Month: February 2008

Categories
News Television

Eye on the Prize

The 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, televised live on ABC Sunday night from Los Angeles, went clip-clip-clipping along. This is not a good thing. The show was so overstocked with clips from movies — from this year’s nominees and from Oscar winners going back to 1929 — that it was like a TV show with the hiccups.

There were hardly any emotional moments from winners on the stage, and there was little in the way of drama for viewers who watched, especially those who stayed with the tedious drag all the way past 11:45 p.m. (Eastern time), when it finally drew to a close. Javier Bardem, who won for Best Supporting Actor, in No Country for Old Men, did move the crowd when he concluded his speech with a message to his mother in his native tongue, Spanish. She was sitting in the audience, surrounded by the usual suspects and celebrities.

No acting prizes were given out until the second half-hour of the show, a poor piece of showmanship — as was hiding kids’ favorite Miley Cyrus, star of TV’s Hannah Montana, backstage until 9:50 p.m., when many of her biggest and youngest fans had gone to bed and didn’t get to see her.

Jon Stewart, the cable TV comic brought in to host, did only a fair-to-middling job, mostly middling, and in fact threatened to ruin the poignancy of Bardem’s speech by later informing the audience, “That was a moment,” in case we were all too dumb to have figured that out for ourselves. Stewart made only a few political jokes, at one point observing that usually when an African American and a woman are both seeking the presidency, it means “an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty” — i.e., it’s part of a disaster film set in the future.

The highly praised Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney, won just one major award (Best Supporting Actress for Tilda Swinton), while Marion Cotillard’s victory as Best Actress for playing legendary singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose was an upset over newcomer Ellen Page as a pregnant teenager in Juno. The closest any movie came to a sweep was No Country for Old Men, which won for Best Adapted Screenplay from another medium as well as Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen) and Best Picture.

There were several references to the recent strike by the Writers Guild of America, which, if it had continued, might have meant canceling the 80th Oscars altogether or putting on a much reduced and postponed show later in the year. Actually, that might have been a pleasant change and a blessed relief from the bloated show and the effusive windbags making speeches that Americans endure annually, even as the number of other awards shows on television has grown exponentially.

Accepting the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Juno), Diablo Cody held up the statuette and said, “This is for the writers.” The sentiment didn’t exactly bring the house down, however. As for Cody, one admirer hailed her as having written “the best book ever about strippers” — no relation to the movie for which she won the Oscar, of course.

Influential Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke, writing in advance of the Oscar show, noted that “few in America or the world have seen the nominated pictures and performances” and predicted that “all in all, everybody should expect the Worst Oscars Ever in the History of Hollywood.”

Was she far from wrong?

Tom Shales is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Straight Talk?

As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there. He supports the war even at the price of his own career or the life of a child he loves.

Yet although the senator from Arizona is obviously no chicken hawk, he carefully avoids “straight talk” about the real costs of this war in dollars and debt. Like every other politician who agrees with the Bush policy of prolonged war and occupation, he still pretends that we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this endless misadventure without collecting enough tax revenue to pay the actual costs.

Hundreds of billions? Sorry, but that vague estimate is probably far too modest, according to a new book by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. In The Trillion-Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, they warn that the war’s “true budgetary cost,” excluding interest, “is likely to reach $2.7 trillion.” Aside from the price of munitions, contractors, transport, fuel, and other fixed costs, their calculations are based on the government’s continuing obligation to provide medical care and disability payments for the thousands of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the coming decades.

Those costs represent a moral debt on which we cannot default — and they will grow larger every day that we maintain the occupation. Even if the war could be ended immediately, the fiscal obligations incurred by the invasion and occupation will continue. Beyond the mandatory disability payments, medical and psychiatric care, and additional benefits to which our vets are entitled, the nation will face years of increasing military budgets to restore the equipment and readiness of our battered armed forces, especially the Army and the National Guard.

Even in the “best case” scenario envisioned by Stiglitz and Bilmes, with our troop presence declining rapidly, the U.S. commitment in Iraq is still likely to cost no less than $400 billion over the next several years, on top of the $800 billion or so that we have spent to date. Those figures, which don’t include veterans’ benefits, add up to $1.2 trillion. What the authors call their “realistic-moderate scenario” for a prolonged presence in Iraq will cost twice as much or more.

