Once upon a time, there was a beautiful place called Hollywood. In that place lived a company called Universal, which made movies. One of those movies was about a vampire named Dracula, and people really, really liked it. So the people of Universal, in their wisdom, said “We should make more movies like that!”
And so they did. They made a movie called Frankenstein, which was liked by even more people. And Universal said, “We should do, like, a lot of these.”
Universal made a movie called The Mummy. It was like Dracula, only with a mummy instead of a vampire. The mummy was played by Boris Karloff, who also played Frankenstein, so for Universal, it was like two movies in one. People really liked The Mummy, even though it wasn’t as good as the other two. In a happy coincidence, Universal made a lot of money.
So Universal said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” They kept making movies about monsters. One of them was about an Invisible Man, who you would think wouldn’t be such a great subject for a visual medium, but he was. Another one was about a good guy named Dr. Jekyll who takes drugs and becomes a bad guy named Mr. Hyde. They made a movie about a man who turns into a wolf when the moon is full. You’d think that would make him happy because wolves are awesome, but it made him sad because he killed and ate people. And on and on it went.
When they ran out of ideas for new movie monsters, they used the old ones again. They made The Mummy again but called it The Mummy’s Hand. Then they made The Mummy’s Tomb, which made sense because tombs are where you find mummies. Then, The Mummy’s Ghost, which didn’t make sense, because mummies are kind of like ghosts already, so that’s like a ghost of a ghost. They got back on track with The Mummy’s Curse, because cursing is definitely something mummies do. Then the writers at Universal said, “Help! We’re out of mummy ideas!” So the Mummy met Abbott and Costello, and it did not go well.
Annabelle Wallis and Tom Cruise fear for their careers in the new Universal reboot of The Mummy.
Universal couldn’t think of anything else to do with the Mummy, so they sold him to a bunch of British people called Hammer, who made a movie called The Mummy. Then they made four more movies until they, too, ran out of mummy-related ideas.
Many years passed, and the rights to the Mummy reverted to Universal. In 1999, they decided to make another movie about a mummy. It was called The Mummy, and it starred a goofy fella named Brendan Fraser, not as the mummy, but as a guy who winked at the audience and said, “Get a load of this mummy, will ya?” This mummy movie was pretty boring, but people liked Fraser, and it had something called “CGI,” so Universal made a lot of money. Again, they said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and made a sequel and a prequel and a prequel to the prequel, which itself had two sequels, and then another sequel, which had nothing to do with the prequels.
Several years passed. Disney started making movies about superheroes from Marvel comic books, all of which happened in the same universe and all of which made money. “Hey, we like money, too!” said Universal. “What if we took all of our movie monsters and put them in the same universe?” And so they made a movie about a vampire called Dracula Untold, and it was awful.
So Universal said, “Everybody forget about Dracula Untold!” and made a movie about a mummy called The Mummy. This time, instead of Boris Karloff, the Mummy would be played by a hot chick named Sofia Boutella, and instead of Brendan Fraser, the guy who says “Get a load of this mummy” was Tom Cruise, Captain of the Douche Canoe. And to help put flesh on the bones of the new universe, which Universal called the Dark Universe, they got Russell Crowe, who used to be a gladiator, to play Dr. Jekyll and also Mr. Hyde.
Then, a writer said “Hey, Universal! We used up all the good mummy ideas in The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, so how about we steal some scenes from An American Werewolf in London?”
And Tom Cruise said, “Steal some scenes from Mission Impossible, too. People like me in those movies.” Then he dove into a swimming pool full of money.
And Universal said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
And that, children, is why the new Mummy movie sucks.
I’d like to extend hearty congratulations to our friends in Nashville for the accomplishments of their professional hockey team. Even without a championship trophy, for the lowest-seeded team to defy probability and conventional wisdom is worth celebrating. I watched more of the Comey hearing than the NHL Playoffs, but I hear it was a hell of a run. Of course, there’s nothing as satisfying as winning it all, but proving people wrong and upsetting the Understood Order of Things is pretty fun. It’s sustained us Grizzlies fans for a few years now.
Rallying a community behind a team is fun, too. There’s an electricity in the air that everyone can feel. It intoxicates even non-sports fans and turns them into diehards, if only for a few weeks. It takes an extra special kind of success to captivate a city in which ice is known more as something you put in your sweet tea than a surface for skating.
It’s impressive. I suspect it’s also the reason Predators mania hasn’t exactly set Memphis ablaze. The only thing setting this city ablaze is the oppressive heat, and the fact that “winter” sports are still being played in this hemisphere in June feels like a slap in the face. Or maybe that’s just the humidity. I’m sure lots of Memphians rooted for the Predators, but there weren’t enough for Memphis to crack the top 10 TV markets for any of the Stanley Cup final games. Memphis has, however, consistently ranked in the top 10 for NBA Finals viewership. Even during the massive power outage. The Grizzlies’ season ended nearly two months ago.
Two years ago, I wrote that it was time to stop comparing Memphis and Nashville. The unique experiences of a Grizzlies game versus a Predators game neatly illustrate the cities’ different personalities and how they don’t always make sense to each other. Take, for example, the tradition of throwing catfish onto the ice. How do the fish enter the arena? Does security look the other way, or do fans smuggle the seafood in their pants and purses? If the latter, how does one — you know what, nevermind. I don’t need to know.
Reuters | USA Today Sports
Catfish on ice
From country singers and catfish to wrasslin’ and “Whoop That Trick,” our sports traditions are, like our general civic vibes, different. Yet the question keeps popping up: Why doesn’t Memphis support the Predators?
Uh, why should we? Because we’re in the same state? What if we don’t know a single thing about hockey because we live in Tennessee, specifically the part of Tennessee where Ball Is Life?
