Month: August 2009

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Isaac Hayes

Like any other city in the world, Memphis sometimes does some things wrong (if you’re young, ask someone
what Union Avenue used to look like). But then again, it can do some
things so right (100 years ago, in 1977, when I graduated from high school, there were about
three places in downtown Memphis where you could get a drink and something to eat).

This past Saturday, the friends and family of entertainment
superstar and philanthropist Isaac Hayes hosted an open-to-the-public
ceremony to unveil Hayes’ new, bronze grave marker at Memorial Park
Funeral Home and Cemetery, and I was fortunate enough to be involved
and attend. (Full disclosure: I work at the Stax Museum of American
Soul Music.) “Rose for Black Moses: A Celebration and Commemoration of
the Life of Isaac Hayes” was one of the most beautiful things I have
ever seen in Memphis.

For starters, if you’ve never visited the Crystal Shrine Grotto at
Memorial Park, you should. It is an area designed and built during the
1930s by Mexican artist Dionico Rodriguez and it’s on the National
Register of Historic Places. It’s like a fairy-tale land, with a cave
filled with paintings and some five tons of quartz crystal, a serene
Pool of Hebron, trees carved into special chairs, and other things that
make it one of the most special places in the city.

“Roses” took place beside the grotto, with candles lighting the
water in the pool, a stage with Hayes’ covered grave marker, music
floating through the air, old friends and family members gathered, and
large urns which were filled with roses that the guests brought. Hayes’
lifelong friend and songwriting partner David Porter and his widow
Adjowa Hayes worked tirelessly to get all of this arranged so that
people in Memphis could come and celebrate his life (most of the
speakers talked about Isaac, their friend and the man who constantly
gave back instead of always taking). The marker would make his grave a
place for people to come visit and pay their respects.

I won’t gush on, but let me just say that near the end of the
ceremony, at sunset in Saturday’s perfect weather, with white doves
released and circling the sky as the incomparable Shirley Brown was
singing, well, wailing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” it was something
magical. It was Memphis at its finest and it was something that
everyone who was there will never forget.

This all came at the end of a stressful week for me. Just the day
before, I got an e-mail from a friend who graduated from high school in
the spring and has been accepted at an esteemed college, but is so far
unable to get the loans he needs to leave inner-city Memphis and get
the education he deserves. This young man is one of the brightest, most
polite, most respectful kids I have ever known. He has worked his butt
off to get to this point. He has not been in any kind of trouble. He’s
a good kid with a big heart and now, because of nothing more than
financial circumstances, he may not get to go. I don’t know what to say
to him, other than the system needs a lot of work.

I also know a fellow who served two tours of duty in Iraq and had
part of his leg blown off by a roadside bomb. He came home
psychologically tortured and now he is sitting in a cell on the
psychiatric floor of the Shelby County Jail at 201 Poplar with no
family in this part of the country. To my knowledge, no one from the
United States Army has tried to contact him, no one has visited him,
and no one wants to acknowledge that when you are told to kill pretty
much anyone that you think might possibly pose a risk of any kind, even
if it is a family huddled in squalor behind doors you are told to kick
in, that this can cause severe temporary, if not permanent damage, to
the mind.

But I was so elated when I read an article online in The
Commercial Appeal the other day about a Memphian, Thomas Dyer, who,
in an attempt to stop suffering to the degree that he can, has become
the U.S. Army’s first Buddhist chaplain. The twisted part of me jumped
to the reader comments to see how far the ignorance meter would rise
among those who profess to believe in God but also in the murder of
innocent people, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,
although there were some real winners condemning him to an afterlife of
what they perceive to be hell. No big surprise there.

I know I’m not making a whole lot of sense here. Sometimes I don’t.
But if more people followed in the generous footsteps of Isaac Hayes,
and if we could possibly find a way to not deny a very deserving young
man a decent education, and if we could help out an Iraq war veteran
who is caught up in a molasses-like judicial system, and if we could
not argue over someone’s choice of a spiritual path to help the
suffering, maybe we could all chill out just a bit and see that it
doesn’t do any good to be close-minded and obsessed with what I see on
a daily basis as just a bunch of bullshit. There.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Soul Power

Jeffrey Levy-Hint’s rough-hewn, hugely enjoyable Soul Power
is both a tantalizing footnote to When We Were Kings, the 1996
documentary about George Foreman and Muhammad Ali’s 1974 “Rumble in the
Jungle,” and a celebration of the nearly forgotten three-day music
festival that took place in Zaire six weeks before the big fight.
There’s more good music in 93 minutes here than in all the Woodstock
footage available.

Levy-Hint assembles his film without voiceover or commentary,
resulting in an altogether more immersive thing than most music docs.
The scenes detailing the business arrangements for the concert can’t
hope to measure up to the performances, but once the concert gets
rolling, privileged moments abound: Manu DiBango’s impromptu
street-corner showcase with local African kids; B.B. King, looking
professorial in glasses, as he works through his proposed set list
backstage; Ali soliloquizing about hungry, underfed African flies and
buying into Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s illusory paradise; the
sheer flamboyance of the Spinners’ matching Shazam sportcoats; Celia
Cruz and the Fania All-Stars keeping everyone awake on the 14-hour
flight by jamming endlessly in the aisles; Don King expounding on his
“mode of operandi”; Miriam Makeba proudly proclaiming every syllable of
her impossible-for-Europeans-to-pronounce name to a joyful crowd; James
Brown asserting, “Don’t bury me while I yet live.”

One complaint: Why did Levy-Hint include all of a minor Bill Withers
acoustic number while only showing a couple of minutes of the amazing
performances from Afropop giants Franco and Rochereau? One hopes the
DVD will resolve this issue.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Kitchen Shift

CREDIT: justin fox burks

justin fox burks

Settle into a bar stool at South of Beale and notice how the
downtown pub gets it right: old-brick ambience, hip décor,
friendly servers, premium drafts. But don’t get so sidetracked by your
Schlafly pale ale that you forget to eat, because this newcomer to
South Main is redefining pub grub.

“We left the menu up to our chef, Jeff Garrett,” says
Brittany Whisenant, who, along with Ed Cabigao,
opened the pub in early August after three months of building
renovations. “All we said is that we want restaurant-quality food but
nothing too stuffy.”

