Month: November 2009

Categories
Art Art Feature

Grit and Grace

For his David Lusk exhibition “From Peace Mountain,” Don Estes takes
birch plywood, vinyl spackling, paint, plaster, and graphite and
creates artworks that evoke Barnett Newman’s “zips,” Mark Rothko’s
luminous colors, Kasimir Malevich’s blinding whites, and Claude Monet’s
Impressionism synthesized with such originality that the end result is
unequivocally Estes.

Each of the seven horizontal bands that make up Peace Mounain
6 is a work of art unto itself. The bottom of the painting, for
example, is a haunting piece of Impressionism in which a spring-green
spit of land juts into pale-blue water beneath an overcast sky. The
impastoed strip of white at the top is so textured, sculpted, and
incised, we feel the undercurrent of Estes’ thoughts and feelings even
in the painting’s most understated passage.

A black cloud hovers near the top of Three Days on the
Sylamore, and a deep-red line abruptly stops at the center of the
work. These elements suggest not only physical but emotional terrain in
which key memories — dark passages, shared passions, and moments
of joy — are reexperienced as Estes creates his art.

Five of the works in the show represent an entirely new direction in
which Estes draws faint lines across the surface of delicately textured
16-by-16-inch squares of plaster created in clay molds. Estes blows
powdered graphite onto the plaster pieces, washing some of it away,
stroking what remains with bare fingers to create endless variations of
white, off-white, and subtly shadowed surfaces. Day flows into day,
sensation into sensation, structure feels less important, and each
nuance is noted.

At David Lusk through November 25th You’ll find a
full range of female forms in John McIntire’s current exhibition at
Perry Nicole Fine Art, including the svelte hips and full bosom of the
dark-walnut sculpture Henry’s Number One Lady, the milky-white,
triple-jointed marble limbs of Georgia, and the Rubenesque
buttocks in McIntire’s limestone torso titled Sandy.

What makes this show one of McIntire’s strongest are the figures
that are quirky and cutting-edge as well as sensual. What looks like
both an oversized phallus and cranium thrusting up from Sandy‘s
derriere suggests the same energy that impassions the body and the
mind. Breasts on top of buttocks on top of craniums in the marble piece
Teresa look totemic, or she could be the talisman of some
ancient shaman summoning all the power in the universe that he can
imagine. Sky Watcher leans slightly forward as she opens herself
up to the universe. Her iridescent white form and small high breasts
look more ethereal than sensual.

The stair-stepped buttocks and mouth spread across a wide face
topped by two mammoth frontal lobes lets us see Valerie from
several angles simultaneously. Like Picasso’s cubist sculpture and
paintings that were inspired, in part, by the discoveries of quantum
physics and Freud’s research into the unconscious mind, McIntire’s
figures appear to be at the edge of some evolutionary leap. His walnut,
marble, limestone, and bronze female forms express every kind of
yearning and raw energy. At Perry Nicole through November
29th

Across hardscrabble landscapes, in the face of death, in spite of
impermanence and pain, Jeri Ledbetter has created a body of work filled
with boundless possibility and an unbridled zest for life in her L Ross
Gallery exhibition, “Mano a Mano II.”

In Tessier’s Bend II, weathered branches work their way out
of underbrush and cross a sometimes arid, sometimes golden-ochre earth,
moving toward a pale-blue patch of sky or pool of water searching for
sustenance and light. The incisive blood-red lines in Sugar Ditch
IV suggest life’s brambles can cut to the quick, and the
clarion-red morass of vines and veins in La Palma remind us,
like William Faulkner’s novels, that life is full of sound and
fury.

In one of Ledbetter’s most iconic paintings, Cielo II,
charcoal washes coalesce into what looks like the death throes of some
prehistoric beast. In the wild scribbles of graphite lines that arc and
jab across a piercingly blue sky, we feel both the ancient creature’s
and the artist’s rage for life.