Instead of pinning Memphis’ perceived disinterest to hatred or jealousy of Nashville’s success, remember that many of us did set aside our saltiness to root for the Titans in the Super Bowl back in the year 2000, long before Nashville became Smashville. And then consider that this is a city that shuts down at the mere threat of snow. Last year an ice skating rink closed because of winter weather. So excuse us if we’re a little slow to hop on the honky tonk Zamboni. After all, this is the South. Like a lot of things in Nashville (for better or worse), hockey is a transplant. Just as the first generation of “lifelong” Memphis Grizzlies fans is coming of age, hockey’s legacy in Nashville is still taking root. Give it time.
Maybe someday instead of a Grizzlies/Predators cross-promotion concocted by their cable broadcast station, “Team Tennessee” will represent a shared attitude between the two biggest cities in the state. The pettiness is fun, but there are bigger fish to throw. Like the jock and the nerd in a high school movie, it’s time for Memphis and Nashville to discover the only way they can outwit the principal is by setting aside their differences and working together.
I’m not sure which city plays each role in this metaphor, but the upcoming statewide election is one example of an opportunity to team up and save the school. Governor Haslam isn’t eligible for a third term. It’s early yet, but four people have declared their candidacy. One is Mae Beavers, whom you may recall as the author of the anti-porn resolution and assorted other terrible bills. We don’t have to love each other’s sports teams, and we soon won’t even have to share an IKEA anymore. But can we at least join forces to ensure Tennessee won’t be run by a bunch of monsters? That seems like a good start.
Jen Clarke is an unabashed Memphian and a digital marketing strategist.
Seth Walker, center, with, from left, Stephen Crump, Tim Van Eaton, Vinnie Longoria and Devin Matthews
Michael Donahue
Justin Rimer
Seth Walker constantly moved when he played centerfield in a pair of cleats on the baseball field.
He never dreamed he’d one day be performing his original country songs in a pair of cowboy boots on stage.
A lot of things Walker, 28, never thought about five years ago now are realities.
“I never thought my album would go to No. 20 on the iTunes chart,” he said. “It’s kind of been almost too fast. We’ve opened up for seven people who are on national radio.”
Walker and his band’s show sold out the last time they played at The Bluff. The line stretched down the block, he said. “I had no idea it was going to lead to something so big.”
Growing up in Memphis, baseball was Walker’s passion. “I played in high school at Christian Brothers. Then I went and played at Northwest Mississippi in college and Lee University.”
He picked up the guitar in high school, but he wasn’t serious about it. “I got like two chords down. I tried, but I just wasn’t dedicated enough to learn it. And then playing baseball all the time – that pretty much took over my whole life.”
Walker’s dream of a baseball career suddenly came to an end. “Right before the draft my senior year I decided to go play basketball with some friends. I tore my patella tendon in my knee. I was going up for a layup and somebody undercut me. I just remember my kneecap being up there. And I had to have surgery the next day. They told me that I probably wouldn’t play baseball again for a long time. I was 22.”
Baseball was his life. “I went into a really bad depression after that ‘cause I thought I was going to do that for the rest of my life. I just got real down. I couldn’t move for a month and a half or two months. I was just watching ‘Criminal Minds’ on the couch for a while. Scared the hell out of me and depressed me even more. It probably wasn’t a good show to watch.”
He picked up a copy of Tim Tebow’s “Through My Eyes.” “It really inspired me to get up off the couch and go to physical therapy. Just the fact that the guy is a winner. His passion for everything that he does. His mental strength. Nobody’s better than him. And he’s going to outwork you no matter what. It just got me off my butt.”
Walker’s brother, Brad, invited him to play in the youth choir at church. Walker showed Brad how to play a couple of chords back in high school.
Walker began selling insurance and was successful at it. “I started coaching at Southwest (Community College). I did that for a year, but it was interfering with my insurance job, so I had to stop.”
In addition to the church group, Walker played guitar and sang “just with friends. Actually, it took me quite a while to sing in front of that many people. It’d just be a bunch of our friends drinking at the pool. Just messing around on the guitar.”
Walker made an insurance call at Coffee in the Attic, a Covington coffee shop. “I went in there to get their business and asked the guy, ‘Do you all have live music?’ My buddy’s like, ‘Man, you should play here.’”
He played one Saturday night. “And that’s how it all started.”
Walker played in front of about 20 people at church, but performing at the coffee shop was a different story. “There were like over 100. I couldn’t even put the capo on my guitar I was so nervous. And I was singing every song so fast. I sang the first song in a minute and a half and it’s a three and a half minute song. Thomas Rhett’s ‘Take You Home.’ It probably sounded like a rap song when I was singing it.”
The crowd reaction was phenomenal.. “I broke the fire code. That was pretty cool. People standing on the bar. There was just too many people in that one place.’
Walker was hooked. “I just wanted to do it again, so I played at the old Dan McGuinness (Pub) on Spottswood. And I just kept playing. Kept developing that following.”
He decided to record a single. “I’d always wanted to put out a song. It was like a dream. Nobody else had done it around here. None of my friends had.”
Walker thought, “I don’t care if it sucks or not, I still want to do it.”
A buddy introduced him to Justin Rimer, co-owner of Crosstrax Studio and a veteran member of bands, including 12 Stones and Breaking Point. Walker recorded “Whiskey and a Dirt Road,” which he and his brother wrote, at Crosstrax. “I spent all my birthday money – 1,400 bucks.”
The song is about “seeing a girl at the bar,” Walker said. “ It could be anywhere. And just not having the nerve to talk to her. Then downing a couple of drinks and talking to her. And just riding backroads. Something we do in Covington.”
