Any agency that gets federal funds for food must now investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, and Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General is leading the fight against the move.
In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) added gender identity and sexual orientation to its interpretation of Title IX. The 1972 law outlawed discrimination based on sex for any program or activity receiving federal assistance.
The USDA said the move to include gender identity and sexual orientation is to keep its programs open to everyone, help ensure “all Americans have access to nutritious foods that promote health and well-being regardless of race, ethnicity, identity or background.” The move is also in line with President Joe Biden’s executive order in January on “preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.”
“USDA is committed to administering all its programs with equity and fairness, and serving those in need with the highest dignity,” said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. “A key step in advancing these principles is rooting out discrimination in any form, including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
We hope that by standing firm against these inequities we will help bring about much-needed change.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
“At the same time, we must recognize the vulnerability of the LGBTQI+ communities and provide them with an avenue to grieve any discrimination they face. We hope that by standing firm against these inequities we will help bring about much-needed change.”
But this is wrong, according to Tennessee’s Attorney General Herbert Slatery, because agencies that don’t comply with the order will lose federal funding. So, Slatery is leading a coalition of 26 state attorneys general to stop it.
A letter addressed to Biden about the issue was written and sent by Slatery’s office and has been signed by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In the letter, the attorneys argue that the new guidance is unlawful because it was issued without the input of state officials and other stakeholders that they say is required by the Administrative Procedures Act. They claim the Biden Administration misread and wrongly applied the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. ClaytonCounty, which protects employees against discrimination because they are gay or transgender, as a basis for the new rules.
The USDA’s move “imposes” new and “unlawful” regulatory measures on state agencies and other agency operators that get federal help from the USDA. Slatery’s letter claims the new rules will cause “regulatory chaos that threatens essential nutritional services to some of the most vulnerable citizens.” The National School Lunch Program, the letter gives as an example, serves nearly 30 million students each day and could be in danger under the new rules.
As attorneys general we cannot just sit on the sidelines, and we will not.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery
“This is yet another attempt by the executive branch and unelected regulators to do what only Congress is constitutionally authorized to do: change the law,” Slatery said in a statement issued Tuesday. “They intentionally misread the [Bostock v. Clayton County] to fit their social policy preferences and exclude the people and their elected representatives from the entire process. As attorneys general we cannot just sit on the sidelines, and we will not.”
The USDA said the LGBTQ community has faced “striking economic and social disparities, such as higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and nutrition insecurity. It said a U.S. Census Bureau survey found that more than 13 percent of LGBTQ respondents faced food insecurity compared to 7.2 percent of non-LGBTQ respondents.
No one should be denied access to nutritious food simply because of who they are or how they identify.
Stacy Dean, Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Deputy Undersecretary
“Whether you are grocery shopping, standing in line at the school cafeteria, or picking up food from a food bank, you should be able to do so without fear of discrimination,” said Stacy Dean, Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Deputy Undersecretary. “No one should be denied access to nutritious food simply because of who they are or how they identify.”
African hackers build a techno-utopia in Neptune Frost.
Neptune Frost is the only movie I watched twice during virtual Sundance last January.
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s afro-futurist musical is bursting with energy and life. Filmed in Rwanda, it features an amazing cast of artists, many of whom are war refugees, and some of the most striking costumes and production design you’ll see anywhere.
Even though they were working with a vanishingly small budget, Uzeyman and Williams stage spectacular musical numbers filmed on location deep in the forest and in a working mine. The resourcefulness of the production is equaled by the sophistication of the ideas embedded in the afro beat soundtrack.
“The concept came first and once Anisa and I had the concept, the first thing I wanted to use towards world-building was the music,” says Williams.
Neptune Frost is a fantasy of revolution arising from the coltan mines of Africa. The mineral is used extensively in computers and consumer electronics, but the people condemned to extract it see none of the material wealth and comfort their labor enables. Near the mine is a vast landfill of e-waste, where scavengers search through mountains of discarded keyboards and monitors for a few grams of valuable metals. In between, a group of rebels carve out Digita, a would-be utopia led by a supernatural hacker named Neptune (Cheryl Isheja).
Cheryl Isheja in Neptune Frost.
“This film was born when Anisia and I discovered the phenomenon of e-waste camps, which are situated around the continent, usually very close to the mines where the materials that go into our technology are taken,” says Williams. “And so, around the same time, we discover that there’s these village sites and camps with mounds of motherboards and keyboards and towers and all these things.
“We were also tuning into a lot of the recycled art that was coming out of these situations — not just art, but science. We were learning about people in Togo, for example, who were taking e-waste and making 3D printers out of it. We learned about people in Sierra Leone who were taking e-waste and making robotic prosthetic limbs out of.
