Month: September 2004

Categories
Cover Feature News

Are You Ready for Some Football?

To paraphrase a certain call from the other end

of Tennessee: It’s football time in Memphis. And

yes, there is a team from the Volunteer State coming

off a nine-win season and a bowl-game victory, with a

record-setting quarterback and a tailback who makes

linebackers weep. This squad — it should be stressed from the

Bluff City to Bristol — calls the Liberty Bowl home.

As year four of the Tommy West era kicks off

Saturday in Oxford against the Ole Miss Rebels, just how high

have expectations risen for University of Memphis football?

In Conference USA’s preseason coaches poll, the Tigers

were voted a close second behind the Louisville Cardinals.

(These two rivals will face each other November 4th on

national television, as ESPN’s Thursday-night game.)

In the same poll, three Tigers were picked

all-conference: junior defensive back Wesley Smith, junior wide

receiver Maurice Avery (safely removed from the basketball

court), and junior tailback DeAngelo Williams. Furthermore,

Williams was forecast to repeat as C-USA’s Offensive Player

of the Year, after establishing new school records for

rushing attempts (243) and yards (1,430) while reeling off 10

straight 100-yard games last year. He has fully recovered from

the knee injury suffered in the penultimate regular-season

game, and Williams, a native of Wynne, Arkansas, finds himself

a preseason Athlon All-America.

And then, of course, there’s quarterback Danny

Wimprine. It only seems like the fifth-year senior has been in a Tiger

uniform since the Hackett administration. Having turned the

U of M passing record book inside out, Wimprine aims to build on his national

exposure as MVP of the New Orleans Bowl triumph last December. In early June,

when rising seniors are more often than not returning kegs between naps, Wimprine

was coordinating a workout schedule with his receiving corps and identifying goals for

the season ahead. “We’ve started something here,” deadpanned Wimprine. “But

you’re never satisfied. Right after we finished

the bowl game, I was thinking about when we’re going back to work. Let’s get better.”

West’s program might define “getting better” in a few different

ways, considering the summer just past. First, senior tailback Derron Parquet (487 yards last season

as Williams’ backup) and junior nose tackle LaVale

Washington were charged with torching an SUV in Eads,

Tennessee, on June 2nd. Then a week later, four Tigers —

Washington, Avery, junior tight end John Doucette and

redshirt freshman tackle Abraham Holloway — were named in a

case involving more than $400 in counterfeit money found

on the U of M campus. Parquet was dismissed from the

squad August 4th, meaning the fate of this team is all the

more contingent on the strength of Williams’ left knee. As

for Washington, he did receive a wrist-slap from the head

coach, despite the arson charges being dropped. Said West in

an August 5th press release, “LaVale Washington has been

a distraction to the football team this summer and will

be suspended for the first two football games.”

In a skewed sense, the off-the-field indiscretions may

be an indicator of this program truly having arrived as a

challenger to the Mid-South’s SEC behemoths. It’s one thing

to win a bowl game and have an All-America candidate

on your roster, but to capture some national attention —

however unsightly — in June? Unheard of in Tiger

Nation, Football Division. Transgressions aside, there are

some questions entering the 2004 campaign that have the

U of M faithful desperate to tailgate. So as you’re

packing for Oxford this weekend, we’ll offer some answers.

· Are expectations too high?

Heck no. Take a look at the Tiger schedule. Yes, the Rebels will be a

formidable opening-week challenge (though David Cutcliffe’s team will

be helmed by a quarterback — Micheal Spurlock — who has thrown

exactly eight passes in his career). But there’s no Mississippi State in 2004, no

Arkansas or Tennessee adding SEC hurdles to the grind toward C-USA play.

On top of that, the two toughest conference games — Louisville and

Southern Miss — are at home.

Injuries, of course, are the great variable when it comes to forecasting a

football team’s fortunes. And if Williams or Wimprine goes down, all bets are off. But if the offensive

stars perform and the defense approximates its standard of 2003

— when it led C-USA in total defense — there’s no reason not

to expect nine or 10 wins from this squad. Another bowl

appearance should be a given.

· Does last season’s success mean anything

this season?

The pat answer would be no. But turn to the inside

back cover of this year’s media guide and staring at you are

no fewer than 30 seniors. From deep snapper Jared Bidne’s

smiling face to the pearly whites of fifth-year senior

Wimprine, you have more experience in a class of Tiger football

players than these parts have seen in years. And every last one of them enjoyed last

year’s nine-win campaign and the bowl victory in New Orleans. Think they

aren’t hungry for more?

In basketball, a freshman can impact a program directly off his

high-school campus. (See Sean Banks.) In Division I football, though, a few

years of weights, film, and spit-spraying hits can do wonders for a player’s

development. Twelve of those 30 seniors are projected starters on the

preseason depth chart, including two offensive linemen (center Gene Frederic

and right tackle David Davis), two defensive linemen (Albert Means and

David McNair) and three defensive backs (Scott Vogel, Cameron Essex, and Tristan Thomas).

Having beaten Ole Miss last year, the leaders on this

team will not be intimidated by Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Better yet, they shouldn’t get rattled when (not if) adversity

presents itself. West says experience is the team’s most

valuable asset. “Outside of our linebackers,” he notes, “every other

position is filled by people who have played.”

· Can Danny Wimprine get better?

Believe it or not, yes. With every yard gained,

Wimprine will establish a new school passing record. (He enters the

season with 7,323.) Same goes for completions (583) and

touchdowns (59). But look at a pair of last season’s biggest

conference tests. Wimprine was 16 for 35 and threw three

interceptions in the loss at Southern Miss. At home against

Cincinnati in late November, Wimprine was eight for 26, with

another three picks. (The Tigers still managed a victory.)

Wimprine remembers those games better than you do, and they

motivate him like no record he’s ever broken. “My biggest challenge

this season,” he says, “is to limit my mistakes.”

