Month: March 2012

Categories
News The Fly-By

In Harmony

A couple of University of Memphis grad students are proving that you don’t have to be on the same stage — or even in the same country — to play music together.

Ionut Cosarca and Liviu Craciun, both originally from Romania, have collaborated with more than 100 young musicians from around the world to create a “virtual symphony.”

Their virtual symphony video, which was recorded and performed by musicians from more than 30 countries, has reached more than 11,000 hits on YouTube over the last couple of weeks.

What originally began as a small project between Cosarca and Craciun at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis quickly grew to unexpected popularity.

“Craciun recorded the first violin and viola parts, and I played the second violin and the cello part on a viola,” Cosarca said. “We put [our recordings] together with some video and audio editing, and in the end it sounded like a string quartet.”

In the beginning, the recording was only of Craciun and Cosarca, but they decided to invite friends from Romania and other countries to join. From there, they realized they could do a virtual orchestra that would allow a lot of people to cooperate on a single piece.

“We were originally thinking about doing an arrangement of a pop rock song,” said Cosarca, “like something from Radiohead.”

But something a bit more baroque, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, was in the cards for Cosarca and Craciun, and the virtual symphony project became a means of advocating classical music to young musicians around the world.

Nearly all of the collaborating musicians are between 10 and 20 years old and joined the project through Cosarca and Craciun’s social media campaign.

“We created a website, littlesymphony.com, as well as a Facebook page and a YouTube channel and started sending messages to musicians,” Cosarca said. “We posted the musical part on the Facebook page along with instructions and a metronome beat.”

Soon, dozens of musicians from around the world joined in on the collaboration, far surpassing the pair’s expectations.

“People just started recording their parts and submitting them, and they got more and more involved as time passed by,” Cosarca said. “Initially, we were only expecting to get around 20 or 30 musicians.”

In the opening minute of the video, each musician and a conductor is shown on-screen, arranged in a way that resembles a symphony onstage. This dissolves to show a handful of musicians at a time, labeled by their country of origin. The video can be viewed on littlesymphony.com and YouTube.

Cosarca and Craciun expect to begin working on their next virtual symphony project within two months.

“For our next project, we hope to get more musicians involved,” Cosarca said, “and we’re thinking about doing a piece by either Bach or Beethoven.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About “Attention Passengers on the Good Ship Memphis: Icebergs Ahead”:

“One problem, as I see it, is the city has built too many Titanics, if the Titanic is a metaphor for an extravagant solution to a simple problem. Instead of doing the inconspicuous, unglamorous, unheralded things that make a city a good place to live, we’ve sunk all our money into titanic plans to attract visitors and tourists to downtown. Cities need residents, not visitors.” — jeff

About “A Path Worth Taking” and a way to resolve the school consolidation worries:

“The only school systems which have more than 100,000 students that have been successful are in extremely affluent cities. So ask the people who are serving on the Unified School Board and the Transition Planning Commission, “Why are you so intent on attempting to cripple the municipalities’ attempt to create their own smaller districts?” — GrizzleGM

About “A School Choice Quiz”:

“I’ve had lunch at an elementary school in Bartlett at least 50 times on Fridays. The noise level is probably equal to that of a U2 concert. … However, the kids aren’t running around or fighting. They are just talking and laughing. I wouldn’t change a thing.” — GWCarver

Comment of the Week:

About “Letter from the Editor” and his reasons for living in Memphis:

“As a conspiracy buff, I moved here because I’m convinced that the haters have seeded the clouds to make them appear dark at all times, casting a foreboding pall that lingers over all of us like some kind of giant death ray. Well, that and the fantastic barbecue!” — phlo

Categories
News The Fly-By

Flying Saucers

CREDIT: John Mancuso

Memphis may be far from Area 51 in Nevada, but some locals claim unidentified flying objects are making an appearance in the skies above the Bluff City.

Strange sightings (and even alien abductions) were the hot topic last Saturday at “The UFO Experience” conference at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn.

The event, which featured ufologist Richard Hoffman as the keynote speaker, was sponsored by the Tennessee division of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a national organization that investigates UFO sighting claims.

Memphian Julia Dennis attended the conference. She claims to have spotted several UFOs in the city and said she believes she’s been abducted.

“There was one large aircraft that came down low, above the tops of my neighbor’s trees. It had lights and windows on it. I saw beings inside,” Dennis said. “I don’t have any memory after that, but I have a feeling that I went traveling with them.”

Throughout the month of February, MUFON claims there have been more than 20 UFO sightings in Tennessee. About five of those alleged sightings were in Memphis or within a 20-mile radius of the city.