“So, there was a lot of stuff on our timeline that was very inspiring, that that made us envision this idea of a village made of recycled computer parts. The production designer and costume designer that we worked with is a Rwandan artist by the name of Cedric Mizero. When he heard the story, he was very shy. He listened, and then the next morning he showed up at our place in Rwanda with sandals made of motherboards. We were very clear on the fact that we had found the right person.”
During the month-long production, Uzeyman and Williams filmed in extreme circumstances far from the nearest town, sometimes while coordinating crews of more than 100 people.
“It was really intense,” says Uzeyman. “We traveled the country, which is said to be the land of a thousand hills.”
Williams says they were lucky to connect with an established group of artists in the Rwandan capital.
“The political unrest in Burundi in 2015 sent a lot of students, artists, and activists, over the border, into Kigali,” Williams said. “And so, that scene there is really reflective of amazing talent from Burundi and Rwanda; that’s what the film really reflects. All of the members of our cast are established musicians, poets, actors, choreographers, dancers, and drummers and they were already in the mode of performance. What carried us was their excitement about participating in this story.”
“It’s like a portrait of a generation,” says Uzeyman.
Designer Cedric Mizero created spectacular costumes and sets from e-waste.
At every turn in Neptune Frost, there is a sense of an old world dying, and a new one struggling to be born.
“It really reflect the fluidity of the youth in Rwanda, where we shot the film,” says Uzeyman. “On the continent, people speak like five languages correctly, regularly. And it’s something that we found very new and very beautiful to show because it’s not especially portrayed a lot — that fluidity that the migrations and all those movements inside of the continent produce.”
Williams says the free intermixing of language became a kind of metaphor for the new world of unlimited information.
“As an American sitting at a table, listening to a conversation, and realizing that people are choosing which expression from which language works best, it became super important for us platform that in the film,” Williams says.
Amidst all the beats and costumes and dancing, Williams says “we’re connecting dots between how the brain works and functions and the coding patterns of language, and what it means to break those codes. Those guys do it fluidly.”
Indie Memphis, in association with Tone, the Black Creator’s Forum, and Dedza, is sponsoring a free screening of Neptune Frost at Crosstown Arts on Wednesday, June 15th. It is a truly unique cinema experience that has been blowing minds all around the world.
“We are very happy with all that people see in the work,” says Williams. “We are very proud to have connected so strongly with the LGBTQ community, with indigenous community, and with the tech community. And we see that the people who now have a chance to see it…that it’s resonating with them.
“We’re just excited about people being able to explore this world and this universe. We obviously built something with a lot of space for questions, with a lot of space for the imagination. We wanted to invite the viewer in to, to participate in our creative process.”
An image from MoSH’s new Pride exhibits (Courtesy MoSH)
At the beginning of June, the Museum of Science & History (MoSH) opened two exhibitions to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, both nationally and locally, with “Rise Up: Stonewall & the LGBTQ Rights Movement” and “Memphis Proud: The Resilience of a Southern LGBTQ+ Community.”
Bookended by the historical moments of the Stonewall Uprising and Obergefell v. Hodges, “Rise Up” explores how the media and coinciding movements of the latter half of the 20th century shaped the national LGBTQ+ history. Though the exhibition’s timeline begins with Stonewall, Raka Nandi, director of exhibits and collections for MoSH, points out that the story of the LGBTQ+ national rights movement “is not so much driven by the Stonewall Uprising but by the stories of various activists who were a part of the movement. These activists were here long before Stonewall, which was in 1969. When you go in, you learn about other activists who were at the foreground fighting for rights straight people take for granted.”
To complement the traveling “Rise Up” exhibition, MoSH also curated “Memphis Proud” to demonstrate how national moments intersected with local ones as Memphans of different backgrounds and experiences came together in community, creating safe spaces and becoming powerful voices for change. Through artifacts, photographs, oral histories, videos, and more, the exhibition intersperses various LGBTQ+ stories in Memphis, beginning as early as 1876, with Frances Thompson, a formerly enslaved Memphian and survivor of the Memphis Massacre, who was imprisoned for dressing as a woman even though she was assigned male at birth.
An image from MoSH’s new Pride exhibits (Courtesy MoSH)
Though LGBTQ+ people have always lived in Memphis, even before Thompson, before our vocabulary and conceptions of sexual orientation and gender identity even existed, tracing the LGBTQ+ community’s history in Memphis proved a laborious yet gratifying task for MoSH’s curatorial team. “There really isn’t any book about the Memphis LGBTQ+ community,” Nandi says. “There’s a historiography published in 1997 by Daneel Buring — Lesbian and Gay Memphis: Building Communities Behind the Magnolia Curtain. This book is actually out of print. It was kind of the formative text that we started with, but we went to archives. We went to Gaze, Gaiety, Triangle Journal, Focus Magazine, The Unleashed Voice Magazine.”