Having served at the highest levels of the federal government, both authors understand that the Bush administration’s war budgeting has been a travesty — aided and abetted by lawmakers such as McCain, who have gone along all the way. Instead of accounting honestly for the war’s costs and requesting the necessary funds to pay for them, the White House has routinely used “emergency” supplemental requests as a device to hide the truth. The emergency process prevents the Office of Management and Budget as well as congressional staff from thoroughly reviewing the data. Inevitably, they explain, this lack of transparency and competence has resulted in waste, fraud, and corruption in payments to contractors, most of them politically wired, while essential equipment and veteran care remain underfunded.

Compounding the disgrace is the fact that the Bush administration and Congress financed these “emergency” budgets by borrowing, rather than raising taxes, as the United States has traditionally done in times of war. The Bush administration has insisted on reducing taxes, with most benefits accruing to the wealthiest individuals, while piling on debt for succeeding administrations and generations (and leaving the nation’s infrastructure to rot away, too). The politicians who have cooperated in this outrage, such as McCain, should tell us why they still call themselves “conservative.”

Back in 2001, when he was still in his maverick phase, the Arizona senator voted against the Bush tax cuts. Today he says that he objected to the budgetary flimflam that cut taxes without reducing program costs, but at the time he claimed to worry about the excessive premiums for the very rich. Now he runs around promising “no new taxes” just like every standard right-wing Republican.

In an unguarded moment, McCain once confessed that he doesn’t know much about economics. Even he should be able to comprehend the disastrous fiscal effects of the Iraq war, which its proponents originally promised would cost us almost nothing. Perhaps he should ask an economist to calculate the real cost of occupying Iraq for a hundred years, as he imagines — and how many generations will pay dearly for this mistake.

Joe Conason writes for The New York Observer and Salon.

Categories
Opinion

Book of Depressing Lists

I’m looking at lists of big companies, and what they say about the Memphis economy is not good, particularly if you are an investor.

The first one is The Wall Street Journal‘s annual list of “The Best and Worst Performers of the WSJ 1,000” public companies in 75 industries over the past year and the past decade. The list includes “leaders and laggards.”

The second list is the Memphis Business Journal‘s 2008 Book of Lists of the 50 largest public companies in Memphis. Several names from this list are also on The Wall Street Journal’s list, and, unfortunately, most of them are laggards.

And not just ordinary laggards, either. Leading laggards, you might say.

Memphis-based companies such as First Horizon National Bank (-55 percent), FedEx (-17.7 percent), and International Paper (-2.4 percent) were losing investments in 2007. So were other companies with a lot of employees and offices in Greater Memphis, such as Regions Financial (-34.7 percent), Tenet Healthcare (-27 percent), Boyd Gaming (-23 percent), and Medtronic (-5 percent).

All of those are among the 20 largest public companies in Memphis and have at least 1,300 local employees. The second tier, ranked 21-50, didn’t do much better. It includes UPS (-3 percent), Target (-11.8 percent), Home Depot (-31 percent), Williams-Sonoma (-16 percent), Macy’s (-31 percent), SunTrust Banks (-24 percent), and E.W. Scripps (-9 percent).

Wal-Mart (+4.4 percent), AutoZone (+3.8 percent), Harrah’s Entertainment (+9 percent), and Nike (+31 percent) managed gains, as did the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+8.9 percent) and Standard & Poor’s 500 (+5.5 percent).

Some of the best known Memphis companies, such as Northwest Airlines (number 14 on the MBJ list), didn’t even make the Journal rankings because their market value doesn’t put them in the top 1,000. And the news from Northwest is likely to get worse, at least for Memphis, if it merges with Delta and consolidates operations in Atlanta or eliminates the Memphis hub.

Lists are a dime a dozen and often silly these days — fattest city, dumbest city, coolest city, etc. But these two lists matter. First Horizon and Regions (parent of Morgan Keegan), which were near the bottom of the bottom industry group — banks — employ more than 4,700 people and are the bastions of the Memphis skyline. Their fall was so bad in 2007 that it made their 10-year return negative. The same is true of International Paper, a Fortune 500 company and the city’s biggest corporate catch of the last 20 years. In other words, if you bought $10,000 worth of their stock in 1998, you now have less than $10,000.

