Get your complete New Year’s Eve party plan from this week’s Flyer cover story.
Categories
Month: December 2011
Categories
Letters to The Editor
Towed
As someone who has played the “your car has been towed and you can’t get it back until Monday” game, I’m thrilled that the city of Memphis is doing something to crack down on these rogue towing companies (“Tow-away Zone,” December 15th issue). If tow-truck drivers have to wait until a policeman arrives before zipping away with people’s cars, it should cut down on overly ambitious and sometimes downright malicious removal of private vehicles and the subsequent highway robbery involved in getting your car back from a tow yard.
Lisa Foreman
Memphis
Time for an Audit?
In 2007, then-Mayor Willie Herenton appointed Sara Lewis to head the “office of youth services & community affairs.” She lasted two years, until $4.9 million in federal funds could not be entirely accounted for. Lewis stated she was too sick and couldn’t talk because her physician ordered her to bed, where she stayed for weeks. She said the program was “impossible” to manage. (And now this person is a school commissioner in District 6.)
When Myron Lowery assumed the mayor’s job on a temporary basis, he said the missing $4.9 million was being audited. So, a few questions:
What is the status of the audit?
Has Lewis recovered enough to answer what happened to the money?
Does “audit” mean the matter is being investigated or just a diversion, hoping the public will forget?
The local TV and print media should be investigating to find answers to this monetary mystery, instead of boring us with everyday coverage of a gay mayor in a small town in another state of possibly abusing his expense account.
Joe Mercer
Memphis
No Texting While Driving
It seems that every day we hear of yet another traffic accident caused by drivers using cell phones/texting devices while driving.
When I back up my car and strike another vehicle (for instance in a supermarket parking lot), that is an accident. But when an individual operating a motor vehicle demonstrates such a callous disregard for the safety of others, that is reckless driving.
This phenomenon is indicative of what has happened to our society. People could not care less about their fellow citizens. Now they can travel at high speed and be distracted all at the same time. Evidently, the punishments being meted out for these crimes are not severe enough.
One solution for recklessness caused by the use of cell phones is the installment of a device allowing for hands-free cell-phone use. All drivers should be required to have this installed in their motor vehicle if they plan to use the phone while driving.
As for texting devices, we must outlaw their use while driving a motor vehicle, period. My nephew was killed in a car accident as a result of a texting argument with his girlfriend. Studies have confirmed that texting lowers a driver’s reaction time worse than alcohol.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, New Hampshire
Hallmark of Insanity?
Albert Einstein famously noted that doing the same thing over and over expecting a preferred outcome despite evidence to the contrary is a hallmark of insanity. Applied to the major American political parties’ solutions for fixing the economy, it seems the politicians and their economic advisers may be due for some psychotropic medication.
Consider the classic canard that tax breaks for the super-rich are good for the overall economy: A rising tide lifts all ships and all that rot. If tax breaks for the super-rich (in place since the early part of the Bush II administration) were intended to let the market work its miracles, guess what. They did not work. Look at the economic mess we are in.
The rising tide has lifted a few yachts, luxury liners, and corporate container ships, but the canoes and rowboats of the middle class have been taking on water. Many are drowning, barely able to hold onto the flotsam and jetsam of the Great Recession.
While no Wall Street bandits have gone to prison, nearly 10 percent of working Americans remain unemployed with homes being foreclosed left and right. Doing the same thing, over and over (tax breaks for the wealthy), expecting an unrealizable outcome (prosperity for all) calls for something other than medication; the economy needs a new intervention.
John M. Kowalski
Memphis
Categories
The Year in Local Music
Our three critics reveal their picks for the best local artists, albums, and concerts of 2011:
Chris Herrington:
1. Digital Lows/”Coastin'” — Cities Aviv: Watching iconoclastic young local rapper Gavin “Cities Aviv” Mays get national recognition amid an increasingly crowded field of internet/indie rap upstarts was one of the most satisfying things to happen in Memphis music this year. And Mays’ unusually focused debut album, Digital Lows — 12 tracks, 35 minutes, no waste, no indulgence — is one of my five favorite albums of 2011, period. “I’m 21. This is the realest shit I ever wrote,” Mays exclaims on the opening “Black Box,” a conflicted missive aimed at his hometown, before the following, boombastic “Die Young” emerges as a deceptively righteous generational anthem. Released separately on a 7″ single, the smooth “Coastin'” is a statement of principles. I’m guessing this guy’s just getting started.
