Bruce VanWyngarden has some advice on the tricky business of dog-naming.
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Month: November 2013
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Black Friday in Memphis
The Flyer staff has some suggestions for how to handle the weirdest “holiday” of the year — Black Friday.
Over the past 40 years, the Memphis and Shelby County community has been in an almost constant state of conflict — by race, by gender, by religious affiliation, and, most intriguing of all, by the accelerating divide between urban and suburban interests.
David Pickler
It could be argued that despite 40 years of court-ordered actions to eliminate the vestiges of segregation, Memphis and Shelby County are more segregated today than at any time in history. While the prior focus of desegregation efforts focused on issues of race, today’s segregated Shelby seems to be principally a function of socioeconomic status.
The past few decades have witnessed an unprecedented level of population mobility, with large segments of the community choosing to vote with their feet. A significant result of this mobility has been the growth and development of Shelby’s six suburban communities. This outward expansion from the core city of Memphis has created substantial animosity from urban leaders, whether in municipal government or in education leadership.
It could be argued that a driving motivation behind the surrender of the charter of Memphis City Schools was an effort of urban Memphis leaders to effect a hostile takeover of the suburban school system. It is certainly unquestioned that the school merger issue was merely the latest chapter in a saga that has also included libraries, ambulances, police, and utility services.
As an aggressive and passionate advocate for Shelby County Schools, I was absolutely opposed to the ill-conceived Memphis City Schools charter surrender, and my public advocacy as a suburban leader made me a fairly easy target during the many months of urban-suburban battles at the ballot box and in the legislature. I was very proud to fight for the rights of suburban residents to the same educational autonomy that had been enjoyed by Memphis residents for many decades.
Upon the decision by federal Judge Hardy Mays that the merger would become the new reality, my fellow Shelby County Schools board members and I chose to fully engage in the work of the Transition Planning Commission and Transition School Board to attempt to navigate the uncharted waters of consolidation. We also watched with significant interest the diligent and passionate efforts of each of our six suburban communities to pursue their own educational independence.
As the merger reached completion, the most significant issue remaining to be resolved was the decision about school buildings located within their municipal boundaries yet still owned by Shelby County Schools.
Despite much concern that the acrimony of the merger and creation of the new municipal districts would derail any meaningful attempts to negotiate a fair agreement for transfer of the buildings, an amazing degree of cooperation and compromise has emerged.
Agreements have been reached with five of the six municipal districts that would end the litigation battle between the Memphis City Council, Shelby County Commission, and suburban municipalities. These agreements provide a nominal series of payments to partially offset the remaining post-employment liabilities still retained by Shelby County Schools. The buildings would transfer without cost to the suburban taxpayers.
Still left to be resolved are negotiations with Germantown. These discussions have been tainted by unfortunate rhetoric on social media sites and in public emails and speeches. The recommendation by the superintendent and staff to retain three landmark Germantown schools has ignited a powder keg within the municipality.
Emotions have flared on both sides, as suburban advocates claim that Germantown is bearing the brunt of urban angst and anger in dismantling the newly merged district. A factor hindering Germantown’s position is a lack of consistency among city leaders and newly elected Germantown school board members as to their desired results.
Additionally, there is a significant lack of trust in Germantown’s long-term commitment to educating all the children currently being served in Germantown schools.
The public-education families living in Germantown should not be deprived of the same right to neighborhood schools that is being offered to every other family in all of Shelby County. I would hope that the spirit of cooperation evidenced in the negotiations with the five agreements already consummated would favor openness resulting in an appropriate agreement with Germantown. The time has come to heal and to focus on providing world-class educational opportunities to all children, urban or suburban. They are our future.
David Pickler is proprietor of Pickler Wealth Advisors and a member of the Shelby County Schools board.
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Star Bright
It’s shaping up to be a good holiday season for Ekundayo Bandele, executive director and playwright-in-residence for the Hattiloo Theatre. The best news is that the new Hattiloo, which broke ground in Overton Square three months back, is coming together even faster than expected, and he plans to announce the venue-opening show in January. If Scrooge Was a Brother, Bandele’s take on the Dickens classic, opened at Chicago’s eta Creative Arts Foundation last week, where it runs through December 29th. On the home front, he is opening his newest Christmas play, The North Star: An Urban Nativity.
“Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity gets turned into a concert,” Bandele says of the play. “I really wanted to tell the story of what happens at the Nativity. And to tell it like I’ve never seen it done, in a way that I think would be interesting for me to watch.”
Bandele’s Nativity is contemporary, but he digs into the source material to tell the story of a poor carpenter, a pregnant virgin, the people who love them, the people who wonder at them, and a big bright light in the sky.
“It’s suspenseful,” Bandele says of a show that, for the most part, takes place in the 24 hours leading up to Christ’s birth.
“It’s much more about Mary and Joseph and their relationship than it is about Christ,” Bandele says.
“The North Star: An Urban Nativity” at the Hattiloo Theatre, December 5th-22nd. $18-$25. hattiloo.org
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Fly on the Wall
Nashville vs. Memphis
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index came out last week and the results are clear: Tennessee sucks. The Volunteer State ranked 47th out of 50 in overall well-being as related to physical health, emotional health, good jobs, access to health-care, and so on. Nashville Scene blogger Betsy Phillips broke things down even further, noting that the Nashville metro area scored fairly well and would look so much better if you cut off the whole rest of the state. She then went on to ask “what Memphis is smoking,” since the Bluff City ranks near the bottom in important categories, but its citizens appear to be much happier overall than those in our “it-city” state capital. Phillips, in what appeared to be a single-handed attempt to harsh our bliss, went on to suggest possible headlines for this major news story, including: “Memphis Sucks But They Don’t See It That Way,” “Cognitive Dissonance On The Mighty Mississippi,” and “Memphis Brings Down The State Again, Still Smiles About It.” Sometimes not being Nashville is enough.
Shit My Daily Says
Tony Allen is a forward? Who knew?
Good Company
According to a list circulated by The Huffington Post, Memphis is number 22 on a list of the 25 most overrated places on earth. According to the clearly ill-informed author, “It’s never a good idea when a town’s main tourist attraction is also its only nightlife destination: Beale Street … Beyond it, all there’s left to see is the muddy Mississippi River.” Other vastly overrated places on this obviously scientific list include London, Milan, Athens, Rome, Venice, Bruges, and Hong Kong.
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The Rant
Valentino Visentini | Dreamstime.com
Mayor Rob Ford
Well, the official publication date of this issue is Thanksgiving Day, and I was kind of nervous over the thought of writing a list of things for which I am thankful, because that just has “nightmare” written all over it.
I can’t stand all that gobbledygook. So you can image how thrilled I was to flip on the computer and find this in The Washington Post:
“As Comet ISON hurtles toward the sun, its million-year-long journey through our solar system may end with its violent death — or a spectacular sky show. On Thanksgiving, when the comet rounds the sun, professional and amateur astronomers alike will await ISON’s fate with bated breath. Its tail may get ripped off by a cloud of solar particles, or the sun’s brutal radiation and pressure may demolish it completely.”
Yes! A big fat explosion in the sky on Thanksgiving. That is my kind of holiday. None of this sitting around thinking about how fortunate I am and making mental — or, God forbid, spoken — lists of things about which I am thankful.
But if I did have to make a list like that, next on the list after Comet ISON hurtling toward the sun for a million years and then being demolished on Thanksgiving Day by brutal radiation and pressure would be Rob Ford. Yes, Toronto mayor Rob Ford. You gotta love that guy. He got himself photographed smoking crack out of a crack pipe, and his excuse was that he was drunk. Then he knocked down a city councilwoman while charging around the room like a wild moose. And as fabulous as all that is, it’s not as great as these recent remarks by Toronto Star reporter Christopher Hume about a newspaper columnist and former American prison inmate coming to Ford’s defense: “Writing about His Worship in a recent newspaper column, the Lord High Windbag prattled on about Ford as if his problems amounted to nothing more than ‘his full-figured, Archie Bunker style.’ Clearly, his Lordship brayed, this is a case of ‘rank hypocrisy from mouthy journalists and gimcrack municipal politicians, and … the confected and inflated sanctimony of prigs and twits.'”