First Horizon and Regions made bad investments related to real estate and subprime mortgages and booked huge losses last year. They didn’t just lag the market, they lagged their peer group of banks by a wide margin. And they did it with a base in the Southeast, which has enjoyed a boom in real estate, population, and automobile manufacturing over the last generation. You have to wonder how much longer they can remain independent — or how low the price will go before someone acquires them.

Last Saturday, The New York Times used Memphis as the poster child for a long story about the mortgage crisis. The story said there hasn’t been so much “nervousness” on the part of homeowners since the Depression.

The long view is better in other sectors. FedEx, with an estimated 30,000 local employees, has a 10-year average return of 11.7 percent. The second largest private employer in Greater Memphis is Wal-Mart, with 6,000 employees and a 10-year average return of 10 percent. But nobody thinks of Bentonville-based Wal-Mart as a Memphis company. Harrah’s, which moved its headquarters from Memphis to Las Vegas, has averaged 18 percent a year for the last 10 years. But most of its regional employees are at the casinos in Tunica. AutoZone, which may be the last bright light on the Memphis skyline, has a 10-year average return of 15 percent.

What’s also troubling for Memphis, however, is that it boasts almost no presence in The Wall Street Journal‘s “honor roll” of top performing industry groups — computer hardware, mining and minerals, oil and gas, semiconductors, aerospace, energy, and software. Only in gambling, medical supplies, and trucking can Memphis claim a significant number of jobs and growing companies.

The top-performing industry group for the past five years is travel and tourism. Memphis is betting heavily on Graceland, FedExForum, the airport, Bass Pro, and Beale Street. Not exactly Dell, Nissan, Toyota, Apple, and Schering-Plough.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Well, it happened again. A Memphis police officer left her gun behind after using a Wal-Mart bathroom, where it was found by an employee. Last month, an officer left her weapon in a courthouse bathroom. What disturbs us about the Wal-Mart incident, however, is that the cop didn’t even notice her gun was missing until “it was brought to her attention.”

Greg Cravens

Now we know how the New England Patriots feel. Before a full house at FedExForum, the University of Memphis’ perfect season came to an end at the hands of the Tennessee Vols, who defeated the Tigers 66-62. With one minute left and a one-point lead, we thought we might win this one, but UT managed to pull out a victory. It was certainly one of the scrappiest games we’ve seen in a long time, and the blue-clad Tigers left the court feeling as blue as the fans.

Speaking of basketball, some people take their sports very, very seriously. The volunteer coach at St. Augustine School got upset when his basketball team was kept out of league competition when someone missed the sign-up deadline — by three months. So, this being America and all, he did what any coach would do: He sued the Parochial Athletic Association and the Catholic Diocese of Memphis, claiming the events “demoralized” his team, resulting in their 0-10 season. He’s demanding $50 million, which we think would go a long way toward boosting team morale, even if they never win — or even play — another game.

That old expression about every cloud having a silver lining may be true. The Shelby County Assessor’s Office says that people whose homes were damaged by the recent tornadoes will have their property taxes lowered. Since some homes stripped of roofs and walls were considerably “devalued” by the storms, that policy makes sense.

Categories
News

Thompson’s Guilty Plea Leaves Some Questions Unanswered

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Former Shelby County commissioner Bruce Thompson, who
proclaimed his innocence and determination to go to trial at a news conference
in November, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in federal court
Wednesday.

Thompson, a Republican from East Memphis, faces a maximum
sentence of one year and a day as part of the plea agreement with prosecutors.
Two mail fraud counts and an extortion count carrying a maximum sentence of 20
years and a $250,000 fine were dismissed. There is no fine or restitution in the
plea agreement. Prosecutors said that will be up to the judge at sentencing, set
for June.

In the four-count indictment last year, the government
charged that Thompson, while a member of the county commission in 2004-2005,
falsely represented to a Jackson, Tennessee construction firm that “by reason of
his position as a commissioner, he had the ability to control the votes of
members of the Memphis City School Board” on a $46 million contract to build
three schools.

