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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

The Howling Monkey Reads The Comics: 11/30/14

Hey, look! This thing is back!

This episode includes raking with Mr. Pickles! Caveman commentary! Nuts to you! Shopping with kids!  Also, headphone feedback near the beginning of the episode makes The Howling Monkey sound ridiculous, and possibly drunk.  We are advised he was not drinking, but remains ridiculous nonetheless!

All that and more on this episode of the Howling Monkey Reads The Comics!
[audio-path:http://www.thehowlingmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/the-howling-monkey-reads-the-comics-113014.mp3]

The Howling Monkey Reads the Comics is a feature of The Howling Monkey blog. Joey Hack is a regular contributor to The Fly On The Wall blog and is a member of The Wiseguys improv troupe.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Tigers Beat UConn, Clinch AAC Championship

In a game that completed a half-century of Memphis football at the Liberty Bowl, the Tigers made plenty of history in beating the Connecticut Huskies today. The final score of 41-10 is almost the direct inverse of last year’s meeting (a 45-10 UConn win) and completes a precise reversal of the Tigers’ 3-9 record last season. In winning their ninth game of the season — a total reached by only five other teams in U of M history — the Tigers clinched at least a share of the 2014 American Athletic Conference championship. It’s the program’s first league title since winning the Missouri Valley Conference in 1971.

Keiwone Malone

“I want to thank everyone who came out to tonight and supported this special, special group of kids,” said Tiger coach Justin Fuente of the 35,102 fans in attendance. “I don’t think I can say enough good things about them. The way they worked . . . . I don’t know if they’re the most talented team around, but they certainly played together. This was a fantastic all-around effort.”

The 2014 Tigers are just the second team in Memphis history to score 400 points in a season. With a total of 416, they could break the record of 430 (set in 2004) in their bowl game (still to be determined). The team’s current six-game winning streak is the program’s longest since 1969, and the nine wins this season match the total for the four-year seniors — honored before kickoff today — who played from 2011 to 2013.

The Memphis offense had difficulty gaining early traction against UConn (2-9), settling for a pair of Jake Elliott field goals in the first quarter. But late in the second quarter, quarterback Paxton Lynch found senior wideout Keiwone Malone on a six-yard fade pattern to complete an 80-yard touchdown drive and give the Tigers a 13-0 lead, all the points they’d need.

Lynch threw three more touchdown passes on three consecutive third-quarter possessions to fully prep Tiger fans for a championship celebration unlike any seen in these parts. He found Malone again (for nine yards), then Tevin Jones (for 12), and Phil Mayhue (for 21). For the game, Lynch completed 22 of 41 passes for 194 yards and did not throw an interception for the sixth straight contest. He also rushed for 56 yards in helping the Tigers score on all six entries into the red zone.

“After the Houston game [the Tigers’ last defeat], I made a bet with myself to not turn the ball over and hurt my team,” said a jubilant Lynch after the game. He finished the regular season with 18 touchdown passes and six interceptions (half of them in that Houston game).

Tailback Brandon Hayes had the unique experience of a second Senior Day, having been granted a sixth year of eligibility last spring (he missed the 2010 season due to a knee injury). Hayes gained but 65 yards today, but will lead Memphis in rushing yardage a third straight season. “After we beat Cincinnati, I knew we had the chance to be contenders, to win the conference,” said Hayes. “But Coach [Fuente] stayed on us, told us not to look past the next opponent. Just go 1-0. Everybody bought into it.”

Hayes and the 20 other Tiger seniors will be the faces of one of college football’s most remarkable recent turnarounds. “When I saw the confetti flying, I got choked up a bit,” he said. “I was just grateful to come back and showcase what I had. This is all bonus. It’s a great feeling. Going out with a bang like we did, the seniors deserve it. It means so much. We trusted in the coaches.”

Cornerback Bobby McCain is another senior grateful to be making plans for a bowl game and fully aware of the difference his class has made in Tiger football history. “We were just trying to get to a bowl game, do something special,” he said. “Coach Fuente told us during offseason workouts that we had the chance to do something special. He meant it. When we lost to UCLA, you could tell the way we came together. And then beating Middle Tennessee, a team we hadn’t beaten since I’ve been here. The seniors are great leaders. They come in ready to work. I’m gonna miss these guys. But I’ve got one more game to play.”

Fuente recognized the contributions — and not just this year’s — of the 2014 senior class. “They have set a great example for our young kids,” he said. “They’ve been selfless. Some of them don’t start, some play a lot on special teams. But they don’t do anything but try and help the team, every day. Think about what these kids have been through, and to achieve something a lot of people didn’t believe they could achieve. It speaks volumes about their character and work ethic. It will take them a long way in life. I think you’ll see them successful in whatever endeavor they choose.”

