this may strike some as beside the point.

According to Public Citizen, the Cheney Plan “contains billions of dollars in handouts to nuclear, coal, and oil companies, including some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. It would repeal time-honored consumer protection law and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, and thus advance the destructive path of deregulation and encourage the same type of behavior that gave us Enron and the California energy crisis.”

Among the bill’s dumbest provisions:

n It reauthorizes the Price-Anderson Act, which caps the liability of nuclear operators in the event of an accident or attack, thereby making taxpayers liable for nuclear catastrophes (a great example of privatizing profits and socializing risks).

n It authorizes the Nuclear Power 2010 program, which would grant federal land and taxpayer money to energy companies for building new nuclear plants.

n It does nothing to improve fuel economy of vehicles and contains provisions that invite the auto industry to sue to delay increases in fuel-economy standards.

Now, here’s an interesting joker in the deck. Who do you suppose wanted FERC to expand its jurisdiction to cover all aspects of electricity transmission?

Why, Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron.

For the first two years of this administration, what Ken Lay wanted, Ken Lay got. In his famous memo to Cheney to deter FERC from imposing caps on wholesale power prices so the California rip-off could continue, Lay also urged that FERC “develop reliability standards and enforce those standards” for the grid.

So guess what? Cheney’s plan recommends that FERC “improve the reliability of the interstate transmission system” and “develop legislation providing for enforcement of a self-regulatory organization subject to FERC oversight.”

In 2001, Ken Lay had a come-to-Jesus session with Curtis Hebert, then chairman of FERC, saying that if he didn’t get on board with Enron’s program, he was gone.

So Hebert was replaced by Pat Wood, who came recommended by Ken Lay. So did another FERC appointee, Nora Mead Brownell.

The White House then denied that Lay and Enron had any undue influence over national energy policy, which was certainly a big relief to everybody.

Before we all get lost forever in finger-pointing, let me point out the fundamental question here: Given that our economy, security, and basic services are totally dependent on the electric grid, do we really want to turn it over to those who only seek short-term profits?

Or to point the finger up into the wind: Do we really have to suffer through another blackout or two before we re-regulate these guys?

Molly Ivins writes for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram and Creators Syndicate.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Welcome to the Monkey House

The Dandy Warhols

(Capitol)

On their fourth album, Welcome to the Monkey House, America’s least likely career band, the Dandy Warhols, look back to that infamous decade when their namesake died. In addition to hijacking New Wave synths, drum machines, and voice boxes, they’ve even hired Simon Lebon to sing on “Plan A” and Nick Rhodes to help produce. But instead of Duran Duran, the Dandy Warhols wound up with something closer to Timbuk 3, which is surely a good thing.

For all the retro hubbub, however, these influences haven’t changed the Warhols’ sound so much as bolstered it a bit and expanded its possibilities. Songs like “Wonderful You,” “I Am Over It,” and “I Am the Scientist” retain sonic similarities to previous albums — the same inviting hooks, the same blasÇ spirit, the same observant humor — but with less guitar and more keyboard, programmed drums, and studio effects.

The approach works on just about every song, but it reaches a pinnacle in “You Were the Last High,” co-written by Evan Dando. As the instruments click into a laidback strut, Courtney Taylor-Taylor sings “I have known love/Like a whore/From at least 10,000 more,” before proclaiming the song’s addressee as his last good time. What begins as sleazy ex-girlfriend baiting becomes a statement of hollowness and loss when he admits that all those thousands left him empty. It’s romantic cold turkey, a far harsher comedown than detox.

If the Warhols have expanded their sound, they’ve narrowed their subject: on Monkey House, marijuana is the band’s muse. Taylor-Taylor introduces “I Am Over It” with “Let’s see if we can get this in one toke — er, take,” then proceeds to program a bong hit into the beats. Such weed worship sounds strange against the New Wave accoutrements; after all, it was cocaine that fueled the nation’s mania for robotic beats and asymmetrical haircuts.

