Month: June 2006

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We Recommend We Recommend

Wave the Flag

Oh say can you see all the opportunities to celebrate the United States this Independence Day? All events listed below feature free admission, family-friendly live music, and food and beverage vendors.

On Saturday, July 1st, it’s the “Star-Spangled Celebration” at Shelby Farms. The show will feature live performances from Hoobastank, Breaking Point, and Survivor’s Jimi Jamison. Gates open at 3 p.m., and fireworks start at 9:50 p.m.

On Monday, July 3rd, the “Red, White, and Blue Celebration” will be held at Tom Lee Park on the banks of the Mississippi from 4 to 10 p.m., with fireworks at 9:45 p.m. There will be a motorcycle show, an antique car show, games, a barbecue-eating contest, and a hot-dog-eating contest. American Idol finalist Gideon McKinney will sing the national anthem.

Also on Monday is the “Fireworks Extravaganza” at Bartlett’s Bobby K. Flaherty Municipal Center, which will feature a performance of patriotic songs by the Bartlett Community Concert Band, as well as a show with Common Ground. Gates open at 6 p.m., and fireworks start at 9:30 p.m.

On Tuesday, July 4th, check out the Independence Day Parade at the Cordova Community Center. After a half-hour patriotic program starting at 9:30 a.m., there will be a parade of children and adults, complete with floats and costumes.

In Germantown, it’s the “Germantown Family Fourth Celebration” at Municipal Park. This annual community gathering will offer live music, games, rides, a petting zoo, and a fishing rodeo. Gates open at 5 p.m., and fireworks begin at 9:10 p.m.

See this week’s calendar for complete fourth of july listings.

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News The Fly-By

In Flight

One hundred fifty miles per hour. That’s how fast the motorcyclist was speeding along Bill Morris Parkway a few years ago when the wind blew him off his bike.

“He skidded along the edge of a metal guardrail, and it just sliced him open,” said Joel Gingery, a flight nurse with Hospital Wing, the Mid-South’s air-ambulance service. Luckily for the biker, 150 mph is also how fast the chopper crew flew to reach the victim.

“I was told to expect a sucking chest wound,” said Gingery, “so I got the bandages ready in-flight. But when I saw what he had, I just threw those bandages away and worked to stabilize him.” The helicopter crew rushed the victim to the trauma center at The Med.

“He made it,” said Gingery, and the motorcyclist joined a list of some 36,000 patients rescued by Hospital Wing since it was founded in 1986.

On June 24th, Hospital Wing flight nurses, pilots, and other crew members — past and present — along with former patients, emergency medical technicians, and several hundred others gathered at the company’s main hangar at 1080 Eastmoreland to celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary. They munched on hamburgers and birthday cake, toured the Hospital Wing facilities, and peeked inside the four specially equipped helicopters — essentially intensive-care units with wings, designed to carry a pilot, two nurses, and one patient.

Barbara Wells has been a flight nurse for Hospital Wing since it was founded, flying on helicopters based in Memphis, Brownsville, and Robinsonville, Mississippi, to treat critically injured patients within 150 miles of Memphis.

Wells estimated she has been on more than 2,000 flights. “One of the most dramatic events was the propane explosion on the interstate here in 1987,” she said. The horrific accident — caused by a tanker truck overturning — took place within sight of the hangar. “I saw the tanker fly through the air in a ball of fire, and I thought it was a plane crash,” she said. Because the interstate was blocked by debris, Hospital Wing helicopters landed on the roadway and in a matter of minutes were carrying the burn victims to nearby hospitals.

“Last year, we flew in Hank Williams’ daughter,” she said, after the woman was injured in a car accident near Tunica. “But the worst cases are usually the ones involving children. Those are the ones that really affect you emotionally.”

On Saturday, though, Wells and her colleagues were smiling and sharing success stories. She looked at the copters parked on the pad and said, with a sense of relief, “I can’t believe they are all here. I hope we can get through the day without them.”

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News

Morris to TVA Board?

CREDIT: HistoryMakers.com

Former MLGW president Herman Morris hopes to be appointed to the TVA Board’s last remaining open position. If it happens, Morris would be the first Memphian and the first African American named to the board.

