There’s never been anything like the 2021 Academy Awards, which will air live on ABC, Sunday, April 25th. That’s because there has never been a year like 2020. The pandemic shut down the world’s movie theaters for the better part of 12 months, disrupting the industry more profoundly than anything else in its 120-year history. The Oscar ceremony comes later this year, with the hope that it would give audiences and voters time to catch up with the films they might have missed in all the chaos. And the rules concerning theatrical distribution have been relaxed somewhat.
Without an acclaimed, Titanic-level blockbuster (Tenet was neither) up for any awards, the atomized audiences of the streaming era largely missed the nominated films. That’s a shame, because it turns out 2020 was a very good year for film. If you’re looking to catch up on some good cinema between now and the time your second vax dose kicks in, there are plenty of gems on the Oscar shortlist.
But it wouldn’t be the Academy Awards without a high-profile snub, and the most egregious is the Spike Lee shutout. Lee has a history of being overlooked at Oscar time, but this year was the worst of all. He turned in a pair of career-highlight films that couldn’t have been more different. Da 5 Bloods would be my personal choice for Best Picture, and both Delroy Lindo and Chadwick Boseman deserved at least nominations for their performances as soldiers coming to terms with their experiences in Vietnam and racism in America. But the only nomination Da 5 Bloods received was for Best Original Score. That begs the question, why isn’t Lee’s concert film with David Byrne, American Utopia, represented in the Best Original Song category, where there’s a chance “Husavik” from the Will Ferrell comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga will take home the trophy?
The Best Actor category is as close to a lock as it gets. Chadwick Boseman, beloved from his role as Black Panther, died last year. His last performance as a tortured, treacherous trumpet player in the bluesy Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is even more Oscar-worthy when you consider he delivered it while dying of cancer.
The Documentary Feature category, on the other hand, is up in the air, with three excellent nominees. My choice is Crip Camp, the story of the birth of political activism among the disabled community, buoyed by the impeccable editing of former Memphian Eileen Meyer. Equally powerful are My Octopus Teacher, about filmmaker and freediver Craig Foster’s life-changing experiences in the kelp forests of South Africa; and Time, the chronicle of Sibil Fox Richardson’s two-decade battle to get her husband released from prison.
Pixar’s out-of-body jazz odyssey, Soul, is the front runner for Best Animated Feature, but the gorgeous Irish film Wolfwalkers could be a dark horse, and the Pixar fantasy/comedy Onward is definitely worth a watch.
Judas and the Black Messiah was a surprise Best Picture nominee, sneaking in before the extended deadline. It’s a crackerjack film that casts the true story of Black Panther Fred Hampton as a streetwise thriller, like Goodfellas. Daniel Kaluuya deserves the Supporting Actor trophy for his role as Hampton, but his co-star LaKeith Stanfield was also nominated, potentially splitting the vote and raising the question of who exactly was the film’s lead actor.
Minari, the story of Korean immigrants struggling to make ends meet in rural Arkansas, was the charmer of Indie Memphis 2020. It received six nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Lee Isaac Chung; I’m pulling for Yuh-Jung Youn for Best Supporting Actress.
Mank, which received 10 nominations total, is a tasty slice of Old Hollywood by David Fincher. Starring Best Actor nominee Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the alcoholic screenwriter who penned Citizen Kane, its meticulous craftsmanship is a wonder to behold. Erik Messerschmidt should win Best Cinematography for his Kane-inspired, black-and-white imagery.
Frances McDormand stars in Nomadland.
My pick for Best Picture is Nomadland. Director Chloé Zhao and actress Frances McDormand crafted a moving portrait of a woman adrift, both economically and spiritually, in the American West. McDormand deserves Best Actress for one of the most detailed and emotionally resonant performances you will ever see, and Zhao — who lived on the road with her actress and crew for months at a time — should become the second Asian person in a row, after Bong Joon-Ho for Parasite, to win Best Director.
Meanwhile, life goes on and so does the Tennessee General Assembly, which has reached what could be called the stretch drive of its race to conclude its annual session. The bills that are going to be run through this last-chance wringer include the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here are a couple that were scheduled for a significant look-see this week:
HB 577/SB 139 — Slated for the Senate regular calendar on Monday night was this brainchild of Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) and Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma). The bill is seemingly intended as some sort of counter to the urges of horny adolescents as well as a shield against liberal attempts at family-life curricula. Essentially, it is aimed at halting or limiting minors’ access to “contraceptive procedures, supplies, and materials.”
It “prohibits distribution of contraception on school property,” “requires the Textbook and Instructional Material Quality Commission to approve all medically acceptable contraceptive information distributed at public schools or public charter schools,” and requires parental permission for a minor to access any contraceptive materials that might possibly be referred by public schools or public charter schools. Bearing down on its central point, it prohibits instruction in a “family life curriculum” that does not emphasize the primacy of abstinence. An omission from the bill, perhaps an oversight, is the lack of any requirement involving cold showers for affected adolescents.
