May have a whole new meaning. According to WREG-TV, the former owner of the King of Clubs, a Memphis strip club shut down because of prostitution, wants to turn his new Cabaret Resort on Highway 61 into a real resort and has plans to build a driving range for golfers right next to the club.
Plante: How It Looks
There s a Youth Villages Annual Fishing Rodeo today at Youth Villages Campus Lake, with proceeds benefiting the organization. At Kudzu s tonight, singer/songwriter Nancy Apple s Twang-a-Dang-Doodle show features Everett Brown. Cory Branan and Tim Raygun are at the Hi-Tone. Susan Marshall with Rick Steff & Sam Shoup are at French Quarter Suites. Candice Ivory is at the P&H. And today s big, big party, which continues tomorrow, is WiffleStock 2004, the annual Ronald McDonald House fund-raiser at Zinnie s East, with wiffleball tournaments, derbies, auctions, live music, food, beer, and lots of other fun.
Fortunately for Jeffrey Goldberg, he not only once lived in Israel but served in its army. Without those credentials he almost certainly would be denounced as an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. After all, Goldberg had the consummate gall and utter chutzpah to say the obvious: Israel’s West Bank and Gaza settlements have to go.
Actually, Goldberg went even further. In nearly 16,000 words in the May 31st issue of The New Yorker, this Washington-based journalist wrote that in some ways the Jewish zealots who have established settlements in the heart of overwhelmingly Palestinian areas are as great — or greater — a danger to Israel as their counterparts among the Islamic extremists, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. His article was titled “Among the Settlers; Will They Destroy Israel?”
For raising that question, he has come under unaccustomed attack. Goldberg has spent the past several years reporting and writing about Islamic radicalism and the threat it posed. This made him the darling of the neocons. But now he’s asking similar questions about Jewish zealotry, and for that his integrity, if not his very sanity, has been questioned by the usual American guardians of Israeli security.
Goldberg’s point is that not only has Israel gotten itself into a demographic and geographic trap with its settlements in Palestinian lands, it has allowed the most reactionary, belligerent, and racist elements in Judaism to establish some of the most provocative settlements. God might want these settlements, as the settlers themselves insist, but it is conscripts, mostly secular Jews, who have to guard them.
For American Jews to keep quiet about these settlements does Israel no favor. After all, in the long run the settlements are unsustainable — difficult to defend militarily, impossible to defend legally. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pledged to remove settlements from the Gaza Strip, but that still leaves the West Bank, with more than two million Palestinians — and only about 200,000 Israeli settlers. The government seems to consider most of these settlements a permanent part of Israel. That’s exactly the way some Israelis saw the Gaza Strip. But Israel is pulling out — not because it wants to but because it has to. The same will eventually happen in large parts of the West Bank.
The longer Israel waits to deal with those settlements — not all, mind you, but most — the deeper it sinks into a quagmire. Goldberg has it right: These settlements, as much as Islamic radicalism, threaten Israel. The latter feeds off the former.
Much of Goldberg’s article is spent on Jewish religious settlers. But he talked to Palestinians too. What they have to say is hardly encouraging, often downright frightening, and usually sad. But the issue for me is not what is good for the Palestinians — I wish them a state of their own and also all the happiness in the world — but what is good for Israel. Getting rid of the settlements would be good for the Palestinians. But it would also be good for Israel.
Some of what the Jewish settlers told Goldberg is disturbing. Many of them have a contemptuous, virtually racist, view of their Arab neighbors. They are wedded to the literal word of the Bible, while much of Judaism is not, and while they by no means share the Islamic radicals’ yen for martyrdom, they are quite willing to die for their beliefs. Okay. But it is the nature of these things that they will take others with them. Not okay.
Goldberg has written a good article about some ugly facts — and done so with a reporter’s keen eye, but also with a Zionist’s loving heart. It should be read by anyone interested in Israel. See for yourself. n
Richard Cohen is a Washington Post columnist; his work frequently appears in the Flyer.
Oxford’s Fat Possum flaunts two of its finest in town this week: Memphis bluesman Robert “Wolfman” Belfour will play the venerable South Main restaurant the Arcade on Friday, June 18th. And Mississippi bluesman Paul “Wine” Jones, who released a couple of heralded records on Fat Possum in the ’90s, will be at Murphy’s Wednesday, June 23rd.
