Month: February 2015

Categories
News The Fly-By

Teen Learning Lab to Open in Benjamin Hooks Library

CREDIT: Stephanie White

Young, aspiring entertainers, business moguls, and video game designers may benefit from a forthcoming 8,300-square-foot teen learning lab at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

The state-of-the-art lab will offer teens everything from video production equipment and video game creation software to a performance space and an art studio.

The construction phase for the facility, which is coined Cloud901, broke ground last Wednesday. A room on the library’s first floor, which will be used for a portion of the learning lab, was packed with city and county officials, library representatives, and local youth.

Stephanie White

Mayor A C Wharton and a teen at the learning lab announcement

Thea Wilkens-Reed, a home-schooled 11th grader, was there. An aspiring lawyer, educator, and news anchor, Wilkens-Reed said she thinks Cloud901 will be a valuable asset to youth in the community.

“It provides an outlet for us to explore our dreams and passions,” said Wilkens-Reed, president of the library’s Teen Advisory Council. “This lab is extremely important to the youth because it will be a safe environment where local teens can have free access to the latest top-of-the-line technology in one location, here in the heart of Memphis.”

Projected to cost around $2 million, more than $1.5 million has already been raised through private donations.

The first portion of the center will be located in a designated area on the library’s ground floor. One corner of the room will feature a video production lab, where teens can shoot and/or edit commercials, interviews, films, and music videos. There will be a sound mixing lab and sound isolation booths in another corner, where aspiring artists and audio engineers can record and mix music.

A technology gallery, projection screen, and brainstorming center are some of the other resources that will be offered on the learning lab’s first floor. A staircase in the middle of the ground floor will lead teens to the lab’s second floor, where additional amenities will be available.

“We are looking forward to creating a community of innovators who are on the cutting edge of technology,” said Janae Pitts-Murdock, teen services coordinator for the Memphis Public Library. “We believe that through this learning center, we’re able to develop the types of skills that teens will need to be successful in their future. We want them to have a learning space where they’re able to pursue their passions, explore their interests, [and] career paths. We want to make a substantive and visible impact on the future prosperity and productivity of youth in Memphis.”

One area of the lab’s second floor will offer an art studio where teens can draw, color, and paint. And “creation stations” will allow for clothing design and creating layouts for publications.

There will also be a gaming zone for aspiring video game designers. They’ll be able to learn game coding and technology, utilize game-creation software, and, of course, play video games.

And a performance stage will be used to help teens develop oratorical skills, perform music they recorded in the lab’s sound booths, and recite poems or speeches in front of an audience. The area in front of the stage will hold an audience of about 100 people.

“This is the beginning of something wonderful,” said Keenon McCloy, executive director of the Memphis Public Library. “We hear so much about teens in the community. The library is really one of the places that levels the playing field and reduces or eliminates barriers to access.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Leading From the Top

So far in 2015, we have  been sufficiently dosed with annual “State of …” speeches delivered by the heads of government of most direct importance to us — the governor of Tennessee and the mayors of Memphis and Shelby County.

And we have heard both preamble and follow-up speeches from all three officials. Though, as expected, all three, Governor Bill Haslam, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, found much to boast about, they all also, with varying degrees of frankness, touched upon some dire needs — for more money, more efficiency, more ingenuity, or whatever — to avoid a curtailment of vital governmental services, including provisions for public safety, that all citizens, regardless of ideology, insist on.

All three chief executives can, with some justification, state a claim that serious efforts have been made within their jurisdictions over the past several years to operate their governments in accordance with the dictates of economy and the needs of hard-pressed taxpayers. But, even amidst the boasting, all three conceded the degree of difficulty they’re operating under.

As Wharton acknowledged on Tuesday, the strain of keeping the city in the black has been considerable. Speaking of the wrenching changes he deemed necessary in the benefits package of city employees, Wharton said, “We’re all scarred, but our city is better off as a result.”

And Luttrell has confessed that the incentives offered to potential new businesses by the EDGE (Economic Development and Growth Engine) board supervised by himself and Wharton are under fire and very likely — like the board itself — in need of review.