Oh, and language in the bill does warn that “passage of the proposed legislation could jeopardize federal Title X funding in FY21-22 and subsequent years to the Department of Health, received for providing comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services.”
• Adults come in for their fair share of regulation, as well. On the calendar for floor action in the House on Monday night of this week is HB 532/SB 406, by Rep. Ron Gant (R-Rossville) and Sen. Page Walley (R-Bolivar). The bill’s abstract advertises its purpose: “revises exemption that authorizes municipalities having a population of 10,000 or less to enforce traffic laws on a contiguous portion of an interstate highway within the boundaries of the municipality if there are at least two entrance ramps and two exit ramps so that the contiguous portion no longer needs to be solely within the boundaries of the municipality.”
Got that? No? Here is HB 532/SB 406 described a tad more purposively: “This is a bill for Piperton, a small town on the Fayette-Shelby line that’s known in the area as a speed trap. The bill gives the town the ability to catch speeders on a 1.5 mile stretch of I-269. Designed to help enhance the coffers of small towns that have extended their lines to include portions of interstates.”
Go back to the use of the word “solely” in the bill’s official abstract. The situation faced by officials of Piperton (pop: 2,142) is that, as I-269 transects Piperton, only the northbound section of it lies within the town limits, while the southbound part goes through neighboring Collierville.
This mischance threatens at least half of the town’s potential revenue from speeding tickets and other moving citations on that small stretch of interstate. This bill allows the town’s constabulary to hit up the other side of the interstate as well, with the likelihood of doubling receipts.
State Rep. Dwayne Thompson, who was the only naysayer to the bill on its way through the House Transportation Committee, planned to renew his objections during floor discussions and hoped to be joined by more than a few of the colleagues who may have to encounter the turf in question with some regularity.
The Rio Grande at Radium Springs (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
I crossed the Rio Grande river last week — several times, actually. It wasn’t that difficult. In fact, I could have walked across and not gotten my feet wet, much less my back.
In Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I was visiting family, the Rio Grande comes down from the northern part of the state and runs along the city’s western edge. Or at least it used to. Right now, the Rio Grande is as dry as a buzzard’s brunch — a 100-yard-wide strip of sandy dirt. The river has looked like this in Las Cruces from October to February for most years since the 1990s. The Rio Grande is “turned on” again early each spring by releasing water from the Elephant Butte Reservoir 70 miles upstream.
But things are changing, and not for the better. In 2020, water wasn’t released into the Rio Grande bed until late March, and the river was back to dirt by September. This year, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District says levels are so low that water won’t be released until June, and that the river will probably be dry again by the end of July. In New Mexico, the Rio Grande is no longer grande — or even a rio — for most of the year.
Historically, the Rio Grande used to flow year-round through the Mesilla Valley from Hatch (Chile Capital of the World), through Las Cruces, down to El Paso, at least at some level. Before the Spaniards arrived, Native Americans farmed the valley and fished the river’s waters. Then as agriculture began to increasingly tap into the river in the 20th century, the Rio Grande was dammed in several places to prevent seasonal flooding, capture snow-melt runoff from the mountains, and provide water as needed to irrigate many thousands of acres of pecans, alfalfa, lettuce, chiles, onions, and cotton. Now, there is enough water for agriculture — maybe — but that’s about it.
South of El Paso, where the river becomes the border between the United States and Mexico, the water level picks up again somewhat, as the river is fed by reservoirs in both countries. But drought (which doesn’t recognize lines on a map) is also affecting flow along the border.
It’s a good thing we have that beautiful 2,000-mile wall. Or, actually, I guess it’s the 452 miles of fencing that were already in place, plus the 80 miles that the Former Guy added. According to Google, there are 300 or so miles of barrier (fencing or wall) along the dry border between San Diego and El Paso. After that, we’ve traditionally counted on the Rio Grande to handle the job of stopping would-be immigrants: making them swim for it or die trying. We may have to rethink that strategy. Wading isn’t all that dangerous.
But I digress. Las Cruces is a lovely place. It has beautiful scenery, and it’s fun to drive around and take in the vast vistas of sky and mountains. (And also to drive into the desert with my brother and shoot at Amazon boxes using my late father’s old .22. We killed several.)
On a whim, I took my tack-sharp 95-year-old mother on a drive north of Las Cruces, through the farm fields of the Mesilla Valley to Radium Springs, where there is actual water flowing in the middle of the desert and where some of the world’s largest pecan orchards are located. We veered off toward the Rio Grande on a gravel road and found a couple of small, shallow pools in the riverbed — a lovely reminder of what used to be, and, sadly, probably not a harbinger of what’s to come.