Still, as songs like the supremely catchy first single “We Used To Be Friends” and the sing-along “Plan A” attest, the Warhols are clearly more than a one-toke band.

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: B+

How the West Was Won

Led Zeppelin

(Atlantic/Swan Song)

The most galvanizing and unexpected aspect of Led Zeppelin’s live How the West Was Won is the way in which it reminds listeners that four real human beings were responsible for rolling up their sleeves and carving out the foundations of classic rock. Across 18 tracks on three CDs, drummer John Bonham’s and especially bassist John Paul Jones’ work are thrown into relief; in 1972, both musicians were leaning toward funk accents long before other white hard-rock bands recognized the power of slipperier, groove-based rhythm sections. Jimmy Page’s acoustic/electric riffs and solos reaffirm his place in history as perhaps the greatest post-Hendrix electric guitarist (whatever that’s worth). And Robert Plant’s unholy wail effortlessly hovers over the dense, surprisingly detailed racket. As the much better double-DVD also shows, live Led Zeppelin on a good night was a tough, tireless, powerful band that succeeded marvelously in spite of the fact that no band of similar stature has had less to say. (Can anyone quote a Led Zeppelin lyric that doesn’t sound like a sound bite from Gandalf the Grey?)

Though the first and third disc fuse Zep’s power and tenderness beautifully on a gorgeous “Stairway to Heaven,” a lively “Over the Hills and Far Away,” a wild “Bring It on Home,” and a mournful “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” the second disc’s meanderings are practically a plea for punk rock to come and clean house. Two of the four songs on disc two are Page’s 25-minute guitar explorations on “Dazed and Confused” and Bonham’s interminable 19-minute tom-tomfoolery on “Moby Dick,” which continues to reinforce my belief that no rock drum solos are worth hearing more than once.

In the studio, Zeppelin was often bigger than its tight stadium-ready britches; however, the double-album sprawl of 1975’s Physical Graffiti is inspired arena-rock excess. In spite of the sharp playing and comfort of familiar songs played to remain nearly the same, nearly half of this long-overdue, shabbily packaged triple-CD is tiresome bloat.

— Addison Engelking

Grade: B

Cup of Sand

Superchunk

(Merge)

When I’m a medicated heap rotting the days away behind a TV tray, somewhere in the bowels of a depressing “retirement village,” I picture my ungrateful children and grandkids simultaneously rummaging through boxes and boxes of my ill-kept belongings and documents, probably looking for neglected pain medication. One of these offspring, the token “precocious one,” will find me in my final home and ask, “Granddad, what was ‘indie rock?'” Ah, the chance to spin one last superfluous, adjective-heavy yarn, and Superchunk will be the band I grasp for when trying to explain indie rock — the momentary great white hope of the closing millennium — to the people of the future.

Superchunk may be the quintessential indie-rock band, but Cup of Sand, a two-disc compilation of b-sides and not-good-enough-for-primetime Superchunk (their third release of this type, mind you), serves more as a “mistakes we made in the ’90s” scrapbook than the perfect example of indie rock for the ages. That’s the purpose of these house-cleaners, and some of what’s cleaned out this time around was clearly too weird for a Superchunk album. Bassist Laura Ballance’s “The Mine Has Been Returned to Its Original Owner” is menacing and bites a metal feel from fellow North Carolinian onetime semilegends Breadwinner.

To deny that Cup of Sand is the sound of a past era would be lying, but to say that it’s as unneeded as most compilations of this nature would be unfair. The Adam Ant and Government Issue covers are a nice touch, and if the whole package were consumed as new material, it would play as the band’s fantasy departure from methodical album-making: an indulgent double-CD of varied material. Providing entertaining icing, the oral-history-style booklet offers an occasional hilarious one-liner (usually from drummer Jon Wurster) and more than a few “I don’t remember recording this” or “I hated playing this live” statements. — Andrew Earles

Grade: B-

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Map or Trap?

