Month: October 2003

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Hand-Picked Audiences

To the Editor:

The attorney general of the United States has just given yet another speech to yet another closed audience of law-enforcement officials (Viewpoint, September 18th issue). Outside the hotel where he spoke, Nashvillians gathered in opposition to the government’s anti-civil-liberties initiatives.

Like many in this administration, Ashcroft has chosen to avoid speaking to the American people. Instead he prefers to speak only to hand-picked audiences, thus creating the illusion of agreement and consensus. But across this country Americans are learning about the U.S.A. Patriot Act and concluding that it goes too far. Congress is coming to the same conclusion. But Ashcroft does not seem to care what we, the people, think. Instead he is on a taxpayer-financed, closed-to-the-public “public relations” road show to defend a flawed product.

The Patriot Act has come under increasing criticism, not only from the ACLU but from Congress as well. Most recently, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 309 to 118 to repeal one of the more egregious parts of the Patriot Act — the “sneak and peek” provision which allows law enforcement to search a home without telling the targeted individual.

On July 30th, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a provision that vastly expands the power of FBI agents to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of innocent people in the United States, including citizens and permanent residents. Since then, Attorney General Ashcroft has launched a multi-city public relations road show promoting the controversial Patriot Act.

One of our primary concerns with the tour is that it appears to be designed to prop up other politically ailing legislative initiatives, including the act’s expansive sequel known as Patriot 2. Significantly, lawmakers and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum, including conservative mainstays like the American Conservative Union and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, oppose this legislation.

Americans are responding to the ever-growing list of examples of civil-liberties abuses in the post-9/11 fight against terrorism:

The June Department of Justice inspector general’s report detailed widespread and systematic abuses of hundreds of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men detained in the weeks after 9/11. The report showed that, even though the men were found to have no connection whatsoever to the attacks on September 11th, they were held for extreme amounts of time under a quasi-official “no-bond, no-lawyers” policy. Although the Justice Department’s response has been a pat “we did nothing illegal,” it’s clear that most of the detainees were held on pretextual immigration violations such as an expired visa or incomplete paperwork.

The proposed neighbor-spying-on-neighbor program called Operation TIPS would have recruited Americans — such as cable-repair persons and postal workers whose jobs grant them easy access to our homes — as government informers charged with reporting “suspicious activity” to a dedicated tips hotline.

The initiative at the DOJ to force local and state police to enforce immigration laws is a plan opposed by law-enforcement officials themselves.

Across America, more than 160 communities, including three states, have passed resolutions against provisions of the Patriot Act and other aspects of the attorney general’s domestic “war on terrorism” that undermine civil liberties without making the public safer. Resolution movements are cropping up everywhere, from the East Coast to the West Coast and from the heartland to the South. In Tennessee, coalitions are now forming across the state to promote these resolutions.

Mr. Ashcroft, Americans want to be safe, but we also want — and deserve — to be free.

Hedy Weinberg

Executive Director

American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee/Nashville

Resign

To the Editor:

Thank you for your editorial and Mike Niblock’s cartoon regarding Bush’s speech to the U.N. (September 25th issue). As you noted, the moderating hand of Colin Powell was evident in those remarks; but clearly, the president did not go far enough.

If Bush wants to convince the rest of the world that he is sincere, he’ll have to apologize for the boneheaded decision he made to start a preemptive war in the first place, along with the subsequent boneheaded decisions that led to the current quagmire in Iraq. Now if Bush and Cheney would just resign, that would be a step in the right direction.

B. Keith English

Memphis

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Beat

I got my radio on: Thanks to WMBZ-FM 94.1 The Buzz, hard-rock fans have a new reason to bang their heads. DJ Renn Wilson, host of the Saturday night Homegrown program, has launched the Homegrown Local Music Showcase at Newby’s on the Highland Strip.

“I started doing the radio show in January, and we got such a huge response from listeners that the decision to do the showcase was easy,” Wilson explains. “Bands like Sammy’s Good Eye, Mr. Peeplez, and Leroy Star are always working hard to make things happen. With their help, the show has really taken off.”

A 13-year radio veteran, Wilson managed bands and promoted concerts in his native North Carolina and in Atlantic City, New Jersey, before coming south. “I worked with bands like Ben Folds Five and Hootie & the Blowfish in a scene that was comparable to Memphis,” he says. “There’s a lot of talent in this town, and it’s just a matter of time before the major labels take notice.”

Wilson recalls one memorable night in Atlantic City, when Saliva played a show with Nickelback and Default. “Saliva blew everybody away,” he says, “and once I came to Memphis I realized why. Most Jersey groups are cover bands, but Memphis is definitely a real music town.”

Upcoming showcases will feature Leroy Star with Starliner (October 7th), Michael Tolcher (October 14th), Mr. Peeplez with The Nina Makris Band (October 21st), and Sammy’s Good Eye with Slamhound (October 28th). Two bucks will get you in the door, with burgers and drinks costing a deuce apiece — and don’t forget to tune into the Buzz on Saturday nights at 9 p.m. for a preview of the headliners.

“Any local musician has a fair opportunity to get involved,” Wilson says. “Just send in a CD that’s broadcast-quality.” Citing such disparate Memphis talents as Cory Branan, Retrospect, Ingram Hill, Scott Sudbury, and Crash Into June, Wilson adds that “there are a lot of bands here who could really go places.” To get your group on the air — or to become a part of Wilson’s behind-the-scenes street team — go to VenuePromotions.com or 941TheBuzz.com.

Further down the FM dial, the sound isn’t nearly as sweet: WUMR-FM 91.7, the University of Memphis jazz station, is in a precarious financial position. The 25,000-watt station — known around town as “The Jazz Lover” — held its first radiothon last week in an effort to create a salaried position for a programming director.

WUMR broadcasts a blend of traditional and contemporary jazz, Latin, and new-age music alongside educational, sports, and community-service programming. According to Dr. Bob McConnell, the station’s general manager and an associate professor at the U of M, WUMR serves as “a training lab for students, providing hands-on experience in announcing, news reporting and writing, talk-show hosting, and sportscasting.”

McConnell primarily serves as adviser to WUMR, “making sure the station adheres to FCC rules and regulations. We need someone who can come down and work at the station full time,” he says. “A lot of students aren’t that familiar with jazz. We have to teach them what fits the format.”

So why is WUMR a jazz station? “That decision was made before my time,” McConnell, an avowed fan of Dinah Washington and Duke Ellington, confesses. “When the station was formed in 1979, we knew we had to fill a particular void and educate students and general listeners. The format ties into a jazz program in the music department taught by Dr. Jack Cooper.”

“The state has drastically cut university budgets,” McConnell continues, “and we were hit with a $7 million cut. When we decided to create the [programming-director] position, we realized we’d have to create our own funds.” The station, which collected $10,000 in an earlier fund-raiser, has already reached $8,800 with its radiothon. “The climate for jazz is good in Memphis right now,” McConnell says, citing club openings and local heroes like Kirk Whalum. “We’re just doing whatever we can to enhance the interest in America’s original art form.” Supporters can send tax-deductible donations to WUMR, c/o Department of Communications at the University of Memphis.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Get Lost

For her second feature film, the wistful Lost in Translation, director Sofia Coppola takes actors and character types from two of the best American films of the past few years — Bill Murray’s successful sad clown from Rushmore and Scarlett Johansson’s sensible left-of-center young woman from Ghost World — and plops them together in Tokyo for a few days.

Both are jet-lagged and sleep-deprived. Murray’s Bob Harris is a Hollywood action star (think Bruce Willis) in Japan to pick up a few million for endorsing a brand of whiskey, and Johansson’s Charlotte is a recent Ivy League grad tagging along with her on-assignment celebrity photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi). They strike up a hotel friendship based on a few crucial commonalities. For starters, they’re each dissatisfied with their professional and domestic lives. Bob wonders why he’s in Tokyo filming commercials when he could be doing a play somewhere, and he communicates via cell phone and fax with his all-business wife, who is at home taking care of the kids and redecorating Bob’s study. Charlotte isn’t sure what her future holds. She’s a philosophy major and writer, though she doesn’t like what she writes and she seems increasingly estranged from her husband.

