Month: May 2006

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

We Recommend

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thursdayMay4Memphis Redbirds vs.
New Orleans Zephyrs7:10 p.m., AutoZone Park, $5-$18Equipment bags go to the first 1,500 kids through the gate at tonight<0x2019>s Redbirds game against the New Orleans Zephyrs.RagtimePoplar Pike Playhouse, 7 p.m., $22It<0x2019>s opening night for Poplar Pike<0x2019>s presentation of Ragtime, the Tony Award-winning musical drama that tells the story of turn-of-the-century America through the eyes of three very different families and through gospel songs and ragtime and cakewalk music. fridayMay 5
Fiddler on the Roof Playhouse on the Square, 8 p.m., $30Dave Landis stars in Playhouse on the Square<0x2019>s production of Fiddler on the Roof, the much-loved musical about a man trying to impart to his daughters the importance of tradition.
Opening Reception for
Matthew HastyDavid Mah Gallery, 6-9 p.m.Opening for <0x201C>Recent Works by Matthew Hasty,<0x201D> an artist known for his landscape paintings that capture the beauty of the Mississippi River. There will be a second opening on Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.saturdayMay 6
Trot for SpotShelby Farms Visitor Center, 10 a.m., $10 for kids, $20 adults, $35 couples, $45 familiesGoing, going, gone to the dogs: This fund-raiser for the Memphis/Shelby County Humane Society at Shelby Farms includes 3-mile and 1.6-mile walks, storytime for kids and pets, a dog wash, and animal contests.
TreasuresAn Antiques Appraisal EventDeSoto Civic Center, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.For $5 an item, an expert appraiser will tell you the value of your valuables. Among the appraisers is Joe Rosson, host of the PBS series Treasures in Your Attic. <0x201C>Bon Voyage<0x201D>The Cannon Center, 8 p.m., $12-$76The last concert of the season for the Memphis Syphony Orchestra Masterworks series features guest pianist Jorge Federico Osorio. Selections include Falla<0x2019>s Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Gershwin<0x2019>s An American in Paris. The evening will also feature the world premiere of a composition by MSO horn player Robert Patterson titled Postcards from the River City. There will be encore performance on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre. Tickets for that concert are $40.sundayMay 7DialogueCourt Square, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.Traveling, interactive art show by Mike Garibaldi featuring nine 7-by-8-foot screens that include inspirational quotes from everybody from Oprah to Gandhi.
DUB Magazine<0x2019>s Car Show and ConcertMemphis Cook Convention Center, noon, $20Traveling exhibition featuring the latest in swanky automotives, including the debut of new lines from Honda, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, and more. Plus, Paul Wall, Slim Thug, Mike Jones, and others will provide entertainment. tuesdayMay 9Booksigning by Jackie BrennerDavis-Kidd Booksellers, 6 p.m.Photographer Jackie Brenner signs her book Friday Night Grind: Bourbon Street, New Orleans, a pre-Katrina exploration of the lives of New Orleans strippers, particularly those lives on Friday nights.
Wine TastingCordelia<0x2019>s Table, $15Just in time for picnic season is this tasting of wines that go well with picnics. The wines will be from France and Australia, and the picnic fare will come from the kitchen of Cordelia chef Nancy Kistler. wednesday May 10Storytime with Mr. ChuckNorth Branch Library, 1192 Vollintine,
10 a.m.Kids are read stories by Mr. Chuck, the host of WKNO-TV<0x2019>s Hello Mr. Chuck!Brown Bag LunchMemphis Botanic Garden, noon, $5Today<0x2019>s Brown Bag Lunch educational series features Kristin Lamberson of Strawberry Plains Nature Center. Lamberson will discuss plants that attract birds and butterflies.

Categories
Book Features Books

Going the Distance

Alot of people write songs,” Wired once wrote of singer-songwriter Doug Hoekstra. “Hoekstra writes five-minute worlds.” In Bothering the Coffee Drinkers (Canopic Publishing), Hoekstra’s prose debut, he also writes short stories and autobiographical essays.

If this musician/writer’s name sounds familiar, it’s because the Chicago native turned Nashvillian has been playing Memphis for years, most recently with blues guitarist William Lee Ellis at the Center for Southern Folklore. But Hoekstra’s also done his share of bookstore gigs. You know the type — a musician making music and browsing customers making like nothing’s happening except for the handful paying that musician any mind.

