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Month: December 2005
Did you notice? Earlier this year we added a new element to the Flyer — the “Cheat Sheet” — a skewed look at the week’s top events. To add a bit of flash to the section, we hired a nice fellow named Greg Cravens to illustrate one of the news topics each week. Since the only credit he gets each week is an 8-point byline, we’d like to introduce you to the man who is asked to convey, oh, such things as the Tennessee Waltz in a postage-stamp-sized drawing. Sometimes with just a few hours’ notice too.
“I like a nice challenge,” says Cravens, from his Midtown studio, which he shares with “a wife, two kids, dog, and mortgage.” Born in Jackson, Tennessee, 40 years ago, Cravens came to Memphis in 1983 to earn a degree from the University of Memphis. After graduation, he began airbrushing and screen-printing T-shirts in a Mall of Memphis shop called Adwear. “We would put whatever design you wanted on a shirt,” he says. “But they let me freelance with the art department equipment after hours, and when I was making as much money freelancing as with the screenprinting stuff, I quit.”
That was in 1991, and Cravens has stayed busy ever since.
“Whoever picks up the phone and calls,” he says, “they are my boss now.” He has done work for just about every advertising agency in town, created a comic strip called The Buckets, which ran for several years in The Commercial Appeal, and draws the “Guru” cartoon for the kid’s publication Jabberblabber.
Although he is trained in media ranging from oil painting to watercolors, practically all of his work these days is done on a computer. “I used to do whatever was required, but the computer has replaced so many of my tools,” Cravens says. “You can get out your oils and do a Norman Rockwell-type thing, but then the client will say, ‘We need it digitally because you’ll have to e-mail it to us.'”
For the Flyer‘s “Cheat Sheet,” we usually come up with a general topic, call Cravens the night before it’s due, and just let him fly, so to speak. “That’s the best way to do it,” he says. “If you say, ‘Here’s your subject matter, go with it,’ then I’m free to come up with a communicative image.”
Actually, each week Cravens provides us with three or four different images, and we pick one that we like. “I used to do four sketches in four completely different styles,” he says. “Then the style settled down to a technique that looks like layered woodcuts — like all the colors have been cut out of separate woodblocks and laid on top of one another.
“I have fun doing four of these and trying to guess which one the Flyer will pick. And I’m almost always wrong!”
For this year-end issue, we took a poll around the office and picked the top five Greg Cravens “Cheat Sheet” illustrations. Something tells us he would have picked other ones.
Picking up where we left off last week, my favorite
sporting events of 2005:
5) Louisville 75, Memphis 74 (C-USA basketball
championship, March 12) — Tiger senior Duane Erwin was kneeling,
certainly praying, merely five feet from me, at the opposite end of the
FedExForum court from where Darius Washington toed the free-throw line — with
time expired — for three shots to win the Conference USA tournament and send
Memphis to an entirely unexpected (undeserved?) trip to the NCAA tournament. The
entire nation cringed in empathy when the freshman point guard missed the last
two attempts, collapsing alone in that key before the CBS cameras. Sometimes
sports must be appreciated, not so much for the “big picture” of championships
and playoff races, but simply for the moment. And it’s when a game makes you
feel most human — whether it be elation or heartache — that you’re reminded
why you watch in the first place.
4) UCF 3, Memphis 2 (women’s volleyball,
October 30) — For the life of me, I don’t understand how television
hasn’t found college volleyball. Forget
[1][1]the
beach and bikini variety. Six-on-six, indoors, this brand of everyone’s favorite
backyard party game is a frenetic two-hour whirlwind of action. And the cohesion
between teammates blows away anything you see on a basketball court. Defensive
players save balls slammed at them merely inches from the floor, and manage to
arm their setters with a ball to place — right there! — for a hitter to slam
back over the net. It’s like going to a basketball game and seeing 50
alley-oops, some of them blocked right back in the “dunker’s” face. Next fall,
take the time to go see Christen Clayton, Melissa Nance and company do their
thing at the Elma Roane Fieldhouse. Your neck will be sore from swiveling.
3) St. Louis 8, Pittsburgh 0 (Busch
Stadium, June 25) — The National League’s preeminent pitcher in 2005 —
the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter — struck out 11 Pirates on his way to a four-hit
shutout, one of four he would throw for the season. The National League’s
preeminent hitter in 2005 — the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols — drilled his 20th
home run of the season (on his way to 41). For only the second time in its
40-year life, Busch Stadium was home to both a Cy Young winner and MVP. (Hall of
Famer Bob Gibson won both in 1968.)
