Month: January 2016

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

There Will Be Snacks

Super Bowl 50 looms, and we’re determined to clear our schedules and dive into the craziness with just about every other American. We couldn’t tell you we know exactly who’s playing, but we’ll definitely be planning what to bring for the snacks. From our cookbook, The Southern Vegetarian, we’re psyched to make the Hoppin’ John Black-Eyed Pea Butter, and we have some help rounding out the dips and spreads table from two friends and fellow cooks who have recommended a couple of recipes they’ll be using on Super Bowl Sunday.

Cookbook author, food stylist, and restaurant consultant Jennifer Chandler offers up a Tex-Mex Corn Dip, which she deems “cheesy, warm, super flavorful, and delicious with Fritos — my favorite chip!” This one is in regular rotation for game day. “When having guests over, I want to spend time with them — not have them in another room while I’m in the kitchen,” she says. “And when it comes to the Super Bowl, I don’t want to miss any play, so nibbles and dips that can be made in advance are my tried-and-true go-to’s. This can be assembled the night before or in the morning and then popped in the oven just before your guests arrive.”

Jennifer Chandler

Chandler confides, “I actually had this Tex-Mex Corn Dip for the first time at a Super Bowl party hosted by my friend Jenny Vergos. Folks at your next party will be asking you for the recipe just like I asked Jenny.”

Whitney Miller, cookbook author and winner of MasterChef season one, suggests a Southern favorite with an inventive twist: Spicy Pimento Cheese with Crispy Green Tomatoes. She lightens up the dish with yogurt and spices it up with Sriracha, everyone’s favorite Asian hot sauce.

Her recipe came about when she decided to add heat to counteract the sweetness of homemade pimento cheese. “Everyone seems to love pimento cheese, whether it’s their first experience trying it or if they have eaten it all their lives,” Miller says. “It always makes me feel good when people rave over mine. What I love about serving it over the crispy green tomato corncakes is that the cheese is ooey-gooey and melty. This is a one-bite appetizer that will keep your Super Bowl guests coming back for more.”

This weekend, some may say they’re in it for the game, some for the halftime, some for the commercials, but we know the truth: We’re all just here for the food! So head to the store and load up on black-eyed peas, cheese, corn, and pimientos in order to make some amazing appetizers that might just turn out to be more memorable than the game.

Hoppin’ John Bean Butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 large garlic cloves (smashed)

1/2 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1 1/2 cups prepared black-eyed peas (or 1 can drained)

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 teaspoon)

1 tablespoon tahini or peanut butter

1/2 teaspoon hickory-smoked sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

In a medium pan over medium-low heat, add the olive oil, garlic, coriander, and cumin. Cook for about five minutes or until the garlic has softened. Add the contents of the pan to the work bowl of your food processor along with the black-eyed peas, Tabasco, lemon juice, tahini, hickory-smoked sea salt, and cracked black pepper. Blend until smooth. Serve with toasted baguette or pita chips. (Makes 1 1/2 cups.)

From The Southern Vegetarian Cookbook by Amy Lawrence & Justin Fox Burks

Tex-Mex Corn Dip

Tex-Mex Corn Dip

1 cup sour cream

1 cup mayonnaise

1 teaspoon garlic powder

3 cups corn kernels, thawed if using frozen

1 jar (4-ounce) diced pimientos, drained

1 can (4-ounce) chopped green chillies

3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the sour cream, mayonnaise, and garlic powder. Add the corn, pimientos, green chillies, and cheddar cheese. Stir until well-combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Place the mixture in a two-quart baking dish. Bake until golden brown and bubbly, about 30 minutes. Serve warm with Fritos Scoops or your favorite tortilla chips. For a spicier dip, add a 1/4 cup diced jalapeños; this dip can be assembled one day in advance. Store covered in the refrigerator until ready to bake. (Serves six.)

From The Southern Pantry Cookbook by Jennifer Chandler

Spicy Pimento Cheese with Crispy Green Tomato Corncakes

Spicy Pimento Cheese

2 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt

1 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Sriracha hot chili sauce

1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1 1/2 cups shredded colby jack cheese

3/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Fine sea salt

1 tablespoon chopped pimientos

Combine the cream cheese, yogurt, mayonnaise, and chili sauce in a medium bowl until smooth. Add the cheddar cheese, colby jack cheese, and pepper to the bowl. Stir to combine. Season the cheese mixture with salt, to taste. Fold in the pimientos. Use immediately, or store in the refrigerator for up to one week. (Makes two cups.)

Pimento Cheese and Corncakes

Crispy Green Tomato Corncakes

4 medium, firm green tomatoes

1 cup self-rising cornmeal

1/2 cup fat-free milk

1 large egg

2 tablespoons canola oil, plus more for greasing

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Dice the green tomatoes, and place in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together the cornmeal, milk, egg, and oil until smooth. Pour about 1⁄ 4 teaspoon of canola oil in the cups of two 12-cup muffin pans. Place the pans in the oven for three minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and immediately spoon 1⁄2 tablespoon of the cornmeal mixture into each cup. Top the cornmeal mixture with 1 tablespoon of diced green tomatoes. Bake for nine minutes. Remove the pans from the oven, and using a butter knife, flip the corncakes over. Return the pans to the oven, and bake an additional four minutes or until the corncakes are browned.

Remove the pans from the oven, and spoon one teaspoon of the Spicy Pimento Cheese on top of each corncake. Set the oven to broil, place the pans on top rack of the oven, and broil the corncakes until the cheese begins to melt. Remove from the oven and transfer the corncakes to a serving platter. Repeat the process with the additional cornmeal batter and diced tomatoes. (Makes about 32 corncakes.)

From Whitney Miller’s New Southern Table

Categories
News News Blog

Full Interview: Q&A with Zoo President Chuck Brady

CREDIT: Memphis Zoo

Memphis Zoo

Chuck Brady

Excerpts from this interview with Memphis Zoo president and CEO Chuck Brady were published in this week’s print issue of the Memphis Flyer.