The Tigers must wait to see if their conference championship is theirs alone. For such a scenario, East Carolina must beat UCF next Thursday and Houston must beat Cincinnati next Saturday. Meanwhile, the Tigers will relish the finest season in 50 years of football at the Liberty Bowl, and await the December 7th announcement of where they’ll be traveling for postseason football. Birmingham? Miami? Atlanta? Doesn’t matter so much, as long as that confetti is flying.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Tigers 72, Indiana State 62

In a town known for hangovers, the Tigers showed some strong recovery powers in beating Larry Bird’s alma mater tonight in the consolation game of the Las Vegas Invitational. In spite of the game tipping off merely 18 hours after a drubbing at the hands of Baylor, Memphis surged over the latter 10 minutes of the first half, outscoring the Sycamores, 29-5, to take control of a game they’d lead the rest of the way.

Indiana State took an early 17-11 lead, but the Tigers tied things at 17 on a dunk by Shaq Goodwin with 8:53 to play before halftime. Back-to-back three pointers by guard Avery Woodson closed the first-half scoring at 40-22, Tigers.

The U of M extended the lead to 20 (46-26) before going cold in the second half. The Sycamores closed within seven points (56-49) on a three-pointer by center Jake Kitchell with 2:19 left to play. But Kitchell fouled out 20 seconds later and the Tigers hit their free throws down the stretch, outscoring Indiana State 10-8 over the game’s final minute to even their record at 2-2.

The Tigers shot 46 percent from the field and limited the Sycamores to 33 percent. Goodwin led Memphis in the scoring column with a season-high 19 points. Trahson Burrell came off the bench to score 15 and was joined by Woodson (12), Nick King (11), and Austin Nichols (10) in double figures. Brenton Scott led Indiana State with 12 off the bench.

The Tigers will play their next nine games at FedExForum, starting next Tuesday when they host Stephen F. Austin. They won’t play another road game until they visit SMU on January 8, 2015.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Baylor 71, Tigers 47

In a game that began late Thursday night and ended early this morning, the Tigers fell to Baylor in the semifinals of the Las Vegas Invitational. The U of M played well Thursday night (at least in the central time zone), taking a 32-29 lead over the Bears into halftime. But after midnight . . . all pumpkin. Baylor outscored the Tigers 42-15 over the game’s final 20 minutes to improve to 5-0 on the season. Memphis dropped to 1-2 and will face Indiana State in tonight’s consolation game.

The Tigers shot poorly (34 percent from the field, including a dreadful 4-for-21 in the second half) and again had trouble distributing the ball (eight assists against 14 turnovers). Baylor commanded the glass, too, pulling down 43 rebounds to the Tigers’ 32.

Pookie Powell led Memphis with 13 points off the bench but was the only Tiger in double digits. Shaq Goodwin (1 for 6) and Austin Nichols (3 for 10) never found a rhythm on offense. Goodwin again came off the bench but contributed only two points and four rebounds in 24 minutes. The most encouraging figure for the Tigers was their 40-percent mark from three point range (6 for 15). Powell, Avery Woodson, and Markel Crawford each hit two from long distance.

The U of M has not started a season 1-3 since the 2000-01 season, John Calipari’s first as head coach at Memphis.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (November 27, 2014)

Our borders are so porous that they have become nearly impossible to police. Thousands of aliens sneak into this country every day and head for border towns where they can blend in with people of similar color who speak a similar language, making it impossible to detect who is and who is not a documented citizen.

The border is so long that no fence short of the Wall of China could even begin to stop the migrating hordes that seek sanctuary in the USA. They have infiltrated every major city, and many illegals have had children here so that they can automatically become American citizens. These are the “anchor babies” you’ve heard so much about. There are so many aliens already here that you could never round up and deport them all. And the number of good jobs that they take away from able-bodied Americans is scandalous. They have begun to dominate entire business sectors and have affected popular culture so much that our children are exposed. The lure of cheap drugs has caused Americans in border towns to flock to pharmacies across the border in order to smuggle drugs back into this country.

They talk differently. Their food is different. Their national sports are different. Let’s face it, these people are different than we are. I strongly believe, and many other like-minded patriots agree, that it’s about damn time that we crack down on this endless stampede of Canadians invading our land.