Memphian Leon Freeman also attended the conference. He claimed to have seen greenish-orange smoke coming from an unidentified object silently moving through the sky one night near the corner of Southern and Willett.

“I was getting into my truck when I saw this big piece of metal about as big as a house with smoke like I’ve never seen before,” Freeman said. “At first, I thought it was an airplane that exploded, but if it was, it would have been coming toward the ground. This object was going above the trees, but they didn’t move. It was going fast, and it was going straight.”

Hoffman said 80 percent of UFO sightings are objects that can be identified as something conventional, meteorological, or astronomical. He said there’s another 20 percent that remain unidentified after an investigation. Those are categorized as UFOs.

“When I talk to a person who’s picked up debris from a crash, that’s one thing,” Hoffman said. “When I talk to an air pilot who’s witnessed an aircraft dematerialize or materialize out of nothing, that’s another.”

Hoffman said some things that are commonly misidentified as UFOs include blimps, helicopters and airplanes, meteors, satellites, kites, and other planets in the solar system.

University of Memphis biology major Jacquis McNary is a skeptic who believes UFO sightings have logical explanations. “Someone might see something that looks weird. But if you pay attention, you realize that it’s a shooting star or an airplane or some other ordinary object,” McNary said. “Some people are looking for stuff out of the ordinary, and they let their imagination get the best of them.”

Those who do believe in UFO sightings have reported all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from discoid shapes like the flying saucer to cigar-shaped crafts. Over the last decade, MUFON has also received reports of black triangles in the sky that are twice as big as a football field. Some people have even reported seeing physical occupants aboard the aircrafts.

TN-MUFON will host another conference called “UFO Abductions Unveiled” on March 10th from 2 to 9 p.m. at Southwest Tennessee Community College’s Macon Cove branch. It will feature self-professed abductees Travis Walton and Thomas Reed, as well and UFO abduction expert David Jacobs.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Can the Hysteria

Does anyone know where to get Valium in aerosol cans? We could use such a device to calm unruly groups of people who panic first and use their brains later.

If there were such a thing, I would buy a case and saturate the rooms where suburban mayors and citizens meet regularly to hone their anti-Memphis rhetoric in order to spring into hysterical (over)reaction to merging the city and county school systems. Perhaps then, reason and facts could become part of the discussion.

Outside of a measure of savings produced by combining the bureaucracies — and only through attrition over a decade or two — here is what will happen if the two systems become one: nothing. Absolutely nothing. The county schools will not decline, and the city schools will not improve. Merely merging the urban and suburban systems will have a net zero effect on test scores of individual schools within any combined enterprise, however it is constructed.

Why? Because the reason city schools perform less well than county schools is that a majority of city parents are less prosperous and less educated. This is no criticism of those parents. Nor is it a compliment to most county parents. The reason that county schools produce higher test scores is because the majority of those parents have more resources to give their children.

It is indisputable that a child of means will almost always outscore a child whose resources are meager.

This explains the supposed superiority of the employees of the county system, whose arms ought to be really tired by now, being that they have been in a near permanent position of back-patting for the higher achievement measures with which they are credited. Here is a fact: What the county system does merely supports the good effects parents are creating at home; it does not make them from scratch.

A reality check for suburban parents is in order, too, as the resources they provide are not comprised of Herculean tasks against overwhelming obstacles. Yes, they are to be respected for providing a safe, stable, and prosperous environment in which to rear their children. But middle-class families beget middle-class families, and if you did not grow up in poverty, chances are good that you will never experience poverty.

So, can we dial back the arrogance and the hysteria? Both sentiments preclude sensible solutions and obscure the reasons why there are two systems in more than strictly territorial terms.

As for the city schools’ insistence that they control part of the unified system, they should just throw in the towel and let the county schools take over. Not because county personnel have some magic fairy dust to sprinkle over classrooms, but since the county claims that they know better how to educate children, the city ought to make them prove it. Let’s see how easy the county thinks it is to manage a system when a large number of disadvantaged kids are part of it. Of course, that would explain the vehement opposition of county administrators to the merger. They might actually have to back up some of their self-serving bombast.

Until there is a way to erect a force field that starts near Kirby Parkway and Poplar and extends north, south, and east of the county’s own Eden, the city’s problems will continue to be the county’s problems. Every poorly educated child has a negative effect on the entire community, and if there were such a thing as a force field protecting suburban Shelby County, sooner or later one of its citizens would have to leave its confines to go to the airport or an Orpheum show or to take in a basketball game.