Meanwhile, Haslam also has his problems. He is fresh from having offered a special session of the Tennessee General Assembly an unusual bargain — some $1.4 billion annually in federal funding (a measurable part of it derived from this state’s taxpayers in the first place) in order to facilitate health-care insurance for an estimated 200,000 Tennesseans who have not been able to afford such coverage. 

Temporarily, anyhow, this bonanza — based on a carefully structured plan with numerous free-market components — has been denied to these citizens, as well as to the state’s over-burdened hospitals, by an ad hoc state Senate committee. The committee was stacked in advance by Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey with opponents of the governor’s plan for Medicaid expansion, called Insure Tennessee, and denounced by them as synonymous with the imagined excesses of “Obamacare.” This, despite the fact that the Haslam’s plan has numerous distinguishing features and was designed to spare the state of Tennessee and its taxpayers any expense whatsoever.   

Perhaps the General Assembly, meeting now in regular session, will revive Insure Tennessee. We hope so. The Shelby County Commission, in two bipartisan votes, has urged just that in no uncertain terms. So have our two mayors. We hope, too, that the scars spoken of by Wharton will heal, and that his and Luttrell’s devices for attracting new jobs, and for developing the workforce to assume those jobs, can reach the right kind of equilibrium to satisfy all components of what is still a seriously divided community.

We agree that these leaders have all managed to get some roses to bloom. But the thorns are still there, too, and somehow have to be plucked.

Categories
News News Blog

Oak Court Mall Shooter Sentenced to 14 Years

Otis Reddic

A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for shooting another man inside Oak Court Mall last spring.

On March 6th, 2014, Otis Reddic reportedly fired a small handgun at 22-year-old Theodis Pitchford as he stood with some friends near a kiosk on the mall’s lower level. Pitchford was struck once in the left side during the shooting. Seven others in the area fled for safety.

Today, Reddic was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempted second-degree murder, employing a firearm in the commission of a dangerous felony and seven counts of reckless endangerment.

According to the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office (SCDAG), Reddic entered an Alford plea in which a defendant proclaims his innocence while admitting prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction.

The shooting last March left Pitchford hospitalized, but he managed to survive. Following the shooting, Reddic fled the scene and remained on the run for nearly two months before turning himself into law enforcement on April 30th, 2014.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Local’s Bahn Mi

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Local recently unveiled a new menu, which includes the Vegetarian Bahn Mi ($15).

This one’s a bear with many elements — a great baguette, savory mushroom “pate,” tart pickled vegetables dressed with a fried egg and cilantro mayo.

It’s also a mess; you’ll be using your fork by the end, because you’ll want to get every bite.  

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Addison’s February Film Journal

Journey To The West (2013; dirs. Stephen Chow and Derek Kwok)—Stephen Chow’s adaptation of what amounts to a few choice early chapters from Wu Cheng’en’s 16th-century Chinese novel is only the second film he’s directed since his triumphant live-action cartoon Kung Fu Hustle hit American theaters a decade ago. Unfortunately, distribution and exhibition vagaries prevented his newest work from reaching a wider audience; in fact, I don’t think Journey To The West played more than a handful of American theaters all year. Yet, like Hustle, Journey’s take-it-or-leave-it combinations of slapstick absurdity and spiritual gravity ought to surprise and delight any action-movie aficionado with an open mind, and it will bring great joy to anyone with a soft spot for the scrappy peasants and secret martial-arts masters of Hustle’s Pig Sty Alley. The CGI-heavy landscapes of this Asian period epic might look a bit chintzy at first, but as soon as an initially lopsided battle between a gigantic, man-eating thing-fish and an entire seaside village escalates into a deadly game of teeter-totter involving baby baskets, rickety bridges and peace-loving monks, quibbling about realism feels like poor sportsmanship. The other two big brawls—which feature professional bounty hunters, an angry Pig Demon and the wicked, all-powerful Monkey King—are just as zany; watching them is a little like watching a couple of bouncers try to beat each other to death with rubber chickens. Surprisingly, Chow’s ceaseless juggling of comic, romantic, sentimental and sorrowful over- and undertones make catching your breath between fight scenes something to look forward to. Grade: A

