Month: February 2005

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Driven

“Hurry hurry hurry,” Camy Archer says. “Let’s get ourselves ready for the first order.”

Archer, owner of the delivery restaurant Camy’s, is watching her day manager Shawn Eads as he works on four pizzas. This is the first order of the day in what will be a 14-hour shift for Archer. The remaining 10 hours, Archer will be on call.

It’s this vigilance that led Archer to open Camy’s and to keep it open. For the past 12 years, Camy’s has delivered food throughout Midtown and downtown. It’s not fast food but sturdy American staples — lasagna, steak dinners, sub sandwiches, pizzas, salads, and desserts.

Archer grew up in Holly Grove, Arkansas, where her father owned a gas station. She and her brother and sister “got to play ball and play with our friends,” she says, “but we all had a 20-minute chore.” Hers was counting the money from the register and the vending machines. She fondly remembers the value of customers to her parents and the give-and-take of owning a business in a small town. It was the sort of place where the doors were left unlocked so the grocery delivery boy could place perishables in the refrigerator after hours.

In 1970, after her junior year in high school, Archer moved to Memphis to pursue a career as a musician. She played guitar and sang both Top 40 and country in different venues throughout the Mid-South. But the travel got old, and in 1987, she started driving for Domino’s Pizza, “deciding what I was going to do,” she says. She eventually began working in Domino’s marketing department, drumming up new business in the Memphis area.

“Do you know a place that delivers anything besides pizza?” she often heard. She took note and then took off on her own.

In November 1992, at age 40, she opened Camy’s. Domino’s was her only competition, but six months later, Pizza Hut began delivering, followed by Papa John’s and Steak Out. She was overwhelmed by the customer response. On day one, she had three employees; the next day, five. Currently, there are 26.

Many of Archer’s employees are students cooking or driving their way on to unrelated futures. Older drivers are earning supplemental incomes.

Working at Camy’s does mean long hours. The business is closed only on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and after the July 2003 wind storm closed Camy’s for a few days, employees used the downtime to paint the store. But, she says, someone once told her, “If you are in a bad mood when you are making that food, it will come out in that food,” so she tries to take it easy on her employees. Managers work no more than 45 hours per week, and if someone is having a bad day, she will let them go home. When the roads are icy, she would rather close than put her drivers in danger. She also tells drivers not to deliver if they are in a situation where they do not feel safe.

Nor will Archer put her drivers in a situation where they’ll not be on time. Students at Rhodes College, University of Tennessee-Memphis, and Christian Brothers University are a great source of business, but she resists the temptation to expand to the much larger University of Memphis campus. Timeliness of delivery would suffer and so would Camy’s reputation.

As for the future, Archer is looking east. The growth areas of Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, and Cordova are too far from her Midtown location for delivery, so she is considering selling franchises. She also did a survey among her customers to see what they’d like on the menu.

The survey results have provided Archer with something new to be vigilant about: hot wings, which were the most requested menu addition.

“We are trying to find the finest hot wings in the world,” she says. n

Camy’s, 3 S. Barksdale, 725-1667

PHOTO BY DEVIN GREANEY

FOOD NEWS

by Sonia Alexander Hill

Round 1 is a sports bar with a twist.

The concept was to combine sports with upscale dining, says partner Orlando Steward. The result is a contemporary-casual décor with plasma televisions, so patrons can catch the game while enjoying grilled salmon or lobster tail. Also on the menu are fried gator bites.

“There’s a story to the gator bites,” says Chef Damien Ward. “I used to own an alligator, and it bit the tip of my finger off, so now I take any chance I get to cook an alligator tail.”

Although Ward was born in Memphis, he traveled extensively while his father was in the military and later during his own military stint. Ward learned to cook in restaurants all over the world.

“I took a chef’s apprenticeship in what was then Yorktown, Yugoslavia. I took jobs everywhere just to learn, not for money, because food is my passion, and to fulfill your passion you have to go to the source,” Ward says.

For Ward, cooking is a family thing. Two of his brothers are also professional chefs, and his uncle was on the culinary staff at the White House during the Johnson administration.

“For me, a black man coming up in the 1960s, it was a big deal to know that your uncle worked in the White House,” he says.

Ward says that the most important aspect of the Round 1 menu is that every item is an original recipe he created.

The restaurant opened February 4th at 6642 Winchester. The hours are 11 a.m. to midnight throughout the week and until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, with a limited menu after midnight.

After a long day shopping in Hernando’s Historic Town Square, take a seat in the Silver Chair, which opened February 10th. Will Rives, the former manager of the Daily Grind in downtown Memphis, decided to venture on his own with this deli-style café and coffee shop.