That impoverished child whose very existence in a county-run system so terrifies some of you is still out there, hoping for a better life but likely to be a drain on regional resources. A separate system cannot separate you from that reality.

So, suburban Shelby County: Take a breath, get a clue, and climb down from your high dudgeon. Unless you want me to pull out the aerosol.

Ruth Ogles Johnson is a frequent Flyer contributor.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Super Tuesday in Tennessee

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

For the second consecutive presidential election year, Tennessee’s two cents’ worth on choosing a leader for the country may have heightened value.

In 2008, the Volunteer State — which, then as now, voted on the multi-state primary date known as “Super Tuesday” — was the subject of intense competition in the Democratic primary between advocates of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And Clinton, who had early on sewed up most support from the state’s Democratic establishment, edged her rival, doing well enough in Tennessee and a few other states to continue campaigning for several more months.

This year, on March 6th, the contest in Tennessee is in the Republican presidential primary — between early front-runner Mitt Romney and three GOP rivals, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul. Ostensibly, the race, which began early last year with a Republican field of 10 contenders, is considered by most to have been winnowed down to a two-man showdown between Romney, the well-heeled former governor of Massachusetts, and Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

But the Republican race has seen so many tos and fros and ups and downs that it would be folly to count out any of the top three — Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich, the onetime GOP speaker of the House. (Even Texas congressman Paul, a hard-shell libertarian with a highly committed, if probably limited, support base, could do well in Tennessee.)

The state is voting according to a complicated “winner-take-most” formula, whereby Tennessee’s delegates to this year’s Republican national convention in Tampa — 27 from the state’s congressional districts and 28 elected at-large — will be apportioned according to the candidates’ final vote totals, with top finishers earning delegates at a higher percentage rate than also-rans.

Like Clinton before him, Romney has support from his party’s ruling elite in Tennessee — notably from Governor Bill Haslam — and his well-placed surrogates may have to bear much of their candidate’s burden. In any case, at press time Romney’s campaign schedule listed no in-state events for the candidate between now and Tuesday, though Haslam will head up what is billed as a “Shelby County/West Tennessee Organizational Meeting” for Romney at Jason’s Deli on Poplar Avenue on Thursday afternoon.

Santorum, who hopes to appeal to evangelicals and other social conservatives, showed up at a Tea Party event in Chattanooga on Saturday, while Gingrich, an on again-off again contender who is hoping to return from the politically dead for maybe the fourth time in the last campaign year, was in Nashville for several events on Monday and another in Chattanooga on Tuesday.

Former speaker Gingrich had surrogates, too — having named state senator Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) and state representative Tony Shipley (R-Kingsport) as his Tennessee co-chairs some weeks back. Though he drew hecklers at an afternoon rally at the state Capitol on Monday, Gingrich was presumably more concerned with his standing in recent polls.

The most recent sampling in Tennessee, a new Vanderbilt University poll of 815 registered Tennessee voters, showed Gingrich in fourth place at 13 percent. Santorum led with 38 percent, followed by Romney with 20 percent, and Paul with 15 percent.

Gingrich’s big win in South Carolina in mid-January was followed by a drubbing by Romney in Florida, and Gingrich has since yielded his place as Romney’s main challenger to Santorum, who is also competing with the former speaker for primary votes in the Southern states.

The presidential primary race may succeed in galvanizing election-day turnout, which, in the case of local races also on the ballot, was slight during the early-voting period that ended this week.

LOCAL RACES: The contested ones include party primaries for two county offices — general sessions court clerk and assessor of property — as well as a race to fill the District 1, Position 3 seat on the Shelby County Commission that was vacated late last year by Mike Carpenter.

The position of district attorney general, vacated in 2009 when then district attorney Bill Gibbons resigned to become state Safety and Homeland Security commissioner, is also on the ballot, but interim incumbent Amy Weirich, a Republican appointed by Governor Haslam, is unopposed on the GOP ballot, as former state legislator and city council member Carol Chumney is on the Democratic ballot.

The district attorney race will be resolved in the county general election of August 2nd, which is also the date for primary voting on state legislative positions.

The contested local races on March 6th break down as follows:

General Sessions Court Clerk

There are five Democrats seeking the position and two Republicans. (An independent, Patricia McWright Jackson, will be on the August 2nd general election ballot.)

Democrats: The contenders are Otis Jackson Jr., Ed Stanton Jr., Sidney Chism, Marion G. Brewer, and Karen Woodward.

