Month: February 2011

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Bill Day

Many great representatives of American culture have come from Minnesota. The state gave us Bob Dylan, Prince, Rod Carew, Fran Tarkenton, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Minnesota Fats. Long a bastion of progressivism, great statesmen like Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale have been elected to Congress by Minnesotans.

Lately, however, things have taken a turn for the weird.  

In the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” citizens seemed immune to celebrity until they went a little crazy and elected Jesse “The Body” Ventura as governor. When that experiment was done, they elected Saturday Night Live alumnus Al Franken to the Senate. In the case of Franken, however, he proved to be a viable candidate because he was good enough, smart enough, and, doggone it, people liked him. I am at a loss, however, to explain how an electorate goes from Hubert Humphrey to Michele Bachmann, unless some outside, sinister force is at work.

In Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise, he describes an incident called the “Airborne Toxic Event,” a chemical spill that makes townspeople go insane. This fictional account is close to describing some of Minnesota’s real-life disasters, like the I-35 bridge collapse into the Mississippi River in 2007, the 57 separate oil pipeline spills since 2000, or even the severe storms and massive flooding that required the president to declare parts of the state a disaster area in 2010.

Whatever the cause, something has made some Minnesotans turn to Bachmann to represent them in Congress, and she acts more like a contestant for homecoming queen than a legislator. It used to be said that politics was just show business for ugly people. In truth, Congress is one big high school do-over, with the same adolescent jealousies and pettiness. Only now, their hissy fits are putting us all in jeopardy. The quote “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful, but there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas” could have been straight from DeLillo, had Bachmann not said it first.

After the president’s State of the Union address, Bachmann, the self-appointed Miss Tea Party, gave a rebuttal to the official Republican rebuttal to the president’s speech. CNN was the only network to elevate this to news, and thank goodness. Bachmann stared into a camera for an online response seen by a few thousand people, while the rest of us got to watch her gaze off, slightly to the left, and appear as if she were waiting for Peter Pan to return and whisk her off to Neverland. With charts and graphs, Bachmann told of the 16,500 IRS officers being prepared to enforce Obamacare and claimed that what was really needed is medical malpractice reform, something Obama had announced only an hour before. More astounding was the footage of Bachmann addressing Iowans for Tax Relief only the night before. Speaking with hushed reverence about the Founding Fathers, Bachmann claimed, “[They] worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” No they didn’t. Half were slave owners, and anyone who ever took a history course knows that. She lauded John Quincy Adams, who was not a founder, but proves, at least, that she saw Amistad.

Among Bachmann’s other lies: She has accused the census of being a government plot to round up dissidents, like her, and put them into internment camps, and she began the canard that Obama was “spending over $200 million a day” on a state visit to India. She advocated eliminating the minimum wage and suggested $400 billion in cuts for veterans’ benefits as an austerity measure. Bachmann was a back-bencher until Sarah Palin proved that venomous rhetoric and a pretty smile will get you noticed, even if the pundits refer to you as a “bubblehead.”

Despite having called for an investigation into Democratic congressmen to see which ones were “anti-American,” John Boehner appointed Bachmann to the National Intelligence Committee, and she has already visited Iowa to explore the possibility of a presidential run in 2012. A pretty face and nice smile may win you “most popular” in junior high, but when you get to Congress, it’s time to put away the pageant sash and work to serve others. Instead, she has said that Obama is turning us “into a nation of slaves” and called health insurance reform “the crown jewel of socialism.”

Watching all the media attention Bachmann was receiving, Palin got all wee-weed up and leaped into the fray. In an interview on Fox News, Palin claimed that the launching of Sputnik in 1957 was the ultimate cause for the Soviet Union’s downfall in 1991 and that the Russians “won the space race.” More ghastly, she noticed that Obama’s phrase from his State of the Union, “win the future,” could be abbreviated WTF, which fits well into her Twitter mindset but not for a serious candidate for high office. Yet she continued to repeat it, including on her Facebook page, oblivious to the 90 percent of Americans who approved of the president’s speech.

Between Michele and Sarah, we could be headed for a loser-leaves-town cage match to determine who will be the undisputed Tea Party princess. Meanwhile, when did stupidity become a virtue in public life? Before a law school graduate becomes an attorney, he or she must pass the bar exam. Shouldn’t we at least have an elementary civics exam for all potential legislators? That might weed out half the know-nothing yet ambitious politicians of today, including Dumb and Dumber.

Randy Haspel writes the Born-Again Hippies blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

It’s a State Issue Now!

As of this week, the volcanic local issue involving the school systems of Memphis and Shelby County has spilled over into the corridors of state government. Big time. Not only will the General Assembly begin this week to consider in earnest bills dealing with the issue, but Governor Bill Haslam stepped in on Tuesday morning with a full-dress press conference at the state Capitol to consider the matter.

What Haslam had to say might possibly give aid and comfort to both sides in the controversy. Essentially, the governor acknowledged that the issue was a local one for Memphis and Shelby County and specifically said the forthcoming March 8th citywide referendum on the transfer of authority for Memphis City Schools to Shelby County Schools would go on as scheduled. “Nothing we are doing here will impact that vote,” Haslam said.

But he declared that the state had a “legal responsibility and a moral responsibility” as well as a “common-sense responsibility” to see that any transition preserved the rights of the teachers and the 150,000 students currently enrolled in the two systems.

Haslam said the state education commissioner, Patrick Smith, “has to approve any plan as it relates to teachers” and noted that Smith had dispatched a detailed letter on the subject to both MCS superintendent Kriner Cash and SCS superintendent John Aitken.

In the letter, Smith cites “a legal requirement placed upon the commissioner of education by Tennessee Code Ann. §49-5-203(d) in the context of a change in any governmental structure or organization.” The statute, he says, provides that “[t]he commissioner must make a determination that the rights and privileges afforded to teachers by Section 49-5-203 are not impaired, interrupted, or diminished by organizational changes like the one proposed by the referendum.

