Month: February 2007

Tim DiScenza, the federal government’s trial attorney in the Tennessee Waltz cases in Memphis, stuck up for the fairness of the press and prosecutors Friday in response to a scathing critique by an author who’s writing a book about the Duke lacrosse scandal.

While the comments of DiScenza and state prosecutor Amy Weirich were general in nature, they contrasted starkly with the views of guest speaker Stuart Taylor Jr., the headliner at the Rhodes Institute on the Profession of Law. About 100 people, most of them lawyers fulfilling a continuing education requirement, attended the event.

Taylor is legal affairs columnist for the National Journal and a contributing editor for Newsweek. His topic was “The Duke Lacrosse Case and What It Says About Our Criminal Justice Process, Academics, and News Media.”

What it says, he suggested, is mostly bad: Durham N.C. prosecutor Mike Nifong made an “outrageous rush to judgment,” most of the media botched the story because of their political correctness and general shadiness, and Duke professors and administrators were spineless and all too eager to join Nifong’s side.

The point of this column is not to comment on the Duke lacrosse scandal. All that most of us in Memphis know is what we read in the papers and see on television. What was interesting to Memphians was the role reversal at Rhodes, with Taylor, a New York Times reporter from 1980-1988, bashing the Times and the press in general and DiScenza, a career prosecutor, saying, basically, that it isn’t that simple.

“Nobody has been more attacked by people who are politically correct and race-obsessed than I have,” said DiScenza. All of the Memphis and Shelby County politicians indicted so far in Tennessee Waltz and Main Street Sweeper are black Democrats.

DiScenza said that based on what he has heard, Nifong “violated every prohibition we have about disclosure of evidence” and would probably have been fired by now if he were a federal prosecutor. But he said the rules for state prosecutors in North Carolina may be different than the federal rules. And he praised the role of journalists and noted that the print news business has aggressively been policing its own on such charges as plagiarism.

He and Weirich also took issue with Taylor’s claim that prosecutors are political creatures and blind to the other side and that grand jurors are mere rubberstamps for prosecutors.

“Just wanting to win a case is not the prevailing view in this office,” said Weirich, who has been with the DA’s office since 1991. She said the office has a responsibility to see that cases are “tried cleanly or disposed of fairly.”

DiScenza said that when a case goes to a federal grand jury – one of which was recently led by crusty former Commercial Appeal editor Angus McEachran, a demonstrably independent-minded sort – the prosecutor must have personal certainty of the defendant’s guilt and “believe that a conviction is what justice demands.”

The Rhodes panel would have been even more pointed had the focus been on Memphis instead of an alleged rape case 1000 miles away in North Carolina. DiScenza’s higher-up is U.S. Attorney David Kustoff, a former Republican Party activist, and Weirich’s is District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, an elected official who formerly served on the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission and ran for mayor of Memphis and has been publicly accused of ducking some cases. Unfortunately, neither attended, nor were there any practicing journalists on the panel (other than Taylor) to defend the Fourth Estate.

For someone supposedly outraged by outrageous conduct, Taylor said a few outrageous things himself. He said that a DNA evidence kit “is so sensitive it will pick up my DNA from 20 yards away” yet it did not find anything from the accused Duke lacrosse players. And he said the lacrosse players, who were at an off-campus party with a stripper, were “bonding” and “they maybe had a beer.” The lacrosse scandal, he said, is “the most egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct to unfold in real time in the history of the United States.”

He later clarified that he was exaggerating about the DNA kit.

Heber Springs, Arkansas. Every weekend, dozens of spectators congregate around Magness Lake to oh and ah and point and marvel at the 130 trumpeter swans who showed up right before Thanksgiving.
But if you want to look and listen, too, you’d better hurry because the swans are ready to head home for the lakes and tundra of Minnesota….

“This year they should start leaving on March 3rd,” says caretaker Dick Herget, who feeds the swans every afternoon. “They always leave in family groups once the lakes up north start to thaw.”

A trio of swans first arrived in 1992, settling in for the winter on the 30-acre lake located on Hays Road a few miles east of town. Since then, the majestic birds with snow-white wingspans up to seven feet have returned every year to the lake, located on the edge of the E&W Wildlife Refuge.

“They keep coming back, and they bring their family and friends,” says Herget. “Last time I counted, we were up to 137.”

Typically, the swans – whose trumpet calls sound more like an old car horn than a musical instrument – don’t venture so far south. In fact, the gathering of swans at Magness Lake is the largest in the Southeast and has attracted considerable attention from national media and conservation groups.