Yet these archives could go only so far in telling Memphis’ LGBTQ+ history. “You can’t talk about Memphis history without talking about race,” Nandi says. “To uncover the Black LGBTQ+ community story was challenging because their history is not archived anywhere.” So to fill the gaps in the archives, the curatorial team talked one-on-one with people who were there in addition to forming an advisory committee with groups and organizations like OUTMemphis and TriState Black Pride to make sure the museum depicted the community accurately and respectfully.
“We wanted to make sure that this wasn’t an exhibit for straight people. It’s for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies,” Nandi says, adding, “This is not a perfect exhibit. Things are left out, and we know things are left out, … but we were very intentional also to make sure that we were including certain things.”
Both exhibits are on display through September 26th, and the museum will have programming throughout the summer because celebrating Pride shouldn’t be constrained to just June. Events include the Summer Pride Film Series, which will screen Swan Song,To Decadence with Love, Thanks for Everything, and Moonlight; an Intergenerational Conversation Panel Series, a live webinar series covering topics important to the local and national LGBTQ+ community; Cocktails and Chemistry with the Blue Suede Sisters, which promises a night of cocktails, drag nuns, and science experiments; and the museum’s first ever drag show on September 24th. For more information or to purchase tickets for these events, visit moshmemphis.com/celebrate-pride-all-summer.
The Tennessee Supreme Court has declined to reconsider its recent decision upholding the state’s 2019 private school voucher law.
In a brief order issued Monday, the high court stood by its 3-2 ruling on May 18 in favor of the state and against the governments of Metropolitan Nashville and Shelby County, the only two counties affected by the law.
The decision marks another legal win for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program, the signature legislation of his first year in office, although other court challenges loom.
The program aims to provide taxpayer money to pay toward private education for eligible students in public school districts in Memphis and Nashville, but it has never launched because of the fierce legal battle.
In 2020, a judge overturned the law on the grounds that it violated the Tennessee Constitution’s “home rule” clause, since it was imposed on the two counties without their approval. But on appeal, the high court disagreed last month and said the home rule clause governs the actions of local school districts, not the counties that sued, even though they help fund those schools.
Attorneys for Nashville and Shelby County quickly asked for a rehearing, arguing in part that the home rule clause should apply because Nashville’s school system is part of a metropolitan form of government.
But the court declined to wade again into their claim.
“The court previously considered the issues raised in the petition in the course of its resolution of the appeal,” the court wrote in a four-sentence order.
A spokesman for Nashville Mayor John Cooper expressed disappointment over the order, while Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz said his office is “evaluating next steps for the remaining claims in our lawsuit.”
Litigants behind a second lawsuit in the case say they intend to press ahead with up to four remaining claims challenging the law’s constitutionality. And Dietz and his legal team are considering a similar move on behalf of local governments based in the state’s two largest cities.
In addition, a program with the complexities of vouchers requires significant preparation before a rollout and likely could not be ready before the start of the new school year in August.
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Austin Butler, who plays Elvis, and Michael Donahue at the Memphis premiere of “Elvis.” (Credit: Austin Butler)
If Priscilla Presley gives her seal of approval to your portrayal of Elvis in a movie, that’s all you need.
And that’s exactly what Priscilla, who was married to The King and is the mother of their child, Lisa Marie Presley, did during the Memphis premiere of the Baz Luhrmann movie Elvis, which stars Austin Butler as Elvis, on June 11th at The Guest House at Graceland.
“Elvis morphed into you,” Presley told Butler on stage before the movie started. “You had his guidance.”
Stars from the movie, director Luhrmann, and members of the Presley family, including Lisa Marie and her daughter, Riley Keough, and Elvis’ buddy and business associate, Jerry Schilling, were at the premiere. They all gathered on stage at one point. The movie is slated to open nationwide June 24th.
The Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Earlier, I talked to Priscilla and people involved in the film.
I asked Priscilla what sets Elvis apart from other movies and documentaries about the performer. “It’s very sensitive to me and the family,” she says. “Baz has done an amazing job in this film. This has been two years. I know he’s been wanting to do this forever, do a movie on Elvis. But, with Baz, I get a little nervous because Baz does what he wants. He’s got an eye. He’s got such style. But now dealing with such a sensitive story was a bit worrisome [as to] where he’s going to take it.”
