Pizza!!!!
The first person to correctly ID where I’m eating wins a fabulous prize.
To enter, submit your answer to me via email at ellis@memphisflyer.com.
The answer to GWIE 79 is the chargrilled oysters at Pearl’s Oyster House, and the winner is … Brittney Block!
Ahead of their annual Media Day (which starts in 45 minutes), the Grizzlies have officially announced their 2015 training camp roster (which I took a screenshot of the press release for, since I didn’t want to mistype “Nwaelele”):
No real surprises here—most if not all of the signings (including the much-maligned Ryan Hollins) have already been reported elsewhere.
Andrew Harrison, the Grizzlies’ recent second round pick, is not on this roster, but I wouldn’t let that take him off your radar. The Griz roster is a crowded one headed into the season—more on that in a future post—but my assumption is that they’ll be stashing him in the D-League playing for the Iowa Energy this year. There just isn’t room for another point guard on the 15-man roster at this point.
We’ll have more from Media Day later this afternoon or in the morning.
Photographer Frank Chin caught all the action at the 12th annual Mid-South Pride festival in Robert Church Park and parade down Beale on Saturday.
[slideshow-1]
Frank Murtaugh
Football is alive and well in the state of Tennessee. As though this needed verification, I gave myself to America’s favorite spectator sport last week, soaking up the experience at three distinct levels — high school, college, and the NFL — in four days. Following are the lingering impressions, the sounds of whistles and colliding shoulder pads still echoing in my ears.
• Last Thursday, along with more than 45,000 fans (almost all of them wearing blue), I watched from the Liberty Bowl press box as the Memphis Tigers won a game that may prove to be the most significant in the program’s history. Surely you know the details by now: Memphis 53, Cincinnati 46. Eleven lead changes, 12 touchdowns, more than 1,300 yards of combined offense from the teams picked to win their divisions of the American Athletic Conference. All in front of a national TV audience thanks to 12 ESPN cameras.
Frank Murtaugh
The most significant win in Tiger history? If the University of Memphis aspires to be a member in one of college football’s Power Five leagues, it must develop a national impression as a “football school.” Define this however you will, it’s a far cry from any impression the U of M has made on the country . . . until Thursday night. The Tigers are 4-0 and have won a school-record 11 consecutive games. Should they beat USF this Friday (and they’ll be favored), they’ll host mighty Ole Miss on October 17th in what could be a battle of undefeated Mid-South teams, each eyeing a New Year’s Six bowl game. It just keeps getting better under fourth-year coach Justin Fuente (now 21-20 on the Tiger sideline). Memphis a football school? We’re getting there.
• Friday night, I went to the Fairgrounds to take in the White Station-Bartlett game. (Disclosure: My daughter is a junior outfielder for the Spartan softball team. I had rooting interest.) There’s a corny charm about high school football under the lights, even in a city the size of Memphis. Fans (read: families) of one team sit on one side of the field, fans of the opponent occupying bleachers on the other side. Cheerleaders do their thing in front of the student section, right next to the school band, every member counting the minutes till halftime and their turn in the spotlight. The p.a. announcer takes time to inform the crowd a car in the parking lot has its lights on.
As for the football, it’s charmingly small. Many linemen barely clear 200 pounds. The kicking games are a shallow imitation of what you see in college stadiums. (Every punt is in danger of being blocked, and a 35-yard field-goal attempt is a stretch.) There are no names on the back of uniforms. (“Number 9 for the Panthers is shifty once he gets through the line of scrimmage.”) A week after scoring six touchdowns, Spartan star receiver Dillon Mitchell didn’t play, apparently nursing a minor injury suffered in practice. (Another charm: No one seemed to know exactly why the star player was sidelined.) White Station won, 17-0, to improve to 4-2 on the season. As the crowd left around 9:30 (12-minute quarters are glorious), the win seemed to mean everything. Come Saturday, life’s distractions would return.