Bob and Charlotte are also both observational types who click over their shared bemusement at the oddness of their surroundings: They first connect when their eyes meet (and roll) across the hotel bar as an American singer warbles her way through “Scarborough Fair.” Their friendship and mutual dissatisfaction established, Bob suggests they organize a “prison break,” and the two end up entertaining each other for the next few days.

Lost in Translation is a film short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with life and nuance and emotion. There are sight gags galore (Murray in the hotel elevator, towering over his Japanese companions; his visual otherness from Japanese culture a constant sight gag as alienation effect), bits of slapstick (Murray on the hotel stair-climber), and constant appreciative amusement at the cultural misunderstandings that these two fish-out-of-water encounter. (“Why do they switch their “r”s and “l”s here?” Charlotte asks. “For yuks,” Bob responds, dryly.)

As natural and affecting as Johansson is, this is Murray’s movie, his strongest lead role since Groundhog Day. And, though Coppola is credited with writing the film, one imagines Murray must have crafted a lot of his own material, especially in relation to Bob’s stoic bemusement at his place in the Japanese pop-culture machine: appearing on a chaotic talk show with “the Japanese Johnny Carson” or bantering with a photographer who keeps demanding more American cool from him — more “007” (Roger Moore, not Sean Connery) and “Lat Pack.” (“You want, like, Joey Bishop?” Bob asks, amusing himself even if the reference sails past the photographer.)

But at the heart of the film are Bob and Charlotte’s nighttime romps through Tokyo, scenes which earn Lost in Translation a place in a small but fertile movie subgenre critic Jonathan Rosenbaum once dubbed “City as Plaything,” a romantic genre that, from L’Atalante to Before Sunrise to The Lovers on the Bridge, has had romantic meet-cutes play amid great, sprawling urban backdrops. And Lost in Translation finds considerable poetry in Tokyo’s peculiar clash of the solemnly ancient and breathlessly modern — old customs mingling with animÇ-inspired video games, the towering Mt. Fuji juxtaposed with the equally breathtaking neon mountains of downtown Tokyo.

The film’s centerpiece is one long night of clubbing that finds Bob and Charlotte exploring streets, bars, restaurants, arcades, and, most memorably, a karaoke club, where their Japanese host tackles “God Save the Queen” and Murray takes a spirited stab at “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding.”

But where all other “City as Plaything” movies are straight-up romances, Lost in Translation is something a little different. Bob and Charlotte’s May-December relationship is a more precarious and more complicated thing than that, sexual tension subsumed by late nights of sake and television and conversation, their negotiations sometimes resembling courtship and sometimes plainly avuncular. What Coppola seems to be going for here is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance (notice the nearly imperceptible moment in Charlotte’s hotel room when Bob reaches down to chastely squeeze her foot).

Lost in Translation is, befitting its title, a film that tracks the ineffable, exploring the contours of unexpressed feelings. The viewer may never be sure how much these two people, at two very different stages in life, actually care for each other and how much they merely serve as stand-ins for each other’s sense of lost possibilities, but that mystery feels appropriate and it’s underscored by the film’s magnificent ending, where the audience is not allowed to hear these characters’ parting words.

All of this complication and magic and longing is embodied in the film’s seemingly tossed-off, spontaneous-feeling karaoke centerpiece. Charlotte, wearing a hot-pink wig, does a seductive take on the Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket,” her self-conscious mimicry of the song’s come-on perhaps a mask for the real thing. Bob tops her, and steals the movie, with a movingly tone-deaf rendition of Roxy Music’s “More Than This”: “It was fun for a while/There was no way of knowing/Like a dream in the night/Who can say where we’re going?”

With this film, following a strong debut with The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola establishes herself as one of America’s most talented young filmmakers. She does her dad, Francis, proud, but she’s nothing like him. Her age, her relative distance from the old studio style, and, most of all, her gender result in a style less plot-driven, less action-oriented, more spontaneous, and, as Lost in Translation testifies, tender as the night.

— Chris Herrington

Categories
Music Music Features

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Inspired by This Is Spinal Tap, the rotating drummer has become part of rock-and-roll lore, but for Lucero the past year has been a carousel of guitar players instead. It all started last winter when founding member and guitarist Brian Venable called it quits.

“Brian just got sick of the road and sick of touring and wanted to stay home,” says singer-songwriter Ben Nichols. “It was like making a little kid get up and go to school. It wasn’t a bad split or anything — I just thought, well, hell, I guess we’ll be able to try something a little different now. There was never any thought of calling it quits.”

Reduced to a three-piece of Nichols, drummer Roy Berry, and bass player John Stubblefield, the band initially recruited Stubblefield’s old Big Ass Truck bandmate Steve Selvidge, who went on a couple of short tours with the band and seemed like a potential permanent replacement.

Selvidge has gone on to join David Shouse’s Bloodthirsty Lovers, a better fit, and Lucero found their answer in the form of Todd Gill, a member of the Little Rock band the Paper Hearts who joined up with Lucero this spring to play with the band at Austin’s South by Southwest music festival. What Gill had originally planned as only a couple of months of helping Lucero out has since turned into a full-time gig.

Nichols says it was an easy transition: “Todd and Brian have a similar ear for melody and sort of a similar style, but Todd’s a little tighter.”

Gill was in place in time to record the band’s third full-length record, That Much Further West. But he wasn’t the end of the band’s guitar experimentation in the wake of Venable’s exit. The band also worked some with local singer-songwriter John Murry, who ended up adding some memorable guitar parts to one song on the new record.

“He plays on ‘Hate and Jealousy,'” Nichols says. “He plays this crazy rock-and-roll solo that I don’t think either Todd or I could do. It’s just a different type of guitar-playing than what anyone in Lucero’s ever been able to do. In the past we’d bring in Luther or Cody [Dickinson] for that kind of stuff, but this time we had John Murry. I would have had him on more of the record, but there wasn’t time.”

But a new guitarist isn’t the only significant change for Lucero on That Much Further West. The record also marks the band’s departure from local label MADJACK, which released the band’s first two records, and debut for New York-based indie/punk label Tiger Style.

Lucero made the decision to sign with Tiger Style — whose roster has boasted bands such as Rye Coalition, Ida, and American Analog Set — around the time of South by Southwest, and Nichols says the move has been good for the band.

“They’re extremely organized and they put out plenty of records and they know what they’re doing,” Nichols says. “They’re really on top of press and radio and retail. I think we’ll probably get a little more attention just because there are people out there that listen to Tiger Style bands who’ll check us out who might not otherwise.”

But Nichols says that the band harbors no regrets about their stint with MADJACK. “They were the only ones who wanted to put out our record,” Nichols says. “Yeah, there were differences, but it was good for us. I think [moving from MADJACK to Tiger Style] was a very natural progression.”

Though the band’s local release show for That Much Further West is Saturday at Young Avenue Deli, Tiger Style is giving the band a New York send-off this week. After getting into Memphis last Sunday off tour, the band flew out Monday for a three-day blitz that will include a listening party at the Chelsea Hotel, a record-release show at a club called the Pussycat Lounge, and a “press day.” (“I have no clue what that means,” Nichols admits.)

In addition to a new guitarist and new label, the third change for Lucero this time around was producing the record themselves after working with the North Mississippi Allstars’ Cody Dickinson on the first two records.

“It was just time to do something different,” Nichols says. “It was fun and I really liked the feedback we got from [the Dickinsons] and I was really curious to see how they did stuff, but I wanted to record this record the same way I did my four-track demos in Little Rock, in the back room at my parents’ furniture store where I write most of the songs.”

To that end, the band self-produced That Much Further West in May at a Madison Avenue practice space and recording studio owned by local musician Chris Scott. The result is an album perhaps less dynamic than the band’s previous efforts, and certainly less produced than last year’s Tennessee, but it communicates the band’s rough, sincere charms as effectively as anything else they’ve done.