In the full, largely unedited interview, Brady details his stance on equal access to Overton Park, managing the Greensward, taking those 27 trees, why a parking garage isn’t the best solution to parking woes, and why the Zoo might not take part of the Overton Park Conservancy’s newly launched study on traffic and parking in the park.   

Equal access to Overton Park is at the heart of the Greensward argument for Chuck Brady, president and CEO of the Memphis Zoo.

Zoo visitors come from “every part of the city” and without Greensward parking, they’ll be turned away, he said. Overton Park is not a neighborhood park for a few but a community park for all.

The zoo does has authority over one-third of the Greensward, he said. He said he hopes this will be made clear with a judge’s order, he said, which is why Brady said he and the board filed their lawsuit last week

– Toby Sells

Memphis Flyer: Tell me about the lawsuit.

Chuck Brady: It’s a petition for a declaratory judgment on the option that Allan Wade issued on behalf fo the city council and [former Memphis Mayor A C Wharton]. So, it’s just trying to take that opinion and make it a judgment.

MF: You felt that Wade’s opinion gave the zoo the right to take those trees.

CB: It gave us management authority on that area, which we always have.

MF: But I think folks think it was just a legal opinion and not a directive from [Memphis] City Hall. You didn’t get permission or guidance from the new mayor or the new city council to begin improvements.

CB: The trees were planted illegally. The city has said they weren’t asked that those trees be planted. The trees were planted to block access and reduce access to that area. So, the area we cleared was to create another entrance and exit in that area.

The trees were carefully take out, balled in burlap, and when I spoke with the [Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland] and [Tina Sullivan, executive director of the Overton Park Conservancy), I told them the conservancy was welcome to have her people come and get them.

MF: To a lot of folks, it looks like the zoo was just a bully and did this without anyone’s permission. I think that’s where a lot of the [anger has come from].

CB: That’s the same way the trees went in.

I think more importantly, you have to understand, that area is the only parking area for about 75,000 people per year. 75,000. That’s a big number. If you block that or you prevent that – those are citizens, too. You have a small group that is saying no, we don’t want them.

I think those people – whether they be from Frayser, or Cordova, or Downtown, or wherever they’re from – they’re citizens, too. They have a right and I think as a city have an obligation to take a community park and make sure it’s accessible to everyone.

That’s our feeling on it. Everyone can call the other side a bully. But there’s two sides to every story.

We really have to understand the access. What has failed to really get out in the mainstream media is that on… Let’s look at who uses (the Greensward). Who is actually being kept out of the park? It’s an interesting group.

So, 65 days a year, we park on one-third of the grass and there’s two-thirds left for other activities. Of those 65 days, you have Free Tuesdays. That’s 13 of the days. Those are 95 percent inner-city residents. Most of them are with limited incomes. So, we would exclude those.

Parents and guardians of school groups, Monday through Friday in the mornings, they come to be with their children or grandchildren for field trips. Those parents would be exulted 14 days out of the 65.

Saturdays, and Sundays, and holidays, which includes not only citizens but guests, that’s 22 of the days. The remaining 11 days are for nighttime functions.

So, when you look at who is being excluded, and I often hear that it’s out-of-towners. No, it’s a lot of citizens. We have a diverse membership and the people who park here – we take their ZIP codes – not only the overflow parking but from all of our patrons. So, we have a very good understanding of where they come from. They come from every part of the city.

That’s the message. If anything we would like to get out there it’s that this is about access to a community park. So, that’s where we are on this.

I know our view is different for the one you’re hearing but it’s an important view. I think if you get into how you develop the park and city long term, that surely has to be something that has to be considered and understood.

MF: I won’t stay on this point too long but why didn’t you tell anyone you were going to take those trees?

CB: The trees were planted in a place where we feel we have management authority over.

MF: So you didn’t feel you needed to tell anyone? You had the right, based on that opinion, to do whatever you wanted.

CB: Now, remember we have been parking and managing the Greensward since 1986. So, it’s not something that… When the conservancy came in 2012 or 2013, we have been managing that area for far longer than that.

MF: You’ve been citing this 1986 master plan as a one of the sources for the zoo’s authority over the Greensward. People are saying that plan is not publicly available. They can’t see it and judge for themselves. Is that true?

CB: It’s available. I don’t know how widely available it would be anymore because it’s an old master plan but it was available in its time and I think it can be made available.

That’s what the opinion is based on. That’s what the contract, when it was written, it was what the city used. You have to remember, in 1986 the Zoo and the park were being re-designed, basically. There was a lot of discussion and public input meetings then.

There’s nothing secret about the master plan. I think it was pretty well distributed at the time but I don’t know now, so many years later. I’m not sure…

MF: When the Overton Park Conservancy was formed in 2012, one of the things that Citizens to Protect Overton Park…they got their own legal opinion. One of the exhibits they put up was that boundary map for the Overton Park Conservancy. There’s a big red line that shows everything…

CB: It’s a Google map that has been red-lined. If you read the Wade opinion, he said that was a mistake. So, behind it there’s a mistake. They were granted something that was already under Zoo management.

If you read further in their management agreement, it clearly states that any areas that are managed by any other entity are excluded in [the conservancy’s] agreement. I think that’s probably at the heart of the Wade opinion is that there is a conflict there.

The red-lined map should never have been done.

MF: Another criticism I’ve heard about the zoo and its future plans is that if you knew that the Zambezi River Hippo Camp was going to bring in 15 percent more visitors, why didn’t you plan on 15 percent more parking?

CB: So, we have parking that’s adequate. What the push is, is to take some of that parking away. The push is to take some of that parking away.

MF: The Greensward was going to be some of that additional parking?

CB: Of course. The Greensward… Do you know how this all started years ago? When the city had architect design the zoo’s parking lot, it was adequate. The neighbors said you don’t have to build a big parking lot. Build a small parking lot and park the rest on the Greensward. And the city went along with this even before [the Memphis Zoological Society] were managers.

MF: There was to be a small shard of parking on the northern tip of the Greensward where there are now trees. That was going to be another making lot.

CB: But it was also the Greensward and that. So, the truth is, there’s adequate parking. There’s not adequate parking for every day of the year. There’s probably going be eight to 10 days a year when we’ll have to turn away visitors.

