Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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Best of Memphis Special Sections

The Best of Memphis

The voting patterns in the Flyer‘s Best Of Memphis election are not all that dissimilar to the voting patterns of other, more important elections. A large majority of voters dutifully fill out their ballots — either online or via the old-fashioned paper-and-pencil method — with full faith in the system. In their eyes, it’s one man/one vote, and may the Best Pizza win. And just as in real elections, some of these folks are informed citizens who have taken the time to educate themselves on the issues. They can readily tell you which dry cleaner, say, gets the starch just right or which casino really has the “loosest slots.” Other voters just fill in the blanks with the same answers every year. Best Ribs? Got it. Best Wine List? Yep. One suspects they just don’t care very much; they just want to fill out more than 50 percent of the ballot so their votes will count.

But that’s okay. At least they’re exercising their faux citizenship in an honest if unthinking manner. As I said, it’s a lot like some voters in real elections.

Other voters, however, present challenges to those of us charged with ensuring free and fair elections. Just as many politicians offer voters free rides to the polls, many candidates for Best Of Memphis honors fill out ballots for their friends and customers, asking only for a signature in return. Some candidates are even less subtle, sending in dozens of ballots at once, all in the same handwriting, using the same kind of stamp. It’s like using dead people to vote. (Folks, please. If you’re going to try to cheat, at least make it a challenge for our poll watchers.)

But our jobs were made infinitely easier this year with the introduction of online ballots. Vote counting was automatic, and cheating was — as far as we can tell — impossible. Perhaps because of this, there were a few surprise winners this year and some old favorites who got bumped. For a complete list of readers’-choice winners, go to page 38.

The rest of this year’s Best Of Memphis issue is filled with an eclectic bunch of articles from our staff — their “A-List” selections. Enjoy. And thanks for voting, no matter how you did it.

— Bruce VanWyngarden

Blog Rolling

10 A-List Concerts

Best Food and Drink on the Cheap

Readers’ Picks 2005

The Shopping List

Urban Image

The True Memphis A-List

A-List ZZZs

Categories
News The Fly-By

A-List Pickup Lines

As a happily married man, my days of trying to pick up a stranger are long past, but out there in the Bluff City, the dance of seduction goes on every night. Boys and girls are looking for love in all the Memphis places and using every weapon at their disposal — including some reeeeally bad pickup lines. On a recent fact-finding mission to several Memphis bars, a few us collected an anthropological sampling from customers and various bartenders. Some folks claimed that humorous lines work best. Others suggested the direct approach. And some people just say really weird stuff. Use at your own risk.

“I think I could fall madly in bed with you.”

“I wonder what our children will look like.””What do you like for breakfast?””Are you going to talk to me or do I have to lie to my diary?””Hi, I’m horny.””You’re on my list of things to do tonight.”

“Do you think our relationship would be just about the great sex, or would it have some depth to it?”

“What time do you get off? [said to a waitress/waiter] Can I watch?”

“So tell me about yourself — your dreams, your hopes, your phone number.”

“Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?”

“Hi. Are you cute?”

“You know, I can sense that you’re a wonderful lover and it intimidates me a little.”

“I’m fighting the urge to make you the happiest man on earth tonight.”

“If I were to ask you for sex, would your answer be the same as the answer to this question?” (I can’t figure out how this one works both ways, but it does.)

As you walk by, turn around and say: “Excuse me, did you just touch my ass? No? Damn!”

“Yep, I have big feet.”

“I want you to have my children. [wait a beat] They’re out in the car. Wanna see ’em?”

“I can make you feel like I’ve never had sex before.” (The guy who told me this one swears it’s actually worked.)

“Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only 10 I see!” (Perhaps the all-time lamest pickup line.)”So you’re a girl, huh?”

“I’ve had quite a bit to drink, and you’re beginning to look pretty good.”

“You remind me of a parking ticket. You got fine written all over you.”

“Hi. Buy you a car?”

“When God made you, girl, he was just showing off.”

“Excuse me, do you live around here often?”

“Wanna see a trick I learned in prison?”

“So, um, do you like turtles?”

“Bond. James Bond.”

“Well, here I am. What were your other two wishes?”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The Unspoken Subtext

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote last week of an “unspoken subtext in our national political culture” — a sense, she said, that the “trolley is coming off the tracks,” that things are broken and can’t be fixed.

I think she’s right, at least in the sense that things are broken right now. Whether they can be fixed or not, I can’t say. But in my 50-something years on this planet, I can’t recall a time when the country seemed more adrift or more divided. And I think it’s because we’ve lost our sense of idealism, the faith that we — all of us, no matter our politics — are committed to doing the honorable thing.

