Month: March 2014

Categories
News The Fly-By

First and Last 48

Jessie Dotson’s case was featured on The First 48.

Aside from blues and good barbecue, Memphis is also known for its reputation as a crime-ridden city. And A&E’s The First 48 brought more exposure to this perception by profiling numerous homicides in the city over a three-year period.

From 2005 to 2008, the reality television series, which follows homicide investigators as they solve cases within the first 48 hours of their occurance, filmed episodes in Memphis. Filming was brought to a halt, however, when some Memphis City Council members and former Mayor Willie Herenton deemed the show to be detrimental to the city’s image. The show subsequently ceased filming in the Bluff City.

In 2008, The Memphis Flyer featured a story on the show’s suspension and potential culmination of filming locally with the article “The Last 48?” by Bianca Phillips. City Councilwoman Wanda Halbert was among those quoted in the article and in opposition of the show.

Nearly six years later, Halbert reflects back on The First 48‘s presence in Memphis and how she thinks it negatively impacted the city.

“I was pretty much instrumental in talking directly to Mayor Herenton at the time and advocated for us to stop being featured, because it was showing Memphis in such a negative light,” Halbert said.

The notorious Lester Street massacre was among the local homicide cases profiled on the show. In March 2008, Jessie Dotson killed his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, two adult friends, and two of his young nephews (ages 2 and 4). He also beat and stabbed his infant niece and two more of his toddler nephews during the occurrence.

For one of the most gruesome mass murders in Memphis history, Dotson was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted first-degree murder. He received a death sentence for each murder.

Although he was charged with the murders, Halbert said the show potentially interfered with Dotson’s prosecution. In the airing of After The First 48, which showcases the verdict and sentencing of trials featured on the show, Dotson said he was coerced to admit to the slayings by local law enforcement.

“In court, he specifically said ‘Listen to the whole tape,’ and The First 48 then turned around and said, ‘What you didn’t see on TV, we discarded it.’ Well, how do you allow some of the footage in the courtroom, when all of it is not available?” Halbert inquired. “That could potentially become a legal loophole.”

Despite the high ratings from the Memphis episodes of The First 48, neither the families of victims, law enforcement, nor the local Crime Stoppers division received monetary compensation from the show. This is another thing that didn’t sit well with Halbert and others and motivated Memphis’ exit.

“We were trying to figure out what was the benefit that Memphis was getting,” Halbert said. “That television show was receiving high ratings and at the same time, Memphis was receiving repeatedly negative views by the viewing audience. People were afraid to come to our city.”

The show only filmed in Memphis for three seasons, but people can still catch reruns of episodes on A&E. This has left a sour taste in Halbert’s mouth.

“I wish there was a way that we could stop the repeated episodes, because Memphis is not unlike any other major metropolitan city,” Halbert said. “It does have crime. It does have a lot of challenges, but that doesn’t mean our city as a whole is bad and we’re not worthy of visitors being welcomed and feeling safe.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Ag Gag Again

It was just last year that a legislative measure nicknamed “Ag Gag” revolted the conscience of a large portion of the state — a contingent large and loud enough to rouse the normally complaisant Governor Bill Haslam, who was pursuaded to make one of his rare uses of the veto.

Now, as the Flyer‘s Bianca Phillips first noted back in February, Ag Gag is back, in the form of HB2258, sponsored by State Representative Andy Holt, and SB2406, sponsored by State Senator Dolores Gresham. The authors, who are the same as last year’s, apparently are going through the motions of complying with Haslam’s suggestion, made in the course of announcing his veto, that they might come up with a “clearer” bill.

The fact is, though, that the original bill was clear enough. As Wikipedia perfectly well puts it: “Ag-gag is a term used for a variety of anti-whistleblower laws in the United States of America.” The bills have turned up in state after state, in conformity with models prepared by (surprise!) the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing organization perfectly described by the London Guardian as “a dating agency for Republican state legislators and big corporations, bringing them together to frame right-wing legislative agendas in the form of ‘model bills.'”