The best time to view the birds is late afternoon, when they fly in for feeding at 4 p.m. “Just remember to only feed them shelled corn,” Herget says. “Never feed them bread because too much can kill them.”

by Pamela Denney

When the Wiggles come to FedExForum this Saturday, they’ll be bringing more than just a touring show filled with song and dance: They’ll bring an international brand name and superstardom to the event. In 2005 (and again in 2006), the Wiggles topped Australia’s richest-entertainers list, earning $45 million Australian in income, above Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, among others. The group was back in the news last November with the announcement that founding member Greg Page, a.k.a. the Yellow Wiggle, was leaving the band due to a serious illness. His understudy of nine years, Sam Moran, fills in as the new Yellow Wiggle beginning on this tour, “Racing to the Rainbow.”

The Flyer recently spoke with Anthony Field, the Blue Wiggle, about the show, Elvis Presley, Greg Page’s condition, and being on guard duty with an Uzi machine gun.

by Greg Akers

Flyer: What should audiences expect to see with “The Wiggles: Racing to the Rainbow Live”?

Anthony Field: It’s a brand new show, beautiful, colorful, inflatable sets, lots of beautiful costumes, new songs, and a lot of Wiggly favorites. Lots of dancing and slapstick humor.

How does a show like this come to be? Who writes it, and what level of participation does the group members have in creating it?

We [the Wiggles] write the show ourselves and write the music. The audience members are writers themselves too, as the show progresses, because we go off the script and go where the children want us to go in the show. Sometimes they yell out requests for songs or crazy things like asking you to fall over or do a handstand. [laughs] The show can go anywhere.

Do you enjoy that kind of spontaneity?

Oh, totally. It’s never the same show for us. If we go on a tour and do 50 or 60 shows in a month, no show is the same, because you don’t know where [the audience is] going to go with it, don’t know what they’re going to say. Which really keeps you on your toes.

How much of your year is devoted to touring versus being in the recording studio or taping shows?

We tour about six or seven months a year, either in the States, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Asia. The rest is in the studio writing songs and we do TV as well. Then about a month is holiday.

What do you do when you’re on holiday?

I live in Sydney on the water, and I go kayak out in the ocean [or] go fishing. I spend time with my family: getting out at the beach, really doing the coastal sort of lifestyle thing.

I read that you work in your wife’s café as well.

Well, we just folded because my wife’s expecting our third baby. I got married when I was 40, and we’ve had a baby every year. We had the café, and every year was harder because my poor wife had two children right in the café. Now, with the third one on the way, we just said, that’s too much. But, I used to go in after we’d toured, I’d go help her in the shop, pour coffees and teas like that, which made me realize that that’s really working. Working in the café, that’s work! [laughs]

Do you get recognized in Australia a lot?

All the time. We’ve been on television there for 15 years, and people know us. They’re a very laid back bunch, so they just say, “Hey, here you go, mate.” It’s really nice.

Describe what it’s like to tour for six months out of the year all over the world.

It’s very hard to be away from your family, that’s the only downside of it. The upside is, you get to meet lots of great people all over the world, and you realize that the world’s a big place. But it’s also not that big, because you can go all over the world and within a day you’re on the other side of the world. It’s very exciting going to places you’ve never been to before or even revisiting places. Also, we’ve got such a great camaraderie, all the Wiggle guys and all the dancers. We’ve stuck together for all that time, and we’re all mates and help each other out. If anyone gets down, you try to help them out. It’s a good life, because we surround ourselves with good people.

You have a background in early-childhood education. How does what you learned in college inform what the Wiggles do?

It’s the reason we came to be. We wanted to use what we’d learned at university for theater for children. Everything we learned at university comes back to us all the time. If something doesn’t quite gel with the audience, we analyze it and go back to what we learned at university and say, why didn’t the children understand what that was about. Was it aimed too high above their level? In everything we do, we try to be positive and encourage the development of their self-esteem and their cognitive development, all sorts of things we wouldn’t have thought about if we hadn’t gone to university.

How does having children of your own affect your work?

I’ve had two little girls so far, both under three, and it has affected what we’ve done. We’re just filming and recording new material, and I think we’ve got a bit more ballet in The Wiggles now. Dorothy [the Dinosaur] is getting into tutus and [other] things that I’ve seen my little girls get into more.

Name some music in your iPod or CD player that you listen to regularly./p>

I listen to a lot of really old music and a lot of Latin music. I’ve got Carlos Gardel, the king of the tango, from Argentina. Of course, Elvis, the Memphis man. A lot of Julio Iglesias, I love Julio, his Spanish stuff is fantastic. There’s a lot of stuff, but not much contemporary. But if you ask Murray for his iPod, he would give you every band you’ve ever heard of. I love John Fogerty too, so a lot of Fogerty, Creedance, things like that.