Rimer was impressed the first time he heard Walker. “I was like, ‘Man, there’s something going on with this guy,’” he said. “His voice is unique in a world where the country voices are very cliche. And I could see he was very eager. He was humble to a world he didn’t know anything about.
“We did this one song, ‘Whiskey and a Dirt Road,’ and we put it out on social media. And, literally, the next show he played sold out. In any town it’s hard, but it’s especially hard in Memphis. Especially when there’s no air play. There was nothing but a social media presence. And the show sold out.
“When you see something like that it’s like, ‘Wait a second. Something’s going on. People are attracted to this guy. They’re attracted to his music and they want to come out and see him.’ And that’s a rarity these days.”
He and Rimer began hanging out, Walker said. ““He actually became one of my really good friends after ‘Whiskey and a Dirt Road,’” he said. “We would go to (TJ) Mulligan’s on Trinity and hang out. One day he invited me: ‘Hey, I want to talk to you about some things.’”
“I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to start a record label for you and I’m going to sign you,’” Rimer said. “So, I literally started Crosstrax Records for him. And he’s my only artist.”
“I told him, ‘Man, I’m not scared to perform. If you want to do this, it’s on you,’” Walker said. “And we did.”
Said Rimer: “We recorded over the last year, working on different songs. And a month and a half ago we released the EP, ‘Seth Walker: Volume 1.’ With no radio airplay within 15 hours we were No. 20 on the iTunes country chart.
“Memphis doesn’t have a country guy like this that all of a sudden people are reacting to. You can’t make up sales numbers. And you can’t make up when you’re selling out concerts. It’s a real reaction, man. People are flocking to this guy.”
Walker hand selected the musicians for his band.
He met guitarist/backup vocalist Devin Matthews, 25, on Instagram. They played their first gig together as a duo at the old Double J Smokehouse and Saloon off South Main.
“Somebody taught me to read tabs,” Matthews said. “I never could read music. From then on I’d just figure it out. I played rock music for a really long time. I went through a really bad breakup and I was really depressed. Country. That’s what I fell in love with.”
Walker invited bass player Tim Van Eaton, 24, to play in his band after he heard him play in another band.
Van Eaton, grandson of J. M. Van Eaton, who played drums with Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, acquired the nickname “Three Finger Timmy” after he accidentally stuck his pocketknife into one of his fingers three hours before their first show with a full band and an audience of 800 people. He got 12 stitches in his finger and was back before soundcheck. “I ended up playing the whole gig,” Van Eaton said.
Guitarist Vinnie Longoria, 20, began playing drums before he switched to guitar. His father David Longoria, a touring drummer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, played in several bands, including Roxy Blue, L. A. Guns and Slaughter.
Country wasn’t Vinnie’s first music choice. “I was a metal guitar player and rock guitar player,” he said.
His metal guitar style works in a country band, Vinnie said. “It makes it really full and colorful.”
Drummer Stephen Crump, 26, also comes from a musical family. “My cousin is Larry McCoy and he writes with Thomas Rhett in Nashville,” he said.
“I grew up in church, so most of the guys that I play with are gospel musicians,” Crump said. “My style is not rock and country. I have a very fast right foot. I don’t double bass pedal it. All my feels are very tasty. It’s not rock music at all. When most of these guys around here hear me play, they’re like, ‘I haven’t heard that in a country band. That’s different.’”
For now, Walker and his band are concentrating on performing. The band wants to eventually put out a full-length album.
Asked whether he’d pick baseball over music as a career, Walker said, “I’ve gotten to play baseball in front of 10,000 people and that’s amazing. But there’s no high like what we’ve done. Just played in front of huge crowds. Singing. I mean, it’s pretty cool. When they’re singing a song that we’ve done on the album.”
Seth Walker and his band will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday June 17 at The Bluff at 535 South Highland. Tickets: $10. Call: (901) 454-7771.
Vietnamese seaweed-wrapped tofu, yuba, sweet potato fritters. All seem simple enough — dishes we can get at our favorite local Pho place. But get up early on a Sunday, drive an hour south, and these dishes can be experienced on a whole other dimension.
I am speaking of Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi, the Thich Nhat Hanh intentional community, that was established in 2005. Each Sunday, the 30-something monastics who live there open their doors to visitors to share a day of mindfulness with them, practicing walking meditation, listening to a dharma talk about what mindfulness is and how to practice it, and sharing a meal.
That meal will make you question how you ever lived before.
So what’s the secret?
“We use a special seasoning,” answers Sister Hoc Nghiem, mischievously. Hoc Nghiem (it means “True Practice”) is a nun and former Memphian who lives at Magnolia Grove.
That special seasoning is a combination of joy, love, compassion, mindfulness, and just good energy, she adds.
The nuns say a kitchen bodhisattva prayer that expresses gratitude for being able to prepare and offer food to their community and recognition that the most important food is joy, love, and harmony.
“Our teacher [Thich Nhat Hanh] says the kitchen is like the meditation hall,” says Sister Boi Nghiem, who Sister Hoc’s sister both in blood and in monastic life
“We will come in a little early and enjoy a cup of tea and enjoy the moment,” Sister Hoc says. “Then we will do something to make the kitchen pleasant, such as make a vase of fresh flowers and light some incense or some sage.”
Then they say a kitchen bodhisattva prayer that expresses something along the lines of gratitude for being able to prepare and offer food to their community and recognition that the most important food is joy, love, and harmony.
Sister Hoc adds that the fact that most of their food comes fresh from their garden creates another layer of that special something.
“And when we grow our garden, we also do it with joy and love,” Sister Hoc says. “We don’t just focus on the food to harvest, but when we are watering our garden, we also do that with joy and happiness.”