Alt-country and roots-rock fans will want to check out the down-south sound of Pat Green and The Lost Trailers at the New Daisy Theatre Thursday, June 17th. An inheritor of Texas troubadours such as Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff Walker, Green built his reputation through constant touring on the alt-country bar circuit before crossing over to country mainstream. Atlanta’s Lost Trailers contribute to the recent marriage of country with classic and Southern rock on their 2004 debut, Welcome to the Woods, which might be called alt-country to tailgate to.
Best bet among locals this week might be the pairing of Cory Branan and Snowglobe’s Tim Raygun, who’ll play the Hi-Tone Café Saturday, June 19th.
—Chris Herrington
The nearly nekkid beat-punk trio The Demolition Doll Rods mine 1950s blues, rockabilly, and Phil Spector-style bad-girl rock-and-roll. On record, they are kindred to the Hellcats, who brought tough biker-chick attitude to the Memphis scene as the ’80s gave way to the ’90s. But live, the Doll Rods are more about leather, chains, crazy-looking pasties, bare skin, and glam. Following in the performance tradition of fellow Detroit rocker Iggy Pop, their shows are loud, nasty, and unpredictable. As suggested by “Married for the Weekend,” the Doll Rods’ anthem to nonstop carnality, sex is the cornerstone of the act. The music is almost secondary to the gimmick, which is too bad. There’s some really good stuff buried underneath all that attitude and all those decibels. The Doll Rods will be at the Hi-Tone Café on Thursday, June 17th, with Memphis punks The Dutch Masters and Tyler Keith & the Preacher’s Kids, who never fail to satisfy.
At the end of the day, Mayor Herenton gets his way.
That’s one lesson to be learned from the renomination of Joseph Lee to become head of Memphis Light, Gas and Water.
Willie Herenton is still mayor, and the members of the City Council aren’t. Even if it takes six months and the sham of a national search, the mayor can outlast them.
Lesson number two is that MLGW and its employees and senior management can apparently run on autopilot. Either that or the managerial abilities of interim president Rev. James Netters have been badly underestimated.
And number three: Herenton is serious about making structural changes in city government. Last year he said he wanted to shake up the corporate culture of MLGW and make it operate more like a division of city government. By insisting that the council accept Lee and by nominating former city CAO Rick Masson to the MLGW board, he’s done that. Masson is running the Plough Foundation. A source said he was considered for the MLGW presidency last year, but Masson says if that was so it didn’t involve him.
This isn’t a mayoral production of Groundhog Day. Herenton announced what he wanted to do, why he wanted to do it, and it took a while but he did it. There shouldn’t be a repeat of last year’s situation where MLGW proposed a rate increase that preempted Herenton’s budget proposal. If the MLGW senior management, several of whom applied for the president’s job, stick around, they’ll probably get raises scaled to the proposed $215,000 annual salary for the president.
MLGW is only one piece of local government and only one monthly bill. In the bigger picture, how serious are Herenton, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, city schools superintendent Carol Johnson, and Sheriff Mark Luttrell when they say they are facing a financial crisis?
They would be more convincing if they acted in concert once in a while instead of independently. For example, we’ll know school closings are imminent when Johnson appears with three of her predecessors — Herenton, Johnnie B. Watson, and Ray Holt, all veterans of the last round of school closings — and not just a couple of sympathetic school board members. A superintendents super-alliance could overcome alumni groups and board members opposed to closing any schools. Johnson can’t do it alone.
A commitment to close half-empty city schools would make Wharton’s job easier too because of the funding formula that ties city and county construction costs together. As Wharton often reminds audiences when he gives a speech, Memphis is part of Shelby County, which is responsible for funding county and city schools.
Another Wharton line is his promise to maintain civil relations with the commission, in contrast to Herenton and the council. “It’s not my chemistry,” he told a group at a public hearing this week. Fine, but Jim Rout was civil too, and civility got us into this. Wharton wants to “break the back” of the $1.6 billion in county debt, 55 percent of which is due to schools. He said he will announce some new ideas for school funding this week. Watch for how many, if any, city officials back his play.
