As we walked out of Inside Out 2, my wife turned to me and said, “They really nailed anxiety!”
The first Inside Out, directed by Pete Docter in 2015, is one of the crown jewels of American animation. It’s also one of the few films for kids (or anyone, really) that is explicitly about mental health. The premise, which it shares with the now-forgotten ’80s sitcom Herman’s Head, is that inside everyone is a committee of personified emotions whose deliberations and disputes determine behavior. Riley, voiced by Kaitlyn Dias, is an 11-year-old girl from Minnesota whose world is upended when her family moves to San Francisco. On the outside, she tries to put on a brave face. But on the inside, her young emotions are in turmoil. Joy (Amy Poehler) is the leader of the emotions, but when she and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) are thrown from Riley’s cerebral control room, Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) take over, and Riley tries to run away from home and return to Minnesota. Only when Joy and Sadness fight their way back to the control room, thus restoring emotional balance, can Riley come to terms with her new life.
Inside Out 2 picks up a couple of years later. Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) is 13 years old, and despite her fears that no one plays hockey in San Francisco, she’s on a team with her two besties Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green). Next year, they’ll be headed for high school, where they want to skate for the Firehawks, the varsity hockey team led by star player Val (Lilimar). After a big win, the friends get invited to a summer skills camp run by the Firehawks’ hardass Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown). It’s Riley’s chance to prove she’s good enough to make the team, and she’s initially excited.
But the night before the camp starts, things start to spin out of control in her emotional world. The Puberty Alarm starts flashing on Riley’s control panel, and Minion-like Mind Workers bust in to start demolishing the place. “Pardon our dust! Puberty is messy!”
The workers are expanding to make space for a new set of emotions, courtesy of puberty: Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Nostalgia (June Squibb), and Anxiety (Maya Hawke). Also, Riley has acne now, just in time to meet the gaggle of older girls who rule the Firehawks roost.
After years of maintaining emotional equilibrium and cultivating a strong sense of self for Riley with only five emotions, Joy is thrown for loop when she tries to manage the newcomers. Anxiety is especially troublesome. After an early blunder by Joy leads to Riley getting yelled at by the coach, Anxiety takes over. Joy only reacts, but Anxiety is a planner, which seems like a prudent thing as Riley tries to navigate a fraught new social situation. Plus, Joy has been maintaining the status quo by putting all of Riley’s negative memories way in the back of the mind, where they are conveniently out of sight, but never dealt with. The fact that processing these bad memories will strengthen Riley’s sense of self never occurs to Joy, who only focuses on the positive. Soon, Anxiety banishes Joy’s hard-won sense of self to the same oblivion as Riley’s suppressed memories, and our young hero starts alienating her friends and trying on a new, fake identity she thinks will get her an in with the popular girls, and a spot on the team.
Anxiety is the breakout star of Inside Out 2, for good reason. We are living in an age of anxiety, brought on by the deteriorating climate, the specter of Trumpian fascism, pandemic malaise, addictive social media algos, and wars simmering in the background. Is it any wonder the kids are nervous all the time?
Kelsey Mann, who took over when Pete Docter was promoted to Pixar’s chief creative officer, puts his focus on Anxiety, and how it works to monopolize the imagination and blind you to the complexities of reality, all in a brisk 98 minutes. When Riley has a panic attack during the big game, the experience is downright harrowing for anyone who has been there themselves. Riley ultimately makes it through it all with a sense of self that is stronger because it is more complex. The kids (and the adults) who pay attention to the message behind the visual fireworks will come away with an easily understood example of how to process the confusing emotions of teen-dom. I wish I had Inside Out when I was young.
“Segreghetto” is surprisingly bass-light, but you’ll barely notice as the layers of percussion send you into a funky netherworld. “The term ‘Segreghetto’ encapsulates the intersection, the crossroads of segregation and ghettoization, perseverance in this human experience,” says Mononeon. “‘Segreghetto’ is a thang where it’s a testament to the enduring spirit of yourself in your community and culture. Like offering a voice to those that are overlooked or misunderstood, carving out your own path even in the midst of systemic inequalities. When me and my friend Davy were writing the song ‘Segreghetto,’ I felt like this junt could be inspiration to anyone willing to defy the odds and chase their dreams, wanting that gold medal.. no matter the obstacles that lie in their path and journey.”
