Month: May 2014

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Book Features Books

Catching up with Cartoonist Graham Sale

CREDIT: Graham Sale

Let’s start with the hate mail cartoonist Graham Sale has received over the past few years.

According to one disgruntled writer: “You have a sick depraved mind and need counseling. I know a Christian Counseling Center that can help you. I’ll be praying for you. There is a day of accountability and you need to prepare for it, Mr. Sale.”

Another wrote: “Your cartoon portraying the Lord Jesus Christ as a dark-skinned, foreign-born, anti-war liberal socialist who wants to give away health care and food to the masses in no way represents the Christ of the Bible.”

Another put it simply: “You are an idiot.”

But then there was one writer who put to him this question: “Your cartoons are so stupid. How can you accept money for them?”

Graham Sale accepted money for them because Chris Peck, former editor of The Commercial Appeal, hired him in 2010 to do weekday political cartoons and a series of cartoons called “Men in Hats” for Saturday’s editorial page.

Sale continued to do them until budget cuts at the paper led to his layoff. But here those cartoons are again, only this time they’ve been collected in three volumes — Cartoons & Illustrations, Political Cartoons, and Men in Hats: If Idiots Could Fly — and, no surprise, it’s Sale as you love or loathe him: mincemeat-maker of the GOP (and not a few Democrats), super PACs, the NRA, big banks, one-percenters, Fox News, and Bible thumpers. That’s in addition to Sale’s acute observations of life’s everyday indignities and inanities. Call those observations his gag cartoons. “A breath of fresh air amidst a swamp of paranoid bible/gun nuts” was how one fan described Sale’s political cartoons in a letter to the CA.

Sale recently also heard other kind words from a politically sympathetic Midtown neighbor: “You and Garry Trudeau were the only two people who got us through the last election cycle.”

Sale, who grew up in Elmira, New York, and graduated from Parsons, has good words for Memphis, where he’s met a number of likeminded people and where, let’s face it, the cost of living’s relatively cheap.

“I’d been in Los Angeles for 15 years. Before that, Philadelphia. Before that, New York City,” Sale said recently by phone. “But in 2010 and with the economy the way it was, I didn’t feel the need to be in L.A. Been there, done that. A friend in Mississippi said, ‘Why don’t you come here? See what Southern hospitality is like.’ I said, ‘Why not? I’ll try something different.'”

And it has been different, Sale said. The opportunities have been better than expected; the ease of meeting people a far cry from the competitive East/West Coast mob scenes. They’re scenes Sale knows very well, because in a variety of creative ventures, you name it, Sale’s done it.

In addition to licensing greeting cards, beach towels, and coffee mugs and creating Boneless Chuck (a bean-bag toy figure with a worldwide following) and a clothing line for kids called Club Crib, Sale has been a freelance advertising illustrator, an insurance salesman, a T-shirt designer (Ron Silver wore one of his shirts in Reversal of Fortune; the band UB40 wore them on Saturday Night Live), a financial planner, and self-help author of What Women Want: A Gentleman’s Guide to Romance. He’s working now on a related title called Win at Work Without Losing at Love. And what’s not to keep a cartoonist from also being a full-fledged author? Nothing, according to Sale: “You have some paper, a pen, you’re in business.”

“I read adventure stories as a kid,” Sale said. “I’ve always wanted a life full of adventure, of risk, for better or for worse.”

But it’s cartooning that’s held and still holds particular pride of place:

“People cut my stuff out and post it. It’s touched them in some way. That yellowing cartoon of mine that they’ve kept? People take it off their bulletin board when they move. They put it back up after they’ve moved. It’s the coolest thing. That’s more to me than winning a Pulitzer. That bulletin board has been the real prize.”

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News The Fly-By

Utility Customers Will Be Able to Pre-pay for Services

Come this winter, cell phones won’t be the only thing locals can purchase pre-paid plans for.

In December, Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) is rolling out a pre-payment plan for customers who have smart meters, which provide more detailed information on energy consumption than conventional meters.

MLGW customers can decide how much they’d prefer to spend on their utilities and receive a notification when those funds are about to exhaust.