The trio met when they worked at Grove Grill, but Garrett’s roots
reach back to New England, which probably explains his menu’s
propensity for seafood. There are new spins on crab cake (lobster and
scallop cakes served with wilted spinach and roasted-corn cream, $13),
mussels (steamed in bacon, butter bean, and tomato broth, $11) calamari
(steaks grilled with piquillo-pepper castrique, $10) and dip (sesame
shrimp toast with molten brie, $12).

Garrett’s menu, served until the bar closes between 2 and 3 a.m.,
offers something for red-meat eaters too. The S.O.B. burger ($11) piles
fried-green tomato, blue-cheese mousse, and pickled red onions on top
of a beef patty; the tasso ham and chipotle tamale ($12) is delicious
with its crawfish red-eye gravy; and the crispy oxtail wontons ($10)
are fried for dipping with mango-basil salsa.

“We thought people might be a little put off by the oxtail, which is
really cow’s tail,” Whisenant says. “But it’s one of our best-selling
appetizers so far. It tastes a little like short rib or pulled
pork.”

Eclecticism also extends to the pub’s wine list, seasonal sangria,
and half-a-dozen signature cocktails. Blueberry Muffin is a
crowd-pleaser, Whisenant says, listing these ingredients: blueberry
vodka, blueberry-pomegranate juice, and blue Curacao. The sangria also
is inventive, marinating peaches and basil in white wine. “They are
good drinks for the summer, but they will change up along with the
menu,” Whisenant says. “We want everything to stay fresh and
seasonal.”

South of Beale, 361 S. Main,

southofbeale.com
(526-0388)

Chef Ben Vaughn‘s new restaurant Grace hasn’t
opened yet, but it’s already moved.

Originally planned for an historic building on Cooper near Union,
Vaughn and his wife, Audrey, decided on a different location after a
frustrating summer spent chasing permits. They were denied a beer
permit because the building was too close to United Methodist Church,
despite the pastor’s support. A liquor license was possible but only
with a prolonged and expensive appeal.

“We had our hearts set on the building, but our pockets aren’t that
deep,” Vaughn says. “We decided it’s time to move on. What matters most
is getting our restaurant open.”

The couple hopes to open Grace — also the name of their
daughter — by the first week of October in the space formerly
occupied by the dessert and wine bar, Sweet Bistro. “We are excited
because the neighborhood has a lot of charm,” Vaughn says. “We can’t
wait to put the brown paper up on the windows and get going. The space
will be distinctly different.”

Plans so far include an intimate salon in the front of the
restaurant for mingling and drinks and seating for 50 in the back.
Dinner will be served Monday through Saturday.

And what about the food? Vaughn, who was executive chef at River
Oaks Restaurant in East Memphis, promises his trademark combination of
French cooking and locally grown ingredients, along with some new
techniques like sous vide, a cooking method popularized by Napa Valley
chef Thomas Keller. Food is vacuum-sealed in plastic to enhance its
flavor and texture and cooked slowly at low temperatures.

“We will have clean and simple food with lots of cool flavors pulled
together,” Vaughn explains. As an example, he cited this: crudo of tuna
served with chilled English peas, baby croutons and micro-celery salad
and finished with chilled roasted garlic horseradish. Micro celery by
the way, are tiny, organic celery tops.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A C’s Rollout: More or Less?

CREDIT: jackson baker

jackson baker

A C Wharton and wife Ruby arrive at the Election Commission

The campaign for Memphis mayor of acknowledged frontrunner A C
Wharton got under way this past week with a hyper-active opening
round.

It began last Thursday with the Shelby County mayor’s picking up his
petition at the Election Commission, continued through the opening of
Wharton’s Eastgate headquarters on Saturday, and persisted into the
current week, with the county mayor’s filing of his petitition on
Monday, followed by his formal endorsement on Tuesday by City Court
clerk Thomas Long, a onetime wannabe mayor himself.

Though the first two of these events drew considerable media
attention, and the crowd at the headquarters opening was large and
enthusiastic, the Wharton rollout was eventually overshadowed by former
Mayor Willie Herenton, who won’t disappear and can’t be put away
— and seemingly has the staying power of Rasputin and Bret Favre
put together.

Speaking on the radio show of blogger/broadcaster Thaddeus
Matthews Monday afternoon, Herenton announced that, despite the
fact that he had drawn a petition to run for his old job, he would not
become a candidate for mayor in the October 15th special election.

Nor, said Herenton, would he support his onetime campaign chairman
Wharton, with whose policies the former city mayor said he disagreed.
One case in point was the particular strategy Wharton is pursuing to
achieve consolidation — one that excludes the two separate school
systems, city and county.

Wharton will be the next mayor, however, Herenton said. “The only
person” who could prevent that, the ex-mayor said, was “Willie
Herenton,” and he himself would be bending his energies to achieving
victory in the 9th District congressional race against incumbent
Steve Cohen.

“He [Wharton] ought to thank me [for not running],” Herenton said.
He added later that, if he had run against Wharton in the special
election, “I’d have had to beat up on him real bad.”

The former mayor said also that he did not intend to endorse any of
the other candidates in the large field that has now declared for city
mayor. He devoted considerable time in the broadcast to pejorative
statements about Mayor Pro Tem Myron Lowery, who would not win
and did not deserve to win, he said.

Herenton insisted that his declared race for the congressional seat
now held by Cohen, whom he had endorsed in 2006, was a reality and that
he would begin his campaign for the office in earnest in January.

Asked by Matthews whether he stood by his characterization in the
Flyer‘s July 2nd issue of Cohen as an “asshole,” Herenton
affirmed that he could think of “no better term” to describe the
congressman, whom he also termed a “hypocrite.”

Herenton said he had been told by several former Jewish supporters
that they could not support him in his race against Cohen. “I respect
that,” said the former mayor, who went on to say that blacks were
unique as an ethnic bloc in that they allowed themselves to be
divided.

Though Herenton had been less than flattering toward a man who, he
said, was neither a leader nor a real mayor, he had still, in effect,
called the October 15th special mayoral election for the county mayor,
contending that Wharton might get as much as 65 percent of the vote in
what is already a teeming field.

So, in a left-handed-compliment sense, Wharton came out ahead in the
aftermath of Herenton’s three-hour talkfest with Matthews on KWAM.

And so, oddly enough, did two other candidates not beloved of the
ex-mayor. In a detailed accounting to Matthews of reasons why he
reluctantly ran for a fifth mayoral term in 2007, Herenton listed as
the most compelling reason this one: “Carol Chumney, had I not
been in that race, would have been your mayor, and I felt that would
have been disastrous for Memphis.”