What did Elvis’ music mean to you growing up?

Elvis meant everything to me. I can’t believe how talented he was. He had everything: looks, talent. He was so musical, his whole body responded to the music he was making. I loved his arrangements and in the ’70s when he had the big band and orchestra as well as 10 or 12 singers behind him, Elvis was the greatest. It’s great when we go to Memphis. We’ve been to Graceland every time we go there. I love that Graceland is not as big as you’d think it would be. The guy was the king of music, and I’m he sure he could’ve gone to a bigger place. It’s a nice place, but he obviously wanted to stay with his roots.

How’s Greg Page doing?

Greg is coping with what he’s got. Some days are better than others: Some days he can be walking around and other days he has a hard day. Occasionally I get a text message from him saying, I’m going all right today. I think every day is a different day for Greg, he’s just learning how to cope with it.

What’s it been like touring without him?

It’s been strange, really. You expect him to be in the dressing room, and then he’s not there. It’s very sad. The other side of it is that Sam [Moran], his replacement, is such a nice guy and has been so good. He’s a friend of Greg’s too, and he’s got the right attitude, and he’s just brilliant. He’s also younger than us, and it’s injected a sort of youthful exuberance into us. There are two sides to it. One side is, [groans] I miss Greg, and the other side is, Sam’s been fantastic. It’s a strange time for us. The audiences in Australia, when we did a tour with [Sam], they loved him and of course missed Greg at the same time, just like we do.

Tell me about your time as an infantry soldier.

That actually was inspired by Elvis, believe it or not: [the 1960 film] G.I. Blues. Crazily, I thought, it’s going to be like that. We’re going to be on a train singing “Frankfort Special.” [laughs] But it wasn’t like that when I joined the army. I was 19 when I joined. I was in the regular army for three years as a rifleman. I went to Germany before the [Gulf] war came down. I was on guard duty there once with a fully loaded Uzi machine gun, and I was thinking to myself, what the hell am I doing here? [laughs] There were some good things about the army, nice guys in the army. It taught me about discipline, and I still get up really early every morning and get the hair [cut] short.

Tell me about the Cockroaches [his popular 1980s rock band].

They were a great band, a real surf band in Australia. We used to play the east coast of Australia, just up and down at all the surf clubs. That was in my 20s after the army, so it was a real great time to let off steam. The music we did was not too different from what the Wiggles do, but just different lyrics. More about love and things like that, no hot potatoes. But it was good, mate, it was good.

How long do the Wiggles plan on keeping going?

We’re still loving it. It’s been a new challenge for us, with Sam, to make it all happen. I think that’s been good for us, because we’ve had to really look at ourselves again and say, let’s really get into this. I think we’re rocking. I think we’re going to be going for a while, because we’re still enjoying it.

What do you see yourself doing whenever you do retire?

I’ll be on my boat or on my kayak, fishing; with my kids and my wife, just taking it easy. Put some sunscreen on and just chill out.

Please tell me, for the sake of my 2-year-old daughter, that there’s a regular party where the Wiggles get together with Barney, the Doodlebops, and Dora the Explorer.

Absolutely, we all get together. We dance on stage with the Doodlebops. When we have to go to another place, we ask Dora the Explorer how to get there. When we have to go to another country, we get in the rocket ship with Little Einsteins. [laughs] We have a great time. Sometimes we have to ask Blue for clues, then we end up at Mickey’s Clubhouse, and we have a great time singing, “Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog.” [laughs] I’ve got little girls too, so I watch all the shows. [laughs]

“The Wiggles: Racing to the Rainbow Live!” Saturday, February 24th, 1:30 and 5 p.m. FedExForum. $18-$35. (525-1515)

Better late than never.

Following up on its strong series of stories about sweet deals in city government and at MLGW, The Commercial Appeal finally turned its attention Thursday to city government’s kissing cousin, the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) and its staff of three former city division directors.

As The Flyer has been reporting for four years, the RDC, or “retired directors club” as some city council members call the quasi-government nonprofit, enjoys an enviable package of salaries and benefits for managing a small slice of the city – the riverfront parks – as opposed to an entire city division. RDC President Benny Lendermon, formerly city public works director, earns over $260,000 a year in salary, pension, and other benefits. The other two retired directors on the RDC staff are Danny Lemmons, formerly of general services, and John Conroy, former city engineer.

“The area’s biggest megaphone,” as CA columnist Wendi Thomas called her employer in her column Thursday, skated over or confused some key RDC issues in addition to doing some good work.

