Month: December 2003

Categories
News News Feature

ALL HAIL THE FEARMONGERS!

U.S. Raises Terror Alert to “High” at Peak of Holiday Travel Season

or go to http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/national/22ALER.html?hp)

What a nice gimmick this is. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again, I suspect, before November 2004.

The current administration must love having this particular arrow in their quiver. Raise the alerts whenever you want people to be “aware” of how unsafe they are — thereby subliminally reminding them of how lucky they are to have a resolute, strong leader like George W. Bush at the helm.

“Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. Be careful even as you drop your children at day care. Be afraid when you go bowling. Be afraid when you cross the Golden Gate/Brooklyn/Hernando Desoto bridge. Be afraid always. “They” are out to get “us.” So never cease being afraid.”

(“And never forget: things could be worse if “we” weren’t looking out for you…”)

Well, we’ve been afraid now for 27 months — to no effect, by the way. No one in public office, no one with any sense of self-preservation re. his/her political scalp, has had enough lack of fear, and enough political courage, to point out the obvious:

Which is this:

(a) Not a single American has died in a “terrrorist” attack on American soil since 9/11/01, and…

(b) In many, many parts of the world, going 27 months without a single terrorist death would be considered a remarkable victory.

So why don’t the Bushies claim this victory? Because to do so would threaten the very foundation of what has been, since 9/11, this administration’s political raison d’etre. At the core of their security policy is this simple fact: if we the American people “win” the war on terrorism, then we the American people will probably be less likely to vote for George W. Bush in November 2004.

Yes, I know, this sounds a bit cynical. Or way more than a bit, I can here the Republicans among you snickering. But, friends, before you dismiss this as left-wing rant, consider the one basic premise that underpins the entire “terrorism” universe:

And this is it, simply put. Human nature, being what it is, guarantees that on some day, at some place, at some time, the Fearmongers will strike it rich. Some day, some place, some time, on American soil, the “terrorists” will strike again.

Unfortunately, at some point, our complex, tortured global village will throw up another Muhammed Atta. Or (probably more likely, in the short term) another Timothy McVeigh. Face facts: modern civilization is like that. It occasionally produces wackos. Think Charles Manson. Think Jim Jones. And those are just the ones who are “Merikan” enough for us to remember and recall their names…

And so one day, inevitably, the Fearmongers will be able to turn to the American people and say: “See? We told you so! We told you to be very afraid, didn’t we? Maybe you weren’t listening; maybe next time, you will. Maybe next time, you’ll be really, really afraid!”

What music to Karl Rove’s ears this must be! It is a no-lose situation.

As long as the powers-that-be in the Bush Administration can rachet up the “fear index” whenever they feel they need a little bump, the majority of the American people wil be reluctant to “change horses in midstream.” And if something truly “bad” actually happens? Well, that would be awful, yes, but who THEN would even consider changing horses?

Let me let you in on a little secret. Whether we as a nation are at Code Orange, Code Red, or Code Spumoni, we will never be completely safe. Any Irishman (like myself) who lived through the 1970s in that country will tell you this: if there are a handful of people who are hell-bent on wreaking havoc on “civilized” life, they will eventually succeed in doing so, at least once in a while. The very definition of civilization — open, free interaction between sophisticated peoples — insures that they will occasionally succeed.

The dirty little secret the Bush Administration does not want to share with the American people is this: there is no way that a “war” on terrorism can ever end in victory. And since modern America is perhaps the world’s greatest “target rich” environment for anarchic expression, total safety and perfect security can never be achieved. Another “terrorist” attack is pretty damn near inevitable, all the code colors of the rainbow notwithstanding.

Case in point: I traveled on an Amtrak train to New Orleans last month. In sharp contrast to the absurdist airport scenes we all know and have grown to accept — aiports where I have thoughtlessly lost more than a couple of corkscrews, where I now take off my shoes even before I’m asked, where we have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs for people who spend their days trying their very best to administer security systems that resemble quaint medieval rituals, days spent trying to do their jobs with grace and sincerity — I give you the situation at the train station in Memphis that night last month:

No one gave a rat’s posterior about what kind of contraband I might have had in the large suitcase I dragged onto that train. And no one would have even noticed if, after leaving my large suitcase in my first-class sleeping-car storage area, I just happened to get off the train, say, in Yazoo City, MS, leaving my timed explosive device to go off, oh, an hour later, perhaps while the train was passing through downtown Jackson.

If I packed enough dynamite correctly, said contraband suticase might have enough force to take out not just several score on the train, but just as many in the surrounding neighborhoods. Hell, I wouldn’t even have to worry about whether I’d counted right about the number of virgins you get in heaven when you’re a suicide bomber. I could have a car waiting and drive back to Memphis from Yazoo City in three hours, getting home just about in time to watch all the phoo-phah about the incident I created on CNN and Fox News…

Does that scenario scare you? Then think about this: the opportunity to repeat EXACTLY what Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City exists today and will exist tomorrow and next week, no matter how many zillions we give Tom Ridge.

There is no amount of money that could ever be spent with the Department of Homeland Security that could ever gurantee that an incident like the one I described above would never happen. Or that next year’s Timothy McVeagh might drive his truck up next to the YMCA in Pittsburgh. Or that someone could carefully put an explosive device in the lobby at next fall’s opening Opera Memphis performance, and get the season off to a real bang.

Friends, we call this logic. This is not a matter of my opinion versus someone else’s; this is cold, hard truth. So why will no one in politics or the media come out and state the obvious?

Well, I can think of one reason. And while, yes, my even writing this will probably occasion a visit or phone call from the Friends of Tom Ridge, I will tell you all now what message I’d ask these fellows to pass along to their boss, if and when they call:

“This, Mr. Secretary, is grand farce. You know and I know that, short of declaring martial law and drastically interfering with everybody’s holiday shopping plans this December, there is no way that a truly “secure” America can ever be achieved. Your color-coded alert system, sir, is a joke.”

Which leads me to my point, and a final question: who benefits most when we go Code Orange? I will let you all draw your own conclusions, only pointing out that I am ready to make book on the projection that we will be either Code Orange or Code Red in November 2004. Any takers?

( Kenneth Neill is the publisher/CEO of Contemporary Media, Inc., the parent company of The Memphis Flyer.)

Categories
News

MLGW’S MORRIS GETS THE SACK

SPECIAL TO THE FLYER — After six years with Memphis Light Gas & Water, CEO Herman Morris was given his walking papers Monday morning. In a closed meeting with Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and MLGW Board Chair Dr. James Netters, Morris was told he would not be re-appointed.

By Wednesday, Morris had only informed top staff he would be leaving.

City Councilman E.C. Jones, who heads up the Council’s General Services, Utilities and Communications committee said appointments – and non-renewals – are within the Mayor’s purview but pointed out that Christmas might not have been the best time to break the news.

“The only problem I have is maybe the timing,” Jones said. “But I realize the new term starts on January 1st and the Mayor does not have a lot of time to advise those people that he’s not going to reappoint them.”

Netters said the Mayor was complimentary in the Monday meeting, warning the two that the news might not be so well-received.

“It was such a shock to me,” said Netters, who also expressed concern over the future of the utility’s Board itself. Herenton told Netters he was still awaiting the results of a charter review before making a decision about the Board, but mentioned he had no one in mind to replace the current board members.

There are no official candidates to replace Morris either, although that has been the source of some political scuttlebutt, with some sources hinting that Roland McElrath, a former Memphis schools administrator is in the running.

Netters said during his 20-year tenure on the Board, he has been tapped to fill the top spot on an interim basis. But he said the Mayor hasn’t suggested that as a possibility in this instance, perhaps because of Netters’ own plans to retire within the first six months of 2004.

Herenton first turned up the heat on Morris at a December 2nd Council committee meeting. Councilmembers were debating a rate-hike, but the Mayor stole the show, decrying MLGW administration and hinting that change was in the wind.