They come across in border towns like Detroit, Buffalo, and Rochester, but those who really want to enter undetected use the wide swaths of land that are too remote to patrol. They enter in places like Duluth, Minnesota, and Grand Forks, North Dakota, and I understand that the farther west you go, the more hardcore the trafficking is in illegal drugs, particularly marijuana. Demand has fallen totally off in Washington state, but I’ve heard about Canucks with calves the size of saskatoons from smuggling backpacks full of dangerously potent cannabis from Vancouver across the border. The Canadians call it “B.C. Bud,” or at least that’s what I was told. And not only are their legal drugs cheaper, I get at least 15 emails per week enticing me to buy them. You can even order them through the mail, flouting the law. And what is this Vicodin they keep wanting me to take?

Canadians don’t care about our laws. They were all bootleggers during prohibition, and some of the most prominent families made their fortunes supplying illegal hooch to Al Capone. Every time our country enters into one of our periodic righteous wars with somebody we don’t like, it’s always Canada that openly welcomes our cowardly draft-dodgers into their midst, especially during that pesky Vietnam business.

Over the past 40 years, there has been a stealth campaign among Canadians to infiltrate and take over the entertainment industry, beginning with the Toronto immigrant Lorne Michaels. In the mid-1970s, he invented a subversive television program called Saturday Night Live, and ever since, he’s relied on Canadians to spread his irreverent message – people like Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short, Norm McDonald, and Mike Meyers. This opened the floodgates for Canadian comedy with imported shows like SCTV, featuring perverted comics like John Candy, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, and Eugene Levy. Following their migrant trail came Jim Carrey, Howie Mandel, and Tommy Chong who began to take over our movie industry.

If our government had been vigilant enough to keep these freeloaders out, we would never have had to suffer through Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Wayne’s World, or Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Canadians spend half their lives listening to Gordon Lightfoot and the other half watching hockey. They drink beers called Moosehead and Labatt and live on a diet of bacon and maple syrup, which they pour over everything. They refuse to speak American. Instead of “out and about,” they say, “Oot and aboot.” They swear allegiance to the British crown, and even have a state that wants to secede, where they force everyone to speak French. And now they want this XL Keystone Pipeline to transport Canadian oil across our great country into the Gulf of Mexico so they can sell it to the Russians and Chinese. Of course, there’s absolutely no danger of an oil spill in the Gulf, right?

It’s past time to round up all your Avril Lavignes, your Ryan Goslings, and your Anna Paquins and begin arranging their transport home. It’s shocking how deeply they have burrowed into our society. William Shatner is Canadian. I mean, Captain Kirk is an alien, for God’s sake. Even the hip-hop artist Drake comes from the mean streets of Toronto.

We refer to Mexicans as “illegal aliens,” but Canadians are always, “our friends up north.” I think it’s time to send these toque-wearing, cheese-eating, Celine Dion-listening ice skaters back into their own wretched country. Especially this Seth Rogan fellow, whose “nerd gets the girl” movies have caused young men to resort to gun violence. It’s time this invasion came to an end and relocations are in order.

I only have one request. When the government starts deporting Canadians, please deport Justin Bieber first, aye?

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Being the final chapter ain’t what it used to be. Nowadays, movie trilogies are likely to have four parts, thanks to the monetary aspirations of quarterly corporate profit-driven movie studios, robbing part three of its catharsis. It happened to Twilight, whose third literary chapter got uselessly split into two parts. The original plan to make The Hobbit into two movies got expanded into three, which meant that significant parts of the first two movies felt like the padding they were. And it happened to Harry Potter, whose closing chapter, The Deathly Hallows, was split in two a bit more successfully. Would Return of the Jedi have been better split into two parts with added Ewok action to fill in the gaps? Probably not. But it would seem that The Hunger Games film franchise has actually benefitted from splitting its final chapter in two, because Mockingjay – Part 1 is the best of the three films released so far.

The franchise got off to a rocky start in 2012 with the first film, where hero Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteered to take the place of her sister Prim (Willow Shields) in the brutal gladiatorial-game-meets-reality-show that gives the series its name. Despite feeling rushed and incoherent, the first film made wheelbarrows full of money for Lionsgate and cemented Lawrence’s star status. For Catching Fire, the producers wisely ditched director Gary Ross in favor of Francis Lawrence, who could at least stage a coherent action sequence, and sent Katniss back into the arena for a tournament of champions designed to discredit and kill the increasingly popular Girl On Fire. But our heroine survived, thanks to her out-of-the-box thinking and the actions of game-designer-turned-revolutionary Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

As this third film opens, Katniss is fighting her raging PTSD in the rebel base deep under District 13. One of her two beaus Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) didn’t make it out of the arena, but is still alive and being used as a propaganda shill by President Snow (a gleefully evil Donald Sutherland). Her other potential lover Gale (Liam Hemsworth) escaped the holocaust of District 12 and is now fighting for rebel President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). Heavensbee and Coin want to use Katniss as a figurehead for the rebellion, but will the young woman known as The Mockingjay take up her mantle as a freedom fighter?

