Month: April 2007

Memphis in May will keep Riverside Drive open longer as it prepares for the annual month-long Festival. Work on the Festival in Tom Lee Park began today, but Memphis in May officials plan to work in and around Tom Lee Park and keep Riverside Drive open to traffic as much as possible.

Jim Holt, President & CEO of Memphis in May said, “Keeping Riverside Drive open while work is underway in Tom Lee Park will benefit those who rely on this major thoroughfare to access their homes and their jobs. While our work schedule is critical to the success of the month-long Festival, being a good neighbor and keeping the inconvenience of the Festival to a minimum is a real responsibility of the Festival.”

During the Festival’s stay in Tom Lee Park, traffic on Riverside Drive will be diverted to two-way traffic with access to one lane northbound and one lane southbound beginning Saturday, April 28. The street will close completely beginning at 12:01 a.m on Thursday, May 3rd in preparation for the Beale Street Music Festival, May 4-6. The street will close from Georgia St. to Union Avenue. The street will re-open on Tuesday, May 8th at 12:01 a.m.

Riverside Drive will close again for the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest on Wednesday, May 16th at 12:01 A.M. through Monday, May 21st at 12:01am, and again for Memphis in May’s finale, the Regions Sunset Symphony, at 12:01a.m. on Friday, May 25th and reopen at 12:01a.m. on Monday, May 28th.

Once the San Diego Zoo traded its distant, brooding male panda Shi Shi for panda playboy Gao Gao, their female panda, Bai Yun, has given birth twice. They didn’t even have to artificially inseminate her, as Gao Gao was reportedly up to the task time and time again. And now, after a third mating, another baby panda is on its way this summer.

It’s widely known that the Memphis Zoo’s pandas have had trouble in bed this year. The female, Le Le, sent the right scent signals and the zoo even turned on some porn, but her male companion Ya Ya just wasn’t interested. He seemed to prefer munching bamboo bars and napping to making the beast with two backs. The cad. (He obviously has issues.)

After Le Le retired to her room, desolate, Memphis zookeepers tried artificial insemination. We’re not sure if that’s worked yet, but we do think the San Diego Zoo is on to something. The Memphis zoo should just trade in the ambivalently male Ya Ya for the studly Gao Gao and let him do his stuff. We’re betting he could make Le Le go go.

-Cherie Heiberg

BY
JOHN BRANSTON
 |
APR 24, 2007

Every writer needs a good editor. And so does every prosecutor.

Assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza closed out the government’s case against former state senator John Ford Tuesday with a two-hour-and-twenty-minute closing argument. Coming at the end of a long day, the performance may not have helped the government’s already powerful case. In fact, it may have struck some jurors as being exactly what the defense team has been saying about the pursuit of Ford: overzealous.

Defense attorney Michael Scholl will make his closing argument Wednesday. It’s a good bet that it will be shorter than DiScenza’s if he wants to score points with the jury.

DiScenza played snippets of a dozen or so tapes the jury had already seen and heard two or three times. The tapes clearly showed Ford doing favors for E-Cycle Management in exchange for payments.

But they were no longer new. As U.S. District Judge Daniel Breen told jurors, closing arguments are just that – argument, not evidence. The government had already summarized its case with a summary witness, FBI agent Mark Jackson, and a time line.

And on Tuesday, jurors had already sat through a three hour and thirty minute lunch break while the judge and attorneys worked out some undisclosed procedural matters apparently involving a juror who was excused.

DiScenza, a veteran career prosecutor who has already won two convictions in Tennessee Waltz trials, started off well enough with a legal maxim that goes something like this: “If you have the facts, argue the heck out of the facts. If you have the law, argue the heck out of the law. If you don’t have the facts or the law, then accuse the government of misconduct and argue entrapment.

That is what Scholl has been doing for two weeks. He called only three defense witnesses, and John Ford was not among them. Unlike his brother, Harold Ford Sr., who made a memorable stand against prosecutors in his 1993 corruption trial, John Ford decided not to testify.

DiScenza finished strong, too.

“Who’s got the power?” he said, voice rising. “Only twelve people have the power to stop this. And that is the twelve of you who go back into that jury room.”

But the ending may have come roughly two hours too late. Closing argument is a last chance to persuade the jury with personality, charm, and rhetorical skills. But every speaker and every writer knows that attention flags after 30 minutes for even the great ones. And a story you have heard three times already is not a great one, no matter who is telling it.

Possibly making matters worse, earlier in the day assistant prosecutor Lorraine Craig drew the assignment of cross-examining Ford’s twenty-something girlfriend, a perky young woman who suggested undercover FBI agent L.C. McNeil may have done some unauthorized undercover work under the covers with a girlfriend in Miami after partying with Ford and friends one night. McNeil had denied the suggestion last week, but Craig bored in so hard on the witness, Mina Knox, that Breen interjected at one point.

In short, if there was a ray of hope for the defense after the proof was in, it was that one or more jurors would hang the panel. After Tuesday, that seemed like less of a Hail Mary than it had a day earlier.

Memphis director Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan may have fizzled at the box office, but the Memphis filmmaker has left us with some lingering iconography.

Really, how long did you think it would take before somebody suggested that Barack Obama should chain Hillary Clinton to a radiator?

Until about now?

A Website called Londonnet reports the following: “Justin Timberlake wants to become a professional golfer.

“The 26-year-old singer is getting so good on the greens he is hoping to land a place on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) circuit.

“A source said: ‘Justin is a very keen golfer and he’s playing to a very high standard now.'”

Golf fanatic Justin – who plays off a six handicap and is a member of Los Angeles’ exclusive Sherwood Country Club – is determined to fulfil his ambition before he is 30 and is practicing as much as possible.”

And, we might add, we’re quite “keen” on the idea of ol’ JT getting a sponsor’s exemption to the St. Jude tournament in Memphis this year. Hell, he could probably beat John Daly these days.

More?