(Darrell Phillips first broke this story on WMC-TV Action News Five. This version is expressly for the Flyer, courtesy of the station.)

Categories
News News Feature

Who Will Testify at Saddam’s Trial?

President George W. Bush and the provisional Iraqi authorities have promised that before Saddam Hussein is executed, he will most certainly receive a fair trial. Conveniently enough, the Iraqis set up a war-crimes tribunal in Baghdad for this purpose just last week. So sometime after Saddam’s Army interrogators are finished sweating the old monster, the preparations shall begin for what promises to be a courtroom spectacle.

Advocates of human rights and international law hope that the prosecution of Saddam will improve somewhat on his regime’s standard of criminal justice, which generally entailed horrific torture followed by confession and punishment. They have urged that Saddam’s trial be conducted with complete fairness and transparency. Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon’s favorite member of the Iraqi Governing Council, says that Saddam must be afforded the lawful treatment he denied his victims.

Those laudable aims presumably require that he be permitted to defend himself legally, no matter how indefensible he actually is. Human Rights Watch insists that the captured dictator “must be allowed to conduct a vigorous defense that includes the right to legal counsel at an early stage.”

Apart from blaming his underlings for the genocidal crimes on his indictment, what defense can he (or his lawyers) offer? Following in the style of Slobodan Milosevic, he may well wish to spend his final days on the public stage bringing shame to those who brought him down.

Unfortunately, it isn’t hard to imagine how he might accomplish that if he can call witnesses and subpoena documents. Charged with the use of poison gas against Kurds and Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam could summon a long list of Reagan and Bush administration officials who ignored or excused those atrocities when they were occurring.

An obvious prospective witness is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who acted as a special envoy to Baghdad during the early 1980s. On a courtroom easel, Saddam might display the famous December 1983 photograph of him shaking hands with Mr. Rumsfeld, who acknowledges that the United States knew Iraq was using chemical weapons. If his forces were using Tabun, mustard gas, and other forbidden poisons, he might ask, why did Washington restore diplomatic relations with Baghdad in November 1984?

As for his horrendous persecution of the Kurds in 1988, Saddam could call executives from the banks and defense and pharmaceutical companies from various countries that sold him the equipment and materials he is alleged to have used. He might put former President George Herbert Walker Bush on the witness stand and ask, “Why did your administration and Ronald Reagan’s sell my government biological toxins such as anthrax and botulism, as well as poisonous chemicals and helicopters?”

Saddam could also subpoena Henry Kissinger, whose consulting firm’s chief economist ventured to Baghdad in June 1989 to advise the Iraqi government on restructuring its debt. “After my forces allegedly murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians in 1988,” he might inquire, “why would you and other American businessmen want to help me refinance and rearm my government?”

Indeed, Saddam could conceivably seek the testimony of dozens of men and women who once served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, starting with former Secretary of State George Shultz, and ask them to explain why they opposed every congressional effort to place sanctions on his government, up until the moment his army invaded Kuwait during the summer of 1990. Pursuing the same general theme, he might call Vice President Dick Cheney, who sought to remove sanctions against Iraq when he served as the chief executive of Halliburton.

The long, shadowy history of American relations with Saddam would also be illuminated by literally thousands of documents in U.S. government files. Memos uncovered by the National Security Archive show that Reagan and Bush administration officials knew exactly how the Iraqi government was procuring what it needed to build weapons of mass destruction, including equipment for a nuclear arsenal.

From time to time, during those crucial years when Saddam consolidated his power and prepared for war, U.S. diplomats issued rote condemnations of his worst actions. Then, as the record shows, they would privately reassure Saddam that the United States still desired close and productive relations.

Pertinent as these issues are to Saddam’s case, they do not mitigate his record of murder and corruption. And the man dragged from his pathetic hideout near Tikrit hardly seems to possess the will or the capability to raise them. Yet it will be hard to boast that justice and history have been fully served if his foreign accomplices escape their share of opprobrium.

Joe Conason writes a weekly column on politics for The New York Observer.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Dull?

To the Editor:

After reading Chris Herrington’s review of The Return of the King, I have to Tolkienly say that Herrington would make a great Grimer Wormtongue. (Second movie, Chris.)

Steve Cook

Collierville

Hooray for Our Side

To the Editor:

Regarding the letter from Michael B. Conway (December 18th issue): Hooray for our side! We captured Saddam. He was hiding underground in one of the many little holes he had. We will also find his pile of WMDs in much more elaborate holes. I know so.

Let’s see … a year ago Saddam was still torturing, murdering, hiding terrorists, and posing a threat to the peace and safety of the Middle East as well other innocents, including us. I am sure the families of all our brave soldiers are proud of their loved ones doing a great job.

Two years ago, Osama bin Laden controlled a country and sent his own WMDs into our country, killing thousands and instilling fear. Today he is running from hole to hole also. His capture or destruction is inevitable. We know the war on terror is not over. But our heroes will always deserve a parade.

Forgive me, but the president’s first job is commander in chief, and I sleep better at night with him doing his job.

Drew A. Cook

Memphis

Jesus and George

To the Editor:

Imagine that before his press conference after Saddam’s capture President Bush went off by himself to pray. He kneels in the White House and asks for a word from God about what he should say. In answer, God sends his son, and before the president’s very eyes, Jesus appears.

George doesn’t recognize Jesus, so he gives him a test. He says, “I doubt you are really Jesus. Tell me something you said when you were on the earth.”

Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

“No, I remember reading Leviticus and Exodus and those words were not in there,” George says. “They just don’t have the right tone. Try again.”

Jesus says, “You have heard it said of old, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, love your enemy. Be good to those that persecute you.”

“Now I’ve got you!” says George. “You’re not Jesus. Jesus would never ever have said something so silly. That kind of thinking doesn’t take into consideration the reality of geopolitics. I like that eye for an eye thing better.”

Duncan Ragsdale

Memphis

Join Them?

To the Editor:

When will the left realize that if you can’t beat them, you should join them? We should get all the rich, left-leaning philanthropists to put all their tax cuts into a “Get Bush Out of the White House” fund. We should point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Halliburton contract in Iraq. We should talk about the perils to our constitutional liberties posed by the Patriot Act. And then we should just say, “9-11 changed everything.” Then maybe the voters would be able to make an informed decision.

Perry Mansfield

Memphis

To the Editor:

The year-end holidays are upon us: Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice. They conjure visions of families gathered by a warm fireplace, opening presents, sharing their love, and … feasting on ham and turkey.

It’s the happiest time of the year — for some. But for the millions of factory-farmed pigs and turkeys, our holiday season portends only agony, despair, and death after a lifetime of caging, deprivation, drugging, and mutilation.

Each of us can refuse to subsidize such wanton violence and cruelty during this holiday season by choosing plant-based foods that abound in every supermarket. There are fresh fruits and greens and soy-based deli slices in the produce section, veggie burgers, soy nuggets, and ready-to-eat dinners in the frozen-food section, and a variety of soy-based milks, cheeses, and ice creams.

This year, let’s have a truly gentle holiday. Let’s send the message of “peace on earth” to all living beings.

Christopher Case

Memphis

Categories
Book Features Books

Word Up

You’ve been waiting to hear all year. The year’s over. The votes are in. “Flash mob” and “nanotube” were runners-up, but they didn’t make the cut. The official Word of the Year, according to the editors of Webster’s New World College Dictionary, is “transparency.” Old word. Brand-new, extended meaning, as in:

“Corporate America … [is] … vowing to sin no more, to tell shareholders the straight truth instead of playing accounting games, to embrace ‘transparency’ so outsiders can see what’s going on” (Newsweek, 5/20/2002). Or:

“[Archbishop Harry Flynn] ‘is exactly what Boston needs right now. He believes in full disclosure, in zero tolerance, in transparency'” (USA Today, quoting a law professor, 12/16/02).