President Bush appointed six new board member three months ago, but one position remains unfilled. This report says the White House is not commenting on possible appointees at this time.

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Sports Sports Feature

Where Do They Go Now?

This week’s NBA draft begins a potentially busy offseason for the Memphis Grizzlies. But with uncertainty and discontent clouding the franchise, the team faces questions that are bigger than one draft or even one offseason.

Despite producing the seventh-best record in the league and a third straight playoff appearance last season, there are signs of malaise: attendance down, hand-wringing up. And in the wake of a now NBA-record 0-12 franchise playoff record, the targets of fan and media complaint are plentiful: Pau Gasol to Mike Miller to Mike Fratello to Jerry West; style of play to ticket prices to side issues about concessions and in-game bells and whistles.

But pointing fingers at all these bruised and battered trees only obscures the forest: Five years in, the real problem with the Grizzlies franchise isn’t any one person or facet of the team. It’s the lack of a coherent organizational philosophy about how to survive, or even thrive, in a small market with necessarily limited resources.

The Grizzlies are embarking on what could be an era of profound transition: Majority owner Michael Heisley has his share of the team on the block, with a potential (if still unlikely) sale this summer. This season will almost certainly be West’s last running the team. Fratello is entering the last year of his contract. And whatever happens, the team — reportedly losing $40 million annually — has let it be known that player payroll has to be reigned in.

So, with the franchise facing transition if not outright tumult, this seems like a good time to speculate on what a fruitful course correction might look like. Having watched the team for five years and covered it for four, here’s my Grizzlies manifesto:

Embrace Reality

For me, the most depressing moment in Grizzlies basketball over the past few months wasn’t Dirk Nowitzki sinking a three-pointer to rob the Grizzlies of a playoff win. It was standing in front of Jerry West at his post-season press availability and experiencing the utter grimness with which he described the team’s financial losses and the necessity of lowering player payroll.

This is reality: Memphis is a small market. The team is losing money. Even at best, according to president of business operations Andy Dolich, the Grizzlies will be a cash-neutral operation. And Dolich admits it will take a long time to reach even that point. It’s insane to expect this team to have one of the league’s 10 highest payrolls — which it did this season. And it’s pointless for fans to pine for a new owner unconcerned about the bottom line.

This is the much-needed realization: Reducing payroll isn’t a death sentence. There is absolutely no correlation in the NBA between player payroll and on-court success. As long as the Grizzlies are willing to operate on a league-average, or even slightly below league-average, basketball budget, there’s no reason the team can’t stay competitive. Teams don’t win in the NBA because they spend tons of money. Teams win through a combination of smart management and luck.

The Grizzlies need to play “Moneyball,” to borrow a term made famous by Michael Lewis’ bestseller about the cost-conscious but competitive baseball franchise Oakland As. Set aside the statistical approach to player evaluation that Moneyball describes: The real message of the Oakland model is how that team’s front office and ownership embraced their financial limitations as a creative challenge.

Recruit Happy Warriors

For all the success of the Jerry West era — quickly turning a perennial league doormat into a perennial playoff participant — the profound disappointment is how little excitement and goodwill his presence has engendered among fans. West may be the Logo to the rest of the league, but his public demeanor has grown so dour that he’s become impossible to rally around. And though many fans and media members have treated Fratello unfairly, he hasn’t been much better in this regard. How can fans be excited about their NBA team when the people running it don’t seem excited about it?

Commit to a Style of Play

The Grizzlies’ slow-down style of play from last season has become a popular target of fan ire in the wake of another early playoff exit. These complaints sometimes confuse style with quality or execution, but they aren’t without merit. The key is realizing that the product on the court has to be about more than just wins and losses.

An NBA team isn’t just an endeavor where players, coaches, and execs indulge their own competitive drives. It’s professional entertainmen — and an expensive one.

If the organization commits to playing a fan-friendly style of basketball and conducts itself — through front- office and coaching hires and player-personnel moves — based on that commitment, then fans will have something to rely on. Through good times and bad, winning seasons and losing ones, there should be one constant: You can depend on a fun and exciting brand of basketball when you go to a Grizzlies game.

