I’ve written before about former Flyer reporter Phil Campbell’s film project to document and assist the town of Phil Campbell, Alabama, after that town’s destruction by a massive tornado.
The film is now finished and they’re looking for a few more bucks to get it out to the public. Go here to learn how to help.
Here’s the official lineup. We will continue to break this down until May 2nd. Get tickets here.
When she’s not inciting wars of religion, Katy Perry spends her time associating herself with Memphis. Witness: Her latest video is set in Memphis, Egypt, an obvious allusion to how cool she thinks the Bluff City is. The very colorful and in no way ridiculous video also features Juicy J, who is the favorite act of every person in Tennessee, according to the news. So, we can conclude that Katy Perry wants to marry Memphis. Even if she doesn’t, getting rid of blues clown John Mayer is a good start. Katy Perry is coming to FedExForum on October 5th. It is widely assumed that she will marry Memphis then.
Katy Perry Is Obsessed with Memphis
Well, the Grizzlies won.
At times, it may have looked like they were trying not to, but they won.
And it’s not just that: the Grizzlies won, and the Suns lost, and the Warriors got drilled. The Mavericks won, but that’s just going to have to be okay for now. Last night was a very good night for the Grizzlies as they continue their pursuit of the 8th spot and a playoff berth.
All those things happened, leaving the Grizzlies just half a game back of the 8th and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, moving Dallas up to 6th. With 26 games left to play, the Griz are in perfect position to make a run at the postseason.
The problem with that? They’ll never make it if they play the way they did in the second half of last night. Sure, it was related to effort—the Lakers are a bad team, and everyone (including the Lakers) knows this—and on other nights the starters will try harder. But everyone involved from the coach down can’t afford to make many more performances like the one last night if this team is serious about making it into the playoffs.
Herewith, some scattered thoughts:
The James Johnson/Tony Allen combo needs a nickname, and they need one fast. I’ve been calling Tony Allen the Lord of Basketball Chaos for years, so I just made it plural. I soon realized that the L.O.B.C. sounds like a great name for some sort of outlaw motorcycle gang, and Twitter took it from there:
.@FlyerGrizBlog "Somebody on Twitter needs to make a "Lords of Basketball Chaos" motorcycle club logo."/As requested. pic.twitter.com/eUhY1DhMqS
— John Lambert (@jl2117) February 27, 2014
[jump]
There was also Peter Edmiston, bringing the Death Row rap game:
@FlyerGrizBlog "So much drama with the LOBC, kinda hard for the other team to even try a 3. But they, somehow, someway, keep coming up wit..
— Peter Edmiston (@peteredmiston) February 27, 2014
@FlyerGrizBlog funky ass plays like every single game"
— Peter Edmiston (@peteredmiston) February 27, 2014
I speculated about a possible clubhouse location:
TA and JJ need to rent some abandoned fast food restaurant on Chelsea to be their clubhouse, or something.
— Kevin Lipe (@FlyerGrizBlog) February 27, 2014
So, clearly these guys need to develop a Sons of Anarchy-like pilot about outlaw basketball player martial arts assassins (I’m including Tony Allen in “martial arts”—remember the kick to Chris Paul’s face?).
Also clear was that I was much happier to talk about this stuff on Twitter than to actually watch the third quarter, which was hideous, as the Grizzlies turned a 22-point lead into a 7-point lead, with the Lakers pushing the tempo and the Grizzlies looking annoyed that they had to actually run back on defense (with the starters out there for something like seven and a half straight minutes). Yeah… the motorcycle gang stuff was more fun.
Is Jodie Meeks invisible to Grizzlies players? I feel like every time these teams have played—three so far—Meeks ends up taking and making a ton of wide-open threes. After two games of that, maybe someone should make a note somewhere that says “Keep Jodie Meeks from being wide open so often.” That seems like valuable scouting information. It didn’t look like that had happened.
Coach Dave Joerger did some things I didn’t agree with at the end of the game. With 3:49 left and a double-digit lead, and Calathes on the floor holding it down just fine (Calathes, Lee, and Gasol all had 5 assists to Conley’s 3), he pulled Calathes and put Conley in. Why then? Why not do everything in your power to keep your starters out of the game?
The same thing happened about a minute later: with 2:49 left and an 11 point lead, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol came back into the game. This move was even more questionable to me, because the bench was playing with more energy and more determination than the starters—who looked for most of the night like they were pondering whether Danver’s or Arby’s had a better roast beef sandwich instead of where they should be on defense.