Israel’s minister of tourism launched a round of stops in the United States last week and made it clear he had no room in his itinerary for President Bush’s “road map” for peace.

With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon under pressure to accept American mediation leading by stages to a Palestinian state, “I can be the bad guy,” said Benny Elon, adding, “The road map is a road trap.” Elon confided his opposition to the plan to a small group of clerics, religious conservatives, and media representatives after addressing a larger group at the Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.

Elon, who acceded to the tourism ministry last year after the assassination of his predecessor, presumably by Palestinian terrorists, told both the larger and the smaller assemblies that the challenge for both Israelis and the country’s sympathizers among American Jews and Christians was “not to forget who gave us the power” to inhabit contested territories in the historic Holy Land.

“We are not going to agree to let down our borders, to be without a state, just to have sympathy,” Elon said. Brandishing a Bible, he told the assembly in the seminary auditorium, “This is behind the conflict — not politics.” He said there was “no difference” between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and likened the supportive evangelicals in his audience to “Christian Zionists.”

Elon said that complications ranging from the ongoing second intifada in Palestine to the after-effects of the September 11th attacks in this country had cut tourism in Israel to almost a third of its former volume but that visits to his country were back on the upswing. He assured his hosts that they would have “absolute safety” as visitors to Israel.

One of Elon’s hosts, Religious Roundtable leader Ed McAteer, announced that his group was paying for several billboards in the Memphis area and elsewhere, all urging President Bush to support Israel’s claim to the Holy Land on biblical grounds.

Elon, who was scheduled to visit several major American cities during his visit, was welcomed to Memphis by Shelby County commissioner Marilyn Loeffel and city councilman Rickey Peete.

* Ordinarily, August would have been the lull before the storm politically, but — well, we had the storm first this year, didn’t we? Then the lull.

In any case, local campaigns have struggled of late to be blips on the radar screen. During the immediate aftermath of the storm, some campaigns even had to discontinue telephone polling because of the negative vibes they were getting to the process.

All that is about to change. With two months to go, door-to-door operations are back under way, ad campaigns are about to be sprung upon us. Among recent developments:

Two District 5 City Council contenders busied themselves with headquarters openings, while a third decided to marshal his resources elsewhere.

State representative Carol Chumney braved the torrid heat to open her headquarters at the Chickasaw Crossing shopping center on Poplar Saturday, with such eminences as Marguerite Piazza and Bob James on hand to lend support. Opponent George Flinn, the physician/broadcast magnate who has the local Republican endorsement, will be holding his headquarters opening this Saturday at Park Place Mall.

Lawyer Jim Strickland, on the other hand, has decided to do without a headquarters and focus instead on electronic advertising and direct mail. Strickland, who began his campaign with a goal of raising $100,000, says he now has $91,000 on hand.

The race for city court clerk has sailed into its first major controversy, with incumbent Thomas Long angrily denying allegations from the campaign of challenger Janis Fullilove that he is a Republican. Long cited a long string of involvements in major Democratic campaigns in an appearance recently before the Shelby County Democratic Women.

A third contender in the clerk’s race, Betty Boyette, hopes to benefit from the internecine warfare of Long and Fullilove.

The Long-Fullilove contest, like that between Democrats Strickland and Chumney, has local Democrats moving in different directions. The party executive committee, which was evenly divided in last spring’s chairmanship race between state representative Kathryn Bowers, the eventual winner, and former chairman Gale Jones Carson, reflected the same split in this month’s key vote on whether to follow the Republicans’ lead and endorse candidates in city-election races.

The committee voted 20-16 against endorsements, with the Bowers faction once again in the ascendancy.

* Sometime Memphian Chip Saltzman, who was state GOP chairman during the 2000 campaign year, held his annual “Young Guns” retreat this past weekend on the Ocoee River in Polk County.