In fact, if what I saw in Las Cruces is any indicator of where we’re headed with the Rio Grande, keeping the scary hordes of brown people from invading our pure Anglo-Saxon soil is just going to keep getting harder. It’s clear that Mother Nature — or climate change, if you’re an elitist — is conspiring against our puny idea of what makes a border.
It may come down to a choice between saving American pecans or keeping a few American wing-nuts happy. I stand with the pecans.
Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis now serves as the first Black female chief of the Durham Police Department. (Photo: City of Memphis/YouTube)
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced Monday, April 19th, he picked Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis to be the next director of the Memphis Police Department (MPD).
If approved by the Memphis City Council, Davis would be the first woman to lead the department. She is now the chief of the Durham Police Department in North Carolina, serving as that department’s first Black female chief. Prior to Durham, she served as Deputy Chief of Police for the Atlanta Police Department.
Strickland made the announcement in a YouTube video Monday morning. In it, Deidre Malone, president and CEO of The Carter Malone Group, a public and government relations firm, interviewed Davis about the kind of leader she would be for MPD and how she would handle some of the city’s unique challenges.
Here are some of Davis’ comments on some of the biggest topics covered in the interview.
On police shootings:
“This is a very painful time, and in our country. This is a very difficult place for the law enforcement industry because — time and time again — we have failed.
“As an African-American woman who gets up in the morning without the uniform on, I understand that there is work to be done. There’s much work to be done to build up those relationships.
“We have officers that get up every day to really protect and serve. They don’t get up in the morning thinking that they’re going out to hurt somebody or kill somebody. We need to be able to build that trust with our communities by showing them that we’re not just going to respond to a call because something bad has happened.”
On interacting with activists:
“We need to ask our community, ‘What do you want from your police department?’ and find time to be in those difficult conversations, even with activists.
“They deserve space to exercise their First Amendment rights. In Durham, that’s what we’ve allowed them to do. As I’m here right now, we had protests in Durham last night. But my staff has learned it’s not all about wearing mobile field force gear and getting in front of people who are already angry, who have reasons to be angry. We need to give individuals their space to protest.”
On challenges in MPD:
“I believe in maximizing manpower. You know, sometimes you can’t get the additional officers that you really need, and sometimes you really need to take a surgical look at what you have and are using.”
On Tennessee’s new open-carry gun law:
“That’s very challenging, and I think is very inconsiderate. I hate to say it like that, but I think it’s very inconsiderate to communities that are already struggling with gun violence.
“When you put officers in a situation where they can’t address suspicious individuals, because they’re walking around with weapons, that makes it very complicated.”
Visit the News Blog at memphisflyer.com for fuller versions of these stories and more local news.
Beautiful Heartwarming beauty is rare on Facebook. But one thread last week overflowed with it. On the Buy Nothing Midtown/Downtown group, a transitioning woman asked for any unwanted clothes.
In less than 24 hours, the post had 503 comments. There were clothes offers, natch, but also an outpouring of support, pride, and congrats.
“I’m From Memphis” Head over to Mari Beth’s Facebook page for a sticker that reads, “I’m from Memphis not Tennessee. Oh, and also fuck Bill Lee.”
Posted to Facebook by Mari Beth
It’s Complicated
A Shelby County Commissioner had a question on Facebook last week about the Complicated Pilgrim restaurant to open inside The Memphian Hotel: “I want to know the market research that said, ‘Name your flagship restaurant Complicated Pilgrim’ in the middle of damn Memphis, Tennessee, in a hotel named The Memphian? Please someone email me that study. Seriously. WTF is a complicated pilgrim?”
The restaurant gave, maybe, a hint of an answer in a December Facebook post that read, “muse mention: Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz.”
When the light turns green, the work truck ahead of me belches out a cloud of dark smoke. I drive through the black cloud, and after a second, the smell seeps in. It’s that familiar stench of half-burned hydrocarbons that permeates so much of modern life.
I’m behind the wheel of a 2021 Nissan Leaf, which, unlike the lumbering work truck in front of me, has no tailpipe to emit smoke, water vapor, or, worst of all, carbon dioxide. It’s an electric vehicle (EV) which runs on energy stored in the 62-kilowatt lithium ion battery beneath my feet. Introduced in 2011, and built in Smyrna, Tennessee, the Leaf was the world’s best-selling EV for nine years, until it was surpassed by the Tesla Model 3 in 2020. “We were one of the first ones on the market,” says Maurice Walker, internet director for Jim Keras Nissan.
Today, there are more than 1.7 million electric cars on the road in the United States. “There are about 13,000 across the state of Tennessee,” says Becky Williamson, strategic marketing coordinator for MLGW. “Most of those are congregated in the large metro areas of Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga.”