All the food prepared at Magnolia Grove is vegan in accordance with the Five Mindfulness Trainings, which represent the Buddhist vision for a global spirituality and ethic and include the first training, “Reverence for Life.”
“When you eat the food here, you can cultivate compassion because you know no animals had to sacrifice their lives, and it makes you feel good about yourself,” Sister Boi says.
The last of that je ne sais quoi that separates the food at Magnolia Grove from any other meal is the fact that they eat in silence for the first 20 minutes of the meal as a way to practice eating meditation and mindful eating.
“I think one of the reasons people enjoy the food here so much is that when they eat, they know they’re eating,” Sister Boi says. “There’s no cell phone or TV to distract them, so they’re really tasting the food and really living in the present moment.”
Sister Boi adds with another mischievous smile, “It’s Vietnamese food, and Vietnamese food is always good.”
Many of the monastics will be in Memphis on Saturday, June 17th for a Day of Mindfulness presentation at Rhodes College as part of Rhodes’ Compassionate Campus Initiative. The event is from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Bryan Campus Life Center on Rhodes Campus, and participants are encouraged to register on eventbrite.com (where you can also make a donation).
Here is a recipe from Sister Boi:
Fried Tofu with Nutritional Yeast
Serving for 5 people
Ingredients:
– 1 box of firm tofu
– 5 teaspoons nutritional yeast (crush it with mortar and pestle to powder)
– 2/3 teaspoon salt
– 1/4 teaspoon sugar
To cook:
– Cut tofu as square or triangle shapes, put them into a bowl, then add sugar and ½ teaspoon salt, shake well and let sit for 15 minutes.
– Mix crushed nutritional yeast and ¼ teaspoon salt together.
– Fry on low heat so tofu turns yellow and stays soft, put them on a tray, sprinkle the nutritional yeast all over them, shake well. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.
If Memphis leaders do nothing, the city’s population will grow at less than 1 percent each year for the next 20 years.
That’s a key finding from those working on the Memphis 3.0 plan, the first comprehensive plan for Memphis in years. Leaders hope to have the plan complete by 2019, the city’s 200th birthday, which will begin its third century of existence. (So, Memphis 3.0. Get it?)
Memphis 3.0 administrator Ashley Cash said the population growth figure isn’t bad news, exactly, but it’s not great news, either.
“The positive of that is that we’re not declining in population,” Cash said. “We’re not projected to lose population. But that’s not really anything you want on a billboard. You want to figure out how to change that.”
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Cash and her team have spent months gathering data about the city and asking Memphians what they think. The team is over that first hump of the planning process, which Cash called the “inventory and analysis” phase. It was, basically, taking stock of the people and resources of the city.
Another major finding, Cash said, was that, again, if leaders do nothing, the city’s major market potential will lie up and down the Poplar corridor and along Germantown Parkway. Again, Cash said the finding wasn’t exactly bad news but she said she hopes to take closer look around Memphis to, maybe, identify other areas for growth.
“Where are some catalytic investments already happening that we can build off of to not leave the future of our city to the whim of the market,” Cash said.
The public told the Memphis 3.0 team, in a series of public events last year, that one of the biggest challenges in the city was transportation. Memphis is 325 square miles, Cash said, and she said she understood that makes for a huge challenge for the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA).
“On the other side of that, though, people are saying we can’t get to where we need to,” Cash said. “It’s not very reliable or efficient. We’d, perhaps, use it more if we could make some changes or have some other options.”
The Memphis 3.0 team will begin to present its findings to citizens in a series of public events next week. Here are the details on those “Show and Tell” events:
Steel-wheeled trolleys will return to the rails later this summer, but no passengers will be in tow, only very heavy bags of sand, as the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) will begin testing trolleys in anticipation of restarting the service by the end of the year.
At least, that is the goal, according to the interim CEO of MATA Gary Rosenfeld, who talked to a group of individuals about the state of public transit in Memphis yesterday at a Sierra Club meeting.
If all goes as planned in what Rosenfeld refers to as a “fragile process,” steel-wheeled trolley service will return first to Main Street, with four trolleys in operation and two as back-ups, followed by Riverside Drive and Madison Avenue.
However, he says each trolley must be verified and tested before going into service.
“If it’s not ready and not safe, it’s not going to happen,” Rosenfeld said. “We’re not going to sacrifice safety to meet self-imposed deadlines.”
Rosenfeld also talked about the improvements MATA hopes to make over the next few years, like increasing on-time performance rates for the buses, which he reports has risen nearly 30 percent in the last two years.
With the proposed route and schedule changes set to take effect in early August if approved, Rosenfeld says MATA’s on-time performance for fixed-route services, now at 76%, should increase by another 5 percent.
However, MATA’s biggest challenge, according to Rosenfeld, is a shortage of funding. He says just as the City of Memphis is underfunded, so is MATA.
Currently, the operating budget for MATA is around $62 million, but in order to best serve Memphis, he says needs an additional $30 million.
“As our funding is right now, we can’t plan really well for the future,” Rosenfeld said. “If we can secure a source of funding, it makes everything more efficient.”
With more funding, Rosenfeld says MATA would be able to increase the frequency of buses, explore more routes, and invest in more buses.
Additionally, operating with no reserves, the budget does not allow for new projects and demonstrations or updating and modernizing the 4,500 bus stops in the city.
Rosenfeld says MATA will be looking to the City Council, who next month will have the opportunity to authorize a public vote on a sales tax surcharge, which could result in more funding for the transit service.
Moving forward Rosenfeld hopes to make MATA’s services easier to use, closer to necessities, and more responsive, while creating more equity for riders.