“You can put enough down that might last you three months or you can put a smaller amount down that might last a couple of weeks. That’s completely up to the customers and how fast they use the utilities,” said MLGW President Jerry Collins.

“And we would contact them by whatever means they wish, be it text message, telephone, [or] email, and let them know they’re so many days away from that amount of money running out. Then they can choose to put more money on their account if they need to or make other arrangements.”

By the end of summer, there will be 60,000 smart meters installed at 24,000 homes or buildings throughout the city.

Collins said the utility pre-pay program has been active in the U.S. for five years, and participants have reportedly saved around 12 percent on average. One of the companies utilizing pre-pay is Gibson Electric Membership Corporation (EMC), a nonprofit, member-owned and member-controlled electric cooperative that operates in eight Northwest Tennessee counties.

Gibson EMC has been implementing its pre-pay program, Pay-As-You-Go (PAY-Go), since 2009. Currently, more than 3,000 of its 35,000 member-owners use PAY-Go, according to Rita Alexander, vice-president of human resources and communications for Gibson EMC.

“It gives new members a way to establish service with minimal set-up costs,” Alexander said. “It enables members to closely monitor their energy use on a daily basis through email, our automated phone system, or through in-home display units. The information that members receive about their electricity use helps them to become more energy efficient and save dollars.”

Smart meters closely monitor a customer’s utility consumption, informing them of their usage every 15 minutes. And the meters can be connected or disconnected without utility workers coming to a residence to do it manually.

Pre-pay plans eliminate disconnection fees associated with non-payment, and the plan rids the need for deposits from customers. People with conventional meters are only able to measure their utility usage once every 30 days. The meters have to be physically connected or disconnected.

MLGW has been developing its pre-pay program since 2013. Collins said he thinks it would be a significant benefit to both MLGW and its customers financially and in terms of convenience.

Collins said if only a small portion of MLGW customers opted for pre-pay, around $8 million could be saved annually, if participants were able to save 12 percent on their utility bills.

“It’s an opportunity to save a substantial amount of money by saving energy,” Collins said. “And the locations across the country where pre-pay has been implemented have seen savings in the 10 to 12 percent range. If we have a substantial amount of households that are able to save that much, then they can use the money they save toward things like rent, food, and medicine, and things that will improve their quality

of life.”

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News The Fly-By

Nashville Mayor To Speak In Memphis

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

When Karl Dean, mayor of Nashville, comes to Memphis next week in answer to the second annual “Summons to Memphis,” he’ll be following in the footsteps not only of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the inaugural invitee at the Memphis Magazine-sponsored event last year, but of Dean’s son Rascoe, who was a Teach for America volunteer at East High School for two years.

“He loved the city, he loved living on Mud Island, and he loved teaching those kids at East High. He goes back regularly to see them,” said the elder Dean who, like Landrieu before him, will be sharing his insights about urban management in the 21st century to a blue-ribbon Memphis luncheon audience at the Grand Ballroom of the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis on June 6th.

Dean hasn’t settled on a theme for his address yet, but he’s eager to talk about his own affection for Memphis, which he sees not as a rival but as a genuine sister city with a shared music tradition and a history that in many ways overlaps with that of his own city.

It did so recently and tragically, in the case of Nashville police officer and Memphis native Michael Petrina, who was killed while directing traffic.

“Nashvillians were deeply hurt by that event,” Dean said. “I was in Memphis for the service, and the city and both mayors could not have been more helpful.”

Dean and Memphis Mayor
A C Wharton have been friends and comrades-at-arms for decades. Dean recalled a time when he was in Memphis for a ceremony celebrating the revival of steamboat traffic here and “A C was giving me a hard time” about the difference between the mighty Mississippi and the Cumberland, joking good-naturedly that there wasn’t enough room on the latter “for a boat to even turn around.”

That was the same Cumberland, however, that in May 2010 overflowed its banks, causing an estimated $1.5 billion in damage in Nashville and putting such major venues as Opryland and LP Field, home of the NFL Titans, temporarily underwater.