• I grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan, and did not attend a single “Tennessee Oilers” game during the one-season layover (1997) the NFL had in Memphis. My interest in the Tennessee Titans over the years has been that of a native and resident of the state, and little more. Sunday’s tilt with Indianapolis at Nissan Stadium in Nashville was my first NFL game since a trip to Dallas in 2007. (This completed a bucket-list achievement of sorts for me, as this is the first calendar year I’ve attended games in the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL.) And the experience left me with two distinct impressions.
First of all, the women. If the crowd — more than 65,000 — wasn’t half female, at least 40 percent of the fans at Nissan stadium were missing a Y chromosome. (One of them was new Nashville mayor Megan Barry, sworn in just two days earlier.) For a sport overstuffed with testosterone and traumatic injuries, there is a tremendous segment of “the fairer sex” passionately devoted to the enterprise. Sitting right next to me was a woman at least 50 years old . . . and her mother. Not a man in the mix. I find this compelling because of all we here about dads and particularly moms unwilling to subject their sons to football’s violence. If so, these moms seem perfectly willing to cheer on someone else’s son.
Then there were the video boards. Behind each end zone at Nissan Stadium is what amounts to a television that runs the entire width of the field. The screens are so big, and the images so clear, that it felt at times like the watch party of the century . . . just with 22 men down on the field occupying themselves with something or other. Football, we know, is made for television. Even at NFL stadiums on Sunday.
The game? It was memorable. Making his home debut, Tennessee’s rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota led the Titans to 27 unanswered points after the Colts took an early 14-0 lead. But the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner tossed a fourth-quarter interception that allowed Andrew Luck and friends to retake the lead. Mariota led another comeback, but rookie fullback Jalston Fowler was stuffed on a two-point conversion attempt with 47 seconds left, giving Indianapolis a 35-33 win.
I’m told there was something called a Blood Moon Sunday night. It must have been in the shape of a football.
Memphis will get $30 million in federal funding to redevelop Foote Homes, the last housing project in the city.
Memphis was selected as one of nine finalists for the funding in July. The money comes from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through President Barack Obama’s Choice Neighborhood competition.
Congressman Steve Cohen announced the award Sunday and said the money “will help revitalize our city and position us for success.”
“This infusion of government funds will stimulate additional private investment, a synergy which will prove even more beneficial for Memphis,” Cohen said in a statement.
Gin’s a Tonic
What do you get when you mix a dynamite husband and wife team like Jim and Jo-Lynne Palmer with a dynamite script like The Gin Game? Fireworks, that’s what. That’s pretty much all I’m saying about this one for now. A fuller review of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play will appear on this blog mid-week.
In case you don’t know, The Gin Game‘s about a couple of nursing home patients who get to know a little too much about one another over cards. Dark comedy with that nursing home smell.
The Gin Game: Through Oct. 4 at Theatre Memphis
——————————————————————————————
Rumors Doesn’t Have It
Love him or hate him you have to admire Neil Simon’s craftsmanship. The guy knows how to write comedy. Farce, on the other hand, I’m not so sure.
Full disclosure: I’ve never liked Rumors. But goodness knows I’ve tried to. I’ve suffered through it four or five times at least, and always with an open mind. The play’s action is rooted in a very human trait, and one that interests me deeply: Love of a good story. Never once— other than a “too little too late” twist in the closing moments— does the show live up to its pedigree, or its promise.
The plot, such as it is: A fancypants party is spoiled when guests arrive to discover the hostess and servants gone, and the host shot and mostly unconscious, but in no danger of losing more than an ear lobe. Nobody knows exactly and wild speculation results in wild antics. The big problem: In order to suspend one’s disbelief and enjoy, we have to allow that the characters on stage are all incredibly stupid. And not just mildly so either. They are stupid to the point of being reprehensible.
GCT Director Jason Spitzer hasn’t given his show much in the way of dynamics. It’s a shoutfest. The volume starts somewhere around 11 or 12 and it’s never turned down. So too the breakneck pace.
The cast’s got lot of heart, and there’s some nice character work happening behind all that loudness. But to what end?