Jackson, a former University of Memphis basketball star, is the incumbent but is currently under suspension following his indictment on charges of official misconduct for improperly coaxing financial contributions and campaign activity from his subordinates. As he noted wryly in one public forum, this state of affairs presented opponents with an “opportunity” and is the major reason for there being a relatively crowded field.

Stanton, a county administrator of long standing and the father of current U.S. attorney Ed Stanton III, is well regarded and, as he boasts, was the unanimous choice of the general sessions judges to succeed Jackson on an interim basis. As such, he is a de facto second incumbent in the race.

Chism, currently the chairman of the Shelby County Commission, is a former Teamster leader and onetime chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party, who has been one of the major political brokers of the last two decades in Memphis and Shelby County. He was especially close to former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton during the latter’s heyday.

Brewer, a retired teacher and principal in the Memphis City Schools system, is making his first political race, branding himself the “non-politician” in the race.

Woodward, also a first-time candidate and former teacher (in the Shelby County Schools system), is running from a similar “non-political” perspective and has been assisted in her campaign by Jimmy White, a well-schooled local political figure who once served as state commissioner of labor. Her filing petition barely got in under the wire on deadline day and required a judicial ruling in her favor.

Outlook: Jackson will draw his share of votes, on the basis of his incumbency and name identification, but the latter factor cuts both ways because of his precarious legal status and recent notoriety. Stanton commands enough respect to draw a significant vote, as well. Brewer is an impressive figure with standing in the community, and Woodward is a promising new face with the added advantage of being the only white Democrat on the ballot, should there be an ethnic split.

Chism’s political clout, degree of support, and organizational ability (huge portions of South Memphis are filled with his yard signs) may give him the win over the other Democrats, though Stanton recently put out a mailer containing endorsements from the likes of 9th District congressman Steve Cohen and Ruby Wharton, as well as one from Shelby County commissioner Justin Ford, who, interestingly, turns up on Chism’s endorsement list, as well. Chism also boasts endorsements from Herenton, Councilman Jim Strickland, and MCS board member Patrice Robinson.

Republicans: The contenders are Rick Rout and James R. Finney.

Rout, currently an employee of Shelby County Juvenile Court, is the son of former Shelby County mayor Jim Rout and a longtime Republican Party activist, having held several executive positions with the local party. He is frank to say, apropos Jackson’s remark cited above, that the current disarray in the general sessions clerk’s office is a major reason for his entry in the race.

Finney is a legal process server who retired from the Navy after 25 years’ service. Aged 75, he proudly noted, at a recent forum, that he was the oldest candidate running in this year’s county election. He also conducts a weekly talk show on KWAM-AM radio.

Both Rout and Finney have had publicized financial problems — Rout as the plaintiff in a still-unresolved lawsuit against a now defunct insurance agency which once employed him and which he says still owes him money; and Finney, who is making regular payments on an I.R.S. lien for back taxes.

Outlook: Mainly on the basis that he is a known quantity among Shelby County Republicans, whose rank-and-file activists will probably turn out disproportionately, Rout should gain the GOP nomination.

Shelby County Assessor of Property

Three Republicans and two Democrats are vying for a position which is charged with the responsibility of setting and periodically reviewing real property values for the tax rolls and has, over the years, generated its share of controversy and turnover at the helm.

Democrats: The contenders are incumbent assessor Cheyenne Johnson and realtor Steve Webster.

Johnson was elected assessor in 2008 after serving 24 years in the office, 10 of them as chief administrator for former assessor Rita Clark.

Webster, a well-acquainted local Democrat, has hazarded a couple of unsuccessful political races to date against better-established candidates, and his race against Johnson would seem to be another uphill battle.

Outlook: Though Webster may yet have an opportunity to serve in public office, it is unlikely to be this year. Johnson was the beneficiary of a recent fundraiser attended by Mayor A C Wharton, and she has like support from other major party figures.

Republicans: The contenders are Randy Lawson, Tim Walton, and John Bogan.

Lawson, a videographer and provider of a wide variety of other high-tech services, was for a decade technology manager for the city of Germantown. He promises to cut the expenses of the assessor’s office through more prudent use of both personnel and physical resources.

Walton, a realtor, has been a review appraiser for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and is a current member of the Tennessee Real Estate Appraisal Commission, He, too, promises to bring about fairer and more efficient processes.

Bogan, a retired Navy commander, is currently a deputy assessor who says the office is currently being mismanaged, with a lack of proper accountability. He has also attracted considerable attention of late as president of the Fisherville Civic Club and a principal in that community’s controversial recent attempts to stave annexation by Memphis.

