Month: March 2019

Categories
News News Blog

Crosstown Gym Opens; Pool, Community Garden to Come

CREDIT: Crosstown Concourse

Crosstown Concourse

Crosstown High’s new gym

A gym at Crosstown Concourse is set to open Friday (today), ahead of the opening of a pool and community garden slated to debut in the coming months.

As the end of Crosstown High School’s inaugural school year nears, its gymnasium opened Friday, Crosstown Concourse announced via Twitter.

The gym, located next to the Crosstown Theater, houses a college-level basketball court that will also be used for volleyball, physical education classes, and practice space for other sports.

Named the Ice Box after the school’s Yeti mascot, the gym is able to hold up to 750 people.

The gym shares locker rooms with the Church Health YMCA pool which is slated to open mid- to late-summer. The new outdoor pool will be accessible to Crosstown students, as well as YMCA members.

LRK

Rendering five-lane swimming pool

Equipped with five lap lanes and a splash area, the pool is designed to be “as multi-functional as possible,” Shauna Bateman, Church Health YMCA’s district executive director, said.

It will be open during the YMCA outdoor pool season from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Both the pool and gym were constructed by Grinder Taber Grinder and designed by the firm Looney Ricks Kiss, which worked with Crosstown Arts to develop the concept for the entire Crosstown Concourse project.

Also slated to open this spring is the Crosstown Concourse community garden, a project led by Church Health in partnership with Crosstown High, Memphis Garden Club, and Big Green, a national nonprofit that builds learning gardens in low-income schools.

Designed by landscape architect Ritchie Smith, the garden will be located near Crosstown Brewing Co., housing raised beds for Crosstown students to maintain through the school’s partnership with Big Green.

Crosstown Concourse

Community garden located near Crosstown Brewing Co.

In addition to being a learning space, Ann Langston, senior director of strategic partnerships and opportunities at Church Health, said the garden will provide “a place of tranquility” on the campus.

A fountain designed by artist Betsy Damon, as well as six sculptures created by artist Brian Russell which were previously located at Church Health’s former space will also be added to the garden. Langston said each sculpture represents one of the virtues that Church Health tries to builds its culture around.

Langston adds that the garden will serve as a place where Church Health rehab patients can practice walking on different levels and types of ground, as well as a space for yoga and other meditation classes.

Anyone in the community who is interested in gardening is invited to help with planting and maintenance of the garden, Langston said.

This story has been updated from a previous version stating the pool would open on Memorial Day weekend. Church Health officials have since informed the Flyer the pool will open mid- to late- summer due to weather delays.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Time Out For The Excuses

CREDIT: Samuel X. Cicci

After the Grizzlies suffered their 39th loss of the season against the equally woeful Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff went on a mini-tirade. He ranted to the media members in attendance about how NBA officials were not calling fouls for Mike Conley in a way that he felt they should, and pointed to how a late no-call against the Bulls swung the outcome of the game. 
Samuel X. Cicci

JB Bickerstaff

Bickerstaff said that he had gotten earlier feedback from the league after issuing a complaint but hadn’t seen any progress as far as the referees calling fouls in Conley’s favor more often. For someone just looking at the Bulls game’s final moments in a vacuum or as an isolated incident, sure, you can say that the referees’ bad calls affected the outcome of the game. But not if you look at the big picture — the picture that shows that the first-year coach is digging for excuses instead of owning up to his own shortcomings.

If some of Coach Bickerstaff’s decisions on the court didn’t include starting Chandler Parsons at small forward over Kyle Anderson, choosing to use Jamychal Green much more than Jaren Jackson Jr., especially in the fourth quarter, and an insane helping of Shelvin Mack, then I’d show more understanding and grace towards his rant. But now, he’s just passing the buck instead of accepting that it’s a bed that he made and now has to lie in.

As I’ve written before, this entire season feels like one that could’ve been different in some way, if not in a major way, if things were done differently. But here we are — looking at a team that is currently 14th in the Western Conference and possibly slotted to pick sixth in the NBA draft.