Mr. Turner (2014; dir. Mike Leigh)—Mike Leigh is one of the indisputable titans of contemporary cinema, but his latest film—which shows us 19th-century England (and a bit of Europe) through the eyes of acclaimed landscape painter and grunting, ill-natured ogre Joseph William Mallord Turner (Timothy Spall)—is an altogether less pleasurable affair than either 2010’s Another Year or 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky. Mr. Turner is a long, lumpy, and weirdly dull film; for nearly half of its 150-minute run time, period details, production design and first-rate location scouting threaten to trump any of the half-formed human and social drama on display. You find yourself thinking things like “Oh, so that’s what a pre-Victorian British art-supply store looked like!” or “Ah, so that’s how the locomotive that inspired the painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ sounded!” or “Did John Ruskin really have a speech impediment?” Natural-light cinematography so vibrant it looks artificial is more immediate than Turner’s troubling interactions with his estranged family, his grotesque maid, and his doting dad. Eventually, though—and it took me a while to step back and see this—these scattered, seemingly disconnected scenes add up to a full, sympathetic portrait of an irascible artist who was alive to something inside himself that others simply could not reach. Once you realize that, Leigh’s methods and techniques reveal themselves more forcefully than ever before. He and his collaborators don’t forge iron links of cause and effect; they stack great and small blocks of incident on top of each other until they form something like a tabernacle for the souls they’ve chosen to observe and preserve for the British nation—and for us. Grade: A-

Louis CK Live at the Comedy Store (2015; dir. Louis CK)—So this movie came out recently, and it stars this fat, balding redhead with a goatee who stands on a (more vivid) red-colored stage in front of what looks like Twin Peaks curtains for about an hour, and he makes funny noises and presents a whole bunch of absurd premises that he sometimes stops to think about and question and poke and prod until he feels like moving on to something else that’s totally unrelated to what he was saying in the first place. And it only costs you $5, and you can only buy it on his website, and if you forget your account password the reminder email will call you an idiot and make sure your new password includes the word “jerkoff” or something similar IN THE PASSWORD ITSELF. But even though you might feel like kind of a jerkoff now that you have an account password that reminds you of that, you should buy the movie and watch it anyway because it’s pretty funny. It’s not quite as good as his other specials, but it’s hard to think of anyone at his age—he’s 47, and he’s done like seven other hour-long specials—who’s as prolific and as entertaining. It’s a great bargain too.

At this stage in Louis CK’s stand-up career, the most conventional and bit-like bits of his act seem somehow beneath him; he’s so fond of pulling the rug out from under his own punchlines that when he lands one like the pro he is it feels like he’s using a cheat code. Still, he has the freedom to entertain himself as well as others, and it’s during those dark spots in his set where the audience is a little unsure of themselves that he still carves out some space for himself. After all, he’s the one who laughs hardest at exposing a hated neighbor kid to the concept of death. Other highlights include run-ins with bats and babies and racism, and the Gawd’s Hawnest truth about the Boston accent: “It’s not an accent, it’s a whole city of people saying most words wrong.” Grade: A-

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Incumbent’s Advantage: How A C Can Exploit His Tenure in the Mayoral Race

CREDIT: JB

JB

Mayor Wharton at Lafayette’s

A day after one more mayoral candidate – County Commission chairman Justin Ford – joined a growing pack of hopefuls determined to unset Mayor A C Wharton, the Mayor was able to demonstrate one of the advantages that accrue to a seasoned incumbent like himself.

Wharton was the guest speaker at Tuesday’s weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Memphis — held not at the club’s usual venue, the University Club on Central, but at the recently revivified Lafayette’s Music Room at Overton Square. Before the assembled media and a blue-ribbon audience that included numerous attendees besides the Rotarians themselves, the mayor was able to simultaneously discuss city business and stage what amounted to a gala campaign appearance, as well.

As a bonus, Wharton got an introduction that amounted to an unstinted endorsement from Bob Loeb, the impresario of Loeb Properties, which has redeveloped Overton Square with no small financial help from city government. Councilman Jim Strickland, one of the other candidates in the mayor’s race, can claim credit for sponsoring the redevelopment and can take the Mayor to task for dragging his feet on parts of it (as Strickland did on making his candidacy announcement two weeks ago), but he won’t be able to beat this kind of testimony from the horse’s mouth:

Bob Loeb…I was just speaking with Mayor Wharton before we got started, and he reminded me of one of our early conversations. He told me that when he was Public Defender, he got a call out of the blue from a guy named Bill Loeb whom he did not know. And my father. A C says it’s the first person who ever suggested he be mayor of Memphis.