Enjoy the last season with number 18 on the field.

(It should be the last season that number is

ever on the field.) Wimprine will leave behind more than records. Because

of what he’s accomplished at the U of M, other blue-chip

high-school quarterbacks may begin to consider Memphis as

a place where they can gain the national spotlight.

· Is DeAngelo Williams a

Heisman Trophy candidate?

No. And it doesn’t matter, not a whit. (Remind

yourself: Andre Ware, Gino Torretta, Rashaan Salaam, and

Danny Wuerffel have Heismans. Jim Brown, Joe Montana,

Marshall Faulk, and Peyton Manning do not.) Williams is doing

to the rushing section of the Tiger record book what

Wimprine has done to the passing section. With only 523 yards,

he’ll break Dave Casinelli’s 41-year-old school record

(2,636). And he’ll have — fingers crossed — a senior season to

pad the numbers (at which time, those Heisman voters just

may remind themselves there’s a team in Memphis).

The confluence of talent the Tigers enjoy with the

two DW’s is unprecedented for the school, and, like the

most thriving symbiotic relationships, each will be that

much better having the other in the same backfield. Williams

even caught 35 passes last season, good for third on the team.

Need some motivation, DeAngelo? In a column

on SI.com earlier this month, Sports

Illustrated‘s Stewart Mandel said 2004 may well be the “Year of the Running Back.”

He listed 10 running backs who represent the “cream of

the crop” nationwide, along with nine who are “poised for

a breakout.” Your name wasn’t on either list.

· Where is the 2004 squad’s greatest strength?

Easy answer: defensive secondary. Say what you will

about the last 20 years of Tiger football, this program churns

out Grade-A defensive backs. Ken Irvin, Jerome Woods,

Mike McKenzie, Idrees Bashir, Reggie Howard, and

Michael Stone, just to name a few. This year’s unit is up to the

standard. Junior safety Wesley Smith was named

all-conference last season after finishing second on the team with 98

tackles. Senior Scott Vogel — a Memphis University

School graduate — was a third-team all-conference selection in

2003 and has 22 starts under his belt entering 2004. Add

senior Cameron Essex and junior O.C. Collins to the mix

and you have an experienced, hard-hitting quartet that will

make big plays hard to come by for Tiger opponents. You have

to like their chances in this weekend’s matchup with

what amounts to a rookie Ole Miss quarterback in Spurlock.

· Where’s the Achilles heel?

Linebacker. You don’t lose the likes of Will Hyden,

Coot Terry, Greg Harper, and Derrick Ballard and not feel it

in your defensive scheme. A pair of sophomores —

Quinton McCrary and Mike Snyder — are expected to fill part of

this void, along with junior-college transfer Carlton Baker.

Junior Tim Goodwell has the most experience among

returning linebackers, though he has yet to start a game.

“I’ve been impressed [with this group],” says West.

“They are very fast. They’re also very inexperienced. They’ve

played a little more mature than they are, probably. I just

hope they continue that through an entire season. We don’t

have a lot of depth. We have to play well up front and

behind them, and I think we’ll be fine. I think we’re as talented

as we were a year ago. We just have to play.”

· Will the Liberty Bowl be packed all season?

Next question. Okay, wait, the answer is no. Last year,

the Tigers set a Liberty Bowl record with an average attendance

of 40,622, an increase of more than 11,000 from 2002. This

means on your average Saturday afternoon with the Tigers in

town, there were more than 20,000 empty seats in the Liberty

Bowl. The average got a big boost from the Ole Miss game

(51,914), but the most impressive turnout was the regular-season

finale, when almost 48,000 fans showed up to see the Tigers play,

yes, South Florida (alas, a 21-16 loss).

This year’s home opponents — Chattanooga,

Houston, Tulane, Louisville, and Southern Miss — aren’t exactly

going to stir the couch potatoes. Tickets will be sold,

though, on the dynamism of Williams and Wimprine and (here

we go again) the success of 2003. Here’s hoping for good

weather on the night of November 4th, when the Tigers and

Cardinals will have ESPN’s Thursday-night audience

counting those empty seats.

· Is the schedule as weak as it appears?

Yes … and no. Seven of the Tigers’ 11 opponents are

ranked 64th(!) in the country or worse by Sports

Illustrated. And that doesn’t even include Chattanooga, a Division I-AA foe. But

if you like the passing game, the Liberty Bowl won’t be a

bad place to be this fall. A troika of star wideouts will be coming

to test the Memphis secondary: Chattanooga’s Alonzo Nix

(90 receptions for 1,060 yards in 2003), Tulane’s Roydell

Williams (66 for 1,006), and Louisville’s J.R. Russell (75 for 1,213).

And another home opponent — Houston — will bring

quarterback Kevin Kolb, who was last season’s C-USA Freshman of

the Year. Finally, you have Southern Miss wrapping up the

home schedule November 12th on a Friday night. The

Black-and-Blue game under the lights? Can’t beat that.

· Can the Tigers crack the Top 25?

This is going to be tough. The strength-of-schedule

element — both for computers and voters with fingers —

is typically too large a factor for C-USA teams to

overcome. The schools from the BCS conferences (Big 10, Big

12, ACC, SEC, Pac 10, Big East) have harder schedules,

by default. You might recall TCU went 11-2 last season

and wound up number 25 in the AP poll.

There are three must-wins for the Tigers to harbor

hopes of a national ranking. They have to win the opener

against Ole Miss, their only BCS-conference opponent. And

they have to win the two nationally televised games against

Louisville and Southern Miss. To solidify the ranking, of

course, the U of M needs to lose no more than two games and

win another bowl game. (For those keeping track, the last

time Memphis finished a season in the Top 25 was 1969,

when they went 8-2, and UPI ranked them 20th in the country.)