That occurs now because we have, “we” meaning the zoo, we have drawn a line that says we won’t park over that line so that there will be two-thirds of the Greensward will be available for other activities. If we honor that line, which we do, then on roughly eight to 10 days a year, we turn people away.

It’s hard to build adequate parking for every day of the year. If you are short parking 65 days a year, because we’re seasonal… I would think if we have enough parking for Zambezi if we have use of the Greensward.

MF: In your letter [to Zoo members last week] you said “it was unfortunate that there has been so much speculation and misleading information shared by our neighbors in the news and social media.” Is there anything you want to set straight?

CB: One of the things I saw, I think Jessica Buttermore [chairman of Citizens to Protect Overton Park] wrote a letter to the editor [in The Commercial Appeal] saying that I said that the Zoo makes a $1 million on overflow parking in Overton Park. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. We make maybe $25,000. That’s roughly what the annual [revenue] is.

A lot of people who come to the Zoo are members and members park for free. So, if you look at the numbers, roughly 40 percent of our visitation is from members. Nighttime events don’t have fees.

MF: Anything else you’d like to set straight?

CB: If I could tell you one thing it’s that we have to…it’s not about…this is not a misinterpretation or anything but we just have to understand it’s about access to Overton Park and the Zoo. That’s what this issue is about.

Sure, there’s a lot of tangential things but this is about, does everyone in the community have the right to access Overton Park and I think that’s the question we’ll have to answer.

MF: The Overton Park Conservancy is gearing up for a parking and traffic flow study. Is the Zoo going to be a part of that?

CB: The conservancy has already done a study. They had 12 recommendations and they rejected all of them. That’s troublesome.

But what we said we would do, we would provide information for them. We spoke to this with the mayor. If all options are open, including parking on the Greensward, then we will participate. If they’re going to limit the options and they’re going to say there can be no new parking areas in Overton Park, then why are we doing the study?

The answer is yeas and no. Yes, if it’s an open study that is going to come up with real solutions. The truth of the matter is that the thing has been studied two or three times. The recommendations haven’t been taken.

It’s not about the number spaces alone. It’s also about how fast the cars enter the park. So, if you have 600 cars entering the park within an hour and a half, only certain types of solutions will work on that as opposed to 600 cars that all enter all throughout the day. There are two different problems there.

Some of the solutions that might work if it was all day won’t work if it’s that quick. That’s not just with us but that’s also with the [Levitt] Shell. Te Shell has a concert and everybody comes at the time of the concert. So, that’s kind of makes the parking solution more difficult than if it was…

Of course, everyone is sensitive to green space but if you were to look back at the Overton Park master plan that was done in the mid-1980s, Ritchie Smith did it, one of his principal recommendations is that there is not enough parking in Overton Park and this has to be dealt with. But it hasn’t been dealt with because we’re here talking about it because of that.

MF: Is the zoo a good [Overton Park] neighbor?

CB: Are we a good park neighbor in the sense that we clean up when people park in the neighborhoods? We send crews out to clean up any litter and what have you every time.

We’ve used the Greensward for almost 30 years. It’s virtually the same as it was 30 years ago. We aerate it. We clean it. I think we’re a good neighbor but I think you’ll find a lot of different opinions on that.

MF: You said it. People are sensitive to green space. I think that’s at the crux of the passion on the other side of the argument is that they believe that this place shouldn’t be parked on it should be played on.

Then, it seems like the Zoo is not listening when they say this is something they want and they’re taking it back. So, it’s an issue that is larger than some trees things like that.

CB: It is. But to go back to what I said earlier, the park is a community park. It’s not a neighborhood park, it’s a community park. So, people from all over the community have an equal right to access to the park.

The park has to be designed and developed so it accommodates those people, however it’s done. I’m not preaching one answer. The answer is not excluding those people. Those people are far greater in number than the people who are trying to exclude them. Our view is that everyone should have access. Period.

MF: Is the idea for a parking garage off the table or out of reach?

CB: Probably nothing is off the table. But the parking garage is expensive. There’s no doubt about that.

There’s been several parking garages built in Memphis in the last five to eight years. I know there’s one over in Overton Square and I know there’s a new tower out at [International Paper]. I think [St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital] has just recently built one.

We know the cost of all of them. One thing we know for sure is that they’re expensive. Probably $15,000 per parking space is going to be the minimum cost, not at the upper end but at the lower end.

I think when you look at the situation in Overton Park, there are two other factors you have to understand. One, there’s no good place to put a parking garage. The place that has been suggested off of Prentiss Place backs right up to neighbors. Those neighbors don’t want a 600-car parking deck there. So, it’s not only the cost but the opposition to where it will be placed.

Then, and this is a very important thing, that parking deck would be vacant 300 days a year. If we needed 600 places everyday, I think that would be a more realistic solution. Many people say, why don’t you just take the money that you charge people to park and put it towards the payment, the debt [on a parking garage]. Well, if you only using it 60 days a year, then the math doesn’t work out.

People who build parking lots, who use it everyday, that’s a way they can finance it. We’ve talked to companies that finance parking garages and they look at our numbers and said that it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work if you think you’re going to collect revenue to offset it.

MF: I was going to show you one last thing. There’s a lot of this going around on social media [Turns a computer around showing a picture of a Facebook post in which someone has cut their zoo membership card in half with the caption: Fire Chuck Brady.] How do you feel about it?

CB: There’s as many – and probably more – responses to us that say, good, we need the parking and the Zoo is a vital part of this community. We get far more of them than we get of those.

[The photo] is very vocal but it’s not the principal sentiment around Memphis. You have to get out of this area and talk to…you know we have 27,000 members. By and large they want what is right for the zoo and the city and they want equal access for all people.

Nobody wants Overton Park to be a park for a few people. 

Categories
News News Blog

TBI Will Investigate Latest Officer-Involved Shooting

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) will be handling the case of Wednesday night’s officer-involved shooting of a man following a police chase. The man, who Memphis Police officers say aimed a weapon at them, was killed, and another man is on the run. 