But, she says, “It is a true story between the ups and downs of Elvis and Col. Parker, but with his stylized way, beautiful way. Especially with Austin Butler, who plays Elvis so realistically. He had him down pat to the point of a gesture. He studied him for two years. And the story will prove it. When you see it, you think you’re seeing Elvis Presley. But, again, he is not Elvis Presley. He is an actor playing Elvis Presley. And that’s what I like about it, too. He’s not trying to be Elvis. He is his own person.
“But the story is a wonderful story and I think it’s a different take on what we normally see.”
Priscilla Presley at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
I asked Butler, who described Elvis as “such a complex human being,” what was the most difficult part of Elvis for him to play. “One of the most challenging things is the fact that he has been held up as either a god-like iconic figure or as this caricature that is not the real man,” Butler says. “So, for me, it was stripping all that away and getting down to his humanity.
“And the challenging part about that is you want to be incredibly technical. You want to be meticulous about all the details. But it could never be the details sacrificing the humanity.”
Luhrmann told me Elvis movies were shown at the theater in the small town where he grew up. “The matinees were the Elvis movies,” he says. “So, like as a 10-year-old, he was the coolest guy in the world. And then I grew on and all that. He was always present.”
As for making Elvis, Luhrmann says, “I didn’t do this so much out of fandom, although I have a great respect for him. I did this because I really believe he is at the center of America in the ’50s, ’60s, and the ’70s. And he is a way of exploring America. To understand that he was this rebel in the ’50s and it was dangerous to do what he was doing. And his relationship to Beale Street and people like B. B. King and then him being put in a bubble in Hollywood and then finding himself again in the [Elvis] ’68 [Comeback] Special and reconnecting with gospel, his great, great love. And then, to put it bluntly and to quote one of his songs, being caught in a trap in Vegas. That’s the sort of tragedy of that.
“And yet, what he’s left behind, as you see in that last great performance of him is still the voice and still the spirit. To me, whatever you say about Elvis, he was a spiritual person. And that comes from his love of gospel.”
I received direction from Baz Luhrmann, who showed me how to properly take a selfie, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Baz Luhrmann)
Kelvin Harrison Jr., who plays B.B. King in Elvis, told me what drew him to the role. “For me, it was just how smart he was and how savvy he was with his business,” he says. “This was a very strategic man, in my opinion, but also [he had] so much heart and soul. And a simple man. He literally was working in the fields, and literally put up a wire on a post and started learning how to play and find sounds playing one string. That is so incredible to me. So I was just so inspired by the tenacity that he had, and just the rawness.”
Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Jerry Schilling at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
In the movie, Elvis is astonished at the stage presence, complete with the most amazing moves, of Little Richard. Alton Mason plays Richard in the film. What attracted him to the role was “how powerful, how outspoken and loud he was,” Mason told me. “How sexy he was. How fly he was. And his aura.”
Mason, who said the revered gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is his great-great-great-great aunt, also told me, “I had to develop empathy for not only who he was, but the period and the time that he was in. And him being that in that time, it takes a lot of power, a lot of fearlessness, to choose to be so different in a time like this. It was an amazing learning experience for me, too.”
Michael Donahue and Alton Mason at the Elvis premiere. (Credit: Alton Mason)
I loved what Tom Hanks, who plays Col. Tom Parker, said on stage before the movie began: “As an actor I found myself shooting in castles in which kings once lived in. I shot in palaces that have been turned into museums that were the homes of kings. I shot in museums in which kings and queens have lived in.”
But he told the audience to notice that all of those kings and queens “have an ‘s’ on the end of them. Meaning that there were more than one. At Graceland, we are visiting the home of The King.”
Tom Hanks at the Elvis Memphis movie premiere. (Credit: Michael Donahue)President and CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises Jack Soden and his wife, Leighann, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Joel Weinshanker, majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises and managing partner of Graceland Holdings LLC and EPE, and Kim Laughlin at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Hal and Geri Lansky and their daughter, Lia Lansky, at the Memphis premiere of Elvis. (Credit: Michael Donahue)We Saw You
Sidney Chism, overseeing his annual picnic with grandson Sidney
As an antique bard once said, “sumer is icumen in.” In fact, it’s been here for a while, well ahead of the official calendar date. And summer means outdoor festivals of various kinds, many of them politically oriented.
The most recent one, hosted by well-known political figure Sidney Chism, was held on Saturday on the same picnic grounds on Horn Lake Road where this annual event has always been held in recent years — except for 2020 and 2021, when concerns about the Covid pandemic intervened.
Chism, accompanied by his grandson — named Sidney, what else? — traversed the grounds in an open-air motor vehicle, keeping an eye on the politicians on hand and the activities at various booths and recreation sites for children.