But what’s with this Word of the Year? The Flyer wanted to know, so the Flyer called Cleveland and talked to Mike Agnes, editor in chief of Webster’s New World.

The Flyer: “Transparency.” The Word of the Year. What are we talking about?

Mike Agnes: The Word of the Year is a publicity thing. We have great fun with it and wonderful arguments about what we should choose and why among the submitted suggestions. “Transparency” grabbed my attention because it seems to be used with a new spin in so many areas of human activity — government, business, nonprofits, church hierarchies, diplomacy. We have citations about adding “transparency” to the diplomatic exchanges between Pakistan and India. Everybody’s on the bandwagon! The last time I can think of this happening was when “glasnost” became the rallying cry in Russia in the ’80s.

“Transparency” struck an international chord? It was your staff’s obvious choice?

Yes, people were dismayed after Enron and the Catholic Church scandals and so forth. Here was a word that seemed to fill a need. The choice was obvious to me. I took it to the most senior editor here, and he said immediately yes. We don’t always have such a candidate. Sometimes it’s a word that shows American English at its most slyly inventive. It tickles our fancy. We did “senior moment” in 2000. What a great word.

“Senior moment”? Never heard of it.

It’s a moment of forgetfulness. People in their 50s were using it. We can’t say it flooded the airwaves though. “Job-spill” was last year, the phenomenon by which your workday life spills over into your private life.

What about this year’s McDonald’s hoopla over a dictionary entry for “McJob”?

You’re thinking of Merriam-Webster, a competitor, in Springfield, Massachusetts. I think they made a decision to put it in their dictionary. I’ve got a copy here of their latest, and I can check it for you. [Sound of pages turning — quickly] If not, it’s probably a word the Oxford English has considered. Oxford’s got an excuse. I mean, anything with 20 volumes … I’d be putting in a lot of new words too. But “McJob” wouldn’t be one of them though … [Pages still turning] … Um, well, of course, if I could spell “McJob” that would help … No, it doesn’t look like Merriam has put it in. They’ve got “mackinaw” and “McIntosh” and “McLaurin Series” … It looks like “McJob” is probably something from Oxford … Oh no, I take it back. Merriam does have “McJob”! [So does the American Heritage, fourth edition.]

Dumb question, but how do you edit a dictionary for new words and old words with extended meanings?

Our staff of 12 … that’s everybody. We have two “readers,” and together those readers produce 1,500 citations a month. Our files hold about 1.8 million citation cards. I read a lot of British and contemporary fiction, and our most senior editor has read every issue for the last 30 years of The New Yorker, cover to cover. Three of us read England’s Times Literary Supplement every week.

It’s high culture to low?

One of our editors covers comic strips Actually, do we call them “comic strips” now? Yes. I was about to say “funny pages.” But that’s a bit dated So, high culture to low, yes. Soup-can labels. Anything. Subway signs. Bus signs. Men’s-room graffiti. Everything.

High-tech terms must be a huge new source.

High-tech is of interest, but it contributes new words to a lesser degree than you’d expect. Consider the demographics. Only 60 percent of households are connected to the Internet. So terms like “blog” mean nothing to them. What’s more important is medicine. Medicine is now not a technical topic but a consumer issue. Newspapers today probably have three times the number of medical articles than they did 10 years ago. Think protease inhibitors. West Nile virus. And then you’ve got “lifestyles.” Seems like 10 years ago we became a nation of “foodies.” We’ve had to add words over the years, like “biscotti.”

“Metrosexual.” One minute it didn’t exist. The next it was all over the place. Yea or nay?

That’s a clever word, but I think you’re going to see that one die. It doesn’t have the punch, the staying power, or the utility of, say, “yuppie.” “Metrosexual” may make it into someone else’s dictionary, but I don’t see it making the grade here. Just because a word is clever doesn’t mean it has “legs.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Breaking It Down

A couple of years ago, Spin cheekily proclaimed “Your Hard Drive” as Album of the Year. Perhaps it’s because I’m a couple of years behind the technological curve, but 2003 was when that concept hit home. There was tons of great music this year, but I was still my own DJ savior: My favorite record of the year might be the singles mix I made in the spring, where Panjabi MC opens and closes the set while the Rapture and Electric Six go nuts, Ted Leo and the Drive-By Truckers provide definitive riffs, and Lil’ Kim, Fallacy, and Killer Mike get busy on the mic. Another contender is the Timbaland’s greatest-hits mix I made in the fall. And if my own 15-track, single-disc version of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below were an actual release, it would place fourth on the list below instead of the 12th place occupied by the overlong official version.

But if you still like to purchase your music in officially released order and packaging (a habit I cling to despite my mix-making prowess and one that isn’t going to go away anytime soon), here are 40 albums from the past year well worth seeking out — along with 20 singles you should download right now:

Top 40 Albums

1. Kish Kash –Basement Jaxx (Astralwerks): It seems odd in a year so desperate — and desperately contentious — that there was so little music that acknowledged the colossal mess the world is in, as if all of pop music colluded to deal with it by dancing our troubles away. And there was no greater house party than Kish Kash. Brit DJs Basement Jaxx decided to make one thing we could all have when it all crumbles down, and they invited a jumbled assortment of friends — young rappers and old punks, second-tier teen-poppers and garage-rock soul belters, art-funk chanteuses and (literally) the girl next door — to help them do it. The result: the most ecstatic and warm-hearted party record in recent memory.

2. Decoration Day –The Drive-By Truckers (New West): On his band’s justifiably celebrated opus Southern Rock Opera, Trucker Patterson Hood composed musical Grit Lit on a macro level — “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” “the duality of the Southern thing,” etc. On this sharper, prettier, deeper follow-up, his regional ardor is conveyed in offhand details, such as opening a song with the line “Something ’bout that wrinkle in your forehead tells me there’s a fit ’bout to get thrown.” Musical life partner Mike Cooley cribs his boogie riffs on “Marry Me” directly from the dread Eagles but then uses them to put across a lyric that band would never touch: “Rock-and-roll means well but it can’t help telling young boys lies.” And newcomer Jason Isbell proves to be the finest writer of working-class folk ballads on the planet. You don’t expect an album about destroyed lives, failed marriages, and legacies of violence and regret to be invigorating. But this one is. And you don’t expect modern-day trad-rock bands to make records that rival the best of Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. This one did.

3. Fever To Tell –Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Interscope): On the debut full-length from the best of the current batch of New York rock bands, Nick Zinner’s attention-deficit-disorder guitar spars with Karen O’s Tourette’s syndrome vocals in a race to finish each song — before someone cuts off the electricity or the world ends, whichever comes first — while drummer Brian Chase tries (successfully) to keep it all from flying apart. The result is a sad, sexy, desperate, open-hearted insta-classic and also the rare CD-age album that picks up momentum as it goes — becoming more confident, more expansive, and more vulnerable as spontaneous noise-tunes evolve into full-fledged songs.

4. The Best of the Classic Years –King Sunny Ade (Shanachie): This master of the hypnotic, guitar-driven African dance music known as “juju” wasn’t introduced to American audiences until the ’80s, when he failed to become the Bob Marley-style crossover success that record-company execs imagined. But this galvanic collection, compiling choice cuts from African LPs Ade released between 1967 and 1974, suggests that American audiences had already missed out on his greatest work by then. Not too late to play catch-up.

5. Boy in Da Corner –Dizzee Rascal (XL Recordings import): This debut album from London’s great hip-hop hope (who was 17 when most of it was recorded) is like a British Illmatic in its mix of high and low, hopping from tear-stained introspection to grimy gangsta rhymes. In Britain, he beat out Radiohead and Coldplay for the Mercury Prize (sort of a Grammy Album of the Year equivalent). In America? We’ll find out soon. Boy in Da Corner is set for a U.S. release next month.