The company, a joint venture of H&M Construction and
minority-owned firm Salton-Fox Construction, paid Thompson $263,992. The school
board unanimously awarded the contract to H&M and Salton-Fox in 2004, reversing
a decision earlier that year to give it to Inman Construction.

On Wednesday, Thompson told U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla
that he did in fact make false statements to H&M president Jim Campbell about
his influence and the make-or-break nature of campaign contributions if H&M
wanted the contract.

While on the commission, Thompson was a proponent of ethics
reform. He decided not to seek reelection in 2006. Shortly after he was
indicted, Thompson told reporters “I have done nothing wrong” and “I reject the
implication that anything has been done in the back of the room or in the dark.”
In 2004, he obtained an opinion from Shelby County Attorney Brian Kuhn that it
would not be a conflict of interest under state statute for him to try to help a
company get business with the city or county school systems because he would be
paid by the company and would not be voting on the contract award. Kuhn did not
know what Thompson had told H&M, and his opinion said nothing about legality.

The indictment said that as part of the scheme to defraud,
Thompson “would falsely represent that he had made commitments to give campaign
contributions” to school board members and “did cause to be placed a check in
the amount of $7,000 addressed to Kirby Salton from H&M.”

When the indictment was announced, United States Attorney
David Kustoff would say only that it was ongoing and the $7,000 was for
“campaign contributions.” FBI Special Agent in Charge My Harrison made headlines
when she said at a news conference, “What can I say? Same game, different
names,” obviously linking Thompson’s case to other Memphis political corruption
cases.

It is not clear what happened to the $7,000. Asssistant
U.S. Attorney Tim DiScenza said there was a meeting of an unnamed board member,
a person with the board member, a representative of Salton-Fox, and Thompson at
which $2000 went to the person with the board member. DiScenza said Salton gave
another $2000 to $4000 to Thompson and kept the rest himself. Kirby Salton has
publicly stated that he gave $2,000 to Wanda Halbert’s campaign through an
associate of Halbert. But Halbert said she was unaware of that until asked about
it in a grand jury session last year, and said the money was either lost or
stolen. She subsequently listed it on her disclosure form.

Salton and Halbert give differing accounts of the meeting.
The plea agreement did not clear that up, but DiScenza said that if Thompson’s
case had gone to trial there would have been no proof that Thompson and any
board members had a deal.

It also left questions about the legality of consulting by
public officials and the leniency of Thompson’s sentence compared to the harsh
treatment of some Tennessee Waltz defendants for taking much smaller amounts of
money.

Former state senator John Ford was convicted of taking
$55,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a businessman to influence
legislation. Ford was sentenced to five and one half years in prison. Ford said
he was acting as a consultant. He faces a second federal trial in Nashville on
charges relating to his consulting work for Tenn-Care contractors. Former school
board member Michael Hooks Jr. is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to
unlawfully taking $3,000 for bogus consulting invoices to Shelby County Juvenile
Court. Convicted Tennessee Waltz defendants Roscoe Dixon and Kathryn Bowers also
described themselves as consultants.

School construction in Memphis and Shelby County has been a
booming business for decades due to suburban sprawl and decaying inner-city
schools. By 2004, with the arrival of new Memphis superintendent Carol Johnson,
it was deemed so expensive and disorganized that a joint venture of O.T.
Marshall Architects and Self-Tucker Architects was hired to inspect all schools
and decide which ones to close, rebuild, or replace. That set off a scramble of
established construction firms to finds minority partners to have a better
chance of getting a piece of the business. Tom Marshall, an architect and member
of the City Council at the time, was head of the project. Marshall, who has not
been charged with any wrongdoing, testified before the grand jury that indicted
Thompson.

Thompson is not an architect, engineer, or attorney, and
apparently earned his money from H&M by providing political contacts,
introductions and political advice – some of it apparently legal and extremely
valuable and some of it false and illegal. Attempts to reach Campbell at H&M
were unsuccessful.

A former prosecutor who
did not want to be identified speculated that the government “maybe wanted to
clear the air on whether board members were dirty” by disposing of Thompson’s
case. Another former prosecutor, Mike Cody, said that based on news accounts,
“it looks like it kind of cleared everybody else.”