The politicians and other public figures were invited to make brief remarks from an event stage. One of the first was Memphis Police Department director Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis, who advised attendees to get the free hot dogs that were partly burnt and gave a “shout-out to the Sheriff’s Department, though we have bonuses and they don’t.”
Circuit Court Judge Valerie Smith and Trustee Regina Morrison NewmanAssessor candidate Steve Cross and wife Renee Crossjuvenile Court Judge candidate Tarik Sugarmon passes out lollipopsCharles Alton, with cockatoo Stevie, at tent of Pearl Walker,where a guest holds cockatoo LeahDara Hall and judicial candidate Kenya HooksJudicial candidate Lee Wilson stumping.Fred Dorse and Judge Loyce Lambert Ryan
On the previous weekend, another stout assemblage of political types attended the annual crawsfih boil, sponsored by judicial candidate David Pool on ancestral Pool St. in North Memphis.
Judge Betty Moore and husband Alvin MooreDavid Pool and Thaddeus MatthewsSohelia Kail and Juvenile Court Judge Dan MichaelDavid Pool as host/troubador
After an accidental two-week hiatus, Music Video Monday returns with a big win for a Memphis artist.
Tonight is Game 5 of the NBA Finals, with the seven game series between the Boston Celtics and the Golden State Warriors tied 2-2. While we all wish the Grizzlies were still in the mix, the soundtrack for the finals have a distinct Memphis flair. Moneybagg Yo and Yo Gotti penned the official song of the NBA finals, “Big League.” It’s all about that moment when the stakes are as high as they get.
Speaking of “as high as it gets,” the video shows game day at the Yo mansion. It’s every bit as decadent as you would expect. Go Grizz, we’ll get ’em next year. Meanwhile, here’s a sick beat from Memphis.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Chris Pratt does this move eight times in Jurassic World: Dominion.
How many ways can you screw up a dinosaur movie? It seems like a slam dunk. The people are coming for the dinosaurs, so you give them dinosaurs. When you’re not doing that, just point your camera at Jeff Goldblum — because if you’re making a movie about dinosaurs, I assume you’ve paid your Goldblum money.
In attempting a Star Trek: Generations move by uniting the old and new casts of a legacy franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion inadvertently exposes the biggest flaw of the Jurassic Park reboot trilogy: The lack of Jeff Goldblum. The new film’s greatest accomplishment is the completion of Chris Pratt’s quest to render his character Owen Grady completely devoid of personality. The former Navy Seal turned velociraptor whisperer is just there to be good at things like riding motorcycles and wrangling wild theropods, not to feel any pesky emotions. His sole move is to straight-arm dinosaurs into compliance, which he does eight times, by my count, in Dominion. Since appearing in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Bryce Dallas Howard has come into her own directing career, helming episodes of The Mandalorian, so her performance as former Jurassic Park manager turned dino-rights activist Claire Dearing is predictably checked-out.
Director Colin Trevorrow struggles to fit his expanding cast of heroes into one frame in Jurassic World: Dominion.
When Dominion begins, they’re living together in a cabin in rural Montana with Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the clone of the daughter of OG Jurassic Park researcher Benjamin Lockwood. Instead of instantly dying from the Anthropocine world’s onslaught of pollution and disease, the dinosaurs who escaped from the exploding volcano on Isla Nublar have spread across the planet. This sounds like the basis for a good story. Imagine dinosaurs tearing a swath through the modern world, while our heroes, led by Jeff Goldblum, tries to find a solution that preserves both humankind and dino-kind. It’s the proverbial un-screwable pooch.
Life, in the person of writer/director Colin Trevorrow, finds a way. It turns out that Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) has been spending the years since her 1993 visit to Jurassic Park studying the effects of genetic engineering on the ecology. She’s hot on the trail of a mysterious new species of giant locust that have been bioengineered to eat everything not produced by megacorp Biosyn. This will cause a worldwide famine if she and her old palentologist flame Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill, remarkably well preserved) can’t find proof of the plan. Lucky for them (and us) Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff freakin’ Goldblum) has already infiltrated Biosyn by gaining the trust of its founder Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott, in a Shatnerian performance). Even though dinos are now roaming wild through the woods and plains of the world, Biosyn has gathered a collection of the creatures into a large, protected space — a kind of Jurassic park, if you will — through which our ever-growing collection of heroes will have to navigate in order to save a kidnapped clone, a baby velociraptor, and also the world’s food supply.
Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) faces down Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) in Jurassic World: Dominion.