Rives named his restaurant for the sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, written by C.S. Lewis. “In the book the main character is under the spell of a witch, except for one hour a night when he is himself. But the witch straps him to a silver chair during those times, so the only time he can be himself is in the silver chair,” Rives explains.

Rives, 25, moved to Hernando two years ago to get married. His wife, Whitley, is his business partner as well as the announcer and public-relations representative for the Memphis RiverKings. Together, the couple spent two months renovating the new restaurant. Modern accents of blues and greens and orange and yellows offset 100-year-old brick columns to give the café a fresh and chic feel.

Rives, with the help of manager and friend Melissa Hill, operates the gourmet coffee bar and serves up breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The menu features hot and cold sandwiches on an assortment of breads, pitas with hummus, soups, and salads.

Rives says that he plans to offer deliveries very soon and would like to open additional locations in DeSoto County. The café is located at 2476 Memphis Street and is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Want to prepare 12 gourmet entrEes each month without having to shop, chop, or even clean up — all in less than two hours? That’s the concept behind Super Suppers, a Dallas-based franchise that opened February 15th at 4730 Poplar, #3 (763-1993).

Super Suppers was developed by Judie Byrd, founder of the Culinary School of Fort Worth. The idea is that with the hectic pace of today’s families, it is difficult to find time to prepare a complete meal. So Super Suppers does all of the

“Hurry hurry hurry,” Camy Archer says. “Let’s get ourselves ready for the first order.”

Archer, owner of the delivery restaurant Camy’s, is watching her day manager Shawn Eads as he works on four pizzas. This is the first order of the day in what will be a 14-hour shift for Archer. The remaining 10 hours, Archer will be on call.

It’s this vigilance that led Archer to open Camy’s and to keep it open. For the past 12 years, Camy’s has delivered food throughout Midtown and downtown. It’s not fast food but sturdy American staples — lasagna, steak dinners, sub sandwiches, pizzas, salads, and desserts.

Archer grew up in Holly Grove, Arkansas, where her father owned a gas station. She and her brother and sister “got to play ball and play with our friends,” she says, “but we all had a 20-minute chore.” Hers was counting the money from the register and the vending machines. She fondly remembers the value of customers to her parents and the give-and-take of owning a business in a small town. It was the sort of place where the doors were left unlocked so the grocery delivery boy could place perishables in the refrigerator after hours.

In 1970, after her junior year in high school, Archer moved to Memphis to pursue a career as a musician. She played guitar and sang both Top 40 and country in different venues throughout the Mid-South. But the travel got old, and in 1987, she started driving for Domino’s Pizza, “deciding what I was going to do,” she says. She eventually began working in Domino’s marketing department, drumming up new business in the Memphis area.

“Do you know a place that delivers anything besides pizza?” she often heard. She took note and then took off on her own.

In November 1992, at age 40, she opened Camy’s. Domino’s was her only competition, but six months later, Pizza Hut began delivering, followed by Papa John’s and Steak Out. She was overwhelmed by the customer response. On day one, she had three employees; the next day, five. Currently, there are 26.

Many of Archer’s employees are students cooking or driving their way on to unrelated futures. Older drivers are earning supplemental incomes.

Working at Camy’s does mean long hours. The business is closed only on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and after the July 2003 wind storm closed Camy’s for a few days, employees used the downtime to paint the store. But, she says, someone once told her, “If you are in a bad mood when you are making that food, it will come out in that food,” so she tries to take it easy on her employees. Managers work no more than 45 hours per week, and if someone is having a bad day, she will let them go home. When the roads are icy, she would rather close than put her drivers in danger. She also tells drivers not to deliver if they are in a situation where they do not feel safe.

Nor will Archer put her drivers in a situation where they’ll not be on time. Students at Rhodes College, University of Tennessee-Memphis, and Christian Brothers University are a great source of business, but she resists the temptation to expand to the much larger University of Memphis campus. Timeliness of delivery would suffer and so would Camy’s reputation.

As for the future, Archer is looking east. The growth areas of Bartlett, Germantown, Collierville, and Cordova are too far from her Midtown location for delivery, so she is considering selling franchises. She also did a survey among her customers to see what they’d like on the menu.

The survey results have provided Archer with something new to be vigilant about: hot wings, which were the most requested menu addition.

“We are trying to find the finest hot wings in the world,” she says.