Ledbetter is master of the palimpsest as well as the expressive
line. We see traces of former worlds covered over with broad, thick
swaths of pale-gray paint the artist lays down with gusto. Ledbetter
dismisses her inner critics, banishes the fierce demons guarding the
temple door, and gives herself permission to experiment, to fail, to
start anew, to create works of art that, like life, are complex,
uncertain, and achingly beautiful.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Freaks

Tis true my form is something odd, But blaming me is blaming
God. Could I create myself anew, I would not fail in pleasing
you. If I could reach from pole to pole, Or grasp the ocean
with a span, I would be measured by the soul, The mind’s the
standard of the man. — a poem by Isaac Watts frequently
quoted in letters by Joseph Merrick

A confession: I walked out of the McCoy Theatre’s The Elephant
Man desperately wanting to drive to Studio on the Square for a late
showing of the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It. Jackson’s
story and that of The Elephant Man have been intertwined since
Jackson toured the Royal London Hospital where he was shown the
twisted, misshapen bones of Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man.” In a
1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the King of Pop denied pervasive
rumors that he’d tried to purchase the skeleton. Then Jackson, a
reclusive plastic-surgery disaster who practically had been born on
exhibit, confessed an affinity for Merrick, the tragic freak-show
exhibit of the Victorian age.

“I love the story of the Elephant Man,” Jackson told Oprah. “He
reminds me of me a lot.”

What’s extraordinary about this admission is, of course, that
Merrick’s doctor, Sir Frederick Treves, noted that in spite of his
hideous figure, keen intelligence, and romantic imagination, the
Elephant Man had become a perfectly polished mirror. People who came to
see him, whether they were royalty or rough trade, saw themselves
reflected in Merrick’s deformity and good nature. The fictionalized
Treves in Bernard Pomerance’s faithful stage adaptation of Merrick’s
story elaborates on the phenomenon, noting that nobody on the Elephant
Man’s visitor’s list is really alike. Except, of course, for the fact
that we all eventually become monsters.

It’s easy enough to find oneself reflected in director Leigh Ann
Evans’ thoughtful, if too introspective, staging of The Elephant
Man. Ed Porter is particularly effective in the role of Merrick.
Pitching his voice into a higher than natural register and twisting his
body into an uncomfortable snarl, Porter has no need for prosthetics
and projects his character’s hideousness, physical pain, emotional
yearning, and eventual complacency with incredible subtlety.

Porter’s physical commitment to the role is unfortunately not always
echoed by his homogenous castmates who do honest work but are too
rigid, even for England in the age of empire. If there is a crucial
element missing from this production, it’s proof that Treves was right
in declaring us all different. Ross the carney (played by David
Yarborough) doesn’t seem that much different from Treves the doctor
(Pieter Smith). And for an actor, one of the most fun parts of doing
The Elephant Man is asking the question, What kind of
monster am I?

Alicia Queen is a commanding presence in the role of Francis Carr
Gomm, the traditionally (and historically) male chairman of the Royal
London Hospital who helps to facilitate Merrick’s illusion of normalcy.
The dynamic character actor could be much more than a presence, but
there is an invisible barrier preventing her from fully engaging with
Treves. Likewise, Madison Hannahs is excellent as the actress Mrs.
Kendal who befriends Merrick and becomes his nurse and emotional
confidante. Opportunities for a richer character study may have been
missed, but Hannahs charms the audience as easily as she charms Merrick
and shows Treves his own secret deformities.

Laura Canon’s set is very useful and very gray. It begs for actors
to complete it, and it begs for them to be at least a little more
colorful, animated, and engaged than they ultimately are.

If, like me, the thought of capturing a pop-culture moment by
watching The Elephant Man and This Is It back-to-back is
irresistible, do it soon: The McCoy Theatre closes its run this weekend
with a Sunday matinee.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Worth the Trouble

CREDIT: Yasonya | Dreamstime.com

The pomegranate is the crazy aunt of fruits. It’s talented and
passionate but misunderstood. But it has not always been this way. The
scabby orb’s blood-red image decorates the temple of Solomon and the
robes of priests, its juice is imbued with medicinal properties, and
its flavor is integral to many Old World cuisines. But in the New
World, the pomegranate’s reviews have been mixed. Its flesh, tart
enough to make you wince, is buried among bitter membranes and crunchy
seeds. Its juice is quick to splatter and stain. Getting to know the
pomegranate’s virtues is messy, painstaking work. It’s worth the
trouble.

The pomegranate runs in many of the same circles as the grape. The
two fruits co-star in several biblical verses, including more than one
suggesting the presence of pomegranates and grapes as an indicator of
good land. Great chefs sprinkle pomegranate seeds atop their finished
dishes, knowing that a single seed is like a sip of wine in the mouth,
creating fireworks when chewed into rich food, from stuffed pork loin
to mushroom linguini.

