Is Bitcoin worth the investment? (Photo: Bermix Studio | Unsplash)
For many people, the stock market is a big casino. Stocks go up, stocks go down, and there’s no telling when it will happen or why. That’s true to an extent, but unlike truly random processes, there are many forces at work that reliably pull stock markets upwards over time.
Bitcoin is an example of a market that does not work like stocks. While some have suggested “fundamental” reasons that crypto assets rise and fall, at the end of the day they go up because more people want to buy them, and they go down when more people want to sell them. Given the nature of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the main reason people want to buy them is because they speculate others will want to buy more in the future and the price will go up. This leads to a speculative cycle of ups and downs that is exhausting.
Bitcoin as an investment is very similar to other “nonproductive” assets like gold, silver, oil, or art. While they might appreciate over time because people either need them or want them, they exist only to be consumed or owned.
Supply and demand influences stocks as well, but there is much more going on behind the scenes when you think about investing in a publicly traded company.
One way to think about a stock is that it is a black box. To get it started, you have to open up the box and put some money (capital) into it. Then, as long as everything goes well, money starts coming out of the black box — like an ATM — over time. You’re not just getting your money back. Over time, you can take out a large amount of money as profit and that initial capital can grow far beyond the amount you put in.
The income that flows out of the black box of a publicly traded company is special. It tends to increase over time as productivity, population, and GDP grows. It tends to rise as inflation increases. It benefits from technological advancements. If you diversify into a lot of these different black boxes, they can be a pretty reliable way to make money in the long run, even if sometimes the money slows down or even stops for short periods of time.
There might be a lot of demand for Bitcoin in 10 or 20 or even 100 years — or there might not. It’s almost impossible to know whether or not interest will continue or the next big thing will come along and make it obsolete.
We can say with much more confidence that there will be interest in 100 years in stocks. Tastes change, but people are likely to always be interested in black boxes that create money! Black boxes of Bitcoin or gold might have more money in them when you open them in the future, but they don’t produce any sort of earnings.
There are no guarantees in investing — it’s easy to lose money in the short term. But in the long term, stock prices are not a random squiggle of lines representing a meaningless random process (like Bitcoin). There is an almost gravitational force that has pulled stock prices upwards over our lifetimes, and it’s likely those same forces will continue to pull stock prices up into our retirement years and beyond. Bitcoin, gold, oil, or art might make a lot of money for you, but in our opinion, a diversified portfolio prominently featuring stocks is the most reliable path to a secure financial future.
Gene Gard is Chief Investment Officer at Telarray, a Memphis-based wealth management firm that helps families navigate investment, tax, estate, and retirement decisions. Ask him your question at ggard@telarrayadvisors.com or sign up for the next free online seminar on the Events tab at telarrayadvisors.com.
Fall brought a grim parade of violence to Memphis. On September 23rd, 29-year-old Uk Thang was fired from his job as a sushi vendor at the Collierville Kroger. He returned to the store with a gun and shot 14 people, one of whom, a widowed mother of three named Olivia King, died. Thang turned the gun on himself before police arrived.
On September 29th, a 13-year-old at Cummings K-8 Optional School shot and injured a classmate in a stairwell. Then, in the early morning of October 3rd, 36-year-old Rainess Holmes and three others broke into a home on North McLean occupied by several students at nearby Rhodes College, looking to steal electronics. When he and Andrew “Drew” Rainer scuffled over an iPad, Holmes shot him in the chest. Rainer died at the scene, and a second person was injured.
Then, on November 17th, Young Dolph, one of the most successful Memphis rappers of the last decade, was in Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies on Airways when two men rolled up in a white Mercedes. Armed with an assault rifle and an automatic handgun, they fired through the store’s front window. Young Dolph was pronounced dead at the scene, leading to an outpouring of grief for the man who had become known in the community for his generosity. No suspects have been arrested.
These high-profile stories of gun violence are the tip of the iceberg. In 2019, there were 237 homicides in Memphis. In 2020, there were 327, a 38 percent increase. By early December 2021, 310 Memphians had become victims of homicide, virtually guaranteeing that by year’s end the final toll will be higher than 2020. But killings alone don’t tell the whole story. So far this year, there have been more than 5,000 violent assaults in Memphis.