Ag gag bills are clearly aimed at suppressing evidence of animal cruelty by using criminal sanctions to inhibit anyone conducting an investigation to verify such evidence — whether in cases of “factory farming” or, as specifically targeted in Tennessee, in the horrific measures used to control and train Tennessee Walking Horses. Last year’s bill mandated that anyone observing animal cruelty report it to law authorities within 48 hours or be liable for arrest and penalty. Ostensibly designed to bring swift attention to animal cruelty, the effect of such bills is nearly the opposite one, to discourage anyone from attempting to document such cruelty.

The old bill criminalized whistle-blowing as “an intent to deprive the owner [of an offending enterprise] and to disrupt such enterprise.” The new bill has it this way: “an intent to deprive the owner OR to disrupt such enterprise” [our caps]. “Or” for “and.” That’s the change. Much clearer, right?

In his veto message, Haslam went light on the more inhumane aspects of commercialized animal cruelty so as to protect the delicate sensibilities of the state’s perpetrators, who included influential sportsmen and large agri-business owners. He chose to term the bill “constitutionally suspect.”

Suspect the new bill remains, and in more ways than in its constitutionality. And, as the current legislative session hurtles toward a close, the bill has a chance of sneaking by to passage. This week, it was slated for votes on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Criminal Justice Committee. It is a hop, skip, and jump away from floor action, and, as de facto stealth legislation, it has a chance of going all the way. The legislature should not saddle Haslam with the onus of saying no again. It should do the right thing itself — and conclusively.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Homeless Count Down

Kenzie Cleaves shares her story of homelessness.

Homelessness in Memphis and Shelby County has fallen 21 percent since 2012, according to the annual census taken here by the Community Alliance for the Homeless, and it marked the second double-digit decline in two years.

The latest census was taken in the cold, gusty hours from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. on January 21st and 22nd. It was the third such count taken since the Memphis and Shelby County mayors established the Mayors’ Action Plan to End Homelessness in 2012. That plan began with a baseline census of homeless people throughout Shelby County in 2012.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development asks communities to conduct these counts. The federal agency defines “homeless” as people living in a place not meant for human habitation, emergency shelters, transitional housing, or other temporary residences. The census in 2012 found 2,076 homeless people in Shelby County. This past January’s count had only 1,636 people.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton said the reduction is impressive but that his office and the 41 members of the Shelby County Homeless Consortium won’t stop working until homelessness is completely stamped out here.

“It may seem aspirational, but I think our people will keep working on this as long as we know the real size of the problem and don’t discount [the number of homeless people here], and we’ll keep plugging away as a community and as a united government,” Wharton said. “Birds have their nests. Foxes have their dens. Is it asking too much for our fellow human beings [to have a place to call home]?”

More than 150 volunteers conducted surveys with the homeless in Shelby County in January. Those interviews showed that chronic homelessness, veteran homelessness, and the number of homeless people without children were all down last year. Most of these were male (84 percent), some were female (14 percent), and some were transgender (2 percent). Nearly 70 percent of individual homeless people reported their race as black or African-American.

Family homelessness was down from 214 individual families in 2013 to 149 this past January. The census said none of those families were unsheltered last year, meaning they weren’t living on the street, and the majority of them (93 percent) reported their race as black or African-American.

The results of January’s census were announced in a news conference last week. Memphian Kenzie Cleaves was there, and she shared her story of having no place for her or her children to live when she got out of jail four months ago. The Department of Children’s Services connected Cleaves with Estival Place, which was established in 1991 by the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association and later donated to the Promise Development Corporation. The space and the programs it offers have helped Cleaves become a better mother, she said.