Outlook: The GOP race is almost a coin-flip situation, but Lawson’s technological expertise has outfitted him with a series of self-produced TV spots that could boost his prospects, provided he can get them proper exposure on local airwaves.

Shelby County Commission, District 1, Position 3

Republicans: This district, which essentially rims the edge of Memphis proper from northwest to southeast, has been GOP-dominated in recent years, and two candidates — former Commissioner Marilyn Loeffel and newcomer Steve Basar — are facing off on the Republican side.

Though she has been more or less politically inactive since being term-limited in 2004, Loeffel presumably still has ample name recognition, both from her commission service and from her longtime prominence as a leading member of FLARE (sometimes also spelled FLAIR), a once flourishing organization devoted to socially conservative ideals. Her main bailiwick is Cordova.

Basar, who has been a steady presence as an attendee at local governmental meetings over the last year or so, is a local businessman who has devoted considerable time and energy to development of the Greater Memphis Greenline and other environmental activities. A native of Detroit, he is currently supply planning manager at Schering-Plough.

Outlook: This one is a tough call, a case of established identity versus promising new face. Presumably Loeffel’s neighborhood base is still intact, though probably not to the same degree as during the former commissioner’s years of public prominence. Basar is still a relative unknown, though his support along the Poplar Corridor parallels that of other former businessmen-turned-politicians, and he has active support from such current Republican commissioners as Heidi Shafer and Mike Ritz. He has previously voted in some Democratic primaries — a fact criticized by Loeffel.

Loeffel, who has some support from serving officials, too, may have the edge on pure name identification, but it’s a coin flip.

Democrats: Unopposed on the Democratic side of the ballot is Steve Ross, an audio-visual consultant and activist who is well-known among local Democrats for his “Vibinc” blog, which often covers public issues in surprising depth.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Halfway Home

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The most anticipated season in franchise history — as we called this Grizzlies campaign in our season preview — did not get off to a good start. First, before a single game was played, the Grizzlies lost their best reserve from a year ago, forward Darrell Arthur, to a season-ending Achilles injury. Then, four games in and already heading toward a 1-3 start, the big blow: the team’s best player last season, Zach Randolph, felled by a knee injury that promised to cost him two months, at least.

Many hoped for mere survival at that point. Try not to fall out of the playoff race completely and hope Randolph would return in time to rescue the season. But fans have happily gotten something more, as the Grizzlies begin the second half at 19-15 — 18-12 since Randolph’s injury — and find themselves in 7th place in a tight Western Conference playoff race. (Only two games out of a top-four seed — and, thus, home-court advantage in the first round — but also only two games out of 10th.)

Resiliency is becoming mundane in Griz country: The team went 15-8 last season after Rudy Gay’s injury, before all but throwing the final two games for playoff positioning by sitting key players. They also went 8-2 last season during O.J. Mayo’s 10-game suspension. The lesson to draw from all of this: This is a good team with plenty of good players. They’re talented enough and — at the demand of hard-nosed coach Lionel Hollins — play hard enough to overcome missing key players.

With Randolph likely back in the lineup within the next week, the Grizzlies are poised for a strong finish. But beyond their record, they’ve impressed in the season’s first half by maintaining much of their effectiveness and style of play despite the loss of key players.

Like last season, the Grizzlies have sported an aggressive, high-level defense that forces lots of turnovers and a middling offense that’s strong in the paint but weak beyond the arc.

Much of the focus early this season has been on the return of small forward Rudy Gay from last spring’s season-ending shoulder surgery. And while some fans are disappointed that Gay hasn’t been more dynamic in the absence of Randolph, he probably deserves a little more credit for maintaining his career norms while coming off his first major injury and a long layoff and into a lockout-compressed season — in the context of which scoring and shooting are down league-wide.

While Gay’s 18.9 points per game is 15th in the league and he found consistency in February after a couple of noticeably bad games in January, it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that Gay started to show the kind of all-around play that marked his game at the time of last season’s injury. In his last five games before the break, Gay’s averages on rebounds, assists, blocks, and free-throw attempts were all significantly above his season averages. Is this increased activity a blip or a trend? The answer will have a lot to say about how good the Grizzlies can be going forward.

But while Gay has been under the microscope, perhaps more key to the Grizzlies’ ability to stay afloat in the face of injuries have been the performances of first-time All-Star Marc Gasol and returning icon Tony Allen.