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

British Invasion

Theatre Memphis’ current interpretation of Jane Austen’s seminal romance novel Pride and Prejudice exceeds three hours. That may be the most useful piece of information I can offer, because if devoting the best eighth of your day to a barrage of class- and gender-conscious barbs traded with restraint in a variety of picturesque settings sounds at all like a little slice of heaven, then the play will probably be a delightful experience. If it sounds like a hellish torture ingeniously conceived by your worst enemies, it’s probably that too. Either way, the acting ranges from adequate to excellent, and it’s really something to look at.

Multi-award-winning Bill Short has done some of his best work yet, turning Theatre Memphis’ tiny Next Stage into a magnificent ballroom illuminated by an antique chandelier. It’s a perfect marriage of elegance and practicality that should bring the set dresser yet another Ostrander nomination. Chris Swanson’s lighting design could be more adventurous, but it does a fine job illuminating a parade of detailed period costumes by Andre Bruce Ward, TM’s often astonishing resident designer.

From the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice, Austen toys with her readers. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It seems like the very essence of cloying chick-lit. But imagine those words spoken with complete conviction by Daily Show satirist Samantha Bee, and you’ll more easily glean the author’s meaning. Jon Jory, the writer and director most closely associated with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, doesn’t always know how to frame Austen’s wit, and his faithfully wordy adaptation slowly meanders from ill-defined situation to ill-defined situation with little sense of its own shape or purpose.

Director John Rone has assembled a largely first-rate cast that occasionally manages to tame the tasteful unruliness of Jory’s script. Jade Hobbs, recently excellent in TM’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is convincingly charismatic as Elizabeth Bennet, whose stormy love/hate relationship with Mr. Fitzworth Darcy (a handsome and able Steven Brown) is what’s kept Pride and Prejudice in heavy rotation for almost 200 years.

Jason Spitzer is transcendent in his cringe-inducing performance as Mr. Collins, a long-winded clergyman on the make. He’s easily the best thing in a production filled with very good things.

Through March 9th

There’s nothing wrong with the University of Memphis’ production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood that a wholesale transfer to another theater couldn’t fix. The U of M’s Main Stage (aka “Big Red”) is great for directors, because there’s virtually nothing you can’t do there. But it’s not particularly kind to patrons, who can feel very far from the action, especially when there’s an orchestra in the pit. That’s particularly troublesome for Drood, a show that requires total audience engagement.

Director Stephen Hancock and choreographer Jay Rapp have created an energetic and engaging take on Rupert Holmes’ music-hall ode to Charles Dickens. Rapp’s work is perhaps as scholarly, detailed, and complete as anything the celebrated Project: Motion dancer has ever done. David Nofsinger’s sets are beautiful to look at; Janice Lacek’s costumes border on the breathtaking. The orchestra is tight, and the cast is uniformly fine, with standout performances from Shaheerah Farrakhan (the Princess Puffer), Jared Graham (Clive), and Jason Lee Blank (Bazzard). And for all of this, Drood never quite springs off the stage — even when the actors literally come out into the audience and work the room.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is nothing if not a crowd-pleaser, and the U of M’s production aims to please in every way. Still, you want to feel like a part of this show. So for best results, request tickets that are close to the stage.

Through March 1st

Categories
Music Music Features

Growin’ Up

Half a decade ago, Crippled Nation looked like one of Memphis’ nü-metal breakout bands, a quartet of guys who fit within that then ascendant genre but were already too ambitious to be hemmed in by the constrictions of that scene.

This month, the core of that band, now called Streetside Symphony, will release its first nationally released album, The Curse, for Ten Star Records, a new indie label started by producer Rick Beato (who’s worked with Trey Anastasio and Shinedown, among others).

“For the most part, we’ve been playing together for over a decade,” says singer/guitarist/piano player Jeremy Stanfill. “But this is a different band. We started Crippled Nation when I was 14 and I’m about to be 27. When you don’t change members, you have to change the name [to signify that it’s a different band]. It was about us growing up and wanting a name to represent what we are now. Otherwise, it’s like growing up and still being remembered as that awkward kid who had braces.”