 “I was in the fast life and didn’t have time for [my children],” she said. “I wanted to rip and run the streets and all of that. We were living here and there, and it was like God sent an angel over my head, and now I feel stress-free and peaceful. Now I have a place I can call home.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Life in the Green Lane

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Memphis is rolling forward with its bike-focused efforts as green lane projects have been announced throughout the city and two new cycling campaigns are underway.

Green lanes, named for their green paint rather than environmental impact, is the term for the types of protected bicycle lanes where there is a buffer between moving bikes and moving cars.

“That buffer area can take different forms,” said Kyle Wagenschutz, the bicycle/pedestrian coordinator for the city. “It could be that you paint the buffer area in the roadway. It could be that you use parked cars as the buffer area, so instead of having the parked cars against the curb, they would be a little off the curb, and the [bike lanes] would be against the curb. That wall of parked cars creates the buffer.”

The city’s first green lane was striped last year on Overton Park Avenue between Cleveland and Bellevue, the same year Mayor A C Wharton committed to building 15 additional miles of bike lanes. The city is in the process of exceeding that goal — 22 miles of lanes have been identified and funded. Eighty percent of the total project costs will be funded through federal grants, with the city having to match the remaining 20 percent.

Bianca Phillips

Since 2010, the city has already constructed 71 miles of bike lanes and paths, but most of the lanes on city streets are not buffered from traffic.

Perception of safety is important to get more people riding bikes, Wagenschutz said, and green lanes help soothe concerns. According to the city, the number of people cycling has doubled over the past three years, and the number of accidents has decreased 32 percent. With those statistics, the highest-used bicycling facilities in the city are ones that are separated from moving cars like the Shelby Farms Greenline and the Wolf River Greenway.

“The Wolf River Greenway, on a weekend, will see 2,000 people a day. On that same gorgeous, beautiful day, we’re unlikely to see that same usage on Madison Avenue,” Wagenschutz said. “It’s because the Wolf River Greenway, in addition to being aesthetically pleasing, provides a level of comfort.”

Ideas for the green lanes and bicycle-centric designs come from countries in Northern and Western Europe such as Denmark and the Netherlands — both of which have large cycling populations.

“We’re taking inspiration from how they designed their roadways in those countries and importing it back to America, adapting it for the culture and the design that’s prevalent here in the U.S.,” Wagenschutz said. “They have mastered the art of design for roadways in such a way that it’s created these kinds of spaces for bicyclists and cars to operate independently of one another.”

The city has also launched the “Get There Together” campaign to put the focus on people, rather than choice of transit, to try and change the mindsets of how people travel within Memphis.

“This new way of thinking embraces the mutual obligation we each have to each other to make sure we’re attentive, conscientious, and respectful to one another, regardless of how we have chosen to get around,” reads the Get There Together blog.

Wagenschutz has also been working on a month-long project for the city called the 30-Day Car-Free Challenge, where for the month of April, Memphians can commit to change their mode of transportation, even for a day, and be entered into contests for prizes. More information about both campaigns is available at

http://bikepedmemphis.com.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

F For Fantastic

In his 2012 Smithsonian essay “Teller Reveals His Secrets,” the mostly silent member of the Penn & Teller team asserts, “You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money, and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest.”

This insight drives the wry, persistent protagonist of Teller’s new documentary Tim’s Vermeer. Like Bad Words, Tim’s Vermeer is about a middle-aged man on a seemingly senseless quest. But that’s where the similarities end. This provocative, whip-smart film unscrews your head, fills it to the brim with combustible ideas about art, science, technology, history, and talent. Then it lights a match.

That match assumes the form of two incendiary, illuminating questions: “What is art?” and “Am I an artist if I make some?” Yet the most charming aspect of Tim’s Vermeer is the polite, almost deferential way those questions are posed. Throughout the film, Penn Jillette (onscreen) and Teller (behind the camera) are atypically reverent and respectful. They aren’t interested in debunking any artwork or defaming any artists; they’re content to let the elbow-patch sports-jacket crowd untangle any loose ends they uncover. They are more interested in exploring the notion of “fathomable geniuses”: hard-working creators who bust their asses while waiting for inspiration from either the muses or the aether to strike.