But if Nashville, which had also suffered major tornado damage downtown in 1998, has had to withstand significant natural setbacks, it has undeniably been one of the nation’s boom cities during the last few decades. Dean has been a major architect of his city’s rise, notably as the moving force behind the building of Music City Center, a state-of-the-art Taj Mahal-sized edifice that opened last year and occupies 16 acres and several city blocks south of the bustling Broadway area.

“It may not be the biggest, but we think it’s the best,” Dean said of his city’s new convention center. But he’s equally proud of Nashville’s “honky-tonks,” his term for the numerous music-entertainment locales in Nashville, a city already world-famous for country music but now, as he noted, a haven for such rock artists as Kings of Leon, Kesha, Jack White, and the Black Keys. As Dean said, Nashville is the site of a full-fledged music industry comparable to New York and Los Angeles.

But Nashville is also a center of the health-care industry, the home of Vanderbilt and other universities, and a place, Dean said, where economic development is on continual display.

Tickets to “Summons to Memphis” are $50 per person, and a table for 10 people may be reserved for $450. They can be purchased at summonstomemphis.com

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We Recommend We Recommend

Bill Courtney Booksigning

”You must absolutely be beside yourself,” said the reporter to the man on the red carpet. “How will the movie winning the Oscar change your life?”

“It won’t,” answered the man. “Tomorrow, they’re going to roll the red carpet up and next year, another great movie will come out, and I’ll be an afterthought.”

The man being interviewed was Bill Courtney. The movie about his coaching the Manassas High School football team in Memphis was Undefeated, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2012. And an “afterthought” Courtney may be in some quarters. Don’t tell that, though, to the inspired audiences who hear Courtney on the speaking circuit. And don’t tell that to readers of Against the Grain (Weinstein Books), Courtney’s book of life lessons (co-written with author and journalist Michael Arkush), which Courtney will be signing at the Booksellers at Laurelwood on Saturday.

The book draws from Courtney’s own life; the lives of the students he coached; the lives of his workforce at Classic American Hardwoods (the local lumber company Courtney owns); and the lives of fellow Memphians, including Dr. Scott Morris, Jim Strickland, Fred Smith, and Jacqueline Smith. The book’s subtitle covers the territory: “A Coach’s Wisdom on Character, Faith, Family, and Love.”

Courtney covers his coaching philosophy in just a few words too. Never mind the standard X’s and O’s. Courtney “starts with believing that players win games and coaches win players.” And elsewhere in Against the Grain: “I didn’t coach football. I coached kids who played football.”

And no, winning isn’t the only thing, according to Coach Courtney. There’s something to be said too for commitment, civility, perseverance, personal responsibility, and dignity. Grace, too, and forgiveness when times get tough, on or off the field.

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News The Fly-By

Jacob Flowers Reflects on His Time at the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center

Jacob Flowers

After 10 years, Flowers is leaving his post of executive director.

The Mid-South Peace & Justice Center has been a part of Jacob Flowers’ life for as long as he can remember.

Flowers, who leaves his executive director post at the end of the month, oversaw the social justice nonprofit for 10 years. But Flowers’ parents volunteered with the Peace & Justice Center in the ’80s, when he just a kid. He remembers his mom’s work on the Central American Task Force and his dad helping out with Nuclear Freeze Movement protests.

Flowers interned at the center in high school and, after college, began working for the organization full-time. As executive director, he was responsible for helping bring the struggling center into a more financially stable position. And he oversaw many campaigns aimed at everything from protesting the Iraq War to fighting for better local homeless services to launching community gardens.

At the end of the month, he’s leaving the position to take on a new role as the Tennessee State Director for Enroll America, a national organization with a focus on boosting the numbers of people enrolled in affordable health care.

— Bianca Phillips

Flyer: Did you get to witness your parents doing peace work?

Flowers: My mom was involved with work around the Central American Crisis and the Sanctuary Movement, which was kin to an underground railroad for the U.S.-sponsored violence in Central America. Her leg was to pick people [from Central America] up from Brownsville and bring them to Memphis. I didn’t get to go with her, but I grew up knowing a lot of these families and a lot of these kids. We had Spanish lessons at one family’s house.