Brought to the Americas by Spanish settlers, pomegranates grow in
the Southwest and Mexico and ripen from September to January. The
fruit’s shelf-life can be extended for months by wrapping them in paper
towels and storing them in a paper bag at the bottom of the fridge
where there isn’t much activity. You want to leave the wrapped
pomegranates undisturbed, with as few vibrations as possible. Like
bottles of wine, the less they’re disturbed, the better they’re
preserved.

When selecting pomegranates, look for firm fruits with rounded,
rather than sunken, skins. Avoid super-sized fruits, which typically
don’t have as much flavor. Like wine-grapes, pomegranates cultivated
for size produce a more watery fruit, with less evident terroir.
So choose from batches of baseball-sized fruits. Pomegranates don’t
have a fragrance when ripe. The best way to determine the quality or
ripeness of a particular batch is to open one. If the seeds are
brilliant ruby red, juicy and sweet, then get some more from the same
batch for long-term storage.

Many recipes pair pomegranate with walnuts. Historically, they’re
grown in the same regions, and culinarily, the flavors complement each
other beautifully. Walnuts are astringent and oily, while pomegranates
have a penetrating acidic sweetness. Pomegranate seeds are used to
accent sopa de nuez, a Spanish creamy walnut soup; they’re
sprinkled atop chiles en nogada, a Mexican dish of stuffed
chiles and walnut sauce; and they’re ground with walnuts and red pepper
to make muhammara, a Persian dip.

Perhaps the most famous pairing of pomegranate and walnuts is
fesenjan, a meat stew with ground walnuts and pomegranate juice.
Fesenjan can be found throughout the Middle East and Central
Asia, from Georgia to Iran, Armenia to Azerbaijan. Fesenjan is
typically made with chicken or lamb. I’ve tested batches with turkey
and wild duck without complaints.

To make fesenjan, start by browning your meat in a pan with
oil. Large pieces should be cut into inch-cubes; chicken drumsticks can
be left whole. Remove skin from poultry.

For each pound of meat, lightly toast two cups of walnuts in a hot
pan, stirring often. When cool, use a food processor or otherwise grind
the nuts into a dry paste. For each pound of meat, slice one large
onion (or two medium onions) in half lengthwise, and then slice each
half thinly end to end.

After the meat has given up its water and browned, add the onions
and fry until they become translucent. Add the ground walnuts and four
cups of pomegranate juice. Reduce heat to simmer and add seven cardamom
pods (or a teaspoon of ground cardamom), a teaspoon each of cinnamon
and salt, and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Add a cup of chicken
stock and enough water to submerge the meat. As it simmers, add water
as necessary to cover the meat. After an hour, add the juice of one
lemon. Many recipes suggest adding a little sugar. I don’t think that’s
necessary, but add a tablespoon if you want.

After another hour, when the meat is falling-apart tender and fully
impregnated with the pomegranate-walnut sauce, cease adding water and
allow the sauce to reduce, stirring often to prevent burning. When the
sauce is thick as melted ice cream, remove from heat and serve
fesenjan with rice.

Given the current health craze attached to pomegranate juice (some
of its constituents are thought to help prevent cancer, diabetes, heart
disease, prostate problems, and viral infections), you should have no
trouble finding it at your local store. Concentrated juice, aka syrup,
is widely available in Middle Eastern, Persian, and Central Asian
markets. The syrup can be diluted with water into juice.

In addition to its role in dishes like fesenjan, pomegranate
juice makes a good base for a marinade and can be used in salad
dressings or as a mixer.

The word “pomegranate,” a combination of the Latin words for “apple”
and “seed,” literally means “seeded apple.” Although apples and
pomegranates have little in common, their external resemblance may help
explain why modern depictions of the forbidden fruit that tempted Eve
often look like an apple, while many biblical scholars believe it was a
pomegranate. Yet another example of the pomegranate’s perennially
misunderstood status. 

And while the pomegranate may have gotten Adam and Eve banished from
the garden, in another myth, eating pomegranate seeds forced the
goddess-borne Persephone to spend half of her life in hell.

