Flyer Podcast: Pump Track, Angry at Angry Birds, The Commercial Appeal, More
This week: pump track, Angry Birds, Hamlet is Dead, housing cuts, hardcore triathlete, transgender bathroom app, The Commercial Appeal, Jerry Lawler’s new restaurant, and much more.
Music this week is “Loneliness is Golden” by Chickasaw Mound
Benjamin Dickinson directs and acts in Creative Control
As The Angry Birds Movie is suicide flapping its way into theaters, it’s probably time to talk about the utter failure of twenty-first century filmmaking to come to terms with the smartphone age. Part of the problem is that smartphone fun stuff, like pleasantly stupid physics games, tweaks a different part of the brain than does a series of well-composed moving images strung together to create a narrative. Movies are meant to invoke dreams, while games involve playing on basic motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Another part of it is that a person using a smartphone just isn’t very cinematic. While it may feel like there’s a lot going on in our heads when we’re glued to our iPhones, from the outside, it just looks like we’re standing there with our heads down. The social and psychological effects of ubiquitous interconnectedness are ripe fodder for fiction, but it’s really hard to represent these things onscreen. Even the most basic problem of how to show the contents of a text message onscreen still doesn’t have a decent solution. To repurpose a phrase normally applied to music criticism, making movies about the internet is like tap-dancing about architecture.
Dan Gill as Wim (foreground)
The works that have actually gotten it right are few and far between. There’s Spike Jones’ 2013 Her, which is in the running for best film of the decade, defaulting to a future where voice commands control everything, thus playing to the strength of film. That same year, Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess tackled the psychology of the age of computing by going back to its beginnings in the early 1980s, and using period-appropriate tube video cameras to create a gloriously gooey, black-and-white mess onscreen. Director Benjamin Dickinson’s new film Creative Control bears the clear marks of both of his successful predecessors, and brings plenty of new ideas along to the party.
Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra creates some eye-popping images.
Dickinson himself stars as David, an ad exec in a near-future Brooklyn that’s pretty much like present-day Brooklyn, only more so. The phones now look like transparent blocks of Lexan, and the interfaces are totally Minority Report, but the scene is still full of hard-partying young go-getters whose income level and coolness seem correlated in some way obscure to outsiders. His live-in girlfriend is Juliette (Nora Zehetner), a beautiful yoga instructor who is having a crisis of namaste, as she begins to see the cranky, self-serving interiors behind her co-worker’s passive-aggressively peaceful exteriors.
Alexia Rasmussen as Sophie
But David takes little notice of his relationship fraying at the seams, because he’s too busy popping stylishly pill-pressed research chemicals with his photographer buddy Wim (Dan Gill), who apparently lives on the set of Antonioni’s Blow-Up. But things are going pretty good for him at work: He’s been given full creative control to create the campaign for his ad agency’s newest and biggest client, Augmenta, which is rolling out new glasses with onboard augmented reality, overlaying information displays on top of the images of its user’s real world. The star of his revolutionary new augmented reality ad campaign is musician/comedian Reggie Watts, playing his own weird self, because if Reggie Watts didn’t exist, he would have to be invented.
But just as he’s getting used to the new augmented reality glasses, he develops a crush on one of Wat’s many girlfriends, Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), and soon he is channeling his forbidden urges into building a simulation of Sophie inside the virtual world of his glasses. The pills, booze, coke, and addictive virtual worlds erode David’s consciousness, and the lines between fantasy and reality blur for him until he—and we—aren’t sure whether he’s having an affair or not.
Virtual Reggie Watts would have to be invented if he didn’t already exist.
Dickinson and his cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra’s black and white images reference Computer Chess, but where Bujalski wanted to muddy a sharp reality, Creative Control wants to make things hyper-real. The color shading drifts subtly from high contrast and desaturated to different muted bitonal schemes that mirror the mood they’re trying to set. With references to Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove, Dickinson sometimes seems to be trying to remake all of his favorite Kubrick films at once. Creative Control is a parade of one striking image after another, but almost everything is done in-camera, with the CGI limited to the augmented reality information layer.
The darkly hilarious Creative Control has too many ideas and too many homages to stuff into 90 minutes, but Dickinson and his collaborators are clearly having a great time trying. The movie sputtered in theatrical release, but it was quickly snatched up by Amazon and is now being featured on their streaming video service. Dickinson may be too in thrall of his influences now, but he is a talent to watch, and Creative Control is unlike anything else you’ll see this year.
