Month: January 2016

Categories
Music Music Blog

Lucero Announce Family Block Party

Lucero

After a successful Christmas show and their first Family Picnic in Memphis, Lucero has recently announced a block party set for April 23rd at Minglewood Hall. The show will feature St.Paul and the Broken Bones, with more acts announced closer to the show. Minglewood will be blocking off S. Willett Street and the surrounding areas, and a portion of the proceeds generated from the show will go to charity. Check out the show flyer and Lucero’s latest video below. Tickets go on sale Friday (January 8th) and can be purchased here. Or, if you can’t wait, fan club tickets are available through Lucero’s website here. 

Lucero Announce Family Block Party

Categories
News News Blog

MPD Director Leaves for New Job

Armstrong

Memphis Police Director [MPD] Toney Armstrong will leave the department next month for a job at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, according to a Thursday morning statement from Memphis City Hall. 

Armstrong will begin his role as the hospital’s director of security Monday, Feb. 1. He’ll stay with the city until January 31 and in that time he’ll assist Mayor Jim Strickland in selecting a new police director. 

Strickland said he will now being a national search for a permanent replacement. 

Armstrong enrolled in the city’s Deferred Retirement Option Program [DROP] last year and was scheduled for retirement in 2017. 

“It is not surprising that one of the crown jewels of our city, St. Jude, would recognize the talent and leadership of our city’s police director, Toney Armstrong,” Strickland said in a statement. “I sincerely thank Toney for his commitment and dedication to the city, and for his work with the Memphis Police Department.”

Armstrong served the MPD for 27 years. He returned to Memphis after serving in the Army and began his work with the department. He worked undercover in the Organized Crime Unit and served in the homicide division for five years.

When former Mayor A C Wharton named him director in 2011, Armstrong was the youngest person to serve in that position.

“I am extremely grateful to have served the city in this capacity,” Armstrong said in a statement. “Because I wanted to stay in Memphis, I searched for a potion that was purposeful and as meaningful as law enforcement has been to me and St. jude was the answer.”

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Thunder 112, Grizzlies 94: Next Day Lamentations

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Courtney Lee was the Grizzlies starting ‘point guard’ against OKC.

Last night’s game (“game”) against the Oklahoma City Thunder was probably a done deal when Mike Conley was ruled out with an Achilles issue and Kevin Durant was cleared to play, but the Grizzlies sure helped that along by playing like it. With Conley out, coach Dave Joerger opted to start a lineup without a point guard (well, unless you consider Courtney Lee a point guard) and save Mario Chalmers for the second unit, and honestly, even though the Grizzlies weren’t really out of it until much later, you could tell right off the bat, even just from Marc Gasol’s body language, that it wasn’t happening.

I’m not even sure what else to say about last night from a basketball standpoint. Chalmers, though he didn’t actually start, ended up playing 40 minutes and scoring 23 points on 8 of 19 shooting, a standout performance on a night when nobody else was really having them. Nothing else really worked for the Grizzlies, who found themselves right back in the position of defending a team they couldn’t defend (Russell Westbrook was in rare form last night, with some drives to the basket that I don’t think the Griz would’ve stopped at full strength).

In the end, the Grizzlies managed to get the Thunder lead back under 20, but it never got any closer than “under 20,” and the game was even more lopsided than its 18-point margin would suggest. In other words, par for the course against the best teams in the league this year.

Game Notes

★ Jeff Green went 3–12 from the field. Marc Gasol went 2–11 from the field, when he could be bothered to shoot the ball instead of passing into a worse play. Z-Bo went 5–13, hounded by Oklahoma City’s interior defense (well, Steven Adams and Nick Collison and Serge Ibaka, anyway) the same way he always is. Mike Conley was 0–0 because he wasn’t playing. Tony Allen played some solid defense, hit a few shots, and generally Did Tony Things, but those things are always difference-makers in a close game, not the thing that guarantees a Griz win from the word go.

[jump]
Larry Kuzniewski

Jeff Green and the rest of the starters struggled to score, as per usual.

★ I’m not sure how many seasons in a row this is where Mike Conley starts picking up little nagging injuries after the New Year that will probably follow him all season long, but it feels like several. At 29, maybe—and I might be run out of town for saying this—the Grizzlies should take that into consideration during his contract negotiations this summer. He’s a great player. He’s tough as nails. But playing hurt all the time puts him at a disadvantage.

★ The offense is terrible lately, and trying to run it without a point guard when Mario Chalmers is on the team seemed like a particularly weird decision. As I already said, Chalmers played almost 40 minutes, so that experiment was quickly abandoned, but still—by the time he entered the game the damage was done, and the Grizzlies, who have quit on more games this season than they have in the last five, already looked like they’d decided they couldn’t win. (Which, in truth, was probably accurate.)