2) Memphis 27, UTEP 20 (October 1)
— I’ve witnessed two Memphis sports moments that I’m convinced I’ll be telling
my grandchildren about long after everyone else has stopped listening. The first
was Albert Pujols hitting a home run to win a championship for the local
Triple-A outfit (September 15, 2000). The second was the 74-yard touchdown jaunt
DeAngelo Williams made through the UTEP defense on a night when the national-TV
cameras were dark in Memphis. Late in the third quarter, with the Tigers leading
the undefeated Miners, 10-6, Williams took a shotgun snap from center and plowed
through the left side of the line for what appeared to be a workmanlike
five-yard gain. Then the fun started. Williams cut right and, quite literally,
ran by a half-dozen would-be tacklers on his way to the opposite sideline. Once
at the sideline, Williams was kept in bounds by a block — 40 yards downfield,
mind you — by freshman quarterback Billy Barefield (who had lined up split to
the right). If you weren’t in the stadium that night, don’t tell me you saw this
run. It’ll be featured in Chapter One of “The Legend of DeAngelo.”
1) Northfield High School 7, Oxbow High 0 (May
28, Northfield, Vermont). It had been 15 years since I saw my alma mater
take the diamond at Memorial Park, so seeing the Marauders put a whipping on the
Olympians was pleasing, particularly for the opportunity it provided for me to
catch up with an old teammate (who also finds himself a journalist today, poor
sap). Northfield went on to reach the state finals, losing the championship
contest for the first time since 1987 when they had a Murtaugh in leftfield
(they’ve won eight titles since I graduated). This turned out to be the last
baseball game I got to see with my dad. It was hot, even in Vermont, as Memorial
Day approached, so Dad didn’t stay the full seven innings. But he was there for
a stretch, with me. And I love him for that.
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CA VS. NY TABS
It’s not often that we at Fly on the Wall can congratulate The Commercial Appeal for being tasteful, but when 41-year-old burglar and sex offender Peter Braunstein was captured in Memphis, the CA’s coverage was subdued, especially compared to New York tabloids such as The New York Daily News.
CA headline: “Writer’s run from law ends”
Sample copy: “wanted for questioning,” “man fitting Braunstein’s description,” “allegedly a highly intelligent writer.”
NYDN headline: “Let Me Die!”
Sample copy: “Halloween sicko,” “sex fiend suspect,” “emaciated and strung out as though he were high on crack cocaine.”
On the other hand, the CA did cite the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a source, so maybe they just didn’t know who Braunstein was.
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WHAT’S ON THE BLOG?
NEW: How the MSM will cover Rep. Ford’s race, courtesy of USA Today. Other seasonal matters. Plus there’s more for you to respond to, on the new Flyer blog, Let It Fly(above).
Categories
From a Different Mold
Here’s a handy retail tip: If you call Mary Carter Decorating Center on Summer Avenue, don’t ask for Mary Carter because there’s no telling who you’ll get.
Storeowners Jim and Kathy Famerty might take your call. It could be their son Chris, who’s in the business too. But one thing’s certain: Mary Carter won’t answer because she’s a paint brand, not a person.
And here’s another reminder: Don’t try buying paint at the small corner store either. The shop’s colorful merchandise is for decorating candy, cakes, and cookies, not furniture or walls.
“Paint was how we got started,” says Jim, whose father purchased a Mary Carter franchise after retiring from General Motors in 1958. The family moved to Memphis from Tupelo, locating the store in the Highland Heights neighborhood where it still operates today.
“Back then, painting was a summertime thing,” Jim recalls. “So we got into cake decorating supplies to make it through the winter.”
Until about a decade ago, when Jim stopped his interior-decorating work, the businesses existed side-by-side, offering old-fashioned customer service and the largest inventory of cake and candy decorating supplies in the Mid-South.
“We get bigger every year,” Jim says. “Grocery stores have bits and pieces of decorating supplies. But for accessories, variety, or help, people come here.”
“Our customers are like family,” adds Christy Roberts, who started working at Mary Carter 14 years ago when she was just 16. “They’ve watched me grow up.”
As if on cue, Roberts greets a customer by name and offers her a taste of a new favorite treat. “Try our tangerine bark,” she says, pulling out a Ziplock bag from behind the counter. “We can’t stop eating it.”
Customers enter Mary Carter through a back door off a small porch, making the place feel more like a cramped and friendly kitchen than a retail store. But look around, and merchandise is everywhere: displayed on counters, tucked in corners, or stacked on metal shelving six-feet high.