Brandon Dill
The main floor of the MidSouth Coliseum.
City officials say they will allow citizen groups to inspect the Mid-South Coliseum to evaluate its potential for future use.
Mayor Jim Strickland announced in a Friday news release that his administration will allow groups, presumably like the grassroots Coliseum Coalition, access to the building with qualified experts like architects, engineers, and specialized consultants.
The inspection period will run for five day from Monday, June 6 to Friday, June 10. Groups can sign up for two, four-hour blocks of time each day during the week for a total of 10 blocks. Requests for access must be made to city hall by Friday, May 27. The tours will be escorted by city officials.
The announcement is the first public move on any plan for the Coliseum since last year. Former Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipscomb had long planned to raze the building to make way for a youth sports complex at the MidSouth Fairgrounds.
All of those plans have seemingly been tabled since Lipscomb was fired from his position last year in the wake of a rape scandal.
For more information on the tours, contact Livia Carter in the Division of Housing and Community Development, at (901) 636-7341 or at livia.carter@memphistn.gov.
Davin Clemons
Memphis Police officer Davin Clemons, a TACT officer who serves as the department’s LGBTQ liaison, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department (MPD) alleging discrimination based on his sexual orientation, his disability, and his religion.
He’s being represented by attorney Maureen Holland, the local attorney who was involved in the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court case that led to same-sex marriage being legalized across the country.
MPD’s LGBTQ liaison role was re-started in 2014 after a lull in participation, and Clemons was the first MPD officer named to the role after its re-launch. In that role, he’s responsible for helping to build trust between the LGBTQ community and the police department. But Clemons alleges that role has backfired, causing some superior officers to discriminate against him because he is gay.
After being appointed as liaison in August 2014, Clemons claims he was harassed, reprimanded, and humiliated by other officers.
Much of the discrimination came from an officer named as Lt. Hulsey in the lawsuit. One incident says Hulsey approached Clemons on Beale on July 4th, 2014, and “yelled and degraded Officer Clemons in front of thousands of citizens at a Fourth of July event. … Officer Clemons believes that Lt. Hulsey engaged in this behavior due to sexual stereotypes and, in particular, a belief that Officer Clemons was not sufficiently masculine, was too feminine, or due to a belief that men should only date women, not other men.”
Clemons also claims he has been discriminated against for a medical condition. Clemons has been diagnosed with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a condition that causes serious breakouts on the face after shaving, and his doctor has recommended that he not shave. He had a “shaving profile” on file with MPD, which was supposed to prevent the MPD from forcing him to shave his facial hair (a requirement of most officers). Clemons has said superior officers have harassed him and forced him to shave, despite his doctor’s orders.
Additionally, Clemons claims discrimination based on his religion. Clemons and his partner Darnell Gooch (also a Memphis police officer) founded Cathedral of Praise Church of Memphis, an LGBTQ-inclusive church. Clemons claims he’d asked off for a religious observance on August 13th, 2014, and he’d been granted the day off by a Lt. Jenkins, but the lawsuit says Hulsey refused to remove Clemons from an overtime detail.
Reads the lawsuit: “This incident lead to a heated verbal disagreement between Officer Clemons and Lt. Hulsey whereby Lt. Hulsey was yelling and screaming and pointing his finger at Officer Clemons and saying that he (Clemons) is going to work the mandated overtime. Officer Clemons objected to working a voluntary overtime on a mandatory basis. Officer Clemons did not yell or scream at Lt. Hulsey in voicing his disagreement. Officer Clemons requested a witness or union representative and Lt. Hulsey denied it. … Officer Clemons was charged with insubordination and disobedience of an order and originally given a 20-day suspension.”
At another time, Clemons, who has a leadership role in his church, claimed Hulsey called him a “false prophet” and that Clemons’ faith “is not to be taken seriously because Officer Clemons is gay.”
“The purpose of the LGBTQ liaisons is to improve trust and relationships, but this is not possible if the appointed Memphis Police LGBTQ liaison is being discriminated against, harassed, and retaliated against due to his participation as a LGBTQ liaison and due to his sex, religion, and disability,” reads the lawsuit.
