Month: February 2005

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

postscript

Certifiably Inane?

To the Editor:

Normally I enjoy reading your publication. However, after seeing the “Hotties” cover story (February 10th issue), I think you would be well advised to wait at least two months before casting stones at the perceived inanity of The Commercial Appeal.

Jeremy Scott

Memphis

What’s Shakin’

To the Editor:

I was delighted to see Janel Davis’ cover story about the earthquake threat in our region (February 3rd issue). The author did a wonderful job describing the history of the New Madrid fault, the efforts to monitor seismic activity, and the need for more stringent building codes.

However, the question of “What happens to Memphis when the inevitable happens?” was never really answered. To say that an earthquake of 8.0 or higher would cause “severe damage” or be “devastating” is an understatement. An event of this magnitude would be catastrophic! The author didn’t mention the impact such an event would have on fire-fighting, police, health-care, transportation facilities, or communications capability.

And little effort was made to make the reader aware that there are things we all can do to be better prepared for tragic natural events. The irony is that if we’re prepared for a natural disaster, it doesn’t take much more to be prepared for man-made disasters. We need more awareness, involvement, and preparedness.

Terry Coggins

Memphis

To the Editor:

A little more than a week after your earthquake story, we have one. Do you guys have a crystal ball or something?

Hal Miller

Memphis

Editor’s note: Not really. But we did cancel that bubonic plague story we had scheduled for this week.

The “F” Word

To the Editor:

Excuse me, Ms. DelBrocco, but do you think only conservatives yell trashy expletives at stop lights (Viewpoint, February 10th issue)? It happens in reverse also.

I was sitting at the light at Tillman and Sam Cooper in my big ole five-star crash-rated SUV with a little “W” sticker on the back. My daughters, age 5 years and 14 months, were in the backseat. It was a beautiful fall day, but luckily I did not have my windows down. A young man in one of those little vegan-powered hybrid things that looked like it would crumple in a head-on with my daughter’s bike pulled up on my right. His car was covered with Kerry/Edwards paraphernalia, with a few old Gore/Lieberman stickers thrown in for good measure. He was obviously agitated at my audacity to come into the Midtown area. The expletives he was hurling at me cannot be repeated, but rest assured there were more than a few “F” words being thrown around.

I could hear him through my closed windows, so I turned up the conservative country music to shield the little ears in the back. This lasted until I got my turn arrow and calmly left him ranting at my tailpipe, with a good view of the receding little “W” as I drove off.

Unlike DelBrocco, I was never really scared, because in keeping with certain “American traditions” — namely, the constitutionally provided right to bear arms — I am licensed to carry a weapon. If the man had ever really physically threatened me or my children … well, we won’t go there.

The point is that just about everyone had a stake in the last election, and emotions were running high on both sides of the aisle, not just for those nasty, old conservatives.

David Dean

Collierville

To the Editor:

Readers who might object to Cheri DelBrocco’s recent column about the real “F” word, i.e., fascism, might want to look up the study of fascist regimes made by Dr. Lawrence Britt. Britt found 14 distinguishing characteristics, among which are a fervor to show patriotic nationalism, a controlled mass media, regimes attaching themselves to the predominant religion of the country, and fraudulent elections.

A real conservative is fiscally responsible, a proponent of state and individual rights, and not inclined to engage in the excesses of empire.

The term “neocon,” which is used to describe our current administration’s political ideology, is nothing short of Orwellian for “fascist.” Given the deep divisions in our country today, if half the population continues to misunderstand the difference between “conservative” and “neocon,” our democracy may not survive.

John Pagoda

New York

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dashing

I’m standing in the chili-pepper section of Penzeys Spices. Displayed before me are more than a dozen varieties of peppers from around the world, in different quantities and grinds. I’ve perused the selections like a customer at a perfume counter, sampling the aroma of each from generous display carafes. At last I settle on the Aleppo pepper from Turkey. Similar in smokiness to an ancho pepper, it has a sun-dried-tomato sweetness to balance the fire. It will make a great condiment for burgers, pizza, and sauces.

Chefs and serious foodies will recognize the name Penzeys from its mail-order and Internet catalogs. A Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based family-owned business that began as a bulk spice house in the 1940s, Penzeys has been opening retail spaces of late. The Memphis location, at the Carrefour shopping center at the corner of Poplar and Kirby, is one of the few stores in the South.

The Memphis store was opened a few months ago by Michael Moore, who is a milkman’s son, a former IBM employee, and an enthusiastic cook. Moore’s specialities? Chili, he says. And soups, lasagne, pies and custards, and just about everything. Moore’s broad culinary knowledge helped him click with executives when he went to Penzeys’ headquarters to talk about opening the store. It also helps him to help people like me pick a pepper.

The East Memphis store is spacious, and its displays are attractively organized. Most herbs are available in a variety of sizes, and sample jars allow the browser to not only see but inhale the selections. Amid the highest-quality parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are the harder-to-find galangal (a mild, ginger-flavored root), lemongrass, sumac (also lemony), zatar (a Middle East blend used on pita bread), and fenugreek. Past the chili section are the curries — red rogan josh, green garam masala, and a yellow maharajah.

Saffron, the most expensive of all spices (a quarter ounce can run up to $57), is available in three different grades (or qualities) at Penzeys. The most select saffron, from Kashmir, is picked only once a year. Not only is it available here, it is less expensive than the lesser-quality Spanish saffron infrequently found in our local grocery stores.