Some 45 sub-40-year-old Republicans from across the state were invited for the weekend — including Memphians Kemp Conrad, the current Shelby County Republican chairman, and David Kustoff.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

I think Billy Bob Thornton‘s great. As a screenwriter, he’s helped illuminate the world I came from (small-town Arkansas) with more insight than any filmmaker ever has or that I ever thought imaginable in a Hollywood film, first with the great modern noir One False Move (which tracked a band of killers from L.A. to Star City [!!], Arkansas), then with his proudly unschmaltzy racial reconciliation piece A Family Thing, and then with his breakout Sling Blade, which may have been a geek show of sorts at the center but included a periphery filled with finely drawn characters and settings. And, as an actor, I think Thornton’s one of the most entertaining character players of his era, enlivening films such as A Simple Plan, Primary Colors, and The Apostle with sharp supporting turns.

The problem is that this column is called Sound Advice, not Sight & Sound Advice, and I can’t say I’ve got quite as much enthusiasm for Thornton’s nascent music career. Thornton released a not-so-well-received debut record, Private Radio, a couple of years back, which was sort of a countrified take on Tom Waits, produced by Nashville mainstay Marty Stuart. Thornton’s follow-up, The Edge of the World, is due in stores this week, and he’ll be making his Memphis debut in support of the record Thursday, August 21st, at the Gibson Lounge, which will reopen that night after suffering damage in what has apparently been trademarked Windstorm 2003.

But Thornton isn’t the only rootsy, regional bet this week. Sweden-by-way-of-New Orleans’ Theresa Andersson will perform at Young Avenue Deli Wednesday, August 27th. A violin-toting melder of rock, funk, and other sounds, Andersson has made quite a splash in her adopted home, winning the Big Easy Award for the Crescent City’s best female artist this year and garnering a ton of press for her provocative set (she performed in a string bikini and body paint) at the city’s annual Jazz Festival. Also at the Deli this week, on Monday, August 25th, is roots-revival fave Deke Dickerson, a Columbia, Missouri, native and a swing and rockabilly guitarist par excellence.

As for locals, WEVL-FM finishes up their annual Blues on the Bluff series at the National Ornamental Metal Museum Saturday, August 23rd, with a string triumvirate of local blues stalwarts: Mississippi Morris, Daddy Mack, and Robert Belfour. And, finally, back at the Lounge, a diverse selection of local artists –folk-rockers Native Son, college-rockers Ingram Hill, plain-old-rock-and-roll-rockers The Subteens, and second-generation singer-songwriter Planet Swan — will join forces in a fund-raiser for local film production company Low Brow-HiJinx, which will be reshooting their debut full-length, The Fixer-Upper, later this year, with a soundtrack featuring all the above artists. — Chris Herrington

That crazy garage-rock sound is alive and well in Memphis, Tennessee, thanks in part to The Break-ups. Now there’s nothing particularly original about the Break-ups’ sound. This trio’s music follows the time-honored path of taking traditional 12-bar blues and tearing it apart with rock-and-roll. But this ferocious trio comes on strong, referencing leather boots, pretty mouths, and drunken mistakes along the way. On Friday, August 22nd, at Young Avenue Deli, the Break-ups will debut their first EP, the fuzzy, lo-fi rocker Break Yourself, an eight song collection that sounds like a cross between classic regional favorites like the Reatards and vintage White Animals. It’s impossible to listen to the bouncing, ever-danceable garage-pop of a Break-ups song like “You Got to Me” without being reminded of the White Animals in their heyday, when they were singing about things like leather boots, pretty mouths, and drunken mistakes. It’s good to hear a band like the Break-ups, who manage to bring on the pop and the punk in equal measures. They will be joined by St. Louis garage rockers Thee Lordly Serpents. —Chris Davis

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Making Light

The small downstairs art gallery at Christian Brothers University was packed this past Friday for the opening of “The Light Within,” a look back at the career of Burton Callicott, the artist and educator who has held Memphis in thrall since he first picked up his brushes eight decades ago. At the center of the crush sat the 95-year-old Callicott who, now confined to a wheelchair, shook hands and engaged in lively conversation about his life and long career as an artist in Memphis. Generations of Memphians, artists and admirers alike, stood stunned by both the man and this breathtaking sample of his extensive body of work.