Camy’s, 3 S. Barksdale, 725-1667

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Picture This

This Saturday afternoon as a companion event with the Stax Museum of American Soul Music’s ongoing exhibit of blaxploitation film posters, the Brooks Museum of Art offers Funky Film Fest, an introductory course of sorts on the short-lived, controversial film genre, which put black faces on the screen (and behind the scenes) in record numbers in the early 1970s.

The selection showing at the Brooks — Shaft, Cleopatra Jones, and Foxy Brown –is like the blaxploitation equivalent of Oscar bait, the borderline-respectable face of a genre that couldn’t get sillier and more flamboyant (The Mack, Blacula), more artistically substantial (Across 110th Street, The Harder They Come), and seedier. (Just check out some of the sketchy obscurities in the Stax exhibit!)

Released in 1971, the same year as Melvin Van Peebles’ avant-garde, proto-blaxploitation Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Shaft served to the mainstream the then-outré energy of Sweetback. Richard Roundtree’s debonair Harlem detective John Shaft is a sexually confident black man who takes no guff from white authority, much like Van Peebles’ Sweetback. But by sprinkling in at least one sympathetic white character and using the familiar narrative structure of the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe detective story, director Gordon Parks fashioned a film that tapped into the post-civil-rights-movement without alienating audiences who just wanted to have a good time at the movies.

Of perhaps more interest now, for both similar and divergent reasons, are Cleopatra Jones and Foxy Brown. Both Jones‘ Tamara Dobson and Brown‘s Pam Grier are miracles of nature who own the screen: Jones with her sleek, Amazonian luxuriousness and Grier with a Marilyn Monroe-like voluptuousness.

Cleopatra Jones, which opens in a Turkish poppy field before jetting over to the streets of Watts, is more James Bond than Sam Spade. Dobson’s Jones is a government agent who has come home to take on drug kingpin “Mommy,” played by a (literally) hysterical Shelley Winters. With its abundant kung-fu action and with blaxploitation regular Antonio Fargis on hand as dealer-on-the-rise Doodlebug, Cleopatra Jones is the campiest of the three films but still nails the overall point of the genre with one character’s exasperated reaction to the LAPD: “To protect and to serve? Shit.”

With Foxy Brown, released three years after Shaft and on the outer edge of a short-lived explosion, you can feel the self-awareness creeping in, especially with the movie’s far-out opening credits. But the film also cuts deeper than Shaft or Cleopatra Jones, trafficking in more volatile, more historically painful imagery. And, message-wise, this revenge tale spouts dialogue that often feels like a remix of counter-culture’s greatest hits, putting a twist on notions from Allen Ginsberg (“Jail is where some of the finest people I know are these days”) to Stokely Carmichael (“Vigilante justice is as American as apple pie”).

But if blaxploitation survives today as a mix of cultural history and camp, you can experience black cinema as living art this weekend as well. The Memphis Film Forum screens four Spike Lee films — She’s Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Crooklyn, and Malcolm X — over three days at Malco’s Ridgeway Four.

The pairing of these two film series is pure coincidence. But if it weren’t, you could have a healthy debate about whether the Lee films serve as complementary or counter programming.

The selection of films looks random at first, and may be. Lee’s 1989 masterpiece Do the Right Thing is a given. After that, his filmography is so scattered and contentious that it defies consensus. But, taken together, the four films screening this weekend neatly convey the diverse scope of Lee’s own work and of the potential for black cinema generally.

Malcolm X is Lee’s biggest production by far, yet might be his most impersonal film. The autobiographical family film Crooklyn is a conscious attempt to shrink his scope and probably his most personal film. Do the Right Thing is, so far at least, his apotheosis, while the romantic comedy She’s Gotta Have It is his debut (and a key film in the growth of the American indie scene).

These screenings are a continuation of a series the Film Forum started last fall with David Lynch and promises to continue into the spring with Krzysztof Kieslowski and Jim Jarmusch. But even with that to consider, it’s hard to imagine a more accomplished and more vital film than Do the Right Thing getting a big-screen showing in Memphis this year. n

The Funky Film Fest schedule is at brooksmuseum.org; Spike Lee Director’s Series schedule is at memphisfilmforum.org.

Categories
Opinion

The Dynamic Duo

In the nearly extinct form of the comedy duo, the Smothers Brothers remain, serving as a golden-age snapshot of a stage style that could have advanced but was destroyed by dilettantes.

It’s a familiar story. Like all mediums of entertainment, comedy throws away its gimmicks and styles once they stop working, and they usually stop working at the hands of subpar performers. This is why prop comedy died with Carrot Top. Examining the history of the comedy duo reveals a similar situation, and it also reveals how the Smothers Brothers, who’ll be appearing Saturday at GPAC, have held on. It’s a simple case of survival of the fittest.

