Month: November 2006

Categories
News The Fly-By

Hitting the Lottery

“If you didn’t enter a lottery, you’re not going to win one.”

That’s a word of advice from Lieutenant D.L. Sheffield of the Memphis Police Department (MPD) Economic Crimes Bureau. In recent months, Memphis has been plagued with counterfeit checks from an international lottery scam.

“People are receiving, either over the Internet or in the mail, a letter that says they’ve won the lottery,” says Sheffield. “This letter explains the amount they’ve won, and then [the victim receives] a check in the mail.”

The check is said to cover the lottery’s processing fees, and the receiver is instructed to deposit that money into their bank account. Then they’re told to write a check for around 80 percent of the total amount of the original check and send it back. Sheffield says the “fees” range anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000.

“We have had several of these deposited into the banks here,” says Sheffield. “If you deposit it and it gets sent back as counterfeit, the bank will take the money out of your account. If it’s a $10,000 check, your account is hit for that loss.”

The checks appear legit, although Sheffield says that the financial institution’s name in the upper left corner is generally the first clue that the check is counterfeit. He says real lottery checks generally include the name of a lottery institution on the check.

Similar in nature to the Nigerian loan scam e-mails, the lottery scams affecting Memphis originate from all over the world: Australia, Canada, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom.

Banks, check-cashing stores, and liquor stores in Memphis are aware of the scam and have been instructed to call MPD when someone attempts to cash one of these lottery checks. An officer will then arrest the person and take them to a police station for questioning.

Renita Anderson, district manager of Ace Cash Express, says her stores turn away about eight people a week attempting to cash fake lottery checks. When a check appears suspicious, Anderson says they ask a series of questions and call the financial institution that issued the check to determine if it is real. If they think it’s a scam, they confiscate the check.

Sheffield says the department works two to three of these cases per week.

The offender is usually released without charges, because many of them honestly believe they’re cashing a lottery check. However, there are a few repeat offenders who have been caught trying to cash the checks at several different places. They’re arrested and charged with forgery, a felony.

“When they take the check to a liquor store and the guy at the counter says, ‘It’s a scam,’ most people tear the check up and leave it alone,” says Sheffield. “But some people are taking them to the next liquor store and trying it. Then they’ll try a check-cashing place. If we find out that they were aware it was a counterfeit check, they may be charged.”

Sheffield says the scam has been keeping his officers busy since the summer.

“It’s become an issue that’s taking up a lot of investigative time,” says Sheffield. “I don’t want my investigators spending time on a case that they’re not going to charge somebody on. It’s cost-ineffective.”

Besides lottery scams, the Economic Crimes Bureau handles identity theft cases, stolen credit card cases, Internet theft cases, and false pretense thefts.

“Business owners should contact the financial institution on the check,” says Sheffield. “If someone comes in with a $3,000 check and it’s not their payroll check, they need to question that, too.”

Categories
News

Panda Porn: It’s Working!

Somebody alert officials at the Memphis Zoo. According to MSNBC.com, the video Chinese officials showed of mating pandas in hopes of getting them to procreate may have been a factor in the panda baby boom in China. The Memphis Zoo’s pandas, Le Le and Ya Ya, have been decidedly disinterested in each other. Worth a shot.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Devil-Music Nirvana

Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny literally opens and closes with fart jokes (as fart jokes go, they’re above average), and the rest of the movie is a complete gas — 93 minutes of childish, imbecilic, prurient, and, most importantly, hilarious material.