The album really finds its legs in the second half, when “Hate and Jealousy” interrupts a string of slower songs. “Tonight Ain’t Gonna Be Good” pushes the tempo even more, and then the album peaks with one of the band’s finest moments, “Tears Don’t Matter Much,” a warm, anthemic tribute to three of Nichols’ musician friends –Arkansans Matt Bradley and Doug Deluca and Memphis’ own Cory Branan. The song’s refrain –“I’m just another Southern boy who dreams of nights in NYC” –would seem to be inspired by Lucero’s regular New York sojourns, but Nichols says that it really comes from Bradley. “I’d decided to write this song about guys back home who I really liked and Matt has this record out with a song called ‘Just Another Southern Boy Who Dreams of Nights in New York City’ and I flat-out stole it from him.”

Lucky record buyers –including those who pick up their copies of That Much Further West at the Deli this week –can hear the song done in an almost synth-pop demo version on a bonus disc of alternate takes Tiger Style has included in roughly 2,000 initial pressings of the record. The bonus disc also includes an “’80s rock” version of “Across the River” recorded with Selvidge.

“Tiger Style’s idea was to think of ways to give people more reasons to buy the record,” Nichols says. “And I’m glad, because I’m never 100 percent satisfied with anything I do and so this way we kind of get two shots at it. If you don’t like the album version, maybe you’ll like the bonus version. I figure some people will even take the two discs and burn their own version of the record.”

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

A Proper Challenger

Memphis mayoral candidate John Willingham likes to tell the story of how various people called him up during the week before the filing deadline for this year’s city election and asked him about rumors that he intended to run for mayor against Willie Herenton, whom almost everybody regarded as the inevitable winner of another term.

“Not today,” Willingham says he answered. And he kept a tight lip right up until the filing deadline itself, when he showed up with a hastily signed petition bearing the requisite number of names. One of the signees was definitely not Kemp Conrad, the local Republican Party chairman who tried to discourage Willingham, a first-term maverick Shelby County commissioner, from running for mayor — at least under Republican auspices — and, for his pains, has emerged as the latest named member of what Willingham considers a “good old boy” network.

It is a network that, as Willingham sees it, stretches back in time through last year’s U.S. Senate election and the two-term administration of former Shelby County mayor Jim Rout and in space to the burgeoning developments of outer Shelby County and the FedExForum that is even now materializing in the nether regions of downtown Memphis.

Conrad’s role in the scheme of things, according to Willingham, was to have brokered Herenton’s endorsement of ultimate Senate winner Lamar Alexander, in return for which — well, it gets sticky right in there, but Rout and his developer friends are allegedly involved, as was the former county mayor’s son Rick Rout, the ex-Young Republican chief who failed to back George Flinn for county mayor last year, as is Flinn himself in an indirect sense, in that pressure was supposedly brought on the physician/businessman by Conrad and others to seek a City Council seat instead of challenging Herenton for mayor this year, because, well

Not that there isn’t a certain logic to these speculations, but only Willingham and a few intimates can follow all the turns and convolutions of them. “Conspiracy theorist,” sniffs Conrad disdainfully. It is a sentiment that is echoed elsewhere in the bailiwick of conventional Republicanism, one of whose exemplars, fellow Commissioner David Lillard, was provoked to tell Willingham during a committee meeting: “You can’t find a snake everywhere, commissioner, even though you’re a professional in that field!”

Lillard’s exasperation was over Willingham’s questioning of the financing arrangements for construction of the soon-to-be Arlington-area high school. Republican Willingham, a de facto ally of several Democrats on the commission, was leery of the project, which depended on approval of an innovative rural school bonds formula, until its potential costs could be reduced and made more accountable.

Eventually, all of that got done — sort of — and for all his vexing of colleagues and county school advocates, Willingham arguably served the public interest.

Likewise with Willingham’s proposal that the commission look into the retrofitting of The Pyramid as a casino for a future in which the U of M Tigers are likely to abscond for quarters alongside the NBA’s Grizzlies in the new FedExForum. The commissioner, who often seems to hear drums that others don’t, eventually had a majority of his colleagues moving enough to his beat so as to get a formal study of the idea approved.

Whether the considerable legal and moral objections to the idea are overcome or not, some movement toward resolving The Pyramid dilemma was the result.

The commissioner’s determined scrutiny of FedExForum arrangements may yet bear fruit also; if nothing else, a committee approved by the commission at Willingham’s insistence may force a closer public scrutiny of what he insists was a sweetheart deal in which the county was stampeded into conceding too much control — of proceeds and of other local facilities’ wherewithal — to Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley.

“The next thing we have to look out for is the riverfront,” warns Willingham, who sees a current blueprint for redevelopment of that area, one approved by incumbent Herenton, to be loaded with similar snares. In concerns like these he is joined by another mayoral candidate, Beale Street entrepreneur Randle Catron, who also worries about potential cost overruns at the new arena and other projects favored by the incumbent mayor.

The two challengers believe — against the evidence of various polls — that there is an untapped opposition to the mayor, both in the white community and the now-dominant African-American population of Memphis. Willingham and his supporters never tire of boasting that, in the words of supporter Shirley Herrington, “we’ve got more yard signs in South Memphis than East Memphis.”

Whether or not this is actually the case, Willingham is consciously directing his appeals — like his somewhat unpredictable votes on the commission — to a mixed audience. Lost in some of the confusion over his various charges is the fact that he and Herenton agree on much, including the need for city/county consolidation.

The commissioner may be an eccentric, but he is no fool. Once an administrator in Richard Nixon’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, he is an engineer and inventor with several patents to his credit. And he does more than cry the alarm, having unveiled a grandiose proposal — still to be pursued before the commission, or, if the unimaginable should happen, with his future mayoral constituents — for using a precast mold methodology that would simultaneously govern most future countywide construction, give county prisoners useful employment, and hold down the costs of creating new schools.

It may be pie in the sky, but John Willingham is ready to ladle it out, if and when enough voters pay attention and credit his vision. Depending on the vantage point, that prospect is either breathtaking or one that should not occasion anyone’s holding their breath.

But try to imagine what the current mayoral race — nay, the current city election — would look like if Willingham, who once delivered a campaign speech shirtless and doffed his shirt again, John L. Sullivan-style, for the Flyer‘s cameras, had not launched his somewhat Quixotic bid. It would be a desultory coronation affair, with Herenton’s only challenges coming from the likes of the game but outmatched Catron and of also-rans like Walter Payne and Mary Taylor Shelby and the all-too-forgettable Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges.

Willingham has at least livened things up, and — as has been the case with various other initiatives of his — more may come of his bid than first meets the eye.

OTHER RACES:

(Runoffs are a possibility in multi-candidate races for city council districts 1 through 7; pluralities win in super-districts 8 and 9, the former predominantly black, the latter predominantly white.)

CITY COUNCIL (District 1): Eenie, meanie . Perhaps the most difficult race to evaluate of any on the Memphis city ballot is this one for the newly configured District 1, which has expanded eastward from the bailiwick of incumbent E.C. Jones to take in a sprawling mass of new territory in newly annexed Cordova, home base of Jones main challenger, Republican endorsee Wyatt Bunker, who is leaving his county school board seat just as it becomes obsolete. Some would say Jones, an old pro with a constituent-service rep, has worked his new turf well enough to go with an assumed healthy margin in the old Frayser/Raleigh portion. Others say that social-conservative Bunker commands the loyalty of his fellow transplants and is doing useful stealth work in Jones end of the district. Nobody quite knows what to make of W. B. Yates, the only African-American candidate and an unknown whom the Jones people suspect of being a ringer who is there only to drain off some of the incumbent s Democratic vote.

Bunker is deluging the district with flyers which attack Jones as Soft on Topless Zoning and stress crime control and education as issues, while Jones is hitting the phone banks and preparing to flaunt his support by such worthies as former Mayor Dick Hackett and GOP State Rep. Joe Kent (Jones former police partner). Both men promise to pinch the public penny.