The weakness of splitting the final chapter of the story is that it makes Katniss’ internal struggle the film’s major conflict. Of course Katniss is going to take up her newly tricked-out bow against the evil Capitol, just like every hero since Odysseus has eventually responded after first refusing the call to adventure. But the strength of Mockingjay – Part 1 comes from the fact that the director and writers don’t have to cram so many plot incidents from the dense source material into a regulation-sized movie, and so they are able to stretch out and focus on their greatest strength: Lawrence.

Katniss is the hero our moment needs: She’s a working-class feminist fighting Das Kapital, represented by the patriarch Snow. She is tasteful and restrained in the face of the gaudy, late-stage capitalism of the ruling class — is there another epic adventure star who counts a stylist and a PR flack among their heroic band? She is a reality-TV star who sees through the artifice of the weaponized entertainment complex that is keeping her people subjugated. Like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick or Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, Lawrence fully inhabits Katniss as a character while also imbuing her with that mysterious movie star magic. Wearing the fierce thousand-yard stare of a seasoned warrior, she is the charismatic Che Guevara to President Coin’s calculating Castro. Then she furtively includes her sister’s cat among her list of demands to her new bosses, and you realize she’s still a teenage girl. Lawrence outshines everyone else on the screen, even to the point of undermining the romantic triangle with Peeta and Gale. It’s clear that neither one of these drips are worthy of Katniss, just as it’s clear that there are few projects 21st century Hollywood could come up with that are worthy of Lawrence, so she had to make The Hunger Games her own.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Grizzlies Turn Up the Heat

The Grizzlies came into the 2014–15 season poised to get off to a hot start, but no one expected them to be this good. At the time of this writing, they’re 12–2, with one loss coming at the hands of the Eastern Conference-leading Toronto Raptors while missing five rotation players due to a stomach virus. They’ve got the fourth-best defensive rating in the NBA and, miracle of miracles, the fifth-best offensive rating. Head coach Dave Joerger, after a rocky start in his rookie season, has the boys in Beale Street Blue firing on all cylinders, playing to their strengths and dominating teams in a way we haven’t seen before.

The question, then, is: How long can they keep winning at this rate? The first 10 games of the season were against inferior teams, at least compared to some of the teams they’ll face in the next 20 games: the defending NBA champion Spurs (twice), their Finals opponents, the Miami Heat, and the Golden State Warriors (the only team higher in most power rankings than the Grizzlies), to name three.

At 12–2, the team is off to the same start as it had for the 2012–13 season, when the Grizzlies played .500 ball for most of January and February, before trading Rudy Gay to Toronto and making a run to the Western Conference Finals. In this year’s ultra-competitive Western Conference, a couple of months of .500 basketball might put them at the back of the playoff pack in January, something they certainly want to avoid.

There’s really one big (seven-foot-tall) reason the Grizzlies are playing the way they are: Marc Gasol, in the final year of his contract, is performing at a level we’ve always talked about in hushed tones, barely hinted at in his previous outbursts: “If Gasol would only …” or “If he ever figures out that he should shoot …” and so on and so forth. It’s early in the season, for sure, but Gasol’s name is already coming up in MVP candidate discussions. He’s scoring at a prolific rate — he just had back-to-back 30-point games against the Celtics and Clippers, the first such double of his career — and his rebounding numbers are up as well. The only thing Gasol is not doing more than he did last year is assisting, and that’s because this season Gasol is taking those shots himself.

The cynical explanation is that Gasol is playing this way because it’s a contract year and he wants to make himself a more lucrative free agent. The more generous explanation (and probably more accurate, given what we know about Gasol) is that Gasol has realized that he has to alter his game to take this team from “perennial playoff team” to “legitimate title contender,” and that given the talent around him this year, if he can sustain his current level of play, that’s exactly what the Grizzlies are: one of the best teams in the league.

I don’t expect the Grizzlies to keep winning 85 percent of their games. There are too many other good teams in the league, especially in the West. There will be nights when they are tired, nights when the other team is more fired up, nights when they just can’t hit the shots that are open, nights when it just isn’t happening. The NBA season is long and it’s littered with nights like that. But, on the flipside, this is a team that won 50 games last year, despite the injury plague that bit them from November on. A team that has won more games than anybody since Gasol returned from injury last season. If they won 50 last year, how many can they win this year?