The film stars Jack Black and Kyle Gass, reprising their alter egos, JB and KG, as members of the comedic power duo Tenacious D. The band made its debut on the small screen in their HBO show in the late 1990s and saw mainstream success with their self-titled album in 2001. That album was mostly a reworking of songs originally featured in their television skits. The film finds Tenacious D again retooling these same ideas, this time for the silver screen: Comedic imagery and song titles from the studio album (“Tribute,” “Dio,” even “Cock Pushups”) occur as plot points in the film. In this way, Tenacious D hasn’t had any new ideas for years. But such is the intrinsic worth of the band’s concept — an amorphous celebration of heavy-metal iconography, the F-word, self-aggrandizement, stoner laughs, and (there they are again) fart jokes — that the horse doesn’t appear ready to die just yet. Tenacious D still works not because they so perfectly capture the cheesiest elements of devil-horns rock but also because they reproduce them without a wink. They may be joking on some levels, but they also seem to genuinely think Tarot cards are awesome and that coming up with a tasty power chord is half the job of writing a great rock song. Their earnestness is winning.

The Pick of Destiny is essentially the Tenacious D origin story. It starts in classic rock-opera fashion with a young JB singing about how he’s stuck in Kickapoo, Missouri, the rock-and-roller son of a holy-roller dad (Meatloaf). On advice from Ronnie James Dio — it’s that kind of movie — JB goes to Hollywood to follow his fate to be the greatest rocker in the world. There, he meets KG, a guitar-playing busker who takes JB under his wing to teach him “the ancient secrets of rock”: Lesson one is the Pete Townshend power slide.

By chance, JB and KG learn of the “pick of destiny,” the “darkest secret in the history of rock,” a talisman made from Satan’s tooth which, when wielded by Robert Johnson, Townshend, Angus Young, and Eddie Van Halen, lent it’s devil-music-making qualifications to their willing hands. Thinking themselves worthy heirs, JB and KG journey to find the pick.

Pick of Destiny is reminiscent of 2004’s Anchorman in that the more outrageous the situation, the funnier the comedy. To wit, John C. Reilly cameos as Sasquatch (he’s also credited as the film’s “Sasquatch Researcher”), and grunge-rock survivor Dave Grohl squares off against Tenacious D as Satan (as man versus omnipotence goes, it’s more in tune with “Devil Went Down to Georgia” than The Seventh Seal). Gass performs more than he acts, but Black’s precise manic energy covers up Gass’ faults even as Black takes pains not to overwhelm his partner. The pair has rehearsed a decade for this, the culmination of their vision, and despite all of their previous successes, Pick of Destiny is the best incarnation of Tenacious D yet.

Categories
News

MPD Launches Operation Jingle Bells

Just in time for Black Friday — the biggest shopping day of the year during which everybody gets up at 4 a.m. to cram themselves in their local big-box store to get a .99 cent DVD player — the Memphis Police Department has launched “Operation: Jingle Bells.” To protect area shoppers from the inevitable increased criminal activity, officers will be patrolling retail centers and malls.

In addition, the MPD offers the following tips:

Leave purses at home or place them in the trunk of your vehicle before you leave

Be aware of your surroundings while walking to and from your vehicle

Avoid shopping alone

Park your vehicle in well lit areas

Do not count money while standing at an ATM machine or show lots of cash in the check-out line

Remove cell phones, lap top computers, briefcases and other items inside your vehicle

Secure packages in the trunk or other part of the vehicle where they cannot be seen

If a robber wants your wallet or purse, hand it over to prevent possible injury

Should you be involved in minor vehicle crash, do not exit the vehicle until a Deputy arrives to prevent a “bump and rob” scheme

Categories
News The Fly-By

Losing House and Home

CREDIT: Danijel Micka, Dreamstime.com

On Laurel Lake Drive, a suburban street in Southeast Shelby County, a five-bedroom, four-bath brick home sits empty. Built last year, it has a three-car garage and is a spacious 3,836 square feet.

But this is by no means a model home.

The property, located near the new Shelby County high school, is one of about 5,000 homes that were foreclosed on during the last quarter.

Last week, a risk management provider listed Memphis as one of the top five markets for mortgage risk and fraud, with very good reason. According to RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties, there’s one foreclosure for every 101 households in Memphis. Only Indianapolis, Atlanta, and Dallas fare worse.