Either the pomegranate is really bad news, or the gods are really
jealous of it. You decide.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Think Big

At the opening party for Stella Marris, Steve Cooper‘s
new restaurant and lounge in Cordova, the menus were stacked in neat
rows near the entrance. The dinner menu described 14 seafood
entrées, plus 11 different steaks and chops. Next came the
late-night fare: sliders, small plates, and a choice of deep-fried
finger foods (alligator, oysters, fried green tomatoes, pepper jack
cheese). Finally, the third menu listed desserts, including warm apple
crisp and 23 cordials and cognacs priced from $7 to $225.

“Wow,” I thought, before scooping up an ahi tuna carpaccio from a
passing tray. “This is ambitious.”

Thanks to executive chef Derk Meitzler, the food at Stella
Marris — Latin for “star of the sea” — is a seamless match
for the size and scope of the place, which offers 15,000 square feet of
lavish décor, seating for over 300 customers, private dining
rooms, two kitchens, and separate tanks for Maine and spiney
lobsters.

In fact, the menu’s mix of seafood and steaks has a nostalgic
appeal, much like the restaurants favored in the 1950s when a side of
potato au gratin could feed an entire table.

“I’m partial to big steaks and big sides,” said Meitzler, who grew
up near Chicago. “I have great memories of eating at restaurants like
Win Schular’s with my grandparents, where they would bring you those
big crocks of cheese.”

Add in Meitzler’s love of Southern and Creole cooking, and the
entrées at Stella Marris are an appealing mix of old and new.
The wild salmon, for example, is broiled and finished with barbecue
hollandaise sauce. “I throw in the Memphis dry rub,” Meitzler said.

Side dishes are updated, as well. The crawfish mac-and-cheese is a
crowd-pleaser (don’t ask for the recipe; it’s top-secret), and the
sweet potatoes are combined with alligator sausage hash.

“We’re Southern-driven with Northern influences,” Meitzler said. “I
play off the idea of Route 61: Start in New Orleans and go north.”

The restaurant’s late-night menu has similar influences but fewer,
and less expensive, choices. Small plates such as fish tacos and hot
wings run $8 to $10 and are served from 10 p.m. until the lounge closes
at 2 a.m. on weekdays and 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Stella Marris, 7955 Fischer Steel, Cordova (755-5553),
stellamarris.net

You can order an 18-ounce rib-eye or a Buckhead filet mignon at
Sharky’s Gulf Grill in East Memphis, but the entrées are
the only reminder of the building’s longtime former tenant, Steak and
Ale.

Under the direction of John Golon, the restaurant on Poplar
Avenue opened last month with a Caribbean-style decor and a focus on
coastal cuisine.

“We’ve taken the kind of seafood restaurant we love at the beach and
moved it to Memphis,” Golon said.

Sharky’s started with dinner service seven days a week and added
lunch two weeks ago. “We didn’t want to open for lunch until we got our
sea legs under us,” Golon said. “I just love to say that!”

For lunch and dinner, seafood is the grill’s mainstay and buying
from day boats ensures a sustainable and fresh supply.

“Traditionally, fishermen go out for seven to 14 days depending on
how long it takes to fill up the boat,” Golon explained. “Day boats
leave in the late afternoon, fish all night, and call in their catch to
brokers. The fish is purchased before the boat gets back to the
dock.”

For Sharky’s customers, day-boat suppliers mean “what’s on your
plate was swimming two days ago,” Golon said. The restaurant’s list of
fresh catch also changes day to day. Last Thursday, choices priced from
$19 to $23 included mahi-mahi, swordfish, salmon, and cobia, a coastal
fish appreciated for its texture and flavor.

Thanks to head chef Lance Morton, a Gulf Coast influence
directs the menu, from the Apalachicola oysters baked five ways to the
grouper Pontchartrain, a grilled dish topped with soft-shell crab and
béarnaise sauce. Sharky’s also offers sushi and coastal
cocktails like “Pineapple Martini” and “Miami Vice.”

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Football’s Back Pages

At the beginning of The Damned United, a film whose title
refers to the colloquial name for Leeds United, the team is in the
First Division, at the top of the English Premier League. The year is
1974, and the team’s famous manager, Don Revie, has just been tapped to
take over the England National Team, leaving open one of the most
coveted managerial positions in football (or what most Americans know
as soccer). Enter the tenacious Brian Clough, newly appointed to the
job and still spewing residual vitriol about Leeds. Over the next hour
and a half, the film connects the dots of Clough’s career and pieces
together his rivalry, perceived or otherwise, with Revie.