“I knew it would be crowded,” says the U of M’s Patty Bladon Lawrence, who curated the show. “I think a lot of people were there because word had gotten out that there were going to be some [paintings] from the ’30s. There are very few of those around.” The paintings Lawrence mentions are a cracking pair of oils picturing shadowy, nocturnal landscapes. Road at Sunset, from 1934, takes as its subject matter the last rosy glow of the sun as it sinks beneath a pair of silhouetted trees. Moonlit Road, from 1936, is a brooding, moon-washed landscape in blue and green. In spite of their obvious subject matter, these paintings have very little to do with either trees or secluded byways. Just like his later, and certainly more famous, paintings, they are about the many tricks that light can play on the eye.

Lawrence has a history with Callicott. She was instrumental in the Brooks Museum of Art’s acquisition of Callicott’s preliminary sketches for the W.P.A.-funded Hernando de Soto murals, which are on display at the Pink Palace. This is also the second time that Lawrence has assembled a major collection of Callicott’s work for exhibition, the first being a lifetime retrospective at the Brooks in 1991.

“This show was not intended as a rebirth of that,” she says. “It was simply intended as a look back again at [Callicott’s] treatment of light. I wanted to point out once again how the body of work from the very earliest paintings on through his late work reflects the same vision, his sort of penetrating observation of nature and all of its light and dark aspects. To show that [even when the artist was working in his nonobjective] period — a time when there was very little recognition of nature in the works — those works still had a ground in nature.”

When Lawrence speaks of Callicott’s “nonobjective” work, she is generally referencing the color fields and rainbow patterns for which Callicott is most famous. Surprisingly enough, there are very few of these paintings collected for “The Light Within,” and the ones that are on display pale next to eerily luminescent landscapes and portraits of shadows rendered so perfectly an observer might believe that they were merely the unfortunate byproduct of a bad hang. More than one unschooled observer looking at Sun Print #5 turned around hoping to find the source of the leafy shadows only to discover they had been tricked by a master.

“We chose not to show [the rainbows],” Lawrence says. “Unfortunately, the rainbow has become such a signature. I think sometimes those sorts of signatures limit our ability to look at an artist, to look beyond things most easily recognized.” Rather than showing the artist’s best-known work, Lawrence chose to hang some pieces that have never been shown publicly: works forsaking the traditional mediums of oil and dry pigment. Lawrence has juxtaposed each painting with one of the painter’s poems.

“It’s a risky business matching words with these paintings,” says Lawrence, who was afraid that too many descriptive words might wreck the illusion. “But it’s not as if there is a painting on the wall and a person standing there telling you about the painting, and you want them to quit talking and let you look at it.”

Callicott’s verses read like entries from an artist’s private journal. They give the observer insight into the painter’s motivations without revealing his process. Next to Embrace #4, a painting of a yellow-boarded house wrapped by the shadow of a tree, there is a poem that reads, “The wide-spanning shadows/of all its branches fall/over roof and wall/is how (in case you wondered)/a tree can embrace a house.” According to Lawrence, the poem had not been written specifically for that painting. It just seemed to fit.

“The poems aren’t about a painting. They are all about his paintings,” she says. “Plural!”

“The Light Within: Paintings and Poems of Burton Callicott” is on display at the University Gallery at CBU through October 10th.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

20?/20!