Nissan Leaf, with Maurice Walker at Jim Keras Nissan (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Walker, who has been selling the Leaf since its 2011 debut, says concern about climate change is the biggest reason people buy EVs. “For all of the customers we’ve sold to, their main idea was to help the environment, to cut down on emissions, as well as save some money by not having to go to the gas pump. It worked out really well for them. [The Leaf] had a very aggressive lease to get them out there, so you’re looking at payments between $200 and $300 a month for a $40,000 vehicle that could get you to and from in comfort, and you don’t have to stop at the gas station. So it was way cheaper than driving anything else in the market.”
According to Drive Electric Tennessee, fuel costs for a traditional gasoline-powered internal combustion engine run between $0.12 to $0.13 per mile, while it only takes $0.02-$0.04 per mile to charge an EV. But EV sales represent only about 2 percent of the American automotive market, which is dominated by SUVs and big trucks, like the Ford F-150. Walker says even though the Leaf is manufactured here in Tennessee, most of Nissan’s sales are in states with strict emissions controls, like California. “You can’t even sell a [Nissan] Armada [SUV] in California, because it doesn’t pass the emissions test,” he says.
Tennessee has much looser emissions standards. “In Memphis, it doesn’t sell as well,” says Walker. There’s one overwhelming reason for that sales gap: “range anxiety.”
Energy Density
It takes a lot of power to move you and your metal chariot down the road to grandma’s house, so you need a means of carrying energy with you. Throughout the 1800s, would-be automotive engineers came up with a lot of different storage methods, from coal-fed steam power, like a locomotive, to compressed air. Electricity, stored in lead acid batteries, was tried very early. The American inventor Robert Anderson had a working electric car in 1832; by the turn of the century, a fleet of electric taxis roamed New York City. A full third of all automobiles sold between 1900 and 1912 were electric.
That would soon change. The internal combustion engine, invented by Karl Benz in 1886, ran on a potent liquid fuel derived from crude oil. Gasoline is one of the most energy-dense substances known. In physics terms, it contains 34 megajoules of energy per liter of volume. For comparison, a modern lithium ion battery, like the one in the Nissan Leaf, can hold about two megajoules per liter. That means, all things being equal, you can get a lot farther with one liter of gasoline than one liter of lithium. In the 1920s, when Ford introduced the gas-powered Model T, the crude batteries of the day couldn’t compete either in range or price. Electric cars disappeared from the road.
But the EV’s saving grace is that all things are not equal. The internal combustion engine is extremely inefficient. About 65 percent of the energy stored in gasoline is wasted when it’s burned in an engine, mostly to the vast amounts of waste heat that must be dissipated by a car’s radiator. Electric motors waste only about 10 percent of the energy stored in the battery. Electric cars are much lighter and have fewer moving parts. That means no oil changes, and much less maintenance. “Rotate the tires every 10,000 miles, and get the battery checked once every 12 months,” says Walker. “I think the total service for all of that is about $200 a year, which is way cheaper than anything else.”
Three years ago, Shannon Dixon bought a used 2015 Nissan Leaf. “What I like about it is, it’s really fast. It has no lag. You hit the pedal, and you’re out of there, so you can get out of some tricky traffic situations. It just feels very nimble. I love the environmental benefits of it, for sure, and the economic benefits. It has not been to the shop yet.”
The listed range of the 24 kWh battery pack is 84 miles, “… but it really has to be perfect temperature,” says Dixon. “If it’s too cold, the battery works really hard to recharge. The same if it’s really hot.”
Heating and air conditioning can also cut into the range, and as the battery pack ages, it holds less energy. But Dixon says range is rarely a problem. The average American drove about 26 miles per day in 2017, so even a battery pack that is six years into its estimated 10-year lifespan is more than adequate for most days. “You have to learn the car, and you have to learn a few tricks on how to increase your range,” she says.
Over the last two decades, EV manufacturers have pursued a lot of strategies to extend range. One of those is regenerative braking, which was pioneered by gas-electric hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius. When Dixon wants to slow down in her Leaf, the electric motors switch from drawing power from the batteries to harvesting power from the car’s momentum to feed back to the batteries. Most EVs come with the option of “one-pedal driving,” where regenerative braking kicks in automatically, and the brakes are only for emergencies. “If you don’t have your foot on the — I was going to say the gas pedal, but it’s the electric pedal — in the battery mode, it slows down, and really saves you the miles,” Dixon says. “That’s kind of fun. I like to try to game it sometimes: Can I drive from here to there without losing any electric miles?”
In my test drive of the 2021 Nissan Leaf, I switch to one-pedal mode at a stoplight. It’s like driving a golf cart, and a little disorienting at first. I stop next to the Malco Summer Drive-In to do some math. Over the last decade, battery technology has grown by leaps and bounds. According to my dashboard meter, the battery is at 94 percent, which will take me 205 miles. I could make it to Nashville, Little Rock, or Jackson, Mississippi, before needing a recharge. I hop on I-240 to return to Covington Pike, accelerating onto the freeway like normal. By the time I look at the speedometer, I’ve topped 90 mph.