The band, which also includes guitarist Chris Mitchell, bassist James Godwin, and drummer John Emerson, made the stylistic change in 2006, christening themselves the United to signify a new band with a new sound. But that name became complicated when the band negotiated its current record deal: Legal issues regarding other bands and companies with similar names became apparent, as did the complications of potential fans looking for a band called “the United” in cyberspace.

“We thought it was a good opportunity to come up with a name that we thought fit us the best. That’s original. That people can find when they’re Googling without digging through a bunch of [stuff],” says Stanfill. (When you Google “the United,” the first hits are for the United Nations and United Airlines.)

The moniker Streetside Symphony fits the band’s current sound, which is more expansive and hopeful. The name sounds like it could be the title of an early Bruce Springsteen song, an influence echoed by the rampant use of Stanfill’s piano on such standouts as “The Runaround” and “Heartbreak Street.” (“Oh yeah, dude, I’m completely obsessed with Bruce Springsteen,” Stanfill acknowledges.)

“It’s like we’ve come full circle,” Stanfill says of the Streetside Symphony’s style. “When we were kids growing up, we listened to a lot of classic rock and Motown and stuff. Then, when we became teenagers and started a band, we were being rebellious and wanted to play everything completely against what we grew up with. For me, I’m just loving being from Memphis and writing very classic-rock soul-and blues-oriented music.”

Stanfill says Beato’s name first popped up when Crippled Nation struck a demo deal with Maverick Records and were talking about potential producers. That deal fell through, but a loose connection with Beato remained. The band later went to record a demo with the producer, who took a shine to the band and asked them to be the first act on his new indie label. The band then recorded The Curse at Beato’s home studio in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Streetside Symphony will celebrate the release of The Curse with three performances Friday, February 29th: Stanfill will be interviewed and perform a couple of solo, acoustic songs at 8 a.m. that morning on Fox 13‘s Good Morning Memphis program. That afternoon, at 5 p.m., the whole band will play an acoustic set at Spin Street, the record store at the corner of Poplar and Highland. Later that night, the band plays an official record-release show at the Hi-Tone Café, with Hi Electric opening. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $5.

Copies of The Curse can be purchased at the band’s concerts, but the album is otherwise available at Spin Street, on iTunes, and at Amazon.

Introducing Flyer Radio

Attention, musicians: The Flyer has started a new interactive feature to help connect local bands and potential fans: Flyer Radio. The streaming feature can be found at memphisflyer.com and is open to any local or regional band or musician who would like to submit a song and direct listeners to their own website. To submit music, click on the Flyer Radio logo on the main page at memphisflyer.com and click the “Want to be added?” icon for instructions. For more information about Flyer Radio, contact Matt Writt at writt@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Learning To Work

CREDIT: Crystal Kirk | dreamstime.com

Under a new proposal, the city’s summer youth job program may be more equally divided between education and employment.

Last week, the City Council’s Public Services and Neighborhoods committee discussed hiring

practices for the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. Students ages 14 to 21 are eligible, but under a previous council decision, 80 percent of those hired have to be between the ages of 16 and 21.

But councilman and teacher Bill Morrison proposed changing the ratio of hires to more accurately reflect the program’s applicants.

“We have more 14- and 15-year-olds applying. To cap it at 20 percent isn’t fair,” Morrison said.

Of the applicants for this summer’s program, 45 percent of them are students ages 14 and 15.

Because of labor laws, “sometimes it’s more difficult for 14- and 15-year-olds to find legitimate things to do,” said youth services and community affairs head Sara Lewis. “What we want to do — based on the data we have and the pool of students who applied — is hire students based on that percentage.”

Lewis also noted that by the time students are selected for the program, many of the 16- to 21-year-olds have already found other employment on their own.

However, 14- and 15-year-olds hired by the city are placed in a career exploration program through Memphis City Schools and paid $6 an hour for 20 hours a week. Older students are assigned to worksites throughout the city and paid $6.85 an hour for 30 hours a week.

Longtime councilmember Barbara Swearengen Ware said the 20 percent hiring stipulation was meant to direct money to student workers and not staff.

“To say let’s take the bulk of the jobs and pay somebody $25 an hour to give them some skills and pay students $6 to receive it, that’s just not good math to me,” she said. “Think about how many jobs that would be for 16- to 21-year-olds. I don’t think this council can take money that’s designated to help students and do anything other than help students.”