Want to decorate a cake for a birthday, anniversary, or holiday? Start with a pan (round, square, rectangle, sheet, bundt, cheesecake, angel food, or novelty); select a cake board (any size in Masonite, white cardboard, or covered in foil); add a filling (lemon, raspberry, strawberry, pineapple, apricot, or cream cheese); decide on candles (dinosaurs, Sponge Bob, Elmo, or a rocket ship, to name a few); find the icing (a bucket of butter cream, perhaps?); and definitely don’t forget the sugars and the sprinkles.
“People come from all over Tennessee and Arkansas to get our sugars and sprinkles. I have a lot of pride about that,” says Kathy, rattling off the selection stacked in neat glass jars. “We have little pigs, footballs, cows, stars, gingerbread men, candy canes, Christmas trees, holiday lights, and my favorite: white pearlized snowflakes.”
Other candy-making supplies are equally diverse and delectable, offering melts in different flavors (mint, butterscotch, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, or sugar-free) and an assortment of candy molds (teapots, starfish, palm trees, cowboy hats, gingerbread house, and even baby Jesus).
“Customers love the candy molds because they are so easy to do,” says Kathy, who teaches candy-making classes in an adjoining room with a telltale sign that reads, “Chocolate is the answer to everything.”
“Melt the candy melts, pour it in molds, pop the molds in the freezer, and you’re done,” she explains.
Like many customers, Stephanie Redmond of Cordova started candy making with Peppermint Bark, a delicious holiday confection of white chocolate spiked with crunchy pieces of green and red peppermint.
“The Peppermint Bark was so easy and delicious, I got hooked,” Redmond says. “Next I did chocolate spoon molds with marshmallow flavoring. I tied them with red ribbons for quick and easy holiday gifts.”
During the holidays, employees stay busy from 8 a.m. until closing, handing out advice and encouragement for making and packaging hand-made gifts.
“The gifts our customers make are special, whether they are suckers or chocolate-covered cherries or birthday cakes, because they took time to make them for a friend or family member they care about,” Kathy says. “It’s really a love thing.”
Jim readily concurs. “Our business is all about feel-good stories of people caring and sharing. I get chill bumps talking about it.”
Categories
DIY
This is not a book,” reads the introduction to ReadyMade. “It is a picture frame, a straight edge, a demonstration of how gravity works (look how swiftly it falls from your hands!), and a good anchor when your balloon is in danger of floating away.”
But ReadyMade, in fact, is a book: a waste-not/want-not “atlas of suggestions” for putting your household recyclables and just plain junk to added, unexpected, practical use. Paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass, and fabric: These are the raw materials we’re talking about, and here’s the book’s first suggestion, as described on its back cover, an unjacketed cover made of politically correct pulp:
Go to it (the back cover), literally, with a knife. (The size of the rectangular opening you’re making is plainly indicated.) Now put a picture of yourself in the opening you’ve made. (That’ll discourage thieves.) Then sign off on it on the dotted line, which is also provided. As are, inside ReadyMade, instructions for turning old phone books into a coffee table; a colander into a light fixture; a wood pallet into a bike rack; a stack of beer cans into a room divider; a chest of drawers into an “Eames-style” shelving unit; a pile of plastic water bottles into a lounge chair; and a FedEx mailing tube into a wall-mounted CD rack.
Who came up this stuff? Grace Hawthorne, publisher of ReadyMade (the magazine), and Shoshana Berger, editor of ReadyMade (the magazine), are the authors of ReadyMade (the book), and they freely admit, “We have no special skills whatsoever.” What they do have is wit, imagination, and an everyman or -woman approach to more than 60 domestic projects you too can do.
Some of these projects are elegant. (See the windshield fireplace screen.) Some of them begin and end in goofiness. (See that water-bottle lounge chair.) All of them, though, come with an estimate of the time and money it’ll take, a list of the materials and tools you’ll need (with beginner instructions on how to hammer a nail), and an “evolutionary scale” that runs symbolically from ape to man: meaning, on the easiest level, “any dolt with opposable thumbs could make it.”
Shoshana Berger is no dolt. She writes on a whole host of topics: trash management (office paper being a biggie); chopstick etiquette; how to tell a good story (“even if you weren’t born in the South”); how to make an Ingmar Bergman film (start with “an ill-fated subject” and film it in black-and-white, “the cinematic equivalent of a migraine”); and how to avoid a facelift: rule #1: Don’t smile; rule #2: Don’t think.