Think Long-Term

Don’t have a plan to make the playoffs next season. Have a plan for building a long-term contender that will be appealing to the fans. Don’t just think about next season.

Though some moves have been made with an eye on the long-term, too often the Grizzlies’ focus has been on immediate minor improvements rather than potential but more gradual major improvements. The result is a team seemingly stuck in Jerry West’s dread “middle,” which has provoked complacency and drained hope from the fan base.

Ball on a Budget

The Grizzlies should set a reasonable player-payroll budget — one considerably shy of the luxury-tax threshold the team exceeded this season — and stick to it. The plan to compete within this limitation has to be based on careful salary-cap management, which means:

1) Find impact players on rookie contracts: Under the NBA’s current collective-bargaining agreement, teams are able to keep first-round picks for four or five years on relatively low-paying contracts. Under this system, the biggest bargains in the league are by and large impact players on rookie deals. For this team to thrive under tighter financial constraints, it’s imperative to do a better job selecting and developing young players.

2) Look for “second draft” bargains. With players entering the league at younger ages, sometimes quality prospects enter free agency before really tapping into their talent. Look for young, cheap free-agent bargains. More Earl Watsons. Fewer Brian Cardinals.

3) Pay for upside and stars. You can pay an all-star like Pau Gasol a max contract if you balance it out with rookie contracts and low-priced role players. What you can’t do is overpay — or maybe even pay market value — for mediocre veterans. Spending mid-level money on tapped-out, low-impact vets like Cardinal and, more arguably, Damon Stoudamire is a risky proposition.

4) Don’t get too attached. Shane Battier was a bargain on a rookie deal, and though he’s decent value now on a relatively modest extension, this team probably should have flipped him for cheaper, more talented prospects when it had the chance. To thrive on limited funds, you need to get an impact from your rookies, but you also have to be judicious about re-signing them. Be willing to deal young players with limited upside before you’re forced to pay them market value.

Whether Michael Heisley retains his majority share of the Grizzlies in the near future or sells it to another ownership group, confronting financial reality is a necessity for this team. It won’t be a question of if the team cuts back spending but how. To thrive, the Grizzlies have to have a plan and be able to sell it to Memphis fans. The future starts this week, but it’s a lot bigger than a draft pick.

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Theater Theater Feature

Gee Whizz

“Urine” isn’t a dirty word. It’s more clinical than “pee” but less serious than “micturition.” It isn’t whimsical like “tinkle,” and it’s not as common as “whizz” or as brutish as “piss.” But Memphis is the obstinate buckle of the Bible Belt, and that buckle comes undone for nothing and nobody. This is God’s country.

Playhouse on the Square’s executive producer Jackie Nichols says some Memphians have gotten their panties in a wad over his theater’s use of the U-word. Angry calls have been registered, and posters for Urinetown: the Musical were removed from public places. What’s especially remarkable about all of this is that Urinetown, for all its potty talk, is positively sanitary. It’s virtually free of profanity and about as fun-packed and wholesome as a play about vast public corruption and the annihilation of an impoverished, plague-stricken city can be.

Bill Andrews plays Urinetown‘s narrator, Officer Lockstock. With gravity and good humor, he addresses the audience directly, explaining that his city is suffering a drought and that private urination has been outlawed. If people want to pee, they have to pay, and those who don’t play by the rules are arrested and shipped off to a place called Urinetown. Lockstock, aided by Little Sally (played with grubby, waifish spunk by Megan Bowers), also lays down the dramatic rules governing musicals. “Too much exposition” can kill a musical, Andrews says. Bowers squeaks that a “bad name” could be equally devastating.

All of Urinetown‘s politicians are in the pocket of the Urine Good Company, headed by the deliciously evil CEO Caldwell B. Cladwell, played to the nines by Playhouse vet Ken Zimmerman. Zimmerman waddles and squawks his way through Urinetown, spinning dark treachery into delightful foolishness along the way.