Smith writes elsewhere in the letter: “In order to make a favorable determination that no impairment, interruption or diminution has occurred, the department must review a comprehensive plan addressing in detail all of the pertinent aspects related to the transition of teachers.” And the letter sets forth a deadline of February 15th for receipt of “a personnel plan for teachers” and a second deadline of March 1st for receipt of “a comprehensive transition plan developed by both school districts.”

An appendage to the letter lists a lengthy variety of subjects to be addressed in the comprehensive transition plan, including student services, facilities and equipment, charter schools, and debt.

Smith also took part in Wednesday’s press conference and pointedly said the commissioner’s office had “moral authority … to withhold funds in any district anytime there’s noncompliance with a rule or a state stature.”

Haslam said he had been in touch with various parties to the issues involved, including Memphis mayor A C Wharton, Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell, state Senate speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville, state House speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, and “some members of the Shelby County [legislative] delegation.” He said he had talked as recently as Monday night to Wharton and Luttrell and declared he had “great faith and confidence in their leadership.”

In answer to a follow-up question on the March 8th referendum, Haslam repeated his assurances that the vote should go on as scheduled: “I don’t think it’s our place to decide who votes or when the vote happens.” But, in answer to another question about several bills pending in the General Assembly, he said the legislature “has a role,” which it would likely define for itself.

• As the action prepared to shift to the General Assembly, yet another local summit meeting was scheduled for City Hall on Tuesday afternoon, involving legislators, city council members, county commissioners, and other interested parties. It would be missing some of the major players, though. State senator Beverly Marrero, a Midtown Democrat serving as this year’s chair of the Shelby delegation, said that she had experienced difficulty talking local Republican members into attending.

With the legislature firmly in Republican hands for the first time since Reconstruction, GOP members, who chair all the committees in the Senate and House and can totally control the flow of legislation, are spending much of their time in Nashville, where the General Assembly will reconvene on Monday, after a three-week recess following the inauguration of Governor Haslam on January 15th.

“I understand they’re getting their program ready, but I still had hoped that some of them could take time off to attend the meeting. We’ve got to try to reach some understanding,” said Marrero. She was fatalistic, however, about attempting to block Republican-sponsored bills designed to obstruct the forthcoming citywide referendum on MCS charter-surrender or to impede the possible merger of MCS-SCS.

“They’ve got the votes and the power, and all we can do is try to make our case and persuade them to look at the big picture,” Marrero said.

Lieutenant Governor Ramsey created something of a sensation last week when he announced — as his Republican counterpart, House speaker Harwell, had previously — that he intended to fast-track bills by two GOP senators from Shelby County.

One, by Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, would basically call for a delay in a referendum on MCS charter surrender as well as require a dual vote by city and county. Another, by state senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, would in effect mandate a state takeover of Memphis City Schools as “non-performing schools” if MCS should end up surrendering its charter.

Both bills were due for consideration by the Senate education committee on Wednesday, but only Norris’ bill was also on the finance committee calendar for later Wednesday afternoon — an indication that the Norris bill would be moved to quick passage while Kelsey’s legislation might be given only a fair hearing.

What might happen in the event of the passage of legislation contradicting the verdict of Memphis voters on March 8th remained unclear, even in the wake of the Haslam press conference, and will almost certainly be resolved in the course of subsequent litigation.

• “I’ll be long gone.” That was Kriner Cash’s half-serious jest in a conversation Friday night about when the end-point might finally be reached in the ongoing wrangle between MCS and SCS. Cash has no immediate plans to ship out or to give up the commitment to long-term educational reform of the city’s schools. The quip was just his acknowledgment of what everybody suspects: that whatever the results of the referendum on MCS charter surrender, a morass of litigation and cross-purposes lies ahead. Cash was asked whether he envisions a further role with a newly consolidated city/county school system if the referendum should pass, making Shelby County Schools — or Shelby County government or mayhap some newly created county entity — the overseer of the new system.

“There’s no guarantee I would continue on,” he said. And “there’s no guarantee that I would want to continue on.”

• So gripping has the issue of possible consolidation of the two local school systems become that the action that purportedly precipitated the crisis has begun to seem somewhat secondary. That was SCS board chairman David Pickler‘s statement the day after last November’s state elections that the big Republican margins provided in legislative races made it a propitious time to seek special-school-district status for SCS.

But all may not have been what it seemed. MCS board member Martavius Jones, who, along with board colleague Tomeka Hart, began the move toward a December 20th vote by the board to authorize a charter-surrender referendum, acknowledged to the Flyer that on Election Night, he, too, had read the election results as being favorable to an SSD move for the county schools and made plans accordingly.

While viewing televised returns at the headquarters of Rebuild Government, Jones confided that now might be the right time to surrender the MCS charter and force consolidation of the two districts. “But if Pickler had not said what he said, I’m not sure I would have proceeded right away,” Jones said.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

All the Lonely People

Though he’s something of a specialized taste in America, where he’s usually good for modest art-house box office and the occasional Best Screenplay Oscar nomination, I tend to think British master Mike Leigh might be our best working filmmaker. All of his nine features since breaking into U.S. theaters with 1990’s Life Is Sweet are terrific, and at least a couple of them (the period pieces Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake, perhaps the ostensibly trickily slight Happy-Go-Lucky) may well be masterpieces.

The 68-year-old Leigh’s latest, Another Year (which recently received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, Leigh’s fifth screenplay nomination), is not quite a masterpiece, but it is his most autumnal film to date and feels like something of a culmination of a series of contemporary, class-conscious, social-realist family dramas that include Life Is Sweet, Secrets & Lies, and All or Nothing.