But don’t let the rough exterior of ReadyMade fool you. The inside photography by Jeffery Cross, the illustrations by Kate Francis, and the page design by Eric Heiman are superslick and superb. Together with Berger’s text and Hawthorne’s project descriptions, they make ReadyMade a good last-minute stocking stuffer for that eco-minded do-it-yourselfer on your list. (“Stocking stuffer”: It’s #18 on the list of “Alternative Uses For This Book.”)
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Q & A: Richard White,
Flying into Memphis International Airport has always been akin to entering a big warehouse. Which is fitting, perhaps, since it’s been the number-one cargo airport in the world since 1992. But, in an attempt to create a more Memphis experience, the airport recently underwent $25 million in improvements, including the addition of area-themed restaurants and shops. After a media tour that included both an Elvis and a panda impersonator, the Flyer spoke with Richard White, director of properties for the Shelby County Airport Authority, about the project and the possible dangers of combining international travel with Interstate BBQ. — by Ben Popper
Flyer: The entertainment was terrific. Will there be Elvis and pandas on a regular basis?
White: No, but there will be live entertainment in Rhythms [restaurant], in Sun Studio, and in the Blue Note Café when that opens. And on special occasions there will be live entertainment and pandas and all that stuff. We feel that the Mid-South/Memphis theme has a flavor that is unique to us. We want anyone who comes to the airport to feel our hospitality.
How long has this project been in the works?
We started the planning on this in 2000. When 9/11 occurred, we basically delayed the process for a year, both for reasons of security and because traffic, as at all airports, dropped off significantly.
A lot of airports try for a grand, sweeping style, whereas this feels very personal.
We surveyed all the passengers who frequent our airport to see what they wanted. In the old airport, when you used to get off the plane, there was no sense of where you were. We felt Memphis had a very attractive uniqueness about it, and we wanted to highlight that.
How did the airport pay for this?
All the money that was spent in here is being paid by the concessionaires. We use something called minimum annual recovery, which is a rate that it costs the airport to produce the piece of real estate, the capital component to construct it and to maintain it, plus the utility rate.
Is the focus supposed to be the central rotunda?
That is the biggest piece of it. Eighty percent of our traffic goes through that area, but we have over 51 restaurants and retail spaces throughout the building. There are little touches as well, such as paintings by local artists and the hanging graphic panels that relate to Memphis.
We have to ask: How do you feel about boarding passengers who have just had a hearty helping of BBQ?
Why not? In Boston, you are going to get a cup of clam chowder. In El Paso, you will probably get a helping of Tex-Mex cuisine.
So, you’re not worried about any significant increases in cabin pressure?
No.
Categories
Turn Me Right Round
Turn the radio dial to one of Memphis’ rock or pop stations on a Saturday afternoon, and you may hear something new. Or rather, something old.
Several stations have recently adopted weekend format changes that are more inclusive of older rock and pop.
WMBZ-94.1 “The Buzz” now plays all-’80s music on the weekends. FM100 has transformed their weekend playlists with “Whatever Weekend,” in which deejays play a mix of everything from disco to holiday songs to current Top 40 hits. WHBQ, or Q107.5, plays pop songs from the ’80s and ’90s during “Wild On Q” weekends.
“We’ve been doing ’80s weekends for about a month now,” said Brad Carson, program director for The Buzz. “It was based on experimenting throughout the summer and last year, and the reaction from listeners has been fabulous.”
Karson Tager, program director of Q107.5, said the station informally surveyed listeners at public events.
“You get into your daily grind. You go to work at the same time every day,” said Tager. “On the weekends, we wanted to help people get out of that grind and bring people back to the station they may only be using during the week.”
The format changes might not stop there. After losing longtime morning shock jock Howard Stern to Sirius satellite radio this month, Infinity Broadcasting’s 93X has been soliciting listener comments on what they should play. However, a source from 93X (who asked not to be named because of company policy) says the station isn’t afraid of losing listeners to satellite.
“We just want to be the best rock station in Memphis,” he says. “That’s what all these efforts are striving to do.”
A New York Times story reported that the number of Sirius radio subscribers has jumped from 600,000 to 2.2 million since Stern announced last year that he was moving to satellite, yet local stations the Flyer spoke with contend their weekend format changes have nothing to do with competition from satellite radio.
“Satellite radio does not give you local news, weather, sports, or anything local,” said the source from 93X. “It doesn’t touch people’s lives in Memphis or Peoria or Santa Barbara or Hoboken. It’s very homogenized and generic. Besides, local radio is free.”
