Years ago, I think people took more pride in their work, even when their jobs involved routine labor. It’s also possible that they saw marketing opportunities that we just overlook today. Of course, nowadays when you want to find the name of a builder, or a contractor, or any sort of manufacturer, you search the Internet or flip through the phone book. But years ago, you could actually admire a fellow’s work, and often find their names right on it.
From the AP, sort of:
“Minnesota Timberwolves fans went to bed wondering how O.J. Mayo would fit in with their guard-heavy team.
“Memphis Grizzlies backers hit the hay hoping that Kevin Love would open things up for Rudy Homosexual in the frontcourt.
“Both groups woke up Friday morning to a totally different reality, thanks to an eight-player blockbuster trade in the wee hours of the night that changed the faces of both teams …”
Boy, you can say THAT again. Actually, the original AP story had Rudy Gay’s name correct. What’s reprinted above is the version edited by Christian news service, ONENEWSNOW. You see, the good folks at ONENEWS think “gay” is a bad word and so they have installed some sort of program that automatically replaces “gay” with “homosexual.” Often with hilarious results. Read the rest here.
Trust us, you’ll have a homosexual old time.
Straight out the streets of Memphis, Tennessee, the robbery capital of the U.S.,” Three 6 Mafia proclaim at the outset of their new album, Last 2 Walk, and not because they’re about to say anything insightful or interesting about this predicament. They just want to exploit the problem of Memphis crime to give the reckless sensationalism they sell an undercurrent of authenticity — all the better to serve the (real and would-be) gangstas, thrill-seeking cultural tourists, and genuflecting hipsters who make up much of their fan base …
Chris Herrington isn’t a big fan of Three 6 Mafia’s latest. Read his review.
Sometimes we turn Flyer writer Chris Davis loose on an unsuspecting world. This is one of those times. Read on, kids.
Obama isn’t simply leading McCain in the polls. At the moment he’s handing poor Huggy Bear his wrinkled old fanny. That may not mean a whole heckuva lot this far from November but it’s at least a hushpuppy for all the American Idol and selected the obviously inexperienced, clearly unelectable candidate Black “>McBama, a secret negro possible Marxist, and sexy-ass Muslim extremest with a bad reputation for being the most reliably liberal dude in the Senate.
If any or all of those slams against Obama sound vaguely familiar its because they’re all variations on the same boilerplate used against Democratic contenders by Republicans and Republican enablers since the disgraced Nixon — a liberal hero and American patriot compared to the players at BushCo. — skulked his jowly, conniving way out of the Oval office.
Well, the secret (some might say magic) negro part is new, but only because it wouldn’t have worked very well against Kerry or Gore. And frankly, none of the GOP’s threadbare old tricks –not even the flagrant racist pandering— appears to be working too well this time around, no thanks to the conflicted Democrats who still can’t wrap their Beltway-muddled brains around radical ideas like popular Democracy.
Not to diminish a revolutionary brand of netroots politics pioneered by 50-state strategist Howard Dean and perfected by Team Obama, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that, like Darth Vader redeeming himself in Episode VI (only more accidentally), the Republicans will be the Democrats best allies in ’08. Why? Well I’m glad I asked.
Reason #5: The GOP is a rudderless party trying desperately not to sail off the edge of little Tommy Friedman’s flat world.
Republicans are out of ideas, as the saying goes. In particular Karl Rove, “The Architect” responsible for George W. Bush’s rise to unprecedented power is completely and hilariously out of step with the Mainstream. Recently the man the President calls Turdblossom cracked on Obama saying,
“Even if you never met him [Obama], you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”
Well, who sounds like a polo playing elitist now? Sure, once upon a time the GOP could spin tales about latte loving, arugula-eating liberals and it scared the hell out of heart-landers who’ve since discovered that lattes are pretty good and Iron Chef is almost as awesome as MXC. In that same meanwhile there’s been no great swelling of Rove’s peers in the country club set.