With Tim Jenison, Penn and Teller find an ideal surrogate. Jenison is a wealthy inventor and tireless autodidact who has been moved and fascinated by the work of 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer for many years. Like most people, Jenison appreciates the subtle, almost photographic play of light and shadow in paintings like “The Milkmaid” and “Girl With a Red Hat.” Unlike most people, Jenison has the patience, ingenuity, and spare cash to test his theory that Vermeer achieved his uncanny effects through a combination of mirrors, reflections, and optical devices. Penn and Teller are with him the whole way as he scouts Dutch locations, learns how to grind and manufacture his own paint, and eventually builds a life-size reproduction of the room where Vermeer created “The Music Lesson.”

Tim’s Vermeer is barely 80 minutes long, but it’s effective at conveying the tremendous amounts of time, effort, and concentration required for Jenison’s mad, painstaking project. When he finally settles down to paint his own version of “The Music Lesson,” wave after wave of camera dissolves combine with his arid, quietly hilarious running commentary (“Another day, more dots”) to mark his slow, delicate progress. There are also some witty time-lapse passages that illustrate the fickle fidgetings of human models. (Throwaway query: What is time, anyway?) For every chuckle, there are unexpected moments of philosophical resonance and significance, like the early scene when Jenison eerily proclaims, “I’m a piece of human photographic film at this point.”

As his project drags on, Jenison starts to understand and appreciate Edison’s definition of genius as 99 percent perspiration. And then he comes to the end. He finishes his work, shows it to others. They approve. Cue Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” Roll credits.

The overall effect is magical.

Tim’s Vermeer

Opens Friday, March 28th

Studio on the Square

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Make the Cut

This sign was spotted at the office of a Memphis-area urologist. So maybe “March Madness” means something different to members of the medical profession? We’d hate to see that bracket.

Medicinal Purposes

This photograph raises some interesting questions. Like, is there anywhere else in the world where you can purchase barbecue ribs from the end-cap of your neighborhood pharmacy? And if there is such a place, are the ribs considered to be allergy relief medicine there to? And finally, if this “allergy relief” is covered by Obamacare, can we move past our differences and figure out a way to give the man four more years?

Music History

An ABC report about a pair of Australian songwriters who moved to Nashville includes this very concise, highly accurate history of American music: “Memphis’ musical influence migrated to Nashville giving it the title ‘home of country music.'”

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Enemy

Jake Gyllenhaal stars with Jake Gyllenhaal in Enemy.

Attention, Negative Nellies of the world: Have I got a film for you (and Positive Pauls should probably look for kicks elsewhere). Enemy is a creepy flick, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s also quite terrific, or at the least, terrifically effective.

Enemy stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell, a history teacher in Toronto who leads a fairly monotonous life floating through life: at school, driving home, and domesticity with his girlfriend, Mary (Mélanie Laurent). A normal question from a colleague shakes his routine: Do you ever watch movies? Adam’s perturbed response makes the question seem more sinister that it ostensibly is.

Upon his teacher colleague’s recommendation, Adam watches a cheerful-seeming, locally made film. It all takes a turn, though, when Adam realizes an actor in a small part looks exactly like him. It freaks him out and fascinates him. A little bit of Internet sleuthing and craftily playing off the fact that he’s trying to find a man who’s his spitting image, Adam tracks down the actor, Anthony St. Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal, too) and talks to Anthony’s wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon). Adam and Anthony meet, and, pretty quickly, Adam decides this was all a very bad idea.

Enemy does a lot with a little. There’s not much narrative meat on the bone, and even clocking in at a scant 90 minutes, the film progresses slowly. It’s a deliberate choice, though, and the director (Denis Villeneuve), writer (Javier Gullón, adapting the novel The Double by José Saramago), editor (Matthew Hannam), and cinematographer (Nicolas Bolduc) opt for atmospherics over happenings.