I remember seeing my father [who was involved in the Nuclear Freeze Movement] arrested for sitting on the train tracks by Channel 3 and blocking a train carrying nuclear weapons from going through our city. Watching two police officers carry him off is an early memory.

How did you end up as the executive director?

I ended up interning here in 2001. I helped start the Orange Mound Community Garden that summer. When I got out of college, I spent time living in Western Massachusetts and looking for a job where I could do this kind of work professionally. Either I could take a baseline level organizing position [somewhere else] or I could go home and help rebuild the Peace & Justice Center, which at the time, in 2003 to 2004, was in a pretty bad financial spot. We didn’t have a paid staff at the time. The board was managing all the programs.

Under your leadership, what have you been the most proud of?

The opportunity that we had to refocus the organization around critical local issues, in addition to focusing on national and international-level issues, is what I treasure the most about my time here — all of those local campaigns that weren’t a part of the political discourse at the time, like homelessness, that we made into central issues that we are focusing on in our city.

What will you miss the most?

Oh man, I’m gonna miss lots of stuff. I’ll miss the great leaders and staff that I have had the privilege to work with. But at the same time, it’s been a real privilege to get paid to do this kind of work. I’m giving up that privilege, but I’ll still be heavily involved as a community member.

What’s next for the Peace & Justice Center?

Part of having a strong, sustainable, people-led organization is letting leadership cycle, so we’re moving up some of our internal leaders. For right now, we can announce that Brad Watkins will be the executive director beginning June 1st.

And you have turned your leaving into a fundraiser, right?

One of the last things I’m doing is trying to raise money for the organization. We’ve launched a 10 for 10 campaign. For my 10 years of service, I’m trying to raise $10,000 to move us strongly through the end of the year. Anyone can donate at midsouthpeace.org/tenforten

Categories
Music Music Features

Blues News

Life of Riley screens at the Brooks Museum of Art on Thursday, May 29th, at 7 p.m.

This documentary from director Jon Brewer renders B.B. King and the blues in an unsentimental and unsettling manner. The film opens with Bill Cosby, who emphatically rejects any romantic notions of the music or of King’s life. It’s a powerful opening to a great historical document.

King’s life is set in place as he is interviewed in recent footage at the site of his birth. There are moving interviews with many of his old friends and family members. Those are cut against interviews with Bono and Eric Clapton. But the man who emerges is one who never stopped moving through a half century of extreme social change.

The notoriously hard-touring King, now 88, was orphaned, went to a one-room schoolhouse, and then into the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. The horrors of the system are powerfully depicted. He witnessed a lynching, worked under armed guard, and ran away twice to Memphis before the musical life took hold. Music aside, the first-person history of 20th century plantation life is worth watching. What King accomplishes from this appalling situation is one of America’s greatest artistic legacies.

King’s guitar playing is idiosyncratic to say the least. His stylistic efficiency relates to his lifestyle of working and moving fast with a light footprint. His ex-wife’s story of him fishing in a silk suit has a funny aspect to it. But his response, “It’s all I have,” is that of an orphan who had nothing, had to depend on himself, and who couldn’t let himself stop working. This is what Cosby wants us to bear in mind. This film should be shown in our schools. Life of Riley goes to video on demand on June 1st.

• KWEM, the West Memphis-based radio station that launched “Memphis” music, is powering up again. Mid-South Community College in West Memphis received a license to operate a low-powered FM transmitter. The signal will go live in about 90 days on 93.3 FM and might reach parts of Memphis. But the programming will be streamed online at kwemradio.com.

KWEM was a music-production think tank at the dawn of electrified blues. In the film discussed above, B.B. King mentions the exposure and experience he gained through his sponsored work on KWEM. The deal was you could pay to play on the air or get a sponsor.

Howlin’ Wolf, born Chester Burnett, had a connection to the station that ran for half a decade: Burnett was the station’s first African-American host. In 1951, Sam Phillips heard Wolf on KWEM, recorded him in Memphis, and sold the records to Chess. Everybody thought things were going along smoothly. However, Ike Turner, pianist and frequent collaborator with Phillips, took Burnett across the river to record at KWEM for the Bihari brothers, owners of the Modern label in Los Angeles. Although Wolf eventually went on to a productive relationship with Phillips and Chess, Joe Bihari and Ike Turner recorded four tracks on Howlin’ Wolf at KWEM in 1951 and several the next year.