Like his previous film, 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year‘s main subject is happiness — why some have it and some don’t. Happy-Go-Lucky, which starred Sally Hawkins as an energetic young single schoolteacher, focused on disposition as some confluence of genetics and willpower. Having established that he thinks one can be single and happy, Leigh turns here to the prickly issue of companionship as a component of happiness.

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are married upper-middle-class London suburbanites Tom and Gerri. He’s a geologist. She’s a social worker. They have a warm relationship with their adult son Joe (Oliver Maltman). They cook gourmet meals using produce from their well-tended plot at a community garden. They snuggle up in bed at night, reading and musing on their mortality and shared history. They’ve been a couple since college and are growing old together happily. It’s a good life.

But things aren’t going quite as well for others in their orbit. And in Another Year, Leigh juxtaposes Tom and Gerri’s serenity against the problems of three single houseguests. There’s Tom’s older brother Ronnie (David Bradley), a taciturn man estranged from his son and flattened by the death of his wife. There’s Tom’s childhood friend Ken (Peter Wight), drowning his bitterness in a battery of unhealthy habits. Most notably, there’s Gerri’s co-worker Mary (Lesley Manville), a 50-something secretary unhappily single after a bad divorce and doomed affair with a married man.

Another Year‘s structure is implied by its title — broken into four seasonal installments, each centering on a gathering at Tom and Gerri’s home. Mary figures in each installment, but she isn’t family, like Ronnie, and isn’t an old friend on equal footing, like Ken. She’s also a subordinate of sorts at Gerri’s office, and Leigh uses Mary to explore how gradations of closeness and class barriers can complicate friendship.

Mary is a difficult personality. Powered by white wine, she tends to dominate social settings with an irrepressible combination of self-absorption and self-pity, always oversharing, her constant chatter a way to ward off true introspection.

Manville — who, as is Leigh’s method, crafted the character with her director in long improvisation and rehearsal sessions before filming began — is so good here as to be nearly unbearable. And though Another Year has received overwhelmingly favorable reviews, some have complained that Mary is treated too harshly. But Mary’s type will be familiar — maybe uncomfortably so — to many viewers, and Leigh and Manville treat her honestly but unflinchingly. Though the film is ostensibly about Tom and Gerri, Leigh gives Manville the final moment, much as he did for her supporting character in Topsy-Turvy.

Similar complaints find Tom and Gerri to be smug in their contentment, somehow missing that Leigh very much allows this reading. As Tom and Gerri exchange knowing glances in the presence of their less well-adjusted visitors and make mild gestures toward helping Mary and Ken, in particular, you can see how perhaps Tom and Gerri may see their own perceived goodness and solidity reflected in their tolerance toward the messier lives of others.

Leigh’s film has a generally warm attitude toward Tom and Gerri, but it also shows how disparities of contentment and security can result in unintentional notes of condescension. Leigh is after nothing more or less than finding truth in these situations and interactions. And these characters are far too complexly textured and richly drawn to elicit a simple response.

Leigh has tended to use a loose company of actors who pop up again and again in his films. The trio at the center of Another Year is also at the center of his company, this combination of familiarity and the film’s acknowledgment of mortality adding an extra depth of feeling for those already engaged with Leigh’s other work.

Broadbent (playing the lyricist W.S. Gilbert) and Manville were a couple in Topsy-Turvy, Leigh’s biopic of the theatrical team Gilbert & Sullivan. Manville and Sheen were neighbors dealing with different family problems in the drama All or Nothing and also appeared together in Leigh’s 1988 film High Hopes. Broadbent had a central role in Life Is Sweet and a smaller one in Vera Drake. Both Manville and Sheen had smaller roles in Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake.

Leigh also draws on his company, rather daringly, for an opening cameo, with Imelda Staunton (who played the title character in Vera Drake) as a very unhappy, therapy-resistant woman who comes to the clinic in pursuit of sleeping pills and ends up forced to talk to Sheen’s Gerri. Staunton’s character is married and has kids but is deeply unhappy, can’t sleep, and doesn’t want to talk about her problems.

These opening scenes are generally unconnected to the action in the rest of the film, but they set up the central question about the mystery of happiness — as a product of good decisions, luck, genetic disposition, and other factors — and the need for connection. Everyone needs somebody to talk to, one character notes to another midway through the film. And Leigh implies here — in this portrait of characters moving past middle age — that growing old is easier when you have someone to do it with. But, as the Staunton cameo establishes, even companionship is no guarantee.

Opening Friday, February 4th

Studio on the Square

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Red Honking Noses

Have you ever wondered what it sounds like when somebody takes a hammer and drives a nail through his nostril, up into the sinus cavity, all the way to the base of the brain? You haven’t? Well, let me tell you anyway. It’s the pure “tink, tink, tink” of metal on metal; quiet but distinct. And it goes on long enough to make more sensitive witnesses squirm in sympathetic agony.

“Thing is, this doesn’t really hurt that much,” says Larry Clark, sideshow geek, circus clown, juggler, magician, and lifelong Memphian, as he gives the nail one final tap. The exception, Clark says, is when you haven’t done it for a while and “things” have to be “pushed” out of the way.

When he was a teenager, Clark was fired from his job as a bag boy at a local grocery store when he balanced a shopping cart on his chin to stop a child from crying. His unique skill set may have been too hot for that grocery store, but it landed him work as a human pin cushion with the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and as host clown for Ringling Brothers. He’s debuting Larry! the Show, his first full-length solo performance, at TheatreWorks this weekend.

“There wasn’t a eureka moment,” says Clark, who can never remember wanting to be anything other than a clown. His act, variously inspired by burlesque, carnival acts, and classical clowning, also owes some debt to W.C. Fields and the “gentleman jugglers” of the vaudeville era whose acts employed top hats, cigars, and cigar boxes. “When people think ‘clown,’ they think of a guy making balloon animals at birthday parties … that’s not me,” says Clark, who, after performing around the world, is excited and a little nervous about this rare hometown closeup for friends and family. “My mom doesn’t think I should juggle chainsaws at TheatreWorks,” he adds. “She said it crosses a line.”