In their annual preseason forecast, the folks at

Sports Illustrated don’t stop at 25. They rank all

117 Division I-A programs. In this year’s poll, the

defending national champs from Southern Cal are at number one

(ho-hum). At the bottom? Buffalo (ho-hum). But ranked

32nd in the country — considerably higher than in any such

poll in memory — is the University of Memphis. And if

you want a final anecdote for just how far the Tiger program

has come, you need merely look one ranking below the U of

M in that same copy of Sports Illustrated. At number 33,

you’ll find none other than the Alabama Crimson Tide.

“Our kids have been pretty good about playing one

game at a time,” says West. “When you get into trying to

figure, okay, we’re gonna win this one, win that one, that one’ll

be hard — it just doesn’t work that way. If you lose one,

you can’t jump off the bridge, and if you win one big-time,

you can’t get too high. You just have to go out and play your

tail off every week and at the end of the year, sack ’em up

and see how many we’ve got.”

Sounds like a plan.

Categories
Music Music Features

Nashville That Says No

Though dismissed as hopelessly reactionary in some circles, mainstream country music

has been making some progressive moves of late. Everybody knows about the Dixie

Chicks, who don’t seem to have much use for Nashville. Breakout stars Big and Rich are pushing buttons,

especially regarding race and Nashville’s penchant for building

cultural barriers between itself and the rest of the musical

world, but they’ve remained coy about electoral politics. And even

Toby Keith has expressed some reservations regarding Iraq.

But despite these tremors, Nashville is still Bush

country, with musical entertainment at the Republican National

Convention this week a pretty even mix of country and

contemporary Christian artists. Among the Nashville cats crooning

for crony capitalists: Brooks & Dunn, Lee Ann Womack,

Darryl Worley, and Sara Evans. (Say it ain’t so, Sara! Say it ain’t so!)

But there’s another side to Nashville, and two new records

from Middle Tennessee residents operating outside the

country-music machine offer an alternative. Onetime Memphian Todd

Snider’s career-best East Nashville Skyline makes his dissent

geographically specific — praising an artist-heavy neighborhood away from

Music Row that the rich avoid at all costs. Steve Earle signs off

from Fairview, Tennessee, in the liner notes to

The Revolution Starts Now, his one-man-527 attempt at influencing an election. But

he’s been battling Nashville’s conservatism for years en route to

becoming the American musician most likely to be seen sparring with

Bill O’Reilly on national television.

The Revolution Starts Now, written and recorded as

the Abu Ghraib scandal was breaking, is actually not as strident

as its title suggests. The kind of revolution Earle is aiming for

isn’t molotov cocktails in the streets (though, if it comes to that,

he might not rule it out) but rather mass personal

transformation rooted in “Where you work and where you play/Where you

lay your money down/What you do and what you say.”

The sanity of the album’s message is doubled in the

liner notes, in which he writes that “Voting is vital, but in times

like these voting alone simply isn’t enough.” This is especially

welcome given a spectacle like Sunday night’s MTV Video

Music Awards with its overwrought “Vote or Die” theme and

constant stream of celebrities imploring the

(largely underage) television audience to get to

the ballot box yet insisting that it doesn’t

matter who you vote for as long as you vote.

Earle knows good and well that it matters intensely who people vote for (if

Young Republicans stay home in November, democracy will be none the worse), but

he still manages to refrain from Bush-bashing. Earle’s strength as a political artist isn’t

rally-the-troops anthems but his ability to identify with regular people caught up in

messes they can’t control. As in his magnificent “John Walker’s Blues,” his gift is in

speaking convincingly in the voices of those far different from him or his audience.

On The Revolution Starts Now, this happens on two ace songs. In “Home

to Houston” and “Rich Man’s War,” Earle

offers decisive snapshots of innocents pulled into an abyss that springs from

geopolitical puppetry: an independent contractor

hauling freight out of Basra, a rifle-toting

enlistee rolling into Baghdad, a backdoor-draftee guardsman stuck

in Kandahar with bills piling up at home, and a rock-flinging

Palestinian teen growing up hard in Gaza.

Following the common-sense call to action at the outset, those two

songs suggest that Earle has made the political record of

the year, but it all falls apart on the very next track, the

spoken-word “Warrior,” a clunky, pretentious experiment that derails the

album. And despite the delicious, rousing “F the CC,”

The Revolution Starts Now never really regains its focus.

The cute “Condi, Condi,” a calypso come-on to the

current national security adviser, is a strangely purposeless novelty.

It doesn’t exactly seem an empathetic nod to an assumed

moderate in a den of hawks or even to a well-meaning human being in

way over her head. But there’s also no sarcasm or critique to it.

Absent any other kind of content, it sounds a little sexist, as if

it’s ultimately silly for a woman to be in such a position.

The rest is filler: “Comin’ Round,” a de-rigueur duet

(with the ubiquitous Emmylou Harris) completely vagues out,

while “I Thought You Should Know” is the kind of standard-issue

love song that could have come from just about anybody on just

about any album.

At only 11 songs, with two of those bookend takes on

the title exhortation, The Revolution Starts

Now is strangely slight for an album with such an attention-seeking title, as if

Earle wanted to get his two cents in before Election Day but only

had enough relevant material to fill an EP.

A better “protest” record, believe it or not, is Snider’s

East Nashville Skyline, which isn’t outwardly political despite the presence of

a righteous campfire-style sing-along called “Conservative

Christian, Right-Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Males.”

Snider is too modest and too nice to lecture anybody

about anything, but he seems to understand in his bones just how

extreme American life has gotten over the past three years, and he is certain of at least

one thing: The bad shit always rains down hardest on the poor. (“Incarcerated,” which

captures both the surreal hilarity and underlying sadness of the lost souls on shows

like Cops and Judge Judy, is genius.)