Charge Up
“This is the gem of your story,” says MLGW’s Williamson. “All you need to do is go pick up your electric vehicle from the dealer, drive it home, and plug it into the outlet that is more than likely already sitting there in your garage or carport. You can charge an electric vehicle with a standard, 120-volt outlet.”
Most EV owners “trickle charge” their vehicles overnight and wake up with more than enough juice in the batteries to get where they need to go. You can also opt for a Level 2 charger, which requires the installation of a dedicated, 240-volt circuit. “Those are the types of chargers that typically you find at businesses,” says Williamson. “The ones at Shelby Farms, which were installed in the last decade as a part of our EV project, are Level 2 chargers.”
A Level 2 charger can fully charge a battery in five hours, adding 12-60 miles of range per hour. “In most public places, people are just charging for the 30 minutes they’re in the grocery store, or the couple of hours they’re having dinner.”
Newer Level 3 chargers, also known as DC Fast Chargers, can get a depleted EV back on the road with an 80 percent charge in about a half hour. Networks of Level 3 chargers, like Tesla Superchargers, are springing up all over the country, according to Williamson. “There are about 12 to 15 of those DC fast-charging stations here in Shelby County.”
Range anxiety is really infrastructure anxiety — gas stations are everywhere, but will there be a charger handy when I need it? With the help of websites such as PlugShare, which keeps track of every publicly available charger, it’s increasingly possible and convenient to string together longer journeys.
But Karen Lombardo, general manager of Roadshow BMW Mini, is not sure it’s enough to overcome EV reluctance for many drivers. “They want to be able to just jump in the truck, drive down to Destin, and not have to worry about it,” she says. “Not necessarily speaking from my professional opinion, but more my personal opinion, I think one of the reasons that people have wanted to wait on electric is that they don’t just look at their car as a commuter vehicle. The United States is different from other parts of the world, where people don’t take their personal commuter on trips. They jump on a train in Europe, or they can fly from country to country very easily and affordably. Here, people look at their vehicle as their freedom — especially in the last 12 months, with COVID making people not want to fly.”
BMW was another early entrant into the EV game. The i3, an advanced compact hatchback made with lightweight, carbon fiber components, debuted in 2014 with an 83-mile range — the top 2021 model will go 180 miles. The i3’s technology and unique styling earned three World Car of the Year awards, but less than 42,000 have sold in America. Still, Lombardo says BMW considers the i3 experiment a success. “The expectation wasn’t there that the i3 was going to sell the way the 3-Series does.”
Companies like BMW, who have spent the last century building up an infrastructure to support fossil fuel-powered cars, use projects like the i3 to gauge what will be needed to support the new technology. “We have to make sure that we can provide the same service level to the electric vehicle owner as we can to the rest of our client base.”
The BMW i4 electric car (bmwusanews.com)
These lessons are being applied to the BMW i4, which will make its debut in 2022. It’s a more conventionally styled sedan, which sports the distinctive BMW kidney grill. The i4 will have a 300-mile range, handle like a sports car, and go zero to 60 in four seconds.
A similar pattern is playing out across the industry. After a decade of development, Nissan Leaf sales are up 50 percent in 2021; in 2022, the company will introduce the Ariya, an electric SUV with a 300-mile range. The new Ford Mustang Mach-E will deliver similar performance for around $40,000. GM is rebooting the infamously thirsty Hummer as a 300-mile EV supertruck and expects to offer only electric vehicles by 2035. Audi, Volkswagen, and Porsche have also pledged to go all-electric in the next 20 years.
Williamson says MLGW has seen interest in electric cars wax and wane over the years, but this time is different. “Drive Electric Tennessee is looking for 200,000 EVs across the state of Tennessee by 2028,” she says. MLGW expects to see 50,000 EVs on its grid in the next 20 years, “… and that’s not taking into account buses and other unique electric vehicles.”
Lombardo agrees there has been renewed interest in EVs. “I would say the last 12 months, in Memphis, Tennessee, I’ve seen Tesla registrations increase by a lot.”
The Future
Founded in 2003 by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Tesla has been associated with Elon Musk since he took over as CEO in 2008. The vehicles have a reputation as the most advanced EVs on the market; there are more than 800,000 Model 3s on the road.
Adam Hohenberg says when he needed a new car, he intended to buy a Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid — only to find Chevrolet had discontinued it. “When I looked around, it just seemed like Tesla was really far ahead of everybody else, and it wasn’t that much more than a hybrid.”
Hohenberg says he has had no regrets. “It’s been great. It just plugs in, and you go. In my garage, I get 45 miles of range per hour. You don’t even charge it all the way up unless you’re going on the highway. I’ve taken it on the road to Florida and to Hot Springs, and you just stop at Superchargers. They’re all just off the highway, so I just stop for 20 minutes a couple of times, and that’s it.”
Investors think EVs are the future: Tesla’s market capitalization is currently $820 billion. That, more than anything, explains why old line automotive companies are rushing EVs into production, and why wave after wave of EV startups have flooded the capital markets.