Gasol, abetted by a sharp decline in his foul rate and seemingly better conditioning, has been able to increase his minutes (from 31.9 last season to 38.1) without a decline in quality. While he’s not quite the physical monster that fellow All-Star centers Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum are, Gasol’s joined them as the only members of the 10 rebound/2 block club at the season’s mid-point while showcasing a more developed all-around game — acting as a secondary playmaker, making more liberal use of his excellent mid-range touch, playing team defense like a bigger Shane Battier.

Now established in the starting lineup, Allen’s minutes have also gone up (from 20.8 to 26.3), and fans should be very pleased with what they’ve seen from Allen. His breakout season a year ago, at age 29, had all the makings of a classic “fluke rule” season, with regression to the mean likely. But Allen has retained most of what made him an impact player in his first season with the team.

Together, Gasol and Allen have been the inside/outside anchors for a near-elite defense, one whose 10th overall ranking in defensive efficiency might sell them short given that the team’s first-half schedule was heavy with games against elite offenses.

With Allen as catalyst, the Grizzlies again lead the NBA in both steals and opponent turnovers, and the starting perimeter trio of Allen, Gay, and Mike Conley has proven to be unusually deadly in this regard. The trio is first (Conley), sixth (Allen), and 11th (Gay) in steals per game, with Allen once again boasting the league’s best per-minute rate among players averaging at least 20 minutes.

Despite struggling with his three-point shot so far this season, Conley has been steady again after several years of inconsistency to start his career. And as the only point guard in the NBA at the All-Star break with more steals than turnovers, he embodies the Grizzlies’ rare combination of aggressive defense and controlled offense.

While the team’s defense has maintained last season’s excellence, the offense has understandably slipped, from 16th last season to 21st at the break. The good news is that this decline can be attributed almost entirely to the loss of Randolph and Arthur — although a contributing factor is the self-inflicted wound at back-up point guard, where the team foolishly jettisoned second-year playmaker Greivis Vasquez before knowing if rookies Jeremy Pargo and Josh Selby were truly NBA-ready. (So far, they aren’t.)

The Grizzlies have remained an elite offensive rebounding team (up from 6th to 4th) despite the loss of Randolph, getting improved offensive board work from Allen and Gay while newcomer Dante Cunningham has, perhaps surprisingly, outperformed Arthur on the offensive glass. And they’re once again the league’s least-prolific three-point shooting team (an area that’s arguably been underemphasized despite a paucity of reliable long-range threats).

The difference this season is that the team’s paint-oriented attack has shifted slightly but meaningfully toward mid-range shooting, with the exchange of Randolph (who took 24 percent of his attempts from mid-range last season) for Marreese Speights (43 percent of his attempts from mid-range this season) as the primary reason.

Speights, acquired for the little-used and oft-injured Xavier Henry, and Cunningham, signed as a free agent to a lower-level multi-year contract, were great finds given the team’s dire front-court needs. Speights has been a good-not-great rebounder and viable scoring threat while responding well to the on-court tutelage of post partner Gasol. Cunningham’s mid-range shooting has been a disappointment so far, but he’s ably replaced Arthur’s energy, defensive coverage, and transition play. But the return of Randolph — assuming he’s anywhere close to his old self — and the shift of Speights to a reserve role should have a significant impact on the team’s offense while only helping a defense that was terrific last season with Randolph as a neutral factor. (The Grizzlies have been significantly better defensively without Speights on the floor this season.)

Reinserting Randolph into a lineup winning without him will require some adjustment, but it should be minor. Randolph’s replacement, Speights, plays a roughly similar game and shoots the ball nearly as often as Randolph relative to his playing time, so the Grizzlies haven’t really altered the way they play all that much. Gasol is likely to see fewer low-post touches, but he’s proven that he can help the offense in a variety of ways and isn’t concerned about his own shots. And the constant question about “whether Zach Randolph and Rudy Gay can play together” is a silly one given that the duo has played more than a hundred games together and the team has been successful as long as Gasol wasn’t injured or Allen wasn’t getting DNPs behind multiple marginal pros.

Add it up, and there’s plenty of reason for excitement heading into a two-month sprint toward the playoffs. If Randolph can make a successful return from injury — and signs are good — this team has the potential to again be a dark-horse contender in a loaded Western Conference. And perhaps from a higher seed this time.

For more Grizzlies coverage, including expanded mid-season player breakdowns this week, see Chris Herrington’s “Beyond the Arc” blog at memphisflyer.com.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Make Bryan Laugh

Is laughter the best medicine? Scientific research suggests that it increases blood flow and may raise the level of infection-fighting antibodies. But what about nonscientific evidence?

