Month: March 2008

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Mississippi Casts a Vote for President Tuesday

CREDIT: jbpics

Tuesday is the Magnolia state’s day to rise and shine, as Mississippi Democrats go to the polls and choose between presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Illinois senator, who is heavily favored because of the preponderance of African-American voters among the voters, would regain his momentum on the treadmill with a victory. But the never-say-die Clintons showed up in force over the last few days — Bill and Hillary and Chelsea, too. So who knows?

Watch this space. We’ll keep you informed as to how the 40 or so delegates break.

–Jackson Baker

Categories
News

Topless Clubs in Memphis to Face Naked Truth?

On a recent Thursday night at the Gold Club, a topless, Caucasian woman with long, dark hair and an ample bosom snakes around a brass pole in the center of the stage. Occasionally, when the music’s intensity heightens, she jumps into the air and lands in an impressive full split on the floor.

One man, seated at the end of the stage, inserts a dollar bill into his mouth, and the woman approaches him slowly. She smiles as she pulls his head toward her breasts and holds it there for several seconds. Then, as she pulls away, she uses her hands to push her breasts together and grabs the dollar between them. The woman saunters away to finish her routine, leaving the man looking dazed, like a boy who’s seen his first nudie mag …

Jackson Baker, John Branston, and Bianca Phillips team up to take a look at the brewing controversy surrounding Memphis strip clubs. Read it all here.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

FROM MY SEAT: Know Thine Enemy

Memphis
hosts the Conference USA basketball tournament for the fourth year in a row this
week, with the hometown Tigers aiming for a third straight championship. (The
most distinct memory from these tourneys at FedExForum remains Darius
Washington’s tears at the end of the epic title game won by Louisville in 2005.)

While
the players in uniform for the Tigers will be familiar, there will be 11 other
teams aiming to steal some spotlight from the country’s second-ranked team. Here
are five C-USA stars who have earned some attention.

• Robert
Vaden, UAB — The junior guard from Indianapolis is the Tigers’ Chris
Douglas-Roberts’ only competition for C-USA Player of the Year (to be announced
on Wednesday). Vaden is among the top 20 scorers in the nation (22.8 points per
game) and leads the entire country in three-point field goals (138). He scored
27 points against Memphis on February 16th in a game his Blazers should have
won, a miraculous run by the Tigers over the game’s final 90 seconds reversing
fortunes. Last Saturday at FedExForum, he made only three of 13 three-point
attempts and was limited to 13 points in a blowout U of M victory. He scored a
career-high 41 points (including nine treys) in a win at UTEP February 27th,
earning his second C-USA Player of the Week honor of the season. A transfer from
Indiana, Vaden was a second-team All-Big 10 selection in 2005-06.

• Robert
McKiver, Houston — This senior guard from New Haven, Connecticut, scored 52
points in a Cougar win over Southern Miss February 27th. The outburst is the
highest point total for a Division I player this season and broke a Hofheinz
Pavilion scoring record previously held by one Larry Bird. McKiver is the
second-leading scorer in C-USA and, like Vaden, among the top 20 in the nation.
He scored 20 against Memphis on January 30th, then 21 at FedExForum on February
13th. With more than 120 three-pointers, McKiver is just behind Vaden and among
the top 10 long-distance shooters in the country. A three-time C-USA Player of
the Week this season, McKiver will certainly be named first-team all conference
for the second year in a row.

• Stefon
Jackson, UTEP — Miner coach Tony Barbee — a longtime assistant under John
Calipari at Memphis — has had as talented a go-to scorer as any coach in C-USA.
The junior from Philadelphia is sixth in the nation in scoring, averaging more
than 24 points per game. Jackson dropped 27 on the Tigers at FedExForum on
February 2nd, a game Memphis pulled out in the final minutes, 70-64. Unlike
Vaden and McKiver, Jackson’s team doesn’t have a bye into the tourney
quarterfinals. UTEP will play SMU at 2:30 Wednesday, then face Houston Thursday
if they can top the Mustangs. A three (or four?) game run by the Miners will
leave Jackson atop this week’s scoring chart.