Burnett, James Cotton, Junior Parker, Hubert Sumlin, and Elmore James worked or performed at KWEM. Bill Black and Scotty Moore played there. Johnny Cash made his broadcast debut and hosted a show.

Jim Dickinson — Memphis’ Dr. Johnson — was emphatic on the issue that Memphis music had its roots at West Memphis’ Plantation Inn. He insisted that Packy Axton was the funky Prometheus who brought the sound back across the river. Between Phillips and Sun’s reliance on KWEM and the Stax/Mitchell connection to West Memphis live scene, it’s a wonder we don’t call it West Memphis Music.

• Memphis Blues stalwart Daddy Mack has a new album and will celebrate its release at the trolley stop of the Center for Southern Folklore on Saturday, May 21st. The show will be recorded for a Beale Street Caravan broadcast and will include tracks from Daddy Mack’s latest album, Blues Central. If you’ve never heard and met this band, you’re missing out big time.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Green Arrows and Red X’s Once Ruled Traffic on Union Avenue

CREDIT: credit: ANdrii larygin | dreamstime.com

From the 1970s to 2001, the mighty, six-lane Union Avenue flowed four lanes west in the mornings and then four lanes east in the evenings. Reversing the flow of this urban behemoth needed only the flip of a switch. 

That switch produced cold, unyielding green arrows or red Xs above the street. They told Memphis motorists which lanes were paths to the promised land (the green arrows) and which lanes were highways to hell (the red Xs). And those could switch immediately (and they did every day, twice a day). 

“You know, it was the time before video games, and we had to make our own fun,” said Memphis City Council member Shea Flinn.

Formally, they were called “reversible lanes,” and, before Interstate 40 was completed here, they made perfect sense. An additional lane on Union was opened up to carry the swell of commuter traffic heading in one direction at peak times, in the mornings when commuters were headed to work and in the afternoons when they left. 

Lights strung above the street changed to tell drivers which lanes were heading in which direction. If it sounds confusing, that’s only because it was confusing.

In 1997, the Flyer had a Best of Memphis category called “Best of Memphis Drivers,” in which one of our on-the-scene readers explained the confusion of the times. 

“Oh, the horror! You can see them coming from blocks away,” the reader said. “You check to see if you have an arrow or an ‘X.’ Sure enough, you’re in the right [lane], involuntarily sucked into a deadly game of chicken.”

Flinn said the reversible lanes confused his Rhodes College classmates. If their questions about the sanity of such a scheme came as they were behind the wheel, Flinn’s advice was quick and urgent: “Just trust me. You want to get over right now!” 

John Vergos, co-owner of Charles Vergos’ Rendezvous, was on the city council when those reversible-lane lights came down. Traffic engineers were wary of removing them, he said.

“They told us it would be all doom and gloom and wanted to study it for six or eight months,” he said. “In the end, the council just forced them to change it. They told us all kinds of horror stories, but it worked perfectly from day one.”

Now, the mighty Union Avenue runs three lanes east and west all day long. But changes are afoot. 

John Cameron, director of the city’s engineering division, said a left turning lane will soon be installed between Cleveland and Bellevue. It will help alleviate some of the traffic trying to turn onto Bellevue to Methodist University Hospital. Also, the lane and a new light will allow left turns for the “first time in years, and years, and years” from Union onto Cleveland. 

“If [the left turning lane] works, we’ll look at moving farther east and making some of those other signalized intersections in places where you can turn left,” Cameron said. “It may even help folks getting in and out of businesses along Union to have that left turn lane.”

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News The Fly-By

Critics Move to Block Overton Square Permit Parking Plan

Opposition has surfaced and is growing against a plan before the Memphis City Council that would allow exclusive parking on some streets around Overton Square for residents living around the revitalized entertainment district.