And some of you know my Dad wasn’t much of a political person, so that is quite a shot in the dark that Dad would reach out to A C and that A C would lead Memphis to become just such a different city than it was. I’d just like to hearken us back to 2009, before A C took office, and compare where we are now with where we were then. There were really two things about that time that opened my eyes to the potential we had in Memphis.

JB

Developer Bob Loeb

One of them was when A C was elected Mayor of Memphis, and the other was the opening of the Greenline, the instant success that it was. And the instant success that Mayor Wharton was. I compare those two events because they both were items that brought us together as a city. And let’s face it: We needed to come together as a city. We’d been fighting internally for a long time. And A C united us in common cause.

And in short order we started having announcements from Mitsubishi and Electrolux to Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Charities looking at Memphis and helping us with education initiatives, building industry and jobs, crime prevention.

And now you look at the pace of the announcements from Sears Crosstown to Number One Beale, just event after event of what’s in the pipeline in Memphis. It is really exciting; so please join me in welcoming our Mayor, A C Wharton, who has made Memphis a City of Choice.

Following that extended apotheosis, the aforesaid A C came to the Lafayette’s stage and took a standing position next to a chair, Clint Eastwood-style

“I’m not going to sit down,” the Mayor explained, “but, just if there are a lot of questions….” the Mayor said, letting the incomplete sentence expire amid a modest chuckle he shared with the audience.

(In fact, once he was done speaking and made himself available for a Q-and-A, there was but one question, about riverfront development, from WMC-TV anchor Joe Birch. The Mayor would deal with that via a roundabout series of remarks that he acknowledged were “vague,” boasting of his ability to “obfuscate.”)

Seemingly free-associating in his general remarks, but making sure to state – and develop – some carefully prepared bullet points, Wharton began by stating frankly, “I’ve got to pat myself on the back.”

That remark was apropos his push to develop bike lanes in the city. He spoke of having answered the plea of “college children” to “design a city with our eyes…with the future in mind.”

The Mayor next talked of having journeyed to New York to “sit down with the rating agencies” and be told that the city’s financial prospectus didn’t “look good,” with high costs for pensions and OPEBs (other post-employment benefits) and the famous $57 million debt to Memphis City Schools (later Shelby County Schools) that awaited him when he took office.

Starting down his checklist, the Mayor claimed progress in reforming the pension system with a hybrid plan that hit the middle between defined benefits and defined employee contributions, while raising the pension fund to $2.5 billion and keeping the city’s unfunded liability at a static level of $551 million.

On health care, he cited an inherited level of $32 million a year in employee health benefits, and – short-handing what had been a long and bitter debate in City Hall – said, “We had to come up with a way of getting that under control” and had therefore “taken significant steps.”

Regarding the $57 million school debt, the Mayor appeared to conflate actions that had taken several years, contending that he had gone to the Council and said, “Look, let’s get that section [a court-mandated maintenance-of-effort obligation to the schools] back in the budget,” and, acting with “a sense of urgency, getting “that $57 million behind us.”

Meanwhile, the city’s reserves, which had dropped to $49 million, had climbed back to $82 million. And the mayor expressed optimism that, “when we go back to New York, we hope to improve on our AA rating.”

Dealing with the city’s financial predicament had been “pure hell,” both for him and for the Council, Wharton said. “We’re all scarred, but our city is better off as a result.”

After that came a rundown on “things developing all over this city” – complete, near to complete, or about to begin. The list included Number One Beale; a new LaQuinta downtown; the prospect of “Baptist [Hospital] coming back into the city; the “phenomenal” Bass Pro Pyramid, due to debut in May; and the Harrahan Bridge, Central Station, and St. Francis Levee projects. Wharton gave somewhat more qualified forecasts about redevelopments at the declined malls of Raleigh Springs and Southbrook.