Joerger has taken the good bones he inherited — let’s not pretend Lionel Hollins didn’t win with a similar (if less deep) roster — and turned them into a team that can beat any team in the league. They can play inside-out, and this season, when that’s not working, Courtney Lee’s hot shooting has saved the day more than once from outside, providing just enough floor spacing on offense to keep defenses honest. Beyond that, the whole team has bought into this season. They’re playing like a veteran team of guys who know each other, and who are motivated to get to somewhere they haven’t been before. The great thing about that for the city of Memphis? There are only two places they haven’t been before: the NBA Finals and an NBA title. Opportunities like this don’t come often for franchises, or cities, or teams. The Grizzlies seem determined to make their own luck, and seize what’s in front of them.

They’re stepping up to the occasion, and the whole basketball world has taken notice.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

“American” Football Picks: Week 14

Last Week: 5-0
Season: 61-18

AAC_logo.jpg

FRIDAY
Houston at SMU
UCF at USF
East Carolina at Tulsa

SATURDAY
UConn at Memphis
Cincinnati at Temple

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Prosecution Rests

Like many Americans, I watched St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch make his announcement on television Monday night regarding the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson case. And like many Americans, I wasn’t surprised that the grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson, nor was I surprised at the unrest that followed.

The signs had been clear. For days in advance of the announcement, we’d heard and read stories about an increased police and National Guard presence in St. Louis. The Ku Klux Klan had announced they’d be there to help stir the pot. Protestors had been organizing for weeks. The kettle was simmering, just waiting for the heat to be kicked up a notch. McCulloch’s announcement was all that was needed.

As any lawyer will tell you, prosecutors use grand juries to build a case for indictment, which sends the case to trial. They are not obligated to present both sides of the story, and they seldom do. And it is a rare grand jury that does not indict when presented with prosecutorial evidence. For example, prosecutors at the federal level pursued more than 160,000 cases in 2009-2010 (the most recent available data), and grand juries voted not to return an indictment in 11 cases. If a prosecutor wants a grand jury to indict, they will, literally 99.9 percent of the time.

It was quite apparent, given his long recitation of evidence supporting Wilson’s story, that McCulloch did not want to prosecute. And it’s true, police have the right under law to shoot to kill if they feel their safety or the safety of others is threatened. That’s pretty much a “get-out-of-prosecution-free” card, unless there’s strong evidence to the contrary, especially given the symbiotic relationship between prosecutors and police.

There’s a reason those photo-ops for drug busts and gang arrests always feature the district attorney and the police chief standing side by side. Cops need the district attorney to validate their arrests by prosecuting the offenders, and district attorneys need cops to testify in their prosecutions.

So why go through the charade? Why not just say there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute? And why, for heaven’s sake, would you make the announcement at 8:30 p.m., when crowds are most likely to be able to gather and when darkness provides cover for looters, making the situation more dangerous for the police, businesses, legitimate protestors, and citizens just wanting to stay safe in their homes? Wouldn’t common sense suggest a better time might be, say, 8:30 a.m.?

There are many questions lingering around this story, and many witnesses and much evidence that will never see a courtroom, and that’s where the frustration comes from. It’s possible that Wilson’s story would have held up in court, and it’s also possible that a forthright prosecutor could have torn holes in his story. Now we’ll never know. The truth is lost in the fire and tear gas and darkness of night.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Terrance and Marcella Simien at Bar DKDC

There’s a special family reunion happening in Memphis this week. Multi-Grammy-winning Zydeco Experience performer Terrance Simien is bringing his accordion to Bar DKDC to sit in with his daughter and her band, Marcella and Her Lovers. It’s not nearly as awkward as it sounds.

“He’ll just be playing with us, and we’ll do a few more songs than usual,” Marcella says, tamping down any notion that her dad might be appearing with his full Zydeco band. The younger Simien moved to Memphis and established herself as a gutsy and idiosyncratic solo performer before putting together the band Marcella and Her Lovers a year ago. A recently released EP, The Bronze Age, shows off the legacy performer’s uncommonly expressive voice and songwriting, though the best cut is arguably a reworking of Little Bop & the Lollipops’ 1961 single “My Heart’s on Fire.”

Marcella Simien

“I only got comfortable with my singing voice when I was 16 or 17, and that’s when I started writing my own songs,” Simien says, describing what it was like growing up in a musical family. “And friends would say I should be on The Voice or American Idol, and I’d think maybe I could, to see how far I could get. But that wasn’t my plan. I didn’t see my dad do it like that. I didn’t see other musicians I admired doing it that way.

“I saw my parents [have a career in music], and it was more of a real thing than a dream,” Simien says. “I mean, it was always a dream, but they made me realize, if you take these steps you can do it. You need to know what you deserve as an artist. You need to place value on your work and your artistry.”