The film flashes back to 1968, when Revie (Colm Meaney) was the
ever-prosperous manager of the First Division Leeds, and Clough
(Michael Sheen), along with his humble and underappreciated assistant
Pete Taylor (Timothy Spall), were managing the Derby County squad,
flailing at the bottom of the Second Division. In a random lottery
pick, Leeds is chosen to play against Derby, a fact that thrills the
provincial Derby County team. But when an exceedingly enthusiastic
Clough feels that he has been slighted by Revie, the scene is set for
Clough’s rivalry against Revie, Leeds, and anyone or anything that
stands in his way.

Some British critics have panned the film, both for toning down
novelist David Peace’s depiction of Clough’s superiority complex and
for adjusting the facts. It should come as no surprise that the Brits
are more than a little touchy about their nation’s most beloved sport
and its history. For our part, the film can stand alone more easily as
a fascinating biopic about a character whose blind ambition, unchecked
arrogance, and ham-handed approach to managing is ultimately
destructive. (“I wouldn’t say I’m the best manager in the country, but
I’m in the top one.”)

Only after a hearty helping of humble pie do the tides turn in his
favor, and then only with the help of Taylor. Clough’s ego having
apparently clogged his brain for years, he suddenly realizes he cannot
go without Taylor. One of the best scenes involves some deserved
groveling and a tinge of well-intended humiliation. Having abandoned
Taylor in Brighton to become the manager of Leeds, Clough comes
crawling back, where Taylor gets him to beg, “Please, please, baby,
take me back.”

Massaged facts and unfamiliar subject aside, the film is highly
enjoyable for all moviegoers, football fans or no. Director Tom Hooper
makes the most of a sometimes bleak, retro scene. In the 1970s,
Britain’s economy was suffering. As a working-class sport, football did
not always boast the best facilities, and let’s not mention Britain’s
penchant for rain and cloud-cover. But Hooper makes something beautiful
from this palette. The acting is superb, particularly Sheen and Spall.
The always excellent Jim Broadbent does a sharp, bristling turn as the
often undermined owner of the Derby County team.

For those of us who are football fans, the film highlights a time
when the sport was financially challenged; when the perfect green pitch
of today was a mud pit; when the thought of paying a professional
footballer 300 quid a week was preposterous. But the film makes it
clear that British football was on the cusp of all those things, and
these changing times provide a fitting backdrop for the vicissitudes of
Clough’s career.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Global destruction as popcorn-movie entertainment.

Director Roland Emmerich has carved a mini-film empire as a purveyor
of high-tech disaster movies. Emmerich’s films are in the spirit of
’70s-era disaster flicks, with sprawling, cameo-packed casts inhabiting
flimsy characters who are secondary to visual spectacle.

A master of the new technology, Emmerich isn’t content with mere
capsized ocean liners or burning skyscrapers. Only computer-generated
global cataclysm will do.

These films — 1996’s Independence Day, 2004’s
The Day After Tomorrow, and now 2012 — have
emerged as pure formula: An unexpected assault — whether alien or
environmental — threatens mankind. A group of broadly drawn,
relatively multicultural, and far-flung characters are established via
early crosscutting and finally brought together midway through the
film. An Everyman who Understands What’s Happening overcomes obstacles
and doubts to find his place beside the primary decision makers.
Fantasies of mass destruction are indulged. Humanity comes together and
survives to start anew. And so it goes with 2012, its title a
reference to a Mayan calendar prediction about the date of the end of
time.

Independence Day is still beloved in some quarters while
The Day After Tomorrow was an impressive spectacle soon
forgotten, a fate likely to befall 2012 regardless of whether it
recoups its budget.

Independence Day is more the crowd-pleaser for several
reasons: It had some human interest in the form of enjoyably blustery
performances from the likes of Bill Pullman, Will Smith, and Randy
Quaid; by contrast 2012 gets by with an overplayed Woody
Harrelson cameo and a subdued John Cusak (and I can barely remember who
was in The Day After Tomorrow). The alien-invasion angle
provides a villain to fight against and more of a sense of distancing
fantasy. In the other films, the villain is simply nature, and the
specter of environmental devastation, however wildly exaggerated, hits
too close to home to serve as simple popcorn-movie escapism. As a
result, these films try to be more serious but are too clunky and
cartoonish to earn the gravity they aspire too.