Finally, there is evidence that the “crisis” and “mess” aren’t desperate. One of Wharton’s biggest accomplishments is what you don’t see: $89 million he slashed from the capital spending budget. Over time, such cuts could break the back of the debt. There are other contrary indicators. This week a new U.S. Census Bureau study showed that Tennesseans pay 20 percent less in state taxes than workers in other states, and other studies say Tennessee has the fourth-lowest overall tax rate among the 50 states.
There was no mood of crisis at Wharton’s public hearing Monday at the Central Library. County employees outnumbered ordinary citizens, some of whom were more interested in making a short speech than asking a question. The dire cuts in pretrial services and victims’ assistance turned out to involve a dozen or so employees, and there is the possibility of funding them with grants instead. A fed-up citizen threatened to move out of Shelby County rather than pay more property taxes. Just once, wouldn’t you like to see a mayor nod and say, “So go. Sorry we lost your business. But I can’t change geography”?
Smart growth remains a concept, not a policy. Wharton’s proposed adequate facilities fee never got state authorization. Contrary to an advance press release, he did not attend a joint appearance Monday with Herenton at the Memphis Area Home Builders Association to announce new housing incentives inside Memphis.
All in all, a week of politics as usual on both sides of the city/county street, with a lot more to come.
When I moved last year, I was told the pool at my new building, out of all those in Midtown, had the last diving board. The diving board wasn’t anything special: white, five feet long, maybe a foot off the ground. At the time, I didn’t think too much about it (too cold), but in the back of my mind, I was excited. How long had it been since I’d gone off a diving board? How long had it been since I’d even seen one?
When I was younger, kids at my neighborhood pool were allowed to swim in the deep end only after swimming an especially harrowing length. There was no stopping allowed, no grabbing hold of the sides. But as soon as we thought we could make it, we’d march over to the lifeguard’s chair and tell her we were ready.
The shallow end was a simple world of bright-orange water wings, wobbly handstands, and lounging mothers who did not want to be splashed. Babies swam in the shallow end. The deep end was where all the fun was: playing sharks and minnows, doing flips under the water, and –most importantly — going off the diving board.
We did splash-contest cannonballs and sleek jackknives, butt bumpers, cartwheels, and, more often than you would think, funny walks where we’d pretend to fall into the pool.
Then there were the big boys: the front flips, the back dives.
I never quite got the hang of the back dive. I remember one evening when my father and sister tried to teach me off the side of the pool. The trick is to form a triangle with your hands in front of you, then watch the triangle as you throw your arms over your head. Chicken that I was, though, mine always went off to the right, resulting more in a side dive than a back one.
Those days are long gone. Diving boards at municipal pools, hotels, apartment complexes, and even private homes have almost all disappeared, probably banished to the land of drive-in movies and skating rinks.
The city’s new $2.5 million Ed Rice Aquatic Center opened this month with six lap lanes and zero-depth entry (which means the pool can be walked or waded into) but no diving board. Of the city’s 16 pools, Bickford, Westwood, Douglass, Willow, and Gooch Community Centers have spring boards.
“When we do renovations at the pools, we clean up the deck and redo the concrete,” says David Han, the city’s aquatics manager. “We do not put the diving board back in.” He says he could name about 100 swim coaches in the area but not a single diving coach.
“The new pool goes from zero depth to five feet. So, for this reason, we don’t have a board. We need a minimum depth of 12 feet for a board,” says Han. In recent years, insurance companies have put more stringent regulations in place regarding how deep a pool has to be to have a board. The cost of liability insurance has also gone up, meaning that even if the pool is deep enough for a board, the owner’s pockets usually aren’t.
It’s too bad, really. This year marks diving’s 100th anniversary as an Olympic sport. But how can young athletes be exposed to the sport if all the boards are gone? I’m not saying diving boards aren’t dangerous — the only thing holding back my back dive was the fear of cracking my head open — but anything can be dangerous if used improperly.
As part renter of the last diving board in Midtown, I thought it might make a good story for our annual summer issue: diving board as endangered species. The day my editor said yes, I went home to cruel irony: The board had been removed, leaving four holes where it had stood.