“These are not only affordable, entry-level homes,” says Beanie Self, executive director of the Southeast Memphis Community Development Corporation (CDC). “These are $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 houses.”

The Southeast Memphis CDC is the only suburban CDC in Shelby County and was created, in part, after the University of Memphis identified a high number of foreclosures occurring in the Hickory Hill area.

“After the city annexed the area, there were a lot of significant problems,” says Self. “Property values went down because people were leaving and crime was up. When the property values went down, the homes were upside down. They owed more on their homes than they were worth, and a lot of people just walked away.”

Hickory Hill rivals Frayser for the most foreclosures, but since Self started tracking local foreclosures about three years ago, she’s seen the number increase 20 to 25 percent each year.

“What we see happening is that folks end up getting into a bigger house than they can afford and a larger loan than they can handle,” says Self.

As the former bankruptcy capital of the nation (read more in this week’s cover story), it’s not unheard of for Memphians to find themselves in financial trouble, but perhaps most telling is the scale of the current problem.

At the corner of Holmes and Hacks Cross, signs litter the roadways promising “New Homes! Zero Money Down!” But in neighborhoods still too new to be “mapquested,” banks are already foreclosing on houses: a $235,000 home on Maids Morton, a $100,000 home on Busy, a $168,000 home on Briona Cove — all foreclosures.

Because the housing market is saturated, many home builders offer special financing incentives. Mortgage brokers sell buyers on interest-only loans or Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) that can get them more house for the money, but it’s not always the best deal in the long run.

“There might not be a down-payment or closing costs. Two months later,” says Self, “the transmission goes out on the car and it’s, ‘Do I pay for that or the mortgage this month?'”

Residents can quickly find themselves owing more on their house than its market value, especially if they have an interest-only loan.

“Tennessee has been targeted by unscrupulous lending groups,” says Self. “We have not had the kind of regulations in place to tackle predatory lending.”

A new bill passed earlier this year will go into effect in January, but for some homeowners, it might be too late.

“Within the next year, it’s going to be really significant,” says Self. “Specifically with the ARMs or with the interest-only loans, when the principal payments kick in, it’s going to be huge.”

Not to burst your housing bubble, but this soap opera can have long-ranging effects.

The Southeast Memphis CDC is a HUD-approved housing provider, meaning it can buy foreclosed properties from the national department of Housing and Urban Development at a discount and then sell them to owner-occupants.

Only, other people are interested in the discounted property, too. “I can’t compete with the investor market,” says Self. “We have a very different cash flow.”

When investors buy property, it generally becomes a rental unit. And, nothing against renters, but rental property can contribute to a decline in the neighborhood. Especially if — as is often the case with rental houses — the landlord is not on-site.

Owning a home is the American dream. We’re a country that rewards citizens for buying a home with a tax break. Loans are available to help people buy a house who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford one. The latest economic upswing was predicated on the housing market.

But the number of local foreclosures — and the variety of neighborhoods in which they occur — should be an eye-opener. If this is the American dream, maybe it’s time for Memphis to wake up.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Hold Your Memories Close

When I was a child, my entire family — on my father’s and my mother’s side — lived in the same small town. We gathered for the holidays at my parents’ house with two sets of grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and assorted stray friends. The heady aromatic incense of roasting turkey, green-bean casserole, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie, fresh bread, stuffing (no mushrooms, please, we’re Midwesterners), and homemade cranberry sauce filled the house from early morning on.

The women worked in the kitchen (this was the pre-revolution, pre-Food Channel 1960s), while the men stayed in the den watching the Lions-Cowboys game, sipping cheap Zinfandel, and salivating. Two tables were set up to handle the hordes — one in the living room, one in the dining room. After we sat down to eat, sometime in mid-afternoon, my father said grace and we dug in. When it was over, the women cleaned up and the men went back to the game and fell asleep.

That was long ago and far away, it occurs to me now. My children’s experiences were different. They mostly grew up in the Northeast and spent their teens in Memphis. Some years, we would all make the journey to one set of in-laws or the other. Some years, we would stay put and celebrate with friends.