★ I don’t even know what else to say about the actual game. I checked out pretty early, as did most of the starters.

Tweet of the Night

This about summed up last night’s proceedings, except for when I was accused of picking on white NBA players because I pointed out that the Thunder’s Kyle Singler—one of the worst players in the league getting regular minutes by any statistical measure, with a 2.1 PER on the season—also had a hair cut in the style of a late 90’s school shooter (yes, that was a real thing that happened):

No one won on Twitter last night. Last night’s game had me reading the Wikipedia article about Marat/Sade looking for good jokes. I couldn’t come up with one.

Pontification Maximus

In games like this, I’m not sure where the blame falls. Clearly the Grizzlies aren’t great this season, and last night they were dealt a worse hand by Conley’s injury situation. But… this can’t be all the players’ fault, can it?

What I mean is this: there’s obviously—very obviously—some kind of motivation issue against the better teams of the league. The Grizzlies, collectively, know they’re limited offensively, and since Christmas, they’ve been even more so. When they get down double-digits to a team they know can score a lot, the defense falls off a cliff. At one point this year the Grizzlies’ opponents started shooting 50% from 3-point range once the Grizzlies were down 15 or more. That’s a clear indication that the effort just isn’t there once they get down big.

My point is this: who can blame them? Sure, they might pull off one or two comebacks and be one or two more games above .500, but for the most part, they really just can’t hang with the league’s top tier of teams right now. But they could, with almost exactly the same personnel, towards the end of last season and into the playoffs.

Larry Kuzniewski

Marc Gasol followed up one of his worst games of the year by… having another one

This is all a downward spiral—interrupted by a couple glorious weeks where it looked like they might actually be able to take out the Warriors based on sheer determination—that started in this game against the Thunder right before last year’s All-Star Break. Things have never been the same since. Are these guys ever going to reach a point where they’re playing on the same page again?

And what about the coach? I think everyone agrees that Dave Joerger is a good basketball coach, but when his team switches from one of the best in the league to a .500 group after a trade, and then continues the downward trend into the next season, there’s no way he’s blameless in this. He’s clearly got guys he likes and guys he doesn’t—the old Lionel Hollins effect—but isn’t what makes a great coach the ability to adapt what the team is doing to the players available, and the ability to be the kind of coach that a certain group of guys needs? Is it Joerger’s fault that these guys give up? I don’t think so. But eventually the fact that they’re not playing together is his fault. He’s the guy in charge of the X’s and O’s. If things aren’t connecting, eventually that’s his problem, no matter how much he complains about the roster he’s been given.

And that’s really what I mean: for a guy who has said time and again to the media that other teams are better and that the Grizzlies’ roster and injuries are the source of their problems—which is 100% true, at least on some level—are the decisions he’s made maximizing what the Grizzlies can do with this group of players?

And finally, obviously injuries have hampered the Grizzlies ever since Brandan Wright started missing games after playing only 100 minutes. But that’s two or three guys, two of whom are still rookies who basically haven’t played at all—Jordan Adams and Jarell Martin. They take up roster spots, so they limit some of the moves that can be made, but who thought this was decent wing rotation? What’s the plan moving forward? Has Robert Pera even watched a Grizzlies game this year? Because he sure hasn’t been seen at one in a long time. Who is making these decisions, about which direction the team is headed? What are they thinking? Is there a plan in place? If the coach hates the roster and the players on the roster don’t think they’re good enough, clearly something has to change. The radio silence from the Grizzlies—other than counteracting the fallout whenever Marc Stein tweets out rumors that paint an inaccurate picture of the inner workings of the organization—is understandable, but it doesn’t engender a sense of trust that the leadership in place knows where they’re going with this thing.

And for a solid 12 months now, this group of Grizzlies has been in some form of decline. They’re 35–32 since that OKC game, not counting playoff games. Barely above .500. And in that stretch they’ve had some bad losses to good teams, some slight losses to bad teams, and no real wins over great teams outside of the second round of last year’s playoffs. And… At some level, everyone involved is to blame. Players, coaches, front office. They’ve gotten the Grizzlies into this mess. Now they’ve got to get the Grizzlies out, and at least make it out of this season with some assets and flexibility to move forward. If the plan really is to build a new core around Conley and Gasol, they’ve got a lot of expiring deals to get rid of. If the plan is to “blow it up” and trade everyone on the roster for whatever they can get, I guess that’s fine, too, but that’s probably not the right path to take. If the plan is to hunker down and make it work with the group of players on the team now, that’s been a bad plan at least as long as the Grizzlies have been playing .500 ball. It’s time for the Grizzlies—on the court, and in the offices—to start demonstrating that they have some idea what’s happening to them.