One of those startups is Mullen Technologies, which recently announced plans to open a manufacturing facility to produce a Chinese-designed electric SUV in a former Nike warehouse at 8400 Winchester Road in Memphis. The project was granted a 15-year Jobs PILOT by the Economic Development Growth Engine for Memphis and Shelby County (EDGE). “We were attracted by the fact that they have an exceptional leadership team,” says Reid Dulberger, president and CEO of EDGE. “They have what appears to be a very sound vision and a path forward. Nonetheless, it is a hyper-competitive industry. There are many new players trying to get into the market, and you have the established auto companies also pivoting heavily toward electric vehicles. So the total cost of entry into the market is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The deal is expected to bring in more than $360 million in new investment and create 434 new jobs with an average wage of $53,000 — if it happens. Mullen Technologies has been in business since 2012, but has never actually produced anything. Repeated requests to the company for interviews were not returned. Dulberger is quick to point out that the PILOT is conditional on Mullen signing the lease, and making the investment.
One thing is clear: The automotive industry is at a moment of great change. “It’s the wave of the future,” says Hohenberg. “You’ll enjoy not smelling fumes or hearing a loud engine. When I got the car, I started noticing all these machines around me, driving around with smoky engines that seemed like they were from another century — which they are.”
Elizabeth King has been singing since she was three. In fact, she fronted a 10-man group, the Gospel Souls, for almost 40 years, starting at the dawn of the ’70s when she first recorded for Pastor Juan Shipp and his D-Vine Spirituals label. But, while she’s always sung at home and church, she hadn’t performed with the Gospel Souls for quite some time when Shipp called her out of the blue a couple of years ago.
“Pastor Shipp called and asked how I felt about going back in the studio,” she recalls. “I said, ‘I would like to, but it’s been so long.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got somebody who wants to record you.’ And I said, ‘You need to quit playing!’ ’Cause you know, Rev. Shipp likes to play a lot. ‘Nobody wants me to sing after all these years!’ He said, ‘I’m serious. His name is Bruce Watson. Can you come in tomorrow morning?’”
Shipp had been cultivating a partnership with Watson, as Watson delved into the catalogs of Shipp’s old labels and began releasing archival material on his new imprint, Bible & Tire Recording Company. Indeed, while a few recordings of King and her group were released as singles way back when, there were many others that didn’t see the light of day until Watson’s new label issued them as The D-Vine Sprirituals Recordings in 2019. But Watson wouldn’t stop at that. He wanted to capture her voice now, after many years of a life well-lived, working day jobs and raising 15 children.
Elizabeth King (Photo: Matt White)
When she arrived at Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio, he already had backing tracks recorded, using what has become a house band of sorts for many of his projects: guitarists Will Sexton and Matt Ross-Spang, bassist Mark Edgar Stuart, and drummer George Sluppick. Also in the mix were keyboardists Al Gamble and Rick Steff, saxophonists Art Admaiston and Jim Spake, and a host of background singers, including the Barnes Brothers (who have an album of their own on Bible & Tire) and some of King’s background singers from the ’70s, the Vaughn Sisters and the D-Vine Spiritualettes.
King was impressed with the band immediately. “They’re good!” she says. “They’re professionals. The guy on drums, on one song, he showed me a couple of turns to put in, to change it a little, to fit their music, and it worked out great.”
Meanwhile, King hadn’t been in a studio for nearly 50 years. When she walked in, “Bruce said, ‘Let me hear you sing.’ He was playing the music and it sounded good, and I started singing. I sang from 10 to 2. He said, ‘Okay, come listen, I think I’ve got something.’ We recorded three songs that day and I didn’t even know it! I knew he was recording, but I didn’t know it was going to sound that good. It was amazing because I hadn’t rehearsed a lick with those guys. And he brought all this out. I said, ‘Next time, I’m going to rehearse and it’ll be even better.’”
She never did rehearse, but it didn’t matter. The band had learned songs she’d known all her life, and she poured all of her life thus far into them. This month, Bible & Tire released the fruits of their labor, Living in the Last Days, and it sounds like a miracle. The band, relative youngsters compared to King, play with a deep knowledge of classic gospel, and it gives her work a unique stamp in an age of synthesizers, click tracks, and a genre now deeply shaped by jazz fusion and funk.
“There have been a lot of changes in gospel music and singing, to me. But I’m still old-school. My kids laugh at me all the time. They say, ‘Mama, that’s old-school. We don’t like for you to sing because you be making us cry!’ I think Bruce is doing a good job. I like all the sounds of the groups that have recorded since I’ve been there. They’re kind of old-school. I like that.”
Meanwhile, King is glad she continued her involvement in music long after the breakup of her original group. “I kept going, because, if you’ve got a voice and you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. I kept going.”