The suit claims the alleged discrimination against Clemons is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Clemons is seeking at least $300,000 in compensatory damages and losses, back pay, lost benefits, and other economic losses. He would also like the officers named in the suit to receive training to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Holland released the following statement from Clemons: “I’m proud to be a police officer for the MPD. I do, however, want to be treated fairly on the job. I believe that all employees should be treated fairly, based on the quality of their work, not on their sexual orientation, religious beliefs, disability, race, color, ethnicity or any other legally protected characteristic. The purpose of this suit is to protect the right of city employees to fair and nondiscriminatory treatment. I am a committed police officer and want to continue my work without interference and discrimination.”
At a press conference introducing the new Memphis Animal Services director Friday afternoon, Mayor Jim Strickland said he could not comment on Clemons’ lawsuit.
Read the lawsuit here:
[pdf-1]
Mayor Jim Strickland and MAS Director Alexis Pugh
Both Community Action for Animals and S.O.S. Memphis (Save Our Shelter) expressed their approval for Mayor Jim Strickland’s appointment of Alexis Pugh to run Memphis Animal Services (MAS). Strickland introduced Pugh in a press conference at MAS Friday afternoon.
Pugh served as the executive director of Mid-South Spay & Neuter Services, a low-cost spray/neuter clinic, for the past year. She’ll be replacing former MAS director James Rogers, who was fired in December as Strickland reorganized his personnel after taking office.
“Save Our Shelter Memphis is very supportive of Mayor Strickland’s decision to appoint Ms. Pugh to the director of MAS,” said Sylvia Cox with S.O.S. “She has great experience. She’s local. She knows the history of MAS, and she understands those issues and what’s been going on, which gives her a better perspective on how to make changes more quickly than someone who may have come in from out of town.”
Community Action for Animals released a statement praising Pugh as “a trained, progressive, compassionate, and intelligent director, a director who loves animals and is aware of the pros and cons of our animal services, and who will hold the staff accountable, support, and encourage spay/neuter, properly assess the animals, and make certain euthanasia, when needed, is performed humanely.”
Pugh identifies herself as “an animal advocate and an animal lover.” She has three rescue dogs, and she’s fostered many others.
Pugh is taking on a shelter that’s been widely criticized over the years for its high euthanasia rate. Although Rogers managed to get pet adoption numbers up and euthanasia numbers down during his tenure, his critics argued that animal intake rates dropped, and they contended that was the real reason for lower euthanasia rates. Pugh said she will focus on ensuring that the field officers — those charged with picking up stray animals, responding to calls, and investigating cruelty — are doing their jobs.
“I think there will be an emphasis on every aspect of operation and certainly field officers are no exception to that,” Pugh said at the Friday press conference. “We’re going to expect them to perform their jobs to the performance level that they can just like everyone else here. And if that means that we need to increase the number of calls they’re responding to, if we need to monitor the number of calls they’re responding to, if we need to look more closely at how they’re handling those cases and if they’re taking cases to court, all of those are parts of their job that we’re going to be reviewing just like every other staff member here. If your job description identifies something as part of your role, you’re going to be held to that.”
Also, under Roger’s administration, a number of “clerical errors” led to several animals being mistakenly put down. Pugh said she has a goal of finding ways to improve processes at MAS to prevent accidental deaths.
“I know there’s an excellent software program in place here, but until I start and get in, I’m not going to know where those challenges lie from a logistics and administration standpoint, but if we’re finding there are processes that are causing errors to be made, then my goal will be to find ways to improve those processes so my staff has clear direction on how to do their job and how to successfully do it without clerical errors causing the loss of lives,” Pugh said.
Cox urged animal advocates to be patient with Pugh and give her time to turn the shelter around.
“SOS encourages all animal advocates to give her the time and the opportunity to get started, to do the research she was discussing, to learn what goes on, and to analyze that and come up the positive changes that are needed to be made,” Cox said. “That will take time. It doesn’t happen over night.”
Katie McWeeney Powell
Frozen drinks at Celtic
• Huey’s is celebrating National Burger Day Willy Wonka-ish style. On Saturday, May 28th, at all locations, guests whose burgers are adorned with a gold frill pick get their meal for free.
• Backyard Burgers on Goodman Road in Southaven is holding a burger-making contest on Monday, May 23rd, 4-6 p.m. Notable citizens make the burgers, and then customers vote on their favorites via a donation to No Kid Hungry.