Hoekstra says that set-up can be “brutal.” But it can be inspirational too. His story of a singer-songwriter doing his thing inside one such store (a story that lends its title to this entire collection) is a fine example. A worst-case scenario, however: the saxophonist in “Kudzu,” stuck inside of Natchez and selling the vine to gullible tourists, before he too hits the road, his career back on track but his marriage in question.

For a songwriter influenced by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the move to storytelling on the page isn’t surprising. Even so, the process has taken some getting used to.

“The peripheral topics may be the same — music, touring,” Hoekstra says. “But prose is a different realm. There isn’t the immediate feedback from audiences to see how something’s working. There isn’t the collaborating with others in the studio. It’s me and the page — concentrated time spent in solitary pursuit. Compared to the musical ‘snapshots’ I write, it’s the difference between a guy who runs a 50-yard dash and one who runs long-distance.”

The novel Hoekstra’s currently working on may be his longest distance yet, but his upcoming signing (and reading and performance) at Burke’s will have him again inside a bookstore, an independent store that could use your help.

Burke’s is the city’s oldest bookstore, but it’s an endangered species. Time-honored it may be, but it runs on numbers, and the numbers aren’t good — nationally, fewer book sales in general, with greater sales going to cost-cutting chains or online megasites.

In a letter last week to customers, owners Corey and Cheryl Mesler got to the point: Burke’s is in financial trouble and needs cash now in the form of donations. It’s not an unprecedented move for an independent bookstore, the owners explained, and Corey says the response has already been “generous” and “heartening.”

When Doug Hoekstra plays Burke’s on May 5th, pay him some mind but hand the store $14.95. That’s the cost per copy of Bothering the Coffee Drinkers. Burke’s will get the sale, Hoekstra will get a cut, and you who bellyache about corporate America and the demise of independents … you’ll be putting money where your mouth is.

Doug Hoekstra Booksigning

Burke’s Book Store

Friday, May 5th, 5-7 p.m.

Reading and performance at 6 p.m.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Bring Out the Pinata

It was a humble beginning.

In 1956, when the first Pancho’s Mexican Restaurant opened in West Memphis, Arkansas, the floors were packed dirt. The restaurant’s centerpiece was a live tree salvaged during the building’s construction.

Fifty years later, the dirt has been traded for earth-tone tiles at the West Memphis location, but according to Pancho’s president, Brenda O’Brien, the food hasn’t changed a bit. Two other full-service dine-in locations are operating in Memphis as well as a fast-food-style Pancho’s on Perkins.

Since the precise anniversary date is unknown, Pancho’s is celebrating 50 years on Cinco de Mayo (May 5th). At the downtown Memphis location, there will be a drawing for a vacation for four to Disney World, and Q107.5 will present a Cancun getaway to the person with the most stamps on his or her passport.

Diners who don’t win a trip can still escape to the Yucatan via the Latin sounds of Los Cantadores. Pancho Man, the restaurant’s life-size plush mascot, will make an appearance too. The band and mascot will also entertain at the Pancho’s in West Memphis during lunch hour.

When it first opened, Pancho’s was one of only a handful of Mexican restaurants in the Mid-South. The idea was conceived when O’Brien’s brother, Lewis Jack, visited Mexico after his high school graduation.

Soon after the business was up and running, tragedy struck.

“The original Pancho’s was built between the two highways leading into Memphis,” says O’Brien, whose father, Morris Jack, built the first restaurant in 1956. “One night, a truck ran through the restaurant, and that was maybe nine months into us opening.”

The restaurant was destroyed, but the Jacks were determined to reopen. Already owners of several businesses in West Memphis (a dry-goods store, a nightclub, a liquor store, a truck stop, and souvenir shop), they weren’t going to let one unruly 18-wheeler crush their dreams.

The Jacks ran a ’50s rock nightclub (“the largest nightclub in the South”) called the Plantation Inn at the site of the current West Memphis Pancho’s location.

“We tore down the nightclub and built the new Pancho’s,” says O’Brien. “Then we built a new club, the El Toro Lounge, behind it. We were moving from ’50s rock into the disco era, so we made the El Toro Lounge into a disco.”

So there was a time when West Memphians could have their tacos and boogie the night away without ever leaving the Jacks’ property.

Though they’re still serving up tacos and beans and rice, Pancho’s most distinct item is the signature cheese dip. There are only four restaurants nationwide, but the dip is available in supermarkets in nine Southern states.

