Bianca Phillips reports on the city’s plans to expand its recycling program.
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Month: October 2012
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MPD Officer Charged with DUI
Off-duty officer Adrian Brown was charged with a DUI after he was caught driving down the wrong side of the highway in Mississippi. Bianca Phillips has the story.
Okay, “burning” is putting it too strongly, but when I was starting this post on Makeda’s famous butter cookies and Made from Scratch‘s shortbread cookies, I realized that I wasn’t sure if butter cookies and shortbread were the same thing.
Apparently, they are not, and it’s a matter of the butter/flour ratio, with the shortbread using more butter. And, indeed, the Made from Scratch cookie is indulgently rich.
So, one final question: Makeda’s or Made from Scratch? Yes and yes. There is no wrong answer.
Made from Scratch cookies are available at Miss Cordelia’s.
The Memphis Police Department announced today that officer Adrian Brown was charged with a DUI, DUI refusal, and driving on the wrong side of the road while off-duty in Madison, Mississippi on Thursday, September 27th.
The 46-year-old officer, who has been employed with the MPD since 1998, was stopped by a Mississippi Highway Patrol officer when Brown was seen driving northbound in the southbound lane of I-55 near mile marker 122 around 11 p.m that night. Brown refused a DUI test.
Brown has been relieved of duty, with pay, pending the outcome of an investigation. He is currently assigned to
Airways Station.
Local filmmaker Mark Jones’ new film, Tennessee Queer, will make its Memphis debut on Tuesday, Oct. 2nd at Malco Paradiso.
Tennessee Queer tells the story of a gay man who visits his rural hometown and winds up throwing a gay pride parade there. The scenes were filmed in Memphis, and the film features local actors Christian Walker, Billie Worley, Jerre Dye, Anne Marie Hall and Jim Eikner.
There are two scheduled screenings, one at 6:30 p.m. and one at 9 p.m. Tickets can be purchased on the Brown Paper Tickets website. For more information, see the event’s Facebook page.
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It’s Watergate All Over Again
Bruce VanWyngarden marvels at the right-wing’s attempts to gin up outrage over the Libyan embassy attack.
Tennessee Seventh District Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn appeared on Fox News Sunday and offered this assessment of the administration’s handling of the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya:
I think this is an issue — Benghazi-gate is the right term for this. This is very, very serious, probably more serious than Watergate.
That’s correct. Blackburn contends that the U.S. UN ambassador’s initial misreading of the Libya embassy attack as part of the Arab world’s riots in response to an anti-Muslim film is on a par with the Watergate scandal.
You remember the Watergate scandal, right? It led to the impeachment and resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, and involved Nixon administration officials approving a criminal break-in and wire-tapping at Democratic party headquarters.
The parallels are so obvious. On one hand, we have an initial misinterpretation of events by an administration official, one that has subsequently been corrected and acknowledged. On the hand, we have a U.S. president condoning a criminal act of breaking and entering by his own operatives, then authorizing an official cover-up.
Why, they’re almost mirror images of each other. History repeating itself.
No wonder Mike Huckabee is calling for the president’s impeachment.
Just one question: What planet do these people inhabit?
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The Surprising St. Louis Cardinals
Frank Murtaugh says the St. Louis Cardinals, on paper, probably shouldn’t be in the playoffs. But recent history tells us not to count out the Redbirds.
Kyle Lohse
Let’s do some time traveling this week. We won’t go back that far, just 11 months. The setting is the St. Louis Cardinals’ clubhouse at Busch Stadium, only minutes after the 2011 World Series champions have completed their parade down Market Street. The fans are still cheering, the trophy is stilly shiny (if damp from champagne), and the players are smiling ear to ear.
Until we show up with our crystal ball.
Asking every player and coach to take a seat, we show off said ball (also shiny), and announce a few forecasts for the champs’ title defense:
• Not only will you lose Hall of Fame-bound manager Tony LaRussa (the longtime Cardinal skipper looks sheepishly at the floor, but doesn’t protest), but Albert Pujols will be playing in the American League next season.
• Chris Carpenter — the team’s horse throughout the championship drive — will pitch his first game of 2012 on September 21st.