On crime, the Mayor acknowledged, “We have to do more.” But, while giving a nod to “Blue Crush” police policies, he cautioned against “get-tough” rhetoric from other candidates. “’Lock ‘em up’ will not do it for us. We do a good job of locking ‘em up….That does not stop crime.”

Apropos the controversial TDZ proposal for the Fairgrounds, the Mayor promised he would “soon launch a public input process, not led by the city, before one dollar is spent, before any earth is turned.” He promised that the city administration would “go back and re-test all the premises” With a nod toward TDZ critic Taylor Berger, who had spoken and written against the project, Wharton said, “I. looked very carefully at Mr. Berger’s letter…. We appreciate those questions.”

The Mayor closed with a piece of boilerplate about the people who will “say bad” during the forthcoming mayoral campaign. “I don’t go around looking for enemies,” he said. “Each and every one of us has a better person inside just waiting to be born.” He proclaimed it as his task, going forward, to “facilitate” the emergence of that better person, and “do the same with the city.”

There were holes in what the Mayor said at Lafayette’s, and, most assuredly, they will be filled with would-be correctives from his rivals in the mayor’s race. But the event at Lafayette’s was a tour de force all the same.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Game Diary, Hollins Edition: Grizzlies 95, Nets 86

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

In anticipation of the grand return of Lionel Hollins to Memphis as the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, his first time back in FedExForum since he was helming the Grizzlies, I decided it was a good time to do a game diary, so that I could capture each and every moment of the game. That turned out to be a poor decision.

Before the Game

➭ There still seems to be a strawman argument out there that people shouldn’t cheer loudly/warm reception. People have written at length about how Hollins deserves a big ovation, and how people who don’t want to cheer don’t get it… Honestly, I’m surprised people would actually be that petty/bitter. I was chief among the Hollins Overreactors. The guy just flat-out rubbed me the wrong way a lot of the time. But as I never stopped appreciating what he did for the team and thus for the city, and the farther away we get from his weird and unpleasant exit, the more affection I have for the guy in hindsight, no matter what he’s done since. I’m certainly not going to flip out about the comments he made about Memphis (you know, the ones I already flipped out about) and let that keep me from appreciating the positives of the moment.

➭ Meanwhile in Brooklyn, the Nets are in disarray. By all accounts, this team doesn’t like Lionel, and Lionel doesn’t like them either. Things are not going well. You could kind of see this coming, though, right? If there’s anything we know about Lionel Hollins it’s that he’s best with a young team who (to be frank) haven’t been in the league long enough to tune out the guy who yells at them. If he were going to return to coaching, I wish it had been with a team that was young and needed discipline, rather than a team like Brooklyn that got old in a hurry and has nowhere to go but rock bottom at the moment. Unleashing a cranky Hollins on a team full of vets—including Deron Williams, the guy who managed to get Jerry Sloan fired—seemed like a recipe for disaster, and it hasn’t gone well.

➭ The moment of truth, before the game: a warm ovation (if not over-the-top) for Lionel and a slideshow of him during all his years with the Grizzlies—with Hubie Brown and Shane Battier at the Pyramid, with a very young Mike Conley on court, etc.—and just like he said in the pregame press conference, he was emotional. Visibly teary-eyed. It was a nice moment, and honestly, he deserved it, and the way the Grizzlies organization handled it was very, very classy.

First Quarter

➭ 11:21 Mike Conley turns a steal into layup for first Grizzlies basket. It’s hard not to notice that Kevin Garnett is barely running. I’m surprised he’s playing on a road SEGABABA against a Western Conference team, a game that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but KG is KG, and he decides when he rests and when he doesn’t. Still, while he’s active on defense, it’s clear that this KG isn’t the one we’re used to seeing.

[jump]

Larry Kuzniewski

➭ 8:45 Jeff Green dunks (the first of many such occasions this evening) and turns to the bench to do the Vince Carter motorcycle celebration, which Carter, in his suit, thinks is hilarious. I call it the “motorcycle” celebration on Twitter and am immediately corrected:

➭ 8:01 Speaking of Twitter, I hadn’t noticed that Joe Johnson had put on a great deal of weight—starting to approach “bottoming-out O.J. Mayo in Milwaukee” territory, if we’re honest—until I saw this float past:

Dyer’s is the best.