Chumney may end up purchasing that sound bite and running it on
radio and TV spots — “disastrous” or no “disastrous.” For the
conventional wisdom is that the then maverick City Council member owed
her 35 percent second-place finish in 2007 to the incumbent mayor’s
presence in that race.

For years in the run-up to the 2007 race, Chumney had cast herself
as Herenton’s chief nemesis in city government. (She also was something
of a nemesis to many of her council-mates and to a staffer or two, but
that’s another matter.) She was so clearly a foil to a mayor whose
popularity was wearing thin that she, not former MLGW head Herman
Morris, became the designated alternative.

Indeed, had Morris not been a candidate, Chumney might actually have
had a chance at a majority. (To be sure, the same might have been said
of Morris had he been able to run one-on-one.)

Absent Herenton to play off against, Chumney’s defiant — and
somewhat abstract — insistence on change might not have resonated
so well with the voters. She would have had to run a different sort of
campaign, one more geared to positive assertions and specific
proposals. And her history of clashing with colleagues might have come
more to the fore.

So it was that the burden of having to run without Herenton to do
the dozens on was regarded by some as a serious problem for Chumney in
this year’s special-election race, especially since acknowledged
frontrunner Wharton, whatever his derelictions might be, was too smooth
and popular a figure to serve well as a substitute villain.

To the rescue, Willie Herenton! The former mayor’s blanket assertion
that he had run mainly to keep Chumney from winning in 2007 was pure
gift, a wholly unexpected repackaging of the Joan of Arc persona her
supporters had draped around her two years ago.

There seems little doubt that the status of Lowery, who had plainly
floundered during his first week in office, was elevated when Herenton
chose, as an explanation for his picking up his own petition week
before last, to recast the mayor pro tem as a menacing, almost
irresistible force requiring nothing less than a maximum resistance
effort by ex-mayor Herenton.

That gave Lowery renewed viability as the official anti-Willie of
this year’s race, a potentially formidable role he earned not by making
attacks but by being the object of them. Though still a long shot,
Lowery actually benefited from Herenton’s public animosity.

Inadvertently or not, Herenton’s remarks on Monday enlarged Chumney
in a like manner. And this potential rejuvenation of her stature came
at a time when the former councilwoman had been largely absent from the
public eye, a virtual non-presence for the last several weeks, with her
campaign finances a question mark.

The other candidates in the mayoral field must be jealous. At least
one of them, professional wrestling eminence Jerry Lawler,
understands the value of grudge matches and polarized role-playing in
the building of a gate and a following. He and several others would
surely welcome being stigmatized by a similar intervention from
Herenton.

It might be their best — indeed, their only — chance of
dealing with professional good-guy Wharton.

And, by the way, longtime bad-guy wrestling manager Jimmy
Hart, the Mouth of the South, was one of the well-wishers in
attendance last month at Herenton’s official farewell ceremony. Was
that coincidence or what?

• Although Republican state representative Brian Kelsey
of Germantown, now unopposed in GOP ranks, would seem to be the likely
successor to former state senator Paul Stanley in District 31,
which comprises parts of East Memphis, Cordova, and Germantown, he’ll
have competition from at least one Democrat, activist Adrienne
Pakis-Gillon. Pakis-Gillon is a member of the Shelby County
Democratic executive committee. A graduate of Mississippi State
University with a degree in political science, she was a delegate to
the 2008 Democratic national convention and has worked in several
political campaigns, including those of A C Wharton.

Kelsey is currently under pressure from party-mates to resign his
House seat now, so as to facilitate an early special election for his
own seat and prevent the Democratic majority on the Shelby County
Commission from appointing a Democratic successor to start the 2010
legislative session as interim House member from District 83, which
Kelsey has represented.

Governor Phil Bredesen last week issued a writ for the state
Senate special election, allowing the primary date to coincide with the
October 15th special mayoral election in Memphis. The general special
election will follow on December 1st.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

“Natural Republicans”

It is an oft-heard meme trumpeted by conservatives that black
Americans are natural Republican voters. It’s not that Republicans are
racist or racially insensitive that prevents blacks from crossing the
partisan divide, Republicans contend. It is that Democrats have some
sort of irrational hold on blacks achieved by racial fear-mongering.
Republicans are not ambivalent to the historical experience of blacks
in America. Democrats have just blinded blacks from recognizing their
true and ancestral political home.

The response of a few Republicans in the Tennessee blogosphere to a
post by a black woman blogger illustrates, I think, why black Americans
who hold conservative values are reticent to join up with today’s
conservative movement.

On August 11th, Genma Holmes wrote a post about teaching her teenage
son to respect police officers. Her approach was unorthodox. Being
familiar with the history of interactions between black males and cops,
Holmes warned her son that when detained by police he should not appear
standoffish or act as if the officer had stopped him unjustly. Such
behavior, she warned, can lead to “unfair treatment, embarrassment,
humiliation, or, in many cases, ‘accidental’ death.”

However, Holmes’ son wasn’t listening to her warnings, so she
enlisted the help of a police academy graduate to conduct a phony
traffic stop designed to test the patience of her young son.

“As my son started to lose his composure and show his annoyance, the
officer became more aggressive, my son said later,” Holmes recounted.
“Consequently, he ended up on the hood of his SUV, face down, and was
told to address the officer as ‘Mr. Officer, sir.'”

“I could hear the disbelief in his voice as he tried to repeat the
sequence of events,” Holmes wrote. “I was not interested in the cop’s
behavior but in [my son’s] responses to the cop. I saw the white hot
anger on his face. I reminded him that his exasperation was what others
experienced daily.”

Of course, this is a sad commentary on our society. No mother, black
or white, should be afraid her flesh and blood will meet his death for
mouthing off during a traffic stop. However, the lesson attempted here
is fundamentally conservative: Life is unfair. Authority deserves the
benefit of the doubt. Manners and decorum should be maintained in the
face of disrespect. These were the lessons Holmes was attempting to
impart.

However, after reading Holmes’ tale, a few online conservatives were
up in arms. Jim Boyd, a perennial conservative candidate for office,
wrote, “For your efforts, your son has now earned the victimhood you
paid to have installed.”

Kay Brooks, a home-schooling advocate, offered a similar rebuke:
“Certainly let him know this happened in the past … but why abuse
your own child in this way? Just so he can walk around … expecting
abuse from cops?”

The former communications director for TNGOP, Bill Hobbs, also
commented: “[Holmes] deliberately set up a fake situation designed to
teach her son to not trust police and to encourage her son to view
police through the lens of race and to view himself as a target and a
victim.”