The greats were great: The routines of the smoothly soused Dean Martin and the prat-falling man-child Jerry Lewis were family-oriented nuggets that sometimes veiled real-life hatred. The strange, satirical meanderings of Ray Goulding and Bob Elliott carried on into the 1980s for a four-decade lesson in the art of subtlety. Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe’s early-’60s confrontational audio street pranks made for poor record sales, but the prescient stunts got their rightful day via reissues in the ’90s.

And while film has birthed no shortage of notable duos — Aykroyd and Belushi, Wilder and Pryor, and Reynolds and DeLuise — it also blueprinted the style that now gives us trainwrecks like Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon, pairings similar to that of drive-time radio rubes who have little to do with original comedy duo moxie.

And then there are the Smothers Brothers.

Tom and Dick Smothers performed in a college folk quintet before setting off as a duo in 1959. They regularly appeared on The Steve Allen Show and began releasing albums, but the brothers kept things musical and relegated the cutting-up for between-song banter. When they soon developed the bickering-siblings shtick, they fell into the ever-sturdy duo agenda of straight guy (Dick) versus half-witted, antagonistic rube (Tom). These roles were interestingly reversed in reality. Dick raced cars and shunned the entertainment industry, while Tom became vehemently involved in the business end of the brothers’ career. They crafted an intelligent, clean rapport (occasionally geared directly at children) that relied on unique and precise timing — a skill in which the brothers are usually regarded as geniuses.

The Smothers Brothers were of serious cultural importance when it came to their most popular product: the ground-breaking and troubled variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Airing on CBS from spring of 1967 until summer of 1969, the Sunday-night show tenaciously pushed boundaries throughout its entire run and was a perpetual thorn in the network’s side. It stayed on by earning a strong youth audience in contrast to NBC’s Bonanza. Tom was constantly battling censors and network executives for culturally and politically baiting messages, skits, and performances. Tom lost the majority of these fights. Segments that fell under the censor’s knife included Harry Belafonte performing in front of footage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, a skit featuring Elaine May that poked fun at censorship, and an ongoing tug of war to include previously blacklisted folkie Pete Seeger. One of Tom’s initial goals was to make The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour hospitable to unknown performers, and it was one of the first variety shows to open its doors wide to African-American performers.

In late 1968, CBS began requiring the brothers to deliver a tape of each show for prescreening by sponsors, a then-unprecedented move in the world of variety shows. Immediately following a begrudged renewal in 1969, CBS recanted and pulled the show for good after Tom tried to rally anticensorship support at the National Broadcasters Association convention. The slot was soon filled by Hee Haw. Into the ’70s, the brothers tried several times to replicate the success of the original show, but the magic was lost. Tom and Dick returned to the performing circuit, resurfacing momentarily in the late ’80s with a failed reunion series.

Tom and Dick played a safe act up the success ladder, then once in power, turned the tables. They had their ups and downs, and they adapted. The Smothers Brothers now stand as the longest-running comedy duo of all time. n

The Smothers Brothers at Germantown Performing Arts Centre, February 26th

Categories
News The Fly-By

5 W’s

Local peace activists see a different side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after a four-week journey to the occupied territories.

Who: The Memphis Peace Team is Jacob Flowers, executive director of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center; Ceylon Mooney, Humanitarian Action Collective founder; Joel Gulledge, of rock band That Was Then; Kyle Kordsmeier; Joey Noffsinger, a minister with Lifelink Churches International, and his wife, Mende Noffsinger.

What, When, Where: Having spent four weeks in Palestine at the end of last year performing humanitarian work and witnessing human rights violations, the Memphis Peace Team is now talking to churches and community groups.

Though Israel’s Parliament has just approved compensation for Jewish settlers who evacuate the Gaza Strip, some militant Israeli settlers continue to oppose the plan with violent demonstrations. The local peace team is hoping to tell pro-Israel faith groups the Palestinian side of the story.

“We did a lot of our direct action in Jayyus where the [Israeli security] wall has really become a barrier to peace,” says Flowers. “Ninety percent of their economy is dependent on agriculture, but the wall has cut off 70 percent of their land and wells.”

The peace team spent one day helping a Palestinian villager cut off from his olive grove replant 20 olive trees after the Israelis bulldozed his 35-year-old grove to make way for a new settlement.

The Memphians also worked with a checkpoint watch group, overseeing Israeli treatment of Palestinians moving into occupied territory.