6. Deliverance — Bubba Sparxxx (Interscope): Jay-Z’s the best pure rapper. Outkast has the cultural clout. And Dizzee Rascal feels like the most momentous artist. But the most compelling persona in hip-hop this year may well be that of this hunting-rifle-wielding good ol’ boy from La Grange, Georgia, who not only proves to be no fluke or novelty on album number two but an almost inspirational New South symbol: instinctively populist, devoid of misogyny (by commercial rap standards, anyway), his down-home wisdom carrying no reactionary aftertaste. And then there’s producer Timbaland, who hooks a beat up to mountain music and converts it into hip-hop form. Inspirational verse: “They watch me in the country like the race on Sunday/And I’ll wear the crown for them ’til you take it from me.” Finally: Nascar rap!

7. Seven’s Travels –Atmosphere (Epitaph): Sean “Slug” Dailey built his underground reputation on being the most empathetic MC in hip-hop history, but this expansive, musically rattled tour diary suggests that the only thing keeping him from being hip-hop’s Dashboard Confessional is his awareness of and ambivalence over his ability to manipulate his audience, especially the pretty young things who approach him after a show. Romantic entanglements in hip-hop have never been as funny, real, or fraught with peril as on “Reflections,” “Shoes,” and “Lifter Puller.” But would you expect anything less from a good-hearted smooth talker who uses a pickup line like “Hello ma’am, would you be interested in some sexual positions and emotional investments?” and dedicates a song to “all the depressed women in the house”?

8. Fire –Electric Six (XL/Beggar’s Banquet): With their over-the-top novelty-rock driven by fluid basslines and danceable beats that indie-rock twerps don’t have the chops or abandon for, these Detroit con artists made gloriously silly dance music for people who can actually, you know, dance. (Not that I’m one of those people or anything.) If Tenacious D really were the World’s Greatest Rock-and-Roll Band, this is what they’d probably sound like.

9. Echoes — The Rapture (Universal): Obscure indie-rock band meets hot new dance-rock production team (the DFA) resulting in classic scream-along single (“House of Jealous Lovers”) and — finally — an album that somehow turns emotionally tortured post-punk into bump-able jeep music. The best discovery of rhythm by New York art-rockers since the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light. And the best use of cowbell since “Honky Tonk Women.”

10. Electric Version — The New Pornographers (Matador): With their relay-race vocals signifying gender utopianism and giving off sparks of agape, these seven Canadians practice old-fashioned rock-and-roll as communal pop party: clipping off riffs, diving into choruses, high-stepping through bridges, and leaning hard into hairpin hooks as if they’re inventing it all on the fly.

11. The Black Album –Jay-Z (Roc-a-Fella): Honey-voiced hip-hop Sinatra Jay-Z has always balanced art and commerce, but this ostensible farewell marks the first time he’s let that tension become his theme — justifying his thug while revealing his admiration for “conscious” MCs like Talib Kweli and Common. And then there’s the Rick Rubin-produced “99 Problems,” which deserves this clichÇd instruction more than any other music from 2003: PLAY LOUD.

12. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below –Outkast (LaFace): With Andre 3000’s musical knuckleballs fluttering around the strike zone and Big Boi’s vibrant P-Funk party eventually devolving into standard-issue posse cuts, this 39-track, two-hours-plus opus is essentially Sandinista! to Stankonia‘s London Calling: There’s a great album in here somewhere, but you’ll have to search for it. If only all overambitious messes could be so funny and so beatwise.

13. Justified –Justin Timberlake (Jive ’02): Super-producers Timbaland and the Neptunes play the Quincy Jones role on this blue-eyed Off the Wall, but it’s the cagey vocal performance of Millington’s most famous showbiz kid that makes it such a startling coming-out party.

14. Til the Wheels Fall Off — Amy Rigby (Signature Sounds): How do you explain a world in which Ryan Adams is a star and Amy Rigby is largely unknown? Are we too juvenile? Too misogynistic? How many people are out there for whom Rigby would be their personal poet laureate if only they heard her? Rigby once asked “21 Questions” (from the album Diary of a Mod Housewife — go buy it!) but has had the decency not to quite ask those. Here she has other problems to worry about, as illustrated by her Song of the Year candidate: “Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?”

15. Ego War –Audio Bullys (Astralwerks): Cutting their techno beats and disco rhythms with hip-hop turntable scratches and scene-setting sound effects, this Brit MC/DJ duo offer up a slackers’ tour of the casually lawless side of club culture.

Honorable Mention: Summer Sun –Yo La Tengo (Matador); Elephant — The White Stripes (V2); Later That Day — Lyrics Born (Quannum Projects); Liz Phair — Liz Phair (Capitol); Failer — Kathleen Edwards (Zoâ/Rounder); The Music in My Head 2 — Various Artists (Stern’s Africa ’02); D-D-D-Don’t Stop the Beat –Junior Senior (Atlantic); Spirit in Stone –Lifesavas (Quannum Projects); Ragga Ragga Ragga! 2003 –Various Artists (Greensleeves); Red Dirt Road –Brooks & Dunn (Arista Nashville); Monster –Killer Mike (Columbia); Indestructible — Rancid (Hellcat); This Is Not a Test –Missy Elliott (Elektra); Mississippi: The Album –David Banner (Universal); So Stylistic –Fannypack (Tommy Boy); Love & Distortion — Stratford 4 (Jetset); Soft Spot — Clem Snide (spinART); Hearts of Oak — Ted Leo & Pharmacists (Lookout!); The Rough Guide to Highlife –Various Artists (Rough Guide); Up the Bracket — Libertines (Rough Guide); Room on Fire — The Strokes (RCA); You Forgot It in People — Broken Social Scene (Paper Bag); Atmosphere — The Quails (Inconvenient); Band Red — Kaito U.K. (spinART); Welcome Interstate Managers — Fountains of Wayne (S-Curve/Virgin).

Top 20 Singles

1. “Danger! High Voltage” –Electric Six: Sounding like the very best parts of lots of radically different songs crammed together (disco basslines, AOR guitars, indie-punk vocals, Germfree Adolescents sax), this Frankenstein’s monster of a record could well be the greatest mash-up ever made.

2. “Hey Ya!” — Outkast: Hip-hop’s most charismatic oddball concocts the sexiest rock song of the year and coins more catchphrases than an entire season of vintage Saturday Night Live.

3. “Beware of the Boys (Mundian to Bach Ke)” — Panjabi MC featuring Jay-Z: The World’s Greatest MC introduces thrilling bhangra riddim to a grateful nation.

4. “Move Your Feet” –Junior Senior: Irony collapses as sexually opportunistic Danish duo declares nuclear war on the dance floor.

5. “So Gone” — Monica featuring Missy Elliott: Can’t figure what’s better: Missy exclaiming “New Monica!” at the outset as if she’s opening a long-anticipated Christmas present or the star of the show threatening to drive past my house in her unmarked car (?!?). Though I guess that dense, beautiful vocal arrangement and that turntable crackle are really the best.

6. “Crazy in Love” — Beyonce featuring Jay-Z: That Chi-lites horn sample! That syncopated vocal hook! Jay-Z as personal hype man! This is how the truly blessed make their solo move.

7. “Get Low” –Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz featuring the Ying Yang Twins: I denied this chaotic Dirty South anthem at first — until I watched people dance to it and thus illustrate its phenomenal rhythmic complexity.

8. “Telephone” –The Stratford 4: Seven minutes of drone-pop bliss in which a mother and son exchange notes on life and mom drops the following indispensable advice: “I’ll say it again though I’ve said it before/There’s more to this life than the Stratford 4.”

9. “Rock Your Body” — Justin Timberlake: After the sonic and emotional maelstrom that was “Cry Me a River,” Timberlake lightens up, riding the year’s most insistent groove into disco-pop heaven.

10. “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” –Ted Leo & Pharmacists: A passionate tribute to British ska and punk done with Thin Lizzy guitars? Whatever works.