But others argued that the extra training would benefit students.

Lewis said they were trying to address what she called a “pipeline” issue, with students not having the training to work for the companies involved in the program.

One major corporation needed 20 employees. It was told it could get 20 employees. [Four] showed up, and two of those four failed,” she said. “The youngsters have to be taught work-readiness skills. They do not have them.”

Morrison and Lewis said the proposed change would be a step toward a long-term solution. In addition to being a teacher, Morrison has a background in human resources.

“The biggest complaint from people in HR is that young people just don’t have the basic skills. They don’t know what to wear; they don’t know what a resume should look like; they don’t know what questions to ask during a job interview. We need to get them ready,” he said.

He sees the proposed shift as a way to make the program more successful. “I think 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds should already have the skills to get their own jobs,” he said.

As for the younger students, “This is their job, to be students,” he said. “The teachers who do this get $25 an hour, but that investment will pay off for students in the long run. They’ll be able to find a higher-paying job, not just something entry-level.”

The full council is expected to review the change March 4th.

The timing — though Morrison hints that this is just the first change he’d like to see in the program — is appropriate, as recent school shootings have focused the community’s attention on youth violence.

“The most dangerous group we have is our youth,” said Councilman Joe Brown, expressing his support for the change. “We’ve got to keep them from being American gangsters.”

When it comes to urban issues, it is often said that poverty is the problem; education is the answer. The summer youth program, whatever faults it may have, seeks to answer both these charges, giving students both money and knowledge.

“Gangs are recruiting 14- and 15-year-olds. If you don’t show them another option, someone else will,” Morrison said. “We’re in a battle.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Metal Health

Other than to dismiss their descriptive validity, you will never see me write the phrases “art metal,” “indie metal,” or “hipster metal.” Chicago’s Pelican has sadly spent an entire career dodging the accusations inherent in these terms. In a perfect world, the music should speak for itself. But it’s not that simple.

Suddenly fashionable again, the metal genre has a lot of pop-cultural capital these days. There’s no shortage of opportunistic musicians waking up one day and deciding that they are going to “get into,” then make, metal without a true love and knowledge of the genre. A casual observer’s amusement with Slayer, Pantera, and Mastodon is not cause to start a band. Then there are the dilettantes who issue shortsighted spoofs of the genre, like Rob Crow (of indie-pop darlings Pinback), who formed the uninspired, unfunny “metal” side project Goblin Cock.

By contrast, Pelican doesn’t just make metal — they are dyed-in-the-wool fans of the genre. They just happen to make a form of the music that crosses genre boundaries. And Pelican’s type of metal is topical; there are no retro elements, unless the ’90s are considered retro. (Okay, maybe the ’90s are a little retro.) Pelican’s take on metal echoes the “glacial” or “ambient” style of ’80s- and ’90s-born metal bands Neurosis and Isis. An instrumental band, Pelican removed the sometimes alienating vocals from this style and emerged as one of contemporary rock’s great unifiers of “pretty” and “heavy.” (England’s Jesu currently wears the crown.)

Pelican’s first release was an eponymous EP in 2003 on the Hydra Head label (the band’s home since). An appropriate imprint, Hydra Head was founded and is still operated by Aaron Turner of Isis. Over the past decade, the label has emerged as a leading torchbearer and tastemaker regarding underground, experimental, and just plain amazing metal. With that initial EP, the agenda was set right away: the instrumental meeting of Mogwai’s dreaminess and memorable songwriting, the bent riff mastery of the Melvins, and elements of the protean doom-metal scene.

It was Pelican’s full-length debut, Australasia, that turned heads, and rightfully so. Within the 11-minute opener “Nightenday,” the guitar lines take on the emotional appeal of beautiful vocals set against the pounding, hummable chug of the riffs and rhythm section. It’s the yardstick by which the rest of the album, and its 2004 follow-up, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw, can be measured.

Within the strict boundaries of their chosen style, Pelican milked as much variety as possible for these two albums. Then they changed things up a little. Last year’s City of Echoes is Pelican’s version of rock: faster tempos, catchier song structure, shorter songs, overt melody. With their signature degree of heaviness intact, it’s the quartet’s best album to date and a great place for beginners. Many people are curious about underground metal but are repelled by the vocals, regardless of the fact that no genre of music utilizes a wider variety of vocal styles. Pelican is a readymade solution to that conundrum.