I saw the apartment manager a few days later and asked if the board was gone for good. (I was hoping that it just needed repairs and was “in the shop.”) She said yes, that an insurance agent had inspected the building and said in no uncertain terms that the board had to go.
Is the diving board gone for good? It certainly looks that way, and there are so few simple pleasures in life already.
Some years after I told the lifeguard I was ready for the deep end, I sat in my own lifeguard chair at an Olympic-size pool. The diving well was 14 feet deep and included two boards, one 10 feet off the ground. It was here I learned how to do a swan dive.
I’m not saying it was a good one, but there’s something amazing about the swan dive. One moment you are solidly on your feet and the next you are flying, back arched, arms outstretched, airborne. Then, just as suddenly, you are slicing through the water. To get to experience three states of matter — earth, air, water — so quickly was incredible.
I’m not sure when I’ll get to feel that way again.
With his latest album, Da Nu Boi, North Memphis rapper Mac E is determined to put the past — including a longtime feud with local rap star Yo Gotti and a well-publicized penchant for label hopping — behind him. “I’m coming out with a new sound, new lyrics, and a whole new game plan,” the 24-year-old proclaims. “And regarding that beef with Gotti, well, I made the phone call and let him know that we don’t need to do this no more.”
Mac E’s problem with local labels Lil One Records (which released his solo debut, Lyrically Platinum), Mo Chedda, and Inevitable Entertainment (Yo Gotti’s home) are more complex. “I’d get with a label and we’d agree to something, then everything would go sour,” Mac E says. “The focus would change, and people would start talking negative.”
But now that he’s signed to the Hy Lyfe label (owned by Memphians Tys and Sease and distributed by local workhorse Select-O-Hits), things are looking up. “I learned that I’ve got to keep myself away from all that,” he says. “Everybody’s got the same goal. There ain’t no time for this fighting.”
Mac E recorded the dozen tracks on Da Nu Boi at Orange Mound studio Da Sweatbox. Special guests such as Turk (who rhymed on “Whatchabout” a few months before his shootout with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department), Yo Lynch, Yung Kee, Gangsta Blac, and Playa Fly collaborated with Mac E on this thoroughly Memphis album. Tracks like “Do Da Dam Thang” and “Gangsta (Screwed)” feature strummed guitars, à la Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti-western soundtracks, rather than standard synthesized clichés, while “My Year” builds a riff off the Willie Hutch hit “Sunshine Lady.”
Now that Da Nu Boi has hit the streets, it’s all about promotion. “We’re giving away CDs, posting flyers, doing free shows,” Mac E says. “Whatever goes on, I try my best to be a part of it. Right now, I want radio. I’ve got a personal relationship with a few deejays,” he says. “They’ll call me to do an intro, but when I drop an album, they won’t play it.”
Then Mac E backs up to explain that Hot 107.1-FM is playing his latest single, “Got Deals” — or, at least, the instrumental version of it. “[My program director] allows us to talk over instrumental bits that we like,” confirms Lil Larry, who’s been a deejay at the station since 2001. “I’m trying to get the audience familiar with the beat. I feel like Mac E’s song will work. It’s gonna get hot in the streets, and it will probably eventually get picked up on the radio.”
Larry, the self-proclaimed “King of the Streets,” says, “I used to wonder why radio stations aren’t playing this guy or that guy. Now I see both sides, and I can talk to these guys on the street and explain it. No other deejay is doing this right now. I’m the only one going to the hole-in-the-wall clubs and hanging out in the ‘hood.”
“If you’re a local artist,” Larry says, “the best thing to do is work the streets.” When pressed, he cites other up-and-coming rappers like Bumpy Johnson and Da Block Burners as potential adds to the Hot 107 playlist. “Not to say those are the only three good acts,” he says with a laugh. “There are so many talented artists in Memphis. It’s just gonna take the right song in the right time at the right place. But,” he cautions, “even if a song is good and it has a buzz, it might not fit our formats.”