Now, I’m not naive or obtuse. One of the reasons Holmes taught her
son this lesson was because as a black male, police may be on “higher
alert” around him. This is taken as given, a fact of life. Holmes is
not minimizing the injustice of the fact, but she is not crippled by it
either. She moves forward.

This is the essence of conservatism. Certain things are intractable.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short. And, yes, sometimes law-enforcement
officers cut more slack to white men than to black men. The lesson here
is that being right is not a bulletproof vest. Every injustice need not
be fought at the very time and place it is perpetrated.

Republicans argue the reason blacks are not Republican is because
they cannot see past petty racial politics to the conservative
principles they share with the GOP. On this occasion, it seems, it was
the Republicans who failed to recognize a woman with clearly
conservative instincts, because she operated on the assumption, for
good reason, that law enforcement may render harsher judgments on black
suspects.

No party or ideology has the market cornered on petty racial
grievances.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Rough & Tumble

Josie Helming

On Sunday, August 30th, when the Memphis theater community comes
together to celebrate the best of the 2008-’09 season at the annual
Ostrander Awards, a toast will also be raised honoring the life and
accomplishments of actor, director, and educator Joanna “Josie”
Helming. Helming, a retired co-chair of the University of Memphis
Theatre and Dance Department is being honored with the Eugart Yerian
Award for Lifetime Achievement.

“What you have to understand is that Josie is the backbone for major
training in this city,” says Cookie Ewing, artistic director for the
McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College and the 2007 Eugart Yerian
recipient.

Kell Christie, Theatre Memphis’ artistic director who took her MFA
at the U of M and studied Chekhov with Helming, elaborates: “You can
walk into any theater in this city and hear some actor doing a vocal
warmup they learned from Josie.”

“When you look at all the things that are happening today, so much
of it goes back to Josie,” Ewing says, singling out Jerre Dye, the
actor, designer, writer, and artistic director for Voices of the South
as an example.

Dye concurs. “She is so completely woven into the fabric of this
community,” he says following a performance of his original script
Cicada.

Helming isn’t originally from Memphis. She’s not originally from
anywhere, really. She was born in Minnesota, but her family soon moved
to New York, then to Florida, then Massachusetts.

“Mostly we moved looking for work,” she says. And there would be
time spent in California, Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana before
settling into her position at the University of Memphis.

“I was a student in the ’60s,” Helming says. “And in the ’60s there
was this idea that you should move around a lot, see a lot of places
and things. And I did.”

Helming’s philosophy as a professor and mentor was informed by the
difficulties she faced as an undergraduate with little direction and
less means. She wasn’t always the best student and failed her math and
science courses repeatedly. She also had to leave school periodically
to work and put aside enough money to re-enroll. She had no idea what
she wanted to do when she enrolled as a freshman at the University of
Florida. Maybe she’d be a history major. Perhaps she’d study political
science and become a lawyer. None of that worked out.

“American history turned out to be the most boring class in the
world,” she says.

“I never wanted to be in the theater,” she says. “Those people were
weird.

“But the theater always takes in wounded birds, doesn’t it?” Helming
asks, remembering how she backed into her theater major after being
cast as in a leading role in a play by Shaw that she absolutely did not
want to perform.

While building sets for the University of Florida’s theater
department, Helming met graduate students Keith Kennedy and Steve
Malin, who, after finishing their studies, would become instrumental in
developing the University of Memphis’ graduate program. She also met
scenic designer Henry Swanson, another future U of M professor who
co-founded the Lyceum, a professional theater in a tiny converted
church in Arrow Rock, Missouri, where she sometimes worked. “Many
things were forged in that crucible,” says Helming, remembering her
summers at Arrow Rock performing Shaw and Moliere in that tiny space
where the side exits were literally the church’s windows.

After only four years teaching at the University of Memphis, Helming
left for a period of time to start an influential childrens’ theater
troupe called the Red Balloon Players, an organization she co-founded
with Joanne Malin, the actor and director who would eventually launch
Theatre Memphis’ educational troupe ShoWagon. “What we wanted to do
with Red Balloon was to show that blacks and whites could work together
with no strings attached,” Helming says of the scrappy company that
performed in Memphis area parks using the wagons from old Cotton
Carnival floats as a stage. Actors Helming worked with and trained for
Red Balloon included Michael Jeter, who eventually won a Tony for his
performance in Grand Hotel, and Larry Riley, who appeared on television
in Knots Landing and as C.J. Memphis in the film A Soldiers’ Story.

Helming retired from the University of Memphis in 2002.

Over the years Helming has directed several Ostrander Award-winning
productions, including The Crane Wife, The Dining Room, and
Translations. More recently she has directed productions of Well and
The Memory of Water.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Home-grown Cinema

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It’s the first day of shooting on Open Five, Memphis
filmmaker Kentucker Audley’s third feature film, and sound guys Sean
Faust and Kent Smith are having a problem.

Smith is trying to attach remote microphones to actresses Shannon
Esper and Genevieve Angelson, but he’s run into a hitch.

“She’s wearing loose clothing,” Faust says to Smith, confused about
why he seems at an impasse.

“I don’t know where to hook it,” Smith says.

“You let her hook it,” Faust says.

“I’m not wearing anything,” Angelson pipes in helpfully.

“Nothing?”

Angelson shakes her head.

“No brassiere?” Faust asks, and Angelson shakes her head again.

“Oh, my. Then I guess we need more ace bandages.”

Troubleshooting is a theme on this first day, in which Audley and a
10-person cast and crew are trying to get a handful of crucial shots at
the Memphis International Airport without drawing too much attention to
themselves.

Audley’s films — such as his Indie Memphis-winning
Team Picture, which went on to screen at the Harvard Film
Archives and the IFC Center in New York, among other places, and got
him tabbed a “new face of independent film” by Moviemaker
magazine — are largely improvised and rooted in real
experiences. He wants authentic, potentially volatile situations, but
shooting in a vast, crowded public space is a new challenge.
Uncontrolled environments, Audley says at the shoot, are “normal for
the kinds of movies I make, but maybe not this uncontrolled.”