“Memphis deserves great transit,” Rosenfeld said. “We need dedicated funding, so we can act like a real transit service.”
With all votes counted in the special general election for state House District 95 (Collierville, Eads, Germantown), Republican nominee Kevin Vaughan has won a decisive victory over Democratic challenger Julie Byrd Ashworth and two independents, Robert Schutt and Jim Tomasik.
The precinct totals, which include early and absentee vote totals, are as follows:
Kevin Vaughan 3,099
Julie Byrd Ashworth 1,737
Robert Schutt 143
Jim Tomasik 25
Write-ins 3
TOTAL VOTES CAST: 5,007
When formally sworn in, Vaughan, a real estate developer with an engineering background, will become the third person to represent the east Shelby County district within the last year. Former longtime representative Curry Todd was defeated in the 2016 Republican primary by Mark Lovell, who won that year’s general election. The seat became open again in February when Lovell was forced to resign his position amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Vaughan, who finished ahead of six other Republicans to win the April special Republican primary for the vacated District 95 House seat ,l,is an established civil figure in Collierville.
Married with two children, he is both a licensed professional engineer and a prominent real estate developer; he is the towner of Township Development Services and township Realty Service.Vaughan was born in Bolivar and was a 1980 graduate of Bolivar High School. He graduated from the University of Memphis in 1984 with a B.S. in electrical Engineering. He was a Presidential Scholar at he U of M and has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of the University.
For the last 30 years, Vaughan has lived in Collierville, where he has a lengthy record of membership on civic boards and commissions, several of which he has headed up.
He is a member of the Collierville Chamber of Commerce Board of directors, a past president of the town’s Rotary Club and a former Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary.
At present, Vaughan is vice chairman of the Collierville School Board.
In the last couple of years, he has attracted considerable attention (and, in some circles, notoriety) for his proposal to develop a new retail shopping development on currently rural land in Collierville Plans for the development are apparently back on course after it was temporarily withdrawn due to adverse public reaction to Vaughan’s indiscreet statement in 2016 that he envisioned his development in the mode of Wolfchase Galleria, a mammoth mega-mall in Cordova.
The proposed development, which has not yet received preliminary zoning approval from the Collierville Board of Alderman but is under reconsideration, was the subject of a whispering campaign by Vaughan’s opponents during the recent GOP primary, and was the subject of similar criticism in the general election campaign from supporters of Democratic opponent Julie Byrd Ashworth, a lawyer..
Vaughan, a self-styled conservative, is pro-life and an adherent of 2nd amendment gun rights and expressed concern about Governor Haslam’s ultimately successful gas-tax proposal when the measure was being during the late legislative session.
For this installment of Never Seen It, we welcome Jon W. Sparks, editor of Inside Memphis Business. Sparks is a longtime journalist who came from a community newspaper in New York City in 1981 to work at The Commercial Appeal. Since taking a buyout 10 years ago, he’s written for several local and national publications before taking the helm of Inside Memphis Business. He is also an actor familiar to Memphis film and theater fans for his appearances in both locally produced films and on the stage. We were joined by Sparks’ wife, Memphis College of Art professor Maritza Dávila, and my wife, filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking.
Our film is Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane.
Chris McCoy: Tell me what you know about Citizen Kane.
Jon Sparks: I know it makes most of the top ten, if not five, lists of the greatest movies ever. But I’ll be the judge of that.
JS: I know it’s heralded for the brilliance of its writing, the concepts, the ending, the black and white cinematography. Orson Welles, of course, leaves a mark on everything he does. Maybe not always good, but he leaves a mark. And I have seen a little bit here and there.
CM: Anything specific?
JS: I’m remembering shouting crowds and Joseph Cotton. I think there were some spinning newspapers.
Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (5)
119 minutes later…
JS: I’m not accustomed to being on this side of the recorder. This is uncomfortable.
CM: I know! OK. Citizen Kane. What did you think?
JS: When you see films that are biographies, essentially, this film set the standard cinematically, and in so many ways. Movies made today that are biographies don’t have the surprises and the approach this one does. This one is fresh today, because of the story angles it takes and the conclusions it reaches with each scene, the time line going back and forth, with Joseph Cotton reminiscing about the old days. But even then, it’s stitched together differently from anything today.
CM: It’s not a three act play, for one thing. It’s six or seven. It lays out the whole story in the opening newsreel. There are no plot surprises after the first ten minutes.
JS: It’s interesting that the newsreel looked so rough. It was really cheesy, the effects were pretty low grade, which is what you would expect out of a newsreel. Then it begins to tell the story, and it’s very theatrical. They even stage a lot of things in a theater.
Title card from the newsreel sequence.
CM: Does the acting feel theatrical?
JS: The acting is all uniformly good, but you can recognize the skills of the theater people doing it.
Laura Jean Hocking: When they’re talking over each other, that seems very theatrical to me. I don’t think you saw that very much before this movie. I associate it with like, Rosalind Russell and the sort of sassy dame stuff. There’s so many things that happened for the first time in this movie.
JS: You pointed out when they started the shot with a close up of a face and then pulling back into the establishing shot. But the acting was so incredibly skillful. I was knocked out by Everett Sloane’s Bernstein. I love how, in the beginning, an editor is barking out orders to reporters: ‘Go find that guy! What’s his name? Its Bernstein! The manager!’ Then the next time he’s mentioned, it’s again ‘What’s his name? Bernstein!’ It’s like he’s so inconsequential, but he’s the thread that goes through Kane’s life. He never divorced him or ran away from him. Bernstein was there and he understood Kane probably better than anyone.