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Step Right Up
Peter Jackson is a man who appreciates architecture. From Helm’s Deep’s ancient keep to Minias Tirath thrusting from the mountain like the prow of a great ship, the director can’t resist swooping his camera to take in the walls and the scrollwork on the columns. His films have become architectural too: huge edifices whose crushing weight is inseparable from their terrible beauty. But Jackson is also the guy who made Bad Taste, a comically bloody movie about aliens who eat people as fast food. His roots are in horror, specifically the low-budget, high-body-count variety. It makes sense, therefore, that he’s always wanted to make King Kong, a movie where a giant, destructive monster meets his demise atop one of the crowning achievements of American architecture, the Empire State Building.
King Kong is also a movie about making a movie. Carl Denham (Jack Black) starts out trying to make an adventure film and ends up unleashing a giant ape on New York City. Black’s Denham used to be a successful filmmaker, but the studio wants to sell his new picture to be used as stock footage. He is so monomaniacal that he’ll lie, steal, and endanger other people’s lives to finish his film.
After the amazing financial success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson was paid a record $20 million to direct his dream project and then turned around and sank most of it back into the project to cover budget overruns. It is clear that he has as heavy an emotional investment in King Kong as he does a financial one, because he takes what could have been a well-compensated victory lap and makes an instant classic bursting with life and energy.
Black’s performance is a revelation. He has the kind of control over his face and body that a great actor must have. He just usually uses it to get a cheap laugh. Here he uses it to draw a complex character that goes beyond the original version’s well-meaning huckster. But he may have had the advantage of direct access to his subject. Early reviewers have compared Black’s take on Denham with Orson Welles, but Black is playing Peter Jackson. The director is living his dream of inserting himself into his all-time favorite movie. King Kong is such a dizzying trip because Jackson is along with us for the ride. When Black’s character announces to a Broadway crowd, “I am actually laying my hands on a 25-foot gorilla,” it is Jackson announcing his intentions to the movie house.
Most movies about making movies are ultimately kind of hollow, perhaps because the process is not as interesting as the product. But Jackson shows you exactly why he loves making movies by delivering the kind of incredible set pieces and action sequences not seen since Raiders of the Lost Ark. Mr. Bad Taste comes out in a scene on Skull Island where the party who set out to rescue Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is attacked by a hideous variety of overgrown insects and huge phallic worms. Soon after, he gets one of the movie’s biggest scares by menacing his heroine with a millipede. In 1933, Kong fought a Tyrannosaurs Rex. In 2005, he fights three of them while juggling a screaming girl between his hands and feet.
Watt’s Darrow is also deeper than Fay Wray’s scream machine. She’s a struggling vaudevillian brave enough to tame a giant ape by doing pratfalls and walking like an Egyptian. The relationship between Darrow and Kong is not, as in the original, a strangely sexual one. It is more like the relationship between a person and pet, only in this case, it’s difficult to tell which one is the pet.
But the star of monster movies is always the monster. Based on a meticulous physical performance by Andy Serkis, this Kong is the standard by which all future computer-generated characters will be measured. He may not be as scary as the original, but he is more believable and more simian, both in movement and temperament. This is a Kong who enjoys watching sunsets and chases an Adrian Brody-driven Yellow cab through the streets of New York City like a cat playing with a Roomba.
Brody plays Jack Driscoll, a screenwriter shanghaied by Denham for the trip to Skull Island who becomes Darrow’s human love interest. Brody does the put-upon writer with Black pretty well, but when he and Watts are on-screen together, the sparks are only flying from her. When Driscoll leaves the rescue party behind to go after Darrow alone, he doesn’t seem to be doing it for any other reason than to advance the plot.
King Kong isn’t flawless. There’s no doubt it’s too long. As in Return of the King, Jackson uses an awful lot of slow motion for a three-hour movie. Sometimes, when he is particularly impressed with a set or monster, he’ll show three different angles where one would suffice. A subplot with a young sailor reading Heart of Darkness feels forced and corny, even for a film as proudly cheesy as this. The soundtrack never really equals the grandeur on the screen. But these are minor quibbles. By adapting the ur-text for all special-effects-based action movies, Jackson is trying to take plot out of the equation. He hangs baroque variations of movement and sound on the spare framework of the Kong story and has a rip-roaring good time doing it. In an era of reduced expectations, King Kong is one movie where everyone, studio and audience, gets their money’s worth.
King Kong Now Playing