The improv comics who make the FreakEngine run want everyone to know that this month’s midnight performance is the most important show they have ever done. And they want you to know that, as unbelievable as that sounds, it’s not a joke. For not quite 15 years, FreakEngine’s quick-witted and somewhat masochistic performers have brought audiences to TheatreWorks for midnight performances on the first Friday of every month. For most of those shows, comedy fan Bryan Sims — known as Kestrel to his friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism — has been in the audience. This show is his special show. He gets to pick the theater games. His key-word suggestions will carry more weight than other audience suggestions.

“We’re going to find a recliner for him to sit in and a crown for him to wear,” Freak-in-charge Michael Entman says.

Sims was recently diagnosed with an aggressive, drug-resistant strain of cancer, and, according to Entman, he’s fighting it with every tool at his disposal, including laughter.

The games Sims has selected include FreakEngine classics like “Marshmallows,” where the performers try to play a serious scene and not make people laugh. If laughter happens, the person responsible gets a marshmallow Peep stuck in his or her mouth and the scene goes on until mouths are too full of peeps to continue. They will also perform “Mousetrap,” their most famous game, which involves bare feet, 80 live mousetraps, and a blindfold.

“This show is a tribute and benefit. It’s geared to make Bryan laugh,” Entman says.

FreakEngine performs a benefit show for Bryan Sims at TheatreWorks on Friday, March 2nd, at midnight. Admission is $5, but separate donations will be accepted.

Categories
Music Music Features

Heartless Bastards at the Hi-Tone Cafe

Erika Wennerstrom is a rare thing: a white blues/roots-belter utterly free of histrionics. There’s a simple power to Wennerstrom’s songs and singing that is perfectly matched by the sturdy accompaniment provided by the music of her no-frills band, born, appropriately, in rust-belt Cincinnati but now based in Austin, Texas. The band’s 2005 debut, Stairs and Elevators, was an oddly, almost ineffably inspirational album. It was so modest yet reached for so much. I never expected Wennerstrom to be able to repeat its charms. But she’s come mighty close with three subsequent collections of direct, bone-deep rock songs suffused with an air of cautious hope: 2006’s All This Time, 2009’s The Mountain, and now 2012’s Arrow. The latest is perhaps a little heavier and flashier than before, embodied by the lacerating guitar rave-up that ends “Parted Ways” or the metallic swagger of “Got To Have Rock and Roll.” But the clincher is still Wennerstrom’s strong, soulful, emotionally committed vocals. The Heartless Bastards play the Hi-Tone Café on Wednesday, March 7th, with the Fling. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $15.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Film Spotlight

Better Than Something: Jay Reatard

After debuting as a work-in-progress at the On Location: Memphis film festival last spring and premiering as a completed work at Indie Memphis last fall, Better Than Something, the documentary portrait of late Memphis musician Jay Lindsey, aka Jay Reatard, gets a local theatrical run this week.

It was primarily filmed as a short in April 2009 but then expanded into a feature following Reatard’s January 2010 death. The bittersweet film opens, smartly, with a tart, revealing French TV appearance from 2008.

“I take myself very seriously, hence my name,” a sardonic Reatard tells his interviewer, who responds, “You feel angry when you’re onstage. Are you still angry?” This prompts a deflated, utterly honest answer: “No, I feel happy when I’m onstage. I feel angry when I do shit like this.”

That was Lindsey — “bad boy” surface and principled, often disappointed, suffer-no-fools core. Better Than Something humanizes Lindsey, as he gives a tour of the houses he lived in as a Memphis youth and tells some rough stories of things that happened in them (including the origin of his great Lost Sounds song “1620 Echles St.”), then hangs out, happily, with old friends at Midtown bar the Lamplighter. Interview subjects include some Memphians who knew him best, such as Lost Sounds bandmate and former girlfriend Alicja Trout and producer Scott Bomar.

Better Than Something doesn’t get into the details of Lindsey’s death, but it doesn’t shy away from his problems, either. One friend talks about smoking crack with Lindsey, a story Lindsey essentially confirms with regret and rueful amusement, while a Matador Records associate complains of fans trying to get close to Lindsey with offers of drugs.

The film concludes movingly, with Lindsey explaining that his unusually prolific catalog of recordings was born of a desire to document his life. “I try to make as much as I can with the time that I have,” he says. “I just make music because I’m afraid of everything else, I guess.”

Opens Friday, March 2nd, at Studio on the Square

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Freeman

“Let everybody say yeah.” All right, break it down, fellows, I got something I want to say. That’s right, now, bring it way down so I can talk to the ladies for a minute. LADIES!