➭ 6:58 It happens: Zach Randolph breaks away on a fast break, crosses over Mason Plumlee (with a hesitation move he may have picked up from Mike Conley) at the 3-point line and then drives past him all the way to the basket where he lays it in. Lionel Hollins calls a timeout because that is the only appropriate response to what he just witnessed.

➭ 4:30 Tony Allen enters the game. To me, TA is the wild card of Lionel Hollins’ return: what’s he going to do? It’s no secret that Hollins didn’t trust TA, and did everything he could to avoid having to play him when possible. I’m sure TA still remembers all the time he spent on the bench watching Xavier Henry start ahead of him… Look. We all know that if a Grizzlies player is going to do something that’s both stupid and wildly entertaining, it’ll be Tony. It’s entirely possible that Allen could do something crazy and then flex right in Lionel’s face, and Lionel might laugh, or he might just get into a fistfight with Tony Allen right then and there. Either outcome would be appropriately Lionel and appropriately Tony.

➭ 1:24 The Grizzlies are currently rolling out a lineup of Beno Udrih, Nick Calathes, Tony Allen, Kosta Koufos, and Marc Gasol. Lionel’s lineups were always infuriating fairly arbitrary, but he was a pretty staunch proponent of positionality overall. So… two point guards, Tony Allen, whom Lionel repeatedly referred to as “not a small forward,” and two centers. One can’t help but wonder if that thought crossed Dave Joerger’s mind as he realized who he had on the floor. Lionel’s really going to love this one.

Really, I’m sure he didn’t love it, because by the end of the first quarter the score is 32–15, and the Nets look like they have no fight in them at all. The Grizzlies clearly came out of the gate determined to send a message to their old coach—look what we can do now!—and, in his heart, I’m sure Lionel approves. He knows what’s up.

Larry Kuzniewski

Second Quarter

➭ 10:09 I picked this game to be a game diary because of the intrigue surrounding the return of Lionel Hollins, of course, and I figured that emotion among the guys (only 5 of them left) who played for him would make it an interesting game. At this point, early in the second quarter, the game looks like it’s going to be a bloodbath (and not the drudgery of a 10-point lead barely held on to for 48 minutes) and I’m going to have nothing to write about. That’s still mostly going to be true—most of the things worth noting happened early in this one, while the Grizzlies were building up their first big lead—but I had expected more drama, more intensity. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of that with the Nets this year.

➭ 9:01 Tony Allen hits a three, the only one he’ll take tonight. The Grizzlies are up 38–17.

➭ 5:00 Deron Williams hits a 3. Normally, this wouldn’t be all that noteworthy, but Deron Williams has missed his last 21 field goal attempts, a streak stretching back across three consecutive games. He then follows that up with another make, which still means he’s been shooting terribly, but his “regression to the mean” here might mean he makes 7 in a row or something. I can’t imagine the kinds of things I’d write if a Grizzlies player making as much money as Deron Williams missed 21 shots in a row over three games. It would be bad.

➭ 2:18 The Nets are somehow back to within 11. The Grizzlies are going to have to put the foot on the gas the rest of the way to put these dudes away. They’ve been so bad all year about letting bad teams hang around and then just assuming they can come back if they get down, or win barely by holding on to a single-digit lead and not exert any effort. Sure, the Grizzlies are thinking about the All-Star break (as am I, if I’m honest), but to (1) let Lionel have the satisfaction of winning this game even though his team isn’t any good and (2) lose this and the Timberwolves game on either side of beating the Atlanta Hawks would be a major disappointment. The Grizzlies need to be gaining ground on Golden State for the 1 seed, not getting closer to Houston for the 3.

Larry Kuzniewski

Halftime

➭ Halftime entertainment is a “celebrity bachelor” thing with Natch the Bear, in which Natch is the bachelor (Natchelor?) and three ladies answering questions competing for his affections, Dating Game style. It was this close to being intelligible, but it came off more like the kind of thing that would happen in a dream about a halftime show: it would make sense in the context of the dream, and then afterward you’d just feel confused and strange about it.