The alarming rise in gun violence is not purely a Bluff City phenomenon. According to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, the rate of firearms killings in the United States rose 24 percent from 2019 to 2020. Mass shootings rose from 417 to 611 over the same period. Curiously, this rise in violence comes at a time when all other crimes are trending downward. Property crimes like larceny and burglary are at their lowest rates since the mid-1960s.
“We’re seeing cities across the country that had a bad year in 2020, a very violent year,” says County Commissioner Mick Wright. “But it seems to be continuing here in Memphis, and that’s very concerning. I think it should be concerning to all elected officials, as well as everyone who lives here in Shelby County. We see it on the news every day. I think people are certainly tired of the shooting and looking for answers.”
What’s Going On? There are a lot of guns in America. In 2017, the Small Arms Survey found that there were about 393 million firearms in the United States — 122 guns for every 100 Americans. A 2020 survey by the RAND Corporation found that Tennessee ranked 14th in the nation in terms of gun ownership, with 51.6 percent of adults saying they had a gun in the home. The two states bordering the Memphis metro, Mississippi and Arkansas, ranked seventh and sixth, respectively, with 55.8 percent and 57.2 percent of households owning a firearm. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics, there is a strong correlation between the number of guns in a state and the state’s gun death rate. Alaska, the state with the highest gun death rate, has the third-highest rate of gun ownership. Tennessee’s gun death ranking is 12, two positions higher than our ownership ranking. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, tied with New Jersey for the lowest gun ownership rate, is also the state with the lowest rate of gun deaths.
“Gun crime is top of mind everywhere we go,” Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich told a Rotary Club audience on November 30th.
And yet, the Tennessee Legislature is dead set on relaxing gun laws. In 2014, they passed a bill making it legal to store any firearm, loaded or unloaded, in a motor vehicle, as long as it is kept from “ordinary observation.” Weirich called the law a “contributing factor” in the escalation of gun violence. “Back in 2010, we had less than 300 guns stolen from cars,” she said, referring the audience to a chart her office produced. “You can see as of October 12, 2021, we’ve had 1,286.”
Weirich advocates for several measures that would streamline the process for the 150,000-200,000 criminal cases that pass through her offices every year, allowing prosecutors to focus on getting violent offenders off the street. She said the permitless carry law that went into effect on July 1st is a step in the wrong direction. “It takes away the ability of law enforcement to come up and ask to see your permit, if you are openly carrying in a restaurant or walking down the street or going into Home Depot. And that is an issue for law enforcement and will continue to be an issue. You know, there’s a lot of talk about penalizing and criminalizing car owners that don’t lock their gun up in their car safely, and that type of thing. My philosophy is always let’s punish the people that are stealing the guns to wreak havoc in our community, and let’s be serious about that. But I don’t know of any common sense legislation that’s floating around.”
Beyond Statistics Michael LaRosa, associate professor of history at Rhodes College, says the murder of Drew Rainer “has had a real chilling effect on the campus, and on that neighborhood, and on the whole city life, I think, because of how visceral it was. I’ve been working at Rhodes for 27 years. I’ve never seen anything like this. … The students are afraid, you know? They’re not afraid in the sense that they’re not going out or staying in their rooms barricaded. But they’re worried about their own personal security in what is really a very safe neighborhood.”
LaRosa does not hesitate to blame the proliferation of guns, thanks to what he calls an “antediluvian” attitude of Tennessee state lawmakers. “Everybody has a gun and that affects the way we interact with one another on the street, and it obviously affects the way the police do their job,” he says. “That’s why we had seven murders [in Memphis] this weekend.”
Erika Kelley (Photo: Courtesy Erika Kelley)
For Erika Kelley, gun violence is a personal issue. On March 18, 2016, she was preparing for her father’s wake. “The day before I buried my father, I got a call that my son, Dontae Bernard Johnson, had been found dead in a parking lot. We later found out he was robbed, shot, and killed due to senseless gun violence. This happened in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. At the time, he was 23 years old. In my last conversation with him, as he was preparing to come home for my father’s funeral, he shared with me that he and his high school sweetheart at the time were expecting their first child. He was so excited about that. My granddaughter is now 5 years old. He never got a chance to meet her.”