The film opens with a series of moody sequences set to a dread score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans: a yellow skyline, a nude pregnant woman, men in a dark room watching a woman have an orgasm, and a tarantula on a gold platter. These are evocative images enhanced by the unknown of how they fit together, underlined by the film’s opening tag: “Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”

The film is designed as a riddle, with the motifs of bizarre reveries punctuating the progress of the plot. Everything might be a crucial clue to solving the mystery. Offering tantalizing hints are Adam’s lectures on oppressive regimes where control is the only concern and the individual is snuffed out; about patterns and the Marxist thought that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce.” Other clues: A body scar, a windshield cracked just so, a net of trolley wires, a key, graffiti, and lyrics to a songs by Faine Jade and the Walker Brothers. Or: maybe none of them matter.

Villeneuve (who also made Prisoners) is in control of this material. Like fellow Canadian David Cronenberg (who once made a movie about madness called Spider, I recall), Villeneuve creates such a feeling of dread and paranoia in his films that it encroaches on even the mundane. He gives the story space to breath and the audience time to get their bearings on the emotional map and to identify all of the relationship vectors in play. Sinister ideas are born and grow to massive size.

Gyllenhaal is roundly excellent. He finds little ways to express the ways Adam and Anthony are different and the ways they are inseparable, but not so much that you’d really notice or detract from the film’s flow. Overall, he forms a notion of dominance and submissiveness in the connection between the pair, as if they’re alleles of a gene. Adam carries his tortured weight as a physical toll on his body. Anthony is more menacing and secretive.

Enemy is a perfect film to see with a group and debate just exactly what happened over drinks or coffee. Theories can run lots of ways: Is it all psychosexual madness in the mindscape of one person, Adam, with a split personality, Anthony? Is it all Adam’s life, but told non-chronologically? Is it a tale of twin brothers, Adam and Anthony, unknown to one another, that examines the emotional ramifications of their meeting? There is a rack of monsters in the film: Are they metaphors for Adam/Anthony’s guilt or anger, lust or horror, repression or oppression? Or, most disturbing of all, can everything in Enemy be taken literally? (I can’t shake this theory.) The only thing certain is, the ending is … unforgettable.

Puzzles lose their power once they are solved, and since I haven’t yet demystified the film, Enemy retains its hold over me.

Enemy

Opens Friday, March 28th

Studio on the Square

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

S#!t: Bad Words ain’t bad, ain’t good.

Jason Bateman stars in and directs Bad Words.

First-time director and star Jason Bateman’s new film Bad Words shows promise; most rookie features with a distinctive look and a cast full of capable pros do. But it isn’t very funny. Once you roll up your sleeves, reach in, and try to figure out which pulleys and levers in its comic mechanism work and which ones don’t, though, the problem of comic analysis spreads out and expands. Trying to explain why something isn’t funny is as tough as trying to explain why something is funny.

Bad Words is weird enough from stem to stern that it could have been something. Bateman plays Guy Trilby, a sharp-tongued 40-year-old who has suddenly made it his life’s mission to win the Golden Quill National Spelling Bee. The bee (which is meant for middle-school kids) is presided over by Dr. Bowman (Philip Baker Hall) and Dr. Deagan (Allison Janney), a pair of stodgy, hateful authoritarians who more than justify most Americans’ mistrust and hatred of intellectuals who aren’t inventors, private detectives, or serial killers. As Trilby clashes with parents, humiliates his prepubescent competition, and wends his way to the nationally televised Golden Quill finals, he repeatedly crosses paths with Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand), an overly friendly Indian preteen who decides they’re going to be best friends no matter how many Slumdog Millionaire jokes Trilby throws his way.