➭ Also at halftime, the Grizzlies have made 1 three and the Nets have made 2. The season low for combined 3-pointers is 4 (Grizzlies @ Kings), so if nobody makes one the rest of the way—something that seems unlikely but also totally possible—we’ll have a new record low.

Third Quarter

Larry Kuzniewski

➭ 11:44 It was apparent to everyone from the opening tip, but Kevin Garnett is really at the end of his career now. He’s keeping Z-Bo off the glass, I guess, just by virtue of not getting called for fouls (his main defensive moves now are slapping hands and arms and flat-out shoves) and knowing where to stand because he’s still Kevin Garnett; he just can’t execute anything the way he used to. It feels like great players always play one or two seasons too long, and that’s clearly what’s going on here. It’s sad to watch, really, like watching Hakeem Olajuwon in a Raptors jersey.

➭ 2:30 My notes from 11:44 to now are almost as boring as the actual basketball game that was happening. But at 2:30, Zach Randolph dunks—and not just a tip-dunk, either, a real honest-to-goodness slam dunk—and Hollins calls a timeout again. I imagine once the Nets got back to the huddle, he asked them, “Y’all really going to let him do that?” and they all just kind of mumbled.

➭ 1:01 Jerome Jordan seems to be playing pretty well for Brooklyn. He was a Grizzlies training camp guy the summer before the Western Conference Finals year (Lionel’s last season) and he was the last guy cut before the beginning of the year. It was well known that Hollins liked him and wanted to keep him, so it makes sense that Hollins would give him a shot in Brooklyn. Funny how the basketball world works sometimes.

Fourth Quarter

➭ 11:24 Deron Williams commits his 5th foul, which is pretty impressive for a guy who died in 2012.

➭ 10:08 I got up from my computer to go get some popcorn. I never get up from my computer unless there’s a break in the action, but tonight… tonight calls for salty popcorn and not as much for careful attention. The Grizzlies are just clinging to a double-digit lead at this point, playing not to lose instead of putting the pedal down and running away with it. Makes sense—they’ve got to play the Thunder in OKC on Wednesday night, so the less energy they exert tonight, the better. But it would’ve been nice to see them beat the Nets by 45, just for the entertainment value. Instead, it’s been a 10-to–13 point game pretty much since halftime.

➭ 9:07 The attendance is announced: 16,901. There must be a lot of invisible people whose tickets were scanned in, or maybe 3,000 people are all getting BBQ nachos at the same time.

Larry Kuzniewski

➭ 5:45 Spent two minutes talking about Memphis breweries on Twitter with Matt Hrdlicka and Joe Mullinax, and I look up and notice that the Grizzlies are still up 14 points. Sometimes covering a basketball game is not as fun as you think it’s going to be. You have to pay enough attention to notice what’s going on, but you’d really rather be doing a million other things. Part of that is the grind—some of us writers need the All-Star break as much as the players do—and some of it is just the fact that a basketball game with a perpetual 14-point lead just isn’t that much fun to watch for the most part. You almost wish they’d implement some kind of running clock.

➭ 5:02 Zach Randolph hits a three-pointer. Now he’s had a crossover, a dunk, and a made 3 in the same game. Clearly the world is coming to an end and/or he’s showing out for Lionel Hollins. Maybe both.

Over the next five minutes of basketball the Grizzlies will try really hard to give the game away—the Nets will find themselves down only 7 with 50 seconds left to play, and they don’t foul until much later, when they’re down 9 with 18 to play. It really wasn’t an exciting game at all after the first quarter’s explosion of attitude and scoring. Sometimes that happens in the NBA: the outcome of the game just never feels like it’s in question. And sometimes that’s okay, but on a night that had so much potential for some kind of emotional occurrence, for it to be neither a close game nor a ridiculous blowout feels like cheating. It did not live up to the hype in any way, shape, or form. That’s good for the Grizzlies—the OKC game tonight is much more important—but it does mean that what had the potential to be A Moment was really just a sparsely-attended Tuesday night game against a middling-to-bad Eastern Conference team. That’s what it was, no more, no less.