The film, co-written (or perhaps co-conceived) with Jump Back Jake
singer Jake Rabinbach, depicts two young women from New York visiting
Memphis for the weekend who are escorted around town by Rabinbach and
Audley, playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Another scene on
the first — and, Audley later says, most hectic — day of
the 12-day shoot is of Rabinbach picking the women up outside baggage
claim, maneuvering his van through a minefield of honking old ladies,
suitcase-dragging travelers, and a whistle-blowing crossing guard for
multiple takes while Audley stalks hurriedly along the drop-off lane.
After this, the crew is happy to move on to more serene locations such
as the P&H Café, the banks of the Mississippi, and even the
candlelight vigil at Graceland.

On the same day that Audley and his crew launched Open Five,
director David Harris, producer Erin Hagee, and their crew began
shooting Savage County, a web-based horror series financed by
Harris’ employer, MTV New Media, created through Craig Brewer’s BR2
Productions, and featuring many of the cast and crew of Brewer’s MTV
web series $5 Cover (for which the L.A.-based Harris and
Memphian Hagee were both producers).

A couple of weeks later, in the final days of an 18-day shoot
featuring long nights, oppressive heat, and, in the words of assistant
director Morgan Jon Fox, “animal- and insect-infested locations,” the
Savage County crew is filming some particularly nasty business
at Parker Prints, an enormous, multi-story brick print shop on Willie
Mitchell Boulevard in South Memphis. Property master Darian Corley and
her assistants have fashioned a portion of the building’s bottom floor
into a torture chamber of sorts, where actress Melissa Carnell is
chained to a chair and preparing to be branded with a hot iron.

“Bloody murder scream or whimpering?” Carnell asks into her
microphone, as Harris, Corley, and Fox watch the shot on a monitor at
the opposite end of the dark, concrete room. “Bloody murder scream,”
Harris instructs.

Watching the scene on the monitor, a layer of Carnell’s fake skin
seems to melt and peels off with the branding iron. The assembled crew
members recoil with a mix of horror and glee and a collective,
involuntary “wha-ha-ha.”

“That was horrible,” Harris says with a smile. “There’s our R.”

Open Five and Savage County are not the only projects
that have been filmed around town lately. Documentary filmmaker Willy
Bearden has made a foray into narrative fiction with the period piece
One Came Home; director Brad Ellis and his Old School Pictures
crew will finish shooting their visually ambitious and highly promising
vampire drama Daylight Fades early next month; filmmaking trio
Corduroy Wednesday continues work on their ongoing web series The
Conversion; and many small projects are no doubt being filmed for
Live From Memphis’ L’il Film Fest and Music Video Showcase,
respectively.

But these ostensibly different projects — one, Open
Five, an intimate, realistic feature likely to make the festival
circuit (and potentially a theatrical run) before a DVD release, the
other, Savage County, an effects-based genre series destined for
the web (and possibly television) — have two things in
common that are emblematic of the evolution of the Memphis indie scene:
Each represents a significant collaboration between homegrown
filmmakers and outside artists, and each has a realistic hope of
finding an audience beyond a handful of local family-and-friends
screenings.

Writer/director Harris shot a pilot episode for Savage County
— which is set in a small Texas town — in March
in Los Angeles, a month before $5 Cover launched. Once MTV
approved the series, Harris considered setting up his production
(budgeted at roughly $250,000) in film hotbed Austin but realized, he
says, that he was “trying to replicate the $5 Cover crew, which
was already in place.”

Justin Fox Burks

director Kentucker Audley

Teaming up with Brewer’s BR2 Productions for a Memphis shoot, Harris
brought in part of the crew from Los Angeles — an assistant
director, a cinematographer, a makeup specialist, etc. — while
longtime Brewer assistant Hagee assembled a Memphis contingent that is
something of a “getting the band back together” moment for the $5
Cover team: Local filmmakers Fox and Mike McCarthy returning in
their assistant director and script supervisor roles, with property
master Corley (a Los Angeles-based Memphis native who worked on the
pilot) and costumer Meriwether Nichols, among others, back as well.

“We start in the world of teen movies and end up in Texas
Chainsaw Massacre,” Harris says, explaining Savage County‘s
plot like this: “Kids in small-town Texas are bored on the last weekend
before school. They pull a prank on an old man and end up killing him,
and his murderous kin come to set things right.”

Five of the seven lead teen characters are played by Los Angeles
actors, with the other two Memphians drawn from the latest films by Fox
(Ryan Carter from OMG/HaHaHa) and McCarthy (Ivey McLemore from
the upcoming Cigarette Girl). The heavies, though, are all
Memphians. Among the “murderous kin” are $5 Cover‘s Jeff Pope,
mammoth local film regular Patrick Cox, and puppeteer Jimmy Crosthwait,
cast after Harris saw him alongside Cody Dickinson in one of $5
Cover‘s documentary companion films.

“We’ve got a good mix,” Harris says of the blend of Hollywood and
Memphis talent on the set. “We were on a pretty tight timeline, but
everything’s coming together.”

“It’s just been a rush to jump in and make it great,” Hagee
says.

As for Audley, his collaborations on Open Five extend beyond
creative partner and co-star Rabinbach. On the other side of the
camera, Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg — one of the leading
figures in the recent indie “mumblecore” scene via films such as
Hannah Takes the Stairs and Kissing on the Mouth —
came in to act as the film’s primary cameraman, bringing with him his
own frequent partner, Dallas filmmaker David Lowery.

Audley, whose debut, Team Picture, found itself screening at
various festivals and exhibitions, befriended Swanberg after sending
him an early copy of the film. The pair soon collaborated on the short
film Ginger Sand, a Chicago-set coda to Team Picture.

Justin Fox Burks

producer Nick Case

“I try to keep myself out of the preparation stages as much as
possible so that people can bring their own things into it,” Audley
says of working with Swanberg and Lowery on the film.

The result, says Audley, “went unexpectedly, which is what I wanted.
I set it up so that things that I couldn’t imagine would happen
happened. Not extraordinary things. But little interactions I hadn’t
dreamed of.”

In addition to collaborating with well-regarded outside filmmakers,
Audley signed on to work with producers Nick Case and Ryan Watt, a
young duo who recently started the company Paper Moon Films with the
goal of producing local independent films. Open Five is their
first joint project.

“It was a completely new team,” Audley says. “Nick

got in touch with me awhile back, and I had seen a couple of things
he had worked on which I was interested in. He could do what I always
needed — legal things, logistics — all the stuff I’m not
interested in working on. I think we understand each other. He gets the
work, and I get his sensibility.”