 

“Larry! the Show” is at TheatreWorks, Friday-Saturday, February 4th-5th, at 8 p.m. $10.

www.larrytheshow.com

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Series Starter

He’s been called “the rightful heir to Faulkner and Welty” (by The American Scholar) and “a Mark Twain for our age” (by Le Monde). His first published short story, “Minor Heroism,” appeared in The New Yorker after his teacher John Cheever submitted it without the author’s knowledge. And his debut novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, was a mega-best-seller that’s been translated into 12 languages.

He’s taught at Sarah Lawrence (his alma mater), Stanford, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and Duke (in his home state of North Carolina). And this week, he’ll be at the University of Memphis to kick off the school’s River City Writers Series spring 2011 schedule.

He is Allan Gurganus — novelist, short-story writer, and essayist — and he’ll be followed in the months ahead by other writers in the series: Dorothy Allison, Albert Goldbarth, and Madison Smartt Bell.

That’s a great lineup. It’s an “amazing” lineup, according to Cary Holladay, associate professor of English at the university and director of the writers series.

“This amazing lineup of authors is an indication of the quality and rising visibility of the U of M’s MFA program,” Holladay says.

The River City Writers Series has been running since 1977, making it one of the nation’s oldest and most respected visiting authors’ series. And you’re invited. Events are free and open to the public.

“We choose writers who are eager to talk with students and members of the community,” Holladay adds.

And for those eager to listen, what are the chances that Allan Gurganus will be reading from his novel-in-progress, the second book in a projected trilogy that began with Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All — a novel called The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church?

With a title like that, fingers crossed, the chances are: good.

Allan Gurganus reading at the University of Memphis (inside the University Center’s Bluff Room) on Monday,

February 7th, at 8 p.m.; interview with the author inside the university’s Patterson Hall (Room 456) on Tuesday, February 8th, at 10:30 a.m.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Playoff Bound?

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

As streamers fell and the Gap Band played at FedExForum Monday night, the Memphis Grizzlies, having just registered an exciting 100-97 win over the Orlando Magic, found themselves somewhere they haven’t been since October — with a winning record — and yet somewhere they expected to be all along — in the thick of the NBA playoff race.

As they enter the final two-and-a-half months of the season, the Grizzlies are well positioned for the playoff run promised by owner Michael Heisley last summer. But whether the team could get to this point had been in doubt for much of this surprising, interesting, and wildly inconsistent season.

After a 4-4 start, the Grizzlies went on a five-game losing streak in mid-November. Hosting Lebron James and the Miami Heat on November 20th, with the team showing signs of internal disarray and a 4-10 start looming, Rudy Gay drove to the baseline in the final seconds and hit a buzzer-beating jumper over James.

It wasn’t just a game winner. It may well have been a season saver. It was at that moment that the Grizzlies’ 2010-2011 playoff campaign regained a pulse, the start of a maddening, Sisyphean journey back to contention that has seen the Grizzlies get to within two games of .500 on five separate occasions, only to slip back again each time, and to get to within one game of .500 last week only to lose a 16-point lead to the lowly New Jersey Nets in the next game.

But, over the past few days, the Grizzlies finally pushed that rock to the top of the hill — overcoming a 21-point second-half deficit to steal a road win against the Philadelphia 76ers and then coming home the next night to rough up an overmatched Washington Wizards team.

“It’s nice to be back at .500. We’ve been scratching and clawing. Stuttering and starting and stuttering,” coach Lionel Hollins said after the Wizards game, describing the team’s season to this point.

And Monday night, against one of the league’s elite teams, with O.J. Mayo suspended and top scorers Zach Randolph and Rudy Gay having subpar games, Hollins got contributions from all over to finally get his team back in the black: point guard Mike Conley’s first career 20-plus point and 10-plus assist game; center Marc Gasol playing the Magic’s Dwight Howard, the league’s best center, close to even; reserves Tony Allen and Darrell Arthur making timely plays.

At 25-24, the Grizzlies are actually a game behind where they were at this point a season ago. But that was a different Western Conference, one in which it took 50 wins to qualify for the playoffs. With the middle of the West sagging a bit this season, a post-season birth is not likely to come with so steep a price tag. At the moment, that 25-24 record is good for ninth place, only one game behind the Portland Trailblazers for the conference’s last playoff spot.

And this is a different Grizzlies team, one deeper, tougher, and more experienced than last year’s model. Plagued with arguably the worst bench in the NBA, the 2009-2010 Grizzlies weren’t set up to sustain their level of play as the season wore on. This year, with more functional depth and a more favorable late-season schedule, the end game should play out differently.

The result should bring the Grizzlies and their fans, if not their first playoff berth since 2006, at least a legitimate post-season race into the final weeks of the season.

Larry Kuzniewski

supreme Marc Gasol.

At the outset of the season, the Grizzlies’ hopes for a playoff run hinged on repeating what went right last season — namely, an effective power game built around the frontcourt duo of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol and strong overall play from their returning starting five — while improving on the team’s two primary problem areas: defense and depth.

That power game stumbled out of the gate. Gasol missed opening night with a preseason ankle injury, and Randolph joined him on the sidelines early in that game with a bruised tailbone, leading to a depressing double-digit home loss to the Atlanta Hawks to start the season.

But the duo has rounded into a reasonable facsimile of last season’s dominance. The Grizzlies once again lead the NBA in points in the paint. They won’t be able to duplicate last season’s league-best offensive rebounding, but after a rough start they are sixth and rising in that category. And Randolph and Gasol are one of only two power forward/center combos averaging more than 30 points and 20 rebounds a game. (The other is Minnesota’s Kevin Love and Darko Milicic, where Love carries most of the weight.)