2012 is essentially the same film as The Day After
Tomorrow, only with a Great Flood replacing a new Ice Age. The film
opens in 2009 with the discovery of “the biggest solar eruption in
human history” provoking a secret global initiative to plan for
planetary upheaval and the preservation of the species. Later, a
struggling writer and divorced dad (Cusak) is taking his kids on a
Yellowstone camping trip when they wander into a military installation
studying a disappearing — and steaming hot — lake.
Soon, the special effects destruction revs up: Californa collapsing
into the sea is the backdrop to a high-speed thrill ride, like
something from an Indiana Jones movies. Iconic creations such as the
Washington Monument and the Sistine Chapel are pulverized.

There’s something interesting in the film’s sci-fi speculation about
what a (slightly) futuristic Noah’s Ark would be, but 2012 is
built on the spectacle of watching the world collapse over nearly three
hours, with little redeeming value in terms of story, characterization,
or thoughtfulness.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Rashomon

A Japanese film constructed like a Chinese box, Rashomon is
still as pictorially ravishing as it is intellectually suspect. Set in
the 12th century, director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 international
breakthrough starts out like a bad joke: A priest, a woodcutter, and a
bum meet in a rainstorm …

But there are no laughs in Rashomon. It is a deadly serious
exploration of a recent rape/murder that grows ever more unfathomable
with each re-enactment, since its witnesses and participants hardly
seem to have witnessed the same thing. The tension and uncertainty
generated by the differing versions of the story spills into the film’s
divided soul: Kurosawa’s exhilarating modernist delight in remixing the
details and actions of the four versions of the crime is undercut by a
trite, undergraduate anti-humanism that threatens to spoil the
formalist party. The film claims to offer truth but leaves you feeling
as lost as its characters, who stare at the sun, the rain, and the sky
in search of answers to questions they can’t quite articulate.

The formal ingenuity triumphs over the “everybody’s a liar” conceit,
though. Rashomon remains one of the major treatments of what
Donald Richie called “relative reality,” and it’s set in the film
equivalent of a World Heritage site — a forest grove alive with
leaves, trees, sunlight and shadows as beguiling and mutable as the
characters’ testimony.

In a movie where every character eventually plays his own
doppelganger, Toshiro Mifune thrills as the bandit Tajomaru, a one-man
zoo who mimics the scratches and gaits of lions, gorillas, and pit-bull
terriers.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the
freakin’ weirdest of times. They were fun times and they were stressful
times. It was two decades ago, and we were starting this strange little
newspaper called the Memphis Flyer. I was the first editor and
in my 20s (for a very short time) and weighed about

50 pounds less than I do now. We didn’t have e-mail, the World Wide
Web, spell-check, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or even cell phones, but,
by damn, we could — and did — smoke at our desks, and
sometimes it was more than mere tobacco. We were out to change the
world or, at least, Memphis. All two-and-a-half of us on the editorial
staff who were putting the paper out each week. And we were nuts. Not
as nuts, though, as many of the people who took to our little paper and
thought that they had finally found the Holy Grail of alternative news
reporting and opinion. But more about that later.

For this special 20th anniversary issue, I just dug out my big bound
book that includes the issues from the Flyer‘s first year and
thumbed through it all. Well, almost all. There’s one cover story
missing: the one that got me sued for $75 million. I guess that one had
to be ripped out of all existing issues. Yes, $75 million! One of the
finer moments in my career, even though I didn’t write the story. I
won’t mention here who or what it was about, just in case I’m still
under some sort of gag order.

Actually, after going through that first year of issues, it looks
like maybe I should have been under a gag order then, based solely on
the video (yeah, movies on VHS) reviews I wrote in the column “One
Night Stands.” While the co-author of the column, Ed Weathers (one of
the smartest people I’ve ever known and the executive editor at the
time), reviewed really engrossing foreign films and movies of social
importance, I managed to review every movie ever made by John Waters,
Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, and every other creator of camp who
ever made it to the silver screen — anything involving sex
changes, drugs, suffocating in sinks of spaghetti, babies being thrown
out of windows, legs getting cut off; anything that starred Joan
Crawford, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, or Elizabeth Taylor or any other
manner of absurdity. I was not going to pass on the chance to
officially write about these films. So why did women keep asking
me out?