CITY COUNCIL (District 2); Incumbent Brent Taylor is unopposed for this Corvova/East Mememphis seat..

CITY COUNCIL (District 3): Incumbent TaJuan Stout-Mitchell\ is unopposed in this Whitehaven-based district..

CITY COUNCIL (District 4): Just in case that truck comes through Long-term incumbent Janet Hooks, wife of a county commissioner and mother of a school board member, is about as well-ensconced and invulnerable as anybody else now serving in any office anywhere. Her service in the family real-estate-appraising business and her discriminating votes on development issues have made her a swing voter in zoning cases, and, though an under-financed field of unknowns Debra Brooks, Rex Hamilton, and Gregory Mcvay Lawrence are making the old college try, their earnest efforts rate about the same odds of success as if they had bought lottery tickets and were looking to get rich.

CITY COUNCIL (District 5): Three-card monte. The only thing certain about this five-fold race is that Kerry White, the fifth wheel and a no-show as far as public campaigning is concerned, will fold. Ditto with under-financed Mark Follis, an arborist and political newcomer who has tried valiantly to make virtue of necessity, boasting that he won t accept money from anybody, neither wicked developer nor John Q. Public. The plucky Follis, however, is short on issues as well as on bucks. The winner will be one of three candidates: State Representative Carol Chumney, who started out with most name recognition and has several endorsements and has campaigned unevenly but tirelessly; physician/businessman George Flinn, who has avoided the negativity that his hired out-of-state handlers saddled him with during his long-odds campaign for county mayor last year; or Jim Strickland, a youthful political veteran and former Democratic Party chairman who has good entrees in moderate Republican circles as well. With her center-to-left base, Chumney was the only candidate who might have won the seat — an open one vacated by long-term maverick incumbent John Vergos outright. But Flinn has an anchor on the right side of the spectrum, and Strickland, who raised good money early and was endorsed by Vergos and the Commercial Appeal, has been running an effective campaign. Late spending should give Flinn and Strickland more visibility, and one of them will probably vie with Chumney in a runoff.

CITY COUNCIL (District 6): How many models are there in this fleet? Funeral director Edmund Ford succeeded brother Joe Ford in this South Memphis seat when the latter (now a county commissioner) made an unsuccessful run for mayor in 1999, and, unless another model Ford comes along to challenge him, should have the lane to himself for years to come.. Opponent Albert Banks III is an unknown with no such dynastic connections, and Perry Steele, though he s been around for a while politically, has yet to get on track.

CITY COUNCIL (District 7): The X Factor. Sometime radio talk-show guy Jennings Bernard can give incumbent Barbara Swearengen Holt a bad time if it turns out he has raised some money. That very much remains to be seen, however. Holt fairly easily survived a challenge four years ago from veteran broker/pol Jerry Hall.

CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 1): One for a match. Once the protÇgÇ of fellow councilman Rickey Peete, incumbent Joe Brown is a reliable enough champion of such populist issues as Prevailing-Wage labor agreements that he can call in his own IOUs.The efforts if gis challenger, University of Memphis student Beverly Jones Farmer, best be gauged by her politically incorrect (but no doubt economical) use of matchbook to advertise her candidacy. Like most outs running against ins, Farmer condemns the pernicious influence of developers and, somewhat intriguingly, recommends a task force to implement social, spiritual, and economic opportunities for the hopeless. (Question: which of us does that leave out?)

CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 2): Fighting fire with fire. As previously noted, challenger James Robinson, once upon a time a spokesman for Memphis Housing Authority residents, has attempted to use incumbent Rickey Peete s past brush with the law (on an extortion conviction) against him, but Robinson has had his own legal problems (misappropriation of funds while on the MHA council). Moreover, Peete s real skills as legislator and conciliator have earned him respect both in the community and among his council peers. Unless Robinson turns up to have raised some significant money late, this is a case of Peete and Re-Peete.

CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 3): CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 3): Once again, how many models in this fleet? Sir Isaac Ford (yes, that s his real name) is a member of the well-known local political family and is making his second try for public office. His first real one, actually, since he dropped out of last year s race for Shelby County mayor after a trial run of sorts. Other differences between this year and last year: (1) He has the active support this time around of his legendary forebear, former congressman Harold Ford Sr.; (2) He calls for revitalizing the community and expanding the tax base rather than for the kind of ambitious socialistic-capitalistic platform (including reparations for slavery and other unusual measures) that he set forth in a series of position papers last year.

Even so, Ford will be hard put to unseat Lowery, who is about as thoroughly ensconced in his seat as any incumbent this season and, in the course of his three terms, has managed to build solid bridges to most sectors of his far-flung district. Lowery is a champion of city/county consolidation in a district where there is minimal resistance to that idea.

CITY COUNCIL (District 9, Position 1): Too many cooks spoil the purge attept.Yes, it s probably true, as all of incumbent Pat VanderSchaaf s opponents assumed, that she was vulnerable this year because of a relatively recent shoplifting incident; because of name-association with ex-husband Clair, himself cast off the Shelby County commission last year after a D.U.I. conviction and other problems; because of having been around so long as to qualify for any generalized turn-out-the-rascals sentiment that might be simmering.

But being an incumbent for 28 years has its advantages, too, and VanderSchaaf has cast her net wide and rallied an influential group of supporters (example: former county mayor Bill Morris, who testifies for her in a widely seen TV commercial). And she is talented enough at mathematics to imagine the distribution and dispersal — of her potential anti vote amongst the several opponents who will likely cancel each other yet as they claim their separate shares of it. This, like other super-district races, is winner-take-all, no run-off, and VanderSchaaf has a better-than-even chance to get a plurality.

That s partly because businessman (and onetime city attorney) Lester Lit has come out of relative anonymity to run an impressive race (getting the Commercial Apepal endorsement certified him as a bona fide contender), which means that fellow businessman Scott McCormick, making his third try for public office, may not find the Republican Party endorsement to be the self-sufficient bonus he once thought it was, especially since Don Murphree will peel away votes in the suburbs and the ever-dogged Arnold Weiner will claim his portion of the GOP vote.. Ex-Marine, ex-school board veteran Jim Brown is deserving but has been forced by limited means to run much too low-profile a race .

CITY COUNCIL (District 9, Position 2): Cart Before the Horse Award to Tiffany Lowe, the previously unknown challenger to incumbent Tom Marshall for running full-out, with a blizzard of signs mainly in public right-of-way areas before she could even assure herself of legal standing to run. Lowe, it turned out famously, is a convicted felon who has not bothered, as other such candidates have in this and other years, to petition for the legal restoration of her rights.. Campaign manager Jerry Hall, ever a would-be broker, displayed his usual energetic flair but might have done some advance checking himself.

Considering veteran Marshall s assumed inassailability in a super-district which favors him demographically, one has to wonder why the effort was made at all.

CITY COUNCIL (District 9, Position 3): Brother, can you spare a dime? A nickel? Well-financed veteran council incumbent Jack Sammons has not campaigned much, and he hasn t had to, despite the fact that he has an articulate opponent in energy analyst Henry Nickell, who has been a fixture at the forums Sammons has skipped, discoursing on the sins of special interest and developers and making proposals for public-debt control that are probably worth listening to. Nickell s chances would be better if Sammons didn t own something of a Mr. Clean reputation in his own right.

CITY COURT CLERK: Does this man have an elephant s memory? Armed with the endorsement of the Commecial Appeal and the mantle of incumbency, clerk Thomas Long has proved a hard target for his most active opponent, former radio personality Janis Fullilove, whose chances are both boosted and retarded by her former career path as an over-the-top radio talk-show jock; and Betty Boyette, a former administrator in the clerk s office who has been plagued by a dearth of money and by lack of organized support from her fellow Republicans.