Why: The peace team believes the conflict has been unfairly reported in mainstream American media, causing public opinion to sway in favor of the Israeli occupation. According to Flowers, if the situation were reported fairly from both sides, public opinion may turn against the Israelis, thus threatening billions of dollars in funding from the American government.

“Over here, it’s all theoretical. It’s disputed territory, and Israelis are acting on behalf of the security of the Israeli people. But once you go over there, it’s thrown in your face what’s really going on,” says Mooney. “If you look at what we did to the American Indians, it’s kind of like what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians — displacing their lands down to the point where they no longer have any sense of nationalism.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

The Quilted Word

If you want to take a picture of my hands you need to get this side,” says Mary Lee Bendolph, offering her palms for inspection.

Bendolph is one of 30 celebrated quilters from rural southwest Alabama who came to Memphis last week for the opening of “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” at the Brooks Museum of Art. Bendolph proudly shows her pinprick scars and the places where six decades of pushing needles through fabric have turned her skin into something like leather.

“I wanted to know what all this fuss was about too,” she says, shrugging modestly. “People had told me these quilts were art, but I didn’t know anything about that. I didn’t know anything about them being art until the first time I saw them hanging in a museum in Houston, Texas. That’s when I knew.”

It took far less time to make a believer out of New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman. When the Gee’s Bend exhibit opened in New York City at the Whitney Museum in 2002, Kimmelman gushed and called these quilts, which were produced by four generations of “Benders” from the 1920s through the 1990s, “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.” In an attempt to describe the massive body of work he dropped the names of modern masters like Paul Klee and Henri Matisse on his way to declaring, when “not rearing children, chopping wood, hauling water, and plowing fields, [the quilters of Gee’s Bend] splic[ed] scraps of old cloth to make robust objects so eye-poppingly gorgeous that it’s hard to know how to begin to account for them.” And how could contemporary art historians account for such a lush and cohesive tradition of modern design coming not from New York or Paris but from rural Alabama? And not only from rural Alabama, but from the isolation of Gee’s Bend. Even the artists continue to be amazed by all the fuss.

“I still don’t know about art. I just sit down to make a quilt,” Bendolph says, slyly setting up her joke. “If I make it level, it won’t be art, it’ll just be a quilt. When one side’s longer than the other side, that’s what makes it art.”

While Klee was busy seeking transcendence through disavowing European art history, the women of Gee’s Bend found God in harmony singing, in ecstatic, spontaneous prayer, and in quilting. As Matisse wrestled with primitive forms, Benders struggled to make the earth produce. They struggled with exploitation, isolation, and often with unimaginable poverty.

“Almost everything I make, somebody done worn the pants, the skirts, the shirt, or the dress first,” Bendolph says. Quilter Annie Mae Young agrees, adding, “We couldn’t throw nothing away. We had to use everything we had. Every bit of cloth, every bit of food, every bit of everything.”

Located on a twisted inland peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River, there is only one road leading in and out of Gee’s Bend. The isolation became even more severe in the mid-1960s when a ferry between Gee’s Bend and the neighboring city of Camden was removed after a number of Benders crossed the river to march with Martin Luther King Jr. By 1970, a full year after America put a man on the moon, the residents of Gee’s Bend still had to travel 15 miles to use a telephone. Electricity and indoor bathrooms were considered luxuries. A plantation culture had existed in the Bend well into the Depression years, and even among fellow blacks, the Benders were considered outcasts — slaves who never left the fields, the exotic residents of a tiny Africa in Alabama.

“We didn’t have TV or [electric] lights. And you’d sew until the kerosene in the light ran out,” Bendolph recalls. “And that was it for the lights until somebody could go to the store and buy more kerosene. I learned to talk around the quilts. I learned to sing around the quilts, and I learned to pray around the quilts. Everything I ever learned to do I learned around the quilts.”

It’s neither fair nor correct to say that ever-deepening abstraction robbed modern painting of its narrative properties. Rather than functioning as easily read pictograms, paintings of the modern period became visual essays: coded messages sent from one artist to another. To that end, the Gee’s Bend quilters have a tremendous popular advantage over the moderns. Their work is practical, casually emotional, and born out of the simple need to keep a family warm during the winter months.

Without access to diversion, oral histories were kept alive around the quilts. Diasporan epics dating back before the Civil War were told. The spirit of God was invoked around the quilts through prayers of deliverance and dreams were interpreted. The products to emerge from these lively quilting sessions are at once abstract and narrative. Faded denim and sweat-stained cotton tell a generations-old story of hard labor and hard life, while vibrant patterns call to mind the work of painters like Kandinsky, Rothko, and Johns.