A Memphis native who got his start as a production assistant on the
Memphis-shot 21 Grams while still a student at Ole Miss, Case
set out for Los Angeles soon after and hustled his way into production
assistant jobs, eventually meeting filmmaker Cam Archer. Case served as
one of the producers on Archer’s experimental indie Wild Tigers I
Have Known (filmmaker Gus Van Sant was the executive producer),
which premiered at Sundance and went on to win an Independent Spirit
Award.

Case is also a producer on Archer’s follow-up, Shit Year,
which stars Ellen Barkin. And he worked as a production manager on
actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s environmental documentary The 11th
Hour, which was shot using members of Martin Scorsese’s regular
crew.

When his Los Angeles apartment lease was up, Case decided to return
home for a while and was surprised at the film scene he found.

“I was shocked,” Case says. “I knew Morgan [Jon Fox], and certainly
Craig [Brewer] and Ira [Sachs] but wasn’t aware of how much was going
on.”

Justin Fox Burks

producer Erin Hagee

In getting to know people involved in Memphis films, Case began to
see a potential role for himself.

“What I found when I started talking to these filmmakers was that
the idea of a producer who could be involved fulltime, who wasn’t just
an investor, was intriguing to them. These guys had been doing it all
themselves,” he says.

Case got involved with Audley on the back end of his second feature,
The Holy Land, which is now finished and getting ready for fall
festival submissions. Meanwhile, Case’s high school friend Watt had
also stumbled into the film scene.

A marketing entrepreneur by trade, Watt had known filmmakers Brad
Ellis and Allen Gardner since high school and became involved with
their Indie Memphis winner Act One. When Ellis and Gardner got
ready to shoot their vampire flick Daylight Fades, Watt signed
on as a producer.

“I got involved as a producer first to invest and raise money,” Watt
says. “I thought I might show up occasionally, and it would be fun. I
ended up on the set every day.”

“I think they’re providing a service that the local film scene needs
whether [the film scene] knows it or not,” says Indie Memphis director
Erik Jambor, who helped connect Case with Paper Moon’s next project,
The Romance of Loneliness, the feature debut from local
filmmaking team Sarah Ledbetter and Matteo Servente. (Jambor will also
be screening Swanberg’s and Lowery’s current films — Alexander
the Last and St. Nick — at the October festival.)

“It’s good to get people off the idea that they have to do
everything themselves,” Jambor says. “[Producing] is not just about
finding funding, but helping to develop writer/directors into artists
who can grow. If you look at the indie film world, that’s where a lot
of the most interesting stuff comes from.”

The kind of collaboration that Open Five and Savage
County represents is something Jambor has promoted since taking the
helm of Indie Memphis a year and a half ago.

Justin Fox Burks

director David Harris

“A lot of what we do is centered on connecting people,” says Jambor,
whose festival was recently named by Filmmaker magazine as one
of the world’s 25 Coolest Film Festivals. “We’re always looking for way
to make these connections happen, and we think that’s a necessary step
to expand the notion of regional filmmaking. As an artist, you can’t be
working in a bubble.”

Defining the producer’s role is another sign of the increased
seriousness and the realistic ambitions driving the growth of local
filmmaking.

“Once the film’s done, we’re just getting started,” Case says about
the distribution options facing indie films in an age of declining
theatrical opportunities. “The distribution world is changing so much.
Those big Sundance buys? They’re not happening. It’s going to be about
self-distribution. Online. TV and TV On Demand. Some people are taking
their films on the road like a rock band — delivering the product
directly to the audience.”

The range of Memphis filmmakers taking advantage of these
alternative distribution models to reach audiences beyond local film
scenesters is growing. It’s no longer just about Brewer, Sachs, and
McCarthy, though McCarthy will make a splash next month when he unveils
Cigarette Girl, his first feature since 2000’s Superstarlet
A.D., which debuted in July before a large audience at the
Revelation Perth International Film Festival in Australia and looks to
expand the “exploitation” director’s devoted cult.

“I’ve got enough street cred. I’ve got gravel-road cred,” McCarthy
says, citing Cigarette Girl as a film he hopes will be taken
more seriously.

This summer, Fox joined past honorees Audley and Brewer as a
Memphis-based member of Moviemaker‘s annual “new faces of indie
film” list, and after a strong festival run, his most recent feature,
OMG/HaHaHa, will get a fall DVD release from venerable art-film
distributor Water Bearer Films. Filmmakers such as Jeremy Benson
(Live Animals), Brian Pera (The Way I See Things), and
Rod Pitts (What Goes Around …) have joined an expanding list
of local filmmakers to garner good festival screenings and demonstrate
an ability to produce even better work in the future.

Justin Fox Burks

Genevieve Angelson in ‘Open Five’

Many filmmakers also are following the $5 Cover lead in
exploring the web as a means of bringing their work directly to
audiences rather than wade through the morass of festival submissions.
Like $5 Cover and Savage County, these attempts have been
through serialized content. Filmmaker Mark Jones (Eli Parker Is
Getting Married?, Fraternity Massacre on Hell Island)
lovingly spoofed daytime soap operas with his On the Edge of
Happiness series, which recently screened at the North Carolina Gay
& Lesbian Film Festival after debuting online.

“I was a little disappointed in not getting into a ton of festivals
for Eli Parker and Fraternity Massacre,” Jones says. “So
I wanted to be more in control of getting my work out there.”

More recently, emerging filmmaking trio Corduroy Wednesday has gone
the web route with their ongoing conspiracy series The
Conversion, an inventive techno-thriller inspired by the move from
analog to digital television.

“We liked the idea of doing something on the web and getting it out
to people and getting immediate feedback,” says Corduroy Wednesday
writer/director Edward Valibus Phillips. “It’s not just one screening
in one theater and one city. Now if somebody sees it and likes it, they
can say, hey people check this out, and it’s available 24/7.”

Phillips and collaborators Erik Morrison and Benjamin Rednour
financed The Conversion via a lucrative win (roughly $1,500) for
their short film CottonBallLand at a recent installment of Live
From Memphis’ L’il Film Fest, a quarterly contest and showcase that has
returned from hiatus to inspire and help develop local filmmakers.

“That’s what keeps us in practice,” Phillips says of the L’il Film
Fest, especially when we aren’t working on a huge project.”

A 12-part series, The Conversion will continue to debut new
episodes through September, with the final stretch playing as part of a
full screening at Indie Memphis in October.

Many see the growth of web-based content as something Memphis can
capitalize on, something Brewer stressed when $5 Cover debuted
earlier this year.

“This is a town with creative people who can make a dollar go a long
way,” Harris says.