“The cheese dip is addictive,” says O’Brien, giggling.

O’Brien inherited the company after her brother died in 1992 and scaled back the number of Pancho’s locations. During his reign, Lewis had expanded Pancho’s to at least 30 locations.

“I was more focused on straightening up and making things right and not just spreading it out everywhere,” says O’Brien.

However, O’Brien did enlarge the retail marketing, like cheese dip, salsa, and salad dressing sales in supermarkets.

Those products, as well as all the food served in the Memphis and Arkansas Pancho’s locations, are prepared at a central commissary located in Memphis.

“The recipes are all the same as the original ones,” boasts O’Brien. “We have added a few new items, though.”

Also like the original, every Pancho’s has a “Lover’s Lane,” a row of booths situated near stained-glass windows and separated by Spanish-style archways, each lit by a glass oil candle.

“Some people have gotten engaged there,” says O’Brien. “Before we moved to Memphis, people used to come over [to West Memphis] and have a nice, quiet dinner. There were a lot of happy times for families.”

When asked her fondest memories from the past 50 years, O’Brien says she can’t think of any one story because there are so many.

“One of the beautiful things about being in business 50 years is that every generation has a story,” she says. “Everybody has been to Pancho’s.”

Even Elvis … or at least his people. O’Brien says Elvis used to send people to pick up food from the old Pancho’s on Bellevue near Graceland.

“People in Memphis and the Mid-South have supported us and have been very good to us,” says O’Brien. “Likewise, I think we’ve done our best for them.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Wine Games

When I was growing up, my family played board games to pass the time. The marathon Monopoly and Risk sessions between my competitive family members provided hours of tense entertainment. Then Trivial Pursuit launched, and my friends and I wasted fledgling brain cells learning names of leading men and women from 1940s and ’50s films. (Montgomery Clift means something to me because the pink pie category had him seemingly on every card.) I didn’t win Trivial Pursuit very often, but at least something stuck in my young brain.

But now there is a bit of relief for my damaged ego: wine games. There has been a flurry of them released in the past few years, all based on trivial, yet educational, wine facts. To liven up an otherwise uneventful home tasting, inject some wine trivia into the fray and maybe you’ll learn something new about your favorite beverage. Some games require an initial 10 minutes of sobriety, like Worldwide Wines ($40), complete with fake money, appellation descriptions, and country cards. Others, like WineSmarts ($25), are easy to play — albeit not well — after a bottle of wine per person.

The most highbrow game, Worldwide Wines centers on buying vineyards of the world, ranging from Napa Valley to Long Island to South Africa’s Constantia, using a fairly comprehensive world appellation map. You start with 22 million fake bucks and answer wine trivia to get ahead. The multiple choice and true/false questions range from easy to difficult, but after the third glass, all of it became challenging. It did, however, get a bit boring, and we found ourselves altering the rules to have more fun.

Another game, Wine Teasers ($13), focuses more on situational wine scenarios, like what wine would pair well with what food. I found the questions a bit subjective, but the explanations had some interesting info in them.

My favorite, and also the easiest to follow with alcohol in one’s system, is WineSmarts. It has uncomplicated score cards to record correct answers and fairly evenhanded trivia ranging from challenging to simple.

If you have no clue about wine, but would like to have one, simply browsing the cards can impart some wisdom. Sample questions: If you buy a California wine with 1999 vintage, what percentage of the grapes must have been harvested in that year? (Answer: 95 percent). What is the principal white grape from Bordeaux? (Answer: Sauvignon Blanc). What does Blanc de Blancs mean on a bottle of sparkling wine? (Answer: a sparkling wine made from only Chardonnay grapes). Good stuff, I think.

If you’re looking to buy these games, check out www.wineteasers.com and www.smartsco.com or Google “Worldwide Wines.”

Recommended Wines

Murphy Goode 2003 Island Block Chardonnay Alexander Valley (California) — Creamy, dreamy, and buttery, with vibrant tangerine, peach, pear, and a dash of woodsiness. $18

Ridge Cellars 2004 Zinfandel Paso Robles (California) — Elegant, sultry and juicy — the kind of wine you’d want to have your way with. Port-like in flavor, with roasted cherry followed by pronounced raisins and dried plums. Drink daily, if you can afford it. $28

Dry Creek Vineyard 2005 Chenin Blanc (California) — Chenin Blanc is a grape from the Loire Valley region of France that is normally made in a sweeter style. Dry Creek labels this bottle “dry” so you’ll know it’s not loaded with sugar. Tart green apple, lemon, and wet slate mix and bathe the tongue in some fun. It’s full-bodied enough to please Chardonnay drinkers. $12

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

They’re no Griswolds

The screenwriter (Geoff Rodkey) of The Shaggy Dog and Daddy Day Care is back, and this time the results are … not horrible?