So East Nashville Skyline is less a bit

of electioneering than a guide for living, a perhaps unintentional attempt to steer

the coarseness of Bush’s America back on track with a recipe of kindness and empathy

and good humor. It’s everything good folk music should be: casual and

conversational rather than stuffy, smart rather than

merely correct, and really, really funny.

Has it gotten so bad that we need a self-described “tree-huggin’,

peace-lovin’, pot-smokin’, bare-footin’,

folk-singin’ hippy” to show us the way? Keep an

eye on New York this week, and you may get your answer.

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

[City Beat] Political Power Then and Now

Mayor Willie Herenton a dictator? Not even close.

I keep an unofficial indicator of Herenton’s popularity by reading the letters to

the editor in The Commercial Appeal. One day last

week, the mayor got a “perfect” score. There were five

letters, all anti-Herenton or anti-Memphis and all

written by enlightened correspondents from one or

another of our outlying meccas: Collierville,

Covington, Olive Branch, Arlington, and Germantown. Not

a Memphian in the lot.

Week after week, inspired by the latest

“outrage” from City Hall, the general thrust of the letters to

the CA is that Herenton is “power-hungry” and

“lousy.” This for a mayor who has been elected four

times, rarely raises his voice, has no control over county

government or the city or county school boards and

only modest influence in Nashville, and is lucky to get

his nominees for city director jobs past the City Council.

The last Memphis dictator died 50 years ago in

an oxygen tent at his home on Peabody Avenue in

Midtown. His name was Edward Hull Crump, known as either Mr. Crump to his admirers and loyal

subjects or Boss Crump to his detractors.

He ran for office, including mayor and

congressman, 23 times without a loss. And he took part in scores

of other elections, usually dictating the results, until

1948, when his candidates for key offices were defeated.

For half a century he ruled the roost, pulled

the strings, made the calls, controlled the black vote

and patronage jobs, empowered his friends, and ripped

his enemies with verbal invective that might be described as

colorful if only it weren’t so bullying and cruel.

He tried to “out” a brave Memphis newspaper

editor, Edward Meeman, as a homosexual by having

one of his minions — Mayor James J. Pleasants, no less

— read the charge into a city legislative proceeding so

it would be exempt from a libel suit.

He called a Senate candidate, Edward Carmack,

a “donkey” and a “vulture” who had “no more right

to public office than a skunk has to be foreman in a

perfume factory.”

He called the publisher of the Nashville

Tennessean, Silliman Evans, a man “with a foul mind and

a wicked heart,” a Tennessean editor “a venal and

licentious scribbler,” and a columnist a man with a

“low, filthy, diseased mind.”

A Tennessee governor Crump did not like,

Gordon Browning, turned Nashville into “a regular

Sodom and Gomorrah, a wicked capital, reeking with

sordid, vicious infamy.”

Estes Kefauver, a United States senator

from Tennessee and the Democratic vice-presidential

candidate in 1956, was “a pet coon” and “the darling

of the Communists.”

Even at a time when political bosses were not

uncommon in big cities, the rest of the country

noticed what was going on in Memphis. The Washington

Post wrote of Crump, “His violent tongue and

cynical mind held sway over the lives of the people of an

important city.”

Crump did not tolerate criticism. In his

book Memphis Since Crump, David Tucker writes that Crump

forced a company to fire an employee who had dared to write a

letter to the newspaper objecting to Crump-supported censorship

of books and movies. The company knuckled under because

it was a big vendor for one of Crump’s annual picnics.

In his heavy-handed way, Crump was effective, and

the population of Memphis increased from a little over 100,000

to nearly 400,000 during his career. When best-selling author

John Gunther visited Memphis to do research for his book

Inside U.S.A., published in 1947 (the year after Crump appeared

on the cover of Time), he was talked into interviewing Crump

by the great man himself. He later wrote, “He is a man of

considerable erudition and, when he wants to turn it on, of the

most persuasive and engaging charm.”

And Gunther was forced to admit that “the great majority of citizens feel no threat to

their liberties civil or otherwise; there is no atmosphere of

tension or reprisal; people, by and large, get along.”

Memphis was known as America’s Cleanest City and

America’s Quietest City. There were no motorcycles roaring up

and down Riverside Drive in Mr. Crump’s day and no

movies that didn’t meet the approval of a local board of

censors. Nightclubs and hotels were lucky to have a

dance permit, much less a liquor license.

Willie Herenton may be many things, but a dictator is not one of them.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Pushing and Pulling

The people at Pull-a-Part, a salvage yard chain attempting to open a location at the corner of Brooks Road and

Graves, like to call their business the “un-junkyard.” But a large group

of Whitehaven residents aren’t buying it.

Lifelong resident Lillian Gillis said the proposed business will

cater to thieves and “undesirables.” Former code-enforcement

inspector Gabriel Pryor thought the salvage yard would leave environmental

scars on the 27-acre site, and resident Peggy Baker said the site is too

close to the homes located on nearby Graves Road.

Whitehaven residents packed the auditorium at Graves

Elementary School last week for a town hall meeting that was touted as

Pull-a-Part’s last chance to make its case to residents. The issue will be

voted on by the City Council on September 7th.

When Pull-a-Part co-founder Mark Cohen finished delivering

a 10-minute speech on the benefits he believed his company could

offer the area, several outraged citizens stood up and voiced their

concerns. Some worried about the business bringing more rodents and

snakes into the community, and others said the company would cause

their property values to plummet. One woman demanded to know why

the company hadn’t chosen a site in Germantown or Collierville.

“It’s not like putting an ice cream stand in the neighborhood,”

said Pryor. “You’re talking about putting in something that has a

potential to be dangerous. The site is located on a floodplain, and it’s

aligned with Nonconnah [Creek]. If the water run-off happens to get into

the Nonconnah, there’s no telling where it might travel.”