• Celtic Crossing just unveiled two new frozen drinks: Frozen Irish Coffee with ice cream, Irish whiskey coffee liqueur, and whipping cream; and the Redbull slushy with Red Bull, raspberry vodka, triple sec, and orange juice.
• Saddle Creek announced earlier this morning that Sur La Table, a very nice kitchenwares store, is opening in 2017.
And now for a photo-dump …
Donuts from the Donut Factory
Upside-down Pineapple Cake from the Sweet Cake Shop, the new place upstairs at Maciel’s. There’s a bar up there too, that’s set to open soon.
A crown at King Jerry Lawler’s Hall of Fame Bar & Grille. Lots to see here, folks.
The Chocoholic boozy shake at the Arcade, $7 during happy hour
Alexis Pugh
Alexis Pugh has been named the new director of Memphis Animal Services (MAS) , according to a Facebook update from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland.
Pugh served as the executive director of Mid-South Spay & Neuter Services, a low-cost spray/neuter clinic, for the past year. She’ll be replacing former MAS director James Rogers, who was fired in December as Strickland reorganized his personnel after taking office. Although Rogers managed to get pet adoption numbers up and euthanasia numbers down during his tenure, his critics argued that animal intake rates also dropped while he was in charge, which they contended was the real reason for lower euthanasia rates. A number of “clerical errors,” as Rogers called them, during his time there led to several animals being mistakenly put down.
At Mid-South Spay & Neuter Services, Pugh was responsible for overseeing and managing all clinic operations. And during her time there, the organization increased surgical productivity by 11 percent and generated more than $50,000 in new donor and grant-funding, according to Strickland. Before serving in that role, Pugh was the executive director of the Humane Society of Memphis & Shelby County.
Pugh will start her new position next month. She will report directly to city Chief Operating Officer Doug McGowen. Previously, the MAS director reported to the director of the Division of Parks and Neighborhoods.
The 2008 financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession will be remembered as the moment capitalism lost the mantle of inevitability that had kept the philosophy beyond questioning since the end of the Cold War. The financial crisis meant millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, and their dignity, and very few people really understood why. The promise of the meritocracy was that if you got a good education and worked hard, you would be rewarded with, if not always material gain commensurate with your abilities, at least stability and freedom from want. In the financial crisis, normal people who worked hard and followed the rules got punished because bankers who reward themselves hundreds of millions of dollars each year for their stewardship of the sacred markets failed to appease the dark gods of capital. I’m sure there are many wonks out there who have very good explanations for what happened, but from the ground level, it was as invisible and mysterious as black magic.
Even now, two Obama terms later, the question “Why did that have to happen?” still lingers in the American consciousness. It’s behind both the rise of Bernie Sanders and, perversely, Donald Trump, and it’s the question on the mind of Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) as he sneaks into the studios of the Financial News Network with a pair of suicide bomb vests and an automatic pistol. Neither one of the vests are for him. They’re intended for the host of the FNN show Money Monster, Lee Gates (George Clooney) and the owner of Ibis Global Capital, Walt Camby (Dominic West), who is the scheduled guest on today’s show. Kyle lost all of his money on a “safe” investment in Ibis recommended by Gates, and now he wants to know why.
Gates is a flamboyant cable host in the mold of CNBC’s Jim Cramer. He opens every show by dancing his way into the studio with a couple of fly girls, before dispensing the latest in financial news and daily segments like “Stock Pick of the Millennium.” Gates is the kind of guy who sets a producer named Ron (Christopher Denham) off to get a tip on the FDA approval of an erectile disfunction cream, then orders Ron to try it out to see if he should recommend it on the air.
And that’s the kind of movie Money Monster is: boner cream jokes are mixed in with serious and complex economic subject matter. There’s an absurdist comedy lurking deep inside Jodie Foster’s would-be hostage thriller, giving it the same kind of schizophrenic tone as the classic film it was clearly inspired by: Network. Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 masterpiece walks the line between office romance and black-as-coal satire, but it’s the latter parts that will always live in cinematic history because they quickly came true. If anything, Money Monster is better at balancing its two competing halves, largely because of the charisma of Clooney and Julia Roberts, who plays Patty, Gates’ long-suffering producer who talks him through the hostage situation via in-ear monitor. Foster is clearly an actor’s director, as everyone gives lively performances. Roberts is tighter and more engaged than in any film in recent memory. O’Connell is sympathetic and a little dim, and Clooney walks his buffoonish anchor through the stages of fear into a heightened self-awareness and eventually a kind of heroism.