In the last weekend of Hollywood’s spring season, the last before Mission: Impossible III kick-starts the summer by no doubt dominating the box office, Columbia Pictures foisted R.V. upon the American public. As entertainment, R.V. is balsa wood light, but as a moral compass, it sinks like so much scrap iron. The balance between the two tips in favor of entertainment often enough — and successfully so, in its modest way — that R.V. sputters down the road but never actually breaks down.

Robin Williams stars as Bob, patriarch of the Munro family. Forced by his boss to cancel his scheduled Hawaiian family vacation in order to attend a very important meeting in Colorado, Bob hatches the plan to rent an R.V. and take the family there under the false pretenses of a vacation, not revealing his occupational ulterior motive.

Here Williams is in full Clark Griswold mode (from the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies). In R.V., Williams actually tones down his manic, stream-of-consciousness style of comedy, embracing a possibly Ritalin-induced level of calm comedy. No one wants to see Williams purposefully make a fool out of himself yet again. The few times Williams cannot contain himself, the film (and the audience) wilts like a flower in direct sunlight.

Cheryl Hines co-stars as Mrs. Munro, a thankless role that only gives her a few moments to stretch her legs. When she does occasionally get a pitch to hit, she puts it into play. Jeff Daniels supports as the head of the Gornicke clan, R.V.-lifestyle devotees. Daniels acts as R.V.‘s own Cousin Eddie (played by Randy Quaid in Vacation and its sequels). That the film’s primary running gag — the Munros keep running into the Gornickes across the great American West — sounds so limpid but actually wrings a few laughs from the audience is a credit to the talents of Daniels and his on-screen wife, Kristin Chenoweth. An astute casting agent has also placed Arrested Development siblings Gob (Will Arnett) and Buster (Tony Hale) in the film, with Arnett getting his scoundrel on as Bob’s boss and Hale playing a cynical co-worker.

That R.V. tends toward soapbox sentimentality isn’t heartbreaking: The movie isn’t all that great to begin with. But it’s still painful to watch unfold, especially since it has a hard time deciding upon which morals to stand. It flirts with a sell-all-possessions message, even as it has its characters decide to accept a corporate way of life that is ostensibly pious because they will be making tons of money on their own terms. R.V. also spices its script with sermons about the value of family time and honesty in relationships.

R.V. is best when it’s not nice to its characters. As satire, the film gathers some speed and seems to be going somewhere. Overall, though, the movie plays out as straight, rehashed comedy, a parking break en route to any pleasurable movie experience, to be sure.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Blues movie misses on the music.

Based on the novel by Southern writer Clyde Edgerton, Killer Diller follows a young musician/convict who is released from jail to a halfway house with a religious bent, Back on Track Again House. While there, the criminal, Wesley Benfield, is drawn toward the House band, which performs hymns unenthusiastically. The wheels in Benfield’s mind turn as he sees a way to turn the raw meat of the band into the tight blues band he always wanted to play in.

William Lee Scott plays Benfield, bad-boy car thief with a heart of gold and killer-diller blues guitarist. As written, Benfield is a brash young man who has — interjecting through the insolence — a thoughtful, sensitive side, his painful past giving way to joy when he has a guitar in his hand and a tune worth playing in his heart.

Lucas Black co-stars as Vernon Jackson, the high-functioning autistic boy in town whom Benfield uses — and then befriends — after discovering his prodigious ability as a boogie-woogie piano player. Black is a fine young actor who has created a niche for himself in the film industry as a Southern character actor, like a Red West but with more leading-man capabilities. Black brings a manic energy to Vernon that occasionally veers into overacting, not a surprising outcome considering the character description. He is nevertheless serviceable enough not to harm the movie.

The script treatment for Killer Diller was probably really good. As it is, however, the movie is a mess of half-developed plot points, ideas, and characters. The kernel of so many fine things exist here: the line between gospel and the blues where God and the devil dance, the role of fathers and mentors in the lives of young men, and the juxtaposition of religious-school coeds grinding at the juke joint on Saturday night and primly attending school functions with their parents the next day. But Killer Diller does next to nothing with these ideas, instead focusing on the empty-headed trajectory of an unlikable lead character punctuated by a few meager stabs at emotional immediacy.