Two varieties of vanilla bean and three choices of cinnamon, again of better quality, are also significantly less expensive than those at a grocery store. This value extends through the entire store, where I found the prices to be, on average, one-third less than elsewhere in town.

Penzeys also sells themed gift boxes — different collections of products for the newlywed, for example, or for those who like spicy foods or those who live on salads or love to bake or prefer Asian foods. Or customers can make up their own box. The number-one gift this past holiday season wasn’t a seasoning at all but hot-chocolate mixes of Dutch cocoa with a “thin mint” extract, which consistently sold out.

There is an extensive selection of hand-mixed seasonings for grilling, marinating, and kicking up your old standbys. With descriptive names like Trinidad, Adobo, Northwoods, Singapore, and Cajun, each mix or rub comes with suggested uses and recipes. Dry salad-dressing mixes and toppings also come in many varieties, an alternative to expensive premixed bottles. Six soup bases are time-saving starters for seasonal soups and stews. I recently used the seafood base for a shrimp risotto, for example. Two teaspoons of the dense reduction produced a quart of richly colored and flavorful stock.

The mail-order and Internet catalogs (Penzeys.com) are colorful and informative, but to discover the right selection for your individual tastes, pay Moore a visit at Penzeys. How else would I have found the Aleppo chili pepper? Or the French gray sea salt? Or the seafood-soup base? Or the seven different peppercorns? Or

Categories
Editorial Opinion

EDITORIAL

Several recent circumstances remind us that the line between public and private interests is a thin one that can be transgressed in either direction.

Last week, for example, Mayor Willie Herenton convened a joint meeting of the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission at The Pyramid, in order to present a comprehensive plan for consolidating city and county schools. The plan envisioned five equal and commonly funded school districts throughout Shelby County, each with a de facto regional autonomy, though a chancellor and a nine-member Board of Education would provide an umbrella administration.

Though there were several outstanding questions about the economics of the plan (not to mention the politics!), Herenton’s proposal was a serious prologue to a long overdue dialogue. Granted, the mayor had made a point of snubbing both the city and county school boards in his invitation, but his plan, after all, proposes to do away with both. Many officials who were there later said they regarded the Herenton initiative as serious enough to merit “further study.”

Almost immediately, though, extraneous factors slipped into the proceedings. Instead of the verbal give-and-take about the plan’s mechanics that might have ensued, two council members and the mayor got into a to-do that had less to do with the public agenda than with their respective private ones. First, council member Carol Chumney launched into a self-congratulatory monologue about her 2002 campaign for county mayor. After a few moments of this, Herenton interrupted her with an impolite expletive. Then, council member Brent Taylor, who has feuded with the mayor, stalked out in a gesture of defiance that may have played better on camera than it did in the room.

All that was lacking was another confrontation between the mayor and local ABC News anchor Cameron Harper. The two had gotten into a well-publicized tangle last month over Harper’s persistence in asking whether Herenton would consider resigning in order to further the cause of consolidation. Surprise! The mayor belatedly answered the question at last week’s meeting, saying he would. And that was, we suppose, a contribution to the dialogue.

But none of the sideshows that occurred last Wednesday in The Pyramid held a candle to the one that was featured on WREG-TV, News Channel 3, later in the week. Reporter Andy Wise interviewed Claudine Marsh, who was recently revealed to be the mother of Herenton’s 4-month-old son. In that dialogue, Marsh succeeded in making two statements — the visual one, whereby a no-doubt curious viewing audience got to see what she looked like; and a rhetorical one, which was more or less to the effect that the mayor hadn’t altogether been a gentleman, leaving her to have a baby all by herself. (For the record, Herenton has acknowledged paternity and promised to provide appropriate supports.)

Beyond that, Marsh and Wise indulged each other in mutual claims to be people of faith, along with the rather striking further contention by Wise that God somehow ordained the interview. Anyone persuaded of that might also conclude that the Almighty had also required Marsh to be interviewed for the next morning’s issue of The Commercial Appeal, which maintains a news partnership of sorts with Channel 3.

The long and short of it all is that the public still has business to be concluded. We all like our fun and games, but it’s time to get back to it — God willing.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Facing It

For “Something of Our Common Feeling,” the current exhibition at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts, curator Elizabeth Alley has gathered together six local artists and three out-of-towners. These nine artists deliver a show that captures humanity’s shared and unruly qualities. There’s beauty here and raw energy and uncertainty and plain, old common courage.

Portland, Oregon, artist Elliott Wall’s No One Wants To See This explores sexuality and mortality with postmodern appropriation and esoteric references. A black candle burns beside the black-haired, black-eyed woman who dominates the composition. Her nude body is an exquisite merging of subdued colors that brings to mind Titian’s Venus of Urbino. Her left hand, like that of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, relaxes across her sex rather than protecting or hiding it.

Instead of the dog or kitten one often finds in nude masterworks, Wall has placed the skeleton of a small animal curled up at the figure’s feet. Directly over her left breast is a crescent moon encompassing a star (a reference to Ingres’ Turkish odalisques?, an allusion to arcane knowledge?). Across the deeply shadowed background are faintly written words that translate to the biblical “Pride goeth before a fall,” warning of the dangers of exalting oneself. The subject of Wall’s work could represent the larger idea of “Beauty” and “Death.” But instead of wielding power over others, Beauty, completely nude and hence completely vulnerable, lies down with that skeleton Death. It’s a complex and provocative work.