Also, I know Joerger is trying to shorten the rotation, and that he’s determined to try to make things work, but… Mike Miller played 20 minutes again, and Ed Davis and Jon Leuer were apparently kidnapped by space aliens last week. With Johnson playing a little more at the power forward spot, I certainly understand that Davis may not be as necessary, but if he was just going to rack up DNP-CD’s, was the trade market really so bad that he couldn’t be dealt for some sort of asset instead of playing the patented O.J. Mayo “We’re just going to bench you and then let you walk” game?
Overall, the Grizzlies are lucky they won this one. They came out in the first half and hung 65 on the Lakers, and then tried a hundred different ways to lose the game down the stretch. Fortunately for them, the Lakers are so terrible that they couldn’t figure how to get back on top. The way the Grizzlies were playing—especially on defense—they would’ve had a struggle regaining the lead.
They won, so we’re not having to have this conversation from a place of despair—simply frustration. But they were this close to blowing this one, and that would’ve been a disaster on a night when so many of the other players involved in the playoff race slipped back down to earth a bit. Instead, it’s on to the next one, and let’s just pretend last night’s game was called at halftime.
If you rank things by state, people go nuts. It’s a fact of life that we all scramble down any list to see what Tennessee or Memphis have beautifully screwed up now. The latest in these sensations is the state-by-state map of distinctive musical acts peculiar to each state … or something. In the great American tradition, everybody reposted and formed opinions about the thing long before anybody figured out the methodology of the study. What do we know? What we already knew: White Southern girls love gangsta rap. I bet $20 that, if Haslam or Ramsey have a daughter between 20 and 40, the girl can drop at least five hip-hop songs word-for-word. Or she went to bible college, one of those.
Here, read this crazy map thing. Then read the even crazier breakdown by someone in Nashville done on a slow news day.
And props to Juicy J for keeping Stacey Campfield real.
Chris Davis reports on the financial problems facing the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and what, if anything, can be done to fix them.
Sometimes the right thing gets done — and even for the right reasons. Such was the case on Monday, when the oft-contentious Shelby County Commission seemed bound to indulge itself in another round of pointless gridlock and
Commissioner Steve Basar
throw one more bender that would leave due process, the community, and the body politic at large with a lasting hangover.
Undoubtedly, county Election Administrator Rich Holden protested too much when he laid the blame for hasty and last-minute district maps in the elections of 2012 on the failure of the County Commission to honor its deadline for completing redistricting after the census of 2010.
A state investigation and county audit found other reasons for the problems that surfaced that year with the issuance of thousands of wrong ballots, and most of those reasons lay within Holden’s own province. Besides, the Commission’s new 13-member single-district system was not scheduled to be in place until this year. So Holden and the Shelby County Election Commisson (SCEC) could just have bypassed the issue of redistricting for the County Commission and gotten the maps that counted in shape for an error-free election cycle.
Still, the administrator had a point. The Commission delayed making up its mind on its district maps for an unconsciionably long time. The deadline for their self-reapportionment had been December 31, 2011, and it wasn’t until Chancellor Arnold Goldin had to make a redistricting decision for them by issuing a summary judgment in mid-June 2012 that the Commission’s 13 single-member districts were made official. Neither side had bent; it took Goldin to break the impasse. And maybe Holden and the SCEC would indeed have presided over an error-free election season in 2012 if they hadn’t decided to wait the commission out.
A specter of the same sort as 2012 loomed over Monday’s commission meeting. The issue this time was whether to adopt a nine-district map for the Shelby County Schools (SCS) board or a seven-district map. The coalition that had consistently taken the side of SCS against the suburbs was for nine districts. Those who had backed municipal school districts in the suburbs wanted seven districts, and they also wanted to add on to the new District 4 that portion of Germantown where three SCS schools are located — in effect giving the residents of that area votes in two different school districts — SCS and the new Germantown municipal system.
This was the last regular commission meeting before the SCEC’s de facto March 3rd deadline for allocating precincts for the next round of SCS elections. So they needed the maps. Yet the two factions deadlocked and started talking about postponing a decision for days, maybe weeks. A case of Here We Go Again?
Except suburban Commissioner Steve Basar, who had been on the prevailing side in one of the procedural votes that had blocked consensus, evidently decided that the commission, this time anyhow, shouldn’t tempt the fates. He asked for reconsideration, changed his vote, and ultimately the Commission was able to vote for a plan assigning nine districts, confined to the areas being served by SCS. Your move, Election Commission.
We congratulate Commissioner Basar and hope he doesn’t get too much constituent flak for his eminently sensible decision.