The Memphis Theatre Awards were called into being by Memphis magazine and the Greater Memphis Arts Council in 1983, but the first award wasn’t handed out until 1984, which has led some to speculate that this year’s 20th-anniversary celebration is perhaps a bit premature. There have only been 19 ceremonies, right? Well, nitpick all you like, it’s been a full two decades since judges began fanning across the Bluff City looking to single out the shows and performances that set the standard for excellence in the dramatic arts.

In 2000, the awards were renamed the Ostrander Awards in honor of Jim Ostrander, arguably the most beloved actor to ever trod the Memphis boards. (Both Jim’s career and his life were cut tragically short by cancer in January 2002.) This name change was the first step in reinventing the awards, tailoring them to better reflect the community they honor. Between 2000 and today, a number of other changes have been made to improve the awards and to play up the fact that for local thespians this event is like a happy family reunion for one very large, very strange family. It is not intended to mark the end of a 20-year partnership but rather to celebrate the beginning of the next 20 years of live theater in Memphis.

With a new name, a new attitude, and a new location, this year’s Ostranders promise to outshine previous years while offering only a taste of things to come. The ceremony will be held on Sunday, August 24th, at the Memphis Botanic Garden. Local actresses and occasional cabaret duo Jenny Odle and Kim Justis will give a repeat performance as dueling emcees. Last year they won rave reviews for their original song, “I Want to Win an Ostrander.” Who knows what inspired silliness they have cooked up for this year’s bash? An educational ditty to help those assembled learn to count to 20, perhaps? In the spirit of irreverence, let’s hope so.

Now, with all due congratulations to all the nominees, let’s move on to the annual picks and pans.

It’s been a tough 12 months for this critic, who, having become the father of twins only days before last season’s awards ceremony, didn’t make it to every show this year. Still, having witnessed the bulk of the performances, I suspect I can peek into my Magic 8-Ball and pick the winners and losers with some degree of authority. There’s only one way to find out though, so here goes.

(Due to limited space, not all of the award categories are represented here.)

Musical: 42nd Street, Theatre Memphis (TM): missed it; Smokey Joe’s CafÇ, Playhouse on the Square (POTS): Great music and great singers don’t always add up to great theater. This narrative-free revue just isn’t a contender; The Fantasticks (TM): missed it; Ragtime, (POTS): Both 42nd Street and The Fantasticks had great buzz, but the epic Ragtime, based on E.L. Doctorow’s acclaimed novel, felt like a landmark event not soon to be forgotten. It’s my pick and I’m sticking to it.

Play: Copenhagen, Circuit Playhouse (CP): a shocker! They should have called it Boringhagen; Morning’s at Seven (TM): Missed it, but word has it this was the sleeper hit of the season. What a cast! Hamlet (TM): a beautiful, timeless production with stunning performances and a fantastic concept. But the role of Hamlet was, in the midst of all the wonderful subtlety, an over-the-top throwback to the days when actors wore pumpkin pants and recited every syllable like it might be their last — a killing flaw; Proof (POTS): awesome script, great cast. It’s a contender; Three Days of Rain (TM): a testament to ensemble acting. Kim Justis, Brian Mott, and Michael Gravois made this soap opera of a script something beyond special. If the Proof ain’t in the pudding, Three Days of Rain should win multiple awards, this one included.

Direction of a Musical: Barry Fuller, The Fantasticks (TM): Fuller seldom misses, and when he does, he misses with style. This could be the surprise winner; Mitzi Hamilton, 42nd Street (TM): glitz, glam, and good entertainment; Scott Ferguson, Bat Boy (POTS): a generally disappointing romp through supermarket tabloid culture. Not even on the radar; Kevin P. Hill, Smokey Joe’s Cafe (POTS): You’ve heard about snowballs and hell, right?; Dave Landis, Ragtime (POTS): By all laws of physics, this big show shouldn’t fit into Playhouse on the Square. But Landis made it fit beautifully. With Ragtime, harsh social commentary meets big entertainment. Landis is a shoo-in.