Let me ask you a question. Did your old man come home drunk last night because he was laid off at the job, and he crawled in bed feeling all romantic? And while usually you might push him away, this time you didn’t since times have been so rough on everybody, only now you need the “morning after” pill, Plan B, or whatever they call it. So you go down to the corner drug store only to find that the pharmacist refuses to sell it to you because he has a religious objection to birth control? Well, did you know that’s just what Missouri senator Roy Blunt’s new bill will allow? Anyone along the birth control distribution chain whose religious views are opposed to contraception can claim a “conscience objection” and refuse to sell it to you. That includes clerks, shelf-stockers, and cashiers. Now, can I give the drummer some?

“Everybody, scream!” Let’s say you’re a single lady and you went to a party and met a nice guy who seemed attentive and funny, so you ended up having nightcaps at your place and Marvin Gaye was playing on the stereo and one thing led to another. Only, later you discover that the SOB is married and something is off with your cycle. It’s been less than a month, and since you would never consider carrying the child of someone else’s husband, nor do you consider a non-breathing zygote with a prehensile tail fully human, you wish to terminate the pregnancy. Only President Santorum has gotten his wish that abortion be criminalized and outlawed in all cases, and even rape victims should consider a resulting pregnancy as “a gift.” So, you turn to Planned Parenthood, but they’ve been defunded and/or bombed and all the physicians who performed the procedure have gone underground to avoid assassination from the anti-abortion zealots. And now, the only place left to go is underground. Can I get a witness? Ladies, having Rick Santorum as president would be like having Franklin Graham as your prom date.

Break it down, band, and let me talk to the fellows. Guys? You didn’t think this wasn’t your issue, did you? Imagine your 16-year-old daughter getting early admission to that prestigious college she’s been dreaming about. All the arrangements have been made, only at the last minute, she gets pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, who is joining the Marines. After your family has cried about it and prayed about it, you all decide the best course is abortion. Only, you live in Virginia, and the state legislature passed a law that requires any woman seeking an abortion to first have a state-mandated ultrasound in order to humiliate them into reconsidering. Since most abortions occur within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, this would require a “transvaginal procedure,” in which a probe is inserted into the vagina and manipulated to produce an image. Fellows, I don’t know about you, but forcibly penetrating a woman for no medical reason sounds awfully close to rape to me. The Virginia legislature might have known this had they consulted any women, but the bill was on the governor’s desk when even he pulled out, so to speak. Governor Bob McDonnell, looking like a graduate of preacher college, covets the vice presidency, so he decided to soften the bill by eliminating the invasive kind of ultrasound but not the procedure itself. Now, ‘scuse me while I do the Boogaloo.

People are always talkin’ ’bout less intrusive government, but that’s just about as intrusive as you can get. All these candidates for president are trying to prove who’s the most conservative. One guy says he’s “severely conservative,” while his opponents line up to say, “I’m the most,” “No, I’m the most,” when what they’re really saying is my penis is larger than yours.

And what about that congressional hearing on women’s reproductive issues held by Representative Darrell Issa? Women are 52 percent of the population, yet a House committee couldn’t find any to join their stag party.

“Issa in da House!” These GOP candidates aren’t running against Barack Obama so much as they’re running against the 1960s. Republicans want to run your sex lives when they can’t even run their own primaries.

“Now, I got one more thing I want to say right here.” I believe in the power of love, yet here comes this guy Ricky Santorum, who thinks he has the final definition of what love ought to be for you and me. He believes that sweet love should only be for married people and, even then, just for procreation. I know someone else who believes that way: Pope Benedict XVI. A long time ago, a Catholic man named John F. Kennedy ran for president and assured the electorate his allegiance was not to the Church in Rome but to the U.S. Constitution.

Now, this Santorum person runs for office claiming that JFK’s address was “a horrible speech” and that he prefers a papal edict. Not the kind of Christianity practiced by Obama, because according to Rick, “He has some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible.” The Sanctum Santorum believes contraception is against God’s will and has seven children to prove it. And in Rick’s world, prenatal screenings only cause more abortions to “cull the ranks of the disabled” in society.

So, good people, what I’m trying to say is that you should get down on your knees and say, “Thank you, President Obama, for being a moral family man who keeps his business to himself. Thank you, Barack, for concentrating on the whole house instead of just the bedroom. And thank you for being the only thing standing between us and the sexual Inquisition.” Any woman who votes for a Republican now has got it coming.

“Can I get an amen?” The name of the group is the Coat Hangers. Now, let’s hear it one time for the band. Goodnight, everybody!

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