Adam Shaw’s multifaceted past works — dark, ominous cartoon frames; deeply shadowed, charcoal nudes; and paintings of refracted bodies in water — intersect beautifully in the paintings presented at this exhibit. The four midnight-blue oils on canvas are dark and atmospheric, but one can still make out the beachcombers in Tidepool and the nude swimmers in Amphitrite, Swimmer (Naiad), and Swimmer II.

Kurt Meer is known locally for his subtle landscapes. In the mixed-media work Endorphine, Meer’s signature earth tones become the raw siennas of a rusted-out model of an automobile and the corrosive browns of the aging skin of a woman who is burning her candle at both ends. Endorphine makes for an uneasy recognition, and it also lingers. Here we all are — members of a fast-paced society consuming both the buyer and the bought.

Some of the exhibition’s most unsettling figures appear in Beth Edwards’ studies of domesticity. With devastatingly numbing effect, Edwards perfectly weds a slick, tight painting style with tightly scripted gender roles. Bored husbands stare at their watches (Watch), sleep (Troubled Sleep), or sip iced tea (Susannah), while their hapless wives cry alone or sit naked and unnoticed.

Los Angeles artist Jason Alexander confronts mortality. In Self with Muses, two almost skeletal corpses display an easy body language, leaning back with legs crossed at the shins and hands loosely draped over their loins. These rotting muses appear to be reflecting on what it all meant and what it all continues to mean. The “Alexander” of the painting neither attacks nor shrinks back. His shoulders are relaxed and his head cocked downward. His left hand rests on the edge of a shroud that surrounds one of the corpses. He is listening, considering, engaging in a dialogue with himself, his art, his own mortality. With lessons learned from Degas, Odd Nerdrum, and Egon Schiele and Julian Schnabel, Alexander has created the show’s most expressive figures and a world where neither debilitation nor death impedes the reflective/creative process. Alexander’s bravura artistic skills persuade us that his vision could be real.

Other notable works in the show include New Yorker Gary Murphy’s sumi ink drawing, Emblem, which captures the beauty of an unkempt, unselfconscious face as it daydreams. Alan Duckworth fills a medium-sized acrylic painting with the deeply etched lines of a young woman’s laughter (Saturday Afternoon), and in Laugh he paints broad planes of almost-white on a young man’s laughing face on what may be that same sunny Saturday. Mel Spillman’s nimble lines and deft washes of gouache create mesmerizingly appealing designs in My Look Turns to a Stare. And, finally, Vitus Shell’s mixed-media Sister II Sister is a poignant African-American portrait whose missing eyes and indistinct features suggest the challenges of developing a clear sense of self. n

“Something of Our Common Feeling” at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts through February 26th

Categories
Cover Feature News

Lost and Found

“Have you ever seen a team coming off 50 wins and a promising playoff appearance dissolve so quickly the following season? No offense to Mike Fratello, who is expected to take over as head coach any minute now, but no Xs and Os can pull together a franchise splintering from top to bottom.”

— Ric Bucher (“Grizzlies Going South Fast,” ESPN The Magazine, December 2, 2004)

“Can Mike Fratello save the Grizzlies? Maybe the Grizzlies can leapfrog the Rockets, Clippers, and Jazz. But even that big of a leap only puts them ninth. Prediction: 12th in the West.”

— Chad Ford (“The Bad and the Ugly,” ESPN Insider, December 20, 2004)

“Will this be a lost season?”

— Chris Herrington (“Basketball Church Is Closed,” The Memphis Flyer, December 1, 2004)

pparently, making a fool of virtually every NBA prognosticator in the country a year ago wasn’t enough for the Memphis Grizzlies, who have followed up their seemingly one-of-a-kind breakthrough season with a campaign both impossibly similar and radically different.

Prior to the 2003-2004 season, Grizzlies president of basketball operations Jerry West made acquiring a true center his top priority, focusing on Golden State’s Erick Dampier. After his pursuit came up just short, West went a different route, spending the team’s mid-level exception in free agency on a hustling forward (James Posey), for whom pretty much everyone felt he’d overpaid. In the draft, West reeled in an experienced collegiate backcourt (first-rounders Troy Bell and Dahntay Jones) who didn’t seem to have a clear role awaiting them.

In the lead-up to this season, what did West do? After his team had finished dead last in the NBA in defensive rebounding, he again set out to upgrade the center position, again focusing on Dampier and again failing to acquire the burly big man. (Which, given Dampier’s age and salary demands, probably wasn’t such a bad thing.) With the Dampier deal going nowhere, West turned to free agency, where he again spent the team’s mid-level exception on a hustling forward (Brian Cardinal) who no one thought was worth the money. And in the draft? You got it, another experienced collegiate backcourt (second-rounders Antonio Burks and Andre Emmett).

Amazingly, these carbon-copy moves somehow led to nearly identical season arcs. Last year’s Grizzlies plodded to a 15-17 record heading into the new year and then hit their stride, finishing 35-15 the rest of the way and marching into the postseason for the first time in franchise history. This year? The team was 14-17 as the calendar flipped to 2005. Since then the Griz have rattled off a 16-5 run, to plant themselves firmly back into the Western Conference playoff race.