There was no mention of Friends for Our Riverfront, another nonprofit that operates on a shoestring budget and has fought the RDC to a standstill on the public promenade and done at least as much to promote user-friendly amenities along the river and parks in general. Two weeks ago the RDC and Friends, along with other groups, each brought well-known speakers to Memphis on different days to plug “green” issues. Virginia McLean, head of the Friends volunteers, has no ties to city government and gets no subsidy as the RDC does.

The CA story quoted Lendermon and city council members Scott McCormick and Tom Marshall who touted the efficiencies and accomplishments of the RDC and pooh-poohed the gibes about the “retired directors club.” Strange then, that the city council, chaired by Marshall, is making such a fuss about former mayoral aide Gail Jones Carson over at MLGW and her $126,000 salary and her pension.

McCormick is quoted saying the RDC does a better job of managing the parks than the Memphis Park Commission did. What the story did not say, however, is that such a comparison is difficult if not unfair. The parks division, as it is now called, is responsible for roughly 180 parks spread over some 300 square miles of Memphis. The RDC gets to concentrate on 10 parks along two miles of the riverfront.

McCormick told the Flyer this week he is satisfied that the RDC really is doing the job for less and baselined its budget against pre-RDC years.
“They said they would operate and maintain the parks for $2 million in 2001,” he said. “They have operated the parks for five years for the same amount. Where in government does somebody maintain the same costs for five years? I thought that was outstanding.”

John Malmo, former chairman of the board of the old Memphis Park Commission, told the Flyer last year that he thinks such comparisons play fast and loose with the facts. Isolating the cost of running riverfront parks from the rest of the city is like trying to isolate the cost of running one room of your house or raising one of your children. Obviously, there are a lot of shared costs and overhead.

The CA story says there are new cobblestones on the riverfront. If so, they’re not the huge ones that many Memphians remember. The broad area at the end of Union Avenue and west of Riverside Drive where the tour boats dock is a patchwork of loose gravel and small cobblestones, with a few massive chain links that are a reminder of the city’s cotton and riverboat days. But “the cobblestones” are in no condition to qualify as a tourist attraction, and, after six RDC years, there are no markers calling attention to them or explaining their significance. To call this an accomplishment of the RDC is a stretch.

With plans to enclose the harbor scrapped two years ago, the RDC’s current big project is Beale Street Landing, a $27 million park and boat landing at the foot of Beale Street and Tom Lee Park. Friends for Our Riverfront and others have argued that modest user-friendly improvements could be made at the park for a fraction of that price.

The CA puts no heat on the RDC board, which includes a host of downtown and Memphis luminaries. Once again, Friends for Our Riverfront does the heavy lifting when it comes to accountability by attending RDC meetings and circulating their notes and minutes via their website.

The quality of the RDC’s work on Mud Island and along the riverfront speaks for itself. The parks, bluff, and Riverside Drive, in the opinion of this 25-year downtown worker and fan, have never looked better. There may indeed be big efficiencies at the RDC versus the public sector. In that case, the agency would be best served by embracing complete financial transparency, explaining its magic formula without fear or favor, joining forces with Friends for Our Riverfront when practical, and expanding its expertise and thrifty business model to other parts of Memphis on a scale commensurate with those salaries.

By John Branston

Search for Elvis Presley items on eBay, and you will turn up hundreds — no thousands — of souvenirs, photos, albums, magazine articles, 45s, LPs, CDs, and just about anything and everything someone could slap a TCB logo on.

But occasionally, something very rare and unusual turns up, and that’s just what happened recently when someone decided to sell the rights to Elvis’ last recorded song.

In 1973, the King of Rock and Roll teamed up with songwriter Paul Terry King to produce and record two songs. One of these, “If I’d Only Bought Her Roses,” was sold last year to Robert X. Sillerman, the current owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises for an undisclosed price.

But the other song, “Just Like Rolling Up the Hill,” has remained a secret until now, when Hill — not in the best of health — decided to sell the rights on eBay. What this means, according to eBay, is that the new owner can “produce, sing, or release it yourself.” It was promoted on eBay as “Elvis’ Last Recorded Song.”

Sounds like a risky venture, but hey it worked for Elvis, so it might work for the highest bidder, an unidentified (or in eBay’s terms, “private”) buyer who ended up paying $31,101 for the rights. The winner receives “copyright and all associated publication and performance rights, etc.”

Learn more about this unusual auction. — Michael Finger

Get some culture this Saturday. Chinese Family Day, a Chinese New Year celebration, at the Belz Museum, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. will include Chinese music, dance performances, puppet shows, a traditional lion dance, as well as crafts, storytelling, and more.