Some have read dark machinations into the Rovian imagery but really, it just sounds like Uncle Karl needs to drop in on Dr. Phil and talk about his wounded inner child who’s quivering and quite unable to shake away the memory of that horrible moment when he was eight and given an atomic wedgie by the 10-year-old guy with his candy cigarettes and a prematurely developed girlfriend who helped.
Reason #4: The Ick Factor
Yes, there’s still a lot of racial tension in America. But only the ickiest ickwads want to be associated with things like this.
And let’s not forget about the Texas GOP, which has ungenerously (and rather shamefacedly, in fact) donated to Midwestern flood victims the $1,500 in rent collected from a controversial vendor selling racist buttons at their recent convention. A party spokesman told reporters that Texas Republicans neither condone nor profit from racism. Although they obviously did both until it became inconvenient and embarrassing.
Reason #3: Jerry Falwell is dead and evangelical extremists.
It’s really too bad that Rev. Falwell, the conservative activist who blamed gays, lesbians, feminists, abortionists, and the ACLU for the 2000 terrorist attacks in New York, didn’t live long enough to witness the horrible Midwestern floods which proved once and for all that sometimes God Almighty aims his devastating wrath at America’s heartland where hard-handed Christian men grow corn, drink sweet tea and marry wholesome female wives who go to church and give birth to fat freckled boys who quickly learn the value of a dollar, the meaning of a hard day’s work, and how to love the Lord as heterosexually as dear old Dad.*
Rigid divisiveness may not define spirituality in modern America but it has become the Religious Right’s public political identity. That’s the late Rev. Falwell’s civic legacy and long distance diagnosis of a brain dead Terri Schiavo— a cynical, self-conscious gift to conservative Evangelicals — cost the former Senate Majority Leader his shot at the White House.
Reason #2: The Ooh Scary Booga Booga Industrial Complex
We live in a scary world, but the spectacular flameout of Rudy Giuliani’s terror-centric run for the White House suggests that scare tactics are so 2004. This week McCain who has occasionally acknowledged that radical Islam is good for Republicans was forced to repudiate his surrogate Charlie Black who said another terrorist attack would be good for his candidate. Why would the death of thousands of Americans be good for anyone, let alone a politician whose party failed to protect America from one such event already and has supposedly spent the last eight years blowing through blood and treasure in the name of national security? It’s difficult to say, though one might be tempted to call it wishful thinking on Black’s part. Though he is usually identified by the media as a conservative spokesman or a “McCain advisor” Black is also a lobbyist whose creepy clients benefit from more war in the Middle East. His firm represented Ahmed Chalabi, the international con man who supplied much of the information used by the Bush Administration to sell America on war with Iraq. It also coached Eric Prince CEO of the private military firm Blackwater, prior to a Congressional hearing.
Fortunately for the Democrats, you don’t have to know that Black’s a fear merchant who uses 9/11 as a license to print money to recognize that anybody caught pondering the positive externalities of a large scale terrorist attack is complete ghoul.
Reason #1: (Drumroll) white alpha male with an awesome ride, important job, and junky wife there’s some other rich old white alpha male with an awesome car, important job and junky wife who’s sick of his shit.
*Before anybody says anything, I don’t think god was punishing anybody. That would be insane.
Let’s assume there are two lesbians living in Santa Monica, California. We don’t know them. We’ve never seen them. For all practical purposes, they don’t exist for us.
Now let’s assume that they decide to get married, and they tie the knot in California. We still don’t know them.
We still have never seen them. So far as we know, they still don’t even exist. Whether they just live together or get married, neither their existence nor their marital status affects us.
That being the case, what the heck business is it of ours what they do?
Charley Reese tackles the issue of gay marriage in this week’s Rant.
Now that the rush and weariness of draft day has passed, time to pick through the aftermath and look ahead. Here’s my mammoth breakdown of where things stand as the Grizzlies embark on the off-season:
Does this trade make the Grizzlies better in the short term?