“Right before my father died, he went out to pick sweet potatoes,” says quilter Arlonzia Pettway, addressing the phenomenon of memory as applied to the quilt. “And so he’s been down on his knees because you have to get down on your knees to get the sweet potatoes. And the knees of his jeans had gotten all muddy. After he died my mother wanted to make a quilt out of all of his things. And I can remember her taking those jeans and washing the mud out before she made the quilt.” Of course, the narrative doesn’t end when the last piece of a quilt is sewn. “When you have something that belongs to your family, you don’t want it to get away from you,” Bendolph says, remembering all the quilts she sold for $5 or $10 because she needed the money to get by. “It’s something you cherish.” n

“The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art through May 8th

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

friday, 25

Tonight’s art openings are at CBU’s University Gallery for work by Jana Bernstein and at Durden Gallery for photographs of Costa Rica by Irene Bailey. Godspell opens at Theatre Memphis’ Next Stage. Jill Scott is at The Orpheum (there’s an after-party back at CafÇ Soul). Today kicks off this weekend’s Memphis Film Forum Black History Month Series with three days of back-to-back Spike Lee films at Malco Ridgeway Four. Today also kicks off the two-day Beale Street Zydeco Festival with live music in most of the clubs on Beale. Acts include Corye & the Zydeco Teens at Blues City CafÇ, Thomas “Big Hat” Fields at Beale Street Tap Room, Keith Franks at the New Daisy, Willis Prudhomme at Rum Boogie, and plenty of others. The Grizzlies play Denver tonight at FedExForum. Today kicks off this weekend’s Exposure Memphis Talent Showcase at the Cannon Center, with finalists performing for nationwide talent and booking agencies. And Broken Strings Records presents Bella Sun, Full Circle, and Solstice tonight at the Hi-Tone. — Tim Sampson

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Hot for Posey

To the Editor:

The Flyer made my week with the “Hotties” article (February 10th issue). My favorite hottie, James Posey, was featured, and I was ecstatic to learn more about him. I have watched him since he joined the Memphis Grizzlies, and I love his demeanor on the court. He is a team player, and I’ve never seen him display cockiness, arrogance, or greed for the limelight. My co-workers, friends, and family laugh at me because I call him “my man.”

I am hoping that one day our paths will cross, so that I can tell him how much I admire his attitude on and off the court. The article increased my admiration for him, and I wish him all the best as his foot heals and he returns to the court.

Shaune Waller

Memphis

The OC

To the Editor:

John Branston’s take on the O.C. Smith case (City Beat, February 17th issue) was outstanding — funny and cynical, yet insightful. Tell him to keep it up.

Jeremy Sorensen

Memphis

Bumper Sticker Wars

To the Editor:

Regarding David Dean’s letter to the editor about his run-in with someone who didn’t like his “W” sticker (February 17th issue): Maybe if a lot more people drove “one of those little vegan-powered hybrid things,” U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians wouldn’t be dying in the fight for oil, er, “freedom” in Iraq. North Korea has a dictator and WMD, but we’re not fighting there. Is it because Bush and his cronies are only interested in spreading freedom in countries where there is lots of oil — and weak armies?

If the U.S. had spent all the money that’s gone toward the war in Iraq on research and development of alternative fuel sources, we might not even be fighting and dying there.

John Klettner

Memphis

To the Editor:

“W: Still The President.” So says one of the newer versions of the “W” stickers appearing on automobile bumpers hereabouts. Well, it’s true that Mr. Bush is still the president, but many Americans don’t find this to be a reason for celebration. For me, it ranks in the “sad but true” category, like “Poverty: Still With Us” or “Limbaugh: Still a Blowhard.”

I must assume the folks who proudly display these “W” stickers are tickled pink by their man’s performance in office, so I challenge them to be a little more forthcoming about why they love the guy. Why isn’t there a Dubya bumper sticker with an LED display that automatically updates the number of Americans (more than 1,400) and Iraqis (probably more than 100,000) killed in an immoral war or tabulates the amount of U.S. taxpayers’ money poured down that drain (already more than $150 billion)?

How about a bumper sticker that acknowledges the administration’s wonderful human rights record: “Torture: The American Way” or “Abu Ghraib: No Worse Than a Fraternity Prank”?

Bush may well be the worst president in our history. If you’re happy to have him around for another term anyway, don’t be shy about telling us why!

B. Keith English

Memphis

Tort Reform

To the Editor:

I am distressed that Tennessee legislators are once again considering tort reform.