•
Jermaine Taylor, UCF — Don’t confuse this sharp-shooting swingman with the
middleweight boxer of the same name. This Taylor’s knockouts come from behind
the three-point stripe, where he was among the C-USA leaders with more than 70
bombs on the season. The Tigers’ Antonio Anderson bottled him up on February
9th, holding him to 13 points and nary a trey. Taylor’s Knights are the fourth
seed in the tourney and will receive a bye into Thursday’s quarterfinals. Should
they beat the winner of the Southern Miss/Rice opening-round game, UCF could
face Memphis in the semifinals.

•
Darrell Jenkins, East Carolina — The Pirates struggled to a record of 11-18 this
season, but it was no fault of their senior point guard, who led C-USA in
assists for a second straight year, averaging 6.1 per game. He enters the
tournament having scored a career-high 30 points against Tulane in ECU’s final
regular-season game. Along with Jackson, Jenkins will be among Wednesday’s
headliners, as the Pirates (the 10th seed) face Tulsa in the tourney’s opening
game at noon.

NOTE:
The tourney’s top seed, Memphis will open play at 6 pm in Thursday’s
quarterfinals. Should they advance, they’ll play in the semis at 3:30 pm Friday.
The championship will tip off at 10:30 am Saturday and be televised nationally
on CBS.

Categories
News

Police Charge Victim’s Brother with Six Murders

Jessie L. Dotson, a convicted murderer who served 14 years in prison, has been charged with the murders of six people at a house on 722 Lester Street, including his younger brother Cecil Dotson.

“We can all rest a little easier today,” Memphis Police Department Director Larry Godwin said at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

Godwin said police are “confident” Jessie Dotson, 33, is the only killer, although the investigation remains open. He said the brothers began arguing last Saturday afternoon and the argument continued throughout the evening, culminating in the “horrific” shootings and stabbings of nine people.

Dotson is charged with six counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted first-degree murder.The dead, all of whom were shot to death, included two of Cecil Dotson’s sons, one four years old and the other two years old. Three other young children in the home were stabbed and critically injured.

Godwin said Jessie Dotson first shot his brother then killed or attempted to kill the others in the house to cover up the first murder. The bodies were not discovered by police for more than 30 hours.

Dotson, along with other family members of the victims, had been in protective custody most of last week. Rumors that the killings were gang reprisals have kept Memphians on edge all week.

“As a community, we are relieved that this was not a random act of violence,” said Godwin. “It was committed by a person who was known.”

Godwin said the more than $80,000 in reward money put up by the state and local governments and others would not be paid out.

Shelby County District Attorney General Bill Gibbons said prosecutors will make an announcement soon about whether they will seek the death penalty for Dotson, who is in the Shelby County Jail.

–John Branston

Categories
News

MGMT in London

Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden’s favorite band, MGMT, is touring Europe at the moment, where they have the top-rated video, “Time to Pretend.”

They’re also making a bunch of videoblogs of their journey. In this one, Andrew VanWyngarden (in the hat) and his bandmate Ben Goldwasser open a fruit stand and later try to find a copy of their CD in a record store, with mixed results. Their other vidblogs are on Youtube.com.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Memphis Week That Was

Yes, this is Memphis. And plenty of Memphians who live in old parts of the city never, ever go to Shelby Farms, which is outside the Interstate loop. And Memphis has more master plans than blues bars these days, what with the riverfront, Pyramid, Mid-South Fairgrounds, Graceland, zoo, airport aerotropolis, and Shelby Farms. And government doesn’t have any extra money, or so they say.