Rumors is at Germantown Community Theatre through Sept. 27
—————————————————————————————————————-
Old School
Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking is exactly that. It’s about two old guys who allegedly don’t like each other just sitting around talking. With its park bench setting and semi-absurd tone, the comedy is reminiscent of many other shows. Zoo Story, Waiting for Godot, and I’m Not Rappaport all come to mind, though Black Guys it’s never quit as substantial as any of that. Most viewers will be able predict the play’s trajectory by the end of scene one making the journey the destination.
Posted by Bluff City Tri-Art Theatre Company on Monday, September 14, 2015
Quick Hits: ‘Rumors,’ ‘Gin Game,’ and ‘Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking’
T.C. Sharpe and J.S. Tate are top notch actors and fun to watch as they fuss at one another and spin their yarns. In their hands, and with the help of director Ruby O’Gray, an interesting counter-narrative emerges. Gender roles and expectations are explored as two old guys who both dated the same woman come to understand that they are, for all intents and purposes, an old married couple. They may not like it, but that’s just how it is.
Gus Edward’s script has its moments but could stand a serious haircut. There’s a much better and more focused one act play lurking in there somewhere.
Bluff City Tri-Arts Theatre presents Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking. At TheatreWorks through Sept. 27.
Memphis Reads, the city-wide book club, has chosen What Is The What by Dave Eggers as its next community read.
Memphis Reads selects one book annually to be read by the Memphis community at large.
The month-long event consists of discussions and related arts events, and culminates in an event with the author on November 5th. All events are free and open to the public.
What Is The What is an epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children, the Lost Boys, was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, while crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges.
Eggers, born in Boston, is also the author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), the novel You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), and the story collection How We Are Hungry (2004). He founded McSweeney’s, an independent book publishing house in San Francisco which puts out a quarterly literary journal, the monthly magazine The Believer, the website McSweeneys.net, and a DVD quarterly of short films, Wholphin. With Ninive Calegari, he has written Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers.
Memphis Reads began as a program from Christian Brothers University as part of their “First Year Experience” wherein all incoming freshman participate in the reading of a selected book and hold discussions and other events throughout the school year. In 2014, the University teamed up with local partners, including Memphis Library, Rhodes College, and Facing History and Ourselves, to expand the program city-wide.
Last year, Memphis Reads featured The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu.
For more information on the program and all events, please visit memphisreadsbook.org.
The Wolf River Greenway, which currently encompasses around 2.6 miles of trail near Germantown, will eventually extend all the way to Harbor Town. And on Friday morning, officials broke ground on one of the segments that extends the bicycle/pedestrian trail westward.
The groundbreaking took place at Kennedy Park in Raleigh, which is located along the path of the Wolf River. The greenway will closely follow the path of the river with bridges and outlook areas overlooking the water.
Chuck Flink with Alta Planning+Design, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based design firm working on the greenway project, said seven phases of the greenway extension are in design now — including the segment that runs through Kennedy Park — and those will begin construction in 2016. Another eight phases will go into the design phase in the next 30 days.
The $40 million expansion of the Wolf River Greenway should be completed by 2019. The majority of the funding for the project comes from the private sector.
Once complete, the Wolf River Greenway is expected to add 1,126,000 more bicycle trips in the county per year and 4,650,000 more walking trips, according to the Wolf River Conservancy.
“We get carried away on the built environment and our repaving projects, but we often forget about our natural environment,” said Mayor A C Wharton at Friday’s groundbreaking.
Saturday night at the Buckman Center (Sept. 26), Voices of the South founders Alice Berry and Jenny Odle Madden will recreate their 20-year-old company’s earliest narrative theater performances.
Madden and Berry were an unlikely partnership. Both were University of Memphis theater students, but they couldn’t have been less alike. Madden did all the musicals while Berry was drawn to drama and more experimental work. But they were both inspired by the narrative theater pieces developed by professor Gloria Baxter who became mentor and creative partner.