Cohen contends that his company’s environmentally sensitive

business practices differ from other junkyards. He says all cars are

drained of oil, gas, Freon, and other fluids before they’re placed on the lot

to limit the risk of polluting the soil. He also said the cars are

arranged and organized by a computer numbering system to give the yard

a neat appearance. An eight-foot-high metal fence will shield the

salvage yard from the view of residents. The company, based in Atlanta,

currently has locations in Birmingham, Nashville, Atlanta, and

Charlotte, and Cohen said they’ve had no problems in those areas.

The site is currently zoned for light industrial, but it will have to

be rezoned to heavy industrial in order for the company to open.

Pull-a-Part is asking for a special-use permit to ensure the site cannot be

used for other industrial purposes should the business ever leave the

area. But several residents said changing the zoning could open doors

for not so environmentally sensitive businesses. During the meeting,

Pryor cited other businesses along Brooks that he believes are

unregulated environmental hazards.

“There was some real confusion on the part of the residents,”

said Cohen. “They were concerned that other people in other

industries have been bad corporate citizens and that’s got nothing to with us.

We handle no more hazardous waste than a gas station.”

The meeting was cut short after a number of residents spoke out

of turn during the question-and-answer period. Rather than

directing questions to Cohen, many residents were demanding to know

which way councilman Rickey Peete, who was facilitating the

meeting, would vote. He eventually told the crowd that he would vote

against the permit and asked the Pull-a-Part representatives to withdraw

their application. They refused and the matter will now be decided by

the council.

“I don’t know where this is headed, but if this [location is not

approved], we might not find another one,” said Cohen. “We

don’t have another one in mind at this point. We searched all over

Memphis, and it’s been difficult to find at least 25 acres in an

industrial area that has good access.”

E-mail: bphillips@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion

“A New Perspective”

Ask Tomeka Hart about her career aspirations and

she’s quick to point out that she’s not a politician. She says that two terms on the Memphis City Schools board will probably be the extent of her public

service. If she’s lucky.

Her political future depends on the voters of District 7, who for 17 years

have been represented on the school board by the Rev. Hubon Sandridge. If Hart

wins, the 33-year-old lawyer will represent a district that includes five of this year’s

No Child Left Behind failing schools. She says she is ready for the challenge.

“My main issue is and always will be the children,” says Hart. “Every

decision the board makes should be determined by the question, Does it benefit the

students? If it doesn’t, I will vote against it. We have to somehow get everyone

involved in the education process, especially parents. If they won’t come to

the schools, we’ve got to go to them.”

After graduating from Trezevant High School and the University of

Tennessee, Hart moved to Georgia and taught junior high and high school business

courses in Cobb County. When she decided to go to law school, her mother

convinced her to return home and apply to the University of Memphis. “I was so

surprised when I moved back and heard all the negative news about the

school board,” says Hart. “Our kids deserve

so much better than what they are getting, which is a lot of grandstanding.”

Cardell Orrin, Hart’s campaign manager, says his candidate offers a “new

perspective.” Hart and Orrin plan to meet with community organizations,

parents, and students during a door-to-door introduction campaign. Orrin says

he wants to raise $25,000 for his candidate. Hart

is also backed by a young professional organization called New Path, and

Orrin has organized volunteers from that group and is meeting with potential

contributors. Last week, there was a fund-raiser

for Hart in the South Main district.

Although Hart has not talked with Sandridge, she knows his platform

and his board history. “I don’t see this as

old versus young, but you have to have a change in ideas,” she says.

The platforms of Hart and Sandridge, 54, are almost completely

opposite. Sandridge supports corporal punishment; Hart opposes it. Sandridge

vehemently opposes closing underpopulated schools, specifically Manassas High; if closing

a school is in the best interest of students, Hart would support it.

“I do not think [this position]

should be a lifetime appointment,” she says.

“If you haven’t made a difference and empowered somebody else in that time, then

it’s time to move on.”

But being in politics is a lifetime

appointment, says Sandridge. “They’re [Hart and other opponents] just

campaigning. You don’t just run a race to get out

there. You have to be on the field every day,”

he says. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted to see the interest in these young

people, but I don’t ever intend to get out of the political arena, because it patrols our

lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Sandridge has been criticized for his tumultuous relationships with other

board members. His antics, including yelling, finger-pointing, and stormy walkouts,

have all been chronicled by local television.

Still, Sandridge doesn’t seem worried about his reelection chances. “My

constituency knows me. The record is what you run

on,” he says. “The arguing within the board

is not always fighting, but what you call political debate. All you see on TV is me

arguing, but I’m just a passionate leader. And at the

end of the day [the media] does not show what happens

positively.”

Hart is single, has no children, and works for the law firm of Young and

Perl as a labor and employment attorney. “What shocks me the most is

when people ask why I care, since I don’t have any children in the school system,”

she says. “Do we have to have kids in the system to care? We have to care

because we will pay for not caring about these

students, one way or another.”

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

postscript

DEVOID?

To the Editor:

I read with pleasure Tim Sampson’s We Recommend (August 26th issue).

It was refreshing to hear someone echoing what so many of us feel. He is

certainly not alone in his repulsion from the garbage we get as news from the media.

The news and soap operas have similar themes, both devoid of any

meaningful information.

Grace Benz

Memphis

On the Ropes

To the Editor:

Your chiseled-chin hero, John Kerry, is on the ropes regarding his service

in Vietnam — and rightly so. In your Editorial (August 26th issue), you cited

the senator’s war record as an “overriding

reason” why Kerry is the better candidate in

a time of “war and terrorist threat.” And

now, you lamented, Kerry is being smeared by a “Big Lie” campaign by a “shadowy”

group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Never mind that we’re not enduring a terrorist “threat” but are in a

full-fledged war. What really shook me was your bizarre argument that those swift-boat

vets aren’t in a “position to judge Kerry’s

Vietnam actions.” Why? Because they’re all Republicans or because of their

“patent resentment,” whatever that means, of

his antiwar actions.