For the video, produced by Texan Twanvisuals, the Mono-man shows off some of his trademark quilted and knit duds. Looks pretty hot to me, on this summer Monday!
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
The Pixar masterpiece gets a sequel. Riley, the runaway girl from the first film, is a teenager now. And that means a whole new set of emotions to deal with. Inside Riley’s head, Joy (Amy Poehler) is still trying to keep it together, as Riley enters the psychic chaos of high school. Now she’s joined by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopousos), and Embarassment (Paul Walter Hauser). Longtime Pixar creative exec Kelsey Mann takes over the helm from Pete Docter, who made the original an enduring classic.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
The Memphis Flyer’s own Kailynn Johnson says “Longtime fans will be reminded as to why this pair works so well together in the buddy-cop genre. Thousands of slap-happy think pieces and unsolicited marriage tidbits later, Smith is still refreshing, and we’re reminded of why the camera loves him. Lawrence’s comedic legacy precedes him, and his impeccable delivery doesn’t disappoint.” Given the $125 million the film has stacked up in a week, viewers agree.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller’s story of how the hero of Fury Road became an Imperator in the army of Immortan Joe is the most epic thing you will see this year. Anya Taylor Joy and Alyla Browne portray Furiosa in this 15-year saga of loss and redemption in post-apocalyptic Australia. The sci fi action is a feast for the eyes, but Miller never fails to engage the mind while rocking the body. Read my review.
Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s high fantasy novels dominated the turn-of-the-century box office, and stimulated the imagination of a generation. Now the three films are back in theaters for a limited engagement in 4K and the full director’s cuts.
A crowd at a previous Juneteenth Festival (Photo: CBJ VISION)
Tone’s been busy. The arts nonprofit organization is dedicated to “elevat[ing] Black artists as innovative thought leaders, courageous storytellers, and risk-taking problem solvers through intentional exhibitions, conversations, concerts, and artist development, “with the goal of “shift[ing] the culture of Memphis through groundbreaking art, media, and communication that centers Black experiences in our city’s past, present, and future.”
To accomplish that goal, Tone has to keep a lot of plates spinning. The latest exhibition at their Orange Mound gallery, which opened on June 8th, is called “Invisible Man.” The theme for the group show, featuring artists from inside and outside Memphis, is deconstructing concepts of masculinity. “We’ve chosen that name because the essence of the exhibition is inspired by Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man,” says curator Kylon Wagner.
Tone’s annual Juneteenth celebration has become wildly popular. This year, it will stretch into three days, from Friday, June 14th, to Sunday, June 16th. It will feature the biggest lineup of entertainment yet and give attendees a preview of the latest developments in the organization’s grand opus: The transformation of a derelict Purina animal feed factory into an innovative center for Black arts, wellness, and entrepreneurship called Orange Mound Tower.
Sitting in the freshly renovated offices of the Tone gallery in Orange Mound, Tone executive director Victoria Jones says sometimes her organization’s ambitious agenda of community transformation can feel overwhelming. “It’s been going, it feels like hyper speed some days. We at Tone internally have really had to focus on building capacity so we could take on the project — not just take on the development of the project, but once it exists in its full capacity, actually grow into that larger space. And so, we have been working on capacity building for our staff, which has led to some really great partnerships with the Mellon Foundation, where we’ve been able to get everybody an honorable salary, wages, and healthcare. Obviously, that’s gonna change the morale of a team! So that’s been really exciting. We have had an opportunity to work with folks like the Memphis Music Initiative, who led the [office] renovation back here for us. … It’s a strong, solid team right now. We’re really learning our systems differently. Because we’ve been such a young, kind of scrappy organization that we were just like, ‘Ooh, let’s try this. Ooh, let’s try that.’ But now we’re learning what it means to actually build out systems, plan for the future, and see those things through. We’re learning what accountability structures could look like, and that’s been giving us space for our imaginations. I think that was a fear for me — and that could be my own Aquarius nature — that systems would block some of that imagination work. But we’ve understood, with the systems we’re beginning to implement, it actually gives the imagination space to grow and see the visions through.”