2. Stranger Me — Amy LaVere: If LaVere keeps making album-to-album leaps like this, where is she heading next? LaVere’s Anchors & Anvils was my favorite local album of 2007, but Stranger Me is better. Working with producer Craig Silvey and versatile session aces like her ex, Paul Taylor, and Lucero’s Rick Steff, LaVere crafts a swaggeringly musical suite of break-ups songs.
3. Step Brothers/Terminator 2/”Letter to My Son” — Don Trip: Rising rapper Trip is my local music artist of the year. Nobody in Memphis released more compelling, crucial music over the past year. But he hasn’t — yet — released a full album quite as realized as Digital Lows or Stranger Me. Pending next year’s Interscope debut, Help Is on the Way, Trip’s finest full-length so far is Step Brothers, a playful series of bangers recorded with Nashville partner Starlito. The duo swaps lines like they stayed up all night in the studio together cutting up and bouncing ideas off each other, which they probably did. And they display this unusual camaraderie in the hysterical body-switch video for the Step Brothers single “4th Song.” A low-key, Southern-fried Watch the Throne.
The best of Trip’s 57 solo mixtapes — okay, more like 10 — is Terminator 2, an inconsistent affair featuring some of his best individual songs: the passionate “Vent,” the conceptually brilliant “Feelin’ Like Mike,” and the mic-skills tour de force “I’m On 1.” And topping it all, so far, is his career-starting single “Letter to My Son,” a slice of raw autobiography that invades radio airwaves coast-to-coast this year.
4. The Man That Time Forgot — John Paul Keith: Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly-style rock-and-roll? Tex-Mex and honky-tonk country? Garage rock and early-’60s soul? Folk rock, smoky jazz-blues, and Marshall Crenshaw-style power pop? Not just anyone can do it, but transplanted Memphian John Paul Keith confirms on his ace second album that he’s an unusually adept roots-rocker, with a lighter touch than most, flawless taste, and sure songwriting chops.
5. Keys to the Kingdom — North Mississippi Allstars: Ten years after their debut, “Shake Hands With Shorty,” Luther and Cody Dickinson — along with constant companion Chris Chew — honor their late father, producer Jim Dickinson, by making, for perhaps the first time, music as loose and free and un-self-consciously spirited as he was. Appropriately, Keys to the Kingdom is a jaunty, defiant album about mortality and loss, featuring such highlights as the ragged, almost punkish kissoff “Jumpercable Blues” and the rambunctuous jazz-funeral showcase “New Orleans Walking Dead.”
Next Five: Cicada Sounds —Mouserocket; More or Less — Skewby; Got To Get Back! — The Bo-Keys; 4 All Seasonz — Royal’T; Rat City — Jack Oblivian
J.D. Reager:
1. Rat City — Jack Oblivian: Of the three ex-Oblivians, Greg Cartwright is generally accepted as the “songwriter” of the bunch — and for good reason. But with Rat City, Jack Yarber proves once again to be a force to be reckoned with in his own right. This record is a start-to-finish garage-pop gem that only gets better with repeated listening.
2. Movie Night — The Warble and 3. 12 Magnificent Songs — Clay Otis & the Showbiz Lights: If this list was of the “most excellently weird local albums of 2011,” then the Warble and Clay Otis & the Showbiz Lights would absolutely be the top two (probably in reverse order). As it stands, both make the top three with what are still tremendous efforts. The Warble’s weirdness on Movie Night is reminiscent of early They Might Be Giants and Ween but with a darker and more psychedelic edge. Frontman Alex Warble definitely has infectious pop hooks in his bag of tricks — songs like “Just Busted” and the title track will get stuck in your head. The Clay Otis & the Showbiz Lights album is, unbelievably, even more adventurous (and, yes, weird). This is a band that answers the previously un-asked musical question, What if Prince and Duran Duran were forced to make an album in the mid-’80s with an eccentric unknown frontman?
4. Cicada Sounds — Mouserocket: This eight-song EP would be good enough on the strength of co-bandleader Alicja Trout’s songwriting contributions — particularly “I Can’t Keep My Hands Off U” and “Hello, Talk to Me,” which are among of her finest compositions to date. But when you throw in a couple of equally memorable tunes by her partner Robby Grant (not to mention his ferocious lead/noise guitar playing), the fine string arrangements of Jonathan Kirkscey, and the very solid rhythm section of Robert Barnett (drums) and Hemant Gupta (bass), you have a great record.