How about if you’re in the same Asian country on the same river on a swift

boat next to Kerry? Is that a good enough position to

judge him? And then when he gets back to the States (after only

four months in a war zone), he tells the world in sworn testimony that you’re

nothing less than a bloodthirsty baby killer?

Now that people are learning about Kerry, they have an overriding reason

to pick the partying frat boy who finally grew up over the lying, shameless

opportunist who has yet to change.

Billy Davis

Memphis

To the Editor:

I am a Marine Vietnam veteran, and I agree with your editorial 100 percent.

I find it offensive that a group of people can make unsubstantiated claims and

get so much media attention without ever having to produce

proof of these claims. Then the Republicans call for the

elimination of all 527 ads. How many 527 ads from the other side have you

seen being covered as a news story for weeks on end?

Since the media has not received specific proof that Bush completed his

National Guard service commitment, that question should not go away.

What about the president’s desire to find out who in his administration outed

CIA agent Valerie Plame? I remember our hard-charging press asking

President Clinton about the blue dress during a press conference with some foreign

head of state. Why does the press seem so docile these days? Could it be that this is

the desire of the corporate media ownership?

Paul Britton

Houston, Texas

Most Disappointing

To the Editor:

So President Bush now claims that “the mostdisappointing thing” about

his four years in office has been his inability to “change the harsh environment”

in Washington. Right. And David Duke is deeply saddened by his failure to

overcome racial bigotry in America.

In 2000, Bush finished a close second in the popular vote after

campaigning as a “uniter, not a divider” and

promising to be a “compassionate conservative.” He also promised to lead

a “humble” foreign policy. Then he governed from the far-right fringe,

reserved his compassion for his wealthy backers, and established the most

incompetent foreign policy in the history of the

republic — alienating our closest allies and creating new enemies.

I understand folks who favor Republican policies on certain issues, but I

am baffled when I observe Republicans who are willing to give Bush a free pass

this fall. Outside the insular fantasy-land of right-wing radio, America is

clearly headed in the wrong direction, and Bush and Cheney deserve much of the blame.

B. Keith English

Memphis

NonUnion Labor

To the Editor:

The public should be made aware of the Grizzlies’ recent decision to hire

out-of-town nonunion labor to staff their upcoming events. I.A.T.S.E. Local 69

has served Memphis and the surrounding area for over 105 years with

quality-trained union labor. Promoters and producers request and rely upon

the I.A.T.S.E. for their staffing needs. This does not include all the major

motion pictures that were filmed here because of the availability of qualified union

labor. I find it hard to believe that an arena built with public funds has turned

its back on the local work force that helps promote our great city.

Allen Byassee,

President, I.A.T.S.E.

Memphis

Categories
Editorial Opinion

EDITORIAL

At the Republican National Convention in New York this week,

Americans (if they bother to tune in) will hear speaker after speaker extolling the virtues

of President George W. Bush, telling us what a wonderful job he has done

during his first term. They’ll hear how he has turned the economy around with his

tax cuts. How he has improved our schools. How he has made all of us safer.

All these statements are arguably if not demonstrably untrue, but none

more so than the last. The latest issue of Mother

Jones documents quite succinctly how this administration’s nation-building in the guise of terror-fighting has

made America distinctly less safe.

A few examples:

Amount needed for basic security upgrades for subway and commuter

trains in large cities: $6 billion (equivalent spending in Iraq: 20 days).

Bush budget allocation for train security: $100 million (Iraq equivalent:

8 hours).

Amount needed to equip all U.S. airports with machines that screen

baggage for explosives: $3 billion (Iraq equivalent:

10 days).

Bush budget allocation for baggage-screening machines: $400 million (Iraq

equivalent: 32 hours).

Amount needed for security upgrades at 361 U.S. ports: $1.1 billion (Iraq

equivalent: 4 days).

Bush budget allocation for port security: $210 million (Iraq equivalent: 17 hours).

Amount needed to buy radiation portals for U.S. ports to detect dirty bombs in

cargo: $290 million (Iraq equivalent: 23 hours).

Bush budget allocation for radiation portals: $43 million (Iraq equivalent:

3 hours).

Amount needed to help local firefighters prepare for terrorist attacks:

$36.8 billion (Iraq equivalent: 122 days).

Bush budget allocation for firefighter grants: $500 million (Iraq

equivalent: 40 hours).

Amount needed to get local emergency medical crews ready for

terrorist atttacks: $1.4 billion (Iraq equivalent:

5 days).

Bush budget allocation for emergency medical training grants prior to

eliminating the program altogether: $50 million (Iraq equivalent: 4 hours).

Any further questions? Ask your nearest cheering

Republican. n

Mother Jones documents how nation-building

in the guise of terror-fighting has made America

distinctly less safe.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

How Sweet It Is

In his offbeat classic Jitterbug

Perfume, author Tom Robbins heaps lavish praise upon the beet. It is, he says, “the most intense of vegetables deadly serious the murderer returned to the scene of the crime.

The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon,

bearded, buried, all but fossilized.”

The novel goes on to describe a recipe for

immortality that includes, among other things, lots of sex and beets.

Beets are as earthy as a mouthful of dirt. Perhaps

that’s why, here in America, few contenders come close to

challenging the beet for the title of Least Favorite

Vegetable. Not broccoli, not spinach, not even yellow

summer squash inspires such vitriolic passion among its

detractors. Perhaps the offense is in the paradoxical earthy

sweetness of the beet, while the scarlet aftermath in our toilet

bowl sings of our marriage to the food chain in ways we’d

prefer to forget.