Wendy Day, founder of the nonprofit Rap Coalition, agrees. “If artists can build a buzz on the street, radio will come to them,” she says. While local rappers are notorious for their complaints about airplay, Day points out that “it’s much harder everywhere else. When I hear complaints about radio play, it’s usually because they’re not doing it right.”
In conjunction with the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission, Day is hosting an 11-part series for locals hoping to break into the music industry. The next installment, titled “Publishing: Where the Loot Is,” will take place on Thursday, July 1st, at the New Daisy Theatre on Beale Street. (Go to MemphisPanels.com for more details.)
“Radio is a business like everything else,” Day says. “The music has to fit a format, and the artist must have a plan in place. Are they trying to sell records, or do they just care about being the man in a four-block radius? Two months ago, we had a panel that talked about how to promote your record and build a buzz. On November 4th,” she promises, “we’re gonna do it again.”
Mac E’s next local appearance will be at the Crystal Palace Roller Skating Rink on Sunday, June 20th, where he’ll be performing with Warner Bros. recording artist Crime Mob. For more info, go to HyLyfe.com. n
E-mail: localbeat@memphisflyer.com
“My rule is if it feels like a ball, I put it in the bag. If it squirms, I let it go.”
Steve Loibner is talking about his livelihood, which is diving for golf balls. There’s nothing too sophisticated about it, to hear him tell it. “It’s the Helen Keller method,” he says. “All feel.”
As we talk, Loibner’s standing waist-deep in a pond on number 11 at the Marion [Arkansas] Golf and Athletic Club. It’s a course where the rough is deep — and has waves. In fact, it seems to this observer that the course is more water than land.
“Oh yeah,” says Loibner. “Marion is my favorite. You can put a ball in the water on every shot. I’m here every month, sometimes twice a month.” They don’t call this place the “Marion Monster” for nothing.
Loibner calls his business Bubbles & Balls, and he’s been at it for 22 years. He began with four courses near his home in Benton, Arkansas. He was a teacher then, and ball-diving was a perfect summer job. “Yep,” he says, “I taught biology and anatomy — and I coached girls’ basketball and softball. I’ve got five state championship rings.” Which is good, since he’s managed to lose four wedding rings plying his watery trade. In 1998, he “hung up his chalk” and went into the ball-recovery business full-time. Now he has 115 courses as clients, spread out between Oklahoma City and Memphis.
His biology background sometimes still comes in handy. “I spend most of my days flipping turtles and goosing frogs,” he says. Surprisingly, he says snakes are not really a problem. “They normally just try to get away from you,” he says, adding that there are a couple of places he won’t work “during the mating season.” The biggest problem, though, is leeches.
Leeches? “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Leeches love a golf ball. They rest on them and wait for a host to come by.” Like, say, a diver. Which is why Loibner covers every inch of his body, except for his face.
He finds lots of other things too. Like shopping carts, bicycles, skateboards, guns, and at least five clubs a week. “Some I donate to a charity like First Tee,” he says. “But most of ’em aren’t in real good shape. Normally, when a club hits the water, the shaft is bent or broken, if you know what I mean.”
Sadly, I do.
“Hold your balls higher,” says the photographer. Loibner grins and lifts the mesh bag obligingly. He’s heard all the jokes. It helps to have a sense of humor when balls are your business.
Usually, Loibner splits the balls he finds with the golf course. Then he puts the ones he keeps through a four-step, 24-hour cleaning process before selling them to various retailers, golf courses, and driving ranges.
He’ll sell you a bag too: $25 for a bag of 100 “pond run” balls. Whether that bag has more cheap Top-Flites or top-of-the-line Titleists is anybody’s guess. Balls recovered from exclusive country clubs are more likely to be a better quality than balls he finds at a place like Marion. And that’s no reflection on Marion, which is a nice course. It’s just wet and anyone who plays here knows they’re going to lose their balls. They even give you three balls before you start to play.
Loibner cautions that his job isn’t for just anyone who can strap on a scuba tank. “It’s black water down there,” he says. “People think it’s an Easter egg hunt, but you can’t see anything. He also likes to tell about the human-sized catfish he accidentally mounted. “I came straight up out of that water,” he says. “Fast.”