Bad Words treats both the pasty, glabrous spelling bee contestants and their pushy, monomaniacal moms and dads with disdain and contempt. The film’s baggy, meandering structure leaves plenty of space for scenes where Trilby wages crude psychological warfare on everyone he sees. But none of his victims ever have a sporting chance; each encounter is as unfair and exhausting as watching a parent stand near his kid’s TotSports Easy Score Basketball Set all day, swatting away shot after shot.

Unfettered, id-driven cruelty is Bad Words’ currency, and it is reinforced by the film’s unusually mannered visual scheme. Trilby’s quest is set in a greyish-brown and grungy-looking dystopia where everything seems tainted with mud and despair; it’s as if Bateman taped together dozens of grainy, decaying ends of film stock from the 1970s and then cleaned them up by dunking them in a creek before shooting.

But the visuals are in some ways the strongest, surest sign of Bateman’s talent. Unlike most live-action filmmakers, he knows how to set up a sight gag. There’s an exuberant slow-motion passage with Trilby, Chopra, and a lobster, and there’s a moment of synchronized door-slamming in long shot that belongs in a zombie movie directed by Jacques Tati.

And Bad Words pulls off something I haven’t seen in a comedy for a long time: It saves its funniest scene for last. As far as big-game switcheroos go, the final round of the Golden Quill tournament is not as memorably counter-intuitive as the finale of last fall’s Rush or 1996’s underrated golf saga Tin Cup. It ain’t bad, though, and it leaves a mark.

Bad Words

Opens Friday, March 28th

Multiple locations

Categories
News The Fly-By

Not Up in Smoke?

After University District residents delivered a stern message of “not lovin’ it” to McDonald’s regarding the fast-food chain’s plans to build a restaurant at Southern and Highland, they seem to have pulled their plans to purchase that property.

Now, a man who told the Flyer he simply goes by Mr. Z and owns the Highland Z Market and other convenience stores around the city, is attempting to purchase the property at Southern and Highland. And he says, if the deal closes, the building’s current tenants will be allowed to stay.

“It’s going to be remodeled, and if someone wants to stay, they can stay,” Mr. Z said.

Whatever smoke shop owner Gary Geiser says he plans to stay in the building where his store has been since 1971. He even held a celebration sale last week, but he says he won’t know for certain if he can stay until Mr. Z closes on the property.

“The problem is we don’t know what is going to happen with this,” Geiser said.

Southern Meat Market owner Randy Stockard isn’t so sure he’ll stick around no matter what happens with the building. Both men have been renting other storefronts for months just in case they have to move, and Stockard is considering moving to a new location on Park Avenue near Pete & Sam’s, where he’s been paying rent since January.

“I’m already paying rent on Park, but it would take me another month or two to get out of here. I started thinking about staying, but I don’t know. I’d probably do better on Park because of visibility,” Stockard said.

Geiser has a back-up plan too. He’s been paying $3,000 a month in rent for a location at 555-557 S. Highland, the old Double Deuce Dance Hall, since November 2012.

“We first heard about [McDonald’s trying to purchase the building] in September 2012, and we heard we only had two months to move. So like idiots, we rented space on the Highland strip,” Geiser said.

Geiser said, if they are allowed to stay put, they’ll turn the space on the Highland strip into office/warehouse space and another retail store of some kind. He said they’re also planning to open another smoke shop in town soon.

After hearing of the McDonald’s plan, the owners of the Super Submarine Sandwich Shop (better known as the “Chinese sub shop”), which was located next door to Whatever, quickly relocated into an old Captain D’s on Summer Avenue. Safeway Wholesale and Supply relocated a block away. Now their former locations are boarded up.

“I wish the sub shop lady hadn’t left,” Geiser said.

Business owners said they first learned of the potential McDonald’s sale in 2012 through rumors, and only after numerous calls to their property manager, Palmer Brothers Inc., did they learn they’d have to move. It sounded like a done deal.

But after University District residents petitioned against McDonald’s plans for a loop-around drive-thru that didn’t comply with the University District Overlay, an official set of standards that regulates all construction in the area, and the Office of Planning and Development rejected the site plan, McDonald’s withdrew its request for approval by the Land Use Control Board.