Meanwhile, if you ask people about their

favorite taste in the whole world, many will name

chocolate. Like the beet, chocolate is a food of passion. In the

movie Chocolat, for example, the heroine opens a

chocolate shop in a conservative, old-world Catholic village during Lent. The town’s leaders

begin a witch-hunt, denouncing her as a temptress. Near

the end of the story she succeeds in awakening the

long-suppressed passions of the town folk. Indeed, chocolate is

known in many circles as not only an aphrodisiac but as an

outright substitute for sex.

So here we are, discussing two passionate,

earth-toned foods, both of which demand to be taken seriously.

Perhaps you suspect where I’m going with this and are bracing for

a combination that seems even less likely than the union

of heaven and earth.

But how heavenly is the taste of pure chocolate?

Not very, unless heaven is a bitter place. Chocolate — the

roasted seed coat of the cacao plant — is made palatable

only when combined with sugar. Oftentimes that sugar

comes from beets, the world’s second source of the sweet

stuff, behind sugarcane.

I was on the phone with a farmer friend one

day while he was making dinner for his wife and their

crew of hungry women. While we spoke, he made a vat of

pesto and some French filet beans in a soy-garlic-ginger

sauce. All of a sudden he said, “Oh, I gotta go stir my

beet thing.” Next thing I knew, I was talking to a dial tone.

That night, one of the farmer’s hungry women brought me a sample of

said beet thing. It was gooey and moist, like fudge. It was sweet

and full of chocolate, like fudge. It tasted like fudge, even though

it was mostly grated beets. (It also contained chocolate

chips, cocoa powder, and butter. He cooked it on the stovetop.)

His wife was inspired by the possibility of chocolate

and beets. Over the weekend, she did some research of her

own, arriving at a dense oven-bar recipe, wherein a cup of flour

is mixed with a cup of cocoa powder. To this is added a

mixture of one cup grated beets, two eggs, fresh raspberries,

a little water, and a melted mixture of two tablespoons

butter and a cup of chocolate chips. This substantial wad is

mixed and baked in a greased pan at 325 degrees for about half

an hour. The product is a color that would make Tom

Robbins blush: a combination of red and brown that is dark as

night and shiny as ebony.

Not wanting to be outdone and aware that Robbins

was also a huge mayonnaise fan, I devised, tested, tweaked,

and perfected the following recipe for chocolate beet

mayonnaise cake.

You think I’m crazy but wait! My tasters were

thoroughly blown away by this perfectly moist and dense

chocolate experience and reluctant to believe it contained

beets and mayo. You, my friend, will like this cake.

Combine the following ingredients in the following order: two cups flour; one teaspoon

baking soda; one teaspoon baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon salt;

1/2 cup cocoa powder; one cup sugar; 1/2 cup chocolate

chips. Stir the dry ingredients before adding one teaspoon

vanilla; 3/4 cup half & half, one cup mayo, and two cups

shredded beets (boiled 10 minutes in one cup water, until

tender, and drained). Bake it in a greased pan at 350 until a

plunged fork comes out clean (about 30 minutes). Cool.

For the frosting, combine 1/2 cup each of sour

cream, cream cheese, and confectioner’s sugar in a bowl. Beat it

all together until smooth. Beat two egg whites until stiff,

fold them into the frosting, chill 30 minutes, and frost.

Tom Robbins, eat your heart out.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

FOOD NEWS

If weeks of Olympics coverage didn’t satisfy your hunger for all things

Greek, come to Bartlett to celebrate Greekfest 2004. St.

George Greek Orthodox Church, 6984 Highway 70, will

host this 43rd annual event September 18th.

“Watching the Olympics you see all the beauty

of Greece,” says Kathy Zambelis, publicity

chairperson. “Now, Greece is coming to the Mid-South. It is a

great way to share our heritage.”

There will be crafts, games, dance troupes, and

music from the Lazarus Band from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Admission is free. A traditional Greek dinner will be

served from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. The complete meal,

which includes an entrée, sides, salad, and dessert, is $12

for adults and $6 for children 12 and under. Advance

tickets can be purchased for $10 and $5, respectively,

by calling the church at 388-5910.

Stay all day or just drive through and carry

dinner home. And don’t forget: The Greek Pastry Shop

will offer a variety of homemade treats, and stands will

sell gyros and souvlaki.

Cafe Society, 212 N. Evergreen, has a new look. Since closing its gourmet market Epicure in

June, the restaurant opened up that space by enlarging

the bar, adding a dining room, and updating the appearance, all while preserving the

upscale French café atmosphere.

“The new bar is beautiful,” says bartender Leanna Tedford. “It’s

made of Brazilian redwood, and it follows the same curve that outlined the

old Epicure. It’s double the size of the old bar.”

Enlarging the bar also allows room for smoking tables. The

renovations include a banquet room that can be reserved for private functions.

Artwork by husband and wife Anton Weiss and Lisa Jennings adorn the walls.

“We’ve been in business 17 years, and it was time for

an update,” says Telford. “We’ve added a few new items to

the menu, but there will be more changes. We wanted to

wait until we got comfortable with the renovations.”

For now, new menu items include osso buco, a veal

shank braised for 12 hours; pan-seared flat-iron steak

with andouille, succotash, and a Gran Marnier-scented

lobster glaze; and the chef’s daily selection of fresh fish.

Senses, 2866 Poplar, may be best known for its pulsing music and cold drinks, but the club also

features a full kitchen. The best time to sample the more

unusual menu items, like the endame (salted soy beans), is

Monday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. when free appetizers

are served in the Martini Bar.

Chef Robby Alexander, who formerly worked at

Automatic Slim’s, helped owners George and Dennis

Mironovich create an assortment of light and tasty finger foods.

“We didn’t want to offer a big cheeseburger, so

we created four mini-cheeseburgers,” says

George Mironovich.