Juneteenth
1862 was not a good year for the United States. The Civil War was raging, and things were not going to plan for President Abraham Lincoln. In the East, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army was menacing Washington, D.C., and Lincoln was firing a succession of failed generals. Things were going better in the West, where General Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign to deny the Confederacy access to the Mississippi River had led to the capture of Memphis. But the cost was great, and Grant’s forces were getting bogged down laying siege to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
In early September, the two armies fought to a draw at Antietam, Maryland. It was the single bloodiest day in American history, with more than 27,000 dead, wounded, or missing. But it halted Lee’s invasion of the North, at least temporarily. On September 22nd, to capitalize on the victory, and give his abolitionist supporters the moral crusade against slavery they craved, President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. Effective January 1, 1863, all slaves in the Confederate territories would be henceforth free. As the news of liberation spread, many enslaved Black people in the West ran away and flocked to newly liberated Memphis, altering the city’s demographics forever.
But many of the enslaved, who had been purposefully kept ignorant by their masters, didn’t know about the emancipation. Even after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865, slavery continued in then-remote places like Texas. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, to begin the military occupation and Reconstruction, and informed the people of Texas that “In accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” In the years that followed, the more than 250,000 Black people liberated that day started calling the holiday Juneteenth. The National Museum of African American History and Culture calls it “our country’s second Independence Day.”
Since it was founded as The CLTV, Tone has made Juneteenth their day of celebration. “We don’t have that many holidays that center our experience in general,” says Jones. “We have had to create Juneteenth. I think it’s our first opportunity to begin to truly celebrate freedom, even before it’s been fully won — ’cause I feel like we still got a little ways to go. It’s an opportunity for us to take a pause and go all the way up for what our ancestors had to go through, what our elders have walked us through, and what we can do in the future. It feels a lot like a real opportunity to celebrate this baton that’s been passed generation to generation. … Slavery didn’t happen a super long time ago, as much as we want to feel like it was some distant experience. My grandmother was raised in a home with someone who was enslaved as a child. The way that affects my family, and the ways I understand generation to generation what had to be sacrificed for my bloodline to be where it is right now, I don’t know of another holiday that would give me room to reflect on that, celebrate that, lift that up, love on the ancestors that had to go through that, and imagine what we can still be working on and doing going forward.”
In 2021, the festival debuted at 2205 Lamar Avenue, a long-vacant, blighted post-industrial site that featured a tower visible from all over the historic Orange Mound neighborhood. “That was the first festival,” says Jones. “We’d done one Juneteenth celebration before that. It did not include a festival. We outfitted this space to do a big gala. Then, after Covid, we thought we needed to bring it outdoors. What could an outdoor celebration look like? Should we try a festival? Can we do a festival?”
The 2021 Juneteenth festival was an unlikely success. Jones recalls a bartender, hired that first year, in a panic wondering how they were going to accommodate thousands of people in a place with no power and no working bathrooms. Unapologetic, Tone’s partner in the Orange Mound Tower project, provided the entertainment. The gathering went a long way toward putting Tone on the map of Memphis arts orgs. “It’s grown substantially each year,” says Jones. “Even with the rain that hit last year, we saw a huge boost in attendance and participation from the artists and headliners we had selected. It’s been a fun growth to watch.”
One of Tone’s goals for the festival is to make it a sort of Black homecoming, attracting people who have left Memphis to come back. “We’re wanting to name Memphis as the cultural beacon of the South, but wanting to do that in connection with other cities,” says Jones. “If we’re thinking about the emancipation of Black folks and that entire experience, the thought that the country as a whole can reckon with any kind of post-racist experience and not have that reckoning happening here in the South is null and void.”
When designing the celebration, Jones says the organizers asked themselves, “How do we participate in and help launch some of those efforts to offer up space for Black folks to be healing, and inviting folks from the South to participate in that? And then essentially hoping that the festival and we can become so large that it’s a true beacon back home, an invitation to come back home, if it’s for the weekend or if it’s for longer. Come back home; help build this new future with us. Juneteenth really gives us that opportunity. We are watching folks pull up for that weekend and get a taste of Memphis. It’s folks who might not have been here for a long time and are like, ‘I didn’t know this was happening here. I didn’t know these folks were here. I didn’t know this community was here.’”
Appropriately, for a Black homecoming celebration, Juneteenth 2024 kicks off with a game of Spades. How did the card game get so popular in the Black community? “I don’t know,” says Jones. “I just know I ain’t never been to a function without it.”