But this déjà vu season has had some nightmares along the way. First was the unexpected departure of the beloved Brown, who’d become a folk hero in leading his band of unaccomplished charges to what seemed like a fairy tale season the year before. Then, unrelated to on-court performance but even harder to take, was the sudden loss of longtime play-by-play man Don Poier, who more than earned the overused broadcaster’s tag “voice of the franchise.”

Though in broad strokes this season looks remarkably similar to last season, the trajectory from preseason point A to probable postseason point B has been markedly different.

The chemistry and injury problems that fed the team’s rough start have been well documented. The mystery surrounding Brown’s at times defensive farewell press conference was somewhat solved by a profanity-laced (and rare) interview from point guard Jason Williams in The Commercial Appeal a couple weeks ago. There can be little doubt now that tension over the role of Brown’s son, lead assistant Brendan, was a driving factor in Hubie’s departure. But even though those issues may have been key to the team’s slow start, there are also Xs and Os explanations for why the Grizzlies were slow out of the gate and for how new coach Mike Fratello has been able to turn this potentially lost season around.

Most of the problems that plagued the Grizzlies early this season centered around adjustments Brown and his coaching staff did and didn’t make in response to a preseason league-office edict which dictated that officials allow more offensive movement by more stringently calling perimeter defensive fouls.

On offense, Brown responded to this change by calling for fewer three-point shots and more drives to the basket, which, given the new emphasis on defensive fouls, would likely result in more trips to the free-throw line.

The strategy worked to a degree. The Grizzlies did indeed get to the line more. But in retrospect, the style didn’t maximize the team’s talent. The Grizzlies’ most aggressive slasher, James Posey, who is also an outstanding free-throw shooter, began the season trying to play on a sprained left foot. Unable to attack the basket the way he had the previous season, Posey garnered only two free-throw attempts in three games before heading to the injured list.

The team’s quickest perimeter player, Williams, has long been loath to attack the basket and was playing in too much of a mental funk to implement the strategy. Bonzi Wells is athletic enough to get to the basket but is better as a post-up player. As for the team’s other perimeter players, average athletes Mike Miller and Shane Battier are bigger threats shooting the ball from the outside, and Earl Watson — heading into this season anyway — wasn’t much of an offensive threat at all.

Still, it’s hard to fault Brown for his strategy, since the new officiating emphasis seemed to compel it and since his team had finished 20th in the league in three-point shooting last year. Watson and Wells had never been considered particularly good from downtown, and Posey’s big season from beyond the arc the previous year might have been a fluke. Miller had one of the league’s prettiest strokes but had always underachieved and seemed to be a serious injury concern in the preseason. Battier was okay from the corner but not the kind of guy you build an offense around. Williams wasn’t shy about letting it fly but was the kind of shooter who runs hot and cold and had never shot better than 35 percent from three-point range. Deeper on the bench, Jones had been a dreadful shooter last season, and rookies Burks and Emmett weren’t known as outside shooters (and might not play anyway).

True, the team’s free-agent acquisition, Brian Cardinal, had finished third in the league in three-point percentage the season before and was a monumental offensive upgrade over departed Bo Outlaw, but there was still no real reason to think the Grizzlies could compete with the top teams in the league when it came to long-range shooting.

But that thinking turned out to be wrong. The team’s increasing use of the three-ball has been the single biggest quantifiable correlation with the team’s success.

Under Brown, the modest 16 three-point attempts per game the Grizzlies took a year ago fell to 14 a game. The team went 5-7 before Brown’s resignation. In the first dozen games under Fratello, the three-point shooting ticked up to 17 a game, and the team went 6-6. Since then, the Grizzlies have averaged 23 treys a game and have reeled off an 18-5 record. Shooting percentages have increased with the attempts: .357 under Brown to .374 in the first dozen under Fratello to .408 since. And now, a team that was downplaying the three at the beginning of the season finds itself second in the league in three-point shooting.

The transformation has been a team effort: Miller’s textbook stroke is finally finding net with a frequency commensurate to its loveliness; his career-best 45 percent shooting is good enough for fifth in the league. Next in line is Battier, who has become more versatile in where he finds his shots and whose career-best 42 percent is 12th in the league. Never known as a marksman, Wells is suddenly hitting from beyond the arc at a (yep, that phrase again) career-best 39 percent. His game rejuvenated under Fratello (as it has been under many a new coach before), Williams is dialing it up at a career-best 35 percent. His backup, Watson, has entirely transformed his game, raising his three-point shooting from an ugly 25 percent last season to a career-best 38 percent this season (and has taken nearly as many threes through 50 games this season as he did through 82 last year). Even the young players have gotten into the act. Jones has developed into a legitimate outside threat in his second season, especially from the corner, shooting 39 percent. And Burks’ slingshot delivery might not be pretty, but he’s been finding the bottom of the net from three-point range at a respectable 38 percent.

Even the two players not shooting a career-best from three this season are still solid threats. Struggling through injuries, Posey has shot only 33 percent on the season, but that includes a 40 percent January before hitting the injured list again. Cardinal has also fought injuries, but he’s still at a solid 38 percent and has been picking up the pace of late, nailing a couple of clutch threes in the fourth quarter of last week’s win over the Portland Trailblazers.