Maybe a more skilled filmmaker would be able to successfully juggle three competing storylines, but the truth is, a skilled filmmaker would know better than to try. The giant locust attack seems to be an attempt at a climate change allegory, which is weird choice for a story that features a world overrun by already allegorical dinosaurs. Were the filmmakers under the impression that we’re begging for a stealth remake of Beginning of the End, the 1957 giant locust movie skewered by Mystery Science Theater 3000? I thought we were here for dinosaurs.
In fairness, there is some crunchy dino-action. The second act features a solid Spielbergian set piece, with trained velociraptor assassins under the command of a smuggler named Santos (Dichen Lachman) chasing a motorcycle-mounted Pratt through the streets of Malta. But even when Trevorrow manages to conjure a string of exciting images, the Adderall-addled script can’t sustain any momentum.
T. Rex searching for snacks in Jurassic World: Dominion.
When things do perk up, it’s usually because of Jeff Goldblum. He effortlessly dominates the screen, delivering schtick with his trademark sly wink at the audience. I was reminded of the infamous story of when Michael Caine, another actor who was always the best thing in bad movies, was asked about appearing in another rock-bottom sequel of a great Steven Spielberg film, Jaws: The Revenge. “I haven’t seen it, and by all accounts, it is terrible,” he said. “But I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
A porch in Memphis (Photo by Jenni Kowal on Unsplash)
I began my search for a rental home roughly three months ago, sometime in March 2022. My (soon to be, and from here on out referred to as ex) husband and I were in the beginning stages of our blessedly amicable divorce. The first prospective landlord I spoke to on the phone was obviously eager to get his property, a unit in a Midtown quadruplex, rented as soon as possible, simply to stop the incessant flow of inquiries. “Past evictions, credit, I don’t care about any of that,” he told me. “If you pay, you stay, that’s my philosophy.” He said he would be at the property in about 30 minutes if I could make it there by then, though he mentioned someone else would be viewing it before I did. I wondered if finding a place could actually be that easy. Then I got the call that it was rented. I had been beaten to it. It would become a familiar experience.
So began the long, arduous process of constant rejection. That could be the title of an epic poem summing up finding a rental in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2022. “A Long, Arduous Process of Constant Rejection.” If that seems overly dramatic, here are some numbers for you to consider. In the three-ish months that I searched, I looked at, inquired about, or saw roughly 115 rental properties. I say “roughly” because this doesn’t count the messages I deleted, the countless internet rabbit holes I went down, or all the phone calls I made. I arrived at the number 115 by looking through my inbox, message chains, notebooks, and Slack threads. My coworkers, my family, my ex-husband’s coworkers, my friend’s online mom-messaging board, my friends of friends of friends — a veritable army of kind, helpful people have been looking on my behalf as well.
Perhaps the most important number of all to consider throughout this process has been the number three, as in “you must make three times the monthly rent to qualify for this property.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for Memphis in 2020 was $41,864. The per capita income was $26,704. So, hypothetically, a single person making roughly $27,000 per year looking for a place to rent in this city would need to find, in order to meet the three times monthly rent qualification, a house or apartment for $750 a month. Keep in mind, we’re talking gross income here, so taxes haven’t been taken out yet. If a property manager wants to base these qualifications on net income, the number goes down to about $640 per month. Right now, at 3:01 p.m. on June 9, 2022, there are 33 results on zillow.com for rentals no higher than $650 per month. This is barring any other filters, like a place being pet-friendly or having more than one bedroom.
But wait! Don’t forget: Some rental companies require four times the monthly rent. I won’t go through all those numbers, but suffice to say, a person living alone on an average Memphis income won’t be able to make that work. I have had the cynical thought — and it has been suggested many times to me by others — that the three-times rent qualification is nothing more than a thinly veiled discrimination tactic. And yet, even when I decided on multiple occasions to forge ahead and ignore the three times thing, I would be rejected. “Insufficient funds,” reads one email that I received after viewing and applying for a Midtown duplex. I made it halfway through one online application before realizing that it required past pay stubs. I’ve worked part time and been a stay-at-home-mom for the past four years. My circumstances are changing, but an online application doesn’t care about that. I understand that a landlord needs to protect their investment, but I can also wish the process of finding housing were an easier one to navigate.
Here’s yet another number to consider: five. As in, your credit score is going to drop about five points every time it’s checked. How about the number 40? As in, you’re going to have to pay a $40 application fee in order for us to check your credit — which will then drop — and then reject your application anyway for “insufficient funds.” Do I seem bitter? Frustrated? Finding a place to live shouldn’t feel like running a gauntlet. And this is coming from a white woman with good credit history and a verifiable source of income. I’m so privileged it’s disgusting. Where does this kind of market leave anyone working minimum wage? Or someone who doesn’t have established credit? A retiree? A single parent paying for childcare?