Unless they just enjoy watching occasional blowout losses to the top five or six teams in the league. Those are a given at this point.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Making Tennessee Great Again!

I’m writing this from the restroom facility at Big Hill Pond State Park in southern McNairy County. On Monday, I commandeered the building, which contains the men’s and women’s restrooms, some racks of pamphlets, and two vending machines. There’s no one here right now, but I plan to stay as long as necessary to protest the fact that the state of Tennessee is run by oppressive know-nothings who wouldn’t know small government — or freedom, for that matter — if it bit them on their considerable backsides.

I’m talking about Andy Holt and Mae Beavers and Ron Ramsey and all those other dolts running things in Nashville, the people who think we elected them to fight an imaginary war against Sharia law and oppose gay marriage and suckle at the teat of the N.R.A. They’re not patriots. They’re self-aggrandizing morons, and I’m taking my state back. I want to make Tennessee great again.

I’m not kidding. I’ve had enough, and I’m serving notice: If the state of Tennessee wants this building back, they’re going to have to come and pry it from my freshly sanitized hands. And don’t think it’s going to be easy.

I’ve got a nice Beretta 12-guage automatic (the one I got as a wedding present from my brother-in-law), an (almost) full box of birdshot, and three pretty substantial bottle rockets. I’ve got four packages of thick-cut Benton’s smoked bacon, some nice sourdough loaves from Fresh Market, 15 Lindt Intense Orange chocolate bars, six heirloom tomatoes, several pounds of artisanal dark roast Kona, 12 bags of Skinny Pop, and two cases of Wiseacre Tiny Bomb.

Check and mate, my friends.

Not to mention, there’s enough toilet paper and hand sanitizer in here to last me ’til June, at least. And don’t forget those vending machines. Also, the Tuscumbia River is just over the hill, and I packed a sweet five-weight Sage and a nice selection of spring dry flies. A country liberal can survive. Underestimate me at your peril, Cousin Bubba.

Of course, I got the idea for this boondoggle, er, courageous stand for freedom, from those guys out in Oregon, the ones who bravely stormed and liberated an empty U.S. national park building that mostly catered to bird-watchers during migration season. Then they hung a bunch of U.S. flags everywhere and asked people to send help via the U.S. Post Office.

Because of that, some people are making fun of them, calling them “Vanilla ISIS” and “Y’allQueda,” but I think those right-wing mokes have the right idea. If you don’t like something, call the government’s bluff! Take over a federal building. For Freedom. And news coverage. What’s the worst that could happen? Not much, apparently.

So, here I am in good old Big Hill Pond State Park, making my own stand for freedom in sympathy with my Oregon brothers-in-arms. And like them, I’m locked and loaded and angry, and I’m not leaving until some big changes are made … or I get some airtime on national television.

So, Governor, er, Lieutenant Governor, Ramsey, you can send in the National Guard, I don’t care. Hell, send in ol’ Mae Beavers. I’d love to chat with that poofy-headed dipshizzle face-to-face. That’s right, you Nashville yahoos, I’m here on Tennessee state property in McNairy County, I’m Memphis as eff, and I’m not going anywhere. Come at me, bros.

Oh, and did I mention I’m white? Well, I am. Really, really white. Sooo … you know. Take it easy.

Categories
Cover Feature News

New Year, New You: 2016

It’s become something of a tradition for the Flyer staff to offer a few resolutions for our readers in the first issue of each new year. We don’t do it because we think you’re incapable of coming up with your own resolutions. After all, who knows better than you what you need to do to improve your quality of life? No, we do it because we think it’s important for all of us to refresh our browsers, as it were, every now and then. And sometimes ideas from others can spark an interest you didn’t know you had or send you on a path to new discoveries. So, without further ado, here are a few suggestions to mull over as 2016 begins. Become an expert in something Memphis-related. A year may be a short time to know everything there is to know about local barbecue restaurants, but it’s more than enough time to figure out which smokehouse serves the best sausage sandwiches or which local coffee roaster makes the darkest brew. One could spend a lifetime poring over all the music recorded in Memphis, but 12 months is a generous amount of time to visit all of the city’s music-themed museums and learn all the dance steps Rufus Thomas sang about. — Chris Davis

See a brand new play, musical, dance performance, or opera before anybody else does. Memphis’ performing arts scene has grown at an unprecedented rate in the past decade. New playhouses opened, new companies launched, and every year Memphians have more opportunities to take in great new work by regionally affiliated artists. If you’re looking for a place to start, try Byhalia, Mississippi by Evan Linder, which opens at TheatreWorks this week. Linder’s a Memphian living in Chicago, where he cofounded The New Colony theater company. His previous writing efforts include the popular comedy 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche and The Warriors, a revealing docudrama built around interviews with survivors of Jonesboro’s Westside school shooting. If you’re in the market for something more tuneful, an original pop opera based on Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann is coming in February. — CD