Honorable Mention: “Gay Bar” –Electric Six; “The Jump Off” –Lil’ Kim; “All the Things She Said” –t.a.T.u.; “A.D.I.D.A.S.” — Killer Mike; “All You Need Is Hate” –Delgados; “Pass That Dutch” — Missy Elliott; “Right Thurr” –Chingy; “Like Glue” –Sean Paul; “Big ‘N’ Bashy” –Fallacy; “Red Dirt Road” –Brooks & Dunn.

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Editorial Opinion

As the Story Goes

The 19th-century British author Charles Dickens, who produced a body of work almost the size of the Library of Congress, is best remembered for only a modest portion of that output — namely, the Yuletide classic A Christmas Carol and the pronouncement, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” from A Tale of Two Cities.

Both are in our minds this holiday season — one in which we hear, on the one hand, glad tidings of an economic revival, and on the other, the gloomy news that our national terror alert has been raised by the Department of Homeland Security to Level Orange. Ho Ho — Oh! It is a schizoid condition we live in, at best.

We have not been bashful about proclaiming the current national administration to be Scrooge-like in its indifference to the great run of humanity and in its special favors for the high and mighty. Like everybody else — save for a few diehard Baathists — we shed no holiday tears for Saddam Hussein, but we would beseech Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld and Mademoiselle Rice to remember that it is Osama bin Laden who has done us irreparable harm and threatens us with even more. We are not likely to be more than temporarily diverted from our anxieties by the capture and trial of other bearded, vagrant types, even if they are certifiable archvillains.

Our mixed feelings concerning the future extend to our state and local scenes, as well. We take pleasure, for example, in the businesslike attitude of our current state administration. In his budgetary openness and his desire to prune away the inessential in state government, Governor Phil Bredesen almost seems capable of making us remember that we are Tennesseans first and Republicans or Democrats second. But we are pained to learn that our quest for solvency may necessarily lead to the termination of TennCare — bad news for the penniless and the uninsurable among us.

What goes around comes around. Locally, we still have the quandary of how to prop up The Med and how to keep on dispensing even minimal care to the mentally ill. We continue to be embarrassed by the specter of failing schools and can only hope that the shakeups planned by new city schools superintendent Carol Johnson will give us a Christmas future that will set the former ghosts to rest.

We have been put on notice that our city and county tax rates will go up — the obvious counterpoint to declining state revenues and giveaway tax breaks at the national level? Presidential candidate Howard Dean has recently put the emphasis on this syllogism: Careless tax cuts at the federal level equal higher costs and raised tuitions and the like at the local level. And even should the messenger himself eventually fall short, the substance of his message remains.

We are a mighty nation and a steadfast people, but there is always at the heart of our being some perishable quality of potential goodness that is like Tiny Tim, and it is our fondest hope that the story we are living, like the one written by Dickens, ends well — or, at least, continues in good grace.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

1. Fever To Tell — Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Interscope): Fever To Tell sounds so spontaneous and gloriously disarrayed that it seems utterly unimaginable that the band could have written down the songs beforehand. It feels more like they found pieces of them on street corners and in bar bathrooms, in gutters and unmade beds, then cobbled them together during a drunken all-nighter. Ignore the predictable cycle of hype and backlash: Right now this sounds like the most immense and exciting band around — built to last as art and not merely as an artifact of a particular scene.

2. Decoration Day — The Drive-By Truckers (New West): “Rock-and-roll means well but it can’t help telling young boys lies,” Mike Cooley sings on Decoration Day. With a three-guitar and -songwriter attack, these Southern boys tie rock-and-roll to a chair, shine a light in its face, and beat out of it hard truths about family responsibilities, failed marriages, dumb suicides, and small towns.

3. Up the Bracket — The Libertines (Rough Trade): Lurking beneath the Libertines’ loose, chaotic sound is a world-weariness that feels deeper and more real than the Strokes’ practiced ennui. Maybe it’s all the biblical references and call-outs to Queen Boadecia, but these guys are smarter than they look or sound. The debut of the year.

4. Her Majesty — The Decemberists (Kill Rock Stars): Colin Meloy was meant for the stage: While critics stupidly compared them to Neutral Milk Hotel and the Smiths, the Decemberists came on like the Max Fischer Players performing an indie-rock opera about World War I. Her Majesty wears its unique theatricality and its out-of-time pretensions like badges of honor, making it one of the most original and charming albums of the year.

5. The Black Album — Jay-Z (Roc-a-Fella): This retiring-the-jersey showcase is all about the unresolved — and unresolvable — tension between Shawn Carter, who wants to rap like Talib Kweli, and alter-ego Jay-Z, who can’t get hustling out of his system. More than Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, The Black Album is the year’s best split-personality album: Instead of relegating each identity to a separate disc, Carter lets them battle for the mic on every song, every verse, every line, every word.

Honorable Mentions: Electric Version — The New Pornographers (Matador); Feast of Wire — Calexico (Quarterstick); You Are Free — Cat Power (Matador); Hail to the Thief — Radiohead (Capital); Room on Fire –The Strokes (RCA). —Stephen Deusner

1. Talkin’ Honky Blues — Buck 65 (WEA/Warner Music Canada); Disenfranchised — McEnroe (Peanuts and Corn): The Source would probably excoriate these two “hip-hop” records and not just because the two artisans responsible for them are white Canadians. McEnroe’s self-produced, self-distributed album has plenty of beats and rhymes, but it’s the life of its creator that comes through the strongest. It makes sense that, in this rap-album-as-Bildungsroman, the most affecting song is about how badly the MC wants to feel the rush he felt when he first heard Mecca and the Soul Brother. Buck 65, on the other hand, is just too strange and prolific for the average hip-hop aficionado. It also doesn’t help that he delivers all of his astonishing, funny, lyrical lyrics in a stage whisper. If DJ Shadow spoke, I like to think that this is what he’d sound like. So call both of these beauties “alternative music” and rejoice if you’re lucky enough to find copies.

2. Til The Wheels Fall Off — Amy Rigby (Signature Sounds): Where Lucinda Williams comes off as glassine, distant, and often humorless, Amy Rigby comes off as the kind of gal who would make you laugh and teach you a thing or two (wink, wink). Her breathless, sexy singing and comic timing are at their peak on the record’s three great songs: “Shopping Around” is the best failed-relationships-as-failure-of-capitalism song since “Money Changes Everything.” “Don’t Ever Change” is a heartbreaking song about trying to live in the moment. And “Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?” is even better than its title suggests. Rigby’s gotten better with age, too; her fourth album is as good as her debut.

3. Indestructible — Rancid (Hellcat): You’re my gee-tar heroes!

4. Decoration Day — The Drive-By Truckers (New West): Thank God rock bands aren’t structured like NFL teams, because there’s no way this trio of near-genius songwriters would ever fit under the next album’s salary cap. Until then, embrace Jason Isbell’s working-class anthem “Outfit,” rock out to Mike Cooley’s naughty but nice “Marry Me,” and marvel at Patterson Hood’s lisp as he croaks his way through tales of unhappiness, suicide, and truly twisted love. How long can this band keep making records this good?

5. Send –Wire (pinkflag): A mean, nasty record full of apocalyptic catchphrases and guitars that sound like the noises your phone makes when you dial up the Internet. Twenty-five years after the classic Pink Flag, Wire regroups for an eardrum assault that burns itself out at the end but leaves plenty of scorched earth and plenty more scorched post-punk “artists” in its wake.

Honorable Mentions: Chutes Too Narrow — The Shins (Sub Pop); The Black Album — Jay-Z (Roc-a-Fella); Speakerboxxx/The Love Below — Outkast (Arista); Balance — Akrobatik (Coup d’Etat); On the Beach — Neil Young (Warner reissue). —Addison Engelking

1. How the West Was Won — Led Zeppelin (Atlantic): I tend to distrust anyone who dismisses Led Zeppelin. Meaning: Someone could say “I don’t really like Led Zeppelin” and, if they were stranded on the side of the road, well, I might not stop the car. Caller ID was invented for people who don’t like Led Zeppelin. Black Sabbath may have created “heavy metal,” but Led Zeppelin created every type of heavy music. The version of “The Immigrant Song” here wastes the MC5 and most of what’s called “proto-punk.”