Last week, I went to Washington, D.C., for a rally against tort reform sponsored by the Center for Justice and Democracy. During a forum, I listened as victims of medical malpractice and parents of victims of medical malpractice told their stories.

I wish that every Tennessee legislator could have heard what I heard. No one with a conscience could deny those victims and other victims of medical malpractice the wherewithal to make the best of a terrible situation.

A cap on pain and suffering would be devastating for the elderly, for children, and for parents who stay at home to care for their children. Who will provide for the most vulnerable among us who are victims of medical malpractice?

“Frivolous lawsuits” is a catch phrase popularized by President Bush. I can assure Tennessee legislators that what happened to the people I met last week was not frivolous.

Earlene Burney

Clarksville

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Future Tense?

The NBA is difficult to forecast. Just take a look at the gulf between the universal preseason predictions for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Seattle Sonics and those teams’ actual oncourt accomplishments. But with the second half of the season upon us, we might as well read the NBA tea leaves of the Grizzlies and their rivals for the final spots in the Western Conference playoff race and try to get a sense of what the future holds.

Memphis Grizzlies: 30-23, 7th place

Schedule: Griz schedule is about as even as it gets in terms of home/road splits and the quality of their opponents. The problem is how backloaded it is. The team’s final eight games include two with league-leading San Antonio, two with perennial division power Dallas, and games against East-leading Miami and bitter rival Houston. This means the Griz need a playoff cushion heading into April or making the post-season could be a dicey proposition. Momentum: After having unexpected success (7-4) while forced to play without offensive linchpin Pau Gasol for a solid month, Griz finally felt the blow heading into the break, shooting under 40 percent in three consecutive games, two of them losses. And right now, there’s no timetable for Gasol’s return.

Sacramento Kings: 33-20, 5th place

Schedule: Kings opponents are pretty good, with a .517 winning percentage, but a healthy number of remaining games are against the Eastern Conference, where the Kings have been as good as any team out West. Momentum: Kings won six straight after trading for guard Cuttino Mobley in January but have gone only 6-9 since.

Houston Rockets: 32-21, 6th place

Schedule: Brutal. Rockets opponents boast a .545 winning percentage, and the Rockets play 16 of 29 on the road and, even worse, 24 of 29 against the superior West. Worse still? Ten of the team’s total 14 games against the league’s four best teams are yet to come. Momentum: Rockets went into the All-Star break on an eight-game win streak. Trades for shooters David Wesley and Jon Barry and the return of do-it-all guard Bob Sura from the injured list have given stars Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming a much-improved supporting cast.

Los Angeles Lakers: 26-24, 8th place

Schedule: Rough. Lakers play 19 of last 32 on the road and only have a single home game left against a bad team (the Knicks) and only three games against the league’s cellar dwellers. One stretch in March has Lakers playing eight of nine games on the road, which could land a serious body blow to their playoff hopes. Momentum: Lakers survived the loss of Kobe Bryant for a few weeks but are only 2-5 under interim coach Frank Hamblen.

Minnesota Timberwolves: 27-27, 9th place

Schedule: Wolves have a few more road than home games left, but their opponents have a combined winning percentage below .500. The Wolves will play eight games against the league’s dregs and only three against San Antonio, Phoenix, and Miami. Momentum: Bad chemistry and nagging injuries have derailed this would-be title contender. It’s too soon to tell if new coach Kevin McHale will make a difference.

Denver Nuggets: 24-29, 10th place

Schedule: Nuggets have the easiest remaining schedule — 17 of 29 games at home, the lowest opponent winning percentage, seven games with the league’s five hopeless teams, and a seven-game March homestand that could vault them back into contention. Momentum: Disappointing Denver is on its third coach of the season but has gone 7-4 since hiring veteran George Karl. If Voshon Lenard and bruiser Nene can return from injury, Denver could be a playoff factor.

Conclusion: Good news for the Griz (as long as Gasol returns soon) with the closest playoff rivals Rockets and Lakers facing the most difficult second-half schedules. Sacramento will be tough to catch, but unless Houston’s eight-game win streak means they’ve suddenly become an elite team, Griz should be able to make a push for the sixth seed in the playoffs and a likely first-round meeting with inexperienced Seattle.

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News The Fly-By

Spotlight

About 100 Memphis police captains contest the

city budget reduction that abolishes their rank.

Ultimate Ultimatum: At a press conference last August, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton said local police officers were not the director’s men, but “the mayor’s men.”

Those familial feelings were torn asunder last week when 92 of the mayor’s men were given an ultimatum: take a demotion or resign.