Now I’m on the other end of the holiday cycle, happy when one of my adult children or stepchildren makes it to Memphis for a major holiday. And resigned to the realities of travel and distance and jobs and relationships that sometimes make that impossible.

This year, it turns out my children will be elsewhere and I’ll miss them, but I like to think at some point during the day they’ll raise a glass of Zinfandel (more likely a nice Pinot) to their old man — and to Thanksgivings past.

Soon enough, they’ll learn time slips by like that muddy river outside my window, and we are powerless in its current. I think that’s why the holidays come around every year: to remind us to be thankful for what we have — and for what we’ve had. To celebrate with those you love, near and far, and to hold your memories close.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News

Hey, Memphis is Integrated! Holy Crap!

“I was in Tennessee yesterday, scene of this year’s most racially-charged Senate race. I got the holiday gluttony off to a roaring start with a stop at Interstate Barbecue in Memphis. It was my first time, and I now mourn all those lost years. If you ever get the chance, it’s a must-stop. You can’t go wrong with the pork ribs.

“The family that runs the joint has a little girl, the same age as my daughter, who was helping out for the holiday. …”

You know where this is going, right? His li’l white daughter and the owner’s li’l black daughter actually got along! In the South! And the restaurant was integrated! Read the rest of Talking Points Memo’s David Kurtz’s journey to enlightenment here.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Remembering Tiffany Berry

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Casey Lanham, a female-to-male transsexual in a black vest and button-down dress shirt, stands at a podium in front of about 50 people at the First Unitarian Church of the River. Slowly, he reads from a list of over 300 names.

“Fitzroy ‘Jamaica’ Green … Jessy Santiago … Monique Rodgers … Venus Xtravaganza ….” The list goes on, and the crowd sits in quiet reverence. Some bow their heads, staring at the unlit white candle in their hands. A few minutes later, another female-to-male transsexual walks down the aisle and begins lighting the candles.

If it weren’t for the occasional name like “Precious” or “Cinnamon,” Lanham could easily be reading from a list of Iraq’s war dead. But these people — transgender men and women killed in hate crimes between 1970 and 2006 — died in a war at home.

November 20th was the National Transgender Day of Remembrance, and this was Memphis’ first candlelight vigil honoring people who have died as a result of transgender prejudice.

“This event’s most important function is to publicly mourn and acknowledge these people,” says the 19-year-old Lanham, who began identifying himself as a male at age 11. “It also serves to make people aware that it is a problem.”

The names Lanham reads have been recorded through transgender activist Gwen Smith’s Web site Gender.org. Smith started the Day of Remembrance in 1999 in San Francisco. Out of the 300 victims, over 150 of them have been killed in the past decade. Since 1989, at least one transgender death has been reported through the media every month. Many more go unreported.

There are 10 transgender deaths on record in Tennessee; four of those occurred in Memphis. One of the names on Lanham’s list — Tiffany Berry (aka Ray Berry) — was murdered earlier this year.

In February, Berry, a 21-year-old male-to-female transsexual, was gunned down after stepping out of her front door at the Camelot Manor Apartments in South Memphis. The Memphis Police Department (MPD) originally thought the death was a robbery, but nothing was missing from Berry’s purse or apartment.

Lieutenant Toney Armstrong with MPD’s homicide division says an arrest has been made in the case, but the police don’t have enough evidence to declare the murder a hate crime.

“Transgender people or people who look transgender are the ones out there on the front lines,” says Heidi Levitt, a psychology professor at the University of Memphis. At the ceremony, Levitt discusses the sacrifice transgender people make daily for the greater acceptance of all gay people. Since they’re visibly gay, they tend to take the brunt of anti-gay violence.