After playing last summer for the Spanish national team and coming back perhaps too soon from his pre-season ankle sprain, it’s taken Gasol longer to round into shape. On the season, his defense, rebounding, and scoring efficiency have all been below last season’s level. But the recent signs have been encouraging. Gasol has scored in double digits in six consecutive games, his blocked-shot numbers have been on the rise, and he just put up 19 points and 8 rebounds against the league’s best defensive center.

As for Randolph, he’s overcome his season-opening injury to be as monstrous a scoring and rebounding machine as he’s ever been. Randolph’s rebound rate this season is a career high. He’s set a franchise record with 14 consecutive double-doubles. And he’s been named the Western Conference Player of the Week twice.

Joining Randolph as a co-alpha dog has been Rudy Gay, who hasn’t made “the leap” exactly, but he has responded well to his controversial off-season contract extension with modest across-the-board improvements and by bolstering his reputation as a prime late-game option with three game-winning or overtime-forcing shots. But Gay’s most significant improvements have not been related to scoring but instead have come in his areas of greatest weakness: playmaking and defense. Gay has become a more willing and effective passer, and his assist rate, while still middling, is the highest of his career. Defensively, his block and steal averages are both career highs, but he’s also just been more solid overall. After being only moderately better defensively when Gay was on the floor last season, the Grizzlies have been significantly better defensively with Gay this season.

Much like Gay, point guard Mike Conley has responded to his widely criticized summer contract extension with solid rather than dramatic improvement. And, like Gay, his most important advances haven’t come from scoring. Instead, Conley has solidified himself as a legitimate starter with better consistency and ball control that has united a career-high assist rate with a career-low turnover rate. (Though Conley’s usually sure hand seems to get a little wobbly in the clutch.)

The one real chink in a starting unit that was among the league’s best last season has been shooting guard O.J. Mayo, whose tumultuous season has included a move to the bench, a black eye at the hands of teammate Tony Allen after complaining about a gambling debt, and, most recently, a 10-game suspension for a failed drug test that found the banned supplement DHEA (available in various over-the-counter products) in his system. But even when Mayo has played, he’s been far less effective on both ends of the floor, with a huge drop in his shooting accuracy and — according to both the eye and the numbers — some serious problems on the defensive end.

With less scoring production from a revolving-door shooting guard rotation and a rebounding and shooting-percentage decline from Gasol as prime culprits, the Grizzlies offense has slipped from 17th a year ago to 21st so far this season. But if the team’s returning core and power offense has fallen off slightly, that decline has been more than offset by vastly improved team defense and much better depth — advances rooted in the same two “new” additions, Allen and Darrell Arthur.

A defensive specialist for the champion Boston Celtics, Allen signed a free-agent contract with the Grizzlies over the summer with an eye on a bigger role that, frankly, his limited offensive skills didn’t warrant. This desire put Allen at odds with his coach, who also had to get comfortable with not only Allen’s rather unconventional game but also his equally unusual personality.

For the first month and a half, it wasn’t really working. Allen was averaging about 10 minutes a game, with a handful of “did not play – coach’s decision” designations by his name. Allen’s demeanor was sullen and disappointed. But, gradually, Allen came to accept his role, Hollins grew more comfortable with him, and Allen finally carved a regular role in the team’s rotation. And then we found out what an engaged Tony Allen is like: A wildly entertaining player both on the floor and on the bench, where he became perhaps the league’s most vocal and demonstrative cheerleader. A chaotic, destructive defender whose ferocity rubs off on teammates. An unpredictable “trick or treat” contributor who has fans alternately hiding their eyes and raising their arms.

Allen is the most unusual Grizzlies player since Bo Outlaw. His ability to jump into passing lanes to generate steals while still recovering to contain his man might be unparalleled league-wide. He has a knack for deft passes, swooping blocks, and thunderous dunks. He also has a knack for wobbly dribbling, missed lay-ups, dead-on-arrival jumpshots, and curious on-court decisions. He’s the most entertainingly volatile Grizzlies player since Jason Williams, except Allen’s energy is more positive. This is a guy who beat up a teammate over a gambling debt and still became a folk hero among fans and a rallying point for teammates.

Larry Kuzniewski

Grizzlies co-alpha dog Rudy Gay

But the former Griz player Allen evokes the most is probably James Posey, from the team’s first playoff run in the 2003-2004 season, another tough wing defender who came to town on a modest free-agent deal and changed the defensive tone of the team.

Among rotation players, Allen leads the league in steals per minute, and his ball-hawking style has inspired teammates, with Gay, Conley, and Sam Young also excelling in this area. As a team, the Grizzlies lead the league in both steals and opponent turnovers, and this has helped instigate a dramatic defensive improvement, with the team leaping from 23rd in defensive efficiency last season to 11th this season.

The Grizzlies’ ability to take the ball from opponents and take care of it for themselves has been one of the biggest positive changes this season, going from a +1 turnover differential last season (21st in the league) to -2.3 this season (second only to the Portland Trailblazers). Essentially, while the Grizzlies haven’t been quite as effective with their scoring opportunities this season, the improved turnover differential and strong offensive rebounding have made up in quantity what the team’s lacked in quality.

And the team’s previously deplorable depth has probably advanced as much as the defense, with Allen and an improved Arthur giving the team two high-quality reserves — or two more than the team had a year ago.

After being thrown to the wolves as an overmatched rookie starter and then losing most of his second season to injury, Arthur has emerged this season as the player the Grizzlies always hoped he could be: A quick, active athlete, Arthur has graded out well defensively. Offensively, he’s proven a deft scorer both on mid-range jumpers and around the hoop. On an isolation-heavy team, Arthur is especially helpful in that he thrives playing off others with catch-and-shoot or catch-and-finish scores.