Dontae Bernard Johnson (Photo: Courtesy Erika Kelley)
Soon afterward, a friend who had also lost her son to gun violence reached out to invite Kelley to a meeting of Moms Demand Action (MDA), a grassroots group founded in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. She is now the local group leader for the Memphis chapter. Kelley and her group spent the last year lobbying against the “constitutional carry” law. “We have been back and forth to Nashville, going to the governor’s office, talking to him, trying to stop them from passing that law. There’s already enough gun violence. Constitutional carry is just asking for more. And as you can see, that’s what’s been going on.”
Erika Kelley and Pastor Brian Kelley (Photo: Courtesy Erika Kelley)
Ultimately, the group’s meetings with lawmakers were fruitless. “They would listen to us and say, ‘Well, we hear you.’ But obviously, that’s all they did because you see that law they passed. … We were with the chief of police and different local community leaders here in our city … The sheriff, he shared in a town hall meeting a couple of weeks ago that he drove all the way up there and met with the governor for five minutes. Basically, they didn’t care. They were already going to do what they want to do.”
Last June, Governor Bill Lee, who made permitless carry a top priority, called the law “long overdue.” He made the remarks during a ceremonial bill signing at the Beretta USA gun factory in Gallatin.
Searching for Answers Charlie Caswell Jr., executive director of Frayser’s Legacy of Legends CDC, is on the front lines of the fight against gun violence. Growing up in the Dixie Homes public housing projects, Caswell was no stranger to violence. “At 14 and 15 years old, both years, I witnessed my friends being murdered in front of me. It had a traumatic impact on my life that led to me acting out with anger over the years. That led me to want to reduce and mitigate that in the lives of other children.”
Charlie Caswell Jr. (Photo: Courtesy Charlie Caswell Jr.)
At the core of Caswell’s program is the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) questionnaire, which is administered to determine if people have experienced violence, abuse, or neglect; have seen a family member die by suicide; or are growing up in a household with substance abuse, mental health problems, or chronic instability due to parental separation or incarceration. About 61 percent of adults who take the test have experienced at least one ACE, and one in six say they have experienced four or more. ACEs disrupt the development of young brains. High scores on the ACE test are predictive of chronic disease, depression, and violent behavior. “Trauma comes in different capacities. It doesn’t have a color to it, or a gender, or a socioeconomic capacity. It happens. ACE tests that show physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, and household dysfunction before their 18th birthday, if you have four or more, you are 1,200 times more likely to attempt suicide, and 40 to 50 percent more likely to use drugs and alcohol.”
Caswell says that thousands of people in the predominantly Black neighborhoods of Frayser and South Memphis are caught in a cycle of poverty, neglect, and violence. “When these children and families are referred to us, we basically sit down with them to assess the trauma that they have experienced in their lives, and then we assess their resilience. We begin to focus on their strengths, which many of them, because of the trauma, have never really paid attention to. … What we recognize through this work, is that many of them have generational trauma. Some of the things that these young men and young women are going through, when we sit down and talk to the parents, the parents went through the same thing.”
Christina Gann is the program director for in-home services for Youth Villages, a Memphis-based nonprofit. “We work with a wide array of young people who are at-risk, and I see a lot who have juvenile justice involvement,” she says.
Gann and her Youth Villages colleagues say they have seen a change in the populations they serve. “I think one thing that did not help was the pandemic,” Gann says. “Kids are back in school this year, which has helped tremendously, but I think that that also made things more challenging for families, and then also for the kids. We saw an increase in a lot of different behaviors. But something else that we’ve experienced is, there’s a lot of exposure to trauma, whether it’s direct or indirect. There’s so much violence in the communities our families live in, and those kids are experiencing the effects of being exposed to that trauma, whether it’s defiance or their concern for their safety. So they feel like they need to get a gun to protect themselves.”
Caswell believes the social upheaval of the pandemic exacerbated his community’s existing problems — but he is quick to point out that his services have been in demand not just in Frayser, but all over the city, and a recent trip to the predominately white, rural community of Crossville, Tennessee, revealed the same problems of poverty, drug addiction, and generational trauma. “I say, there was an epidemic before the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control, the same people who told us to wash our hands, stay six feet apart, and kept us in quarantine, were the same people who came out with the research in 1995 on the impact of trauma. When you take the people who are dealing with dysfunction, and you keep them in the house all year — they didn’t go to school, they didn’t go to work, they stayed in with the same family — all that trauma and negativity, just like a volcano, it then erupted. What we’re seeing is an eruption of what was already building up and was not being addressed, before we left them in that mess.”