Those affected are the 30-year captains, officers who received the rank under a 1927 city charter guideline which automatically promotes personnel after 30 years of service. Giving the captains an ultimatum was police director Larry Godwin’s way of reducing the police budget by $1.3 million, a move necessitated by the city’s $6.4 million budget shortfall. After last Friday’s announcement, officers were given a week to notify Godwin of their intentions.

Protect and Served: “I think it’s a cheap way of using the city’s budget woes to get rid of 30-year captains, which have never been popular with MPD management,” said Memphis Police Association (MPA) president Tommy Turner.

Most of the captains have signed affidavits to be included in litigation against the city. The MPA was granted a temporary restraining order Tuesday, which freezes the positions until a March 7th hearing. The injunction also intervenes in the February 25th notification deadline required by Godwin.

“It’s not a rank that we need,” said Godwin. “The rank is given at the tick of a clock upon [reaching] 30 years, not a process in which we test skills. I think you should achieve it by merit.”

Badge of Honor? At the core of this protest by 30-year captains is what Turner and the MPA see as a violation of city charter. Under that original code, police and fire personnel received the captain distinction in recognition of their service during the yellow fever epidemics in the late 1800s, according to department administrators. Upon receiving the promotion, officers then retired with the pension of a captain.

Many of the 30-year captains received their promotions at ages well below retirement age and remained on the job, drawing salaries that in some cases doubled their previous wages.

“I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” said officer Jim Johnston, 57. After his captain’s promotion in September, the former sergeant reorganized his family budget based on his new salary. With college tuition to pay, Johnston’s options are limited. “Mr. Herenton is not running me off this job. If that means having to stay here and work at a lower pay, I’ll have to work a lot of overtime and make it up. I’m here until I fulfill my obligation.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Gonzo

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

For many of us of a certain age, that sentence — the opening line of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — reverberates like a great gong, tapping slightly addled memories of another life 30 years gone, another universe. The news of Thompson’s suicide this week brought it all back.

It was a time when the weekly arrival of Rolling Stone meant “Do not disturb” for the next three hours. Nothing published today compares in terms of pop-culture impact to RS in its prime. We devoured Lester Bangs and Ralph Gleason because what they wrote about the new Neil Young album meant something, because the music, like the world, was ours.

And when the magazine published one of Thompson’s insane “reports,” accompanied by the equally bizarre illustrations of Ralph Steadman, well, hipness could get no hipper. It was like we were all in on the same stony joke — all of us, reader, writer, artist, publisher.

Interview Nixon? No problem. Pass me that joint first.

I lived in San Francisco then, and like many other aspiring “gonzo” writers there and elsewhere, I fell under Thompson’s spell. Thankfully, very little of what I wrote in those days remains. The truth is, no one else could write like Thompson, because no one else who imbibed drugs and alcohol the way he did could sit up long enough to type a sentence. He didn’t just write gonzo, he lived gonzo.

In the mid-1980s, it was my strange fortune to talk to Thompson on a number of occasions. I was co-writing a book in which Thompson was profiled. Our phone conversations were brief and mostly about fact-checking. A year or so later, however, I was assigned to track Thompson down for a Saturday Review magazine cover photo. “Cover of Saturday Review? Sure, I’d kill for that,” he said. And I believed him. But then he dodged my calls for weeks.

Finally, his agent called to say he would cooperate and that he was holed up at the Drake hotel in New York under an assumed name. The name? The agent wasn’t sure. That was our problem. The photographer, being a resourceful sort, called the front desk and asked for “Mr. Raoul Duke,” Thompson’s Doonesbury alter ego. Contact! Thomp-son told the photographer that his “office hours” were from 2 to 4 — a.m! — and not to come back until then.

Using a fifth of Wild Turkey and the negotiating skills of a Grisham hero, the photographer finally got Thompson to pose for a startlingly close-up cover shot. Thompson hated the picture, and after the article came out, he was quoted as saying he couldn’t say the word “Saturday” anymore without retching. We never had occasion to speak again.

In recent years, when I saw Thompson in photos or when I read his columns, it seemed to me he’d become something of a parody of himself. Running around stoned out of your mind is edgy stuff at 30; it loses its charm at 67. It also tends to lead to acts of anguished desperation, like shooting yourself and leaving your wife and son to find your shattered body. It was inevitable, I suppose, but sad nonetheless. The man was a brilliant writer. He even wrote his own epitaph:

“… No explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. … There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. … We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”

You had a nice run, Duke. Rest in peace. n

Bruce VanWyngarden is editor of the Flyer.