“It’s a game about making do with what you have. You get that hand, and how can you make it jump?” says Willie McDonald, Tone’s development director. “The gala didn’t feel like the right first touch point for the weekend. So just trying to figure out, how do we welcome folk? What we have been seeing in attendance lately is, folks are coming from outside of the city to join us. … Our Juneteenth celebration happens under the banner of a family reunion, and Spades is an essential family reunion activity.”
The Friday night Spades tournament will be held in the Tone gallery, amid the artwork of the “Invisible Man” exhibit. More than 150 people have signed up so far. “We’ll have a whole new, larger crowd to experience that exhibition,” says Jones.
“It was live last year,” says McDonald. “There was some controversy in the room.”
On Saturday night, the celebration moves across the street to Orange Mound Tower for the gala. “It’s in one of the smaller warehouses,” says Jones. “This year, the is theme is revival. I’m imagining reviving the tower. And so the theme will be ‘Sunday best.’”
The seated banquet will include a keynote speaker and entertainment from Beale Street musicians and the Tennessee Mass Choir. “The way it’s sectioned off, it gives us three or four different room opportunities. We gonna have some unique experiences in each room,” says Jones.
On Sunday, the party kicks into high gear, with a vendor marketplace and Black-owned food trucks. One new addition this year will be a carousel with actual horses. Since the event commemorated by Juneteenth happened in Texas, many enslaved people found out about their emancipation from Black cowboys who spread the word on horseback. The Black rancher tradition has recently been in the spotlight, thanks to Jordan Peele’s film Nope, and Beyonce’s country-flavored Cowboy Carter album. (Peele is currently producing a documentary about Black cowboys.) “That’s a real part of Juneteenth tradition that I don’t think we get to elevate as often, that it was a Black cowboy letting a lot of the enslaved folks know,” says Jones. “We’ve been trying to find unique ways to tie Black folks on horses into the experience. It’s the symbolism of freedom and mobility.”
The star of the show on Sunday is the music. This year’s lineup is stacked with talent, both from Memphis and elsewhere in the South. McDonald says the nature of the event helped attract some big names. “The significance of us having this Juneteenth in Orange Mound, being the oldest neighborhood established by emancipated Black folks in the United States, and the funding from that going toward the larger capital campaign efforts for establishing a hub for Black innovation.”
The biggest name performer is neo-soul legend Erykah Badu, who will be doing a set under her DJ name Lo Down Loretta Brown. Memphis hip-hop legend, Three 6 Mafia founder, and secret engine of popular culture innovation Juicy J, whose accomplishments are too numerous to list here, will be on hand to deliver a highly anticipated performance. Also on the bill is New Orleans rapper and record label owner Curren$y, fresh off his 2024 collaboration with Trauma Tone on Highway 600.
Hitkidd (Photo: Kam Darko Visuals)
The official headliner is Memphis’ own Hitkidd. The producer of GloRilla’s song of the summer “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” and Campsouth Records mastermind is no stranger to the OMT stage. “He was at last year’s Juneteenth, and probably my favorite performance of the night,” says Jones.
“It was epic!” says McDonald. “[Last year] the main stage rained out, so our entire crowd stormed the north warehouse, and it made the second stage turn into the main stage. We had to get barricades up in like 10 minutes. Then we got Hitkidd standing up on top of tables and Slimeroni and three other female artists going HAM. It was the moment.”
The Architects of the Future
One person who attended last year’s Juneteenth festival was Germane Barnes. He’s an associate professor and the director of the Community, Housing & Identity Lab at the University of Miami School of Architecture; a Rome Prize Fellow; and the winner of the 2021 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize. He was at the festival at the suggestion of Chicago-based artist, professor, and entrepreneur Theaster Gates, a pedigree which impressed Jones and the Tone board of directors. “His practice is based around building out culturally informed spaces, spaces that have the cultural references that resonate for the people that they’re designed for,” says Jones.
Germane Barnes (Photo: Courtesy Studio Barnes)
The architect was intrigued the moment he saw the tower rising over Lamar. “He walked with me all the way to the top of the tower the first day that he came,” says McDonald. “He stopped and took detailed photographs on every floor. He attended the gala. He hung out with us the whole weekend. Then he leaves, and we don’t hear from him for a couple weeks.”