5. Got To Get Back! — The Bo-Keys: Local R&B outfit the Bo-Keys are a throwback act in the sense that the group’s music instantly recalls the classic 1960s Memphis soul sound of Stax and Hi. What sets the group apart is that most of the members (including guitarist Skip Pitts, drummer Howard Grimes, and trumpet player Ben Cauley) actually participated in that scene in its heyday. And it shows on Got To Get Back!. Kudos to bandleader/bassist/producer Scott Bomar for bringing and keeping this all-star soul group together.
Next Five: Self-Titled Record — William Stull; Movements — The Dirty Streets; “Evening News” — Sharp Balloons; Tarantula/Blue Blood — Limes; Homemade With Love — Davy Ray Bennett
Chris Davis:
1. The Pixies at the Orpheum: They played both the album track and the slower, more beautifully arranged (UK Surf) version of “Wave of Mutilation,” Doolittle in its entirety, and prime cuts from Surfer Rosa. What more could anybody want from a Pixies concert? Well, “Letter from Memphis” would have been nice. It’s not like they didn’t play it in Nashville.
2. Al Kapone and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra: What could have been a stunt team-up turned out to be an exciting collaboration. “The Music,” Kapone’s valentine to Memphis’ best-known export, stood out in an evening full of outstanding performances.
3. Carla Thomas singing “B-A-B-Y” at the Center for Southern Folklore’s tribute to Rufus Thomas: Backed by FreeWorld, Thomas was in good voice and high spirits, and, to borrow a phrase from Kapone, she made this signature tune shine like brand-new jewelry.
4. Folk Alliance Conference: What made this year’s Folk Alliance special? Sitting in a hotel room about two feet away from Ron Sexsmith covering Elvis Costello’s “Every Day I Write the Book,” hearing the Atomic Duo perform a bluegrass-inspired cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon,” catching Blind Boy Paxton’s X-rated version of “Stacka Lee,” and the Carolina Chocolate Drops mixing Irish reels with beat-boxing.
5. Amy LaVere’s Stranger Me and Jack Oblivian’s Rat City: I can’t make up my mind about this year’s best new song. LaVere’s “Stranger Me” is haunting and impossibly catchy, while Jack Yarber’s Star & Micey collaboration “Girl on the Beach” is unexpectedly bright and joyous. And both of these barely edge out the nifty, noisy mess of Sharp Balloons’ “Evening News.”
Categories
K.C. and the Sunshine Band
Put on your boogie shoes and head to the Horseshoe Casino Thursday to enjoy K.C. and the Sunshine Band.
Categories
He Fought the Law, and the Law Won
John Branston returns from the North Country with tales of breaking the law and making a run for it.
Categories
Confessions of an 80-cent Tax Scofflaw
Just spent several minutes paying 80 cents by credit card to the Illinois Tollway for an unpaid toll on the way to O’Hare Airport after Christmas.
To all those who think that toll roads are a good idea for Memphis, please think again. The impulse to get other people to pay a share of our taxes is understandable. But there are unintended consequences, as this little jaunt illustrates.
Interstate 294 around Chicago is a toll road that is sometimes a faster option than Interstate 94, which is “free” but goes through the city. There are manned and unmanned stations every few miles. Regular drivers flash an “I Pass” and speed right through. At manned stations, you can fork over your money to an attendant, who will make change and maybe even give you directions. At unmanned stations, including the last one before the airport, drivers must pay the exact amount, which is 80 cents. Bills are not accepted.
I was alone and driving a rental and had exhausted my supply of change, plus a dime borrowed from the guy in the car behind me, at the previous unmanned station, where the toll was 30 cents. I was cutting my flight connection close and would gladly have paid $1 or even $5 to the Land of Lincoln, but no way. Coins only. Get out of the car and hit up a stranger for 80 cents. Or speed through and pay later, which I did.
To do that, you go to Illinois Tollway’s website, which is not to be confused with the Illinois tollroad website, which is a collection of ads and links to “how to” sites.
Then you fill out your information, complete five steps, and your card is charged 80 cents. If you don’t do this within seven days of the violation, the cost can be as much as $20.