This is a story about international commerce, diplomacy, and fly fishing. It begins simply enough, with my friend John Ryan looking at some fly reels on eBay. He became intrigued by a sleek-looking bit of machinery called the CNC Machine Cut Aluminum Fly Fishing Reel. It was made in China and probably a knock-off of a more expensive reel, but for $39, John decided he’d take a shot.
Since he was at my house and perusing my eBay account, I ordered it for him and he gave me $40 cash. For the record, I advised against the purchase and suggested the reel was probably going to be a piece of crap.
The reel arrived about 10 days later. It looked pretty good, actually — sleek and shiny, and the spool spun easily. Only one problem, a big one: There was no drag system, nothing to slow the reel when a fish strikes, no way to keep it from spinning while casting or stripping line. It was a piece of crap. Useless.
John was philosophical, but I decided I should warn other people who might be tempted to order the “Chinese POS Reel,” as we now called it. So I left a disparaging comment about the product on eBay. Something along the lines of, “Buyer beware: This reel has no drag system. It’s a POS. Stay away.”
Imagine my surprise the next day when I received a message from “Jean” in China: “We feel sorry you not satisfied with the reel and leave us a negative We note in our description ,yes ,the reel without drag system .If you feel it’s not good to use .Could you return this back, Hope you can offer us a chance to communicate with you work with the problem . If you have any requirements ,pls be free to tell us.”
I was sure that when we ordered the reel there was nothing in the description noting that it didn’t have a drag. But I went back and looked, to be sure. Aha! It had been “edited” the previous day, and a line added saying, “This reel without drag disc/clicker , if you want the drag, pls click here.” It had Jean’s fingerprints all over it. Also, suddenly, there were no more of these reels left to sell.
International chicanery of a high order, indeed.
I replied to Jean: “A reel without a drag system is like a lotus flower without petals.”
Pretty good, I thought. Let these commies know they were dealing with someone with diplomatic skills and the soul of a poet, not some stupid American pushover.
The next day, Jean wrote back, again asking if I would remove the negative comment, and adding that if I returned the reel, they would send me a “more expensive reel with drag system.”
I replied, “I will spend no money on your reel until I have another in my hand.”
The next day? Victory. The commies melted like a wet fortune cookie. “We sending you Reel 2901859889 ,worth $50 which, have drag. Please return first reel and we will repay you cost.”
“It’s a deal,” I replied. “Pleasure doing business with you, comrade.”
Like a boss.
Bruce VanWyngarden
The Past is a terrific, perhaps great film about the way miscommunications and misinformation and misunderstandings create the false assumptions upon which we build the personal narratives we tell to ourselves and to others. Guilt is presumed but not necessarily earned. Truth isn’t only subjective but also completely unreliable. Maybe you didn’t get an email that had crucial information in it. Maybe you heard wrong. Maybe you’re simply on the wrong side of the bed to see what is really happening.
The plot begins straightforward enough: Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to France from Iran to sign the papers to be legally divorced from his wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo). They have been separated for years, but Marie needs to move on with her life, especially because she’s in a serious relationship with Samir (Tahar Rahim). (Featuring a man’s reluctance to be divorced, The Past is like a much less funny Her.)
In addition to seeing his wife again, Ahmad is reunited with Marie’s daughters, teenager Lucie (Pauline Burlet) and the much younger Léa (Jeanne Jestin). Though they aren’t technically his children, his relationship is as a father. Marie and Lucie aren’t getting along, and they each ask Ahmad to talk to the other on their behalf, to find out what’s wrong and to make peace. Matters are tense between Ahmad and Samir, who regard each other warily. Further complicating things is Samir’s young son, Fouad (Elyes Aguis), who sees only constant upheaval in his life because of what’s going on in the adults’ world.
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) writes and directs, and the plot he gives The Past winds through the characters’ lives with greater complication as it travels. What seems simple or formulaic never is. The more you know, the less you feel you know what’s coming next. Farhadi creates thoroughly knotty situations; he starts his film in media res so that we may witness his characters partway through their grieving process of living, coping with damaged families, broken promises, and abandonment.
It’s a kind of death without life, but watching The Past is by no means a depressing experience. By the last act, when revelations are bomb blasts and conversations are the fallout, you care intrinsically about these characters and their fate. The Past calls to mind the films of Michael Haneke, Atom Egoyan, and the Dardenne brothers. When they finally come at last, however long delayed, understanding and emotional release serve as a resurrection. ■
The Past
Opens Friday, February 28th
Ridgeway Cinema Grill
Bruce VanWyngarden recounts an adventure in international commerce involving fly-fishing and tense negotiations with communists.