The Asian-influenced menu mostly features

appetizers to be shared among friends and a couple of

entrées for bigger appetites.

Now that the club has found its niche in the

nightclub industry, it is carving out a spot in the

catering business as well. It offers themed buffets, such as

“Caribbean Carnival” or “Tea Time,” as well as nearly

50 finger food or plate dinners.

“Whether it’s a business meeting for 40 or a

wedding reception for 700, we can provide everything

— food, drinks, servers, sound, lighting, and even

decoration,” says George Mironovich.

Cookbook compliments of the Woman’s

Exchange will be published in the fall of 2005 to

share recipes and raise funds for an organization that has

been in Memphis since 1933.

“We’ve done cookbooks in the past, but this

will be the biggest and the best,” says Libby Aaron, a

member of the organization. “The book will be

hardcover and include about 250 recipes.”

The Woman’s Exchange is a national

nonprofit organization that sells products and crafts made

by people who work from home because of disabilities

or other reasons.

“The Woman’s Exchange is helping people

help themselves,” says Aaron. “Changes in the economy

have been hard, and consignors are a dying breed.

Women just don’t sew like they used to and the operating

costs are increasing, so we just need a good fund-raiser.”

The Memphis chapter’s store at 88 Racine also

features a tearoom. Three-course meals with a selection

of three entrées are served for lunch Monday through

Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts :: Record Reviews

Uh Huh Her

PJ Harvey

(Island)

On Uh Huh Her, PJ Harvey’s righteous,

angel-of-death passion and anger are imprisoned within familiar

lyrical tropes and familiar, simple arrangements, which

make her latest release as weak and timorous as her

previous masterpiece (and greatest album), 2000’s

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, was strong and confident.

The shocking, beautiful thing about Stories From

the City, Stories From the Sea was the way Harvey’s

magnificent, operatic, intensely carnal vocals embraced songs

of heartache and songs of pure romantic bliss. As

unlikely as it seems, that album’s “You Said Something” is one

of the great romantic mix-CD tracks of the new

decade. Unfortunately, Stories‘ ecstatic engagement with the

world has been exchanged for something far more typical:

bitterness, resignation, and terror. In Uh Huh

Her‘s songs, a lover’s mouth and a radio tune are not passports to

nirvana. They’re kisses from an asp.

This conscious downer is a statement of both

negation and independence. Harvey writes all the lyrics,

plays every instrument except the drums, and produces

every single track. As she has before, she charts the systole

and diastole of the broken heart. If she’s a sloppy,

somewhat mundane writer (one of the powerful punker

numbers compliments a man by saying, “You can straighten

my curls”), she often elevates her narratives with her

obvious commitment to the material. She also programs the

tracks to offset their lyrical similarity, alternating between

softly cooed ballads and heavily distorted

electric stomps. The jarring shifts in tone and dynamics sustain the first half of the

album, but after “Cat on the Wall,” things

drift off to sea. In fact, one interlude consists of seagull sound effects. But this album

is too trim for such atmospherics, and the seagulls sure as hell don’t lead into

“Lady Cab Driver.” Strangely, they might

have done just that in the old days.

Because Harvey is a powerful, deeply romantic artist

with plenty left in the tank, this failure emanates a Neil

Young-like integrity. As she quavers on “Pocket Knife,” “I just

want to make my own fuck-ups.” Instead of fucking up,

though, I’d like to hear her growing up. —

Addison Engelking

Grade: B

Listening Log

Red Bedroom —The Fever (Kemado):

Like a harder-edged Franz Ferdinand sans hit or hype, this NYC

quintet spins received sounds into frantic post-punk dance

music. Both bands dig Bowie, to a draw. But the Fever know

their Yankee roots. Last time out they covered Sheila E.; this

time they evoke Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

without embarrassing themselves. Take that, Brits! (“Cold

Blooded,” “Gray Ghost,” “Scorpio”)

Grade: A-

Drag It Up –The Old 97’s (New

West): Three years ago, the Old 97’s bid “alt-country” adieu with raging

pop guitars, tart vocals, and some of the slyest, sexiest

relationship lyrics ever conceived. The record was

Satellite Rides, and few outside their cult bought it. Here, after an iffy solo

move by frontman Rhett Miller, they’re back with alt-country

indie New West, and if that sounds like a regression, well it

sounds that way too. Slower, rootsier, less agitated, less

immediate — compared to the band’s past work, this is a total downer.

Compared to the typical “Americana” album?

More than passable. (“Won’t Be

Home,” “Moonlight,” “Adelaide” )

Grade: B

Crunk Classics –Various Artists (TVT):

In an age of downloading and CD-burning,

this Dirty South sampler can’t possibly

compete with the one you can make yourself, especially since

you aren’t likely to leave off “Get Low,” which

Crunk Classics does despite the fact that it was released on the TVT

label. The album collects representative but not standout

tracks from Lil Jon, Trick Daddy, Three 6 Mafia, etc. It

sounds okay, but not as good as commercial rap radio on an

average weeknight. (“Get F***ed Up” — Iconz, “Raise Up”

— Petey Pablo, “Where Dem Dollas At” –Gangsta Boo,

“Do It” –Rasheeda)

Grade: B-

Definitive Jux Presents, Vol. 3 –Various Artists

(Def Jux): This sampler provides too much fodder for

those convinced that the indie hip-hop scene is no fun.

NYCers Aesop Rock and El-P are the ideological

standard-bearers, but it heads up to Boston (The Perceptionists)

or skips out west (Murs) to shore up the head-bobbing

basics. (“Medical Assistance” — The

Perceptionists, “Dysexlia” –Rob Sonic, “You’re Dead to Me”

–Murs, “Oxycontin Part 2” –El-P featuring Cage, “Clean

Living” — RJD2) n — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

082404_PJ_Harvey