This may not be the most aggravating government hassle of the season but it’s close. The lesson is that the fine for minor motor vehicle violations — tolls, speeding tickets, parking tickets — is often only part of the story. Which is one reason why I don’t like the idea of privatizing parking meters in downtown. The lack of a dime can get you a $20 parking ticket, and if you pile up three of those you get a bigger fine and/or a day in court. I prefer the present system with its inefficiencies. A toll station on Interstate 55 at the Mississippi line or on the Arkansas side of the Interstate 40 bridge might seem like a good idea until you’re the one getting stuck in a traffic jam or fined $20 for want of 50 cents.
Categories
Zoo Lights
It’s your last week to see the SunTrust Zoo Lights at the Memphis Zoo.
Categories
Sweet Grass Next Door
Last Friday, I took a break from holiday errands to grab lunch from Sweet Grass Next Door.
One glance of the menu, and I knew wanted the fried egg sandwich ($8).
It’s the end of the year. Our office is closed for a week. The editor says we got to fill this space anyway. So here goes.
Home for the Holidays. It’s nice to go home and see the old places looking good. West Michigan not only doesn’t have any snow, the grass is green. I climbed a sand dune near Benton Harbor the day after Christmas and people were walking the beach on Lake Michigan. Not even skim ice on the inland lakes near Grand Rapids that we used to play hockey on over break. Eds and Meds seem to be keeping the area going, but it’s been a bad decade for pyramids. Steelcase office furniture closed its pyramid-shaped headquarters in GR, and General Motors closed its factory a few years ago. United posted a last-minute $156 round-trip fare from Memphis to O’Hare, leaving a three-hour drive around the lake on Christmas Eve, which was a pleasure, listening to the Lions beat San Diego and make the playoffs. The flight was two hours late because of a delay in Denver. Memphian Michael Lightman was getting off the plane, and he said the problem was a delay in Durango. In Durango they’re probably blaming the dog. I bet the pilot we wouldn’t take off before 1 p.m. He burned rubber backing away from the gate, taxied at about 100, took the u-turn on two wheels and won the bet by seven seconds. I made a note to call the FAA after I climbed down from the ceiling.
Fashion. Looking good and good looks are not the same. A newspaper reporter doesn’t know much more about fashion that a cow does, but at least reporters can report what they see. And what I see in downtown Memphis on the sartorial front does not bode well for high-end haberdashery. Mayor A C Wharton is one of the last of the sharp dressers. There’s a joke that he mows the lawn in a shirt and tie, and maybe he does. City Hall and the courts are one of the few downtown places where you see men in suits and women in heels. Dressing up for work is going the way of fedoras and shoeshine stands. The bank headquarters are all gone, except for First Tennessee. Ad agencies are consolidating and moving out of downtown, and some of the ones still around are casually hip. The Glankler Brown law firm left. Morgan Keegan is endangered, and so is Pinnacle Airlines, even before it completes its move into One Commerce Square. Some of the other big downtown employers: MLG&W is strictly utilitarian in every sense; AutoZone is a fine company but a suit salesman’s nightmare of black pants and gray or red shirts on the rank-and-file and the executives; At The Commercial Appeal, not even the publisher wears a tie; and at the University of Memphis Law School, every day is casual Friday.
Social media. Facebook has 800 million members. I bet it is 500 million in three years. The lack of any assurance of privacy is the Achilles heel. Facebook is planning an IPO (initial public offering) of stock next year. For a publicly traded company, what good are all those members and friends if you can’t share their information with someone who wants to sell them something? One look at your email inbox should make you think twice. Another opportunity for spammers and hackers.
The Big Shrink. Developer Henry Turley says his fellow commercial real estate pros are preparing for the coming era of much smaller offices, and fewer of them, as people work at home and on computers. I was struck by all the excess space when I visited the office of a full-service brokerage firm last week, and even moreso a month ago when I did a story on a commercial real estate pro who has left a big expensive office in Peabody Place, appointed with art work, leather chairs, huge tables and desks, expensive paneling, and all the other trimmings. Maybe some version of “Mad Men” in 2030 will take a nostalgic look back at the era of office excess.