“It’s Not a Mystery” On the streets, the grim parade continues. Friday, December 3rd, three teenagers and a nine-month-old baby were ambushed while sitting in their car at a Marathon gas station on Elvis Presley Boulevard. Breunna Woods, a 16-year-old cheerleader, and Phillexus Buchanan, a 15-year-old student at Hamilton High School, were killed, while another 16-year-old and the baby were wounded. Twenty-two people under the age of 17 have been murdered in Memphis so far this year.
Kat McRitchie, a longtime MDA activist, believes a public health approach is the only way forward. “It’s not a mystery, what causes gun violence. It’s a question of whether or not we have the political will and are willing to commit the resources to preventive measures that don’t always campaign well. They take lots of work, lots of coordination of multiple offices at various levels of government, nonprofit, healthcare, and education. It’s hard work, and sometimes, it’s expensive work. But in similar cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, we have seen success when they treat gun violence like a public health epidemic and treat it strategically and take prevention very seriously. In Memphis, we’re used to taking a lot of problems for granted and accepting them as things we just have to respond to because they’re a given. Gun violence, like many other problems facing our city, can be prevented. It does not have to be this way. And if we, as a community will come together, it won’t be this way.”
Ariana DeBose, Hamilton alum, stuns audiences as Anita, even as she plays opposite Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing the Shark girl in 1961.
Over and over again in Steven Spielberg’s stunning adaptation of West Side Story, people face off against each other from the opposing sides of the screen. The Sharks and the Jets do it, as you would expect from theater’s dancing-est street gangs. Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) do it, first underneath the bleachers at the high school dance, then in the church where they declare their love. And the men and women of New York’s Upper West Side Puerto Rican immigrant community do it as they sing about “America.”
West Side Story is about the contradictions at the heart of the American experiment. Yes, we’re all created equal and, since we have the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we are free to love whom we want. But, as lyricist Stephen Sondheim put it, “Life is all right in America/If you’re all white in America.”
Sondheim, who passed away at age 91 just days before Spielberg’s film was released, was the newcomer in 1957 when he co-created West Side Story with composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. It was Robbins’ idea to set Romeo and Juliet in what was then the poor neighborhood on Manhattan island and transform Shakespeare’s feuding “two households, both alike in dignity” into the Jets and Sharks, two groups of poor New Yorkers separated mostly by the timing of their ancestors’ immigration to America. Tony Kushner, who wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s adaptation, makes this explicit when he has police Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll) call out the Jets as the last white people who can’t make it in America.
Most of the onus of updating West Side Story for a 21st century America falls on Kushner as the screenwriter, and the Angels in America scribe succeeds beyond all expectations. This film is not a remake of the 1961 Best Picture Oscar winner; it’s an adaptation of the original play. The order of the songs reflect the play, which makes a lot more sense, plot-wise. The difference with the Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins version begins immediately. The camera pans across an urban wasteland of demolished buildings until it lands on a sign announcing the upcoming construction of Lincoln Center. The little square of turf the Sharks and Jets fight and die to control is doomed from the start. Later, in the Gimbels department store where Maria works as a cleaner (another Kushner addition), one of her co-workers expresses the hope that they will be able to stay in the neighborhood and live in a nice, new apartment. Another maid shoots her down — those apartments will be for rich people and we’ll have to move.
Spielberg has never made a musical before, although he has dabbled, such as the opening “Anything Goes” number in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I figured he would do a good job, but I didn’t think his first foray into the genre would be a perfect film. His staging and camera moves are on another level from everyone else working today. The dance at the school gym where Tony and Maria meet rivals the kinetic action sequences of Mad Max: Fury Road.
There’s not a sour note in the acting. Rachel Zegler is a first-time film actor who was one of 30,000 people who auditioned in an open casting call; her last role was as Maria in a community theater production of West Side Story in Englewood, New Jersey. She is absolutely radiant. Hamilton veteran Ariana DeBose nails the picture’s most difficult role as Anita, the Shark girl caught between love and anger. Just to add another layer of difficulty, DeBose has to play opposite Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing Anita in 1961. Moreno takes on the shopkeeper’s role as Valentina and delivers a showstopper in a show made of nothing but showstoppers. In Moreno’s hands, “Somewhere” is transformed into a paean for an American dream of equality that always seems just out of reach.