Perpetual Transition, the support group that hosted the event, hopes to make the vigil an annual Memphis event. “We must make ourselves known in homes, schools, churches, and businesses,” says the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center’s Cole Bradley from the podium. “We must do this until the next GLBT gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender] leaders speak of hate crimes in the past tense.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Dozens of people stand in line at stores around Memphis, desperately hoping to get their hands on the new PlayStation 3 for the holidays. Some merchants give tickets to the first few customers; any others are out of luck. At a local Target, one of the hopeful shoppers who waited overnight for one of the store’s eight PlayStations turns away a latecomer, telling him, “There’s not a chance in hell.” Ahhh, that’s the Christmas spirit. It just warms your heart, doesn’t it?

Memphis police report that more than 540 homes have been burglarized here in the past three weeks alone. No doubt the thieves have heard that’s pretty much their only chance to get one of those new PlayStations.

The Memphis Zoo has a new Greg Cravens

addition: a cute baby giraffe named Angela Kate. Workers unexpectedly find the creature in the giraffe compound after its mother — whom no one knew was pregnant — gave birth and apparently neglected it. So it’s the same old story: no mention of a father, a covert pregnancy, the poor infant abandoned by its mother — sounds like a teenage pregnancy.

Memphis Light, Gas and Water holds seminars for customers to show them how to reduce their utility bills. Oh sure, putting caulk around the windows and lowering your thermostat helps, but we’ve discovered there’s only one thing that works during the winter: Turn all your lights and heat completely OFF until, oh, June. It’s simple, really.

The Muvico at Peabody Place darkens about half of its 22 screens, citing a decrease in demand. Some people will see this as the direct result of in-home competitors like Netflix, but we tend to blame Hollywood for cranking out such tripe as Santa Claus 3.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

There’s been so much in print about how Daddy

41’s people are back in the saddle, I was terrified when I saw a photo

of Dan Quayle among the pack. If they’ve called back Dan Quayle to lend intellectual heft, we’re all dead ducks. Fortunately, it was just a file picture of Quayle with the old team.

It does seem that we may be going back to the typical modus operandi of Dubya. Poppy Bush has helped Junior out of the Vietnam War, his failures in the oil business, and other efforts all of his “adult” life.

Unfortunately for us and for the world, the people from the first Bush administration who initially joined this administration were Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Not exactly the most diplomatic, forward-looking, helpful people to be guiding Dubya.

During the first Gulf War, Bush 41 and his administration knew what it would be like if they tried to take Baghdad — and opted not to go in. Now, the more sober-headed people from that administration are moving in to try to clean up the mess Junior made in his Iraq excursion.

Meanwhile, let us bid farewell and adieu to Brother Donald Rumsfeld, who is so full of wisdom he does not seem to be able to apply it. As a parting gift, here are some of his classic quotes:

1. “If you develop rules, never have more than 10.”

2. “Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”

3. “Needless to say, the president is correct. Whatever it was he said.”

4. “I don’t do quagmires.”

5. “I don’t do diplomacy.”

6. “I don’t do foreign policy.”

7. “I don’t do predictions.”

8. “I don’t do numbers.”

9. “I don’t do book reviews.”

10. “Don’t divide the world into ‘them’ and ‘us.’ Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs, and you have yours.”

11. “Don’t say, ‘The White House wants.’ Buildings can’t want.”

12. “If I know the answer, I’ll tell you the answer. And if I don’t, I’ll just respond cleverly.”

13. “I believe what I said yesterday. I don’t know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it’s what I said.”

In fact, I’m rather going to miss Rumsfeld’s Zen-like nuggets of wisdom, the most famous of which is probably about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns:

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

According to Newsweek, Air Force secretary Jim Roche went to Rumsfeld early on and said, “Don, you do realize that Iraq could be another Vietnam.”

Replied Rummy: “Vietnam? You think you have to tell me about Vietnam? Of course it won’t be Vietnam. We are going to go in, overthrow Saddam, get out. That’s it.”

I don’t know what happened to that excellent plan, but I would like to know who knew it was unknowable.