2. Civil War — Matmos (Matador): Full of heart, surprises, and mood, even if it’s full of the over-academic guitar noodlings of David Grubbs as well. Great artists should release albums that do exactly what this one does: leave you with absolutely no idea what the next one will sound like.

3. Microminiature Love — The Michael Yonkers Band (Sub Pop): A 35-year-old album by a Minneapolis outsider who got jacked around by Sire, thus leaving this music unreleased and whispered-about since its 1967-68 conception. It’s reminiscent of a surfy Red Krayola if it evokes anything at all. Yonkers has been toiling around active and unknown for all 35 of those years, sometimes jumping on stage with the likes of hometown horror-noise, Throbbing Gristle-revivalist Wolf Eyes and other Midwest bizarros. He finally got his day of sorts with this reissue — an unexplainable mishmash of avant-/psych-pop. Microminiature Love certainly sounds like it’s from the ’60s, yet it also sounds like nothing else from its era.

4. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below — Outkast (La Face): It’s been eons since Prince has released diddlysquat worth batting an eye at. This is on everyone’s year-end list for a reason: It’s like the best Prince album also containing the best of Ashford and Simpson, Rick James, the greatest pop band ever (whoever that is), and Outkast. Really, people, you tell me what the hell “Hey Ya!” sounds like (besides Prince). I’m all ears.

5. Electric Version — The New Pornographers (Matador): Better than Mass Romantic, with just as many Dan Bejar (Destroyer) ghost-pinned songs. As good as this band is, there was no plausible way that Electric Version was going to suck, but this good? Color me surprised.

Honorable Mentions: Live at the Atlanta International Pop Festival, July 3 & 5, 1970 — The Allman Brothers (Epic/Legacy); No Silver/No Gold — The Baptist Generals (Sub Pop); Forgotten Lovers — Gary Wilson (Motel Records); Guitar Romantic — The Exploding Hearts (Dirtnap); Australasia — Pelican (Hydra Head).

— Andrew Earles

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

By the Numbers

Eagerly awaited in Memphis because most of it was filmed here and eagerly awaited elsewhere because of the talents and résumés of those involved, 21 Grams is one of the most ambitious and uncompromising films of the year.

For starters, it s the first American film from young Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose 2000 film Amores Perros was one of the freshest directorial debuts in recent memory. And then there s the cast, which boasts modern-day Brandos Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro, along with Naomi Watts, whose stunning performance in Mulholland Drive alone established her as one of the planet s finest actresses.

In Amores Perros, Iñárritu audaciously intercuts three plot lines connected by an auto accident, using his intersecting stories to explore class rifts in modern Mexico. As risky as the storytelling was for a debut film, the stories Iñárritu told in that film were themselves relatively self-contained, with only minor (yet crucial) overlaps.

For 21 Grams, Iñárritu ups the ante on the same premise, this time bringing his three protagonists lives crashing together and jumbling his narrative with chronologically chaotic editing.

The three subjects here, whose already precarious lives collide after the central accident, are: Paul (Penn), a mathematics professor with a strained marriage and a bum ticker, who is awaiting a heart transplant; Jack (Del Toro), an ex-con with a wife and two kids who has gone straight after being born again, a cure that causes his wife some discomfort (Jack drives a pickup decked out with a Jesus statuette on the dash, crosses hanging from the rearview, and Faith emblazoned across the tailgate); and Christina (Watts), an upper-class wife and mother who is also a recovering drug addict.

21 Grams is marvelously acted, with Penn and Del Toro s brooding topped by Watts brilliantly mercurial performance, but the film seems to waste some of this firepower with its overactive direction and overdetermined script.

The early reviews of 21 Grams have been mixed, and it s easy to see why: Rearranged and looked at sequentially, the story here isn’t just the stuff of chance but of wildly unlikely and melodramatic events. Perhaps the narrative trickery serves to draw pathos out of a scenario that might seem a little too pulpy if told in a more mundane fashion.

This structural approach has become quite common in left-of-center cinema over the past few years from the work of Quentin Tarantino to Memento to Gaspar No’s Irreversible to Brazilian import City of God to Iñárritu s own Amores Perros.

The structure of 21 Grams is quite similar to that of yet another recent title, Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, one of the very best films of the past decade. Like 21 Grams, The Sweet Hereafter is centered around a tragic auto accident ?in this case, a fatal school bus crash that devastates a rural Canadian community and tracks the way the event changes the lives of those involved by juxtaposing and alternating before and after. But a crucial difference in the structure of the two films is that The Sweet Hereafter has two elements that are presented chronologically: the school bus making its doomed trip along its route the morning of the crash and a teen-age babysitter (one of the crash s few survivors) reading The Pied Piper of Hamelin to two children (who will perish in the accident).

The Sweet Hereafter follows both of those events in a straightforward fashion, twisting them around each other like a double helix and surrounding them with seemingly random (but emotionally linked) scenes from both before and after the accident. The chronological jumble preserves the mystery and engages the audience in the film, but that double helix holds everything together. The arc of the film is still emotional (and its structure associative) rather than narrative which is what 21 Grams is aiming for but the structure is also elegant rather than chaotic. When the bedtime story is completed, it s one of the most heart-crushing moments in recent cinema.

By contrast, 21 Grams feels like a jigsaw puzzle dropped on the floor. Rather than demanding that the audience negotiate the visual information it imparts, it asks the audience to wade through a dense cinematic forest, sans machete. One suspects that Iñárritu is trying to connect the film s form to its content, which dotes on fate and chance. But since the film s philosophical musings come across as more than a little dubious, this gambit doesn’t really connect. Though Iñárritu, as in Amores Perros, communicates a keen feel for class differences (see especially the cutting between scenes of Christina s and Jack s home lives and parenting styles), he doesn’t seem to acknowledge how this is at odds with his film s glib chaos theory. After all, the social forces that keep these characters apart are far more common and easily explainable than the random events (and not so random, as when Paul hires a private investigator) that bring them together.

But if Iñárritu and editor Stephen Mirrione (who handled difficult and complicated material better in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic) seem to have bitten off a bit too much, the hero here in addition to the actors, of course may well be cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, whose bleached-out images are as memorable as the film s performances or story. Which, of course, is where Memphis comes in.

However much of an artistic or commercial success 21 Grams is (the former debatable; the latter yet-to-be-determined), the only true relevance for Memphis is how well the city is used as a location (for shooting, not for the story, which is set in an unnamed American city).

In this respect, Prieto and Iñárritu use the city s mix of lovely tree-lined neighborhoods and decaying urbanscapes to present the wide class distinctions of the country as a whole. And for those who just want to see the city up on the big screen, there s plenty: crows flocking over the Sears building, milkshakes at the Arcade, Tip-Top Liquors, Earnestine and Hazel’s, recognizable Midtown neighborhoods, etc.

Whatever its flaws, 21 Grams may not be the best film shot in Memphis (I vote for Mystery Train) and almost certainly won t be the most successful (The Firm?), but it is a memorable addition to the city s store of big-screen contributions.

Chris Herrington

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Mona Lisa Smile affords me the delightful opportunity to engage you, my beloved readership, in an at-home or at-work participatory exercise that will help communicate one of the theses of Julia Roberts foray into the Inspiring Teacher genre. That thesis is twofold: A) Appearances are deceiving, for beyond your expectations there are unknown depths and qualities; and B) there are many ways to celebrate this idea.

You see, I went to the film with my pal Jonathan Kidder, who is making his way in Chicago as an actor. Not long ago, I mentioned to him that I thought that his headshot (the photo/résumé that an actor uses to promote him/herself) was not an accurate or appealing representation of what he has to offer as a performer. Jonathan has a puppy-dog charm, a boyish face and smile, and an overall winning way. His headshot was dark and sullen and dangerous perfect for that big Matrix audition but not so much for, say, Johnny Appleseed.