Jordan Nichols, Jackie’s talented progeny, returns from New York to sing and dance his way through the demanding role of Urinetown‘s Bobby Strong. After Cladwell’s daughter Hope teaches Bobby to listen to his heart, the young man causes an uprising at Public Amenity #9, kidnaps the girl, and becomes the spiritual leader of the huddled, unwashed masses who yearn to pee freely. Rachael Saltzman brings an endearingly dizzy quality to Hope and doesn’t lose her comic edge as she transforms from conflicted hostage to righteous revolutionary.

Costumed like that icon of American propaganda Rosie the Riveter, Carla McDonald lends her powerful voice and considerable comic gifts to the role of Penny Pennywise, a latter-day Mother Courage who makes virtue of necessity.

Urinetown‘s author, Greg Kotis, cut his teeth with Chicago’s Neo-Futurists, the clever collective behind the long-running surrealist hit Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Like Too Much Light, Urinetown aims to be uncompromisingly artistic without sacrificing its commercial edge. Its tone and structure have been lifted directly from the groundbreaking Brecht/Weill musical The Threepenny Opera, but it’s tempered by the kind of sophomoric, fart-laden musical parodies we’ve come to expect from Mel Brooks.

With a light touch and laser accuracy, director Bob Hetherington eviscerates all the ridiculous tropes of musical theater and even manages to take an unforgettable poke at Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town.

Urinetown‘s finest attribute is its ability to stimulate the mind as well as the funny bone. Just when you think you know the heroes from the villains, the ground shifts to make you reconsider everything. Just as Threepenny Opera closes with near tragedy that’s supplanted by a fake happy ending, Urinetown‘s fake happy ending evolves into genuine tragedy. It’s a sad, sad story told by a brilliant comic and enthusiastically interpreted by an impressive troupe of actors, singers, and dancers.

So don’t take down the posters. Please.

Urinetown: the Musical

Playhouse on the Square

Through July 23rd

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Editorial Opinion

Biding Time

Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission was not the swan song of the current body before a newly elected commission is seated after the August 3rd general election, but there was something ex post facto about this week’s meeting, all the same.

Outgoing 5th District commissioner Bruce Thompson could not resist pointing out an irony in his colleagues’ unanimous and routine decision to award a $13 million contract to a private firm to provide

health care to the inmates in the county’s corrections system. “I’m all for private management and out-sourcing,” Thompson commented wryly — a reminder of his long and futile campaign to win commission approval for just such an arrangement to manage the county incarceration units.

Similarly, the appearance before the commission of Memphis schools superintendent Carol Johnson and members of her board to plead for additional funding had a pro forma air about it. Johnson later acknowledged to the media that she had mainly meant to “remind” the commission of its responsibilities to the schools. Meanwhile, a somewhat desultory debate had given commission members a chance to rehearse some of their familiar chorus lines. Republican John Willingham, a candidate for county mayor, allowed himself one more bromide on county government’s failure “to straighten out [its] finances and numbers,” while Democrat Walter Bailey indulged himself in one more lamentation that the city schools were the victims of “trickle-down” financing.

For all that, the county’s previously agreed-upon tax rate, which determined the rate of school funding, was whisked through with only perfunctory nay votes from Bailey and Michael Hooks.

Bailey mounted one more last stand when he waged what turned out to be a solitary campaign to prevent, or at least defer, a resolution to reauthorize the commission needs-assessment committee which, for the last year, has made an effort to predetermine the ideal spending ratios for the city and county schools. “A grave disservice to both boards — a shotgun approach,” he pronounced. But to no avail; the resolution went through handily.

Monday’s meeting also saw the wrapping up, more or less, of the various remaining protests against the use of the newly purchased Diebold voting machines. As Election Commission director James Johnson explained, state law, which forbids any ballot changes within 40 days of an election, rendered it too late to do anything about the potentially confusing number and arrangement of the various screens. And complaints about the accuracy of the machines themselves from Minister Yahweh (the community activist once known as Sweet Willie Wine) had been formally “received” and duly shelved as recently as the committee meetings held last week by the commission.

So it was that a variety of issues and problems belonging to the current commission’s tenure were passed along for probable reconsideration by the next one. And so it goes, as ever, at election time.