When Barnes recontacted Tone, he asked permission to use the Orange Mound Tower project in a class he was teaching at Ohio State University. “He’s got these grad students, and he had them do renderings of the tower. So we fly out to Ohio, and we’re looking at these CAD renderings. They’re splitting the tower open like an egg, showing us cross sections. They’re throwing all kinds of different facilities into it, just giving us perspective on what it could turn into. Some of these would be featured in the space where we’re hosting the gala. There’ll be an installation showing the progress of the tower that we’re sharing right now.”
Jones says, “The work we got to do with those students was so important. That’s our first time learning how to give feedback to architects. He’s pushing us, ‘Speak up, do you like this? How do you feel about this?’ … We got a lot of positive feedback from the students as well. Most of their coursework is for projects that don’t even exist in real life, so to know this could affect and touch an actual community was meaningful.”
Orange Mound Tower (Photo: Chris McCoy)
Barnes formally came on board as the architect of record for the Orange Mound Tower project in early 2024, thanks to a grant from the Memphis Music Initiative. “Germane got on that first call with us excited, and that felt good, really affirming that this is a dream project,” says Jones. “He’s never gotten to do a project of this scale, and so for him, this is an opportunity to touch a big project that, as he describes it, would usually be reserved for a 70-year-old white man. Him being able to come in as a young Black guy and flex what he can do, we know he knows that in a space this Black, it’s just gonna be incredible. He’s teamed up with local firms LRK [Looney Ricks Kiss] and APA [Aaron Patrick Architects], and they’re creating an architecture dream team for us.”
While Unapologetic remains an ownership partner, Tone has taken the front seat in development work. The Tower team also includes Brent Hooks, an accomplished project manager with more than a decade’s worth of experience in large-scale urban development and complex project coordination. “His extensive background in civil engineering and construction management ensures the successful delivery of high-quality projects, contributing significantly to the team’s success,” says Jones.
Veteran developers Bill Ganus and Darrell Cobbins serve as development consultants. “They’re just so deeply familiar with the landscape of Memphis, and they’ve really been helping us identify some moving parts. We want such a unique approach to tenancy, and how we’re imagining these kind of communities forming around the art and culture, food and agriculture, small business, and health and wellness. [Darrell] has been encouraging and inspiring as we’re imagining how we can truly build out communities around these concepts, not just getting folks to sign leases, so that they can also participate in imagining what the space could look like.”
With almost $4 million invested in the project’s design phase, and another $7 to $9 million on deck, Jones expects to be ready to move Tone onto the 10-acre site sometime in 2025, along with other tenants who will sign up for space in the massive warehouse that will be rejuvenated in the first phase of the project. “We’ve broken it into digestible chunks to make our fundraising job a bit easier,” says McDonald.
Jones says Tone is trying to build an infrastructure for Black freedom in Memphis, to retain talent, and to attract new people and new innovation to the city. “What does it mean if we’re able to actually build the infrastructure in our image in ways that are more thoughtful, more innovative than the structures that we’ve seen around New York, L.A., even Atlanta? You don’t have to force a fit here. You can actually build it to be what you want it to be. Once that infrastructure is developed, or at least in those beginning phases, we’re inviting folks in. Hey, this platform is here. You ain’t gotta go nowhere. Matter of fact, we need you not to go anywhere! Go see the world, but keep your home here, so we can build this city together.”
Visit tonememphis.org for a full schedule of Tone’s Juneteenth events and for more information.
Dead Soldiers are back from the dead! Or at least from a hiatus. No strangers to Music Video Monday, the sprawling big band of Ben Aviotti, Nathan Raab, Krista Wroten, Michael Jasud, Clay Qualls, Paul Gilliam, Victor Sawyer, and Jawaun Crawford plays “city music,” not country music.
Director Joshua Cannon is a fan, so he was excited to get the nod to direct their first music video in six years. “Dead Soldiers fall in line among the best bands to come out of Memphis. We’re so lucky we get to claim them as our own. Seeing them live is really something special — just supremely talented and good-natured people.
“We kicked around a few concepts for this video, but with a song like ‘Ride,’ and with the eight of them doing what they do so well, I decided to keep the focus there and keep the camera moving. Working with my buddy Ryan Parker on this was a ton of fun. He cooked barbecue and we watched The Last Waltz a lot to prepare. Michael Jasud also turned us onto a performance of The Animals playing ‘House of the Rising Sun,’ which was real sick and inspired the composed moments. Overall, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had making anything, thanks to an amazing crew of talented people who are so good at what they do and to the Soldiers, who are a great hang.”