We’ve let the materialists take over. We’ve become a country led by deal-makers and lobbyists. Congress (Republicans and Democrats alike) and the administration seem committed only to their own financial and political gain. Even religion, which should be the most private and holiest of matters, has become just another special-interest lobby. What Would Jesus Legislate?

People naturally become cynical when they’re lied to and manipulated. And when Americans are lied to by government officials, they lose faith in America. Perhaps this is why special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was so impressive in his press conference last week. He seemed to have an honest and palpable faith in the power of law to ferret out the truth.

So is there hope on the horizon? A cynic would say no. An idealist would say yes. A realist would say maybe, if we elect people who will speak the truth and face down the greedheads who have taken over.

I don’t know the answer, honestly. I do know at this point the trolley’s bouncing downhill fast, no tracks in sight.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: “Facts” Fixed Around the Policy

By the time you read this, all hell may have broken loose in the long-festering scandal known variously as Rovegate, Plamegate, or Judygate. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to announce his decision regarding who to indict — and for what crimes — this week.

Fitzgerald’s charges could involve much more serious matters than the “outing” of an undercover CIA agent. They may unveil the conspiracy to “sell” the American public on the war with Iraq with “facts” that were “fixed around the policy.” The investigation could lead all the way to Vice President Cheney and the shadowy White House Iraq Group.

If that happens, color me a happy man. Not because I wish Cheney any particular hardship, but because such an indictment may finally shed light on the lengths to which this administration has gone to manipulate the media and deceive the American public.

From its “Mission Accomplished” carrier landing to its payments to pundits to its staged presidential “conversation” with the troops to its coopting of New York Times reporter Judy Miller, the Bush administration has been relentless in its efforts to distort the truth.

American journalism is nowhere near being the powerful force that flushed Richard Nixon from the White House in the wake of the Watergate scandal. This is partly due to the emergence of large media corporations whose interests are more about bringing profits to shareholders than about bringing truth to the public. And it’s partly due to the fact that this administration, like none before it, has mastered the art of media manipulation. Two dangerous trends that need to stop now. Go, Fitzy, go.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The Never-Ending Blog Cycle

This happens to me all the time: I’m reading an item on a Web site that suggests that I read something at another site: (“Skippy over at Blogadelic gets it right. Read the whole thing here.”) Hmmm. Sounds interesting, I think, so I click and read Skippy, and he suggests a link “over at Digeridoo’s place,” who then sends me to Roxanne, who links me back to where I started. Dang.

If you’re a regular Web surfer, especially a blog-addict like me, I suspect this happens to you as well. (In my case, it’s partly because I read a lot of self-referencing blogs, most of them about politics.) But despite the fact that blog-surfing can be a never-ending circle game at times, it’s a growing addiction.

The mouse is the new remote. People follow postings at their favorite Web sites with the devotion of soap opera fanatics. I know folks who make daily rounds to blogs and Web sites like old-time wilderness hunters used to check their traps. In fact, I’m one of them. My route leads me through progressive politics (Daily Kos, TalkingPointsMemo, AmericaBlog, Wonkette), conservative politics (TownHall, FreeRepublic), news (Reuters, Drudge Report, The Raw Story, MSNBC), local folks (The Flypaper Theory, Half-Bakered, Smart City, and the Flyer, of course), and even personal stuff like my New York son’s band’s site (myspace.com/themanagement, in case you’re interested).

To name just a few.

So many sites, so little time. Nobody even knows how many blogs exist, but the most recent estimate is around 17 million. And yeah, that’s a lot of traps — more than you could check in several lifetimes, so I can’t prove this. But I’d be willing to bet the 17th-million site would send you back to the first one.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The Flyer’s Redesign

I continue to be amused and amazed at readers’ responses to the Flyer‘s redesign. It’s almost like the fable of the blind men and the elephant, as famously recounted in a poem by John Godfrey Saxe that began thusly: Six men of Indostan went to see an elephant/(Though all of them were blind.)/That each by observation/Might satisfy his mind.

The first man felt the elephant’s side and thought the elephant must be “very like a wall.” The second man, who felt the elephant’s tusk, thought the elephant was “very like a spear.” And so forth. The point being, I suppose, that we each see things from our own perspective and are often blind to things that seem obvious to others.

Those of you who’ve written or left voice-mails about the “new” Flyer have been similarly divided in your opinions. Some of you apparently think we are “very like idiots” for messing with your “good old Flyer.” And yes, we’ve even been accused of the quintessential colloquialism: “fixing what ain’t broken.” Others of you have expressed delight and admiration at our good taste and splendid judgment. (You folks are “very, like, cool.”)