One reason for the latter circumstance was suggested early on by Fullilove, who appealed to Democrats by accusing Long of Republican loyalties. The incumbent denied that vehemently, but in a recent appearance before the crowd at District Attorney General Bill Gibbons annual fish-fry fundraiser, paid special tribute to early political mentors Gibbons, lawyer John Ryder, and activist Annabel Woodall all card-carying GOPers.

MEMPHIS SCHOOL BOARD (District 1): The special-election contest for the seat left vacant by the death of Dr. Lee Brown, the incumbent, was initially expected to follow the outlines of the race for city council in the same, recently enlarged district. In that one, a white Democrat with a history of support in the working-class neighborhoods of Frayser and Raleigh is opposed by a white, socially conservative Republican from newly annexed Cordova. No whites in the school board race at all, however which fact could be a de facto courtesy nod to the across-the-board constituency of the well-liked Brown, an African American.

Lawyer Jay Bailey (or J.Bailey, as he signs himself these days) is the odds-on favorite, as the son of powerful Shelby County Commission member Walter Bailey, a Democrat, and as a candidate who can also boast public support also from the likes of Shelby County Trustee Bob Patterson, a Republican. His major opposition is from FedEx administrator Willie Brooks, who has support from such plugged-in types as Commissioner Deidre Malone and veteran lobbyist/pol Calvin Anderson. Also running are college students Reginald Bernard and Stephanie Gatewood and school counselor Anthony Clear.

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Back in the post-Nirvana early ’90s, Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando became an alt-rock sex symbol, a rising star who disappeared for nearly a decade, reportedly as the result of a pretty bad drug problem. But now he’s back, with his first solo album, Baby I’m Bored, and a new lease on life. Dando’s rootsy alt-rock sound hasn’t changed much, though the times have. You can see how his music holds up this week at Newby’s, Sunday, October 5th. Dando will be joined by New Jersey’s The Love Scene, frequent Lucero tourmates whose strong rootsy rock sounds a bit like the local boys on their debut EP, Blood Is the New Black.

Chicago’s Trans Am headline the Hi-Tone Café Saturday, October 4th, but here’s betting that New York’s electroclash A.R.E. Weapons will be a lot more fun. Boston’s lovably mopey The Movies will get things started.

Nashville’s Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, whose colorfully over-the-top mix of country, blues, and rockabilly evokes the likes of Rev. Horton Heat and Southern Culture on the Skids, will attempt to turn the Hi-Tone Café into an old-time tent show Sunday, October 5th.

Papa M is the musical nom de plume of David Pajo, an indie-rock cult figure who was a founding member of Slint and has also played with Tortoise, Royal Trux, and Stereolab, but who features slow, semi-bluesy songcraft on his latest record, “Whatever, Mortal”. Pajo will be backed up on the road by members of Zwan and A Perfect Circle. Joining Papa M at Young Avenue Deli Tuesday, October 7th, is Entrance, another indie-rock solo act doing the blues bit. In this case it’s Guy Blakeslee, formerly the bassist for Baltimore noise band the Convocation Of, who turns in an acoustic psych-blues ramble on his album The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken By Storm!.

Joining Clem Snide at the Hi-Tone Café Wednesday, October 8th, is Califone, a Chicago band whose atmospheric Americana landed them on tour with Wilco recently. Spun off from beloved indie blues band Red Red Meat, Califone is experimental where most roots bands are conservative, their playful percussive sound meant to rattle rather than soothe –kind of like if Timbaland were raised on nothing but field recordings. The highlight of the band’s fine new album, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes, is a song called “When Leon Spinx Moved into Town,” which manages to be a metaphor for the singer’s sex life. — Chris Herrington

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We Recommend We Recommend

God Save Neal Pollack

I don’t address those questions anymore,” says Neal Pollack, sounding genuinely peeved. But I couldn’t just let the despised line of inquiry drop so easily. In spite of nearly incontrovertible proof that Pollack is a real guy, a first-order satirist, and a brutally funny political columnist able to turn words into blunt, hurtful objects adorned with rusty spikes and razor-wire, rumors still circulate.

“I was born in Memphis,” Pollack offers. “I remember standing out on the high dive at the Jewish Community Center.” Sure he does. No man who can sing with such conviction about a dwarf juggling dildoes in Times Square could really have his roots in the Mid-South. Could they? He’s clearly a deceiver.

Pollack first came to the attention of the literati as a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the brilliant (if cleverer-than-thou) literary magazine operated by A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius author Dave Eggers. As McSweeney’s has been known to play around with identity and the thin line separating fact and fancy, readers began to question Pollack’s true identity. Now, as he is preparing to embark on a tour promoting his new book Never Mind the Pollacks (HarperCollins), a fictional history of rock-and-roll from Memphis in the 1950s to Seattle in the 1990s, which, along with its accompanying CD, spoofs Robert Gordon’s It Came from Memphis and virtually every other rock history ever penned, it’s only fitting that the truth be known. Is he author or rock star? Is he the figment of a better writer’s imagination or is that alleged “better writer” merely the figment of his? And does anybody really care so long as he keeps making with the funny?

“Look,” I pressed, “you’ve got a kid now, and someday you are going to have to explain to him that his daddy doesn’t really exist: that his daddy is really Mr. McSweeney pretending to be Neal Pollack. Or vice versa. You’re going to have to tell the kid that sometimes things aren’t what they seem to be.”

There was a moment of silence. The very real man who can spoof Hemingway and Mailer with such ease was about to get very mad at me. So I came clean and admitted that I was only baiting him in hopes of releasing the over-the-top self-righteousness that is the hallmark of Pollack’s satire. This said, the serious questioning can begin outright.

Flyer: So, Neal, I’ve heard you sing about it but have you ever really wiped your behind with someone else’s novel? I don’t think novels are as absorbent as you seem to think they are.

Neal Pollack: Well, um, no, but they do have a lot of pages.

I read somewhere that you will do what it takes to get attention: send people your used condoms, French kiss a moose

I have no shame. I will do whatever it takes to make a living as long as it is for the most part in the bounds of the law. For the most part.

Does the shamelessness work for you?

It’s not shamelessness. Sometimes I am ashamed, but I have to fight through it. This is my job. In some ways every book tour is like a walk of shame: “Oh my God what have I done?!”

You’ve got to feel the same way about the new CD and your tour with the band.

I’ve never done anything like this before: “God, what the hell am I doing?” I can’t play an instrument. I can’t even shake a tambourine. But I can carry a tune and I can tell jokes. And I look really good with my shirt off.

Whether you are doing Hemingway or Springsteen, your tone is spot-on. How do you get there?

When you are doing parody you have to immerse yourself in your subject matter and really become whatever it is you are parodying. When I was doing the Springsteen song I immersed myself in Springsteen. I tried to get the lyrics and the pacing just right and paint a satirical picture of the Boss. The key to doing parody well is to become what you are parodying.

Is it parody or satire?

Satire. It’s satire, I guess. Satire implies a degree of artistry. And to satirize something properly you have to be deep inside of it. I don’t think I’m the hipster Weird Al.

And it’s fearless. After the whole Trent Lott debacle, where he pined for the days of segregation, you took on the voice of a Southern racist and argued that negroes were inherently bad. People misunderstand that sort of thing. They don’t get it. It’s scary stuff.

If it doesn’t have teeth it’s not worth doing. I don’t know that my work is that dark, but comedy needs a dark edge and I try really hard. A lot of contemporary humor gets to that dark place. South Park gets there. The Simpsons when it’s good. And The Daily Show. I’m naming all TV but that’s where the best satire is being done now. And [satirical newsweekly] The Onion. I’m a little ripple in the pond compared to those institutions. I’m the satirical novelist. Ooooooh! I might as well be the satirical cello player.

There is always a danger when someone distinguishes themselves in one field, then tries to make their big rock album

Who are we thinking of here? Billy Bob Thornton?

Billy Bob, Bruce Willis, Jerry Springer

Those are all movie stars or TV stars. I’m operating on such a different level here. This is a garage band not a celebrity ego project. I know that I’ve got good musicians, and we put on a good show. We’re gonna bring it HARD.