Led by Allen and Arthur, and with reasonable contributions from second-year swingman Sam Young and rookie point guard Greivis Vasquez, the Grizzlies have decent depth for the first time in three seasons. Last season, the Grizzlies were +7.3 per 48 minutes with their primary lineup and -6.7 without them. This season, the primary lineup (Conley-Mayo-Gay-Randolph-Gasol) has fallen off slightly (+4.9), but the team’s plus/minus is only barely negative with other lineups, and lineups where Allen or Young have replaced Mayo have been very positive.

Overall, the Grizzlies on-court performance this season has been better than its record. Point differential is commonly considered a better indicator of future performance than win-loss record. By that measure, the Grizzlies, at +1.1, have been better than two teams ahead of them in the standings: the 25-22 Portland Trailblazers (+0.4) and even the 29-20 Utah Jazz (+0.3). And considering the Grizzlies have put up a positive point differential against what has been a difficult, road-heavy early schedule, the indicators are very positive going forward.

ESPN.com‘s John Hollinger does daily NBA power rankings based on how well teams have faired against their schedules and has the Grizzlies ranked 10th after the win over the Magic. By applying past performance against the strength of a team’s remaining schedule, Hollinger also does daily playoff odds, which have the Grizzlies with a 57.2 percent chance at making the playoffs, better than Portland’s 42.4 percent.

But if the metrics are so strong for the Grizzlies, why have they been fighting uphill all season to get to their current 25-24 record? They’ve struggled some in close games, improving to 7-9 in games decided by three or less or in overtime with Monday’s win over Orlando, and have gone 1-4 in overtime games. Among these are three of the most unlikely losses Griz fans have ever seen: Losing on a fullcourt buzzer beater in Sacramento, on a stolen inbounds pass at New Orleans, and on a fluky series of miscues at Phoenix.

The team has also been inconsistent, manifested in a competitive 7-7 record (with two overtime losses) against the league’s eight best teams and a modest 8-5 record against the league’s eight worst teams.

Another issue, as Hollins acknowledged after the win over Orlando, is that it’s taken awhile for this team to come together — and given Mayo’s current suspension and uncertainty over his status approaching the NBA’s trade deadline, questions still remain. The Grizzlies spent a month of the season playing lackluster — and since jettisoned — veteran guard Acie Law and not playing Allen much. Four different players have started at least seven games at scoring guard.

But, in winning six of their past seven games to get above .500, the Grizzlies have gotten in a groove. And the remaining schedule is conducive to maintaining momentum. After their road-heavy start, the Grizzlies will play more home games the rest of the season than any other Western Conference team. Having taken five road trips of three games or more already, the Grizzlies don’t have a trip longer than two games remaining.

An optimistic but also realistic look at what this team has done and the way the remaining schedule plays out suggests this: If Gasol continues to come around as a physical presence, the team can sort out its complicated wing rotation in a satisfactory manner, and they can avoid major injury, fans can get ready for a return of playoff basketball in Memphis this April.

Categories
Music Music Features

Turn It Up

CREDIT: Jason Sheesley

Last Memorial Day weekend, the second annual Memphis Hates You Fest packed the Hi-Tone Café for two nights and bested the debut turnout in 2009, with more than 500 patrons attending.

In a Flyer article previewing the event, Ben Aviotti, a co-founder of the metal/heavy rock collective, attempted to clarify what Memphis Hates You was: “I’ll tell you what it’s not. It’s not a record label,” he said. “Originally, it was just a message board, a forum for like-minded musicians helping each other with shows and promotion. Eventually it expanded to include an online store, festival, and booking agency.”

Well, Memphis Hates You is still all of those things, if not more of each due to the collective’s profile continuing to gain greater exposure. And while it remains free of the label classification, a label is precisely the reason behind what is more or less the collective’s next step.

It was only a matter of time before the growing heavy music scene in Memphis represented several acts ready to debut official releases, with a few already having done so. Although a collective is beneficial on many levels, running a label calls for more organization, easier accountability, and fewer cooks in the kitchen. Enter Good For Nothing Records, run by Memphis Hates You co-founders Aviotti and Nathan Raab, both of the Unbeheld. Using a keen sense of financial caution that is very telling of our times and the state of the music industry at large, Good For Nothing is not a label in the “we want to put out your record” sense.

Call it more of a DIY service designed to aid not only bands within the Memphis Hates You collective but like-minded but unaffiliated acts as well. “We don’t have any intention to bankroll somebody’s studio hit or pay to press up someone’s vinyl. That’s all on them,” Raab says. “We’ll help you do your DIY thing, basically. We’ll do or help with the mastering if you need help with that. We have connections and can get discounted studio time for bands. We’ve got people who can do design work for next to nothing.”

That said, the release that inaugurates Good For Nothing, therefore fully justifying this week’s rollout celebration, was handled from the ground up by the label. This would be the Unbeheld/Galaxicon split 10-inch, released in an edition of 200 with several colors of vinyl and hand-screened cover art.

What many people don’t realize is that a 10-inch is actually more expensive to manufacture than a full-length album because the machinery has to be reconfigured to cut the more uncommon size. Each band contributed one track to each side of the 45 RPM 10-inch, and, at that speed, the maximum amount of good, dynamic audio that can fit is 10 minutes.

Each band utilizes this audio window to its fullest. Higher-profile Southern contemporaries such as Black Tusk, Baroness, Zoroaster, and Kylesa can be heard as influences, but actual ’70s Southern-rock influences are only heard on the Unbeheld side, with Galaxicon managing to hit on prog-rock with the shorter song, no less. The Unbeheld track also displays quite the variety when it comes to the vocals (usually the one trouble spot that keeps prospective fans from embracing a lot of heavy music/metal these days), alternating between clean and soaring stadium-rock style to crustier Baroness-ish bellowing and several points in between. Both tracks go way beyond “promising” and showcase two bands that could easily hold their own against any of the aforementioned heavyweights.