“Annual income £20.00, annual expenditure £19.97½, result happiness.
“Annual income £20.00, annual expenditure £20.02½, result misery.”
— Mr. Micawber, from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield
Both the 20th and 21st centuries have provided an opportunity in capital markets unparalleled in history. Anyone can earn money by saving and investing. Returns can be volatile, but the idea of approaching a double-digit average return on investments year after year, safe from hyperinflation, expropriation, or other disruption, is very special.
This phenomenon has created the concept of retirement, where financial assets can grow over a lifetime and eventually replace the need to work. But how do you get your money invested and working early enough to make a difference?
When I ask my clients how much income it would take for them to live comfortably and save appropriately, the answer is usually the same — something like 20 percent more than what they earn now.
The irony, of course, is that it’s like a treadmill — someone else is dissatisfied living on your 20 percent higher dream income, and there are others desperate to make it to your baseline.
Money does equal happiness, but only up to a point. Studies have suggested that a household income of about $75,000 is the upper boundary of that zone. Everyone would appreciate a raise, but studies suggest that emotional well-being, defined as aspects of day-to-day joy, sadness, anxiety, anger, and happiness, is controlled by other variables once basic needs are met and income rises above $75K.
How to get there? Well, spending less is a lot easier than earning more. The only way off the treadmill is to truly believe that beyond a certain point more spending does not equal more happiness.
Bill Gates famously says, “It’s the same hamburger,” when asked about being a billionaire. He has the means to hire chefs or fly in food from the finest restaurants in the world, but he still eats a lot of hamburgers. More expensive options simply don’t make him any happier and he has nothing to prove by consuming more.
I used to have an almost-daily Starbucks habit that I decided to address. Rather than budgeting $10 or $20 every week to moderate it and occasionally treat myself, I realized I was paying a huge premium for an addictive product that didn’t really matter to me. I switched to homemade decaf, which I can take in my insulated mug down to a park bench among the Starbucks sippers essentially for free.
That saving strategy works for me not because I’ve trained myself to accept privation; it works because my mindset is now that spending money makes me feel deprived. Just like Bill Gates (well, maybe not exactly), I also have nothing to prove. If someone thinks my DIY coffee is less impressive than a Starbucks cup, so be it. I’d rather have the money.
To paraphrase the Dickens quote above, if you can find true happiness living below your means, everything else is likely to fall into place. That revelation is more powerful than a thousand life hacks or budgeting tips, even if you can’t let go of Starbucks. There are probably things you can release, which, with the right mindset, could leave you closer to financial independence — and just as happy.
Gene Gard is Co-Chief Investment Officer at Telarray, a Memphis-based wealth management firm that helps families navigate investment, tax, estate, and retirement decisions. Contact him at ggard@telarrayadvisors.com.
Growing up, cancel culture was an evangelical Christian thing. They were always boycotting something. We couldn’t even play Dungeons & Dragons on Boy Scout trips, out of fear it would turn us into little Satan worshipers. The problem was that, as an adjective, “Christian” in front of pop culture anything like music, movies, or books meant it was going to suck rhinoceros dick, to borrow a phrase from the movie Porky’sII.
As a kid, I thought Porky’s II was hilarious. I grew up in a good, protestant Southern household, where the raunchy comedies were like liquor — they stayed hidden at the back of a closet. I’d pull those Betamax tapes out and laugh my ass off when my parents weren’t home.
Remember those pitiful kids whose parents canceled everything popular? Want some heavy metal? Here is Stryper. Want a superhero movie? Here is Willie Aames as Bibleman. Want to read a supernatural thriller? Here’s Left Behind.
I didn’t want to worship Satan. I just wanted music that rocked, and the Christian bands weren’t offering anything that competed with Danzig and Slayer.
As a kid, I saw three innocent teens in West Memphis get canceled all the way to death row for being into things I enjoyed, things you could buy at Walmart, like Iron Maiden albums and Stephen King books.
My mom went to classes at church that taught her what I shouldn’t be exposed to. They studied what to cancel. From Mötley Crüe to NWA, I learned the protestant lesson. You kept the fun stuff hidden.
I could listen to music with headphones. I could get books from the library. I didn’t really notice the ’90s Disney boycott. I had younger siblings who wouldn’t stand for any Flanders-esque substitutes, so that one didn’t last long in our house.
The one that got me was the Levi’s boycott. Suddenly we were wearing Lee jeans, an off brand who made jeans with no regard for the shape of actual human bodies. They were cut to fit a theoretical person with stick legs that merged with an ass that was about four inches tall but as wide as a dump truck. Then they narrowed back to be too tight at the waist.
These days, people are only being “canceled” to the extent they aren’t getting big money from big corporations. They aren’t censored by the government. And big companies have to go where the money is. They can’t rely on racist artifacts like the Electoral College and the Senate and voter suppression. To them, money from a gay guy in San Francisco or a Black woman in Atlanta is as important as money from a white guy in rural Wyoming. It’s that actual conservative God — the Invisible Hand of the Free Market — at work.