Add it all up, and the Grizzlies have nine(!) players who are legitimate three-point threats. Not even Seattle or Phoenix, the league’s two most prolific outside-shooting teams, can compete with that. And equally impressive is how the team’s three-point game has been viable within two entirely different offensive styles.

When the Grizzlies’ perimeter attack first came together under Fratello, it fed off of the interior play of Gasol, whose ability to draw double-teams and willingness to pass the ball served as the catalyst for quick, unselfish ball movement that regularly resulted in open outside looks. Gasol rarely picked up an assist in these situations, but he was the engine, something that fans locally and nationally (on TNT) got a tutorial on in the Grizzlies’ Martin Luther King Jr. Day victory over the Houston Rockets.

When Gasol went to the injured list in late January, there was every reason to believe that the team’s offense would fall apart. But the adjustments made by the coaching staff — and their execution by the players — has been inspired. With no post player capable of consistently drawing a double-team, the Grizzlies’ offense has looked entirely different. Rather than relying on ball movement and deft passing to create open looks, the Griz have installed more player movement. The double-team/kickout/kick-around dynamic has disappeared, replaced by an equally effective matrix of cuts, penetrations, and picks-and-rolls that have allowed the team to go 7-3 without its best player.

On defense, it’s been a different story for the Grizzlies. If Brown’s seemingly correct adjustment to the new officiating style backfired on offense, it was the adjustment the former coach didn’t make on defense that hurt the team early on.

The Grizzlies’ 50-win outburst in 2003-2004 was driven in part by an attacking, pressure defense that led the league in steals and negated the team’s rebounding problems. This season, with the league tightening up on just the kind of aggressive perimeter defense the Grizzlies stressed (and with team-best defender Posey hobbled by injury), some of those steals were becoming fouls. As noted by CNNSI.com columnist and stat guru John Hollinger in a November 30th article, Grizzlies opponents increased their free-throw attempts far above the league average.

Fratello exchanged Brown’s fullcourt pressure for a rotation-focused halfcourt scheme that has developed an amoeba-like cohesion, feeding off of the team’s recovered oncourt chemistry. Steals are down (from first to ninth), but the overall performance is better: third, behind only Detroit and San Antonio, in opponent scoring and sixth in opponent shooting. The glory of a steal leading to a fastbreak layup has been replaced as the primary symbol of Grizzlies defense by the more workmanlike display of forcing the other team into a shot-clock violation.

There are other changes, of course: The deft way Fratello has exploited the team’s depth while quietly discarding Brown’s rigid 10-man rotation has allowed him to mix and match lineups (and thus, minutes) without provoking the kind of resentments (from inside and outside the organization) that Brown’s substitution patterns caused.

Part of the reason the Grizzlies are holding teams to fewer points this season is the same reason the Grizzlies are also scoring fewer points: They’re playing at a slower pace. This goes against the conventional wisdom about a team with Williams at the point and frontcourt players who are quick and agile but not very strong. The assumption about this team, which I certainly shared, was that it had to run to win. Fratello hasn’t slowed this team down like he did in his previous coaching stint in Cleveland, but he’s sacrificed the transition game in order to promote more active team rebounding. That the Grizzlies have improved on the defensive boards (from last a year ago to a still-poor 26th) without upgrading personnel is a testament to this subtle strategic shift. And the team’s three-point shooting has more than offset what they’ve lost in fastbreak buckets.

The more things have stayed the same for the Memphis Grizzlies, the more they’ve changed. In a season that once seemed lost, the Grizzlies find themselves in the same unlikely place they were a year ago — firmly in the playoff race. As this is written, the Grizzlies sit seventh in the West, a game behind division-rival Houston Rockets and with a decent lead on the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves, two teams that are struggling through in-season coaching changes.

But being a sixth or seventh seed in the West this year isn’t like last year. Last year, the top of the conference was a murderer’s row of historic proportions, including the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and MVP Tim Duncan; the league-leading Timberwolves and impending MVP Kevin Garnett; the three-time champion Lakers with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal; and the deep, explosive Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings just behind those three.

The competition doesn’t look quite as fierce this season. The Spurs, with the elevated play of ultraquick backcourt Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, look like the best team in the league and a must to avoid. But if the Grizzlies can stay above the eight seed, then they might have a chance to do some damage in the postseason. The most likely opponents are the upstart Phoenix Suns and Seattle Sonics, neither of whom boasts much playoff experience. The Grizzlies have lost twice to the Sonics this season, but both games pre-date Fratello. And the Grizzlies have played the Suns very well, holding a 2-1 season advantage. Longshot opponents Dallas and Sacramento don’t look as formidable as past editions, with the Mavs losing point-guard Steve Nash to the Suns and the Kings losing much of their past depth.

Can this year’s version of the Grizzlies do what last year’s couldn’t? Not just make the playoffs, but make something happen when they get there? Winning a series still seems like a far-off dream. But for a franchise without a single playoff-game victory to call its own, extending a first-round series past the minimum four games sure would be a nice start — and would really stick it to the NBA analysts who left this team for dead in December. n

Czar Power

Seven questions for

Mike Fratello

Flyer: With all the injuries, you haven’t had the full roster at your disposal for a single game. But isn’t it accurate to say that Pau Gasol is the one player whose loss changes team-wide strategy and style of play?