Now, why on earth have I never used the term “gimcrack” on this page? I am going to every week from now on. And possibly “prigs and twits.”
“Why, old dear, have you succumbed to the message of this holiday season’s gimcrack advertising, when you know that such commercials are targeted to prigs and twits?”
I love this. I am thankful to be able to write sentences using the word “gimcrack,” and I am very grateful to Mayor Rob Ford for bringing this all about.
And speaking of the holidays, and commercials for crap no one needs, I saw something on the news last week about people who were already turning the parking lots of big-box stores into campgrounds. I don’t mean a few days before Black Friday; I mean weeks before it. Do these people not have jobs? Lives? Families? As I wrote on this page around this time last year (and I repeat this for a dear friend), “I am hightailing it to the parking lot of the nearest big-box store and camping out in the parking lot so I can be one of the first shoppers to hit the door running and buy, buy, buy. I can’t wait to be a part of the mob that storms the place. In fact, I hope I get trampled just to make it more exciting.”
But now I want to run around the stores like Mayor Rob Ford, drunk and on crack in the city council meetings up in Toronto — kind of like how Lobster Boy used to fly across the room in his wheelchair and head-butt his wife.
Ah, Lobster Boy. Now, that just makes me feel downright nostalgic. Not that I am “thankful” for nostalgia. It just reminds me of when I was in my 30s and had a beard that was not white. I should have been more thankful for that back then, but I’m sure I took it for granted.
So, aside from gimcrack, what exactly am I really thankful for this year (even though I promised not to do this)? I’m thankful that I haven’t seen an army of raccoons on my porch recently — although I did have a stare-down with a possum on said porch the other night, and I was sitting in my bedroom the other day when a chipmunk ran past my foot. I’m just waiting to find an armadillo in my bathtub any day now.
I’m thankful for Bettye LaVette, Mavis Staples, Bobby Womack, Singa B, and a great number of other singers who can put me in a great mood. I’m very thankful for Al Green’s Full Gospel Tabernacle, especially since when a baby starts crying in church during his sermon, he now shouts, “Shut up, kid!” and then just starts laughing and dancing around the pulpit, urging those in the crowd not to add that big extra shot of Grand Marnier to their margaritas, ’cause they just don’t need it.
And I am thankful this column is now coming to a close, because I have obvious issues that need to be addressed. Happy Thanksgiving.
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Medical Markdown
While the federal government works out the kinks in the Affordable Care Act website, Shelby County residents have another way to save money on medical expenses.
The Shelby County prescription discount card may be a benefit to residents who are worried if their current insurance plans will be honored under the Affordable Care Act or if they’ll have to sign up for a different plan. The discount card will also benefit those who are uninsured.
On average, the discount card saves customers 24 percent off the retail price of their prescribed medications and can be utilized by anyone in Shelby County for free.
“This is a way to help people at a real pivotal time in their lives with issues regarding the Affordable Care Act,” said Steve Shular, a spokesperson for Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell. “With insurance issues that are yet to be settled, any tool that would give them a discount on prescriptions would certainly be a welcome relief.”
The National Association of Counties (NACo) launched the card in 2005 as an alternative for those who are underinsured or uninsured. Shelby County partnered with NACo this fall, making it one of more than 1,300 county governments across the nation offering the prescription discount card to residents.
To obtain a card, residents can visit nacorx.org and print one off. The cards can also be downloaded on a smartphone or picked up from a participating pharmacy.
Since the card was introduced, it has saved $550 million on more than 43 million prescriptions across the country. It’s accepted at 65,000 different pharmacies, including Walmart, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS.
“More than nine out of 10 pharmacies are part of the network, so you’re harder pressed to find a pharmacy that’s not [participating] versus one that is,” said Andrew Goldschmidt, director of membership marketing for NACo.
Insured residents won’t be able to apply the card to products that are already discounted through their medical insurance plan, but they can use it for prescriptions not covered under their plan.