I’m one of the lucky weirdos who is both right-handed and left-eye-dominant. I discovered that fact when I was about 10 years old and was allowed to join in the “target practice” in the hills behind my grandparents’ house. When my uncle handed me a light rifle, I took it with my left hand and raised the sight to my left eye. Either my dad or my uncle corrected me, but I responded with something like, “It feels wrong.” Frankly “wrong” isn’t the half of it. It feels downright unnatural for me to shoot right-handed.
I’ll never forget my uncle laughing out loud at his bookish, right-handed nephew shooting like a southpaw. I remember my dad shrugging his shoulders with that “What are you gonna do?” expression on his face.
I share this story to underline this fact — I was raised around guns. I was never one of the cousins who really got a kick out of shooting, but I don’t think of a gun as some sort of mythic creature that can act of its own accord. I haven’t only seen them in movies and on TV. So I can only hope that you won’t write me off when I share this next story.
When I was about 10 years old, I lived with my mother and younger sister off Jackson Avenue in Midtown. We lived in a little gray duplex that, in my memory at least, sat on a small hill.
Late one night, my mom had to run an errand. I don’t remember what the errand was. Maybe she just desperately wanted a Pepsi. My mother has a fondness bordering on mania for Pepsi. I’m not sure where we were going, and I’m not sure why she decided to take us with her. It’s likely this was after our house had been broken into, so maybe she felt safer letting us sit in the car while she ran inside.
So she woke me up and stuffed me into a coat and rolled my sleeping sister up in a blanket like a burrito, and, with me in the lead and my mother carrying my sister, we made our way to my mom’s beat-up old Toyota. I was sitting up front in the passenger seat and my mother was bent over sliding my sister into the back seat when a man ran up and grabbed her purse.
He had a gun, a handgun, and he was pointing it at my mom. She screamed, hands up framing her face like a cartoon character who’s seen a mouse. I was frozen. But the mugger ran off and my mom eventually stopped screaming. This story has a happy ending. We survived, and we lost only a cheap faux-leather purse and its paltry contents.
It can happen so quickly. That’s what I’ll never forget, even though in reality, this is something of a non-story. No one was shot; no one was killed or even hurt. Still, people are shot and hurt and killed every day. There’s the thinnest of membranes between a regular day and the worst day of your life. And, unlike with disease or catastrophic storms, this is a problem of our own making.
I admit it’s not a problem with only one solution. It’s not even a problem with only one symptom. There are so many kinds of gun violence, and so many causes. It will take effort and expense and coordination to fix.
Last week, a 24/7 Wall St. study was published; it cited Memphis as the most dangerous city in the United States. Reports such as that one aren’t helping anyone. Writing off a city — or a community or neighborhood or ZIP code — as inherently dangerous is in itself a kind of violence. It says it’s socially acceptable to ignore that problem, to judge or avoid a place and its people. And of course, legislation like Tennessee’s “permitless carry” bill, which Governor Bill Lee signed into law earlier this year, isn’t helping either. We will have to do challenging work, on multiple levels, from different angles, to have a hope of living in a safer country, state, and city.
Scarcely a week after the announcement for District Attorney General by University of Memphis law professor Steve Mulroy, joining attorney Linda Harris in the Democratic primary, a third Democratic entry is now declared.
This would be Janika White, a member of the Bailey, Bailey & White law firm, who made her announcement on Tuesday at the Walter L. Bailey Jr. Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar.
White boasts years of experience in both civil and criminal cases. In the past, White served as a judicial law clerk to then-Chancellor Kenny Armstrong of the Shelby County Chancery Court and went on to clerk for Judge Bernice Donald, who at the time was a U.S. District Judge. She is also the niece of the late Rev. Ralph White of Bloomfield Baptist Church, who was heavily involved in Democratic politics.
Her stated goal is “to provide equity and justice to all who encounter the legal system,” and, like both Mulroy and Harris, is critical of current D.A. Amy Weirich, a Republican.