So, readers, your assignment: Go to the Portfolio section of JonathanKidder.com, where you too can see what you think of this guy. The homepage has an outstanding shot of him looking like a 1950s Ivy League heartthrob. But there s also the Running Jonathan, the Academic Jonathan, and a couple of Hide Your Daughters Jonathans for good measure. My point: There s A and B, just like in Mona Lisa Smile.

Welcome to Wellesley College in 1954. Steeped in tradition and in the celebration of the role of the contemporary woman as a scholar/homemaker, Wellesley is the premier institution of higher learning for the brightest of young women. (Some of the film s inspiration is reputedly drawn from Hillary Clinton s experiences there.) New to the faculty: Katherine Watson (Roberts), a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed art-history professor from California with Big Ideas. At first intimidated by the preparedness and expectations of her students, she is soon appalled that Wellesley s ambitions for its students are not in the courtrooms or emergency rooms or hallowed halls of academia or politics but rather in the kitchen or at the vacuum. Wellesley isn’t as interested in producing lawyers or doctors as it is in providing Ivy League husbands with well-rounded wives. Wellesley 1954: not for the career-minded woman.

Katherine has a handful of students to reciprocate her art-history lectures with lessons in the Wellesley Way: Joan (Julia Stiles) is the star student whose dreams of Yale law school are compromised only by her impending engagement and possible marriage; Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the worldly one whose loose drinking is matched only by her roving virtue; Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the girl whose self-esteem nearly sabotages a potential beau; and Betty (Kirsten Dunst) is the ice queen with a heart of gold that movies like these seek to thaw. Complicating Katherine s pursuit of academic excellence and feminist empowerment are two suitors. One is a sensitive but expectant boyfriend back in Cali, and the other is Wellesley s hunky Italian professor Bill Dunbar (28 Days Dominic West). And to top it all off, Katherine s unorthodox ways aren t sitting well with the Wellesley brass (gasp!), and her employment may go the way of the lesbian nurse (a dignified Juliet Stevenson) who provided illicit contraception.

Life is apparently only made worthwhile by the Humanities. This is another, mostly unspoken, thesis of the film which is shared by other seize-the-day films like Dead Poets Society and The Emperor s Club and uttered convincingly and appealingly by Roberts. We are so accustomed to this kind of film that we can almost mouth the dialogue as we hear it. There is nothing new in Mona Lisa Smile, for we certainly, safe in 2003, realize that sexism is bad, opportunities for women are good, Lucille Ball was not a communist, and that Picasso was really onto something (a disputed idea in the film). So, again safe in 2003, it s easy to take shots at the traditionalist values that defined the 1950s. But director Mike Newell balances the heavy sexual politics of the film with complicated (if not rich) performances from a great cast (standout: Gyllenhaal) and an affirmation of what we already know in the 21st century: There are more than two sides to every coin (nobody considers the edges) and a person behind every smile.

If Mona Lisa Smile doesn’t warm you to those ideas, perhaps only JonathanKidder.com will.

Seize the day! Bo List

Categories
News The Fly-By

Dream Weaver

Beale Street is going to be a festival in the heart of the city every day — a Memphis in May atmosphere all

year round, where people of every description can gather and feel good about themselves and their community.

There will be no barriers to blacks or whites, real or imagined, and we’re going to make it apparent to both.”— John Elkington, 1982

Performa Entertainment Real Estate offices are a music lover’s dream. Memorabilia from artists of every possible genre line the walls and adorn tabletops. An eerie bust of soul legend Rufus Thomas, complete with red eyes, greets visitors at the door. The decor isn’t that surprising, really. You’d expect the offices of the company that manages “The Crossroads of America’s Music” to look a little hip and trendy.

“

Don’t expect hip and trendy from John Elkington, who looks more like, well, a real estate agent. The 54-year-old entrepreneur has made a career out of turning nothing into a lot of something.

With Performa, Elkington has managed to not only reenergize Beale Street (which now surpasses Graceland as the state’s top tourist attraction, according to Convention and Visitors Bureau numbers) but also package the formula for other cities around the country. City leaders have come from as far as Spokane, Washington, to partake of the business voodoo used to put Memphis on the map. Mention his name in development circles and the most common response is simply “John Elkington is a dreamer.”

As 2003 comes to a close, with the partially completed FedExForum looming at Beale Street’s back door, Elkington and company are doing what they do best: changing with the times. As the area makes ready for an influx of fans and visitors, Performa is devising plans to capitalize on the expansion. “Our legacy to Beale Street will not only be that we started it but we finished it,” said Elkington. “But the work is never finished. We spent this whole year working on our next 20 years.”

Devising the Plan

When Elkington first decided to take on the task of redeveloping Beale Street in 1983, everyone told him he was crazy. Others had tried, unsuccessfully, to redevelop the once-thriving area, which had dwindled to boarded buildings and piles of rubble after the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination in 1968. The Elkington and Keltner Company took over management of the street from the Beale Street Development Corporation and became responsible for everything — securing tenants, collecting rents, maintaining buildings, and advertising and scheduling events.

“I was 32 years old and thought I could do anything at the time,” he said. “When you’re younger you don’t know as much, and you get involved in projects that you really don’t have the qualifications for. So, what happened? I had no plan, no marketing money, and I almost went bankrupt, twice.”

Elkington estimates he spent more than $3 million of his own money, in addition to federal grants, to renovate the district.

The perseverance paid off. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Beale’s redevelopment, a year in which Beale Street businesses grossed more than $24 million, according to Performa CFO Joe Calabretta. In the intervening years, an Olympic torch has been carried down the street, President Bill Clinton ate at Blues City Cafe, and more famous bands than you could possibly name have played in its clubs.

Vice president of operations Al James has been with Performa for 20 years and worked with the Beale Street Development Corporation before that. Although Elkington gets most of the credit for turning the street around, James actually maintains it, working with the Beale Street Merchants Association, spearheading security, and patrolling the area during nighttime events. His day begins at 6 a.m. and sometimes ends well after midnight. “I’m the last person from the original team,” he said.

The energetic 49-year-old admits to having doubts about Elkington in the beginning. “I have to give John his props. He has weathered some storms. I followed him here and businesses followed him too. He has proven a lot of people wrong. The street has proven itself. We can’t lose on this.”

The street posted its first profitable year in 1990, with sales of $5.6 million. In 1996 the street was removed from the U.S. Department of Interior’s list of endangered historic buildings, following the openings of Silky O’Sullivan’s, Alfred’s, and Rum Boogie Cafe.

Elkington then took his development/management formula on the road — to Shreveport, Louisiana, Cincinnati, Ohio, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and elsewhere. The results have been mixed.

Spread Thin

Elkington came before the Shelby County Commission earlier this fall for what should have been a routine approval vote for his reappointment to a seat on the Center City Commission (CCC). Somewhat surprisingly, he received a dissenting vote from Commissioner Linda Rendtorff.

Although Elkington had served on the CCC before, Rendtorff questioned his commitment to the position and its requirements. “The [CCC] post has to deal with a lot of issues dealing with money and tax freezes, and these things need to be scrutinized very carefully,” said Rendtorff. “And here you’ve got somebody who doesn’t fill out forms like he’s asked, doesn’t fill out resumes, doesn’t show up for [his] committee [interview] and expects to be put on the board. These things need careful scrutiny, and I’m not sure he’s capable of that.”

Quite the contrary, said CCC president Jeff Sanford, who has known and worked with Elkington in various capacities dating back before Beale Street was redeveloped. “John has been very interactive and participatory on our board,” he said. “I was around when he was dreaming about creating the district, and I remember in the late 1970s he called and asked my opinion and I told him he was nuts. Now we have people calling the [CCC] because they’ve heard about the success of Beale Street and about John.”