Black Cobra, which is sharing the bill with Pelican at the Hi-Tone Café this week, is less interested in melody and less interested in having a full band. Guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian and drummer Rafael Martinez pull more sound from a limited lineup than any two-piece going, even Lightning Bolt. Landrian hails from defunct Florida sludgecore legends Cavity, one of several bands that applied Black Sabbath and the Melvins to the crushing, sonically violent direction that hardcore had taken in the early ’90s.

Yes, Black Cobra can be down-tempo and sludgy at times, but the focus is on pummeling intensity with intermissions of minimal introspection. Representative releases like 2006’s Bestial and last year’s Feather and Stone deliver this formula in spades. Imagine if Mastodon were a two-piece or if Today Is the Day were a tad bit friendlier, and the picture becomes clearer. Live, Black Cobra is reportedly a force to be reckoned with. By the time they make it to the Hi-Tone on Tuesday night, the duo will be seasoned by an unforgiving touring schedule that regularly puts the band on the road more than 200 days a year.

Last but not least, Relapse Records’ Unearthly Trance, the opening band on the bill, is a brutal beast that can effortlessly move between the pounding thud of Neurosis and the aggro-noise of Unsane.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Movies as Memories

There just aren’t enough weird movies being made. That’s the conclusion I came to after seeing Be Kind Rewind, French filmmaker Michel Gondry’s ode to VHS and Fats Waller.

Jack Black and Mos Def star as Jerry and Mike, two dopey New Jersey video-store denizens. After Jerry (Black) is magnetized in a power-plant accident, he erases all the tapes in the store, leading Jerry and Mike (Mos Def) to remake the films themselves to replenish the stock. (That’s the straightforward part.)

Be Kind Rewind isn’t just bizarre; it’s positively oblique. But weird for weirdness’ sake is of limited use, so it’s a good thing Be Kind Rewind has all kinds of add-on attributes that help make it as good as it is: charming, touching, funny, silly, harmlessly intellectual, and only recommended for those with a high-tolerance suspension of disbelief.

Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) owns Be Kind Rewind, the Passaic, New Jersey, VHS-only rental store where the movie is set. His building is slated for demolition to make room for a condominium development, and he has 60 days to vacate the premises or come up with the money to bring the building up to code.

Fletcher takes a trip to New York City, and he leaves the store in the hands of his sole employee, Mike, with one major bit of instruction: Keep Jerry out of the store. Jerry is the neighborhood conspiracy nut who works in a junkyard and frequents the video store. He also has Black’s manic energy, so he leaves a wake of carnage behind him wherever he goes.

Once Jerry gets magnetized and destroys the store’s inventory, he and Mike remake the movies so that word won’t get back to Fletcher that they’ve ruined Be Kind Rewind.

Writer/director Gondry was behind the 2004 jaw-dropper Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. As expected, Be Kind Rewind is visually playful, particularly when Mike and Jerry start remaking films. These moments have a lo-fi glory as we’re shown the nuts and bolts of the duo’s amateur movie magic.

As Mike and Jerry redo Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, RoboCop, Driving Miss Daisy, and When We Were Kings, Gondry’s film makes its primary statement: Our interpretations and memories of films and history are more important than the original artifacts. As one characters says, “Our past belongs to us. We can change it if we want.” Historical truth bows to the personal one.

The subtexts don’t stop there, though. Be Kind Rewind is also a cautionary tale, examining the effect of economic and political forces on art, and, specifically, how Hollywood squelches creativity and enterprise as it dumbs things down for the marketplace.

As a VHS video-store vet myself, I reveled in the re-creation of the subculture — though, critically, Be Kind Rewind takes place in the unhip variety, as opposed to the hyper-literate world of Clerks. Be Kind Rewind’s motto is “1 Video. 1 Day. 1 Dollar. Everyday.” The independent store’s battle with a big-box video store rings thoroughly true, and the film wonders, what is destroyed by progress? Pour one out for Collierville’s Movieland, R.I.P.

Be Kind Rewind

Now playing

Multiple locations