CM: Bernstein’s take is the most objective of all of them. He never really took Kane seriously, but he didn’t hate him, either.
Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane.
JS: But he understood him well enough to function with him. The same actor did him from old to young, but in a way he always looked old….And that’s just one great performance. Anges Moorehead, forget about it! She’s got that face that is so hard, and here she is a mother giving up her child.
CM: Her voice breaks when she says ‘Charlie’, and that’s the only bit of emotion that she lets slip through. It tears your heart out! One of my favorite things that has trickled through films ever since is the ‘Citizen Kane shot’, where there are two people in the foreground framing one person in the background. The two people in the foreground are talking about the person in the background, but the person in the background doesn’t know they’re being talked about. That happens at least twice in this movie. The first time it’s mom and dad and the banker, with Charlie framed in the window in the background. The second time he does it, there’s a freakin’ musical scene going on! He shows you how the composition is going to work in the first angle, then he goes to the reverse angle and boom, it’s exactly the same shot from before, with two people discussing Kane’s fate while Kane is dancing around trying to get their attention. Welles rubs your face in it.
The first instance of the ‘Citizen Kane shot’.
Ten minutes later, the second instance.
#2 in context:
Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (2)
Maritza Dávila: I thought the acting was so natural. The first wife was such a lady, and you could tell she always had to act like that, so proper. And Orson Welles. Wow.
LJ: How old was he?
CM: I think he was 24. It’s ridiculous. I’ve wasted my life.
MD: His acting…even when he is so restrained, you can just feel it in him, the feeling that, ‘I have to win!’ All that childhood trauma that he was never able to get rid of. The same behavior that he has with his guardian, he continues that behavior over and over again. With everything.
CM: He would redirect that energy towards somebody else, but it was always the same energy.
…
JS: I love some of the choices Welles makes. When he gets married for the first time, they tell the whole story with a series of scenes at the breakfast table. They just get farther and farther apart….Now the other relationship, a bit more traditional.
Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (4)
CM: He uses the other relationship to sneak in the jigsaw puzzle, which is really the overarching metaphor for the whole thing. He just sneaks it in there. That’s one of the things that’s great about the screenplay. Everything pays off. Everything you think is just a throwaway detail turns out to be a setup.
MD: The comedic relief throughout the whole movie is so well placed.
CM: One thing that struck me this time through—and maybe this is a result of reviewing movies all the time—is that this is so much denser than anything you see today.
JS: Part of that is at the beginning. They hit all these high points and then never visit them again. I thought, well OK, they tell the story fast, then they’re going to tell it slow. But they didn’t do that. They filled in the spaces. The death of his first wife and son is never dealt with at all. The stock market crash and the Great Depression is the same thing. They kind of go, ‘Oh, well, we don’t have as much money as we used to.’ But expanding on those obvious points is something that would be done today. They would show it with all the tears and everything.
CM: And hearing you say that makes me think, if I was giving advice on a screenplay, I would give that note. ‘Why don’t we get to see him losing all his money? Why don’t we get to see his wife and son dying?’ I would have given bad notes to Orson Welles.
LJH: Once his wife and kid leave you never see them again. You don’t have to.
JS: And that’s good writing, to only say something one time, and say it right. You see that in beginning writers. They’ll tell you the same thing a bunch of different ways, because they’re just so in love with the idea. Just express it one good way.
CM: Have faith that your audience is smart enough to put the pieces together.
…
CM: So, Mr. Editor of Inside Memphis Business, this is a movie about business and wealth and capitalism.
JS: He was a very rich man who was on the side of the poor man. He was going to devote his life to making the plight of the underdog much better. He was clearly going to make the country great again, in some fashion.
CM: It’s very relevant today, because he feels like Trump. He even does the ‘Lock her up!’ stuff.
JS: That was prescient.
CM: Obviously, the character is based on William Randolph Hearst, but he becomes Teddy Roosevelt for a minute there.
Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (6)
MS: One thing that occurred to me, with all of the things that happened to him, he never matured.
LJH: When Susan leaves, he throws a tantrum and tears her room up.
MD: That was the most out of control he found himself. And then he died. Before that, he was like, ‘I want to make you a singer. Not because you want to be a singer, but because I want you to be a singer.’ He was just putting all of that need into every single person he meets..
CM: And when she says she doesn’t want to be up there in front of an audience that doesn’t want her, he says, ‘That’s when you have to fight them!’ This time, I was like, wow, that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.
JS: He has the resources that, if people don’t want him, he can change. He can buy a newspaper. But she is stuck in that one role, playing that one thing. She doesn’t have the versatility that he has, but he doesn’t see that. If there is anything that’s repeated, it’s that insecure side of him that people kept reminding him of. You just want to be loved. You just want to love yourself. That’s what she tells him when she finally stomps out. He says ‘I need you to do this!’ She says, ‘Oh yeah. It’s about what you need. Adios! Tear up the room! I’m outta here!’
…
CM: What is this film’s view of business, of capitalism?
JS: It was not very positive, as Hollywood films often are. It had a very low opinion of business. In the very beginning, before we see him as the shabby character he really is, we see him as a heroic trustbuster. This comical character, his stepfather, is the goof. But he’s a typical trust guy. He’s a slumlord who embodies all the evils of capitalism. So Kane goes after him, but not because he believes it.
CM: Kane is not a Marxist.
JS: Kane is a Kane-ist. He’s just sticking it to the old man because he’s the old man…They don’t really make a whole lot about how Kane acquired these newspapers and built an empire. They throw a little bit at you about how he says, ‘We need to raid that newspaper and get their best people.’ Then he just does it. There’s no particular shrewdness that you see in any of that. There’s no great lessons to be learned about how to run your business. You do have the conscience, Jed, who is something of a besotted conscience, who tries to keep him a little bit honest. For god sake, don’t start a war!
Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (3)
CM: The point of view that the Spanish American War was a media phenomenon was not a widespread thing in 1940. People did not think that yet. And they were literally in the middle of a media push to start another war. I feel like it has a much more sophisticated take on politics than on business.
JS: Yes. And again, just an interesting, savvy, storytelling. He runs for office and fails.
CM: Do you think we’re seeing what would have happened if Charles Foster Kane would have won?
LJH: You have the fraud at the polls headline and everything!
JS: I think it’s futile to try to draw too many parallels between the movie and today. What’s happening today has destroyed satire as an art form. Veep is one of the funniest shows on television. You can laugh at the jokes, but the absurdity of the situations aren’t quite as effective compared to our daily headlines.
CM: You’ve been a journalist for a long time. This is about journalism more than it is about business or politics. Kane today would be, who, Murdoch? Roger Ailes?
JS: He’s more of a Murdoch. Ailes was more ideological about it. Murdoch is all about acquiring the properties and getting the reach.
CM: …and this is all collateral damage from Murdoch’s drive to be number one in the ratings. Which is also kind of Trump’s thing. He really doesn’t care about anything about ratings.
JS: His stated need was to go get the people. He wanted to be the voice of the people, and for the people to come to him. He wanted people to love him, and that was through numbers, how it worked for him. Of course today it is so different. Back then one story in one place could make a huge difference. Now a story has to appear in a lot of different places to make any big deal about it.
LJH: But now you see a story that pops up in multiple places and then Fox News will go ‘No! No!’ and it will disappear. Who is even listening to them?
CM: In Kane, you see the end of that phenomenon. You see the Kane network slowly lose relevance because people stopped believing it. I feel like that’s the process you’re seeing right now, a disenthrallment. They’ve finally gone too far. There’s too much evidence. Trump not only is Kane, but Trump is Susan. He gets in the opera house and has to sing, only to discover he’s not a good singer.
JS: But Susan goes on tour. You see Inquirer papers all over America proclaiming her a great singer, and saying ‘sold out audiences!’ But then people go see her and she’s not a great singer. The truth really does matter.
…
CM: So, is Citizen Kane the best movie ever made?
JS: No. It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but you shouldn’t wait until you’re 67 to see it. It’s a movie that needs to be seen. It’s important on a number of levels. It’s an incredible story about America…In a way it’s like Death of a Salesman. It shows how business and money can take over someone’s life and crush you.
CM: What’s better?
JS: I don’t know…
CM: Vertigo is the one that overtook it in the Sight & Sound poll. Is that better?
JS: I don’t know. I do love Hitchcock.
CM: Personally, I don’t agree. I think this is better than Vertigo. I don’t even think Vertigo is Hitchcock’s best movie. I like Rear Window better. So what do you think is better than Citizen Kane?
JS: I think probably the two Godfathers, just in terms of sheer scope and artistry. There’s brilliance from top to bottom. Another one of my favorite films is Seven Beauties. And I have a real soft spot for 8 1/2.
After a tour Thursday of the Finley Road (Whitehaven) campus of Southwest Community College, in a repurposed former shopping center, Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd touted a remedial catch-up program underway there and spoke of the irony that Shelby County, with its larger-than-usual poverty base, was experiencing a “flipped” ratio, whereby only 20 percent of tech-school certificates issued in the county are via public schools and 80 percent by private schools..
In the rest of Tennessee, the former state Commissioner of Economic Development said, 80 percent of such certificates are issued through public schools, as against 20 percent by private institutions. The imbalance in Shelby County, Boyd said, was due in large part to the simple lack of both accessible public facilities and adequate training equipment.
“We also need to do a better job of telemarketing,” he said.
The Knoxville-based Boyd was a major force in the development of several of Governor Bill Haslam’s innovations in post-secondary education, including Tennessee Promise, which offers free tuition to the state’s community colleges and technical schools and Drive to 55, which offers incentives for adult Tennesseeans to complete college degree programs left incomplete.
The pilot program in remedial English and math at Finley Road is meant to as a precursor to similar programs elsewhere that are designed to improve the preparedness of tech- and community college students, thereby to raise their graduation rate.. Candidate Boyd envisions further state programs to achieve that goal and has developed two non-profit programs that are potential models to that end, Tennesse Achieves and Complete Tennessee.
Clearly, Boyd intends, if elected Governor, to develop further the kinds of programs pioneered in the Haslam administration..
The former Commissioner professes not to be concerned about the activities of other announced gubernatorial candidates, who at this point on the Republican side include Frankiin businessman Bill Lee, who recently claimed significant fundraising results, or state Senator Mae Beaver, the most recent candidate to make a formal entry. Nor is he preoccupied with the matter of who else might enter the race
“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the competition,” said Boyd, whose pre-governmental career was that of a highly successful entrepreneur. He recalled having “about 12 competitors” when he was developing Invisible Fences, a tech product designed to contain pets without the use of overtly physical barriers. “I just sold the features, and things worked themselves out.”
Not that Boyd is entirely oblivious to the practical task of dealing with rival candidates. His visit to Memphis included what he expected to be “a significant fundraiser” on Thursday night, and he has already spent a great deal of time criss-crossing the state on campaign tours. And while he runs, he runs. Literally.
Boyd begins each day with a five-mile run. (On Thursday, his schedule was brisk enough that he had to start his morning run at 4 a.m “Believe it or not, it’s my way to relax and compose myself.” he said.
Shamefinger paid homage to Adam West at 901 Comics Anniversary Celebration.