Maybe not. The Grizzlies lose the only solid veteran on the roster in Mike Miller and the trade leaves the roster out of balance and potentially lacking a lot of important qualities that adding Kevin Love would have provided — toughness, rebounding, a great pick-and-roll/pick-and-pop partner for Mike Conley, someone to start the break, etc. …
Read the rest of Chris Herrington’s latest take on Grizzlies’ Draft Day at Beyond the Arc.
Times certainly do change. When Mel Brooks’ smash, multiple Tony award-winning musical adaptation of his satirical 1968 film, The Producers opened on Broadway in 2001 it was gobbled up whole by critics who, in euphoric spasms, described it as nourishing comic manna from old-school showbusiness heaven. The slobbering reception, if a bit sycophantic, had to at least be sweet vindication for Brooks, a master parodist who won a best screenplay Oscar for the original film only after watching it stink up the box office amid angry, nearly universal critical outrage. Even the drug-taking, lovemaking, rock-and-roll revolutionaries of ’68 rejected Brooks’ iconoclasm and his evenhanded mockery of both the ossified establishment and the self-important counterculture. It probably goes without saying that a scant two decades after the end of WWII, mainstream America still wasn’t quite prepared for the satirical story of two Jewish swindlers (brilliantly and manically played by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder) who concoct a plan to bilk millions from investors in a glitzy Broadway show called Springtime For Hitler, a musical celebrating in song and dance the glorious achievements of a handsome young fuhrer and his hip, hypersexualized Nazi Party.
For all of its naughty words and bad intentions the retooled Producers musical is never all that shocking to anyone except perhaps the militantly prudish and gay activists who might be offended by how long Brooks tries to drag out the same “laugh-at-the-funny-homos” gag. And that’s a bit of a problem. We should, at the very least, be joyously grossed out by these revolting creatures of pure avarice, just as we were by Mostel and Wilder’s original takes on the repulsive Bialystock and his compulsive partner Bloom. But just like it’s equally groundbreaking movie-to-musical cousins Hairspray and Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, The Producers loses a more than it gains in its translation to the stage. Like The Holy Grail, in particular, it becomes a fetish object for fans who can’t wait to stroke their programs while silently mouthing their favorite lines along with the cast. And at Playhouse on the Square’s final preview there were more than a few people in the crowd vibrating in their seats, anticipating such famous quips as, “Blue Blanket!” and “I’m in pain, I’m wet, AND I’M STILL HYSTERICAL!”
Playhouse heavy-hitter Dave Landis seems like he should be able to settle fairly easily into the slippery shoes of the greedy, grossly libidinous Broadway producer Max Bialystock. That’s not the case, however, as Landis, the exceptional director of Compleat Female Stage Beauty, plays the role too close to his vest allowing his equally gifted costar Michael Detroit to upstage him at every turn in the role of Bloom, a sputtering nebbish.
Ken Zimmerman, Playhouse on the Square’s original artistic director, who put audiences in the aisles with his portrayal of a wicked, if pragmatic capitalist in last season’s Urinetown, engages in some expert scenery-chewing as the flamboyantly homosexual (not to mention completely thick) Broadway director Roger De Bris. He obviously (and rightfully) derives a tremendous amount of pleasure knowing just how much his sparkling, silver dress makes him resemble the Chrysler building. David Foster, last seen as a mildly effective Johnny Depp wannabe in Pirates of Penzance is no less delightful as Carmin Ghia, Zimmerman’s houseboy and partner in fabulousness. It’s a true shame that Foster’s only given one threadbare joke to stretch over the entire show, though he swishes through it with zany aplomb.
Bruce Bergner’s scenic design, a mix of painted drops and practical furniture on wagons, is almost as flat and uninspired as Ben Wheeler’s lights and Jay Berkow’s bloodless choreography. To that end The Producers is the perfect opposite of Theatre Memphis’ West Side Story where extraordinary design and tight dancing make up for an unevenness among actors and vocalists. In this case, bland design and washed out lighting leaves Landis, Detroit, and a talented cast of professionals looking like well-intentioned community theater performers.