Over at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., it’s , where you can sign up for the “School of Scribes” to learn how to write your name in hieroglyphs and design your own Egyptian jewelry.

Better late than never.

Following up on its strong series of stories about sweet deals in city government and at MLGW, The Commercial Appeal finally turned its attention Thursday to city government’s kissing cousin, the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) and its staff of three former city division directors.

As The Flyer has been reporting for four years, the RDC, or “retired directors club” as some city council members call the quasi-government nonprofit, enjoys an enviable package of salaries and benefits for managing a small slice of the city – the riverfront parks – as opposed to an entire city division. RDC President Benny Lendermon, formerly city public works director, earns over $260,000 a year in salary, pension, and other benefits. The other two retired directors on the RDC staff are Danny Lemmons, formerly of general services, and John Conroy, former city engineer.

“The area’s biggest megaphone,” as CA columnist Wendi Thomas called her employer in her column Thursday, skated over or confused some key RDC issues in addition to doing some good work.

There was no mention of Friends for Our Riverfront, another nonprofit that operates on a shoestring budget and has fought the RDC to a standstill on the public promenade and done at least as much to promote user-friendly amenities along the river and parks in general. Two weeks ago the RDC and Friends, along with other groups, each brought well-known speakers to Memphis on different days to plug “green” issues. Virginia McLean, head of the Friends volunteers, has no ties to city government and gets no subsidy as the RDC does.

The CA story quoted Lendermon and city council members Scott McCormick and Tom Marshall who touted the efficiencies and accomplishments of the RDC and pooh-poohed the gibes about the “retired directors club.” Strange then, that the city council, chaired by Marshall, is making such a fuss about former mayoral aide Gail Jones Carson over at MLGW and her $126,000 salary and her pension.

McCormick is quoted saying the RDC does a better job of managing the parks than the Memphis Park Commission did. What the story did not say, however, is that such a comparison is difficult if not unfair. The parks division, as it is now called, is responsible for roughly 180 parks spread over some 300 square miles of Memphis. The RDC gets to concentrate on 10 parks along two miles of the riverfront.

McCormick told the Flyer this week he is satisfied that the RDC really is doing the job for less and baselined its budget against pre-RDC years.
“They said they would operate and maintain the parks for $2 million in 2001,” he said. “They have operated the parks for five years for the same amount. Where in government does somebody maintain the same costs for five years? I thought that was outstanding.”

John Malmo, former chairman of the board of the old Memphis Park Commission, told the Flyer last year that he thinks such comparisons play fast and loose with the facts. Isolating the cost of running riverfront parks from the rest of the city is like trying to isolate the cost of running one room of your house or raising one of your children. Obviously, there are a lot of shared costs and overhead.

The CA story says there are new cobblestones on the riverfront. If so, they’re not the huge ones that many Memphians remember. The broad area at the end of Union Avenue and west of Riverside Drive where the tour boats dock is a patchwork of loose gravel and small cobblestones, with a few massive chain links that are a reminder of the city’s cotton and riverboat days. But “the cobblestones” are in no condition to qualify as a tourist attraction, and, after six RDC years, there are no markers calling attention to them or explaining their significance. To call this an accomplishment of the RDC is a stretch.

With plans to enclose the harbor scrapped two years ago, the RDC’s current big project is Beale Street Landing, a $27 million park and boat landing at the foot of Beale Street and Tom Lee Park. Friends for Our Riverfront and others have argued that modest user-friendly improvements could be made at the park for a fraction of that price.

The CA puts no heat on the RDC board, which includes a host of downtown and Memphis luminaries. Once again, Friends for Our Riverfront does the heavy lifting when it comes to accountability by attending RDC meetings and circulating their notes and minutes via their website.

The quality of the RDC’s work on Mud Island and along the riverfront speaks for itself. The parks, bluff, and Riverside Drive, in the opinion of this 25-year downtown worker and fan, have never looked better. There may indeed be big efficiencies at the RDC versus the public sector. In that case, the agency would be best served by embracing complete financial transparency, explaining its magic formula without fear or favor, joining forces with Friends for Our Riverfront when practical, and expanding its expertise and thrifty business model to other parts of Memphis on a scale commensurate with those salaries.

A picture of Memphis musician and actress Amy LaVere, shot at the New York premiere for Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan, is now up at the site Go Fug Yourself. They aren’t kind to Amy, but we kinda like it.

On Friday, officials from Memphis, Gas, Light & Water released a statement regarding city councilman Edmund Ford’s utility bill. Read the letter here.