If you really want to be a better person in the ensuing year, stop killing Joe Cocker on the internet. The soulful yet incomprehensible singer died for the first and last time in 2014 and is unlikely to pass away again, no matter what you saw on Facebook. You know who else isn’t going to die again any time soon? Andy Griffith. So when somebody shares a link mourning Mayberry’s favorite sheriff (again), don’t share it. If you’re not sure whether or not a celebrity who’s currently dying on social media is already dead, it only takes a second or two to check facts using a powerful internet tool called Google. The same can be said about that easy-to-read pie chart about the true costs of ObamaCare or that crazy Sarah Palin quote that sounds exactly like something she might say. Bad information is easier to spread than it is to correct. So check facts before passing along internet content. And, for the love of God, stop killing dead people. — CD

Don’t be afraid. Are you afraid of terrorism? Sure, we all are. But did you know that the number of people killed in the United States by terrorists this century is less than one percent of the number killed by random gun violence? Humans are lousy at assessing risk. For the vast majority of people in America, the most dangerous thing you will ever do in your life is drive a car. And yet, you jump behind the wheel with no hesitation every day and support giving up your civil liberties and spending billions on pointless and never-ending wars that really don’t reduce terrorism at all.

Terrorism is a tactic that uses the media’s search for a sensational story and the average person’s bad grasp of statistics to force us into making bad decisions. This is true whether its employed by white Christians with a AR-15 or brown Muslims with a suicide vest. It loses its power if we remain unafraid and refuse to overreact. If you want to defeat the terrorists, keep calm and carry on. If you want to maximize your odds of living a long time, exercise. — Chris McCoy

Vote. 2016 is a national election year. Notice I didn’t say “important” election year, because they’re all important. Get out there and vote in every primary and general election. Don’t just argue on the internet. Hate a politician? Vote against him. Love a politician? Vote for her. Exercise your franchise. — CM

Question your assumptions. Is there an issue in your life that bothers you? Some factor you just can’t seem to turn around? Use the new year as a opportunity to change your perspective. Are you sure you’re attacking your problem from the right angle? If your methods of making things better aren’t working, don’t be afraid to discard them and look for better ideas. Don’t let pride get in the way of needed change. — CM Add essential oils to your medicine cabinet. Don’t completely ditch the pharmaceuticals, but at least push those pill bottles aside to make room in your medicine cabinet for essential oils. Created from the pure oil of various plants, essential oils are nature’s medicine. Their use isn’t F.D.A. approved, but I’ve been using oils for years to cure headaches, clear my sinuses, reduce stress, and induce sleep. Rub a few drops of peppermint oil on your temples to ease a headache. Dab lavender oil on your pillow to help you sleep. Diffuse eucalyptus oil to help clear up a stuffy nose, and try tea tree oil to treat minor cuts and scrapes. While not all essential oils are safe to consume, a few brands, like doTERRA and Young Living, specialize in oils that may be taken internally. I Love Juice Bar in Midtown uses these food-safe oils in their essential oil shots, which combine various oils with fruit juice. The Energizer shot is made with coconut water and wild orange and peppermint essential oils, and the Sniffle Stopper combines lemon and ginger juice with a blend of wild orange, clove, cinnamon, eucalyptus, and rosemary oils. — Bianca Phillips

Do yoga … with beer. Yoga and beer might seem like an unlikely pairing, but there’s really no better way to relax than sipping a local craft beer after an hour-long class of upward-facing dogs, triangle poses, and planks. Brewery/bar yoga is a trend sweeping the nation right now, and Memphis is in on the fun. Bendy Brewski Yoga offers weekly classes at High Cotton Brewing Co. (Thursdays) and the Rec Room (Mondays). For $15, you get an hour of beginner-friendly, hatha yoga, followed by a beer of your choice from the taproom at High Cotton or the bar at the Rec Room. Drinking beer after yoga class offers a chance to socialize with classmates, something that’s missing from traditional yoga classes where students don’t get much time to talk. — BP

Don’t give so many f*#ks. Stop caring so much. Seriously. Just stop. Don’t worry about what people think of you. Don’t spend any time seething over something someone said on your Facebook post. Don’t get your panties in a wad over some dude cutting you off in traffic. Stop all that nonsense, and LET. IT. GO. Last January, I read a widely shared and artfully crafted online essay by author Mark Manson titled “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*#k,” in which Manson opines that the key to happiness is knowing when to give your f*#ks and when to save them. Look it up, and read the whole thing. It takes about 12 minutes, but it’s 12 minutes you won’t regret spending.