In a statement released to the press, White said, “What we are currently doing is simply not working. Violent crime is up, more people are being incarcerated, but our communities are not getting any safer. It is past time for change. I’m running for District Attorney to answer a call to service and bring justice, fairness, and safety to our community.”
A marketing firm has published an elaborate, holiday-themed parody of The Daily Memphian.
Signature, the Memphis firm, said the online newspaper had nothing to do with the parody. Instead, it was created for clients and friends of the agency for the holidays, according to Charles Marshall, the firm’s chief idea officer. Though, he said, “maybe we made it look too much like the original.”
The parody, called The Merry Memphian, comes with headlines like “FedEx New Distribution Center at North Pole Runs Into Blizzard of Disruptions” and “Clark Tower Adding World’s Longest Fire Pole.” It also features stories from columnists that parody DM writers like Chris Merryington (Chris Herrington), Geoff Coldkins (Geoff Calkins), and Jennifer Bells (Jennifer Biggs).
Maybe the most elaborate part of the Merry Memphian site is a poll to cast actors in a fake Craig Brewer movie called Memphis City Council: The Movie.
Credit: Signature
The poll asks who should play council chairman Frank Colvett, wrestler Jackie Fargo, cartoon character Baby Huey, or a potato. The choices to play council member Jamita Swearengen are Taraji Henson, Maxine from Batman Beyond, or Heather Hedley.
For council member Edmund Ford Sr., the poll suggests either Usher, John Ford Sr., or cartoon character Snidely Whiplash. For Dr. Jeff Warren, the poll suggests Bradley Whitford, Colonel Sanders, or Santa Claus.
Credit: Signature
The site also comes with fake ads for local and national brands. For example, Earnestine & Hazel’s is parodied as “Earnestine & Hazmat: Voted Memphis’ Most Dangerous Place to Eat.” Huey’s is “Chewey’s: Home of The World Famous Gristle Burger.” MemPops is “MEMPups: All-Natural Dog-Flavored Pupsicles.”
Memphis Whistle with edible flowers bed in Cooper-Young (Credit: Jef Hicks)
Memphis Whistle is slated to open December 17th for to-go orders at its first brick-and-mortar location at 2299 Young Avenue. The space is slated to open as a restaurant/bar by the end of 2021.
What began as a drink delivery service during the pandemic blossomed into a space that owner Jef Hicks describes as a “quaint little house” with four rooms. He describes Memphis Whistle, which features a lounge space, dining space, and bar, as “lounge comfortable.”
“One of the rooms has a couch, a couple of chairs, and a little settee. That is super loungey. Another room has three tables, a little more of a standard look. Everything will be lower lighting from lamps,” Hicks adds.
As for the decor, Hicks says, “Most of the colors are very rich, royal, jewel tone, romantic colors — so you could look beautiful in there at all times, especially in the evening.”
Memphis Whistle dining area (Credit: Amanda Hicks)Memphis Whistle lounge area (Credit: Jef Hicks)
The exterior of Memphis Whistle is a rich purple, accented with turquoise. “You won’t miss it,” says Hicks. “You would have to try really hard to miss it.”
Also working with Hicks at Memphis Whistle are his wife, Amanda Hicks, who handles the office duties, IT, and accounting; and Winifred Henry, who Jef says, is “in charge of it all.” Jef and David Parks began the original Memphis Whistle. Parks will be bartending at the soon-to-open McEwen’s Memphis.
Describing the drinks, Jef says, “Mine are more the Prohibition-style cocktails.” These would be “the old typically heavier booze” drinks like the Boulevardier and the Vieux Carre.
And, Hicks says, “I will be continuing to feature the Memphis Whistle cocktail recipes that brought us notoriety.” He described the drinks as “seasonal fruit forward with herbal tastiness and plenty of booze.”
Kyle Gairhan is executive chef. “We are concentrating on smaller fare along with sandwiches and burgers,” Jef says. “And finger foods and tater tots. We are going to make our own chips to go with all the sandwiches. We make our own barbecue sauce. We cook our own pork. We’re going to be making our own brisket. We’re trying to do as much as we can in house.”
And, Jef says, “We will try to support local farms or small businesses as much as possible. That’s really important. To keep the dollars local.”
Even the art on the walls is local. Featured artist Celeste Rachele did the pieces, which are for sale. “I want to support local art, food, drinks, produce,” says Jef.