One rumor that apparently spread through the art community like fertilized kudzu was that due to the redesign we had reduced our coverage of the visual arts. I received numerous letters about this “decision” from gallery owners and painters. Let me shine a light on that part of the elephant. Such a thing was never even considered. We love artists and art and we’ll continue to cover the Memphis art community as we always have — maybe even a little better than we always have.

And that’s not elephant doo.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The Katrina Fallout

What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday, here at the Flyer we were all chattering about the paper’s makeover and the U of M’s chances against Ole Miss. This week, we’re forced to contemplate the forthcoming makeover of a million lives and the Gulf Coast’s chances for recovery from a horrific disaster, the magnitude of which is still unfolding.

The Commercial Appeal, various Web sites, and the network news outlets have done a good job covering the story of Hurricane Katrina and providing information about ways we can all help out. We urge you to do what you can to assist in welcoming the thousands of new Memphians who have arrived in recent days. Memphis is, after all, known as the City of Good Abode. Now, more than ever, we need to live up to that reputation.

And we should take a moment to pause and be thankful for so much that we all take for granted: a job, a home, a family — alive and in one place. Tough days lie ahead for those who have to rebuild their lives from scratch. Lend a hand. Be a Good Samaritan. If you see a car with Louisiana plates, there’s a good chance the occupants are hurting. Maybe you can help.

That said, I need to mention a change in the Flyer‘s fall schedule (more fallout from Katrina, however trivial it may seem at this point): Our annual “Best of Memphis” issue — and the accompanying party — has been moved from the September 29th issue to a date (yet to be decided) in October.

In another housekeeping note, News of the Weird is absent this week, chased out of the paper for space considerations by our Katrina stories. It will return, weird as ever, next week.

See you at the gas pump.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

Categories
News News Feature

EDITORIAL: OUR A.W.O.L. CONGRESSMAN

Given Harold Ford Jr.’s peculiar voting pattern in recent weeks (last month, he voted in favor of the Bush administration’s bankruptcy bill), the congressman’s failure to vote at all for the budget measure passed by the House last Friday might be considered by many Democrats — who are the majority in his district — as something of a plus. That Republican budget, of course, includes clauses that pave the way for oil drilling in parts of the Alaskan wildlife refuge, as well as a new round of tax cuts balanced on the backs of the poor, who in turn get huge cuts in Medicaid and other entitlements.

The budget was passed by a narrow 214-211 margin, with Congressman Ford one of just 10 members who failed to show up for the vote. The Congressman told The Commercial Appeal that his absence was the result of “a previous commitment to be in Tennessee” on the night of the budget vote. He did not mention that that commitment involved attendance at Tennessee House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh’s Coon Supper in Covington, a city outside the boundaries of his Ninth District.

It is no secret that Ford has set his sights on Bill Frist’s Senate seat in 2006, and that his quest for that position is currently taking him far and wide across the state. Fair enough. But when his attempts to further his political career involve failing to register a vote on a critical measure in Congress on behalf of his Memphis constituents, he does every citizen of the Ninth District, Republican or Democrat, a disservice.

Let us clarify somewhat the nature of this disservice — in which Ford, to be sure, had company. There were 10 absentees; six of them, besides our own congressman, were Democrats. Presumably, a majority were opposed to the budget. If Ford and the others had been in Washington to cast a vote, the budget would have presumably failed.

Alternatively, if Ford — who prides himself on his accessibility to the folks across the aisle — had been there and had been able to talk a single Republican into a change of heart, the vote would have been tied.

By such action — and inaction — is history made.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Gonzo

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

For many of us of a certain age, that sentence — the opening line of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — reverberates like a great gong, tapping slightly addled memories of another life 30 years gone, another universe. The news of Thompson’s suicide this week brought it all back.

It was a time when the weekly arrival of Rolling Stone meant “Do not disturb” for the next three hours. Nothing published today compares in terms of pop-culture impact to RS in its prime. We devoured Lester Bangs and Ralph Gleason because what they wrote about the new Neil Young album meant something, because the music, like the world, was ours.

And when the magazine published one of Thompson’s insane “reports,” accompanied by the equally bizarre illustrations of Ralph Steadman, well, hipness could get no hipper. It was like we were all in on the same stony joke — all of us, reader, writer, artist, publisher.

Interview Nixon? No problem. Pass me that joint first.

I lived in San Francisco then, and like many other aspiring “gonzo” writers there and elsewhere, I fell under Thompson’s spell. Thankfully, very little of what I wrote in those days remains. The truth is, no one else could write like Thompson, because no one else who imbibed drugs and alcohol the way he did could sit up long enough to type a sentence. He didn’t just write gonzo, he lived gonzo.