Wrote Manson: “Because when we give too many f*#ks, when we choose to give a f*#k about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life f*#ks us.”

He’s not saying we shouldn’t care about anything, but rather, that we should be selective about what we choose to care about. When you reserve concern for the things that really matter, you’re not setting yourself up for nearly as much disappointment. Life is less stressful that way, and who doesn’t want that? — BP

Use apps to change yourself. I’m overweight, according to the federal government. (Thanks, Obama.) I’m no techie. I don’t code. I’ve never hacked a mainframe or whatever they do in movies. But I do have a smartphone, I understand how to use it, and it’s with me all the time, every day. That’s why I’m suggesting three apps to help you in the new year. — Toby Sells

Lark. My BMI (calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) puts me closer to the government’s obese territory than I like to admit. I know I gotta watch what I eat, but it’s tough. I’ve tried online calorie trackers in the past, but I hate them. It’s tedious work and largely inaccurate. I gave up on trackers until I ran across the Lark app two weeks ago.

The app “talks” to you in a friendly, text-message format that should be comfortable to anyone with a smartphone. It tracks food, yes, but it also talks to you about the quality of the foods you eat. (Bacon is a processed meat, apparently. Who knew?) In that way, Lark is a personal coach and nutritionist. Lark also tracks your sleep and activity. It does both based on the movement of the phone, so it’s not precise on these two functions. But, overall, Lark is great for anyone looking to track their behavior to change it in the future. — TS

Dry January. This year I’m going for the New Year’s resolution trifecta: losing weight, quitting smoking, and drinking less. (Insert incredulous eye roll here.) Drinking is the root that affects the other two. I smoke only when I drink, and hangovers convince me to eat like crap and they certainly don’t motivate me to work out.

So for my three birds, I’m going to try one stone: Dry January. That’s right, no drinking for the entire month. A friend of mine does this every year, and it always sounds terrible. Dry January has existed in the United Kingdom for a while, long enough for there to be a hashtag (#dryjanuary) and an app called (you guessed it) Dry January. The app lets you track your dry (or wet) days. It offers helpful hints to stay on the wagon and a money tracker to show how much you’ve saved by abstaining. — TS Memphis Public Library. We know you rewatched Cajun Pawn Stars this year. We know it was probably an accident and that you feel kinda bad about it. So, how about this year, you read a f*@cking book? Sounds good and all but can you even imagine doing something so completely 20th century like walking into a library? In Memphis, you don’t have to. 

The Memphis Public Library has a vast collection of digital content you can download to your computer, tablet, or phone. It hosts a family of seven mobile apps that give you access to free (FREE!) books, audio books, magazines, music, and more. Did I mention it’s all free? All it takes is a library card. (Insert the Reading Rainbow theme song here.) — TS

Read Moby-Dick. What gets lost in the fact that this is a really thick classic novel that is infamously hard to read is the fact that it’s often hilarious and always a brilliant, dark, eloquent summation of the dark, doubtful side of the American psyche. There’s also a lot of stuff about whale parts. If you need more convincing, there’s even a great book — Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick? — that will do a better job convincing you of its ultimate value than I can here. You’ll feel smarter after you read it, you’ll see the world in a different way, it will never quite leave your mind, and you might even find yourself deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people’s hats off. — Kevin Lipe

Get things off your mind. I firmly believe that if you’re not keeping track of your to-do list somewhere, you’re trying to remember the whole thing all the time. Whether you’re doing that on purpose or not, it’s stressful, and eventually you’ll feel stressed out and not even remember why. The biggest thing you can do is write stuff down instead of trying to remember it. Whether you use a complicated system like David Allen’s Getting Things Done (which I recommend, but it can be daunting) or a checklist on a Post-it Note, quit trying to remember stuff, and you’ll feel a lot better about all those things you’re supposed to get done. — KL

Buy things that will last. It’s never been easier to get a great deal. We’re flooded with things that are cheap, designed to look good, wear out fast, and need to be replaced. It’s far more satisfying to do your homework, spend a little more up front, and own something that you can have forever. This applies to everything. Knockoff boots, or an expensive pair of Red Wings? I know which ones you’ll still be able to wear in 20 years. Cheap new dining room table, or find one at an antique store that’s already been around 50 or more years? It’s a lot easier to worry less about the “stuff” you own when you know the things you have are going to stand the test of time. — KL