Last October, the Memphis Police Department (MPD), the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, and the Shelby County District Attorney’s office signed a memorandum of understanding with the TBI to allow the state agency to investigate officer-involved shootings. That agreement came after Memphis Police officer Conner Schilling shot and killed Darrius Stewart, who was unarmed, during a traffic stop last year. Under state law, all TBI investigations are sealed.

On Wednesday evening, two MPD officers shot and killed a man whom friends and family have identified as 32-year-old Johnathan Bratcher. The TBI has not yet released the man’s identity. Around 3 p.m. yesterday, two police vehicles tried to pull over a man driving a Chevy Impala near Trezevant and Lowell. But the driver did not stop, and police pursued the car in the direction of South Parkway and Mississippi Boulevard. At that intersection, the Impala crashed into other cars and then ran over a curb at St. Andrew A.M.E. Church. The driver and passenger jumped out of the car and attempted to run away.

The two Memphis police officers, who have not been identified, and an unidentified Shelby County Sheriff’s officer tried to chase then men. That’s when one of the men allegedly pointed a gun at the officers and was then shot and killed by police. The other man remains at large as of Thursday morning. One of the Memphis Police officers was white and the other black. The man who was shot was black.

Mayor Jim Strickland’s office released the following statement Wednesday afternoon: “I have been made aware of an officer-involved shooting today. However, TBI is the lead agency investigating. I am not at liberty to discuss the details of this case. This is a reminder of the dangers our officers face on a daily basis, even on something as routine as a traffic stop.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Wrestling With the Truth

And in the latest news: Iconic folksinger Richie Havens has died; one of the Oregon militants has dressed in a sumo outfit and made a video challenging Chris Christie to a wrestling match; and a New Yorker has built an igloo in Brooklyn and listed it as an Airbnb.

At least, those are among the first few stories on my Facebook feed today, the links posted by my friends and acquaintances. My job, should I choose to accept it, is to discern which of these stories is true.

These are the kinds of choices we online content consumers face these days. Crap is everywhere: memes, fantastical stories, listicle slideshows, spam emails, questionnaires that purport to show who your soulmate is or what character in Downton Abbey you’d be. Oh look, here’s a picture of Obama’s “college ID” that says he’s a foreign student. Fake. Here’s a Ted Cruz “quote” where he says he’s been chosen by God to be president. False. And here’s a report that says Donald Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose a supporter. True.

When reality is as crazy as fiction, how do you determine what’s actual news and what’s fake? It’s not easy, and it’s so tempting to quickly share juicy or incriminating or funny stuff that reinforces your views, without verifying whether it’s true. Making things even more difficult are the hundreds of websites that run outrageous lies under the guise of “satire.” It’s all clickbait, designed to get your IP address and sell advertising.

I just returned from a digital conference for altweeklies. It was held in San Francisco, a city so digitized that print newspapers are hard to find, even if you look for them. The local SF Weekly is corporate-owned, printed on low-quality paper, and with a typeface so small it’s nearly unreadable. It looks like a bad Best Buy circular.

Yet, elsewhere in the country, including Memphis and other mostly mid-size cities, the independently owned weeklies are still viable, still getting picked up and read, and still have a recognizable brand in their market. These papers are mostly concerned with growing their websites as assets that complement and enhance their brands and extend their market reach.

It’s no secret that getting breaking news via a print product is not the way of the future. It’s a big problem for daily newspapers, but it’s nothing new for weeklies. We’ve always come out once a week and have never had to worry about competing to deliver the hottest scoop. We’ve focused on the news behind the news, analysis, opinion, feature stories, entertainment, humor, and music. And we’ve always been relentlessly local in focus. If we break a news story, it’s usually on our website.

And it turns out, according to the experts at our conference, that that’s a good strategy. In-depth local coverage will become the survival path for any news organization not named The New York Times. Most of it will break digitally before appearing in print. The problem for dailies is, as it has been for years: How do you monetize the digital product at a level that pays for a decent-sized news staff?

The bottom line is that no matter what platform you use to get it, reliable, entertaining, and well-sourced local content is more important than ever. And we appreciate the readers and advertisers who help us make it happen in Memphis.

Oh, by the way, Richie Havens died in 2013. The militia sumo-wrestling video story appears to be true. And I don’t care enough about the Airbnb igloo story to pursue it.

Be careful out there.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Anomolisa

I’m a fan of awkward sex scenes. I’m not talking about the blue-backlit, Tom Cruise/Kelly McGillis sex scene set to “Take My Breath Away” in Top Gun, or the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman mirror sex scene in Eyes Wide Shut. Sure, I like watching Tom Cruise have sex as much as the next guy, but I prefer fumbling, awkward, embarrassing sex scenes. One of my favorites is in the otherwise unremarkable 1986 film The Big Easy, where Dennis Quaid struggles with his clothes, and Ellen Barkin exclaims, “I’m not very good at this!” Not only do those kinds of scenes feel more realistic (Have you ever had Berlin and a blue backlight on a first date?), but they also reveal more character than boobs. Would you believe that the best sex scene of the Oscar season is in a film nominated for Best Animated Feature?

It’s not hentai. It’s Anomalisa, written and co-directed by Charlie Kaufman, who won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Anomalisa was created using stop-motion animation of the type more usually associated with late ’60s Rankin/Bass holiday specials or Robot Chicken. Instead of Frosty the Snowman or pop culture-riffing slapstick, Kaufman and his co-director Duke Johnson have pushed the medium somewhere new.

You might forget you’re watching an animated film in Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa.

Based on an experimental play Kaufman wrote in 2005, Anomalisa‘s closest filmic companion is probably Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) is an author and customer service management consultant who is traveling from Los Angeles to Cincinnati to deliver a lecture. After an awkward exchange with his seat mate on the plane (voiced by Tom Noonan) and an excruciatingly long cab ride with a talkative cabby (also voiced by Tom Noonan), he settles into his fancy hotel room with a call to his wife (Tom Noonan) and son Henry (Tom Noonan).

You may be sensing a pattern in casting by now.