Direction of a Drama: Jasson Minadakis, Copenhagen (CP): What this director did to this great script is a crime. The judges must have gotten into the crack stash when they picked this stinker, generally stunk up by bad direction; Joanne Malin, Morning’s at Seven (TM): Malin is an attentive director and she had a dream cast. Could be a spoiler; Stephen Hancock, Three Days of Rain (TM): a perfect production but it won’t win this category; Rob Satterlee, Proof (POTS): You tell me; Bo List, Hamlet (TM): This was a director’s show, and List’s fingerprints were all over it. While the production was deeply flawed, this Hamlet still managed to make jaws drop. This trophy belongs to List.

Leading Actress in a Musical: Rebecca DeVries, Honk! (CP): nope; Misty Clark, 42nd Street (TM): maybe; Carla McDonald, Ragtime (POTS): She should be nominated for her turn as Patsy Cline; Leah Bray Nichols, Bat Boy (POTS): In the midst of an underwhelming production, Nichols shined like a new dime in a mud puddle. She gets my vote.

Leading Actor in a Musical: Jonathan Russom, The Fantasticks (TM): The red-headed boy wonder has skills but no trophy. There’s too much stiff competition; Kent Fleishman, 42nd Street (TM): It’s just not Fleishman’s year either; Michael Ingersoll, Bat Boy (POTS): This kid’s one to watch, but he was better in Honk!; Jordan Nichols, Honk! (CP): He’s talented and charismatic, but Honk! didn’t allow for much range; Michael Detroit, Ragtime (POTS): I sometimes have problems with the consistency of Detroit’s acting, but it’s getting better and he’s going home with the gold.

Leading Actress in a Drama: Irene Crist, The Lion in Winter (TM): so she was snarky; Mary Buchignani, Anton in Show Business (CP): Missed it, but Ms. B. rocks the house wherever she plays; Martha Graber, Pack of Lies, Germantown Community Theatre: The potboiler never boils, but the production was solid and Graber gave the performance of a lifetime; Kim Justis, Three Days of Rain (TM): Kimmy, Kimmy, Kimmy is there nothing you can’t do? You’re going to host the show AND win the big prize. That’s gotta feel good.

Leading Actor in a Drama: Dave Landis, Copenhagen (CP): the best performance in a totally misguided production. Landis will win this year, but not for Copenhagen; Christopher Swan, Fully Committed (CP): What a great performance! What a dreadful show! Swan might win on charisma alone. Doubt it; John Maness, Hamlet (TM): Ah, rewarding bad behavior, that’s what I like to see from our judges. This performance is a big black mark on Maness’ otherwise sterling rÇsumÇ. Excuse me, may I throw up a little?; And the co-winners will be: Brian Mott and Michael Gravois, Three Days of Rain (TM). Both were nominated and both will win.

Ensemble Acting: Copenhagen (POTS): Sometimes a show comes along that is so intellectual and deep that people feel not liking it will prove how shallow they are. That’s the only way I can explain all the nominations for this dreadful sleep-inducing piece of never mind; Morning’s at Seven (TM): can’t comment; Three Days of Rain (TM): The most perfectly realized production of the season. It can’t miss.

In the college and university division I suspect that the bulk of the nonmusical awards will go to Rhodes’ Hamlet, which was a revelation and in most ways superior to Theatre Memphis’ production. The University of Memphis’ Into the Woods is likely to sweep the awards for best musical.

But the greatest travesty of this year’s judging season is the fact that U of M’s masterful take on Jose Rivera’s Sueno received not a single nomination. Innovative in terms of both performance and design, this show was one of the most professionally realized productions to appear on a college or university stage since Rhodes produced Nicholas Nickleby in 1985. The fact that it wasn’t nominated in the best play category is a joke and the fact that it wasn’t given a nod for its spectacular design make me wonder if any of the theater judges bothered to check out this amazingly thought-provoking show based on the Spanish classic Life Is a Dream.