“I have one prescription that is not covered by my formulary through NACo, and I actually use the card to reduce a 90-day supply of that prescription from $33 to $14,” Goldschmidt said.
Whenever a transaction is completed with the discount card, the county is reimbursed $1 by CVS Caremark, the pharmacy benefit management company behind the project. Shular said the reimbursed money would be used to fund programs like the Healthy Shelby initiative, a consortium of business and community agencies pushing to improve the health of citizens.
The discount card can also be used to purchase pet medications that fall under the plan. This may be highly beneficial, considering that only about 6 percent of dog owners and around 3 percent of cat owners have health insurance for their pets, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
“County residents just need to ask their veterinarians to write out the prescription, and then they can take it to one of our participating pharmacies,” Goldschmidt said. “Your pets are part of the family too, and you want to keep it that way.”
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Quit It!
A week ago, I stood up in front of a room of highly motivated people and tried to convince them to quit.
I had been invited to speak at the Ignite Memphis event at Crosstown Arts. If you’ve never been to one of these before, they’re surprisingly fun for an evening centered around PowerPoint presentations. Speakers create 20-slide presentations that auto-advance every 15 seconds on the topics of their choice. It’s not just a local phenomenon; Ignite events happen in cities all over the world.
At this particular Ignite, the slate of presentations ranged from storytelling, to drinking, opera, more livable cities, Jesus, and the end of the world. And I talked about quitting, because, lately, quitting has become an activity very near and dear to my heart.
Before you think about quitting, though, it helps to rethink the concept of “busy.” You’re busy. I’m busy. Being busy is important, but it’s not an excuse. Americans value being busy to the point that there are children’s books glorifying the concept (Little Miss Busy, for example). We’re constantly telling others that we’re too busy, that we have so much going on.
Why do we do this? A handful of people really are that busy. I suspect that for most of us, it’s done out of fear — a fear that we’re not doing enough or producing enough to seem important. We stay at work late when we don’t need to, and we blow off the things and people we care about unnecessarily, mostly because we’re afraid to say no. We’re afraid of free time. We’re afraid to not be busy.
For a long time, I was that person. I always pushed hard, tackled everything at once, and never, ever stopped working. I thrived on being so busy. In my case, it was more than just feeling valuable — it was a method of running from the parts of my life that weren’t so great at the time.
I loved my old job (writing the “I Love Memphis” blog). It was fun, and I got to meet a lot of very cool people and check a bunch of things off of my bucket list. But it was also a lot of nights and weekends and stress and being “on” all the time. Those things were part of the job, so I didn’t mind them. After a while, though, it just stopped being fun. I started changing from someone who was super happy to someone who was a cranky mess.
I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until I read an article by Adam Dachis called “Burnout Is Real: How To Identify and Address Your Burnout Problem.” The article details how to identify burnout (among the many warning signs: irritability, exhaustion, feeling like you’re never doing enough, inefficacy, and the denial of said warning signs) and then how to take action to counter it.
That’s the thing about burnout: It’s nearly impossible to recognize it when it’s happening to you, even if you fit all of the warning signs. I told myself I was just having a bad day, that I would be totally fine if I could just get all of these things done, that sleeping and eating weren’t as important as whatever was next on my to-do list. As you can imagine, I was a joy to be around.
And one day, I woke up and knew what I had to do: I had to quit.
Once I got the idea in my head that I could make my life better and improve my mental health by walking away from something, I couldn’t think about anything else. It wasn’t easy, but few things that are worth it are.
So, that’s what I’d like you to do. Find that thing in your life that you’re just doing out of obligation, and stop it. Give up an activity that you feel “meh” about. Stop feeling “meh” about things in general.
Stop complaining about how busy you are and how many obligations you have. If you’re busy, own it. Let others know that you’ve made that choice. More importantly, start quitting. Start quitting the things that you aren’t completely invested in; the ones that aren’t that important; the ones that don’t make you happy. Just quit.
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The War at Home
Two very different literary-minded coming-of-age movies unfolding against the backdrop of World War II are opening this week. One of them, Kill Your Darlings, is pretty good. The other one, The Book Thief, is pretty terrible.