In addition to the Unbeheld/Galaxicon split, upcoming Good For Nothing releases will include a re-release of the Unbeheld’s debut full-length and albums from the bands Dead-I-On and the Chinamen. Aviotti says the label will also look outside the Memphis Hates You scene, citing a re-release of the local hard-rock trio the Dirty Streets’ debut album.

Outside or inside the collective, Good for Nothing is the perfect vehicle to spotlight a scene in Memphis that has weathered serious challenges in terms of local publicity and acceptance. And this week’s label showcase at the Hi-Tone will provide a nice snapshot of this emerging scene, with the Unbeheld, Galaxicon, and the Chinamen joined by Tanks and Sauras. Sauras, it should be noted, is a top-shelf amalgam of different heavy styles that could put the city’s heavy music scene on the map if heard by enough people.

“What a lot of folks in the Memphis scene don’t realize is that there’s a lot of great bands right now. A lot of people are active, and it needs to get out there,” Aviotti says. “We’ve been gaining momentum. I think there will be some great things in the future, for us and for Memphis.”

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Up and Away

From Up Here, the compelling, if almost entirely humorless drama that opened at Circuit Playhouse last week, tells the timely story of a disturbed boy who takes a gun to school intending to kill himself and everybody else. Yet Liz Flahive’s raw but ultimately hopeful play isn’t about guns, or schools, or shooting.

It’s about child abuse in every sense of the word, save the most conventional sense. It’s about the abuse children heap on each other and the overprotective abuses parents can inflict with only the best intentions. It’s about the abuse communities and the media dole out while quenching the public’s thirst for gritty details and blood. But most of all, From Up Here is about the kind of child abuse that can happen to us at any age when our ever-tender, always-developing personal identities come into conflict with the identities ascribed to us by others. It’s a play about the death of joy, when our creative urges are transformed by convention into a love that dare not speak its name.

Director Irene Crist has served up a robust production. Her excellent ensemble cast, which includes Kim Justis, John Moore, Josh Bernaski, and Liz Sharpe, negotiates the soul-scraping corners of a play that, in the wrong hands, could turn into an exercise in theatrical sadism. Justis is especially good here as a mother on the verge of falling apart. When things seem darkest, she finds this hard-to-watch but impossible-not-to-watch show’s best, and necessary, laughs.

Through February 20th

Like Bottom the Weaver after his sexy adventure in fairyland, I walked away from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opera A Cappella unable to determine whether I’d experienced authentic sorcery or some trick to make me an ass. On the surface, Shakespeare’s romantic comedy about magic and mistaken identities in ancient Greece doesn’t seem to mesh all that well with a smooth jazz vibe, the unavoidable byproduct of composer Michael Ching’s daring a cappella score. It’s a little weird to experience Robin Goodfellow’s puckish games in doo-wop pentameter, although Ching’s treatment of the material is both a tribute to Shakespeare’s words and a nearly reckless celebration of the human voice.

Don’t let the buzz — mine or anyone else’s — fool you. The best thing about this Midsummer isn’t the gimmick of using singers instead of an orchestra but the exquisite tension that develops as the natural consequence of extended a cappella performance. For audiences, there’s a NASCAR-like thrill of knowing that there may be a crash and it might be spectacular. For the vocalists, both on stage and in the pit, Midsummer is the ultimate trust exercise, as many voices work together for two hours with nothing to assist them from measure to difficult measure but the sound of other voices. The concentration on display is intense, like watching a team of police officers defusing a bomb. But fun.

Savvy listeners will appreciate the clever composer’s goofy quotations of everything from Mendelssohn to The Sound of Music. But Midsummer‘s clowns, the “hard handed men of Athens” who’ve gathered in the forest to rehearse a play to perform at the Duke’s wedding, get short-sheeted at almost every turn. Their prose isn’t as thoughtfully translated into song, and, as a result, some of the most humane characters in the Western canon are reduced, almost entirely, to sight gags. Somehow — and this is a true testament to the opera’s strengths — it isn’t a crippling defect.

Playing off Ching’s musical wit, director Gary John La Rosa and his design team have strewn the stage with storybook costumes and ornate wigs. The set, defined by a row of Greek columns, is a kitschy cliché top to bottom, glowing in the gorgeous quotation marks of John Horan’s lights. The traditional profiles are edged with glitter rock flourishes and, taken together, make a perfect, whimsical counterpoint to Ching’s winking, compulsively romantic score.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opera A Cappella is an unprecedented collaboration between Playhouse on the Square and Opera Memphis. It seems, at times, like it’s still a work in progress, but it’s still one of the niftiest things I’ve seen on stage in Memphis since I started paying attention 25 years ago. If it’s not a sweet anomaly, it’s an evolutionary moment.

Through February 13th

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Boycott Chinese Products

There is a national movement building for a three-month boycott of Chinese goods for March through May. If this boycott is successful, it will accomplish three things:

First, it will make participants aware of just how tied we are to Chinese-made goods. In many cases, there will not be affordable alternatives, so participants will have to try to do without until the boycott is over.

Second, the boycott will make stores like Walmart aware of how vulnerable they are to a consumer-driven boycott. 

Third, and most important, it will get the attention of our political leaders. They have been very slow in putting any kind of meaningful tariffs or restrictions on goods from China. No company in the U.S. can compete with Chinese companies that pay as low as 25 cents per hour for labor. 

Putting tariffs on Chinese goods will likely start a trade war, which could include a refusal from China to loan us any more money. And certainly, the cost of living in the U.S. will go up, as more goods are again manufactured in the U.S. or tariffs are added to the price of Chinese imports. But the longer we wait to take action, the more painful it will be.