Foster and company seem to delight in putting up a cliche solution to the intractable problem of a live TV hostage situation and then shooting them down. As it wears on, it veers too far into allegory and away from the credible, but it’s still a worthy and surprising ride, and at a taut 98 minutes, it never outstays its welcome.
The Marshall Tucker Band play the New Daisy on Friday, May 20th.
Friday, May 20th
The Gloryholes, Shame Finger, HEELs, 8 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.
Marshall Tucker Band, Black Oak Arkansas, 8 p.m. at the New Daisy, $25-$30.
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF
Radio Ghost, 10 p.m. at the Cove, $5.
Saturday, May 21st.
Slippery When Wet: Bon Jovi Tribute, 8 p.m. at the New Daisy,
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF (6)
Dreams For Dogs: Memphis & Tunica Humane Societies Benefit, 8 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF (2)
Daddy Mack Blues Band, 8 p.m. at the Center For Southern Folklore, $5.
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF (3)
John Nemeth, 10:00 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF (7)
Chickasaw Mound, 10:30 p.m.at Bar DKDC, $7.
Sunday, May 22nd.
Strong Martian, China Gate, Turtle Island, 8 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $5
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF (4)
NF, Social Club, 8 p.m. at the New Daisy, $18-$40.
Weekend Roundup 63: Marshall Tucker Band, Chickasaw Mound, NF (5)
The Memphis Zoological Society has finally released an economic impact study performed jointly by the Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research and the Center for Manpower Studies at the University of Memphis.
The study, hinted at and excerpted from by zoo spokespersons on earlier occasions, was made public last Friday (the 13th). Whether the legendary symbology of that date comes into play is as yet unknown. What is fairly certain, however, is that the study will not resolve the ongoing dispute between adherents of the Overton Park Greensward, on one hand, and members of the zoo establishment on the other.
The source of that dispute, which has mostly to do with allowing zoo visitors to park their cars on the Greensward, is no secret. It involves the age-old dichotomy between quality-of-life issues and the economic bottom line.
On the latter side of the divide are the city’s business elite and the Memphis City Council majority that is responsible for a controversial March vote that gave the zoo control over the Greensward.
On the former side of the divide is the environmentalist community and what would appear, from the volume of protests, to be a sizeable hunk of local citizenry determined to keep the Greensward as parkland.
The best things in life are free, would say the Greensward defenders. Yes, but there’s the rub; they bring in no revenue, the zoo partisans might counter, employing the newly released impact study to buttress their case. The study goes into considerable detail, but its thrust is that the million or so people who visit the zoo annually result in quantifiable advantages for the local community: $83 million in goods and services, $32 million in salaries, wages, and benefits for the 879 zoo employees, and nearly $5 million in state and local taxes.
No sooner had the document bearing these stats landed in public territory, however, than a group calling itself Physicians for Urban Parks issued a counter-claim, signed by an impressive number of local medical people, charging that the study lacks raw data to support its claims, was carried out unprofessionally, and amounts to little more than a “promotional device” whose figures “have been used again and again to justify the Memphis Zoo being given rights to Overton Park.”
The doctors’ letter singles out one specific flaw, a claim in a portion of the economic impact study regarding visitor expenditures alleging “that $364 is spent per party, per visit, on transportation.” Challenging that assertion, the letter cites the 2013 Tennessee visitor profile, “which the zoo publication uses as a data source” and which states that 94 percent of visitors come to Tennessee by automobile. “[T]herefore, that figure must apply almost entirely to gas stations. Using a price of $3.60 per gallon for regular unleaded and a 20-gallon gas tank, the publication contends that the average zoo visitor fills up the gas tank in Memphis five (5) times over a 2.16-day period. Obviously, the numbers are radically inflated, or simply wrong.”
We are in no position to adjudicate this difference of opinion, other than to recall the old adage that anybody can use statistics to prove anything, and to conclude the obvious: That the zoo’s release of its report will not close the argument, and it remains to be seen whether the city-sponsored on-again, off-again mediation talks will manage to do so.
Editor’s Note: The editorial says that the Zoo study was made public last Friday, May 13. That is incorrect. The study was originally released a year ago (May 6, 2015 for the digital copy and May 7, 2015 for the hard copy). It was re-released on May 13 of this year.