In the mid-1980s, it was my strange fortune to talk to Thompson on a number of occasions. I was co-writing a book in which Thompson was profiled. Our phone conversations were brief and mostly about fact-checking. A year or so later, however, I was assigned to track Thompson down for a Saturday Review magazine cover photo. “Cover of Saturday Review? Sure, I’d kill for that,” he said. And I believed him. But then he dodged my calls for weeks.

Finally, his agent called to say he would cooperate and that he was holed up at the Drake hotel in New York under an assumed name. The name? The agent wasn’t sure. That was our problem. The photographer, being a resourceful sort, called the front desk and asked for “Mr. Raoul Duke,” Thompson’s Doonesbury alter ego. Contact! Thomp-son told the photographer that his “office hours” were from 2 to 4 — a.m! — and not to come back until then.

Using a fifth of Wild Turkey and the negotiating skills of a Grisham hero, the photographer finally got Thompson to pose for a startlingly close-up cover shot. Thompson hated the picture, and after the article came out, he was quoted as saying he couldn’t say the word “Saturday” anymore without retching. We never had occasion to speak again.

In recent years, when I saw Thompson in photos or when I read his columns, it seemed to me he’d become something of a parody of himself. Running around stoned out of your mind is edgy stuff at 30; it loses its charm at 67. It also tends to lead to acts of anguished desperation, like shooting yourself and leaving your wife and son to find your shattered body. It was inevitable, I suppose, but sad nonetheless. The man was a brilliant writer. He even wrote his own epitaph:

“… No explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. … There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. … We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”

You had a nice run, Duke. Rest in peace. n

Bruce VanWyngarden is editor of the Flyer.

Categories
News News Feature

HEAD SHOT

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

For many of us of a certain age, that sentence — the opening line of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — reverberates like a great gong, tapping slightly addled memories of another life, 30 years gone, another universe. The news of his suicide this week, brought it all back.

It was a time when the weekly arrival of Rolling Stone meant “Do not disturb” for the next three hours. Nothing published today compares in terms of pop culture impact to RS in its prime. It was the bible of of the counter-culture, an absolute must-read. We devoured Lester Bangs and Ralph Gleason because what they wrote about the new Neil Young album meant something, because Bob Dylan’s lyrics had mythic importance, because the music, like the world, was ours.

And when the magazine published one of Thompson’s insane “reports,” accompanied the equally bizarre illustrations of Ralph Steadman, well, hipness could get no hipper. It was like we were all in on the same stony joke — all of us, reader, writer, artist, publisher.

Interview Nixon? No problem. Pass me that joint, first.

I lived in San Francisco then, and like so many other aspiring “gonzo” writers there and elsewhere, I fell under Thompson’s spell. Thankfully, very little of what I wrote in those days remains. The truth is, no one else could write like Thompson because no one else who imbibed illegal substances the way Thompson did could sit up at a typewriter long enough to put a sentence to paper. He didn’t just write gonzo, he lived gonzo.

In the mid-1980s, it was my strange fortune to encounter Thompson by phone on a number of occasions. Initially, I was involved in co-writing a book in which Thompson was profiled. Our conversations were brief and mostly about fact-checking. A year or so later, however, I was assigned to track Thompson down for a Saturday Review magazine cover photo. “Cover of Saturday Review? Sure, I’d kill for that,” he said. And I believed him. But then he dodged my follow-up calls for weeks.

Finally, someone in his entourage called to say he would cooperate and that he was holed up at the Drake Hotel in New York under an assumed name. The name? The agent wasn’t sure. That was our problem. The photographer, being a resourceful sort, called the front desk and asked for “Mr. Raoul Duke,” Thompson’s Doonesberry alter ego. Contact! Thompson told the photographer that his “office hours” were from 2:00 to 4:00 — a.m! — and not to come back until then.

Using a fifth of Wild Turkey and the negotiating skills of a Grisham hero, the photographer finally got Thompson to pose for a startlingly closeup cover shot. Thompson hated the picture, and after the article came out he was quoted as saying he couldn’t say the word “Saturday” anymore without retching. We never had occasion to speak again.

In recent years, when I saw Thompson in photos or when I read his columns, it seemed to me he’d become something of a parody of himself. Running around stoned out of your mind is edgy stuff at 30; it loses its charm at 67. It also tends to lead to acts of anguished desperation, like shooting yourself and leaving your wife and son to find your shattered body. It was inevitable, I suppose, but sad, nonetheless. The man was a brilliant writer. He even wrote his own epitaph:

“… No explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. … There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. …”

R.I.P, Duke.

(Bruce van Wyngarden is editor of the Flyer.)