Go to a concert at a DIY venue. From the Buccaneer to the Buckman Center, there are plenty of shows happening every night of the week in Memphis. There are also DIY spaces (usually accessible by Facebook event pages) taking place all over town at places like Found, Goner Records, and Amurica that are practically begging for your attendance. Better yet, host a DIY show yourself! All you need is a PA, a power strip, and a (semi) empty room. Remember: Some of the biggest bands in Memphis got their start playing in someone’s living room. — Chris Shaw

Go to a Memphis Tigers basketball game. The attendance this season has been downright sad. We’ve all heard the excuses. You’re over Pastner. You knew Austin Nichols would leave. You’re doing your part to show the University of Memphis that the fans demand a new coach by not renewing your season tickets. Actually, the only thing you’re doing is making our city look bad when Tiger games get televised nationally on ESPN and its sister stations. Go to a game. It’s cheap, fun, and a good way to show possible recruits that Memphis is still Tiger Country. — CS

Support local music by buying something from a band. Just about every local record store in the city has a local music section, so if you can’t make it out to see a band live, search for their album/cassette/CD/single at your favorite record store. Even Spin Street has a local music section. If you can make it out to a local concert, buy something! A lot of times local bands are opening for touring bands, meaning their cut of the door is less and their merch sales are what keep them going. Look at it this way: A seven-inch record usually costs the same as a beer, and it lasts a whole lot longer. — CS

Get oblique. Back in 1975, musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt created a set of cards called Oblique Strategies. The set has gone through several updates and is also available in an iPhone version, but I recommend getting a box of the cards. Got a problem? Need a fresh approach? Pull a card out of the box. If nothing else, it will give you something to think about. I’ll try it right now: “Repetition is a form of change.” Repetition is a form of change. — Bruce VanWyngarden

Relax. There’s a new spot on Madison downtown called Relax H2O. If you’re a downtown worker, this place may be the answer for you when the stress of that impending deadline strikes. Relax H2O features oxygen bar therapy, massage chairs, and aqua massage beds. Open Monday through Saturday with Sunday appointments available. Call 421-8351 for more info. — BV

Get out on the water. I make this one of my recommendations every year. The magnificent waterway that’s at our front door is enjoyed by way too few Memphis residents. And the Ghost River section of the Wolf River is also just sitting there waiting for you. You don’t need to buy a big boat. Just drop by Outdoors Inc. or your favorite sports and outdoor store, including the Bass Pro Pyramid, and get yourself a kayak. You’ll be amazed at what tranquility is available just a short hop away. Not to mention, exercise, bird watching, and just getting into the flow. Kayaking is easy and affordable. Do it once and you’ll be hooked. — BV

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Paul Ryan and Bernie Sanders

In keeping with the polarized politics on Capitol Hill, I have one winner for Republicans and a very different winner for Democrats. Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Bernie Sanders perfectly embody the polarization that prevents Congress from getting anything done on the nation’s most pressing issues, from immigration to stopping gun massacres to fighting the Islamic State. 

This dysfunctional Congress deserves its dismal 13 percent approval rating from the American people. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate reached a new nadir in broken politics by inviting a foreign leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to use the Congress as a setting to disrespect the American president back in March. They acted without first consulting with the White House. And then there was the refusal to hold confirmation hearings on the president’s nominees for judicial posts or to the Foreign Service.

Congressional Republicans have made it their everyday practice to obstruct initiatives from the twice-elected leader of the nation.

The GOP antipathy toward President Obama is not new. The bigger change is the out-of-control elbowing inside the Republican tent that came to define the year on Capitol Hill. Republicans in the House successfully launched a coup earlier this year against then-Speaker John Boehner, forcing out a man who is by any measure a strong conservative but still not conservative enough for the party’s far right. The eventual winner after several weeks of embarrassing party infighting was the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate Ryan. But Ryan won without winning the official endorsement of the rebellious Freedom Caucus, who dictated Boehner’s departure. All this led the new speaker, in his very first speech as the top Republican in the House, to stare failure in the face. 

“Let’s be frank: The House is broken,” he said. “We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.”

The real story is that he is the most conservative speaker in recent times. Ryan rose to prominence as the defiant right-winger who proposed, as top Republican on the budget committee, to change Medicare from a guaranteed health-care program for the elderly to a limited, untested voucher plan. He also backed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations. He has been a reliable opponent of abortion rights and gay rights, and he supported President George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security.

Despite that very conservative record, the new speaker had to deflect charges from the Freedom Caucus, conservative talk radio, websites, and bloggers that he is just one more establishment Republican. That outrageous indictment fits with a Pew Research poll from May that found 75 percent of Republican voters want congressional Republicans to obstruct, defy, and challenge President Obama more frequently.

The GOP’s deference to the far right has resulted in a backlash from liberal Democrats around the nation and on Capitol Hill, and that finds expression in the presidential bid of Sanders.