But Shelby Farms has a conservancy of people who seem to know what they are doing and really want to get it right. There is $50 million in public and private money available. The road issue is finally resolved and construction is well underway. And Shelby Farms is more than 4,000 acres, which is five times the size of Central Park in New York City. If anything, it is too big. And there are no Pyramids or old buildings to adapt or tear down. And a river runs through it. And Mayor Herenton is sitting this one out.

Three design firms are bidding to become the master designer. The Shelby Farms Park Conservancy will pick a designer but not necessarily a design. The designer can pick and choose. As consultant Alex Garvin said, the goal is to turn an ordinary park into something extraordinary.

So by all means go to the main branch of the public library and see what the three design candidates have in mind. Their imagination defies summarizing. And visit the Shelby Farms website.

Meanwhile, here are a few suggestions you probably won’t see any time soon.

The Willingham Express. Named for former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham, who once talked for 56 straight hours about the missing MATA bus station at FedExForum’s parking garage, this park shuttle totes visitors and their bikes for free, 10 hours a day, from points around the city. To get it started, MATA provides the services of five of the 4,978 buses in its parking lot on North Watkins. To pay for it, the Madison Avenue trolley line is closed, and its three regular passengers are each given new cars instead.

The Welch Driving Range and Pitch-and-Putt. Named for developer Jackie Welch, who proposed selling off part of Shelby Farms along Germantown Parkway and putting in, among other things, a driving range to raise money to improve the rest of the park. The proposal received exactly one enthusiastic response — mine. I hereby donate 50 used golf balls to the cause. And, priced right, I would bet that a driving range would draw more customers than any other feature in a park which looks, after all, like a golf course.

White Boy’s House of Games. Features in-line skating, skateboarding, BMX course, paddle tennis, and NASCAR worship to the musical accompaniment of Memphis party bands of the Sixties.

The Great Memphis Yard Sale and Swap Shop. The problem with high-end designers is that they are high-end designers. Their work would be improved by spending a few weekend afternoons visiting yard sales in Frayser, Whitehaven, Cordova, Midtown, and Germantown. If this recession keeps up, the bargains will be unbelievable.

Sierra Club Hug-a-Tree. Featuring an actual tree transplanted from Overton Park’s Old Forest for the zoo expansion. Wrap your arms around this baby and you’ll be green in no time. Add-on to the one million new trees one designer has already proposed. A million is an abstraction; 1,000,001 is a real number.

Whac-A-Tree. Inspired by the popular game Whac-A-Mole, customers line up for a chance to take an ax or chainsaw to an actual tree while a member of the Sierra Club hurls verbal abuse.

MPD Free Bike Exchange. This one’s for everyone in Memphis who has ever had a bike stolen, which is to say everyone in Memphis. The bikes are free, and the supply is regularly supplemented by the Memphis Police Department’s impound lot. The catch is that they are painted dorky colors and have big-booty seats and sissy handlebars. Steal that? Damn, might as well bring it back or dump it in Patriot Lake, which is cleansed periodically of bikes, ala the Amsterdam canals.

Baby-Bass Pro Lake. Face it, The Pyramid is too hard to adapt. But Bass Pro polishes its tarnished image in Memphis by stocking new lakes and donating lures and worms to any fisherman under the age of 12 or over the age of 65.

Memphis Homebuilders Street-Soccer Complex. In honor of the Mexican laborers who built 98 percent of the homes in Shelby County in the last 15 years, this is no Mike Rose Fields. The fields are irregular size with patches of bare ground, uniforms and mothers are banned, and the official language is Spanish. If you can’t speak it, you can’t play. Best quesadillas in Memphis at the concession stand.

Design-On-A-Dime Gardens. One dime gets you and three of your friends land rights to a tenth of an acre garden plot. Free mulch, seeds, and use of tools. HGTV meets American Idol when park visitors pick the gardens of the year and winners get a free round-trip plane ticket to the famous garden of their choice.

Joey’s Hard Luck Hardcourts. Named for Memphis Tiger Joey Dorsey, these outdoor courts have windscreens, lights, and decent nets. Several times a year, members of the Tiger basketball team show up for a free-throw shooting contest against all comers. Three out of ten usually takes it.