The last number to become relevant during this search was one. As in, I was the first person to view a property. As in, only one landlord actually asked for my opinion on what I could afford instead of making the decision for me. I feel extremely lucky to be able to end this piece by saying that I now have a place to live. How many others are being left hung out to dry?
Jombi: Caleb Crouch, Bry Hart, Auden Brummer, Sam Wallace, Joe Espinal (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Caleb Crouch came up with the name “Jombi.” He then told Bry Hart, “That’s your new nickname.”
“Five months later we decided to make that the band name,” Hart says.
And of Crouch, Hart says, “He’s a nickname guru. He loves to come up with that stuff.”
Hart, 20, is the drummer, and Crouch is bass player in the band that also includes rhythm guitarist/lead vocalist Auden Brummer, lead guitarist Sam Wallace, and keyboardist/second lead guitarist Joe Espinal.
Hart and Crouch were the initial members of Jombi. “We started as a jam band. We are now — I’m quoting a friend of ours — ‘a band of ambiguous genre.’”
The band recently released Jombi Presents… — six songs recorded at Young Avenue Sound.
A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Hart was influenced by his dad, Fred Hart, a guitarist who played in bands in high school and college. “He did a lot of the same things I’m currently doing now.”
And, Hart says, “He formed Grandmaw’s Attic when grunge came around. They all went to Delta State University and they played around Cleveland, Mississippi. They had a decent audience and they made a record. I’m saying all this ’cause I think that had a big influence on me wanting to write my own music and perform it live and network.”
His dad introduced him to a lot of music, including Mötley Crüe, Jimi Hendrix, and The Cars, when Hart was 5 years old. “He showed me all the stuff he listened to when he was younger. He also showed me bands like The Cult and Drivin N Cryin. That’s one of the first CDs I ever listened to — the Smoke album.”
Hart also was into “the toddler stuff.” He recalls dancing to The Wiggles, which was an influence on his own music direction. “The blue Wiggle, Anthony, played drums and I wanted to be like him.”
He also loved the Jet song, “Cold Hard Bitch,” which his parents just referred to as “Drums.”
“I’m sure it was the visceral nature of it, hitting things,” he remembers. “Listening to songs and learning the drum parts attracted me more than learning anything else in the song. Even as a young kid, I could sing the songs a little bit, but I was very into the rhythmic side of things.”
When he was 3 years old, Hart got “a very small kid’s drum set” for Christmas. “I broke it on the first day. I just played it so hard. I was such a hard hitter at that age. The heads busted through and my cymbal got bent. I was disappointed, but they went out and bought me another one.
“I went through about six of those Walmart hundred dollar kid’s drum sets. By the time I was about 5 [years old], my parents started to understand there was more going on.”
On his 6th birthday, Hart got a Pearl Forum drum kit. “One of their beginner series and it was beautiful. It has black, sparkly wrap. I still have it, but I don’t play it.”
Hart who began taking drum lessons when he was 7 years old, moved with his family to Southaven when he was 11. He began studying at School of Rock Memphis a year after it opened. “Being with kids who shared the same passion as I did, connecting with them, playing, lit some fire in me.
Hart expanded his musical knowledge and foundation while studying at School of Rock Memphis. “Getting so used to playing live before I even went out and did it on my own was super beneficial to me. As well as having and knowing the benefit of having chemistry on stage. Being able to communicate on stage. Being able to communicate in a practice space.”
Caleb Crouch and Bry Hart at a School of Rock Memphis show in 2020 at Newby’s. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Joe Espinal, Son.Person, and Bry Hart at a School of Rock Memphis show in 2020 at Newby’s. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
His first band, but not one he formed, was 2nd Gen, which played “a good mix of stuff,” including a lot of ’80s material like “Don’t Stop Believin’”and “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”
Hart was in the drum line in marching band from freshman to junior year at Lewisburg High School. “Drum line opened my eyes to a lot of the techniques I think I had missed out on learning [on a] drum set and, specifically, rock songs. Using different grips and focusing more on dynamics as well as writing in general. Hearing a lot of the music that was written for marching band and symphonic band was very influential because I had never been super into that stuff before I was forced to play it.”
Hart became close friends with Crouch and Espinal at School of Rock. Sharing the same musical tastes, the three started a band, Water Illusion, with another friend, Max Dixon. “We had listened to a lot of the progressive rock that had come out of the ’70s as well as some progressive metal like Dream Theater. So, we tried to write this intricate stuff while we were very young.”