Democratic voters still strongly back former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the party’s 2016 nomination, but the defiant roar of the party in 2015 can be heard at Sanders’ political rallies.

He has been a political sensation all year long, in every corner of the nation. He attracts energized, loud crowds by identifying the Republican majority in Congress as the tool of big business and extremely wealthy Americans, including Charles and David Koch and other plutocrats. Sanders’ anger at the power of big money is resonating among left-wingers looking to identify those responsible for rigging the economic and political system against workers, unions, students, immigrants, and minorities.

Sanders succeeded in forcing Clinton to do a flip-flop and become an opponent of Obama’s Asia trade deal. He lashed out at her for being slow to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. He critiqued her 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

“He [Sanders] is where the economic heart and soul of the party is right now And he’s got the outsider thing, which is so big this year,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said recently.

Sanders and Ryan are the year’s political leaders in Congress because they captured that “outsider thing” for the left and the right. 

As the year ends, both parties and their leading men are in a critical struggle over whether the outsiders are now in charge.

Juan Williams serves as a Fox News political analyst and is the author of the bestseller, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.

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Music Music Features

New Year, New Sounds

The first big experimental show of the year kicks off this Friday night when Cities Aviv performs at the Hi-Tone with Fit of Body, Divine Interface, RPLD GHSTS, and Duma. Cities Aviv has been given ample coverage in this publication since he arrived on the scene in 2011, but here’s a quick rundown for those not paying attention. Since teaming up with producer Matt Qualls for his first hit single, “Coastin,” Cities Aviv’s career has taken off, producing songs for well-known rappers like Antwon and creating genre-bending albums like Your Discretion Is Trust and Come to Life in between touring the U.S. and Europe. His brand of music has been called “backpack rap,” “cloud rap,” and “black punk,” but to me, it just sounds like hip-hop with a lack of pretense, even if neatly packaged, half-real music genres are all the rage these days.

Trill Americana

Cities Aviv

After a few years spent living in New York, Cities Aviv (real name Gavin Mays) is once again a Memphian, trading his Bed-Stuy lifestyle for a place at the top of the slower-paced, grassroots music scene that few places other than Memphis can provide. For his first official show of 2016, Mays said he wanted to curate a lineup that breaks the traditional concepts of how Memphis concerts normally go down.

“The whole idea behind this show is to present a contemporary performance experience,” Mays says.

“Given the rich musical history of this city, sometimes I feel that the cultural landscape gets stuck in a sort of lockstep motion. Rock-and-roll birthing more rock-and-roll, and so on. Rap and hip-hop for fans of rap and hip-hop, and so on.”

Mays says he also considers the show an opportunity for the crowd to interact and be part of the performing experience.

“In curating this, I wanted to invite participators to crush norms that have been lodged in place. I say participators because by attending an event you create the atmosphere, so you are actively a part of the performance.”

To get this interactive atmosphere rolling, Mays enlisted locals RPLD GHSTS (his tour partner and cohort Quinton Je-Von Lee), and the new experimental band Duma. After a few shows at unconventional venues, RPLD GHSTS seems to have been more productive lately, performing around town more often and recently completing a European tour with Cities Aviv. Duma, on the other hand, are an up-and-coming band that Mays says is worth paying attention to.

“Duma is the current project of Dominic Van Horn (ex-3D Acid Glasses) and Langston Taylor (a local performance artist). I caught a live set of theirs a few months ago at a now-defunct space off of Madison and knew I wanted to have them involved with this show. What they do is equal parts deconstructed techno and punctual floor noise.”

Two Atlanta bands will also be performing, Divine Interface and Fit of Body, both associated with the label Harsh Riddims (home to Nima, Bluntfang, Takahiro Mukai, and more).

“Harsh Riddims is a label based out of Atlanta that houses everything from outsider electronics to off-beat rap,” Mays says. “Friday, the label head Fit of Body will be performing as well as the enigmatic Divine Interface. I think what they do is important and a testament to the hidden gems in the South.”

With most popular rap coming out of the South being created by club artists like Yo Gotti and 2 Chainz, Saturday’s show is an example of how deep the Southern hip-hop well really is. Much like the show that Mays booked for Texas noise artist BLACKIE last year, all four groups on Friday’s bill are there to make you think first, and dance second. Fit of Body’s now sold-out tape Health is Wealth is an amazing mix of lo-fi, trance-inducing instrumental hip-hop, and Divine Interface creates dreamy beat collages that sometimes sound similar to the old Memphix recording artist Express Rising, minus the vocals of course.

While it certainly seems that Mays is bringing some of the elements of what he saw at New York shows down to Memphis, don’t expect him to be a permanent fixture in either city for very long.