• Lance Berkman — 31 homers and a Series-saving hit in Game 6 — will get a total of 96 plate appearances in 2012. He will drive in seven runs.
• The Cardinals’ starting shortstop in September will be Pete Kozma, a man who won’t even hold down the everyday shortstop job at Triple-A Memphis.
• The Cardinals’ second ace, Adam Wainwright, will lose (at least) 13 games.
Hey … pass that champagne bottle!
Among the true joys of following baseball — as it’s played daily over six months — is just how unpredictable every season is. Last spring, if you had the Baltimore Orioles and Oakland A’s in the American League playoff picture — ahead of the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels — you’re riding shotgun on my next Vegas road trip. The game surprises, one year after another.
For the 2012 St. Louis Cardinals, the surprises weren’t all of the doom-and-gloom variety. Let’s consider a few more images from that crystal ball:
• Kyle Lohse — poster boy for a rotation’s third pitcher — will win 16 games and post a 2.86 ERA. (This was Lohse’s contract year, so maybe this was in fact predictable.)
• Lance Lynn — the face of middle relief for the 2011 champs — will step into the rotation and win 18 games himself.
• While Pujols hits .288 and delivers 30 home runs and 104 RBIs (through Sunday) for the Angels, his replacement at first base in St. Louis — Allen Craig — will bat .310 with 22 dingers and 91 RBIs. Craig will have 151 fewer plate appearances. (Two more figures to compare: Pujols was paid $12 million this season, Craig $495,000.)
• Joining Craig in the 20-homer club will be old standbys Matt Holliday and Carlos Beltran, but also David Freese and Yadier Molina, giving the Cardinals their first team with five such sluggers.
• Jason Motte, the Cardinals’ set-up man as recently as August 2011, will become the fourth Cardinal to save 40 games.
The regular season comes to a close Wednesday, and baseball’s first winner-advances/loser-golfs wildcard game will be played Friday in Atlanta. The Cardinals have a two-game lead on the L.A. Dodgers for the second wild card slot (with three games to play). A Cardinals-Braves tilt would have some carry-over drama from 2011, as the defending champions would face the team whose collapse was essential for them to even qualify for postseason play.
The most compelling angle from the Cardinal side of things will be manager Mike Matheny’s choice for starting pitcher. The rookie manager is armed with two certifiable aces (Wainwright and Carpenter), but must weigh the strengths of Lohse, whose performance over the last six months trumps that of any of his teammates, including the two former World Series heroes. Do Lohse’s numbers this year outweigh his career playoff mark (0-4, 5.54 ERA)? Do Wainwright’s recent struggles cost him the start? Can you possibly send Carpenter to the hill with only two or three starts under his belt?
Those with memories of Carpenter’s epic complete game last year in Philadelphia (to clinch the Division Series) will want to see him on the hill in Atlanta this Friday. And they’ll be thinking with their hearts. Start Lohse … but with a short leash.
The Germantown Democratic Club (for yes, Virginia, such a group exists and may even be thriving) met at the Gazebo in Germantown Municipal Park Saturday for its annual picnic. Here Dave Cambron exhorts his fellow Democrats to take heart from recent poll samplings that show President Obama to be leading Mitt Romney nationwide.
Attendance at this year’s event seemed well above the average turnout in recent years.
Ironically enough, considering that Germantown is considered to be the heart of the heart of Shelby County’s Republican constituency, the Germantown Democrats, who also include a good many members from Cordova, Collierville, and unincorporated areas, constitute one of the county’s more active party groups.
An analogy might be to the South Memphis Republican Club, or the Orange Mound Republicans. Do such groups exist?
The point is not facetious. The President will almost certainly carry Shelby County on November 6, and until Republicans are able to carve out a bridgehead within Shelby County’s African American majority, they will not be able in the long run to match Democrats in countywide voting.
In the short run, the GOP has managed quite well, dominating most county elections over the last 20 years despite being demographically challenged. But Democratic incumbents won the countywide offices up for grabs in August, and that fact could have portents for the future.
(Those attending the picnic were well aware, however, that Republicans now dominate politics and government statewide, and that fact is unlikely to change for some time to come.)