Bloggers Paint-Ball Pit. Hosted by blogger Thaddeus Mathews, players are divided into teams according to which group they hate the most — blacks, whites, liberals, or Willie Herenton. No blood no foul. Masks mandatory to assure anonymity. Limited to first 5,000 entrants. Sponsored by The Med and the Memphis Funeral Directors Association.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Two Parties Go Different Directions on Naming Trustee Candidates

Acting Shelby County Trustee Paul Mattila, a Democrat, said Friday he had “no problem” with the decision Thursday night by the Shelby County Democratic Party’s executive committee to withhold nominating a candidate for the August general election ballot until a wide-open party convention later this month.

“I knew I’d have to work for it, anyhow,” said Mattila, who was appointed Trustee last month by majority vote of the Shelby County Commission. There had been some speculation that Mattila, a longtime aide to the late Trustee Bob Patterson, might be nominated as the Democratic candidate by the executive committee itself, but a party committee recommended the convention process instead.

The convention will be held on March 29 at Airways Middle School.

Meanwhile, the Shelby County Republican Party‘s steering committee, also meeting on Thursday night, resolved to appoint a GOP nominee at a meeting of the steering committee on April 1.

Both parties face the nomination process with a measure of uncertainty. As has usually been the case over the years, the Democrats simmer with factionalism, based party on the racial divide and partly on what has been a rough tri-partite division of the party apparatus between a group loyal to Shelby County Commissioner and ex-Teamster leader Sidney Chism, one corresponding to the old Ford political organization, and another composed of members of Mid-South Democrats in Action and other relatively new organizations.

Then there is Del Gill, a perpetual party-of-one who unsuccessfully challenged the county commission’s right to name a successor to Patterson and had demanded a fully-fledged primary election instead. Gill has made a point of challenging Mattila’s bona fides and was among those agitating for a convention.

Gill came to Thursday night’s meeting armed with a panoply of formal motions but was largely held at bay by party vice chair Desi Franklin, who was subbing for chairman Keith Norman. The chairman is a Baptist minister whose frequent absences and what some consider a pro forma leadership style have upset executive committee members across the factional divides. So far, though, no candidate to unseat Norman at next month’s party reorganization meeting has yet emerged.

The Republicans, too, have divisions — a fact underscored by last year’s steering-committee decision to endorse mayoral candidate John Willingham in the Memphis city election. The bare majority favoring Willingham against a non-endorsement option was largely composed of conservative members from the suburbs and outer Shelby County — an irony pointed out by Memphians on the committee. Willingham would go on to finish a distant fourth in the mayor’s race, earning just over a thousand votes overall.

How the Republican divide will play into the selection of a party candidate is hard to predict. Debra Gates, chief administrator in the Trustee’s office, had been backed by most Republicans on the commission during the appointment process but has indicated she has no interest in running for the office. Some Republicans wondered if Mattila, who has friends across party lines, might be willing to run under their label but were rebuffed by the acting Trustee, a lifelong Democrat.

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About the commemorative
“Blues Notes” placed along Beale Street:

“Is there any explainable earthly reason why my name and those of Pat Kerr and John Tigrett’s should be placed alongside the true masters and heroes of American music: W.C. Handy, Otis Redding, B.B. King, Isaac Hayes, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam and Dave, and Elvis Presley!?! This is a travesty to Memphis music and an insult to the great contribution of the men and women whose sweat, blood, and God-given talent made Memphis the epicenter of the world’s music culture!!!” — IsaacTigrett

“Tigrett’s letter is some angry throw down on his stepmother, Ms. Pat Kerr Tigrett. There seems to be some sort of nasty family feuding going on.” — Summerlib

About “Promoter Ericson Advances Pyramid Plan,” by Jackson Baker, discussing an alternative to Bass Pro Shops’ plans for The Pyramid:

“Would Ericson object to a proviso excluding casino use? ‘No, they’re illegal in the state of Tennessee,’ the entrepreneur answered. BAH, HUMBUG. Put a moat around it and call it a Chickasaw tribe barge on a Federal waterway — none of this ‘state of Tennessee’ business!” — Toast

Comment of the week:

About “Policing Panhandling,” the

Center City Commission’s proposal to fund a security force to fight downtown panhandlers, by Bianca Phillips:

“When the Center City Commission stops funding the security — like human cockroaches — the panhandlers will be back.” — The Box

To share your thoughts, comments, concerns, and — maybe — get published, visit memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Book Features Books

Acting Out

John Rechy was 12 years old, in 1945, when for the first and only time he laid eyes on Marisa Guzman, though he already knew of her. She was the infamous “kept woman” of one of the richest, most powerful politicos in Mexico, and her father in El Paso despised her for it — despised her for bringing such shame on the family; despised her because she was not ashamed.

But there she was on the day of Rechy’s sister’s wedding: a woman sitting alone on a threadbare couch in an empty room, elegantly dressed and inhaling on a cigarette. Rechy was transfixed by her beauty, her poise, her “sublime” aloofness, and her challenge to the conservative attitudes of Mexican-American culture.

Rechy knew that culture, because he was born into it. He was Juan Rechy, son of a pious Mexican mother, who took pride in what she called her “pure” Spanish blood, and a violent father of Scottish descent, who went from successful orchestra conductor in Mexico to occasional musical tutor after he moved the family to Texas, where they barely made ends meet — a fact Juan Rechy hid from the outside, Anglo world.

This much we know from the opening chapters of About My Life and the Kept Woman (Grove Press), Rechy’s new memoir.

This much we learn later — and it isn’t the fictionalized account in the novel that made Rechy famous in 1963 (City of Night) or the nonfictional account that made Rechy a notorious literary figure in 1977 (The Sexual Outlaw):

He was a fair-skinned child who was able to “pass” for Anglo, but, like Marisa Guzman, he was aloof — a “ghost boy,” in the words of a neighborhood boy. He was bright too and fond of literature and writing, which brought him to the attention of a high school English teacher. One afternoon, she invited Rechy to her apartment; the same afternoon, she seduced him into losing his virginity. Then she threw him out, and Rechy soon threw himself into college studies. Then he met the demands of army life, but he wasn’t shipped to fight in Korea. He was assigned in Germany, and on leave in Paris he discovered one night where the easy money was: hustling.

Rechy moved to New York — a guy who played it straight but earned his way cruising Times Square. He moved to Los Angeles — a guy who played it straight but earned his way cruising Pershing Square. In San Francisco, he got a taste of S&M. And in New Orleans, he had his fill of sex, drag queens, and drugs. But he lived to write about it in a piece that Rechy titled “Mardi Gras,” and he mailed it to Evergreen Review. That “letter,” expanded to book form, became City of Night, and it threw him into the company of Christopher Isherwood and Allen Ginsberg. But Rechy’s hustling days weren’t over.

He headed for the “field of sexual anarchy” known in Los Angeles as Griffith Park, where he recalls 27 (yes, 27) sexual encounters in a single day and where, one day, he and another man were arrested. The charge: “oral copulation,” a felony. The judge’s verdict: guilty as charged. The sentence: probation and a fine, not the usual jail time, because, in the words of Rechy’s lawyer outside the courtroom, “of who you are.”

Free to go, Rechy went back to work, but it wasn’t at his typewriter. It was inside Griffith Park, and for the first time, Rechy writes, he wasn’t there for the pay. He was there because of who he was: an object of desire acting, unashamed, on his own desire.