Kill Your Darlings takes place in and around New York City’s Columbia University, where freshman Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) meets charismatic fellow student Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan). Carr is a bright, seductive blowhard in love with sardonic come-ons spiked with visions of cultural revolution. Naturally, young Ginsberg finds him irresistible. When Carr introduces Ginsberg to fellow reprobates and future Beat Generation icons Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster), plenty of antisocial hijinks, romantic entanglements, and harsh, painful life lessons soon follow. Their story plays like A Separate Peace on bennies and nitrous oxide, with a few formal experiments and avant-garde camera trickery thrown in to sustain the druggy, jagged, cold-water-flat vibe.
The Book Thief, which was adapted from Markus Zusak’s bestselling 2006 novel, takes viewers on a more conventional emotional journey. The film follows young Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) as she learns about life, literature, and love from her adoptive parents (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson) and a Jewish refugee (Ben Schnetzer), who ends up hiding in the family cellar. Some other good Germans help her, too, but those wicked Nazis seem to pop up everywhere. Liesel’s story plays like a less expansive, airbrushed Forrest Gump presided over not by Tom Hanks but by Death itself. (Yes, no joke, Death narrates part of the movie.)
The off-putting, patchwork quality of The Book Thief film version is evident from the beginning, and it has to do with the dialogue. Even though the film takes place almost entirely in Germany, all of the major characters speak English with a German accent. This is nothing new, though; there are countless examples of Hollywood films set in foreign locales where all the people talk like Iowa weathermen.
But, strangely, not everyone in the film follows this convention. One wicked middle-aged Nazi delivers his grand book-burning speech in German, and the swastika-wearing Hitler Youths-to-be sing their propaganda in die Muttersprache as well. Liesel, her parents, her friend Rudy (Nico Liersch), and others drop unds and dummkopfs into their everyday speech, but the precious words that line the cellar walls and help Liesel learn how to read are all in English.
This may seem like a minor point. But in a movie that’s all about the redemptive power of reading, writing, and storytelling, why isn’t it clear which language is the language of that redemption? Why switch from one language to another at any point, much less at key points early and late? Why not shoot the whole thing in English? (Or German?) One plausible theory is that the filmmakers are trying to convince moviegoers that German is the best language of all when it comes to oppressing and frightening citizens. But English is a fine language for fear-mongering and intimidation, too.
This puzzling, corner-cutting decision would not loom so large if the rest of the film weren’t rushed and thoughtless as well. I haven’t read Zusak’s book, but the film seems to pick up and drop ideas that must have been given more space in print. From Rudy’s Jesse Owens fixation to Death’s weary lamentations about working for the worst people in history, The Book Thief skims too many surfaces when it should stop now and then for a longer, deeper look. Instead of insight, we’re treated to light comedy that’s as uncomfortable as Roberto Benigni’s mugging in Life Is Beautiful.
I’ll say this for The Book Thief, though: After seeing its timid, unoriginal depiction of the Nazi era, I have newfound respect and admiration for Quentin Tarantino’s loony, vengeance-fueled demolition of all things Third Reich in Inglourious Basterds.
Amazingly, Kill Your Darlings might have more provocative things to say about war than The Book Thief. The scene when Ginsberg’s smug literature professor dismisses his rebellious pupil by reminding him that “the war awaits” is the most pungent commentary about the limits of art and imagination in either film.
Kill Your Darlings‘ episodic structure and narrative fractures reflect the impulsive, cut-up aesthetic that Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs would later explore and refine. But this is an actors’ show, and the leads humanize these mythical men very well. The sunken-eyed, desperately composed DeHaan could be Leonardo DiCaprio’s evil but supremely talented older brother; as Burroughs, Ben Foster could be Ryan Gosling’s more detached, cerebral, and androgynous older sibling. Nice job, fellas.
Kill Your Darlings
Now playing
Studio on the Square
The Book Thief
Now playing
Multiple locations
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The Real LaFayette Returns
With the news that Lafayette’s is returning to Overton Square, Joe Boone talks to Lafayette Draper, the legendary bartender for whom the club was named.