And sometimes the hazards are human. “Once, when I came up out of the water, a ball hit me on the back of the head,” Loibner says. “I went back down and laid low until I figured they were gone. A little later, I went into the clubhouse and there’s a couple sitting at a table. The woman looks at me and says, ‘I’m mad at you.’
“I said, ‘Why?’
“She said, ‘Because my husband’s ball hit you in the head on the 9th hole.’
“‘And you’re mad?’ I said.
“‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It bounced off your head, onto the green, and my husband birdied the hole. I had him beat until that happened.'”
Like many of my fellow Americans, I spent Friday the 11th in mourning. I set aside some time for a moment of silence before I dedicated my own mini-memorial to a fallen idol: a genius who transcended his field and became a colossus in American life; a hero whose questionable politics were often forgiven by his generous, eternally optimistic public persona; and a man whose footsteps were so deeply imbedded in the country’s cultural pathways that they were no longer recognizable through the scrim of history.
I played Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music full-blast for two hours, and I mourned for Ray Charles.
I know that Charles has kept a low profile in the last few years, but with a little imagination, it is easy to retune the chorus of Ronald Reagan hagiographies from the commemorative issue of Time and make them sing praises for the Genius: “What remains is Charles’ largeness and deeply enduring significance.” “If Charles were not the greatest popular musician, he was one of the best actors of the popular musician we have ever had.” “Charles utterly remade the American musical landscape.” Forget the Gipper. At least Ray Charles’ blindness didn’t do irreparable damage to the country.
In fact, I’ll always prefer Ray Charles to Ronnie the Populist, because, even at his most cartoonish, Charles rejected the illusions that gave Reagan life. Brother Ray shilled for Pepsi, made small talk with Big Bird, and sang for the Republicans because that’s what he wanted to do, and those were the people with the dough. Besides, he’d created enough masterworks to coast anyway. He had a leader’s honesty, not a leader’s image. Charles knew art couldn’t be faked.
This isn’t supposed to be a political article, so I am sorry if I keep conflating presidents and presidential elections with creative works of lasting significance. But thanks to new releases by Mekons founder Jon Langford and stand-up comic David Cross, I can’t help it. The two opposing pictures of the U.S.A. that emerge from Langford’s All the Fame of Lofty Deeds and Cross’ It’s Not Funny provide more specific cultural assessments and truer alternatives to the way we live now than anything I’ve heard from the two dolts running for the White House.
The musician takes the braver path. Although All the Fame of Lofty Deeds is supposed to be a concept album about a disillusioned country singer, it’s a portrayal of the country’s convulsions every bit as accurate as the Mekons’ 2002 OOOH! The twist this time is that Langford has decided to believe that the sun will shine again someday. (Ray Charles would approve.) But it’s a long, hard climb. Langford warns on the opening track, “You have your reasons to believe in people/But people aren’t all the same,” and images of surrender and oblivion are everywhere: Langford sings and writes about going over the cliffs, living lies, and moving to Switzerland. At the end, though, he’s smiling in fellowship at his backup band during (what else?) a pedal-steely cover of “Trouble in Mind.”
This conflicted yet exalted spirit comes across in both his passionate, warm vocals and the disembodied roots rock that frames them. Langford’s a stylistic cosmopolitan — there’s some Nashville honky-tonk, some Depression-/recession-era banjos, some saloon piano, some slide guitar, some accordian, some dobro, and even a youthful blast of punk guitar. The music is skillful yet casual, intimate yet absolutely solid and certain. It’s some of the best white blues I’ve heard since the Rolling Stones’ heyday, and it reinforces a portrait of a country that is “not stupid/Even though it’s silent/It still has eyes and ears/It just can’t find its mouth.”
As seasoned pros who have been in their respective games long enough to earn legendary status, Langford and Cross share an obsession with youth. Langford mournfully insists that “the country is young,” on the brilliant U.S.A.-as-enfant terrible metaphor/song of the same name. On the other hand, fellow fortysomething Cross concludes a stand-up tirade against al-Qaeda and American gullibility when he whines, “Are we a nation of 6-year-olds?” Recorded earlier this year in Washington, D.C., the best bits of It’s Not Funny refine the most scathing, hilarious, and intelligent political consciousness since Bill Hicks (who earned his bread by brutalizing Bush senior in his stand-up comedy 15 years ago). Courageous and smart, Cross has provided the country’s loud mouth that Langford’s seeking, and while that may get him panned in the New York Post, it has earned him raves in the alternative press and dinner plates at at least one former presidential candidate’s fund-raisers.