This, finally, put him in the same company as Marisa Guzman, and Rechy doubles back, during scenes of crisis, to that sight of her throughout this memoir. He’d already been in the company of Isabel Franklin, an object of his fascination in high school — the “American” high school in El Paso where the lighter your skin color, the better for you. Isabel had spied on Guzman too that wedding day. She was, in fact, Guzman’s niece; her real name, Rechy learns, was Alicia Gonzales; and she went on to further falsify her background and marry a prominent San Francisco newspaper columnist. She’d lied her way into that marriage, and it failed. Rechy had lied his way through an underworld, and he survived. But as he writes in About My Life and the Kept Woman, he “escaped the final dangers of that world only through the accident of talent.” The man’s lucky to be alive.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Talking Shop

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

For many of us, a trip to one of the international markets in Memphis is almost like visiting a foreign country — the food labels are written in a different language, there’s an array of produce we have never seen, and foreign smells and languages whir in the air. The newly opened Sara Supermercado on Park near Getwell is no exception in many ways, and yet it’s different. With all the things hanging from the ceiling at Sara — Superman piñatas in the main grocery section, for example — it feels a little like you’ve stepped into a rather unusual birthday party.

Sara is owned and operated by Nathan Hammab, who moved to Memphis from Chicago three years ago and quit the beauty-supply business in order to open the market. The business consists of two stores. One is the small market carrying mostly Hispanic foods; the other is a butcher shop (pictured below) with a counter that stretches the length of the shop.

In the butcher shop, strips of cured beef for making jerky hang to dry above the counter. On display in the glass cases are marinated pork, beef, and chicken, skewered chicken, pork chops, several yards of sausages, and fresh seafood, among many, many other meats.

Price and item descriptions are mostly in Spanish, displayed on bright orange tags strung from wall to wall. The butcher speaks very little English, but Hammab will help out if pointing to the desired item and hand signs don’t get you anywhere.

Store hours are Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday.

Sara Supermercado, 3984 Park (562-5100)

The Peabody hotel, which recently received the Mobil four-star award, will partner with Jack Daniel’s for a Southern Dinner and Whiskey Tasting on Thursday, March 27th, at 6 p.m. The dinner is part of the 75th anniversary of the Peabody ducks, a tradition that started after a little too much whiskey.

Lynne Tolley, one of the distillery’s seven master tasters and owner of Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House Restaurant in Lynchburg will lead the whiskey tasting of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Black Label, Gentleman Jack Rare Tennessee Whiskey, and Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel at Capriccio Grill. The tasting will be followed by a four-course dinner featuring recipes adapted from Tolley’s Cooking with Jack. On the menu: Tennessee-smoked trout spread; spinach and beet salad with bacon dressing; cornbread and muffin cup ham biscuits; glazed salmon; beef brisket; and bread pudding for dessert.

Cost for the dinner is $85 per person plus tax and gratuity. Reservations can be made by calling Capriccio Grill at 529-4183.

Capriccio Grill, The Peabody, 149 Union (529-4000)

On Saturday, March 29th, Memphis in May is holding a barbecue-judging seminar on the judging process and the rules of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

Participants will learn about the official meat categories, the scoring process, and blind, on-site, and final judging, and, of course, sample barbecue during the simulated judging exercises. Attending the seminar, however, isn’t sufficient to becoming a certified judge. That badge is obtained after judging an official meat category at two Memphis In May-style barbecue contests as well as completing other requirements.

Cost for the seminar is $60 per person, and the registration deadline is March 21st. The event is being held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Grand Ballroom of the Holiday Inn Select at 160 Union. For more info, e-mail cscott@memphisinmay.org or visit memphisinmay.org.

In addition to its free cooking demonstrations on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, Williams-Sonoma now offers one-hour technique classes on Sundays at 11 a.m.

The series will cover soufflés (March 9th), Easter eggs (March 16th), balsamic vinegar (March 30th), knife skills (April 6th), pasta from scratch (April 20th), breakfast for Mom (May 4th), and grilling 101 (May 18th).

Classes are free of charge, but registration is required.

Williams-Sonoma, 7615 West Farmington (737-9990)