Guitarist Ben Avioti says the feeling was mutual. “He [Cannon] was such a joy to work with. The whole crew was awesome and they totally put up with our antics for 14 straight hours.”
You can see a lot more of the Soldiers’ antics and hear “Ride” live on June 21st at The Green Room in Crosstown Concourse. But first, check out the video.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
I prove I’m a human all the time. (Photos: Dreamstime.com)
Thanks to a single post on TikTok, a question rocketed through social media and emerged into real-world conversations. Since the spirit of inquiry is in the Memphis Flyer’s DNA, we set out to explore the “man-bear quandary” and find a definitive answer. Our investigation spawned many other pressing questions. The following conversation took place entirely within the writer’s head.
Let’s say you’re walking alone in the woods. Which would you rather meet: a man or a bear?
I don’t know. Can you give me more details?
No. Man or bear?
I choose bear.
Let’s say you’re walking alone in the woods. Would you rather meet a woman or a bear?
Is the bear male or female?
It doesn’t matter. It’s a bear.
It does matter! Is it a mama bear defending her cubs? Or is it a male bear with a belly full of salmon he just pulled from the rushing stream at the bottom of the hill?
I don’t know! It’s a non-bear-nary bear! Woman or bear, that’s the choice.
Bear.
If your sister or mother or daughter were walking alone in the woods, would you rather she encounter a bear or a man?
I’m gonna go with bear again.
You’re doing this all wrong.
That wasn’t a question. How are my answers wrong?
I’m trying to make a point about misogyny and sexual assault. Men are supposed to choose the man because bears are dangerous. Women are supposed to choose the bear because it’s not as dangerous to them as a man. About 20 percent of women will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes. Don’t you think that’s bad?
Of course sexual assault is bad! Listen, if you really want to make a dent in the Memphis crime rate, get to work fixing the TBI crime lab. I’m just not sure questioning what a man, a bear, or the pope does in the woods is the best way to make your point.
Don’t bring religion into this. It’s a social-media gotcha question. Your response says a lot about you. Can you think of a better way to determine moral worth?
No, I guess not.
Right. So, why do you keep choosing the bear?
If all I know is gender, I’m going to have to assume the worst. People have all kinds of agendas. But bears only have bear agendas. They’re not out to get you. They’re just doing their bear stuff. Stay out of their way and leave them to it. Bears can be dangerous, sure, but at least you know where you stand with a bear. If the choice is Jane the friendly forest ranger or a bear, I’ll choose the forest ranger. If it’s Tweakin’ Joe defending his secret meth lab, I’ll take the bear. Plus, bears don’t have guns.
Aha! You just chose the woman over the bear!
No, I’m choosing the park ranger. Women do meth, too. It’s all in the details. Is this like the Voight-Kampff test from the movie Blade Runner, where they try to determine if you’re a replicant by asking you weird empathy questions?
You’re walking in the desert, and you see a tortoise on its back, baking in the sun. Why aren’t you turning the tortoise over?
Of course I’m going to turn the tortoise over! I’m not a robot.
How do I know you’re not a robot? How do YOU know?
I prove I’m a human on the internet all the time.
Please choose all the images which contain a bear.
Exactly! Like an AI doesn’t know what a bear looks like.
Has the AI ever seen a bear?
AIs don’t “see” anything. It’s just making educated guesses about what comes next. AI is just spicy autocorrect.
Doesn’t “making educated guesses about what comes next” also describe human thought processes?
This is getting ridiculous. You can’t measure my humanity by asking about my reaction to animal encounters. The man-bear quandary is just another “Would You Rather?” question designed to stir up meaningless debate on the internet. Good for procrastinating when you should be writing, but that’s it. Would you rather fight one man-sized chicken or five chicken-sized men?
Obviously, the man-sized chicken.
You obviously don’t play Dungeons & Dragons. A man-sized chicken is called a “dinosaur.” They get two claw-attacks and one bite-attack per round. Smoosh a couple of the tiny men, and the rest will have to pass a morale check or retreat.
Would you rather duel Aaron Burr with pistols at 10 paces, or fight Abraham Lincoln in a pit with a broadsword?