The only other character in the film not voiced by Tom Noonan is Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a woman from Akron who has traveled to Cincinnati to see Michael speak. By the time the two meet, Michael is in the midst of a full-blown existential crisis of the sort that, in films, always seem to occur in a luxury hotel. The two share a brief encounter (this is where the awkward sex happens) before Michael must give his speech the next day and decide whether or not to return to his wife.

Anomalisa‘s often funny script full of quiet yearning would have been quite easy to film in a conventional manner — indeed, there are countless indie films in the last decade that use the premise of the chance encounter that fills unmet needs in lonely lovers’ lives precisely because it’s an easy scenario to film. But by taking the story and lovingly creating everything in miniature — from the cotton-ball clouds the tiny model airplane flies through to the dingy Cincinnati cab to the anonymous luxury hotel suite — Kaufman and Johnson have conjured a great technical achievement. By the time the close-up of a martini glass stem in the hotel lobby bar happens, you might have forgotten you’re watching an animated film. But don’t worry, Kaufman will remind you with a dream sequence where he deconstructs everything, right down to the stop-motion puppets themselves.

Anomalisa is a worthy addition to Kaufman’s formidable filmography, which includes not only his collaborations with Spike Jonez, such as Being John Malkovich, but also Synecdoche, New York, which no less a critical mind than Roger Ebert called the best film of the 2000s. This is Kaufman’s first film in seven years, which is a big shame. When you hear the lament that superhero-sized blockbusters are pushing out more worthy mid- and small-budget movies, consider that little bits of genius such as Anomalisa is the sort of creative, serious work we’re missing out on. It’s not just the artists who are suffering.

Categories
Film/TV TV Features

The X-Files

In the premiere of the six-episode miniseries reboot of The X-Files, agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) meets Tad O’Malley (Joel McHale), a right-wing talk show host in the mold of Glenn Beck. As he is about to get into O’Malley’s limo, Mulder snidely remarks that paranoia has made the younger man rich. Back in the 1990s, conspiracy was a cottage industry Mulder ran out of the basement of the FBI’s Washington office. In 2016, it’s the founding sentiment of the Tea Party, and thus big business.

Organized political paranoia is not new to 2016, nor was it new to 1993, when Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) was assigned to keep tabs on Fox “Spooky” Mulder’s paranormal investigations. In his 1964 essay for Harper’s Magazine, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” historian Richard Hofstadter traced conspiratorial thinking back to the 1797 publication of a book called Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Government of Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

Hofstadter’s focus was on the right-wing, anti-communist paranoia that had birthed the House Un-American Activities Committee and the John Birch Society, whose crackpot beliefs about water fluoridation were immortalized by Sterling Hayden’s General Jack Ripper character in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. But in 1964, there was another strain of the paranoia virus spreading to the left. The Warren Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was released less than a month before “The Paranoid Style,” and people were already finding holes in its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. As the 1960s rolled on, with more assassinations, riots, war in Vietnam, and general social chaos, the radicalized left began to take what Hofstadter called “the characteristic paranoid leap into fantasy.”

The American cinema of paranoia began in 1962 with The Manchurian Candidate, where Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh uncover a Communist brainwashing plot. The spy genre jumped onboard the paranoia train in 1965 with The Ipcress File, whose dark vision contrasted with the swinging Bond films. In the 1970s, Warren Beatty starred in The Parallax View, Robert Redford went undercover in Three Days of the Condor, and Dustin Hoffman was tortured by secret Nazi Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man.

The 1970s were also the heyday of the paranormal, with public interest spiking for UFOs, cryptozoology, and the Bermuda Triangle. Spielberg drew on this rich vein of weirdness for his 1977 masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which defined the visual style of The X-Files.

The apex of the conspiracy genre came in 1991 with Oliver Stone’s epic JFK, which earned its Best Editing Academy Award in a breathless sequence where Donald Sutherland lays out the details of the conspiracy to kill the president to Kevin Costner. The same year, Duchovny portrayed an FBI agent on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

Chris Carter successfully synthesized those threads into The X-Files, whose nine-year run peaked in 1997 with almost 20 million weekly viewers. He pioneered the contemporary television formula of long-form storytelling sprinkled with stand-alone, “monster of the week” episodes. So in this age of retreads, it seems like a natural choice for a revival.

But the premiere of the six-episode miniseries reveals that the 1990s conspiracy formula doesn’t adapt well to the post-9/11 world. Duchovny remains his charming, if slightly wooden, self, and Anderson’s take on Scully is more confident and subtle. The leads’ onscreen chemistry is stronger than ever, but since Mulder and Scully have actually had a (possibly alien hybrid) baby together in the show’s later seasons, the Sam-and-Diane, will-they-or-won’t-they tension is missing from their relationship. Carter’s writing, on the other hand, is a lifeless attempt to graft 1990s paranoia onto today’s more hard-edged, legitimately scary right-wing worldview. The premiere’s attempt at emulating JFK‘s immortal Mr. X sequence falls flat. Even worse, Carter’s instincts for suspense seem to have failed him. It was years before Mulder saw a real UFO in the show’s original run, but he touches one in the first 30 minutes of the reboot.

Still, all the pieces are in place, and the miniseries’ third episode, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” written and directed by Glen Morgan, whose “José Chung’s From Outer Space” is the best episode of the original series, looks promising. But after the lackluster premiere, the miniseries may only be satisfying to those who want to believe.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

“Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage” at the Orpheum

CREDIT: Christie Goodwin

Whether you’re a Trekkie or not, chances are you can name at least a few of the major crew members who’ve served aboard the starship Enterprise over the past five decades. Everybody knows Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and the gang, but some of the groundbreaking sci-fi series’ biggest heroes remain largely unsung: the composers. “Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage,” a touring multi-media experience featuring a full symphony orchestra, docks at the Orpheum Theatre this week to celebrate 50 years of going boldly where no man has gone before while underscoring the role music has played in defining the films and TV shows.