Calls to Palmer Brothers for comment were not returned by press time.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Featureflash | Dreamstime.com

So I just took a long, deep breath and held it for a second and then exhaled a long, deep, pensive sigh with a little “hmmm” gurgle in it. I do that all the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me and neither does the psychological medical profession. And no, this is not about smoking cessation, the topic of my last column. But thanks to all who went to memphisflyer.com and offered helpful comments on quitting. Well, except for the person who accused me of being a member of the Tea Party, but I feel fairly certain that was a joke. I hope it was a joke. But this is not about Tea Baggers or politics at all because I have been taking a break from all that. Too much tweeting going on for me.

I just took a long, deep breath and held it for a second and then exhaled a long, deep, pensive sigh with a little “hmmm” gurgle in it because I seem to be reaching a point where I am either going to live in the 21st century or I am going to find a spot so remote that I’ll never see anyone again and will live out the rest of my days there in a yurt.

This is all because I finally, finally broke down and bought a flat screen television last week. Yes, I guess I’m the last holdout wanting to keep my treasured, 200-pound 1994 Magnavox, which, until last week, still worked just fine and had a great picture (is that still correct? Does a television have a “picture?” Hell if I know). It’s not that there’s anything earth-shattering about buying a flat screen television, unless, of course, you do that on the night of or morning after Thanksgiving and you get killed by a big-box mob before you get home with it. No, this was just a typical, hey, the old television finally bit the dust so gotta buy a new one, and all they sell now are flat screens with high-definition.

The problem is, I can’t watch it. It makes me motion sick. It does make everyone look a little darker and swarthier and slightly Romanian, and I like that, but it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up.

See, this is not so much about the television as it is about life. And growing older. And watching the world change so rapidly. I hate to sound like such a geezer, and I am very young at heart about most things, but the flat screen television just flat out makes me nauseated. Yes, nauseated. Not nauseous. Please, please don’t ever say that you are nauseous, which 99 percent of the people in the world do, because that means you are sickening. Now, if indeed you are sickening, then go ahead and say you are nauseous.

So, I am told that the cause of this nausea could be because I still have the old, digital satellite dish receiver and it needs to be upgraded to a high-definition receiver and if I do that it won’t look so much like people are floating around in circles on “the picture.” So, with much trepidation, I called my satellite television provider and asked how to go about this very simple upgrade. After speaking to a robot voice for a while I finally got a young man on the line, and I could just see him salivating, knowing I was a rube who would probably buy anything. But that was not going to happen.

Featureflash | Dreamstime.com

SVU’s Detective Elliot Stabler

By the way, I had this conversation while standing in the middle of McLemore Avenue, rubbing the ankle on which I dropped the treasured, 200-pound 1994 Magnavox while trying to remove it from all the wires and replace it with my new, flat screen television that makes me sick to watch.

The first thing out of the young man’s mouth was something about how he couldn’t live without his DVR. Hmm. To which I replied, “Oh, is that so? Well, you probably watch a lot more than Law & Order reruns and you probably need DVR in your life. By the way, what is DVR?” He actually LAUGHED AT ME. He went on to explain that with his DVR he could skip through commercials and record many shows at once to watch later. To which I replied, “Well! That is just awesome for you! I have about eight jobs so I really don’t need that, and I can just do the simple upgrade from the digital receiver to the high-definition receiver, having no clue in hell as to what that actually means.

He went on to ask me if I was a sports fan. “No,” I replied, “I don’t watch sports on television unless Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson happened to be trying to solve a crime at a sporting event.” Dead silence on the other end of the line. This all went on for eons until I finally got my way and then was transferred to a non-English-speaking person to verify everything. There’s no telling what I actually ended up with. I just know that now I’ve read the directions and they indicate not to place the television near any dust. Sure.