Fratello: As our primary post option, he probably has the most effect on our offense being altered, forcing us to play a different way. With him in the game, defenses have to collapse and play more than one man on him. And, because he’s unselfish, we can then play off of him with our other people. That we’ve been able to adjust [to not having that dynamic] is a tribute to the other players and to the fact that Jerry [West] has put together a roster flexible enough that it allows us to play a couple of different ways. This is a team with a high basketball I.Q., and that gives you the chance to make those kinds of adjustments.

There seems to be a strong correlation for this team between three-point shooting and winning. Under Hubie Brown, the team took about 14 threes a game and was 5-7. In the first dozen games after you took over, those attempts were up to 17 a game and the team was 6-6. Since then, the team has been averaging 23 threes a game and has gone 18-4. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?

I can’t answer the Hubie part of it, because I don’t know. There may have been an emphasis there on taking the ball to the basket more and getting to the foul line more, which may have been something they were trying to improve on from the year before. When I first came, I was trying to get a handle on what this team was all about. I was trying to learn. And as we moved along through those first eight to 10 games, and I became more comfortable with what this guy could do, what that guy could do, we tried to get guys shots in spots we felt they could be most productive. And a very positive weapon for us has been the three, because we have more than just one or two guys who can operate from out there and make a high percentage of shots. So we’ve stayed with it, and they’ve made shots.

So, has it been a conscious decision to emphasize that or more of an evolution?

An evolution. It’s not like I ever said to them that I wanted to take four more threes a game. It never came to that, and I still feel the same way. There are good three-point shots and bad three-point shots. I don’t have a problem with the good three-point shot if you’re a player who should be shooting it. And if that’s the case, we want you to shoot it with confidence. But players have to know the difference, and that comes through practice.

What impact has the new emphasis on making hand-check calls had on the game this year?

I think it’s part of the reason why points are up around the league. You’re just not allowed to get into players physically the way you used to. The reaching-out calls are more frequent now, which puts teams in the bonus quicker and gives them more free-throw attempts.

And what kind of impact has this had on your own defensive philosophy?

You have to clean up your defensive end of the court, because otherwise you’re gonna put other teams on the foul line too early each period. It forces you to just stay down in your defensive stance and have good footwork and get more help from teammates to ward off penetration.

One reason I ask is that this team led the league in steals last season. This season the steals are down but, and this is just an unconfirmed observation, it seems like forced shot-clock violations are way up.

Yeah, we’re probably a more compact defense this year. Not as much gambling and stuff like that, which won’t produce as many steals. I want us to be able to know going into those last few minutes that we can get defensive stops when we need to. Now, I’d love to have the steals they had last year. We still chart deflections. But I also want us to be solid when you have to be solid.

One last thing, non-basketball. Have you had much of a chance to get a feel for the city, or have you been too busy?

I wish. People ask me all the time, “You been here? You been there? You seen this?” I just chuckle and say, ‘Nah.’ I know where the airport is and where my office is and where I sleep at night, and that’s about it. But the season demands your time. There are no shortcuts with this job.

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Sturm und Drang (Shang-a-Lang)

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In 1986, four years after its modest off-Broadway opening, Little Shop of Horrors — a campy, ’60s pop-inspired creepshow of a musical based on schlock filmmaker Roger Corman’s ultracheap film of the same name — was again transformed into a popular, expensive, and extraordinarily well-made bit of musical cinema starring such known commodities as Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, and Vincent Gardenia.

Set in a hopelessly broken urban landscape where “the hopheads flop in the snow,” the film flirted hard with the play’s original themes: addiction, sadistic relationships, greed, and mankind’s eminent corruptibility. But Hollywood wasn’t ready to bank on a zany comedy where all the characters are ultimately devoured by a flesh-eating plant bent on world conquest, so the ending was altered. In typical comic-book fashion, the boy got the girl, the monster got blown up, and all of the baddies got what was coming to them. And so the play’s greatest irony was rendered impotent.

Little Shop‘s chorus, three cool black chicks more Motown than Greek, provide the framework for this candy-coated, but politically savvy, morality tale. In an often-reprised number, they sing about “the meek,” who, according to the often-quoted (and perhaps misinterpreted) Bible verse, will someday inherit the earth:

They say the meek shall inherit — You know the book doesn’t lie

It’s not a question of merit; it’s not demand and supply

You know the meek are gonna get what’s coming to them by and by.

In the stage version of Little Shop, the meekest characters are used, abused, and ultimately eaten as they feed any number of beasts: the market, the media, the status quo, and eventually Audrey II, a blood-sucking, limb-chomping plant discovered by supergeek Seymour Krelbourn, a mild-mannered skid-row florist with a slim-to-no chance of ever pulling himself out of the gutter. Grim metaphors are piled up like syrup-drenched pancakes — an exhilarating, relatively low-budget antidote to the coked-up, trickle-down ’80s, an era famous for glorifying corporate ruthlessness and rampant consumerism.

From the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Little Shop was produced frequently by regional theaters across the country and at least five times in Memphis. A recent Broadway revival, criticized by some for its lack of intimacy, has pumped new life into a production well on its way to becoming an old warhorse. It has done so at a time when the conditions that made the play so prescient in the 1980s have returned, and in force.