Christie Goodwin

Final front-ear

Composers like Gerald Fried and Sol Kaplan had very little time to score the original Trek episodes. They would often create original sounds for up to 30 minutes of footage a week and score as many as two episodes in a month. Haste called for broad strokes, and, as Star Trek historian Jeff Bond has noted, the result was theatrical, “very expressive and thematic.” It was all in accordance with the wishes of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who told title theme composer Alexander Courage that he wasn’t interested in a bunch of space age-sounding bloops and bleeps. He wanted big romantic orchestrations like you might find accompanying an Errol Flynn swashbuckler like Captain Blood.

“The Ultimate Voyage” concert considers Trek‘s music in and out of its original context. Many of the pieces will accompany video montages with themes like “2 B Human,” “Close Bonds in Space,” “50 Years of Life Forms,” and a tribute to Leonard Nimoy’s Spock titled “Always Will Be.”

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Memphis Symphony Chorus: Unsung Heroes

CREDIT: Courtesy of Memphis Symphony Orchestra

From rock-and-roll and soul, to R&B and hip-hop, there’s no doubt Memphis is one of the world’s premier music cities. As Memphis music has conquered the world over the last five decades, there has been a group that has performed in front of untold thousands of people, but who have largely flown under the radar of most Memphians: the Memphis Symphony Chorus.

The musicians who make up the chorus are mostly ordinary people with day jobs, families, and normal worries. But when they line up behind the musicians of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in the Cannon Center or at Sunset Symphony, they become something greater. “You’ve got 100 people coming together to make something ephemeral and beautiful,” alto Terron Perk says. “It goes back through the centuries. It’s a continuity of humanity and art that is really exciting to be a part of.”

Jan Carnall, a teacher turned full-time artist who has served as the group’s historian for the last few years, says the chorus was started in 1965 to allow the symphony to take on a wider range of musical works. “There was a lot of interest among church choirs to form one large chorus,” she says.

That first year, the chorus had two performances: A Rodgers and Hammerstein medley in the summer, and Leroy Anderson’s “Suite of Carols” at two holiday performances.

Baritone Irvine Cherry is one of the group’s longest-serving members, having joined the chorus 45 years ago. “My wife got me involved. I got roped in. When I started out, we were rehearsing in the choir loft at Second Presbyterian Church.”

For the chorus’ 50th anniversary, Carnall researched the group’s history, compiling hundreds of newspaper clippings, snapshots, and memorabilia into four thick scrapbooks full of headlines like “SYMPHONY, CHORUSES SOAR TO GLORY.”

“I can’t say enough about how important [the chorus] is to the city,” Carnall says.

Courtesy of Memphis Symphony Orchestra

The chorus performs dozens of works every year, but some stick in the singers’ memories, such as the infamous 1996 performance of Beethoven’s Missa somlemnis. “Beethoven’s Mass [in D major] was the toughest thing I’ve ever done,” Cherry says.

“Beethoven is one of my favorite composers,” Carnall says. “But he does not take kindly to voices! He always composes quite difficult pieces. He was very temperamental.”

The Missa solmenis requires sopranos like Carnall to sing at the top of their range for extended periods. “It was quite a monumental piece. It was quite difficult. I almost quit. But I said, you know, I am not a quitter! I can learn from this!” The chorus commemorated the grueling performance with buttons that read “I SURVIVED MISSA SOLMENIS 96″.

For chorus members like Cherry, these are the kinds of challenges that keep them coming back, year after year. “I just enjoy it tremendously,” he says. “I like to sing. That’s what it amounts to.”

The chorus’ founding director was Sara Beth Causey. “She auditioned me when I came to the chorus in the ’70s,” Carnall says. “I remember her as being a very disciplined person. She really expected a lot out of the chorus.”

In 1988, the baton passed to Larry Edwards. “I came to Memphis to be the director of choral activities at the University of Memphis Rudi E. Scheidt school of music,” he says. “At the end of my first year teaching here, I got a call from the executive director asking if I was interested in the Symphony Chorus position, should it ever come open. I came down here as a young faculty member, and committed my career to working in the community of Memphis. I think a big part of my longevity here is due to the Symphony Chorus.”

Edwards’ students often sing alongside the chorus. “I enjoy teaching at the university level. I believe in collaboration in the arts, so both positions here have been really helpful to build up an interesting culture of choral music. Having my young people sing alongside these passionate volunteers is a great thing for my students, and I think it’s a really good thing for the Symphony Chorus to collaborate with this group of really talented singers who come here to learn music.”

“The human voice is the oldest of instruments,” Davis says. “The tradition of getting voices together to sing is a long one, going back hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s my position that most instruments aspire to use the sound of the human voice as their litmus test. Ideas of vibrato, for example, come out of the vocal tradition. I know in the studios here, the instrumental faculty encourage their trumpet players, their violin players, to sing. They’ll sing a line, and then say that’s what we want to have happen to your instrument. I think it’s the foundation of all music-making.”

To lead the chorus, Edwards works closely with Lisa Mendel, who is an associate professor of audiology at the University of Memphis. Mendel first tried out for the chorus in 1990. “I was looking for an outlet for my minimal musical skills at the time. In a few years, I was asked to be on the board. A few years after that, I was asked to be president, and I’ve been president ever since. It’s been a great opportunity.”

Keeping so many volunteers engaged in the demanding task of transforming notes on a page into music takes work, Mendel says. “We consider ourselves a professional chorus, even though we’re not paid. Our payment is the performance — and even the rehearsals. On some performance weeks, we practice every night. It’s quite a sacrifice for busy working people. They are so drawn to the love of singing and the love of performing. There’s so much that brings us together.”

Mendel says meticulous preparation is the key to sustaining a volunteer organization over the long term. “I think having a structure helps a lot. If people come to a rehearsal, and it’s chaotic … the music’s not ready, the conductor is not there … it’s difficult for people. But when you walk through our door, there’s a structure. You know what’s going to happen. You know where things are.”

Laura Jean Hocking

Liz Parsons rehearses the altos

Edwards says the rehearsals at the Balmoral Presbyterian Church at Quince and Kirby are just as important to group cohesion as the performances at the Cannon Center. “The process has to be enjoyable and rewarding. They have to come and leave their stressful jobs and busy lives and focus on doing something totally different and still be challenged and pushed. They get to experience a different side of life. I’ve done this for almost 30 years, and I enjoy watching it change the lives of people who come out every Monday night.”