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve totally relocated to Memphis, but regardless this is home, and I’m always interested in building here,” Mays says. “As far as new music goes, there are a lot of works in queue that will see the light soon.”

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Music Music Features

Clay Otis and friends live at Bar DKDC

Clay Hardee (stage name Clay Otis) cranks out more new music than most of the active bands in Memphis, frequently collaborating with the Sheiks, the Vest brothers, and anyone else he can convince to join him in the recording studio. Over the years, Hardee has introduced us to his weird, sometimes inappropriate brand of dream pop with albums like The Overachiever (released on the fictitious F*ck Florida Records) and Citizen Clay, his latest masterpiece with comical song titles like “Friend on Crack” and “Pills at Night” that was released in early 2014. In between those releases, he also found time to record the single “Disco Werewolf” with the Dream Sheiks, a super group of sorts made up of members of local bands Dream Team and the Sheiks.

Clay Otis

Not one to be tied to one group of instrumentalists, Hardee will debut all new material this Friday at Bar DKDC with special guests Luke White (James and the Ultrasounds), Logan Hanna, Greg Faison (Dream Team), Dirk Kitterlin (Marcella & Her Lovers), and Graham Winchester (the Sheiks, Jack Oblivian, Maitre D’s). While all of the players previously mentioned definitely have a lot of gigging under their belts, don’t count on Friday’s show at DKDC to be business as usual. If we’ve learned anything from Hardee over the years, it’s to expect the unexpected. While Hardee didn’t start making music until he was in his 30s, his progression as a local musician has been interesting to watch. In an interview with the Flyer from 2014, Hardee admitted that he had no intention of playing music until a movie he was working on got turned down. As one of the most unpredictable musicians currently playing in Memphis, it’s fair to say that Hardee made the right decision.

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The Matilda Twins

New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley described Broadway’s Matilda as the most “satisfying and subversive musical ever to come out of Britain” and “an exhilarating tale of empowerment, as told from the perspective of the most powerless group of all — little children.” The national tour of the Tony-winning Roald Dahl-inspired musical is much like its New York counterpart. On some nights, because of twin brothers Justin and Geoff Packard, the two shows are almost exactly alike.

Justin and Geoff both play various ensemble roles while understudying the slimy Mr. Wormwood and the tyrannical Miss Trunchbull. Geoff’s on Broadway. Justin’s touring the country and coming to Memphis when Matilda opens at The Orpheum this week. Six weeks ago, they both got the call and found out they’d be performing the same role simultaneously.

“Because this tour started on the West Coast, we weren’t performing at the same time, even when we were doing the same role,” Justin explains. “Then I got back to the East Coast, and he texted me: ‘I guess we’re both Trunchbulls today’ — it was cool.”

Justin and Geoff aren’t identical, but they were once inseparable. Both started out as athletes before transitioning into theater. “We’d go straight from football practice to play rehearsal,” Justin says, remembering high school shows where he’d play the villain to his brother’s hero. “It was always like, ‘Here come the Packard Brothers,’ until Geoff went to the University of Cincinnati, and I went to Ithaca College in upstate New York. Before that, we’d never really had different experiences.”

Matilda tells the story of a pint-sized prankster with self-taught telekinetic powers. It’s even more faithful to the spirit and letter of Dahl’s novel than the acclaimed 1996 film directed by and starring Danny DeVito.

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Acting Up

In August 2015, Jo Lynne Palmer was nominated for her devastatingly real performance as an elderly woman struggling with Alzheimer’s disease in Distance, a new play by Jerre Dye and Voices of the South. She didn’t receive the award, which went to Bad Jews‘ Laura Stracko, but every time Palmer appears on stage is a win for Memphis theatergoers. In 2011, the veteran performer suffered a stroke while singing and dancing her way through a production of The Fantasticks at Germantown Community Theatre. That unfortunate event ended happily though, with Palmer making a full recovery and returning to the stage better than ever. It also led to a joint effort by area theaters to create the Emergency Needs for the Theater Artists Community fund (ENTAC) for area thespians who find themselves facing difficult situations as a result of accidents or serious illness.

Jo Lynne Palmer

Health care was a hot election-year topic when ENTAC was first created, but the Theatre Memphis-administered fund hasn’t received as much attention lately. Memphis actor Ron Gordon hopes to raise the fund’s profile by creating an annual awareness- and money-raising event. For his first outing, Gordon organized a silent auction and enlisted 20 area musicians to perform a concert at Neil’s Music Room.

Donations to the fund and for the silent auction can be dropped off at the box offices of Germantown Community Theatre, Playhouse on the Square, or Theatre Memphis.