After that band broke up, the musicians took a break until the summer of their sophomore year when they formed another band, Illustrated History. “This time writing stuff a little less technical.”
They were the backing band playing original music by Livia Overton, who was the singer. But that project didn’t gel.
Then Covid hit. During quarantine, Hart, who began writing songs when he was about 12 after “messing around with GarageBand on an iPad,” went to his computer and wrote 15 songs, which he made into demos with Brummer as vocalist.
Hart, who originally was influenced by drummer Neal Peart of Rush, says, “His lyricism really attracted me.”
A lot of Hart’s lyrics were “fiction-based. I was writing little stories inside of songs.”
He recorded one of his songs, “Vanessa,” at Young Avenue Sound with Brummer as vocalist. “It sounded way better than we could ever have imagined. First recorded song of mine I had ever heard.”
He released it on Spotify and other streaming platforms under his name.
“Vanessa” was the impetus to form Jombi a month later. “I had the idea to get a band together just to perform ‘Vanessa’ live. That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to perform ‘Vanessa’ live and maybe start writing some other songs for the band.”
He and other members of what would become Jombi got together to “see how the musical chemistry and social chemistry works.”
Jombi (Credit: Michael Donahue)
They listened to a lot of Phish. They liked “the complex arrangements with the live improv and a very heavy emphasis on funk and groove-oriented stuff as well as a commercial sense.”
“Vanessa” sounded great with the band, so they added some covers. “We do a Band of Gypsies song, a Cream song or two, Doors. We would take those songs and make them jam-based songs. We’d improv over them for long periods of time.
“We would take an idea we had and then everybody would add their own little fairy dust to it and make it a Jombi song.”
They had about three songs finished when they played their first show a year ago at Hi Tone. “When we stepped on stage, we let loose. And everything that makes us us kind of came out. We found our footing as a live band, a live act, just by doing that. Going out and doing it. ’Cause you can’t do that in a rehearsal. There are 70 people looking at you.”
Jombi (Credit: Michael Donahue)
As for the new album, Hart says, “We have written a bunch of songs that all sounded different. Most people nowadays hold onto singles and just release single after single after single. After I realized how different each of our songs sounded, I realized that wasn’t a good idea because the songs sounded so apart from each other. It wouldn’t even sound like the same band.”
So, they decided to do an album so they “could put all of those songs together. I think all of them connect in some way because we wrote them together and recorded them together.”
“Party Time,” one of the songs, lasts 10 minutes. “Lyrically, it came from Crouch’s dad. He wrote poetry when he was younger.”
The poem was about growing older. “As time goes on and time gets harder, you’re still going to have the people that stay with you and make things easier.”
“We’re all nerds,” Crouch says. “We’ve all spent an obscene amount of time practicing our instruments. That amount of study is bound to affect the music you play and write. There isn’t anything we can do about it. Our music is kind of nerdy. To me, that’s what I like about it and what sets it apart.”
And, he says, “I think we do a good job at making heady music accessible to anyone willing to listen.”
“I feel like we’re quite a young band for the music we play,” Wallace says. “I have a lot of musician friends and a lot of them are doing stuff that’s a lot more modern, in my opinion. I know guys who play punk rock, grunge music, but I really feel Jombi, in a way, captures a more classic vibe with kind of a modern twist.”
“We all have fairly different music tastes,” Brummer says. “We can all kind of appreciate each other’s. Caleb really loves jazz. Bry is into progressive music. Me and Joe are into jam bands. And Sam is more into modern indie stuff. And kind of having all those music interests and different styles in one group lends its an interesting sound.”
They bring their influences into the music they create, Brummer adds. “On our last album we had a 10 minute long fusion kind of jam song. And then we had a three-minute pop song as well. It’s a varied musical environment to be in. Having all those different skill sets and creative brains in one place allows us to do certain things with music that other bands — at least in Memphis — might not.”
“We’ve each played with each other for a number of years, so we have a unique chemistry that only comes with time,” Espinal says. “As a result, we have the ‘Jombi sound,’ which is the blend of each of our styles with the cohesiveness of knowing each other really well.”
Wallace will be moving to Nashville before the end of summer, Hart says. “Which may create a bit of a halt in our process, but I don’t fear it.
“The big picture is to record as many songs as possible and to play live out of Memphis. Get around Tennessee, the Southern region, and promote our music and play live. That’s a big goal for us.”
Hart is confident about Jombi’s future. “In a non-egotistical way, we have developed our craft playing our instruments for a long time. And we’ve done that all in the same place, in the same environment, to where the chemistry we have on stage is undeniable.”
To listen to Jombi Presents…, click here: https://songwhip.com/jombi-presents