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News The Fly-By

Still Talking

When Leon Gray showed up at the WWTQ AM-680 studio a few days ago for his regular 4 to 7 p.m. Air America drive-time shift, he was told that his time was up.

“The parting was definitely not amicable,” he says.

Gray, a broadcast veteran of several radio and TV stations both here and elsewhere, acknowledges that declining ratings were part of his problem. But this he blames on shaky support from both the station and its corporate masters.

“If you look at Arbitron, that’s absolutely correct,” Gray says, “but I have to compare the promotion we got to what other stations do to promote their product, to what this company did. Intercom is ashamed of their product. If I bought a new car, I’d like to show it off. They didn’t. Dollar for dollar, we over-achieved. My performance was way above the anticipated, given the investment in me.”

Another obstacle to success was what Gray considers the over-the-edge commentary of Air America’s syndicated lineup. Beyond Al Franken and Jerry Springer, both of whom he admired, the station’s one and only local host found little else that was simpatico. “What certain members of the national Air America network did was take a mirror image opposite conservative radio and push it beyond the conservatives’ delivery of their negatives,” he says.

“For people in this area, knowing that this area is the buckle of the Bible Belt, both black and white, to openly — as the satellite programming does — denounce God or anybody’s expression of God while at the same time holding up with pride, as Janeane Garofalo and Rachel Maddow do, holding up their atheistic beliefs, their homosexuality, to say ‘let’s get rid of theocracy and religion and blah blah blah, accept my gayness,’ those kinds of things just don’t play, to even a lifelong, fourth-generation Democrat in the South.”

Don’t get Gray started on that. Though he insists backlash from his local progressive audience had “absolutely nothing” to do with his firing, he is well aware that his own religious, heterosexual, and anti-abortion agenda often clashed with the preconceptions of many listeners. But he interprets his demographics differently. “My callers may be somewhat accurately defined as center-left, but my listening audience as a whole would be better defined as center-right.”

Of his abrupt dismissal, he says, “I can see the big picture. It was never about me. I wouldn’t allow myself to perceive that as being about me.”

As for the prospect of acquiring future audiences, Gray is emphatic: “I will not seek another on-air job. I have definitely finished seeking on-air radio jobs. And I won’t seek working in news.”

Though he won’t say specifically, one possibility could be political. Gray has worked for several political campaigns in the past, and he is a known supporter of the senatorial ambitions of Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr.

Gray, a Memphis native who returned to the city in 1994, makes this promise: ” I have developed a strong reconnect with this city. I won’t abandon it in this time of deepest turmoil.”

In other words: One way or another, stay tuned.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Deep Thoughts by Rodney Carney

“It’s almost time for the NBA Draft in New York City and I am going through a range of emotions. I am anxious. I am nervous. I am excited. But most importantly I am ready to join the NBA.

“Monday I was in Philly to work out for the 76ers at the Wachovia Center. I’ve been nursing a sore ankle the past few days so the first thing I did when I got to the gym this morning was to ice it and then tape it up before I hit the court. I ran through some light workouts and took a tour of the arena with my mom and the coaches.

“Then I met with a psychologist who confirmed – thankfully – that I wasn’t crazy. Just kidding. The questions were a little strange, but every player who works out for the Sixers goes through it, which eased my mind. When that was all over, I rushed to the airport to catch my flight to NYC and prepare for the big day.”

You can read more of Rodney Carney’s thoughts on his NBA.com blog here.

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News

We’re Number Six!!!

Rolf Pitts writes a lively travel column called “Traveling Light” for Yahoo.com. This week, he lists his 10 favorite places to “wander” in America. So what does Memphis have that compares with Olympic National Park, Big Sur, and Key West?

Go here and find out.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Eat Up

CREDIT: iFOCE.com

The World Rib-Eating Championship — an International Federation of Competitive Eating contest — is being held at the Beale Street Red, White and Blues Independence Day Festival on Monday, July 3rd. Scheduled to compete is Dale Boone, who set a world record by eating 28 reindeer sausage in 12 minutes. For more information on the contest go here.