Justin Fox Burks

Memphis puppeteer Jimmy Crosthwait in ‘Savage County’

“I think the new media will be great for Memphis,” says Corley, who
says a lot of her recent work in Los Angeles has been for web-based
content. “More and more content is needed and there are people here who
know how to do it. I think $5 Cover was great for Memphis, and
[Savage County] coming here is the proof of that.”

If the Memphis filmmaking scene is entering a new, more diverse, and
more serious phase, the Savage County shoot is a reminder of why
so many are drawn to filmmaking despite the heavy odds against
lucrative success: It’s about as close as you can get to hard work as
creative play.

Back at Parker Prints, Corley is showing off a set filled with
gruesome gadgets: a chair with chains that tips, suspended, over a
lawnmower blade; a hook for hanging brave actors upside down; a wall
rack where victims are tied up, spread-eagle.

“What’s great about a production like this is that everyone in the
art department is local, and, on a low-budget project, you get to be so
much more hands on,” Corley says. “Everything in here is a mechanical
working rig. Of all the big-budget movies I’ve worked on, this one has
the most rigs.”

Outside, while techs prep the scene, Crosthwait is waiting for his
close-up. Harris comes up to make sure Crosthwait and Cox have seen the
dialogue changes for their upcoming scene.

Harris gives a curious look that suggests the colorful Crosthwait
has taken to his “hillbilly killer” role perhaps a little too well.

“I didn’t want to play this like a goddamn Barney Fife, for it to be
that rednecky,” Crosthwait says, getting into character as he describes
this murderous clan’s proud Confederate heritage.

“We show no mercy. And over the generations, we’ve gotten damned
good at it,” Crosthwait declares. “I’m not just a drunken lunatic
redneck killer.”

He then describes his motivation — a dead, mistreated
wife — via a self-created backstory that no one else seems
to know about. “God didn’t show my dear Abby any mercy. Why should
anyone else be any different?”

But for now, Harris just wants to know if Cox and Crosthwait have
the dialogue down. Crosthwait has one line in the scene
— “go ahead” — which he performs for his director
with gusto.

“I nailed it!” Crosthwait exclaims with a grin and a flourish. “I
smell Oscar.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Pharmaceutical Sounds

It was 10 years ago (or close to it) that I ventured out to the
Hi-Tone Cafe on a weeknight to catch Nebula’s air-moving lesson on the
fineries of the power trio. Besides my paranoia that the trio’s
blunt-force thud would literally throw my heart off beat (the only
other band that has inspired a similar fear is Torche), I remember two
particular details of the evening: One, only seven other people saw the
show, and two, taped all over the merch table were signs with the words
“Nebula Welcomes Trades for Merch” surrounded by generic clip-art
images of pharmaceuticals.

I remember finding it refreshing that there was no clip art of
burning joints or glass bongs, then thinking that I’d probably be won
over by this clever and direct way to tackle the age-old “Where’s ‘the
guy’?” problem facing touring bands as they enter each new town. I also
concluded that if the band kept playing shows like this one, the signs
would soon disappear. Lastly, I recall really enjoying Nebula, but
bemoaned the fact that their chosen genre was mired by innocuous,
mediocre bands that buried good bands like this in obscurity.

This genre went by the unfortunate name of “stoner metal” or “stoner
rock.” Black Sabbath is the influential ground zero for stoner metal,
like, well, every other style of metal, but from there other
ingredients in the stoner-metal recipe are early-’80s groundbreaking
loners such as Trouble and St. Vitus along with the Melvins (huge
influence) and the heavier or scarier true grunge bands of the late
’80s and early ’90s (Tad, Mudhoney, Green River). Then there’s a few
points of reference that sort of set stoner metal apart from other
metal sub-genres: Black Flag, Meat Puppets, and a few other lost SST
bands from the mid-’80s and the “aggro” rock/noise-rock heyday (Helmet,
Hammerhead, etc). Monster Magnet, Clutch, and Queens of the Stone Age
are generally seen as the three stoner-metal bands that have tasted
success within the past two decades.

The movement might not have had its salad days if not for two record
labels: Man’s Ruin and Meteor City. Owned and operated by artist Frank
Kozik, Man’s Ruin was the better known of the two, but Meteor City is
the one still active. Listeners knew what they were going to get with a
Man’s Ruin or Meteor City product: thick, thick, thick riffs and the
rest of the song used as an excuse to drive these riffs, a wider range
of vocal styles than any other strain of metal, and slow-to-mid-tempo
pacing.

There was but one “scene” when it came to stoner metal, and that was
the Palm Desert scene, a healthy group of constantly related musicians
known by their own tag, “desert rock.” Kyuss was the first and best,
Thin White Rope is maybe the oldest, and Queens of the Stone Age is, of
course, the best-known export. But it was another corner of the Palm
Desert scene that attracted Nebula’s primary songwriter and guitarist
Eddie Glass in the early ’90s. Glass had previously been drumming for
Olivelawn, a punk-rock band with a decent following around Southern
California, when he passed through the gateway into the Palm Desert
scene as a member of Fu Manchu, less a band than a Palm Desert rite of
passage. Fu Manchu is still active as a vehicle for founder and
guitarist Scott Hill to recruit other players likely to depart due to
creative differences. Eddie Glass and drummer Ruben Romano did just
that in 1996 after three years with Fu Manchu, forming Nebula shortly
thereafter.

The musical differences that Glass had with Fu Manchu’s Hill were
clearly based on Glass’ desire to incorporate more psychedelic and prog
elements and to dial-down the Black Flag-meets-Black Sabbath vision
that always has driven Fu Manchu. Nebula didn’t release anything until
1998, but made up for the work-shedding period with three EPs and one
full length by mid-1999 on as many labels (Relapse, Sub Pop, Man’s
Ruin, Meteor City). Nebula’s two full lengths on Sub Pop, 1999’s To
the Center and 2001’s Charged, pull off the ’70s production
trick with success and would appeal just as much to fans of the Melvins
as they would to open-minded Yes or Gentle Giant fans.

Nebula has released a handful of EPs over the past decade, and when
they left Sub Pop, two albums on the Liquor & Poker label followed,
in 2003 and 2006, before the band released a Peel Sessions recording
and the most recent and enjoyably solid Heavy Psych album on Tee
Pee Records, both in 2008.

Fans of every band listed above and even those who just like their
jams to be JAMS are encouraged to join Nebula fans when the band plays
with The Entrance Band (formerly Entrance) at the Hi-Tone this
week.