Elkington contends Rendtorff’s concerns are unfounded. “When I was younger, that was the case. But people change, and as they get older, they mature,” he said. A second marriage (to Valerie Calhoun, a Fox-13 anchor), two grown sons, and an 18-month-old have mellowed Elkington. “People used to tell me that I was too busy and doing too much, and probably in those days I didn’t care. I just wanted everyone to like me,” he said. “Now, I don’t care who likes me, and I don’t feel bad about saying no anymore.”

Elkington was ultimately reappointed to the CCC and serves as the mayoral appointee on the group’s Downtown Parking Authority and on the Center City Development Corporation. “John’s been around a long time. He knows a lot of people, and sometimes just being around long enough will get you there,” said Rendtorff.

Even though Sanford may be in his corner, representatives of other cities where Elkington has taken his expertise have questioned his accountability, citing a lack of responsiveness, communication breakdowns, and unrealized promises. In what may have been Performa’s most public management failure, financial support for the Red River Entertainment District in Shreveport fell through in October when the primary creditor, Flint Industries, met with foreclosure.

Mayor Keith Hightower and city officials worked with Elkington for more than seven years. “We wanted restaurants, clubs, and shops. A little more commercial than Beale Street, but unique to Shreveport,” said Hightower. “The project got built, we funded it, and Performa never filled it up. When leases weren’t executed, a lot of names were thrown around and it never came into fruition.”

In interviews with the Shreveport Times, Hightower criticized Elkington for insufficient marketing of the area, particularly during tourism season. After the disintegration of his city’s relationship with Performa, a foreclosed project, and $15 million in losses, Hightower has tempered his criticism somewhat. “We’ve been contacted by some other cities [about Performa’s actions], but I’m not on a witch hunt to get John. I think he got spread too thin. He kept a dream alive for a long time. Unfortunately for us, it was a bad dream. But that’s in the past, and we’re trying to move on,” Hightower told the Flyer.

The mayor said his city has been able to obtain some tenants, but plenty of vacant space remains, largely due to negative publicity surrounding the district’s handling.

Elkington’s employees stand behind him. “The Shreveport deal really hurt him. It made him angry, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen John that angry before,” said Cato Walker, Performa senior vice president of development. “The whole story was never told. Part of the problem was the partnering and also circumstances caused by the city’s requests. Shreveport needed someone to blame, and because he was the face [of the project], they blamed him.”

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, downtown development director Jack Steelman speaks wistfully of his city’s planned Fourth Street entertainment district. “We still have banners up with that name, but now it’s become more of a restaurant row,” he said. Performa finished its work with the city in 2000. Though plans were drawn up for retail outlets as well, no projects were begun.

“We were pleased with the outcome in terms of the plan itself, but we hoped he would bring more capital and deals to the table than he did. But we were pleased with the people that we met through him,” said Steelman.

Through Performa, the city was able to acquire funding to build $26 million in residential units. But it also fell victim to Elkington’s multitasking. “John is such a dreamer that sometimes people found him hard to believe,” Steelman added. “We’re a fairly conservative, mid-size Southern city that just didn’t see things that a dreamer like John would see. But it’s also fair to say that he was trying to evolve from consultant into developer at the same time within our project, and some unrealistic prices were put on land by private owners.”

Locally, Elkington has also had to fight some battles. Two years ago, then-Performa CFO and longtime friend Paul Gurley died. Since then, Elkington and Gurley’s widow, Mary Harvey, have been disputing unpaid bills stemming from a company credit card issued in Gurley’s name. Although Harvey did not pursue legal action and Performa paid the $13,000 bill in question, animosity still exists between the two.

Elkington has also been criticized for overcommercializing Beale Street, diluting — some would say eliminating — its uniquely Memphis characteristics. Three of the street’s largest venues, the Hard Rock CafÇ, Wet Willie’s, and Pat O’Brien’s, are franchise developments. “In the endeavor to make money, I don’t see how [Beale Street] could not have become commercial,” said Walker. “Beale Street has been a self-exploiting and commercialized street all its life. Rufus Thomas exploited Beale. B.B. King exploited Beale. Elvis Presley exploited Beale.”

Elkington maintains that the venues on the street remain unique to Memphis, and local management is sought for the franchises. In an attempt to continue the street’s African-American heritage, Performa has also instituted a 25 percent minority-ownership rule for new venues.

According to Performa’s management agreement with the city, any rental income above and beyond Performa’s expenses, which include security, insurance, and street maintenance costs, must be paid to the city. Elkington says there will be no surplus this year. Because of arena construction, access to parts of the street has been difficult, he said, adding that tenants have also dealt with extended pavement and sewer repairs, forced evacuation following July’s big storm, and security expenses of $180,000.

“From what’s being reported, sales on the street aren’t down compared to last year, but they are not up either,” said Calabretta. “It’s anybody’s guess as to what’s to happen with the arena. The businesses that I’ve talked to are looking for 12 to 20 percent increases during [Beale Street’s] off-season [between Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras].”

At press time, city officials had not responded to repeated requests for information regarding Performa’s dividend payments. According to Calabretta, more than 60 percent of Performa’s revenue comes from out-of-town projects. Through November, the company produced $325,000 in out-of-town billings compared to about $200,000 from Beale Street.

Elkington will manage entertainment districts in Cincinnati, Jackson, Mississippi, and Trenton, New Jersey, in the next two years. Plans for Jackson’s Farish Street district are complete, and properties are under construction. Trenton’s South Broad Street Village project will include more than 200 apartment units and 40,000 square feet of commercial space, developed by Performa. Plans for Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine district will be unveiled in January.

So far, Cincinnati city councilman John Cranley has been pleased with the progress. “John is in the process of working with local restaurants and local celebrities. We are also buying land and helping to land tenants,” he said. “The business aspect of the deal as well as the personal friendships that have developed from it have been good as well. We have never had an experience here with accountability or unreturned phone calls.”

In Progress

Elkington is working to bring a Chicago-based club, the District, to Beale Street. He also hopes to achieve a long-term goal by bringing the King Biscuit CafÇ as a breakfast venue to the street. “Memphis is changing, and we’re trying to get younger people here,” he said. “We have an urban crowd here, and you’ve got to address that.”

Elkington said he plans to transfer ownership of his management company to a minority owner within the next five years. The management deals, which require five to seven years of ongoing work, no longer hold an allure for Elkington. His primary interest lies in development and building ventures.

“Not many people get to take a dream from idea to reality,” said Walker. “John has developed a great product in Performa. … And he is not above getting out on the street and picking up paper. Back then [during the company’s founding], John was like a bull in a China shop. Now he realizes that you can’t do things with so much reckless abandon. He’s realized that he no longer has to be the whole crew.”

E-mail: jdavis@memphisflyer.com

Performa Business Projects

Illustrations of Jackson, Mississippi s, Farish

Street

entertainment district, scheduled to open in 2005.

?

Beale Street/Memphis

The District new Chicago-based restaurant/nightclub; opening spring 2004 in the former Have a Nice Day CafÇ space

Lee s Landing new development adjacent to FedExForum, consisting of a 420-car garage, 15,000 sq. ft. of retail space, a national steak house, and a Westin hotel

Blues Alley redesigned rear facades of existing businesses bordering FedExForum

New Police Museum

Midtown s Central Business District development 50,000 sq. ft. of retail space

Other Cities

Over-the-Rhine (Cincinnati) plans to be unveiled in January for 100,000-sq.-ft. development. Performa has received letter of intent to develop 40,000 sq. ft. of that area.

Farish Street (Jackson, Mississippi) plans completed; city is doing infrastructure; opening spring 2005

South Broad Street Village (Trenton, New Jersey) $24 million in state funds to develop the area; Performa will develop 232 apartment units, 100,000 sq. ft. of neighborhood commercial space, 30,000 sq. ft. of office space, and a 650-car garage.