This team has always looked like it had more left in the chamber — and that questionable coaching has been a catalyst in its shortcomings. To sit in front of the city’s media and try to imply that a lack of foul calls for Conley is the major problem is not only an insult to the intelligence of the fan-base, but a desperate reach for sympathy — and a deflection. This wasn’t Dave Joerger crying back in 2016, after being swept, or even David Fizdale’s “take that for data” rant in 2017. This was Bickerstaff 100-percent deflecting from the real issue: His team lost at home to a very bad team. Just let that be what it is, without making excuses. Especially when the excuses include defending a player, in Conley, who is quite capable of defending himself.

If Conley accepts constantly being fouled while not losing his mind to the officials, then that is as much as an issue with him as it is with the officials. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and closed mouths don’t get fed. If Conley wants the calls, then he needs to stop with the good-guy thing and speak up for himself.

On Wednesday night, It didn’t appear that too many people bought Bickerstaff’s attempt at sympathy. The rant garnered more eye-rolls than applause. It’s time-out for the excuses, Coach Bickerstaff. Own it. Do better. The city will respect you more for it. Trust me.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

If you keep telling stories about the same characters, eventually you’re going to end up buried under your own lore. This can be frustrating for a writer. Just ask Arthur Conan Doyle, who, after several dozen stories and novels, tried to retire Sherlock Holmes by tossing him off a waterfall. (It didn’t work, of course. Doyle brought Holmes back from the watery grave eight years later.)

As everyone from Doyle to the Star Trek writers have learned, you either end up ignoring your characters’ past or letting it inform their growth. There’s a big temptation to just hit the reset button, so we can watch our unchanging heroes overcome the same adversity, only this time with a bigger special effects budget. But that’s not why we tell stories. Our heroes should grow and change with us — especially childhood heroes.

I’m not sure animator Dean DeBlois thought he was going to be fleshing out the life story of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III when he and co-director Chris Sanders created How to Train Your Dragon for DreamWorks Animation in 2010. If he had, they probably would have rethought the names. It’s been nine years. Shouldn’t we know how to train these darn things by now? Does the third installment, The Hidden World, introduce advanced dragon training techniques?

Turns out, yes, it kind of does. Instead of just thinking up some new, wacky adventures for Hiccup and his dragon Toothless to get up to, DeBlois (who has sole writing credit, a rarity for one of these monster productions) lets the consequences of the last film sink in. Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), who started off as a bumbling weakling in need of draconic pedagogy, has now ascended to the chiefdom of the wacky Viking village of Berk. Toothless, the dragon he tamed instead of killing as a child, has also ascended leadership, to become the alpha dragon of the growing colony at Berk.

The film begins with a visual flourish as a fleet of great, dark ships emerge from a pea soup fog. It’s a very Game of Thrones image that telegraphs this film’s more mature attitude. Hiccup and his crew, including Astrid (America Ferrera), Gobber (Craig Ferguson), and Snotlout (Jonah Hill), swoop down from the night to rescue a load of dragons from draconic traffickers bent on building a fire-breathing army.

At first glance, the idyllic village of colorful, soaring dragon perches and jolly, vaguely Scandinavian huts seems to be a happy land. (Potential dragon dung issues are not addressed.) But Hiccup struggles to maintain the peace he won between beasts and humans, and the outside world is increasingly suspicious of the dragonriders. The evil Warlord slavers hire Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham), an infamous hunter of Dark Furies like Toothless, to rid them of the troublesome alpha, thus leaving Berk defenseless, and their cages full. To complete the parallel stories of young chief and young dragon king, Grimmel uses a captive female Light Fury to lure Toothless into a trap, just as Hiccup and Astrid are facing pressure from the tribe to tie the knot. Under the threat of imminent invasion, Hiccup and Toothless lead a search for the legendary hidden homeland of the dragons, where they hope to find safe haven.