Chorus members come from all walks of life and represent all levels of musical accomplishment. Alto Kelley Smith has a degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and, since the 1970s, has sang professionally alongside such luminaries as Eartha Kitt on Broadway, and even at Disney World. “You name it, I did it,” she says. “I feel that Dr. Edwards, our music director — when it comes to choral music, they simply don’t get any better. It’s an honor for me to sit under his tutelage every Monday night. He understands what’s written on the page and what isn’t. It takes that kind of musical intelligence to get that over to the singers in order for the music to be done right. I’m forever learning. I never go into it thinking, I got this.”

Laura Jean Hocking

Music teachers Samantha Wilson and Joseph Powell

Samantha Wilson and Joseph Powell are getting married on June 3rd. They are both choir directors; she at Treadwell Middle School, he at White Station High School. “You run the music really quickly, and perform it. I think that’s my favorite part: We go through so much music in a short amount of time,” Wilson says.

“It’s great for people like us, who are musicians as our day job,” Powell says. “It’s great for people who have never done anything like this before who enjoy singing, because it’s a great mix of both worlds. You have the amateurs who just love it, and you have people who take it really seriously, because it’s their thing. To be able to bring that diverse group of people together and achieve a great sound is one of the great things about this group. It’s such a wide range of backgrounds and people.”

Shane Rasner’s day job is as a dentist, but the chorus fills an important need. “I can’t imagine my life without music. It’s a great opportunity to live in a city where they have a symphony and a chorus. The Mozart Requiem we did after 9/11 was very powerful. I’ll never forget that.”

Laura Jean Hocking

50th Anniversary Concert on Friday

The Mozart Requiem, a favorite with both fans and musicians, was also the first piece Cindy Armistead, administrator for Campbell Clinic Surgery Center, performed with the group. “I was just overwhelmed by the talent surrounding me, not just vocally, but the instrumentalists up on the stage. It was incredible,” she recalls. “I am not the prepared musician most of these people are. I was a science major. My brother was a member of the chorus, and he told me I should audition. I’ve never auditioned for anything in my life! It was quite the eye-opener for me. It was intimidating initially, but everyone is so open and so into teaching. We all want to do our best. I look forward to coming, just to learn.”

Jennie Latta, a bankruptcy judge and mother of six, has sung with the chorus for 11 years. “I don’t like to watch football or baseball. I like to play,” she says. “It’s the same with music. I love to go to concerts, but I would much rather be involved in it myself.”

Latta says the diversity of musical experience keeps her coming back. “When we celebrated our 40th anniversary, we did a big show at First Congo. We ringed the room, and sang an a cappella piece, and it was astonishing. The idea that that many people could sing together separated by that much space is awesome. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. Singing with church choirs, you don’t get to push the envelope.”

Dr. Edwards and the Symphony’s staff and conductors sometimes plan out a season’s music as much as 18 months in advance. But then the two groups go their separate ways. “They forget about us,” he says, until the final rehearsals about a week before a performance, when he turns the chorus over to the conductor. “At 7:30, there’s a trained chorus on the stage ready to merge with a group of professional instrumentalists.”

Mendel says, “I think what’s interesting is that many of the performances that we do, we’re performing under a different conductor. So one of Larry’s many skills is teaching us music from not only from a musicality standpoint, but he also teaches us to be flexible, so when we get with a different conductor who might take a phrase differently from what Larry has taught us, we can change quickly and work with him. Singing in different genres, singing with different conductors, singing in different venues just add to the versatility and flexibility of our group.”

“People ask what it’s like to work so hard on a piece of music, and put your heart and soul into the preparation of it, and then I sit in the balcony. I turn the performance over to someone else,” Edwards says. “Sometimes I don’t breathe, but my reward is at the end of the piece: seeing the faces of the chorus and hearing the cheers of the audience.”

For the last three years, Edwards has turned his chorus over to MSO conductor Mei-Ann Chen. “She’s a very demanding artist,” he says. “But in our 50th anniversary season, she worked really hard to highlight the chorus.”

“[Chen] is a fantastic musician,” Perk says. “She is also a cat wrangler who knows how to get the best out of her musicians. The chorus would go over a cliff for Mei-Ann Chen.”

Chen says the feeling is mutual. “These are some of the best people in Memphis. I really treasure what we have done together onstage. I will always remember the incredible trust we placed in each other. When I was coming in new, they embraced me.”

During the Memphis Symphony’s recent financial crisis, Chen says she was moved that one of our chorus members contributed $100,000. “That’s a story you don’t hear often,” she says. “The dedication and appreciation between the two organizations.”

The chorus holds auditions for new members in August and January. Mary Seratt, a retired library administrator who has sung with the chorus for over 20 years, recalls how she got up the nerve to try out. “I was facing some medical tests. The outcome could have been pretty crummy, so I did things like … I rode roller coasters. I’d always wanted to sing with this bunch, because I’m a symphony supporter. I thought, what’s the worst that could happen? I’m going to die. I should try out. And I made it. And lo and behold, I didn’t die!”

Courtesy of Memphis Symphony Orchestra

Full symphony, chorus, and audience from the Holiday Pops show

For those who are considering auditioning, Seratt says “Do it. Swallow your fear. But be prepared — you’re going to have to sight read. You might have a lovely voice, and your mommy thinks you’re a great singer, but if you’re semi-professional, can read music, take direction, and work well with others, come with us.”

On February 5th, the Memphis Symphony Chorus will celebrate its 50th anniversary. “We’re doing this concert in the Immaculate Conception cathedral. What a treasure they are to the artistic community here in Memphis,” Edwards says. “They have an open arms policy in allowing their space to be used for artistic events, and they have been just amazing. I’ve chosen literature that will work especially well in this space. There’s a three-second reverb in there! We call it a stand-alone concert. It’s going to be mostly a cappella.