That one-year pilot plan would allow Square-area residents to buy an annual parking permit for $50. Residents could also buy up to four visitor permits for $25 each. The permits would allow them exclusive rights to park in spots on city streets that are currently open to the general public. Those spots would only be within a defined parking district.    

The plan is moving through the council’s legislative process now and got the first of three needed approvals during last week’s council meeting. Should the ordinance face no big hurdles in the council process, it could become law during the council’s meeting on Tuesday, June 17th.

But a change.org petition against the idea began two weeks ago by resident Gene Elliott, who said “residents should not have to pay to park in front of their own property.” Elliott said if the ordinance is passed, residents and their guests would have to opt into the permit program and pay the $50 or risk being ticketed. 

“Memphis already has an extremely high property tax rate. This permit will only add to the burden of local residents and businesses,” said Elliott’s petition. “Residents should not have to pay to park in their own neighborhood!”

The petition had 106 signatures at press time. Comments on the petition echoed Elliott’s sentiments on the extra financial burden the permits would bring and the adverse effects they’d have on tourism, businesses, and residents. While that petition is the most formal opposition to the plan, discussion on the matter has also filled comment threads on Facebook and local media websites.   

Council Chairman Jim Strickland brought the parking-permit ordinance to the council. He said he’s aware of the opposition to the plan and met with several businesses and residents in the area last week to try to resolve some issues.

“There’s just misinformation out there,” Strickland said. “One of the points is: ‘How dare you charge people to park on their own streets?’ First, it’s the residents who wanted the program. It was not originated for the city to make money. I’m only pursuing it because the people living there asked for it.”

The cost of the permits only covers the cost of administering the permit program, Strickland said. 

If the program is approved by the council, petitions will be sent to residents in the parking permit district. Should enough residents on any one street sign the city’s petition, their street could become part of the parking district. 

So far, that district is limited to an area bound by Cox Street on the east, Morrison Street on the west, Union Avenue on the south, and Jefferson Avenue on the north. A section of Lee Place North is also included. Neighbors within that area can determine whether or not they want their street in the program.  

City of Memphis Engineering Director John Cameron said if a street is approved for the program, signs would be erected there, residents and permitted visitors would get their permit (a sticker or a hang tag), and anyone who parks there without a permit would be ticketed.   

The council will likely discuss the matter during their next committee session on June 3rd. 

Categories
News The Fly-By

Ioby Launches New Website To Help Memphians Bring Ideas to Action

The Green Machine, a mobile grocery store, has been delivering fresh produce to residents of Memphis food deserts for more than a year now. But now the group behind the Green Machine has begun crowd-funding to take their mission to the next level with a grocery cooperative storefront for the Vance neighborhood downtown.

That’s just one of many ideas recently posted to the new Create Memphis website (memphis.ioby.org) launched last week. The site is powered by Ioby, a crowd-funding site that focuses on public projects and creative place-making. Ioby stands for “in our backyards.”

The national company Ioby has had a Memphis presence for about a year now, but until last week, the local site was set up like their other city sites with only serious crowd-funding campaigns that already had plans, budgets, and teams ready to implement the projects. The Hampline, the soon-to-be-constructed, two-way bicycle track from Overton Park to the Shelby Farms Greenline, was funded through the old Memphis Ioby platform.

But Ioby is trying something new with Create Memphis. Anyone with an idea can go to the site, post the idea, and see if it gains any traction. From there, a team of people at Ioby and Livable Memphis will help those ideas that need funding start a crowd-sourced campaign.

“As the [old] Ioby functions, it’s a useful tool for people with an idea, a plan, a budget, and a team. But a lot of people have ideas for Memphis that aren’t that developed yet, and in fact, they may not be ideas that should even come to fruition,” said Erin Barnes, executive director and co-founder of Ioby. “The idea behind Create Memphis is that it is an opportunity for people who have the beginning of an idea or would like to work on addressing a problem in their neighborhood.”

Barnes said Create Memphis was partly inspired by the Make Memphis campaign, a Facebook group started by entrepreneur Taylor Berger to generate ideas for improving the city. Ideas are posted to the Make Memphis Facebook page, but many don’t have the financial backing to become reality.