Tonight’s program includes a performance of The Window, a story by Memphis author Eleanor Glaze, and Listening, from the first chapter of Eudora Welty’s autobiography, “One Writer’s Beginnings.”
The Window tells the story of Miss Manifest, an elderly woman who finds she has locked herself out of her house. Listening is a lyrical look at childhood, exploring Welty’s, “memory, family, and her life-long love of words.”
Also, if you’d like to learn more about Voices of the South’s origin story, here’s a short video of Madden, Berry, and Baxter, telling the story, along with some great photos from early productions.
Voices of the South Revives the Company’s Earliest Performances
I’m on record as saying the gangster movie is a played-out genre, except I think I phrased it more like “If I have to watch another movie about well-dressed gangsters in the Northeast, I’m gonna puke.”
I know gangster movies have been a staple since at least 1931, when Jimmy Cagney strutted around in The Public Enemy, and I know that, at their best, they’re a commentary on the American dream, capitalism, the immigrant experience, etc. But lately, it seems like they’re a shortcut to gravitas for a bunch of writers and directors who are obsessed with a vision of masculinity that, in 2015, seems increasingly toxic. I’ve gone beyond the point where I think it’s fun to watch jowly men scowl at each other across well-appointed tables. We get it. You liked The Godfather. Let’s move on.
It would be too much to say that Black Mass dispelled me of that notion, but director Scott Cooper’s film is good enough to suggest that maybe there’s life left in the old gangster movie carcass yet. To be fair, James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) and his totally legitimate business associates in the Winter Hill Gang were not, by any stretch of the imagination, well dressed.
Black Mass marks a return to serious acting for Johnny Depp.
Black Mass is told in a series of flashbacks, as members of Bulger’s gang, beginning with Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons) are deposed by the FBI. In their memories, Bulger was just as contradictory a figure as Cagney in The Public Enemy. He was a ruthless, violent thug, but he also was kind to children, let his mother win at gin rummy, and was beloved in the South Boston neighborhood where he grew up. By the time we first meet him in 1975, he has already served nine years years in San Quentin and Alcatraz, and was a respected boss in Boston’s Irish mob.
Instead of getting mobbed up, Bulger’s childhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) joined the FBI. He reaches out to Bulger’s brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), a state senator and one of the most powerful men in Boston, to make contact with Bulger and persuade him to become an informant. Amazingly, Bulger agrees, but as the story progresses through the 1980s, it soon becomes apparent that Bulger is just manipulating Connolly to his own ends and using the FBI as his personal intelligence agency as he consolidates power.
After spending most of the last decade playing over-the-top characters like Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and whatever nutso man-child character Tim Burton was peddling that year, the buzz was that Black Mass represented Depp’s return to serious acting. He is easily the best thing about the movie. His Bulger is introduced as a demonic presence in silhouette, and he seems to remain partially in shadow the entire film, even in scenes set in Miami’s tropical sunlight. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi never misses a shot to make Depp’s partially shaved noggin look like a death’s head skull perched atop his ubiquitous black leather jacket. Edgerton, who is excellent at playing men blind to their own flaws, follows Depp around like a puppy as he is drawn deeper into the world of criminals he’s supposed to be fighting. Also excellent are Kevin Bacon as a Connolly’s FBI boss, and Cumberbatch, whose Southie accent is so perfect you’d think he grew up there.
Unfortunately, the screenplay is not up to the level of the performances and cinematography. Part of the problem is that the real story itself is kind of flat, with no peaks and valleys, just a slow slide into degradation for everyone involved. No matter how well-rendered Bulger is, he’s still a singularly loathsome individual who may or may not have been pushed into full blown psychosis during more than 50 LSD experiments he volunteered for while in Alcatraz. Watching him run roughshod over the corrupt city government and weak-willed FBI agents is like reading about World War II’s Eastern front—you don’t want to root for either Hitler or Stalin. It makes for a bleak view of humanity dressed up in tacky 70s clothes and some of the worst hairstyles ever committed to film. But if you’re a fan of gangster movies and/or Depp, Black Mass is the best dose you’re going to get this year.