Kodi Smit-McPhee and Benedict Cumberbatch ride the range in The Power Of The Dog.
The Power of the Dog swept the Southeastern Film Critics Association’s annual awards poll, earning not only the Best Picture award, but also Best Director for Jane Campion, Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Supporting Actress for Kirsten Dunst, Best Supporting Actor for Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Campion’s work transforming novelist Thomas Savage’s story for the screen.
“Jane Campion has been one of our finest directors for decades, and I’m thrilled that our members chose to recognize her exquisite work on The Power of the Dog,” says SEFCA President Matt Goldberg. “Campion has crafted a unique Western that gets to the core of the genre while still feeling fresh and vital. It’s an absolute triumph of mood, performances, and craft that will certainly go down as one of her finest movies in a career full of marvelous filmmaking.”
Kristen Stewart as Diana in Spencer.
Kristen Stewart won Best Actress for her portrayal of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, in Spencer. The Best Ensemble acting award went to Wes Anderson’s sprawling tribute to journalism, The French Dispatch.
Greg Frayser’s work on Dune earned him the SEFCA’s Best Cinematography award.
Best Original Screenplay went to Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza. The sci-fi epic, Dune, won Best Cinematography and Best Score for Hans Zimmer.
Best Documentary went to Summer of Soul, which also placed #10 in the overall rankings. Best Animated Feature went to The Mitchells vs. The Machines. In what must surely be a first, the experimental documentary Flee placed second in both the documentary and animated film categories.
Sly Stone performs at the Harlem Cultural Festival, a concert series of the same caliber as Woodstock, but long buried in music history until now.
As a member in good standing, your columnist voted in the poll. You can see how my choices differed from the consensus choices in the December 23rd issue of the Memphis Flyer. Here is the complete list of awards winners for 2021:
Top 10 Films
1. The Power of the Dog
2. Licorice Pizza
3. Belfast
4. The Green Knight
5. West Side Story
6. The French Dispatch
7. Tick, Tick…BOOM!
8. Drive My Car
9. Dune
10. Summer of Soul
Best Actor
Winner: Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
The Toy Truck benefiting Porter-Leath is celebrating its 20th year of handing out Christmas gifts. (Credit: Porter-Leath)
The 20th Annual Toy Truck benefiting Porter-Leath has spent several weekends providing holiday gifts for children, but it still has one stop to make along the way. After several days each at the Poplar Collection Shopping Center and WMC Action News 5 (with a guest appearance by celebrated former Grizzlies player Zach “Z-Bo” Randolph), the Truck will make its final stop this weekend at IKEA to continue collecting toys for more than 2,500 preschool children.
For 20 years, Toy Truck has doled out presents to children up to the age of five who might not receive another gift for Christmas. Children are able to receive age-appropriate gifts that promote early learning, such as dolls, trucks, and building blocks.
“Every year, generous individuals, groups and businesses support the children of Porter-Leath by filling the truck with new toys,” said Rob Hughes, vice president of development at Porter-Leath. “Their continued support not only helps Porter-Leath preschoolers learn through play, but also makes Christmas a merrier time for their families.”
The final stop, taking place at IKEA, will be on Saturday, December 18th (10 a.m.-3 p.m.), and Sunday, December 19th (11 a.m.-3 p.m.). Those in the giving spirit can drop off new, unwrapped toys at the Truck, as well as cash, check, or credit card donations. Donations can also be made by texting TOY to 50511. Each one will be matched by a Secret Santa in the community.
The Toy Truck benefiting Porter-Leath gathers toys for over 2,500 preschool-age children. (Credit: Porter-Leath)A fan with former Grizzlies star Zach Randolph (right), who made a special appearance at the Toy Truck benefitting Porter-Leath at WMC Action News 5 on Saturday. (Credit: Porter-Leath)
Jeff Hulett is dropping his new album, What I Mean, this week. On Saturday, December 18th, at 4 p.m., Hulett will premiere the new album at his record release party at Memphis Made Brewing Company on Cooper.
The first music video from the new album, “Belong” was created by Jake Vest, the Memphis ex-pat musician and producer. The images reflect the song’s mixture of anxious, spoken-word lyrics and soaring melodies of hope. Take a look!
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