When a hero gets made king, it’s usually just a reward for the end of the story. It’s not often that we get to see those heroes go on to make hard, kingly choices. For a film where the character designs teeter on the edge of the uncanny valley, DeBlois treats his hero more like Jon Snow than a guy named Hiccup. There’s still some wacky moments with Snotlout and Gobber, but the film’s heart really isn’t in the kiddie comedy this time around. DeBlois and the DreamWorks animators instead put their energy into a wordless sequence where Toothless tries to woo Light Fury with a dragon mating dance, with Hiccup playing silent Cyrano in the bushes. It’s a beautiful sequence that references Fantasia — and kind of a daring move for a genre that is obsessed with forward motion to keep the kids’ attention. But the kids who first discovered How to Train Your Dragon are teenagers now, contemplating their place in the world, and their animated friends have grown up with them.

Categories
Music Music Features

Memphis Magnetic Recording Company Opens in Memphis

CREDIT: Alex Greene

This week marks a watershed moment in the local studio scene: On Monday, the owners of the new Memphis Magnetic Recording Company discovered that their freshly renovated building on Vance Avenue, near Downtown, had passed inspection and was ready for business. It’s news that many on the Memphis music scene have anticipated for some time. Producer/engineer Scott McEwen and studio designer Bob Suffolk have been working on the space for over a year and half, and, due to their past track records and known love of vintage gear, forging friendships and raising eyebrows all over town.

Suffolk, who’s lived in Dallas for many years, plans on relocating to the Bluff City. “Our tracking room’s huge. All the bands from Dallas — and we’ve got some great bands there — they just go to work in Nashville,” Suffolk says. “I keep telling the bands, ‘Stop driving through Memphis! Turn off, come see us. Stop driving to bloody Nashville!'” Indeed, the studio owners hope to add to the growing profile of Memphis as a recording destination in its own right, and their aesthetic fits right in with the existing, sometimes legendary facilities here.

Alex Greene

Scott McEwen & Bob Suffolk

“Our studio is brand-spanking new, although it’s done in what I call a purpose-built vintage style,” Suffolk says. “It’s all analog, though it has ProTools if needed, and it’s huge. It’s a performance tracking room. And with a vocal booth and a lounge. We hope to help bring Memphis to life again, because there are so many great musicians here. And so far we’ve had a tremendous response from a lot of people in the city. Scott and I just stuck our necks out. When I first saw this raggedy old building on Vance, I thought ‘Oh, dear.’ It was built in 1927. It’s been empty since 1954, and it was full of vagrants and all sorts of crap. It was nasty. We started from scratch. Self Tucker, the architects, have been helping us.”

Walking into the space does feel like a step back into the past, and it’s not just because of the decor. Over the past 20 years, McEwen has made a name for himself at his Nashville facility, Fry Pharmacy, where he’s been amassing vintage gear and perfecting his analog recording chops. But, feeling the pinch of rising costs there, he’s throwing in his lot with Memphis, a city that has loomed large in McEwen’s imagination since the 1990s.

“I love Doug Easley’s work. I used to live with Mark Ibold, the bass player for Pavement,” he says. “So I was listening to the records Doug and Davis McCain were making, and I realized Sonic Youth and Jon Spencer and all these guys were going to Memphis. I loved Doug’s work from afar. I feel like he put Memphis back on the map, for my generation. So he was really important to me. I feel lucky to call him a friend.”

Now McEwen hopes to bring his long list of clients, including J.D. McPherson, to Memphis with him. Like him, they tend to favor the indie/Americana side of things and have a taste for the richer sounds of analog and tube gear. He likes to point out that their primary board, a Sphere, “was the Grand Ole Opry’s mixing board, in the 1970s.” And Suffolk, for his part, harks back to the original glory days of analog studios, when the revolution on the horizon was not digital, but solid state electronics.

At 19, he was hired as the “tea boy” at London’s Pye Recording Studios. “The first session I did was bringing in tea for the Kinks. I remember I walked into Studio 1 with a tray of tea, and they were tracking. Ray Davies was on the harpsichord, and he looked up and stopped, and all the people in the upper booth looked at me and motioned, ‘Come up here.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, God, I’m such a bastard.’ And to this day, I’m still the tea boy. Tea boy and studio design.”

A lucky break gave him the chance to renovate London’s famous Trident Studios in the 1980s, and from there he’s worked on many such facilities. Now, as he and McEwen open up for business, they’re looking to bring more of that big studio sound to Memphis — and tea as well.