Showgirls wearing giant pretzels, Volkswagens, weiners, and German Shepherds on their heads will always by funny. But once you get past the awesome headgear, Rebecca Powell’s costumes for the “Springtime for Hitler” sequence are just plain boring. Brooks’ design team took appropriately the look to extremes of sexual fetishism and anything short of that is going to be a letdown. As cute as dancing girls in too-short liederhozen may be, they just can’t compete with the sadomasochist connotations of stormtroopers in tight leather hipboots.
To do justice to The Producers a director must push beyond the boundaries of good taste to see if Brooks’ time-proven material can still make audiences squirm with guilty delight. It’s an exercise in excess irreverence given a minimal, overly reverent treatment in its Memphis premiere.
by Chris Davis
The Memphis Grizzlies introduced new draft picks O.J. Mayo and Darrell Arthur at a press conference today in the lobby at FedExForum …
Most player introduction press conferences feature the men of the hour in business attire. Darrell Arthur looked the part in a conservative gray suit. Occasionally, we’ve seen players dress down, as in the T-shirt-and-jeans approach of Darko Milicic or second-round pick Will Soloman.
But O.J. Mayo set a new sartorial standard with a fashion-forward look: plaid bowtie and brown vest on a gray-blue shirt, designer jeans, and unlaced brown-and-orange Nike high-tops. He just laughed when I asked afterward if he was tempted to bust out a little “Gold Digger” from the dais. …
Read Chris Herrington’s evaluation of the Grizzlies’ draft at Beyond the Arc.
Johnnie Mosley says he’s been riding the bus for “a looong time.”
Mosley founded Citizens for Better Service, a MATA watchdog group, in 1993.
“At the time, MATA had a proposal to increase bus fares and decrease routes,” he says. “A group of us riders thought it would be best to form a group to speak for the concerns of bus riders.”
Though they speak out any time MATA proposed to increase fares or cut routes, Mosley says the group also deals with complaints against bus drivers. Though MATA has a complaint line, riders don’t always feel they have been heard when they use it.
“MATA has some good bus drivers, but occasionally drivers won’t even answer a simple question,” Mosley says. “Once my group becomes aware of their complaints, we’ll take their concerns directly to [Will] Hudson.”
With higher gas prices — MATA’s next gas contract will charge them $4.52 a gallon versus the current $2.87 — Mosley is worried that the transit company will once again try to raise fares or cut services. He would like to see them increase services instead.
“There are some areas of town where, if you miss one bus, you may have to wait another hour, an hour and a half for the next one. That’s terrible,” he says. “The more people see buses running in their neighborhoods, the more likely they are to get on one.”
“If push comes to shove and they have to cut routes and increase fares, we want to make sure that it’s fair and equitable,” Mosley says.
To reach Citizens for Better Service, call Mosley at 789-6463. — Mary Cashiola
It’s the economy.
The grimmest economic picture in at least 30 years underlies school funding, property taxes, suburban flight, Grizzlies attendance, aerotropolis, stable neighborhoods, and the tenuous position of Memphis as a major-league city.
Mayor Herenton blasted the media for mistreating him and Joseph Lee, but the media should be blasted for obsessing over Herenton and the NBA draft while tip-toeing around a bigger story.
The stats of O. J. Mayo and Kevin Love and Mike Miller, the odds of the Grizzlies getting the first or second pick, the relative merits of the fifth pick and the 28th pick — we were bombarded with this stuff for three weeks on television and in the daily paper, culminating in Thursday’s NBA draft.
Does anyone honestly think 14,000 people are regularly going to show up 41 times this season to watch the Grizzlies? When Peabody Place is getting out of retail and entertainment? When the Redbirds are struggling to sell $7 tickets? When uncompleted Memphis subdivisions are selling for pennies on the dollar? When the very survival of Ford, General Motors, Morgan Keegan, and First Horizon as we have known them is in question? And we’re talking about the injustice of Chris Douglas Roberts going in the second round and not getting a guaranteed contract?