“It’s an opportunity to work with the chorus on a different level of finesse than when we’re working with the orchestra. I think the Symphony Chorus is growing into a chorus that is comfortable working both with or without the orchestra. That’s been an exciting journey that we’ve taken, and it’s been an exciting journey for the symphony audience. That’s our benchmark. It’s not that we sometimes do a great job. It’s that we always do a great job.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Local Show Roundup

CREDIT: Windy Mayes Sibberson

Local songwriter Lisa Mac will premiere her debut video for “Hurricane” this Friday at Studio688. Produced by Elliott Ives, a guitarist who has played with Justin Timberlake, “Hurricane” kicks off a productive spurt for Mac. The song is one of two singles (with music videos) that will be released before her debut EP drops later this year. Mixing elements of blues and hip-hop, Mac creates futuristic pop music with Ives that is more than likely far removed from the music she used to create in church.

Her song “Get Away,” featuring Project Pat, is especially interesting and seems to be as radio-ready as local pop music gets. Mac describes her relationship with producer/guitarist Ives as an “underlying vibe.” “We just have something in common,” Mac says. “He gets me — he gets exactly what I want. I want to surprise people, confuse them a little bit. Really, I write blues songs. They’re relatable and real and coming from a real place. But the sound is pop with hip-hop and rap influences. I want to catch people off guard.” Mac will be performing at the video premiere.

Lisa Mac, Friday January 29th at Studio688, donations are suggested.

Fresh off the release of a brand new album recorded with Jack Oblivian by Doug Easley, the Sheiks continue their musical onslaught with a show at the Lamplighter. While Sheiks guitarist Keith Cooper has been busy recording the second NOTS album and a new album for Time, his band has found time to keep their shows at an all-time high, recently performing at the “Memphis Does Bowie” benefit. Speaking of the “Memphis Does Bowie” benefit, the Sheiks’ drummer Graham Winchester organized the event in almost no time, and the money raised is reportedly over $20,000, all of which will go to St. Jude. Not bad, Mr. Winchester. Not bad at all.

Also on the show is Duma, a band that features local artist Langston Tayloe and Quinton-JeVon Lee, the recording artist known as RPLD GHSTS and frequent Cities Aviv collaborator. While the Sheiks and Duma probably have very little in common musically,

shows at the Lamplighter have been well-attended, and, as this show is free, there’s really no reason not to check it out.

Sheiks and Duma, Friday, January 29th at the Lamplighter, 11 p.m. Free

Windy Mayes Sibberson

Choke Chains

Choke Chains hail from different cities in Michigan, but their Memphis connections run deep, mostly due to Lindsay McConney being involved in No Bails, a band that played GonerFest and saw a release on the short-lived local label Orgone Toilet. While No Bails is still kicking, McConney now spends her time in Choke Chains alongside former Dirtbombs and Bantam Rooster member Thomas Potter.

Choke Chains recorded half of their debut album at Rocket Science Audio last year, and they are set to play the first Rocket Science Audio Variety Show of the year this Thursday with Richard James and the Special Riders. The main event goes down on Saturday, however, when Choke Chains finish their Memphis victory lap with a performance at Murphy’s with Manateees, Time, and Bloody Show (from Ohio).

To celebrate the release of their new album, Choke Chains enlisted Kevin Corrigan to appear in their video for “Safe Word.” You might remember Corrigan from the movies The Departed, Goodfellas, and Buffalo 66. According to Thomas, the two met when Corrigan attended a Dirtbombs show in Los Angeles, and they vowed to someday work together. That dream came true with the extremely bloody music video mentioned before. It’s worth checking out if you’ve got the stomach for it.

Choke Chains, Manateees, Bloody Show, Time, Saturday, January 30th at Murphy’s 9:30 p.m. $5

Lastly, the local hardcore band Thief’s Hand is playing a show at the Hi-Tone on Tuesday, February 2nd, with Syracuse hardcore band Bleak and local shredders Creux. Thief’s Hand recently opened for Power Trip at Murphy’s, and musically they sit somewhere between heavy hitters like Hatebreed and Integrity. Creux are also a newish band on the hardcore/metalcore circuit, and their EP Con Artist is worth a listen. If either local band sounds like your cup of tea, then you’ll also enjoy Bleak, whose name isn’t exactly a fair representation of their fast and heavy music. Bleak, Thief’s Hand, Creux, Tuesday February 2nd at the Hi-Tone, 8 p.m. $7

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Willy Bearden events

Willy Bearden keeps busy. In the next week, the author, filmmaker, and regional historian will address a book club at Elmwood Cemetery and share tips for would-be documentarians in Collierville. He discusses these two events while putting finishing touches on a new book about Elmwood Cemetery. “The new book focuses a lot on the scoundrels and weirdness,” he says. “Like Elvis’ cook who perfected the peanut butter and ‘nanner sandwich. And there are a lot of musicians buried at Elmwood too: Sid Selvidge, Jimmie Lunceford, one of the guys in the Mad Lads, and Herman Frank Arnold who wrote the music for ‘Dixie.'”

Bearden’s given many tours at Elmwood, and Wednesday, February 3rd, he’ll share excerpts from Cotton: From Southern Fields to the Memphis Market with the cemetery’s Read in Peace Book Club. Before that, on Thursday, Jan. 28th, he’ll visit Collierville’s Morton Museum for a Lunch n’ Learn.

Documentarian extraordinaire

“Lots of people want to know where I’ve found the stuff I use in my films and how I pull it all together,” Bearden says. “But I also tell folks, ‘You can do this.’ It’s very easy to pull your own story together, especially with everybody having a camera in their pockets.

“I always show a photograph that was taken of Main Street in 1892,” Bearden says. “The thing that gets me: Whoever took this photograph had to lug this big camera around. He had to put it on a tripod. It was expensive to make a photograph back then and very difficult to get the exposure right. And I know, whoever that guy was, he had a buddy who was standing right there by him saying, ‘Man, why in the world are you taking this picture of something anybody can see?’ Well, on that day, anybody could see it. But 100 years later — because some dude dragged his camera down to Main Street, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, look at that!'”