Neal Pollack will sign and read from Never Mind the Pollacks at Square Books and perform with the Neal Pollack Invasion at Proud Larry’s in Oxford, Mississippi, Thursday, Oct. 2nd. On Friday, Oct. 3rd, he’ll be reading and signing at Davis-Kidd and performing at the Hi-Tone.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Endgame

Let’s talk about something that didn’t happen: Playhouse on the Square’s guest director Drew Fracher cut the scene in Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy where Hecate, queen of all witches, scolds the Weird Sisters because she wasn’t invited to join the “destroy Macbeth” party. Good. The play needs cutting, and Shakespeare didn’t write that scene anyway. But imagine, if you will, the character of Hecate played like a female answer to Gary Oldman in True Romance. She’s surrounded by piles of cocaine and garbage bags overflowing with weed. She’s the top-dog dealer, and she’s stalking her leather- and lingerie-clad underlings like an animal. “How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death,” she spits, pulling out a Glock and waving it around like she means business. “And I the mistress of your charms, the great contriver of all harms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art.” Oh, it would have fit so perfectly inside this production. It would have helped certain aspects of this innovative and edgy interpretation of the Bard’s darkest tale make a bit more sense. But this is asking for too much, I know. Fracher understands that Macbeth is not a horror fantasy about mere mortals confronting hellish evils. He shows us that it is more than an object lesson about the sins of greed and over-reaching ambition. He sees right through Shakespeare’s subtext and hones in on Macbeth’s two big problems: addiction and impotence. These are the great motivators that turn a good soldier into a suicidal serial killer within the confines of five acts.

Consider the drunken porter, played here by Michael Detroit as a one-legged war vet in a wheelchair. His topic of choice — booze — becomes a sweeping metaphor for the many things (power included) that intoxicate: the things that make a man stand to and stand down, that inflame passion and destroy performance. This throwaway scene is often dismissed as mere comic relief. As it joins the twin afflictions of addiction and impotence in unholy matrimony, it is very likely Shakespeare’s money shot.

Consider Macbeth’s terse request for a drink immediately following his encounter with Banquo’s ghost. Consider that the witches give Macbeth his “first hit” when they tell him he’s going to be king, but once he gets that golden crown he can’t stop the (presumably) preemptive killing. It is no great leap then to present Shakespeare’s tragic hero as a drink-swilling, pill-popping, machine-gun-toting, cocaine-sniffing freak, paranoid, lousy with the booger-sugar, and downright nihilistic. Actions? Consequences? Shit. That is the Macbeth Playhouse delivers with more than a modicum of style. It might even remind you (in a fractured, postmodern sort of way) of a certain white-knuckled president from Texas who could probably really use an eight ball right about now.

“I have no children,” says wicked King Macbeth grievously before taking out a contract on his best friend whom certain supernatural sources confirm will sire a noble line of monarchs. Oh, the scepter envy! By play’s end he sits upon a stolen wheelchair/throne wearing a kilt, a flak jacket, dark sunglasses, and a beret, looking for all the world like Hamm, the helpless tyrant in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame but talking more like Ray Liotta somewhere near the end of Goodfellas. Mac’s wife is dead, but he don’t care. In this po-mo take on the same-o Shake, he’s Jesus’ son and daddy is a stone-cold fool. Guest artist David Engel has a bit of trouble working his tongue around some of the play’s most famous speeches (“dagger,” “tomorrow” etc.), and he can be clumsy with his business. In the end, however, he makes the famously bloodthirsty king as pathetic as he is volatile and terrifying and that’s all that really matters.

Mac’s imaginary dagger is invisible (again with the impotence shtick, oy!), but Lady Macbeth’s hallucinated stains are all too real. “Out, damned spot,” she cries from the comfort of a white straitjacket soaked in blood. The implication is that her obsessive hand-washing has made a scabby mess of her palms. It’s a powerful image, at uncomfortable odds with the scene Shakespeare actually wrote. Nevertheless, Angela Groeschen’s portrayal — crass, clever, and sexually manipulative — explodes off the stage in a shower of wicked pheromones.

Director Fracher is a bigwig in the world of fight choreography, and the final battle between Macbeth and Macduff (played to the hilt by an extraordinary Jonathon Lamer) is really something to see: a little fantasy kung-fu, a lot of real-life exhaustion.

There are T’s left uncrossed, I’s left undotted all over the place in this production. And not all of the actors are up to the task at hand. In spite of a driving, reasonably satanic soundtrack (Ministry? did I hear Ministry?), this Macbeth is choppy, moving in fits and starts. But they are good-looking fits and starts with enough sex, violence, and occult imagery to keep the most ADD teen sufficiently engaged.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Golden Fleece II?

The over-40s among our readers will recall the “Golden Fleece Awards” once handed out by William Proxmire, the former Wisconsin senator best remembered for having conducted a decades-long, one-man crusade against government waste, particularly in the military.

Proxmire, remember, would regularly publish lists of government funding foul-ups.He enjoyed railing against the Defense Department for its expenditures on such items as $5 nuts, $50 bolts, $500 screwdrivers, and $5,000 toilet seats.

Perhaps President Bush should bring Proxmire, now 87, out of retirement and ask him to scrutinize the nuts and bolts of his administration’s whopping $87 billion budgetary request for funds to “reconstruct” Iraq.For surely, this request deserves Golden-Fleece-level scrutiny.

I could go on and on about how the Bush administration’s decision to launch a preemptive war against Iraq was singularly boneheaded.But that will get us nowhere.Neither will our wishing and hoping that other developed nations bail us out with troops and/or money. For better or worse, the rest of the world views Americans in this instance as bulls in a china shop.We were the ones who went charging into Iraq.We broke the vase. Now we own it.

That vase comes with an $87 billion price tag, $66 billion of which is earmarked for the Pentagon.What details we know so far must be giving Proxmire the willies.Wonder what the retired senator thinks, for example, of the $4 million we’re investing in developing telephone area codes in Iraq or of the $19 million we supposedly need to establish wireless Internet service?And what would he say about the $100 million we’ve set aside for a couple of thousand sanitation trucks?

Back in April, The Financial Times reported that our all-conquering army was purchasing diesel fuel for its tanks (from American-owned private companies, of course) at roughly $150 a gallon.Hopefully, the Defense Department can cut a better deal this time around, since the administration, in its budget, is setting aside $900 million — we’re not making this up — for the importation of petroleum products into Iraq.

Frankly, we’re surprised that little nuggets like this haven’t sent Proxmire, despite his years, out screaming into the street.And we’re even more amazed that all Americans aren’t asking the same kinds of questions about the Iraq budget so far being asked only by a handful of enterprising reporters.

Just last week, on a Baghdad Web site, an Iraqi engineer noted that he and his colleagues had estimated the reconstruction cost of a damaged bridge in his neighborhood at $120,000, only to find out that Bechtel, the American contractor, had already put a price tag on the project: $1.4 million!Perhaps this story is apocryphal, but given its track record and its cozy relationship with so many of the reconstruction corporate players, how can one not view Bush administration requests for funding with anything but extreme skepticism?

And as for the $66 billion earmarked for the Pentagon, how can Congress possibly approve this funding without insisting upon leadership change at the Department of Defense?By foolishly antagonizing potential allies, by grossly underestimating his troop needs in “liberated” Iraq, and by allowing the near-complete destruction of that country’s infrastructure in the aftermath of our April “victory,” Donald Rumsfeld has already shown himself to be historically inept.The idea of giving him responsibility for distributing $66 billion of taxpayer funds in Iraq is ludicrous.

Only after President Bush has given Rumsfeld his walking papers should Congress even begin to consider the administration’s Iraq budget.And only after that budget is gone over with the equivalent of William Proxmire’s fine-toothed comb should its approval even be contemplated by the House or the Senate.