Adam West, who played Batman in the 1960s TV series, was remembered June 10 at the 901 Comics Anniversary Celebration. West died June 9 at age 88.
The week-long celebration of events, which commemorated the first year anniversary of the store at 2162 Young Avenue, included performances by Shamefinger, Gloryholes and The Turn It Offs June 10 in the gazebo at the corner of Cooper and Young. The event coincided with the Blythe & Young Block Party, which included Goner Records and other participating businesses.
The members of Shamefinger wore DC Comics superhero masks in honor of West.
“We’d already planned to dress up as superheroes in some form, but we decided to go with DC superheroes for Adam West,” said bass player Farmer Zanath.
Their costume was “a little $5 cardboard mask pack that we bought at Party City. It was a pack of Justice League superheroes.”
Who wore the Batman mask? “That would be me,” Farmer said. “I wanted it, but I left it up to the band.”
Asked why he was selected to be Batman, Farmer said. “I tend to write the darker, faster songs for the band, I guess.”
The band members didn’t wear the masks during the entire set, which opened with Nerf Herder’s theme for TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” “We found out the masks muffled our voices for the mike. (We) took off the masks and played the rest of the set.”
The 901 Comics store owners Shannon Merritt and Jaime Wright learned about West’s death from a customer. “I just thought how big of an impact he was on my life,” Shannon said. “I used to come home from school and watch Batman. And my friend across the street and I would grab towels from the linen closet and run around and play Batman. We didn’t have capes, so we would take towels and we’d safety pin a blue towel and a yellow towel on our shirts so we’re like Batman and Robin.”
One of the 901 Comics events was a show featuring art work by Memphis artist Dean Zachary, who drew Batman in “Batman: Day of Judgement” in 1999 for DC Comics. “I’d been working toward drawing Batman ‘cause that’s always been my favorite character,” said Dean, 54. “I’d done work for DC along the lines of Green Lantern and Superboy. Various showcase pieces.”
Asked why he liked the Batman character, Dean said, “The fact that individual was self disciplined and focused. And sort of that idea of someone who was not a superpower like a lot of the other heroes in the Spandex universe.”
Batman was “a good guy who trains constantly and stays on that level of excellence as far as training physically and mentally and keeping on the edge of technology. What attracted me was he was just a human being trying to make a difference. Protecting the innocent, putting the bad guys away.”
Dean was a fan of the Batman TV show. “I loved it. I was a little kid then. And that was my first introduction to superheroes. I would watch it on a black-and-white TV in my room. And when you would see that flame come out of the back of the batmobile and they slid down the bat pole, jumped in and drove off – I knew it was campy and silly then, but when you’re 5, you don’t really care.
“I thought Adam west brought a charm to the role. A playful, suave, lighthearted charm not unlike Roger Moore did in the Bond films. He was lighter and more playful, but he managed to ground the character enough to where, as a grade schooler, I was impressed and excited and entertained, but I thought it was the right look for Bruce Wayne and Batman.”
And, he said, West “had this unforgettable voice. You always knew when Adam West was talking. A singular voice very much like William Shatner. Not question who it its. For the time and for the stylization of that particular incarnation of the character, he was perfect.”
MIchael Donahue
Rodney McDowell was at Fourth Bluff Fridays
Rodney McDowell kicked back in a red plastic Adirondack chair at the Fourth Bluff Beer Garden, part of the Fourth Bluff Fridays weekly gathering. The Sheiks band was about to play at Memphis Park, formerly-named Confederate Park.. Other people staked out chairs or lolled on the grass under shade trees.
Fourth Bluff Fridays wasn’t the first time Rodney had been to the park. “I used to come down here before they ever had it when I was a little boy,” he said. “We’d ride down here on a bicycle.”
Fourth Bluff Fridays, which began last year, started the 2017 season in May and will conclude June 30.
“Fourth Bluff Fridays is part of the national initiative Reimagining the Civic Commons,” said Fourth Bluff Project programming curator Andria Lisle. “In Memphis, the project scope is four blocks of Downtown, including Cossitt Library, Memphis Park, Mississippi River Park and the promenade behind the University of Memphis Law School.”
The event includes games, food trucks, the TapBox beer trailer and bands. “All local bands and all local vendors,” said Blake Lichterman, who is managing Fourth Bluff Fridays.
Fourth Bluff Fridays is sponsored by Downtown Memphis Commission, Riverfront Development Commission, Innovate Memphis and the Mayor’s office.
Fourth Bluff Fridays is for people to “just just join for a common, peaceful event,” Blake said. “Essentially, this is just a party.”
Back row: Bill Mard, Seth Moody, Daniel McKee, Jacob Church.
Graham Winchester brought 200 little bits of paper to his band’s album release party May 26 at Young Avenue Deli. The paper included the download code for Until the End, the new album by Graham’s band, Winchester and the Ammunition.
“Each one had a picture of the album cover and it had just a little code written on it that you punched in on line to get a free album,” Graham said.
By the end of the concert, 180 of the little sheets of paper were gone, he said.
Graham, who said he had a blast at the concert, was impressed with the audience’s reaction. “Three out of the 10 songs on the album were kind of slower or more medium paced. To be able to play those kind of songs in a rowdy Friday-night bar and have everybody listen and absorb the music was really refreshing. I felt like people were listening closely.”
Graham described the band as “very sort of late ‘60s early ‘70s style with multiple layers of instruments. We’re definitely influenced by the latter era Beatles album and Beach Boys albums and Harry Nilsson. Stuff like that. Solo George Harrison. Stuff that’s got a big production going on. Even sometimes strings and horns.”
Graham has been in “about 40 bands” since he began playing drum at age 12. “It was just the instrument that matched my energy levels,” he said.
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