Here are the stats that matter. Oil $140 a barrel. Gasoline, $4 a gallon. FedEx stock $78, down from $119 a year ago. First Horizon $7.50, down from $39. Regions Financial $11, down from $35. Suntrust Banks $37, down from $90. International Paper $23, down from $41. Northwest Airlines $6, down from $24. Pinnacle Airlines $3, down from $20.
General Motors, once the symbol of American industrial might, is $11, down from $43. Its stock market value is $6.5 billion. Some American businessmen are worth more than that.
Those companies have a big Memphis and Tennessee presence, and thousands of their employees have lost their savings and some of them will lose their jobs and we’re supposed to worry about a basketball team?
Reporters and sports executives act like the sports world and the business world are in separate universes. In the 1970s, an NBA player was doing well to make $200,000. The NBA salary structure that pays Pau Gasol $14 million and Brian Cardinal $7 million for a season is as unsustainable as the $40,000 SUV or the third shift at Ford and GM or the $120 round-trip ticket on Northwest. Business cuts jobs and wages and closes plants or cuts services. The NBA and the Grizzlies tweak their marketing campaigns.
Watch the bottom fall out of the sports and entertainment market in 2009. Last season, a Grizzlies crowd of 11,000 was alarming. This season, 11,000 could be encouraging. Watch a couple of the Tunica casinos closely. Watch expensive restaurants close. Watch for some private schools to close. Watch for more malls to close. Watch for a surge in free, neighborhood-based entertainment like the upcoming concert series this fall at the renovated Overton Park Shell. The easiest way to save money is to cut out $40 tickets, unnecessary driving, and $7 drinks.
And watch for city and county government to make hundreds as opposed to scores of layoffs in 2009, when state and federal funds dry up and homeowners get their new property reappraisals that reflect the decline of 25 percent or more in the value of their homes. And if they don’t get a reduction, watch for a stampede to the assessor’s office and the board of adjustment by homeowners and businesses making appeals.
In all the commotion and outrage over Joseph Lee, it seems something is being overlooked. The former president of MLGW could have spared himself a lot of grief by having a conversation with former City Councilman Edmund Ford that went something like this:
“Councilman, you’re behind on your electric bill. You’ve been behind for a while. You’re putting me, the board, and this company in a bad spot. I needed council approval to get this job. I needed your support as chairman, especially. I appreciate that, but you’re testing my patience.
“Here’s the deal. If this bill isn’t paid within a week, I’m going to have a press conference. I’m going to bring your utility bills, and I’m going to explain exactly what I am doing and why I am doing it so there won’t be any misunderstanding or, heaven forbid, charges of wrongdoing.
“This looks fishy. Anyone can see that. So I’m not just going to cover my butt, I’m going to do it before somebody else tries to get me in a jam.
“The choice is yours. Pay up, or I go public. If it makes you look like a deadbeat, that’s your problem. You can join me at the press conference if you want to go that route, but we’re not going to hide anything. See you.”
Federal prosecutors in Memphis did what they had to do in dismissing their case against Lee and Ford. Prosecutors are not supposed to bring a case unless they think they can win it at trial. After Ford was acquitted by a jury — even though the jury watched videotapes of Ford taking payments from Joe Cooper — it was extremely unlikely that a jury would convict Ford and Lee. That doesn’t mean they didn’t think they had a case.
Interesting item in The Wall Street Journal this week. FedEx was named as one of three companies that are “baring their claws” during tough times and aggressively going after greater market share at the expense of their weaker competitors. In other words, the strong shall survive. Maybe in five years we’ll see 2008 as a pivotal year for FedEx, in a good way.
There’s reason for long-term optimism about the Northwest-Delta merger and Memphis International Airport as well. Delta CEO Richard Anderson seemed genuine when speaking about keeping the Memphis hub, albeit in a reduced capacity. He restated his optimism about the merger in national newspapers last week. And, for what it’s worth, he carried his own luggage to his car after speaking at a Memphis Chamber of Commerce event a couple weeks ago.