The Dr. Seuss estate stopped publishing some books that weren’t selling much to begin with. Pepé Le Pew, a character built around one joke that isn’t funny anymore, won’t be in the new Space Jam movie. Mr. Potato Head … nothing changed there except the logo. Mainstream conservative media just told people they should be mad. When there is a widely popular plan to tax the rich to rebuild bridges and roads, you have to change the subject somehow.
People comparing the Lil Nas X video for “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” and Cardi B video for “WAP” to Pepé assaulting a cat seem to be missing some big points about both consent and media aimed at children versus adults. And, as someone who enjoyed so-called “devil music,” I never noticed these kinds of complaints thrown at Hank Williams III for his “Straight to Hell” song. Go listen to that one to hear a straight white guy enthusiastically singing about heading down there. It didn’t generate any uproar.
As a kid, the Bible had the most murder, rape, violence, and supernatural horror I encountered in anything I read or listened to. For all the talk about the devil, he’s a bit player in the story, rarely mentioned outside the book of Job, where he is God’s gambling buddy. The real villains, occurring again and again throughout history, are the sanctimonious, authoritarian hypocrites who abuse scripture to justify their self-serving actions. The book’s main protagonist calls them on their bullshit and tells them God wants them to help the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. Then they cancel him on a cross.
Craig David Meek is a Memphis writer, barbecue connoisseur, and the author of Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce & Soul.
Chad Getchel and
Leah Roberts Getchel (Photo: Leah Roberts Getchel)
Take a chef de cuisine from a fine dining restaurant, add a former personal chef/catering company executive chef, and what do you get?
Good Groceries Mobile Diner.
“My husband is the chef de cuisine at River Oaks Restaurant. Chad Getchel,” says Leah Roberts Getchel. “In 1999, I became a certified personal chef.”
She worked a corporate job at AutoZone for almost nine years before becoming an executive chef for Cotton Bowl Catering. She returned to the corporate world, where her jobs included working for FedEx, Hilton, and St. Jude.
But, she says, “When COVID hit, I lost my corporate job.” Wondering what she was going to do next, Leah thought, “Go back to the food world.”
She and Chad, who was laid off for three months from the restaurant, originally thought about starting a food truck to service corporate offices that lease space and don’t have company cafeterias.
They bought a food truck, which they equipped with a 36-inch stove, flattop, and burners before the lockdown. “People were still going to the offices for the most part. We thought this would be over. Shortly after that, nobody went to work. The offices were empty.”
They noticed more people were patronizing food trucks, so they began serving the general public at farmers markets and neighborhoods. But, she says, “It took a little time for people to adapt to our menu because it’s a little bit more of a high-end restaurant-style menu, not your typical food truck fare.”
Instead of pork, they serve duck because the pork industry is “just riddled with problems,” including inhumane treatment of pigs, Leah says. “We started playing with ducks and made duck breakfast sausage. You can’t tell the difference between it and a pork sausage.”
They serve the Barbecue Duck Sammy — pulled duck with tangy barbecue sauce, cole slaw, and sliced pickles on brioche bread. Their Duck Confit sandwich is slow-cooked duck with mango chutney and a medium-fried egg on toasted brioche. “Egg yolk is my favorite sauce,” she says.
Here Chicky Chicky is marinated chicken on a toasted ciabatta bun with mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato. “We also have the fresh (vegan and nut-free) pesto, lemon juice, olive oil, and melted Provolone.”
Realizing they went “a little too crazy on the duck,” they added a house-made salmon burger with mango chutney and jerk seasoning. They only serve pork if it’s “local and certified humane.”
They call themselves a “mobile diner” because they take traditional diner foods “and elevate them.”
Chad, who works part-time at Good Groceries Mobile Diner when he’s not at River Oaks, is leaving the restaurant in May to work full-time at the food truck. “I really love it,” Chad says. “It’s a lot of freedom. You get to do whatever you want as long as somebody is going to buy it.”
Born in Lansing, Michigan, Chad began cooking early. “I remember asking my mom if I could make an experiment. I’d go into the kitchen and put a whole bunch of random stuff in a frying pan. I ruined a whole bunch of pans when I was five or six.”
Since he played guitar in bands, Chad worked in kitchens because the hours were flexible. Realizing he wasn’t going to make a living playing music, he went the cooking route and went to cooking school at Sullivan University in Lexington, Kentucky.
A Downtown brick-and-mortar restaurant is in the planning stages for Good Groceries Mobile Diner, Leah says. “We’re not making a move on that until September. But, later down the road, we’d love to have a restaurant and keep up with the food truck. It’s a lot of fun.”
To find out where Good Groceries Mobile Diner will be during the week, go to eatgoodgroceries.com or their Facebook page.