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Sports Tiger Blue

East Carolina 64, Tigers 53

A disappointing season spiraled further downward for the Tigers tonight in Greenville, North Carolina, where they lost to the East Carolina Pirates two weeks after beating them by 12 points at FedExForum. The difference tonight was the absence of Austin Nichols, the U of M’s most consistent offensive threat and only rim protector defensively. Nichols missed the first of an estimated four games with an ankle injury suffered in his team’s loss to Temple last Saturday.

The lead changed hands four times late in the second half before ECU pulled away over the game’s final four minutes as the Pirates ended the contest on a 14-4 run. The win is just the second in 17 games for East Carolina against Memphis.

B.J. Tyson was the star for the Pirates with 23 points off the bench. Tyson slammed home two of three consecutive Pirate dunks early in the second half, a sequence that turned a 29-27 Memphis lead into a 33-29 advantage for the home team. Shaq Goodwin converted a three-point play with 6:24 to play to give the Tigers a brief 47-46 lead, but ECU continued to capitalize on Memphis mistakes, including a shot-clock violation coming out of a timeout with the Tigers down only two points. The U of M committed 18 turnovers while picking up only 12 assists. Without Nichols to feed offensively, the Tigers shot 36 percent (19 for 52), while ECU hit 46 percent from the field.

The Tiger rotation was compromised further when Calvin Godfrey — who started in place of Nichols — picked up two early fouls and saw his minutes squeezed before fouling out in the second half. He scored five points and pulled down seven rebounds in the limited action. Goodwin and Nick King led the Tigers with 13 points, the former pulling down 12 rebounds and the latter eight. Trahson Burrell was held scoreless and no other Tiger scored as many as ten points.

East Carolina improves to 11-13 (4-7 in American Athletic Conference play), while the Tigers fall to 14-10 (6-5). Memphis is left to compete for a top-five spot in the AAC standings, which would earn them a bye to the quarterfinals of the AAC tourney, the team’s only remaining chance at reaching the NCAA tournament. The U of M next plays Saturday when it visits USF for the teams’ only meeting this season.

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News News Blog

Three Men Receive Hefty Prison Sentences for Crime Spree

Three Memphis men have been collectively sentenced to more than a century in prison for a crime spree that lasted several months.

Between May 2012 and January 2013, brothers Devonta and Deshun Hampton, and friend Matthew Tyler, committed robberies, burglaries, and assaults in the area of Kimball and Cherry Road.

In the early morning hours of May 24th, 2012, Deshun and Tyler, both 18, also attempted to murder a security guard and killed a pit bull.  

At around 4 a.m., Deshun and Tyler opened fire on a guard sitting in his vehicle in the Cherry Crest Apartments complex. Although he wasn’t struck during the gunfire, the guard’s face was cut from shattered glass. 

Deshun and Tyler recorded the incident on a cellphone while taking turns shooting at the guard, according to the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office (SCDAG).

The same day, they also recorded the fatal shooting of a pit bull, which was used for security by a Cherry Road businessman. Deshun reportedly shot the pit bull in the neck before he and Tyler ran away laughing. The dog succumbed to the gunshot two days later.

Last October, both Tyler and Deshun pled guilty to attempted murder of the security guard and murder of the animal, in addition to several other charges, including aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, and aggravated assault.

Tyler, who is already serving an 11-year prison sentence for aggravated robbery, has been sentenced to 66 years for his role in the felony offenses. Deshun has been sentenced to 55 years in prison for his participation in the crimes.

Deshun’s brother, Devonta, 20, has been sentenced to 32 years in prison for his role in eight different felonies, including aggravated robberies, burglaries and employment of a firearm.

According to the SCDAG, at least eight people were victimized during the three culprits’ crime spree. Victims included men, women and children.

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News News Blog

Go-Go Go-Karts

CREDIT: Autobahn Indoor Speedway

Autobahn Indoor Speedway

Formula One-style go-karts are coming to Memphis.

Autobahn Indoor Speedway will open at 6399 Shelby View Drive in March. The 40,000 square-foot facility will feature a Grand Prix-inspired track.

Driving around down those straightaways and around the turns will be electric go-karts that resemble F1 racers.

Adults karts can reach speeds fo 50 miles per hour. Junior karts can get up to 25 miles per hour.