Worst of all, though, is the actual blues in Killer Diller. Black is somewhat convincing as a piano genius, and some other members of Benfield’s blues band are even genuinely good. Scott, though, looks uncomfortable with a guitar in his hand and is worse when he sings. His songs, including one painfully gaudy Furry Lewis cover, are inelegant and pedestrian, only marginally more interesting than the hymns so derided earlier in the film. Seemingly aware of this, the film doesn’t offer much real-world recorded blues to which the audience might compare the band’s music. In a movie where the blues on display is supposed to be the highest and truest expression of its characters’ emotions, the only thing you’re left with is a longing for the genuine article.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I am about to scream! In fact, I just screamed. Out loud. In my house. My kittens are afraid. But then they are always a tad bit afraid because, in keeping with my past practice of dressing up my poor, late Jeffie cat in embarrassing costumes, I have just taken a ruffled coffee filter and fanned it out in a folded shape and put it on one of their heads and made her play Patti LaBelle Kitty. It’s sick. But that’s not why I am about to scream. I just bought an e-mail/Internet/cell-phone/dish-television “package” from a company whose name I won’t mention (but it sounds a lot like LaBelle if she were from the South), and all I want to do is simply conduct a Google search to get more details about the new White House/Fox News press secretary, and it is not working. First of all, after spending, oh, 17 HOURS on the phone with BS (that’s what I call the company now) to get this “package,” they sent me the “easy” kit to hook it all up. After trying my best for several days to install the program and then having to have a professional computer programmer look at it and then take the computer to his office after hours of working on it at my house to no avail, it seemed like it might work out all right. And it did for a day or so. And then it began working with a mind of its own. I am not a complete moron when it comes to technology. Close, but not complete. I have gotten Web sites up and running and now manage their content. Well, one Web site. And I am good at it and very, very proud of myself for learning how to do this. I haven’t yet ventured into the world of myspace.com as, apparently, every teenager in America has done and is now being stalked by creatures who are ending up on Dateline NBC, crying about how awful their lives have become. I hate them. ALL I WANT TO DO IS GOOGLE THE IDIOT PRESIDENT AND SEE IF IT IS TRUE THAT HE HIRED A FOX NEWS MORON TO BE HIS PRESS SECRETARY. But no. Now, when I log on, it sends me a message telling me there’s a connection error and to exit the system to correct it. When I do, it pops up and tells me that there is NO ERROR and to exit the system to restart the search and then when I do it pops back up and tells me there IS an error and to exit the system again and when I do it again tells me there is no error and to exit again and when I do it pops back and tells me there IS an error and to exit again. Look: I have four hours before I have to take my shoes off in public at the airport and leave town. I own two pairs of pants. They each have cigarette burns on them and the cuffs look like Courtney Love’s split ends (God love her!). This is a business trip. Until yesterday, I had no ATM card (magnetic strip worn to a frazzle from too many bar tabs), no eyeglasses (smashed to bits last weekend during a botched canoeing trip), and one of my kittens is already urinating on his food, sensing that I am leaving town and thereby abandoning him forever and sending him into shock. Before this is all over with, I may be urinating on my own food. I need a break. And I have four hours to work it all out. Would someone please send a letter to the editor of this paper with information about the idiot president and let me know all about this new press secretary? I have a feeling I am going to be locked up somewhere for a while.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Q&A: Dean Deyo, co-convener, Coalition for a Better Memphis

With the
largest ballot Shelby County
has ever seen arriving in voting booths this August, the Coalition for a Better
Memphis wanted to help local citizens choose highly qualified candidates. The
coalition devised a ranking system for candidates and released its first set of
results — evaluating those running for County Commission
seats — just a few weeks ago. The results have caused perhaps an expected stir
among candidates: The winners think the system works; the losers see it as
flawed. The Flyer
recently spoke with Dean Deyo, one of the coalition’s organizers and the
chairman of the Leadership Academy.
— By Ben
Popper

Flyer: How did you
get the idea?

Deyo: We
would have to give credit to the Regional Chamber [of Commerce] in Memphis. They
do something called Best Practices, where they travel to other cities and try to
exchange ideas and steal whatever they do best. They looked at what they were
doing in Atlanta and said this would be fabulous for us.