No, Cross’ looks at race and privilege are far too barbed and accurate for any political affiliation. Just listen to the way he says “facts” in any routine, in any context; this man cannot comprehend why the truth is ignored, but he will not be silent. That is one definition of heroism, I think. He’s also the only comic I know who’s making anything out of the devastating, confusing days after 9/11. In a striking bit about the “useless information” of the terrorist threat levels, he imagines the following domestic conversation: “Honey, the terrorist alert has been lifted to orange.” “Oh, what should I do?” “Well, get the bread out of the oven and let’s eat dinner.” And the anguish Cross finds in such everyday absurdities boosts him into greater, more outlandish hyperbole and more sharply imagined scenarios. His closing bit, George W. Bush’s rewrite of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, is an appropriate protest similar in tone and structure to Richard Pryor’s horrifying “Bicentennial Nigger” routine from 1976. But Cross’ stunt is far less effective than his portrayal of a soldier in Afghanistan who is told to pray for President Bush while bullets whiz around his head.
So let’s pretend these are the aesthetic options for the future of the country. If you had to vote for an artistic stance that would sustain you for the next few years, what would you vote for? Langford’s burr and finger-popping tunes or Cross’ flabbergasted yelps? Some deeply sarcastic outrage or some weary compassion? Music with an undeniable beat and connection to history or contemporary comedy that still hits you in the brain and guts after a dozen listens? Or maybe there’s a third-party alternative somewhere in the middle? My sincere hope is that Langford’s vision wins out and Cross doesn’t need to make a record like this every year. Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about anything beyond the original fire that burns within these two fearless creators.
When pit bull owner Jessica Lytton returned home from a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles on May 24th, she got an unpleasant surprise. Animal Control officers were taking her three pit bulls and a stray she’d recently adopted out of her fenced-in backyard and loading them into their truck. She wouldn’t be able to get her dogs back until she’d attended a hearing to determine whether her dogs would be deemed “vicious” under the city’s vicious-dog ordinance.
A neighbor had reported that one of Lytton’s pit bulls escaped the yard while she was away, and although the officers said the dog was back in the yard when they arrived, they’d observed two of the dogs fighting with one another. They said she’d have to attend the hearing to prove she wasn’t breeding the dogs for fighting.
The ordinance states that dogs can be adjudicated “vicious” if a court can prove that the dogs are bred primarily or in part for the purpose of dog fighting or any other aggressive activity.
“I had a fence separating my boy pit bull and the stray from the two females, but somehow they’d gotten through to each other. The one that started the fight just had puppies six weeks ago,” said Lytton. “That’s normal dog behavior.”
Her court date was set for June 4th, but the Animal Control officers did not show up, so it was rescheduled for the 18th. The dogs were to stay in the city’s custody until a verdict was reached. On June 10th, Lytton received a call from the Memphis Animal Shelter informing her that two of her dogs had fallen ill with distemper. She says they informed her that she would need to pay an $800 boarding fee by the end of the day or the dogs would euthanized.
Since the case was still pending, her attorney Jorie Brownlow had Judge Tarik Sugarmon issue a restraining order against the shelter. However, the stray had gotten so sick it had to be euthanized the following day.
Lytton attended city court on Monday, and Sugarmon determined that she was not breeding the dogs for sport fighting and ordered the city to return them to her. He said the city should do more to make dog owners aware of the specifics of the ordinance. Some of the boarding fees were waived and she was allowed to retrieve her dogs. She was charged with failure to properly control her dogs.
She picked them up and took them to a vet, but the pit bull with distemper died an hour after she returned home. Another one is showing symptoms of heartworms. She says she has not decided if she will take action against the city.
Phone calls to Animal Control were referred to the city attorney’s office. Calls to that office were not returned by press time. n
E-mail: bphillips@memphisflyer.com