“People are always saying, ‘Somebody ought to …’ fill-in-the-blank. Well, if it needs to be done, maybe you should do it,” said Emily Trenholm, executive director for the Community Development Council of Greater Memphis, the umbrella organization over Livable Memphis.

From the Create Memphis website, anyone can click the “Add an Idea” button. The idea becomes a dot on a map of the city, and others can like your idea or comment. The staff at Ioby or Livable Memphis will help set up crowd-source campaigns for ideas that need support.

“You might say someone should really put a mural on that big blank wall. And then someone might comment, ‘You know, I could do that.’ And then you can use Ioby to raise a couple hundred dollars,” Trenholm said.

Paul Young, administrator of the Shelby County Office of Sustainability, is planning to upload about 200 ideas that were generated through recent Mid-South Regional Greenprint meetings. Those ideas range from bike lanes to community gardens to planting more trees.

“Ioby is going to integrate these ideas into their platform in case someone wants to pick up on one and try to implement it,” Young said. “We as government aren’t able to do everything, but this allows a way for those recommendations to live on beyond the planning process.”

The Create Memphis website is funded by the Hyde Family Foundation and the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Jon Favreau’s Chef satisfying, not spectacular.

That Eli Roth’s cannibal film The Green Inferno played as a trailer to Chef appeared to be a good omen, but Jon Favreau’s foodie film, of which he serves as writer, director, and star, is a chain restaurant movie — serving up fare that is reliable, if not spectacular.

The story revolves around Carl Casper, a chef anointed the biggest thing going in the L.A. food scene, but that was 10 years ago, and where Casper sees beauty in the greens of a bundle of beets, his boss, Riva (Dustin Hoffman), sees it in the greens of a bundle of money brought in by customers who’ve been coming back for the same decade-old menu.

A visit by an important critic finds Casper and Riva at odds. Casper wants to try something new and exciting, Riva wants to play it safe by serving the same old scallops and lava cake. The chef gets slammed by the critic, and what follows is a violent confrontation (one that is filmed and goes viral) that leaves Casper without a job and doubtful about his future. Thrown in the mix is the relationship Casper has with his 10-year-old son, who yearns to spend more time with his dad.

As a food film, Chef never reaches the heights of 1994’s Eat Drink Man Woman, but it does capture the giddiness as seen in 2009’s Julie & Julia of creating and sharing a meal so fine that the mood is electric. And, if the film doesn’t quite make you want to be a chef, it will certainly make you want a sandwich.

It’s clear that Favreau did his homework. It’s seen in such foodie flourishes as the Lucky Peach magazine in Casper’s apartment and the appearance of culinary stars like Aaron Franklin of Austin’s Franklin Barbecue and Roy Choi of the Kogi BBQ Taco Truck in L.A. At one point, Chef becomes a road-trip movie, with Casper, his right-man, and Casper’s son driving across the country, from Miami to L.A., in a food truck. The trip serves as a primer for Casper’s son — Cuban sandwiches in Miami, beignets and muffulettas in New Orleans, and Texas barbecue in Austin. (Interestingly, there is apparently nothing noteworthy foodwise between Texas and California.)

The film is well served by its supporting cast. Scarlett Johansson is Casper’s sympathetic and (duh) sexy sounding board, while John Leguizamo adds humor and energy as Casper’s sous chef. There’s a cameo by Amy Sedaris as well, stirring up memories of the fantastic Jerri Blank as the too-tan, not-hearing-a-word publicist. The film’s biggest laughs, however, go to the brief though wonderfully weird and awkward scene with Robert Downey Jr. playing the ex-husband of Casper’s ex-wife.

It’s ironic, then, that another of these supporting roles points directly to the chief weakness of Chef. Hoffman, as the nervous restaurant owner, does not want to try anything that stretches the imagination. And while Favreau’s character fights the static, Favreau as a writer and director does not push the boundaries. There are at least three musical interludes (two too many), and the ending, while pleasing, is about as pat as they come. Ultimately, Chef feeds you just enough to be satisfied.