How were the
criteria for the rankings developed?

In order to expedite the process we
hired the same consultant who was hired by Atlanta, a group called Civic
Strategies. They came to Memphis, interviewed our community leaders, and read
everything they could in the archives of
The Commercial Appeal
and the
Memphis Flyer.
They went and pulled copies of the Shelby County five-year plan. From that
research, they developed a list of qualities a County Commission candidate
should have and the issues they should know about.

We have also created a “transparent” system. You as
a voter may appreciate what we’re doing but feel that at the end of the day the
only issue that matters to you is ethics. That is why we posted the candidates’
individual scores on the Web site, as well as their written responses to each
question.

Who is in the
coalition?

We knew from the beginning that we needed a
diverse coalition. If you look at the enrollment online you will see we have
everything from AutoZone to neighborhood associations like the 35th Ward Civic
Club to 100 Black Men, the Urban League, and Memphis Tomorrow. So we had over
110 people with nothing in common, white and black, young and old, Democrat and
Republican.

Politicians have
always been elected on rhetoric. What’s wrong with that?

One example I used at our first meeting that
seemed to ring true to people is the District 29 election: Ophelia Ford and
Terry Roland. Ford won by 13 votes. Because it came off-cycle, we didn’t know
much about either of them. But perhaps a more important point is that there was
a third candidate in that election: Robert Hodges, better known as Prince Mongo.
He got 89 votes. Now there might have been some people who voted for him because
his name appears on nearly every ballot, and they assumed he was a credible
candidate. If information had been out there, maybe this election could have
been different from the beginning.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Q&A: Dean Deyo, co-convener, Coalition for a Better Memphis

With the
largest ballot Shelby County
has ever seen arriving in voting booths this August, the Coalition for a Better
Memphis wanted to help local citizens choose highly qualified candidates. The
coalition devised a ranking system for candidates and released its first set of
results — evaluating those running for County Commission
seats — just a few weeks ago. The results have caused perhaps an expected stir
among candidates: The winners think the system works; the losers see it as
flawed. The Flyer
recently spoke with Dean Deyo, one of the coalition’s organizers and the
chairman of the Leadership Academy.
— By Ben
Popper

Flyer: How did you
get the idea?

Deyo: We
would have to give credit to the Regional Chamber [of Commerce] in Memphis. They
do something called Best Practices, where they travel to other cities and try to
exchange ideas and steal whatever they do best. They looked at what they were
doing in Atlanta and said this would be fabulous for us.

How were the
criteria for the rankings developed?

In order to expedite the process we
hired the same consultant who was hired by Atlanta, a group called Civic
Strategies. They came to Memphis, interviewed our community leaders, and read
everything they could in the archives of
The Commercial Appeal
and the
Memphis Flyer.
They went and pulled copies of the Shelby County five-year plan. From that
research, they developed a list of qualities a County Commission candidate
should have and the issues they should know about.

We have also created a “transparent” system. You as
a voter may appreciate what we’re doing but feel that at the end of the day the
only issue that matters to you is ethics. That is why we posted the candidates’
individual scores on the Web site, as well as their written responses to each
question.

Who is in the
coalition?

We knew from the beginning that we needed a
diverse coalition. If you look at the enrollment online you will see we have
everything from AutoZone to neighborhood associations like the 35th Ward Civic
Club to 100 Black Men, the Urban League, and Memphis Tomorrow. So we had over
110 people with nothing in common, white and black, young and old, Democrat and
Republican.

Politicians have
always been elected on rhetoric. What’s wrong with that?

One example I used at our first meeting that
seemed to ring true to people is the District 29 election: Ophelia Ford and
Terry Roland. Ford won by 13 votes. Because it came off-cycle, we didn’t know
much about either of them. But perhaps a more important point is that there was
a third candidate in that election: Robert Hodges, better known as Prince Mongo.
He got 89 votes. Now there might have been some people who voted for him because
his name appears on nearly every ballot, and they assumed he was a credible
candidate. If information had been out there, maybe this election could have
been different from the beginning.

Categories
News

It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimpfant

If there’s any further evidence needed that Three 6 Mafia is well on its way to world domination, here it is: Pimp clothes for kids. Yep, “baby-beater” tank tops, “Jr. Pimp Squad” jerseys, and “My Mom is a MILF” T-shirts. Just the thing to get your little ones into thug culture at the earliest possible age. Next up: Baby Grills. Yo, check it here.