The Broadway tour of Little Shop of Horrors opened at The Orpheum February 15th and runs through February 20th.

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News

U.S. ATTORNEY, EXPERT TESTIFY AT SMITH TRIAL

The federal court trial of former medical examiner Dr. O.C. Smith took another strange twist Thursday as Terry Harris, the United States attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, testified under subpoena as a witness for the prosecution.

Harris was on the stand for more than 40 minutes and somewhat upstaged the day’s most celebrated witness, Dr. Park Dietz, an expert in staged crimes who has testified at numerous high-profile trials.

Dietz drew the media cameras after his testimony about “factitious victimization,” which he described as a mental disorder that makes otherwise normal people do strange things to attract attention. Smith is accused of lying about an incident in June, 2002 when he was found bound in barbed wire with a bomb around his neck.

“Denial is the common response when confronted,” Dietz said.

But it was Harris who may have made the greater impression on the jury. The defense team let Dietz go with a couple of perfunctory questions about his firm’s fees for its help on the case ($32,000) and a reference to an error Dietz made while testifying in the Andrea Yates case. Dietz had already explained the error under questioning by the prosecution.

The Harris testimony was possibly more significant because he has been a friend of Smith for several years, including 14 years as a county prosecutor before he became United States attorney.

Harris seemed prepared to simply tell the jury why his office was recused due to the association of several attorneys with Smith. He wound up testifying in detail about his meeting with Smith the day of the attack and the reasons why Smith went from victim to suspect.

“I was afraid he was going to be in much worse condition,” Harris said about Smith’s physical appearance when they met about six hours after the attack. “I was relieved to see he was not in terrible shape.”

It was several months later that Smith became a suspect.

“There were inconsistencies and he needed to be looked at seriously as a suspect,” Harris said.

In cross-examination, defense attorney Jim Garts asked Harris about the liquid that was supposedly thrown at Smith to temporarily blind him. The defense has hammered on that point in its cross-examination of forensic specialists whom it has tried to discredit.

Prosecutor Bud Cummins then followed up by asking Harris if there were other things that made Smith a suspect. Garts objected, but Cummins argued that Garts “opened the door,” and U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald allowed him to continue his questioning. He then got Harris to reply “yes” to a series of questions about the absence of torn clothes, serious injuries, lack of resistance, and inconsistent statements as other factors that made Smith a suspect.

The upshot was that the jury wound up hearing a highly credible, somewhat reluctant prosecutor with first-hand knowledge of Smith’s appearance and explanation from the day of the crime describe what he knows. Previous witnesses included forensic specialists who looked only at pictures or pieces of clothing. Their testimony was rebutted at length by Garts and his colleague Gerald Easter.

Harris left the courtroom unscathed.

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News The Fly-By

Metropolitans Out of Molehills

The symbolism intentional or not was unfortunate.

When Mayor Willie Herenton presented his metropolitan school plan last week, he was at our very own “Tomb of Doom” in a room called the King’s Chambers.

The plan was for an all-encompassing Shelby County school district, yet it was City Council members and county commissioners at the table, not members of the two school boards.

And the plan being presented was more than two years old.

Sometimes what you don’t say is more important than what you do say. These hard-to-ignore details said, “Second verse, same as the first.”

Since the meeting, much has been made of the mayor’s promise to resign if the city and county governments consolidate. Much has also been made of the continuing cage match between the mayor and certain City Council members.

They’re both catchy hooks, but what happens when we get to the bridge? Maybe it’s time we all learned a new song.

At full annexation by the city agreed upon in 2000 as part of the 20-year countywide growth plan Memphis will stretch all the way to the Fayette County line between Stage Road and the Wolf River. And the capital funding formula won’t be $3 to the city schools for every $1 to the county schools; it will be $5 for every $1.

Want to build a $25 million school in Collierville? Better be ready to pony up $150 million, about a fifth of the city schools’ current budget.

Kind of puts a few temper tantrums in perspective.

Herenton proposed a 20-member community task force with four members each from the city, the county, the suburban communities, the school systems, and the local business community. The group would review Herenton’s plan “critically dissect it, analyze it, tear it apart” as he put it and would also serve as a clearinghouse for any other proposed solutions.

Along with Ron Belz, TaJuan Stout Mitchell, and Robert Lipscomb, Russell Gwatney is one of the city nominees to the task force. He’s been involved in trying to solve school financing since 1999 and says he doesn’t know what, if anything, will be different this time around.

“The problem is, the mayor’s talking, but not everyone understands why,” says Gwatney. “Until the county commission, the suburban mayors, the City Council, and the school boards sit down and really pay attention to what’s going on in the county, I think we’re going to come up with Band-Aid approaches.”

For instance, of the top 10 Tennessee cities with the highest property tax rates, four of them are in Shelby County.

“Memphis has the highest property tax in Tennessee,” says Gwatney, “but why is Germantown third? Why is Collierville sixth? Why is Bartlett seventh? It’s not because Memphis did anything; it’s because county taxes are so high.”

By comparison, Nashville is 28th. Memphis’ property tax is about 53 percent higher than that of the capital city.

“The real issue is the failure to solve the school-funding problem, whether it’s by freezing the boundaries in perpetuity, special school districts, or creating a countywide school system,” says Gwatney. “To leave it unsolved is less responsible than trying to do something to fix it.”