Categories
Music Music Features

Remembering Otha Turner

This Saturday, August 29th, the rolling farmland of north
Mississippi will once again be the focus of blues history. At a
ceremony in Como, Mississippi, hill-country blues legend Otha
Turner will be added to the Mississippi Blues Trail,
receiving a permanent roadside placard commemorating his contributions
to Mississippi music.

The placard will be placed near the Como Public Library and not far
from the Gravel Springs home where Turner spent most of his life. And,
importantly, the ceremony will be held in conjunction with this year’s
annual Fife and Drum Goat Barbecue Picnic, a summer tradition
started by Turner and carried on by his family after his passing in
2003.

“I’m excited about the people coming, about meeting new people,”
said Turner’s daughter Betty Turner of her father’s recognition.
“We’re all just real excited.”

“We’re honored that there are people in this country who think that
much of Grandfather,” said Bobbie Turner, Otha’s
granddaughter.

Turner’s life and music stand as a testimony to the continuing power
of American roots music. Those attending Saturday’s ceremony will
include family, friends, musicians, and blues enthusiasts who feel that
Turner’s life went well beyond his music and that his family extended
beyond his relatives.

“He was one of the best friends I’ve had,” said Bill Ramsey,
who helps the Turner family organize the picnic every August. “He would
sit and talk to everyone.”

“I’m proud to see it happen,” said Sara Brown, who, with her
husband Kenny, organizes the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic
every summer in Potts Camp. “I think it’s a tribute to him and the
recognition he deserves.”

Turner lived his whole life in a small farm community outside
Senatobia. As a teen, he began to craft fifes out of river cane and
would eventually come to lead the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band
as an adult. His music, while known regionally, went largely
unrecognized throughout most of his life.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that Turner’s music began to receive
outside attention, with one song, “Shimmy She Wobble,” featured in
Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York. Successful
musicians, such as the White Stripes, acknowledged Turner as an
influence.

But perhaps no legacy of Turner’s is quite so powerful as his annual
Fife and Drum Goat Barbecue Picnic, held on the grounds of his family
farm near the end of every summer.

“It’s real,” Ramsey said. “There’s no better way to describe
it.”

The picnic is free and features barbecued goat and pork, a true
miscellany of visitors from all over the area, and a variety of
musicians from around the South performing on a flatbed trailer as a
makeshift stage. It stems from a strong tradition that values community
over commercialism.

“This [picnic] was his pride and joy,” Bobbie Turner said. “This was
one of the happiest times of his life every year.”

Understanding Turner’s personal philosophy helps to explain the
ongoing enthusiasm and support for this annual party.

“His main thing was family,” said Bobbie. “Grandfather always had
this thing about himself: Anybody who wanted to come in and play during
his picnic, he would stop and give them the opportunity because he
always said that music is within your heart.

“So, as the years have past, we’ve had more and more musicians come
in and say, hey look, do you mind if I play?” Bobbie said. “And I say,
okay, we’ll get you on.”

“For Otha, everybody was laughing, dancing, eating — he wanted
to make sure everybody was having a good time — black and white,”
Ramsey said.

“He was a patriarch, no doubt about it,” Ramsey added. “But he was
the boss.”

Categories
Opinion

What Derrick Rose Knows

The meeting that sealed the fate of the University of Memphis
basketball program with the NCAA cops took place in November 2007.

Basketball fans and the public know only that former Tiger Derrick
Rose was questioned about his ACT and SAT scores at that meeting by
university officials and coaches. Earlier that year, Rose took the ACT
three times in Chicago and the SAT once in Detroit, where he finally
made a score that gave him eligibility to play basketball.

The university took Rose at his word that he didn’t have anyone take
the test for him, even though entrance test performance over four tries
in a short time is as predictable as a bench press, sprint time, or
vertical jump. The 2007-2008 season had not started. There was still
time to keep Rose off the team, but he played, and the rest is
history.

Coach John Calipari, athletic director R.C. Johnson, and President
Shirley Raines are taking the heat for the NCAA’s decision to strip
Memphis of its 38 wins and championship game banner. But Rose is the
one who should be on the hot seat. The university’s appeal of the NCAA
decision has about as much chance as an 80-foot heave. The person who
should take the last shot is Rose.

Rose knows what scores he made on the SAT and ACT even though those
scores are blacked out in public documents and cannot be released by
the testing services without his permission.

Rose knows whether someone took one or more of the tests for him,
causing the score to be canceled, which happens to only one out of
6,000 tests.

Rose knows why he took the SAT in Detroit.

Rose knows what Calipari and U of M coaches told him after he had
failed to make a high enough score on the ACT three times.

Rose knows what any outside adviser told him about this problem that
could make or break his college career, which was his audition for his
professional career.

Rose knows what his own handwriting looks like. He knows he could
easily disprove or prove the findings of forensic document examiner Lee
Ann Harmless in a September 2008 report that concludes he probably had
someone else take the SAT.

Rose knows what he was asked and what he answered during that
meeting in Memphis in November, which, like the SAT score and the
handwriting analysis, has been completely eliminated from the publicly
available university response.

Rose knows why he refused to take part in any investigations by the
testing service or the NCAA on six occasions in 2008 and 2009.

Rose knows why he didn’t answer certified letters from the
Educational Testing Service that were sent to his home in Chicago in
April and May of 2008 offering him three ways to clear his name. Rose
knows why he declined to meet with NCAA investigators in June of 2008,
August of 2008, January of 2009, and March of 2009 — all dates
before the NCAA sanctions were imposed.

Rose knows that his cooperation, if he has nothing to hide, could have taken the heat off the University
of Memphis. And he knows that if he does have something to hide, his
cooperation could identify others who deserve blame or vindication.

Rose knows why his only “explanation” to date consists of a few
brief comments saying he took his own tests.

It would be wildly inaccurate to call the University of Memphis
Rose’s alma mater and a stretch to suggest he was a student athlete in
any meaningful sense of the word. He was an entertainer who made a lot
of money for the university and himself.

But he is a man, too, who, like the rest of us, has to face himself
in the mirror every day. If he does nothing, no matter how great a
professional ballplayer he becomes, he will always be known as the
ineligible player who cost Memphis a season that branded its basketball
program as an outlaw.

If he fully explains himself, it won’t be easy. It will be harder
than making those free throws at the end of the Kansas game.

But superstars want the ball at crunch time.

Come on, Derrick, you’re the man. Tell what happened before the
clock runs out on the appeal. A lot of damage has been done, but you
can still clear it up. Take the ball.