But we did some serious stuff, too. The first issue had a photo on
the front cover with the words “THE CIRCLE OF POISON!” It was about a
chemical company in Memphis making dangerous pesticides that it was
peddling to the “Third World.” We were so awesome. The table of
contents in that first issue had a great photo of Rufus Thomas on it
and a review of one of his records inside. We were so cool. We used
words like “verisimilitude.” We were so smart. And we covered art. We
even covered performance art. It was, after all, the 1980s, and we were
so hip. The best performance art we covered was probably our own first
“fashion guide,” in which the models’ hair was bigger than the paper’s
delivery trucks and several women sported high heels with socks rolled
down at the top. I pray that look doesn’t make a comeback.

Before the first issue of the Flyer ever hit the streets, we
had people calling us to tell us what we were doing wrong. I kid you
not. And then the aforementioned crowd of eccentrics who had taken to
the paper began ringing our phones off the hook and showing up at the
office to voice their opinions. Of course, their opinions had little to
do with the actual paper. They were people who had been wronged by
society and thought we should help make it right for them. I came back
from lunch one day and there was a very sweet young man sitting at my
desk talking to the FBI on the telephone, revealing new proof about who
really assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King. If I wasn’t going to write
his story, he was surely going to get it out there somehow. (I think
he’s okay now, and it really wasn’t his father who did it.) The letters
and calls from prison were especially interesting, but not quite as
much as the visits by the inmates once they were released. Kind of
scary, but there was no stopping us. I did have to have my home phone
number (remember land lines?) unlisted, but that was more to fend off
our own columnists, who didn’t like their prose edited and called at
night to curse me. You know who you are. You can’t have my cell-phone
number to this day.

And we did have some interesting columnists. Does anyone remember
the Cinema Sisters, who, in theory, were reviewing movies but instead
wrote a couple of sentences about the flick and devoted the rest of
their space to comment on what people in the theater lobby were
wearing? LOVED them. The best part was how our freelance writers turned
in their columns. As I mentioned, we didn’t have e-mail, so they either
brought them to me (sometimes handwritten) or I had to go to their
houses at night, pick them up, and then type them in myself on what
might have been the world’s first mass-manufactured computer. And then
some people just mailed in unsolicited works of journalism, like the
elderly man who sent me an essay on the “persecution of small penises,”
which he wrote in his sister’s closet.

For those of you who are too young to remember the early days of the
Flyer and spend all of your time FB’ing your BFF’s all day, I
hope you appreciate those of us who had to walk miles in the snow to
get to work to get this paper out. We were gnarly dudes and chicks with
passion and journalistic pizzazz. For the most part, we haven’t changed
all that much.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Wharton Responds Testily to Joe Ford’s Criticism of “Former” County Administration

Mayor A C Wharton exchanged business cards with 91-year-old veteran Frank Mullinax after ceremony at West Tennessee Veterans Cenmetary in Germantown.

  • JB
  • Mayor A C Wharton exchanged business cards with 91-year-old veteran Frank Mullinax after ceremony at West Tennessee Veterans Cenmetary in Germantown.

Memphis mayor A C Wharton got in some smack talk Wednesday in response to Shelby County Commissioner Joe Ford’s critical remarks Monday about the financial prowess of Wharton’s recent administration as county mayor. Ford made the remarks in the course of his still unresolved contest with fellow commissioner J.W. Gibson to become interim county mayor.

Midway of the nearly 30 ballot-marathon that failed to produce a winner, both Ford and Gibson bridled at Commissioner Deidre Malone’s attempt to break a recurring 5-5 impasse in the voting by nominating a would-be compromise candidate, current county CAO and finance director Jim Huntzicker, who occupied that position under Wharton.

Gibson, the beneficiary of Malone’s votes up to that point (and later) seemed mildly put out, saying to Malone, “You never cease to amaze me.” But Ford used stronger language, suggesting that the “former administration” was guilty of outright fiscal mismanagement that could result in “disaster” if its financial practices were to be continued for the next several months.

Asked his reaction following a Veteran’s Day ceremony Wednesday, Wharton said Ford was off base with the criticism, which he said showed little understanding of the facts. “That’s one place he should never have gone,” Wharton said, suggesting that Ford’s remarks were made for political effect and nothing else.

Wharton was asked if Ford’s criticism should therefore be regarded as “ill-founded,” and responded, smiling wryly, “He doesn’t even know enough about the question to have any idea whether what he’s saying is ill-founded or well-founded or whatever.”

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