Please support this boycott. It’s bad enough that China is the largest foreign holder of our debt. If we also continue to give them all of our jobs, we may as well just start learning the Chinese National Anthem.

David Gordon

Memphis

Middle Ground Needed

I picked up a Memphis Flyer (January 20th issue) while passing through the Memphis airport recently and was entertained by the two opposing letters to the editor. Some of Joe Boone’s local references had me at a loss, but I could tell that he is not a Tea Party fan. Then, Lynn Moss’ reply to someone who was “Mad As Hell” seemed to balance the page with a volley of anti-liberal examples “to get the facts straight.” (“Liberal” comes from “liberty,” doesn’t it?)

However, she is just as guilty as the writer she is accusing. To say that the March 2010 bullet shot through a window of Eric Cantor’s office was from a Democrat or liberal is the same as saying that the Tucson gunman was Republican or Tea Party follower. Incredible!

What’s unfortunate is that there was no room left on the page for a voice of reason to bring the two extremes together. Paul’s words from First Corinthians 1:10 would fit nicely here. Maybe they should be read before every session of Congress.

Bob Warmath

Coppell, Texas

Rant Response

In response to Randy Haspel’s Rant in the January 20th issue, I have to wonder just which of the Bill of Rights he sees as having “evolved” to embrace newer technology and which he wants to remain stuck in the 18th century.

Mass communication during the American Revolution went only as quickly as a man on a fast horse, yet the First Amendment is used to protect speech made over the Internet, radio, and television. Who is to say that advances in firearms technology should not also be protected? Furthermore, I do not see how more gun control laws would have stopped the shooter in Tucson from shooting a peaceful gathering of people to see their congresswoman. He had passed a federally mandated background check, and a waiting period would not have stopped him, since he had purchased the firearm long before carrying out his plan.

He possibly could have been stopped if the school which expelled him had told law enforcement about their concerns for his mental health so that he could be flagged against the possibility of his buying a firearm. But this was not done, nor did any of the people who’d gotten on television to express their concerns about him do anything to get him any mental health treatment before he committed the shootings.

Just what hoops should a law-abiding U.S. citizen have to jump through in order to exercise any of their guaranteed rights? Do you think the rhetoric which some people blame for the shooting could have been toned down if there had been a waiting period on all talk-show hosts? Am I the only who’s noticed reports about how crime is being reduced, as well as the laments about gun ownership increasing? If gun ownership is going up and crime is going down, that should show that increased firearms sales are not automatically the root cause of criminal activity.

Doug Hesson 

Memphis

Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 word

Categories
Music Music Features

Changes at the Hi-Tone

When local entrepreneur and music fan/supporter Jonathan Kiersky returned to Memphis in 2004 after several years of traveling, he was looking for a new career opportunity. And, as luck would have it, inspiration came in the form of a disappointing night out.

“The Hi-Tone Café has always been a great music venue, but I thought more could be done with it,” Kiersky says.

“One night I tried to go to the bar early, around 8 p.m., before a show I was going to attend and was turned away because the show hadn’t started yet. I just thought that was crazy to turn down my money when I wanted to hang out there.”

And so, when Kiersky heard the club was for sale in early 2007, he jumped on the opportunity and immediately set about making significant changes.

“I want the place to be more than a music venue. I want people to feel as comfortable coming here in the evening just to get dinner or drinks or watch a game as for a late-night show,” he says.

Aside from some new tables and chairs and fresh coats of paint, the most impactful immediate upgrade Kiersky made was to the drab bar menu, which was expanded to include a diverse selection of pizzas, sandwiches, and specials made with fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

He also opened the Hi-Tone for Sunday brunch (which has become a popular destination for local scenesters coming down from the weekend) and partnered with the Memphis Grizzlies and Goner Records to host a series of watch parties for the team’s road games.

“I didn’t want to change the Hi-Tone exactly, because it was already a cool place. I just wanted to make it better, more inviting,” Kiersky says.

Kiersky made another big change this December, when he and longtime talent buyer and bar manager Dan Holloway decided to end their professional relationship, thus clearing the way for Kiersky to fully take the booking reins himself.

“I plan to keep up the head of steam we’ve built,” Kiersky says.

“We have tons of very big national-act shows in the works and plan on working more on community projects and developing local and touring bands as well. I’m excited.”

The parting of ways seems to have worked well for Holloway as well. After fielding several job offers both in and out of town, he has signed on to be a talent buyer for a group of venues in Austin, Texas, including the city’s premier underground music nightspot, Emo’s.

“It’s bittersweet, for sure,” Holloway says. “It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Memphis. I owe so much to the people I’ve worked for and with here over the years. I wouldn’t have this opportunity if it weren’t for Memphis, but it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

“I think he’ll do well there,” Kiersky says. “The job should be right up his alley.”

Vinyl Resurgence

Over the years, the vinyl mastering lathe owned and operated by esteemed local engineer Larry Nix (housed in a small wing of the Ardent Studios complex) has cranked out hits and influential recordings by the likes of Isaac Hayes, Big Star, Al Green, and ZZ Top. By 2005, however, the lathe had fallen almost entirely out of use after decades of service due to the decline in vinyl production and Nix’s waning interest.

But in 2009, fellow local producer/engineer Jeff Powell stepped in and approached Nix about getting the business and the lathe going again, and Nix agreed to teach him the craft.

“It has been wonderful,” Powell says. “I am still reading Audio Engineering Society white papers, a couple of old reference books, and even the original equipment manuals. Most importantly, Larry and John Fry have taught me the most about the craft by just talking about it and answering my million questions.”

After two years of apprenticeship and observation, Powell is now working the lathe on his own — most recently cutting projects to vinyl for Greg Dulli’s (of the Afghan Whigs) Twilight Singers and locals The City Champs. Still, Powell feels his skill at this delicate engineering art are still developing.

“It will be an ongoing education. I learn more every time I make a record,” Powell says.