Books, and movies. When it came out last spring I thought James Stewart’s “Tangled Webs” was the most important nonfiction book of the year, and I didn’t see anything after that to make me change my mind. His analysis of public corruption, perjury, and enablers has special relevance to Memphis. Another winner: I bet there is more truth than fiction in John Weisman’s “KBL: Kill Bin Laden” billed as “a novel based on true events.” In fiction, I’m amazed at how Lee Child keeps churning out terrific thrillers in his Jack Reacher series. The 2011 offering, “The Affair,” is set in northeast Mississippi and has a couple of scenes in Memphis. If I’m stranded on a desert island (or in an airport) I want the Reacher series and a magic genie and two more wishes. The other series I always recommend to people is Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker mysteries. Estleman works on a 1950 manual typewriter, and Walker is a Detroit private eye who lives by the code. “Infernal Angels” is about the proprietor of Past Presence (“Everything you require for the modern regressive lifestyle”). Child’s series jumps back and forth in time, but Amos Walker has aged steadily and chronologically through 21 tales. Finally, the late Christopher Hitchens (“Arguably”) won’t be easy to replace as an essayist. A secular humanist, conversationalist, humorist, William Buckley without the conservative politics or the wardrobe.
Television and media: Food shows are brilliant. Colorful contestants, interesting new wrinkles, and clever hosts. I love “Chopped,” and I had Geoffrey all the way on “The Iron Chef.” “The Good Wife” is Mr. Crankypants’ favorite non-reality show. Late to the party as usual, I got hooked on it in 2011. It’s all about the beautiful women with black hair, black eyes, black clothes and attitudes. Kalinda is Hottie of the Year. Julianna Margulies is runner-up, but her best work was in the movie “City Island.” Lea Michele of “Glee” is second runner-up. “Glee” is ridiculous. Those high schoolers must be about 30. Fox shows always go over the top but I’d have quit every sport, trashed my Chuck Taylors, and joined the glee club if Lea was in it.
Health and fitness and sports. As I get older, the desire to play sports gets stronger and the desire to watch other people play them, especially pros, gets weaker. It’s weird how sports loyalties endure. I have not lived in Michigan for 40 years but still root for the Red Wings, Tigers, and Lions, all of whom had good years in 2011. They say the Catholic Church has you after your childhood, and teams do too. I’m surprised that people spend $40 a ticket or more to sit in the nosebleed seats at an NBA game. The St. Jude Marathon is still most impressive local participant sports event, with 13,000 people running 5k or 26 miles. I’m sweating though if I have to find sponsors for the tennis tournament, golf tournament, and minor sports with our corporate community shrinking. I think Peter King of Sports Illustrated is an exemplary reporter. His Monday notes, analysis, commentary, and reporting on Sunday’s games are better than the games themselves. What a workhorse he is. Another sportswriter, Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal, is also really good — funny, serious, and original in the difficult twice-a-week format that limits the timely topics.
News Media. The Wall Street Journal has changed a lot under Rupert Murdoch from a business newspaper to more of a general interest newspaper with daily reports on fashion, sports, and fitness and health. The Journal’s brand has always been separation of reporting and the editorial page. The reporting is so good it can and should be a course syllabus in Journalism 101. Compassionate, wide-ranging, fair, fiends on attribution and accuracy. But after 30 years I can’t read the editorials or the Oped columnists with the exception of Dorothy Rabinowitz who manages to be tough as nails, brilliant, jaded, always interesting, and look like a fascinating woman in a Woody Allen movie. I still admire the Journal’s disdain for on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand columns. The New York Times put up a pay wall, and I paid. Gail Collins is great. So is Maureen Dowd. I can’t make it through a Thomas Friedman column though, much less his latest book, “That Used to Be Us.” David Brooks is good in his back and forth with Collins but otherwise kind of blah. Why don’t conservatives ever criticize their own? On the list of Things I Don’t Do Much Any More: watch the national news at 5:30 p.m. Bad timing. I’ve checked national papers several times already, and the drug commercials drive me crazy. Boniva my ass. Sally Field is the Devil. Local television reporters work really hard and do their work well for the most part. Like baseball infielders, the more chances you get the more errors you are going to make and there were some beauts in 2011. Do we need four stations for saturation coverage of Kapone the lost dog? In local print media, paid obituaries have become an art form and a bright light of community journalism.
Random Notes. Occupy Memphis makes no sense to me, and like that three-story American flag in front of Guardsmark’s building after 9/11 I don’t see an ending. I want to cry when I see a story about a Memphis area man or woman who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Make an extra visit to the Little Tea Shop next year to help Suhair and the staff recover the time it was closed due to family illness in 2011. The television commercials for Red Lobster and the hot dogs at Sonic make me want to go there right now. Ghost River beer is great. Congrats to Chuck and the gang.
Happy New Year.
Categories
Grizzlies/Spurs: What Happened?
Chris Herrington breaks down the Memphis Grizzlies’ first game, a not-so-close loss to San Antonio.