It’s unclear exactly what will happen now. Although listening didn’t seem to be on the agenda in the King’s Chambers, Herenton said he’s willing to hear other plans.

“It’s difficult for me to cooperate with the status quo, when the status quo doesn’t take us out of our dilemma,” he told the group.

I have a suggestion. Let’s have a fresh start. Throw out all the old connotations. If you want to have a meeting in The Pyramid, you have to realize that it’s like a shiny pimple on the lip of the city. Sure, it’s the signature of the skyline, but it has come to represent everything wrong with Memphis.

For the mayor’s purposes, the observation deck may have been a better choice than the King’s Chambers. The breathtaking view might have reminded our leaders that our entire community’s future is at stake. The 10-minute climb (and that’s conservative) up 32 stories would have reminded everyone that tackling challenges requires hard work.

And then maybe everyone would have gotten the point.

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News The Fly-By

SO, CONGRESSMAN, HOW FRUITY WAS IT?

This tidbit comes by way of the D.C. mag Roll Call: At least one [legislator] takes special care to keep his feet smooth, clean and pretty Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the single, debonair 34-year-old Democratic legend from Tennessee. On Wednesday, a [Roll Call] informant saw Ford getting a pedicure at Toka Salon on Pennsylvania Avenue Our spy says Ford was relaxing in his pedicure chair, alternately working his BlackBerry and cell phone as the pedicurist scraped dead skin off his feet. [On another occasion] Ford was chilling poolside at the schwanky Delano hotel in Miami. He wore a bathing suit and Washington Redskins baseball cap, puffed on a stogie, and sipped a fruity frozen drink. — Chris Davis

Plante: How It Looks

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News News Feature

CITY BEAT

FAMILY FUN!

It’s fun! It’s educational! It’s Parker Brothers’ new mystery game, “O.C. SMitH, MeDiCAl EXaMIner.” Winners get a sample of barbed wire and a subpoena.

A skilled mystery writer would have this story end with a) Smith’s conviction, b) Smith’s acquittal, or c) nothing: the plot is too far-fetched.

The attacker was a) a 25-ish fleshy man weighing about 170 pounds, b) a 40-ish man weighing about 200 pounds, or c) Colonel Mustard in the library with a lead pipe.

In the fight for his life in the stairwell, Smith was a) tougher than a combat-experienced Navy Seal, b) easier to subdue than your great-aunt Eunice, or c) throwing desperate haymakers at himself.

The overwrought piety and self-important tone of the mysterious letters suggest the author was a) a Catholic anti-abortion zealot, b) a fundamentalist death-penalty zealot, or c) Andy Wise or Wendi Thomas.

The misspellings and curious use of capital letters in the letters suggests the author is a) deranged, b) an e-mail spammer, or c) a Memphis high school graduate.

The pictures of Smith post-attack look like a) a commercial for Clearasil, b) a man splashed with lye, or c) a typical 1963 high school graduation picture.

The large number of female witnesses in the trial shows a) forensics is an equal opportunity field, b) women really can do math and science, or c) Smith was getting more than Frank Sinatra in his prime.

The phrase “rendered safe” means that a) a bomb has been fixed so it won’t blow up, b) your teenaged daughter is home with the flu, or c) Willie Herenton has had a vasectomy.

The barbed-wire headgear worn by Smith resembles a) Hannibal Lecter’s mask, b) a crown of thorns, or c) a birthday present for John Ford.

The scars on O. C. Smith’s chest came from a) machine gun fire, b) a knife attack in hand-to-hand combat, or c) a breast reduction.

The involvement of the Mike Fleming radio program in the case is evidence of a) the importance of talk radio, b) a red herring, or c) great news for Mike Fleming.

Two weeks after the attack, Smith and a female French anthropologist went to Lyon to a) study 19th century manuscripts, b) unwind and craft an alibi, or c) drink wine and make whoopee.

The phrase “frog-march” describes a) Smith’s attacker forcing him to the stairwell, b) Navy Seal hazing, or () a drum-and-bugle team in Lyon.

Smith’s description of his attacker is what you would expect from a) a veteran forensic pathologist with keen powers of observation, b) a man punched and doused with lye, or c) a cross-eyed drunk with an Etch-A-Sketch.

Smith rappelled down a bridge to get to a dead body because he was a) showboating, b) didn’t want to get his pants wet, or c) wanted to try out his new rope.

The cost of protecting Smith and his wife 24/7 for months with TACT officers was a) $1 million, b) $10 million, or c) a big waste of money.

A barbed-wire bit like the one on Smith would look good on a) a terrorist, b) a cranky horse, or c) some members of the Memphis City Council.

The presence of Super Glue on the back of the bomb on Smith’s chest indicates a) the attacker was serious, b) the stuff doesn’t work well, or c) product placement.

“Pull it, twist it, shake it” is a) a way to trigger a motion-sensitive bomb, b) a child’s toy, or c) a male impotence remedy.

“Factitious victimization” is a) a mental disorder, b) psychobabble, or c) a great way for an expert witness to make a few thousand bucks.

Smith’s conviction will show that a) justice is blind, b) the defense theory was ridiculous, c) a jury will believe anything.

Smith’s acquittal will show that a) our judicial system works, b) the prosecution’s theory was ridiculous, or c) a jury will believe anything.