Kenneth Neill is CEO of Contemporary Media, Inc., parent company of The Memphis Flyer.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

ELECTION PREVIEW: A Proper Challenger

A PROPER CHALLENGER

Memphis mayoral candidate John Willingham likes to tell the story of how various people called him up during the week before the filing deadline for ths year’s city election and asked him about rumors that he intended to run for mayor against Willie Herenton, the redoubtable figure whom almost everybody regarded as the inevitable winner of another term.

“Not today,” Willingham says he answered. And he kept a tight lip right up until the filing deadline itself, when he showed up with a hastily signed petition bearing the requisite number of names. One of the signees was definitely not Kemp Conrad, the local Republican Party chairman, who tried to discourage Willingham, a first-term maverick Shelby County commissioner, from running for mayor — at least under Republican auspices — and, for his pains, has emerged as the latest named member of what Willingham considers a “good old boy” network.

It is a network that, as Willingham sees it, stretches in time back through last year’s U.S. Senate election and the two-term administration of former Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout and in space to the burgeoning developments of outer Shelby County and the FedEx Forum that is even now materializing in the nether regions of downtown Memphis.

Conrad’s role in the scheme of things, according to Willingham, was to have brokered Herenton’s endorsement of ultimate Senate winner Lamar Alexander, in return for which — well, it gets sticky right in there, but Rout and his developer friends are allegedly involved, as was the former county mayor’s son Rick Rout, the ex-Young Republican chief who failed to back George Flinn for county mayor last year, as is Flinn himself in an indirect sense, in that pressure was supposedly brought on the physician/businessman by Conrad and others to seek a city council seat instead of challenging Herenton for mayor this year, because , wellÉ.

Not that there isn’t a certain logic to these speculations, but only Willingham and a few intimates can follow all the turns and convolutions of them. “Conspiracy theorist,” sniffs Conrad disdainfully. It is a sentiment that is echoed elsewhere in the bailiwick of conventional Republicanism, one of whose exemplars, fellow Commissioner David Lillard, was provoked to tell Willingham during a committee meeting, “You can’t find a snake everywhere, commissioner, even though you’re a professional in that field!”

Lillard’s exasperation was over Willingham’s questioning of the financing arrangements for construction of the soon-to-be suburban Arlington high school. Republican Willingham, a de facto ally of several Democrats on the commission, was leery of the project, which depended on approval of an innovative rural school bonds formula, until its potential costs could be reduced and made more accountable.

Eventually, all that got done — sort of — and for all his vexing of colleagues and county school advocates, Willingham arguably served the public interest.

Likewise with Willingham’s proposal that the commission look into the retrofitting of The Pyramid as a casino for a future in which the University of Tigers are likely to abscond for quarters alongside the NBA’s Grizzlies in the new FedEx Forum. The commissioner, who often seems to hear drums that others don’t, eventually had a majority of his colleagues moving enough to his beat so as to get a formal study of the idea approved.

Whether the considerable legal and moral objections to the idea are overcome or not, some movement toward resolving the Pyramid dilemma was the result.

The commissioner’s determined scrutiny of FedEx Forum arrangements may yet bear fruit also; if nothing else, a committee approved by the commission at Willingham’s insistence may force a closer public scrutiny of what he insists was a sweetheart deal in which the county was stampeded into conceding too much control — of proceeds and of other local facilities’ wherewithal — to Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley.

“The next thing we have to look out for is the riverfront,” warns Willingham, who sees a current blueprint for redevelopment of that area, one approved by incumbent Herenton, to be loaded with similar snares. In concerns like these he is joined by another mayoral candidate, Beale Street entrepreneur Randle Catron, who also worries, like Willingham, about potential costs overruns at the new arena and other projects favored by the incumbent mayor.

The two challengerss believe — against the evidence of various polls — that there is an untapped opposition to the mayor, both in the white community and the now dominant African American population of Memphis. Willingham and his supporters never tire of boasting that, in the words of supporter Shirley Herrington, “we’ve got more yard signs in South Memphis than East Memphis.”

Whether or not this is actually the case, Willingham is consciously directiing his appeals — like his somewhat unpredictable votes on the commission — to a mixed audience. Lost in some of the confusion over his various charges is the fact that he and Herenton agree on much — including the need for city/county consolidation.

The commissioner may be an eccentric, but he is no fool. Once an administrator in Richard Nixon’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, he is an engineer and inventor with several patents to his credit. And he does more than cry the alarm, having unveiled a grandiose proposal — still to be pursued before the commission, or, if the unimagineable should happen, with his future mayoral constituents — for using a pre-cast mold methodology that would simultaneously govern most future countywide construction, give county prisoners useful employment, and hold down the costs of creating new schools.

It may be pie in the sky, but John Willingham is ready to ladle it out, if and when enough voters should pay attention and credit his vision. Depending on the vantage point, that prospect is either breathtaking, or one that should not occasion anyone’s holding their breath.

But try to imagine what the current mayoral race — nay, the current city election — would look like if Willingham, who once delivered a campaign speech shirtless and doffed his shirt again, John L. Sullivan-style, for the Flyer‘s cameras, had not launched his somewhat Quixotic bid. It would be a desultory coronaton affair, with Herenton’s only challenges coming from the likes of the game but outmatched Catron and of also-rans like Walter Payne and Mary Taylor Shelby and the all-too-forgettable Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges.

Willingham has at least livened things up, and — as has been the case with various other initiatives of his — more may come of his bid than first meets the eye.

OTHER RACES:

(Runoffs are a possibility in multi-candidate races for city council districts 1 through 7; pluralities win in super-districts 8 and 9, the former predominantly black, the latter predominantly white.)

CITY COUNCIL (District 1): Eenie, meanieÉ. Perhaps the most difficult race to evaluate of any on the Memphis city ballot is this one for the newly configured District 1, which has expanded eastward from the bailiwick of incumbent E.C. Jones to take in a sprawling mass of new territory in newly annexed Cordova, home base of Jones’ main challenger, Republican endorsee Wyatt Bunker, who is leaving his county school board seat just as it becomes obsolete. Some would say Jones, an old pro with a constituent-service rep, has worked his new turf well enough to go with an assumed healthy margin in the old Frayser/Raleigh portion. Others say that social-conservative Bunker commands the loyalty of his fellow transplants and is doing useful stealth work in Jones’ end of the district. Nobody quite knows what to make of W. B. Yates, the only African-American candidate and an unknown whom the Jones people suspect of being a ringer who is there only to drain off some of the incumbent’s Democratic vote.

Bunker is deluging the district with flyers which attack Jones as Soft on Topless Zoning and stress crime control and education as issues, while Jones is hitting the phone banks and preparing to flaunt his support by such worthies as former Mayor Dick Hackett and GOP State Rep. Joe Kent (Jones’ former police partner). Both men promise to pinch the public penny.

CITY COUNCIL (District 2); Incumbent Brent Taylor is unopposed for this Corvova/East Mememphis seat..

CITY COUNCIL (District 3): Incumbent TaJuan Stout-Mitchell\ is unopposed in this Whitehaven-based district..

CITY COUNCIL (District 4): Just in case that truck comes throughÉ Long-term incumbent Janet Hooks, wife of a county commissioner and mother of a school board member, is about as well-ensconced and invulnerable as anybody else now serving in any office anywhere. Her service in the family real-estate-appraising business and her discriminating votes on development issues have made her a swing voter in zoning cases, and, though an under-financed field of unknowns — Debra Brooks, Rex Hamilton, and Gregory Mcvay Lawrence — are making the old college try, their earnest efforts rate about the same odds of success as if they had bought lottery tickets and were looking to get rich.

CITY COUNCIL (District 5): Three-card monte. The only thing certain about this five-fold race is that Kerry White, the fifth wheel and a no-show as far as public campaigning is concerned, will fold. Ditto with under-financed Mark Follis, an arborist and political newcomer who has tried valiantly to make virtue of necessity, boasting that he won’t accept money from anybody, neither wicked developer nor John Q. Public. The plucky Follis, however, is short on issues as well as on bucks. The winner will be one of three candidates: State Representative Carol Chumney, who started out with most name recognition and has several endorsements and has campaigned unevenly but tirelessly; physician/businessman George Flinn, who has avoided the negativity that his hired out-of-state handlers saddled him with during his long-odds campaign for county mayor last year; or Jim Strickland, a youthful political veteran and former Democratic Party chairman who has good entrees in moderate Republican circles as well. With her center-to-left base, Chumney was the only candidate who might have won the seat — an open one vacated by long-term maverick incumbent John Vergos — outright. But Flinn has an anchor on the right side of the spectrum, and Strickland, who raised good money early and was endorsed by Vergos and the Commercial Appeal, has been running an effective campaign. Late spending should give Flinn and Strickland more visibility, and one of them will probably vie with Chumney in a runoff.

CITY COUNCIL (District 6): How many models are there in this fleet? Funeral director Edmund Ford succeeded brother Joe Ford in this South Memphis seat when the latter (now a county commissioner) made an unsuccessful run for mayor in 1999, and, unless another model Ford comes along to challenge him, should have the lane to himself for years to come.. Opponent Albert Banks III is an unknown with no such dynastic connections, and Perry Steele, though he’s been around for a while politically, has yet to get on track.

CITY COUNCIL (District 7): The X Factor. Sometime radio talk-show guy Jennings Bernard can give incumbent Barbara Swearengen Holt a bad time if it turns out he has raised some money. That very much remains to be seen, however. Holt fairly easily survived a challenge four years ago from veteran broker/pol Jerry Hall.

CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 1): One for a match. Once the protŽgŽ of fellow councilman Rickey Peete, incumbent Joe Brown is a reliable enough champion of such populist issues as Prevailing-Wage labor agreements that he can call in his own IOUs.The efforts if gis challenger, University of Memphis student Beverly Jones Farmer, best be gauged by her politically incorrect (but no doubt economical) use of matchbook to advertise her candidacy. Like most outs running against ins, Farmer condemns the pernicious influence of developers and, somewhat intriguingly, recommends “a task force to implement social, spiritual, and economic opportunities for the hopeless.” (Question: which of us does that leave out?)

CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 2): Fighting fire with fire. As previously noted, challenger James Robinson, once upon a time a spokesman for Memphis Housing Authority residents, has attempted to use incumbent Rickey Peete’s past brush with the law (on an extortion conviction) against him, but Robinson has had his own legal problems (misappropriation of funds while on the MHA council). Moreover, Peete Ôs real skills as legislator and conciliator have earned him respect both in the community and among his council peers. Unless Robinson turns up to have raised some significant money late, this is a case of Peete and Re-Peete.

CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 3): CITY COUNCIL (District 8, Position 3): Once again, how many models in this fleet? Sir Isaac Ford (yes, that’s his real name) is a member of the well-known local political family and is making his second try for public office. His first real one, actually, since he dropped out of last year’s race for Shelby County mayor after a trial run of sorts. Other differences between this year and last year: (1) He has the active support this time around of his legendary forebear, former congressman Harold Ford Sr.; (2) He calls for revitalizing the community and expanding the tax base rather than for the kind of ambitious “socialistic-capitalistic platform” (including reparations for slavery and other unusual measures) that he set forth in a series of position papers last year.

Even so, Ford will be hard put to unseat Lowery, who is about as thoroughly ensconced in his seat as any incumbent this season and, in the course of his three terms, has managed to build solid bridges to most sectors of his far-flung district. Lowery is a champion of city/county consolidation in a district where there is minimal resistance to that idea.

CITY COUNCIL (District 9, Position 1): Too many cooks spoil the purge attept.Yes, it’s probably true, as all of incumbent Pat VanderSchaaf’s opponents assumed, that she was vulnerable this year — because of a relatively recent shoplifting incident; because of name-association with ex-husband Clair, himself cast off the Shelby County commission last year after a D.U.I. conviction and other problems; because of having been around so long as to qualify for any generalized turn-out-the-rascals sentiment that might be simmering.

But being an incumbent for 28 years has its advantages, too, and VanderSchaaf has cast her net wide and rallied an influential group of supporters (example: former county mayor Bill Morris, who testifies for her in a widely seen TV commercial). And she is talented enough at mathematics to imagine the distribution — and dispersal — of her potential “anti” vote amongst the several opponents who will likely cancel each other yet as they claim their separate shares of it. This, like other super-district races, is winner-take-all, no run-off, and VanderSchaaf has a better-than-even chance to get a plurality.

That’s partly because businessman (and onetime city attorney) Lester Lit has come out of relative anonymity to run an impressive race (getting the Commercial Apepal endorsement certified him as a bona fide contender), which means that fellow businessman Scott McCormick, making his third try for public office, may not find the Republican Party endorsement to be the self-sufficient bonus he once thought it was, especially since Don Murphree will peel away votes in the suburbs and the ever-dogged Arnold Weiner will claim his portion of the GOP vote.. Ex-Marine, ex-school board veteran Jim Brown is deserving but has been forced by limited means to run much too low-profile a race .

CITY COUNCIL (District 9, Position 2): Cart Before the Horse Award — to Tiffany Lowe, the previously unknown challenger to incumbent Tom Marshall for running full-out, with a blizzard of signs — mainly in public right-of-way areas — before she could even assure herself of legal standing to run. Lowe, it turned out famously, is a convicted felon who has not bothered, as other such candidates have in this and other years, to petition for the legal restoration of her rights.. Campaign manager Jerry Hall, ever a would-be broker, displayed his usual energetic flair but might have done some advance checking himself.

Considering veteran Marshall’s assumed inassailability in a super-district which favors him demographically, one has to wonder why the effort was made at all.

CITY COUNCIL (District 9, Position 3): Brother, can you spare a dime? A nickel? Well-financed veteran council incumbent Jack Sammons has not campaigned much, and he hasn’t had to, despite the fact that he has an articulate opponent in energy analyst Henry Nickell, who has been a fixture at the forums Sammons has skipped, discoursing on the sins of special interest and developers and making proposals for public-debt control that are probably worth listening to. Nickell’s chances would be better if Sammons didn’t own something of a Mr. Clean reputation in his own right.

CITY COURT CLERK: Does this man have an elephant’s memory? Armed with the endorsement of the Commecial Appeal and the mantle of incumbency, clerk Thomas Long has proved a hard target for his most active opponent, former radio personality Janis Fullilove, whose chances are both boosted and retarded by her former career path as an over-the-top radio talk-show jock; and Betty Boyette, a former administrator in the clerk’s office who has been plagued by a dearth of money and by lack of organized support from her fellow Republicans.

One reason for the latter circumstance was suggested early on by Fullilove, who appealed to Democrats by accusing Long of Republican loyalties. The incumbent denied that vehemently, but in a recent appearance before the crowd at District Attorney General Bill Gibbons’ annual fish-fry fundraiser, paid special tribute to early political mentors Gibbons, lawyer John Ryder, and activist Annabel Woodall — all card-carying GOPers.

MEMPHIS SCHOOL BOARD (District 1): The special-election contest for the seat left vacant by the death of Dr. Lee Brown, the incumbent, was initially expected to follow the outlines of the race for city council in the same, recently enlarged district. In that one, a white Democrat with a history of support in the working-class neighborhoods of Frayser and Raleigh is opposed by a white, socially conservative Republican from newly annexed Cordova. No whites in the school board race at all, however — which fact could be a de facto courtesy nod to the across-the-board constituency of the well-liked Brown, an African American.

Lawyer Jay Bailey (or “J.Bailey,” as he signs himself these days) is the odds-on favorite, as the son of powerful Shelby County Commission member Walter Bailey, a Democrat, and as a candidate who can also boast public support also from the likes of Shelby County Trustee Bob Patterson, a Republican. His major opposition is from FedEx administrator Willie Brooks, who has support from such plugged-in types as Commissioner Deidre Malone and veteran lobbyist/pol Calvin Anderson. Also running are college students Reginald Bernard and Stephanie Gatewood and school counselor Anthony Clear.