The world of Vesta is
endlessly complex. (Photo: Courtesy Netflix)
In writing class, they teach about the different kinds of conflicts a story can center around. Person vs. person is the most common, but there’s also person vs. self, person vs. fate, and person vs. society. Person vs. nature (formerly known as “man vs. nature”) is not nearly as common as it was a hundred years ago, back in the days of frontier and jungle adventure magazines. That’s one of the reasons the sci-fi animated series Scavengers Reign is so refreshing. Its take on the classic story of a shipwrecked crew struggling to survive in a hostile wilderness is simple at first, but becomes more fascinating as complexities emerge. In fact, “emerging complexity” is one of the overarching themes of the 12-episode story. Creators Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner are fascinated with the interplay of life-forms, both cooperation and conflict, which create a functioning ecosystem. The world they have created is unlike anything you’ve seen.
Scavengers Reign begins with its castaways, survivors from the crew of the cargo ship Demeter 227, already stranded on the planet Vesta. Azi (voiced by Wunmi Mosaku), the capable quartermaster, is paired with her robot Levi (Alia Shawkat). Their escape pod landed safely on open ground, and Azi uses an omniwheel motorcycle to scout the surrounding terrain. When Levi starts acting odd, Azi discovers that a fungus-like alien life-form has been growing on the robot’s circuitry — and the robot likes it.
Photo: Courtesy Netflix
Ursula (Sunita Mani), a biologist, was in the escape pod with Sam (Bob Stephenson), the captain of the Demeter. Their landing was a little rougher, but they have managed to salvage enough gear to communicate with the fatally damaged ship still in orbit. In the pilot episode, “The Signal,” the pair travel to retrieve a battery from another crashed escape pod. Once they get there, they see that the crew have all been killed by some unknown environmental hazard, which they then have to face. But that’s business as usual on this planet.
The occupant of the third escape pod has it the worst. It landed in a tree-like plant hundreds of feet tall, and Kamen (Ted Travelstead) has been trapped inside for weeks. He is finally rescued (if you want to call it that) by a creature he names Hollow. Imagine a cross between a platypus and a koala bear with psychic powers which it uses to dominate other life-forms. Instead of making little green tripod-thingies bring them yummy berry-like spheres, Hollow latches onto the human and demands Kamen hunt for him. In Kamen’s mind, it speaks to him in the form of Fiona (also voiced by Alia Shawkat), Demeter’s robotics engineer. Hollow uses Kamen’s guilt over their dysfunctional relationship against him, and his already fragile psyche slowly crumbles.
Sam and Ursula succeed in contacting the ship, and they manage to activate the automatic landing sequence. At first, they’re worried it might land on top of them. Then they discover they didn’t get that lucky. The Demeter lands many kilometers away from all three parties. The first half of the story is taken up with their increasingly frantic and costly attempts to make it to the ship. Once there, they will find that this world has even more surprises in store. As the show progresses, flashbacks start to fill in the details of how they got here, and who they were before they were lost in space and written off by their employers.
Anime’s dominant visual style has become so pervasive that I hear stories from art teachers about begging their young students to try to draw something else. Scavengers Reign owes a debt to Miyazaki’s sense of grandeur and deliberate pacing, and Akira’s pervasive body horror. But Bennett and Huettner’s aesthetic is more like the French illustrator Moebius. The world of Vesta is endlessly complex, with many animals and plants living in such close symbiosis that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Our heroes are constantly dodging predators, both animals and plants. But many of their interactions with the native flora and fauna aren’t so cut and dried. When Ursula is trapped inside a living wall of thorns, Sam freaks out. But Ursula insists she was never in danger, and in fact might have even been communicating with the giant plant-like organism. What were they saying? She doesn’t know. But as the story progresses, the survivors slowly learn to stop trying to conquer nature, and start trying to live in harmony with it. That’s what makes this beautiful and thought-provoking show such a treasure.
Unapologetic artist A Weirdo From Memphis is hitting the road this summer with label mates PreauXX, Kid Maestro, and CMajor. They’ll be appearing at Offbeat in Jackson, Mississippi on June 15, at the California Clipper in Chicago on June 22, at Seasick Records in Birmingham, Alabama on June 28, at the Platypus in St. Louis on July 13, and then two nights in NYC at Heaven Can Wait on July 27 and the Bed-Stuy Art House on the 28th.
AWFM’s got a new single and music video to wow the crowds. “Hysteria” is a horrorcore-style grinder which features a guest verse from prolific New Yorker RXK Nephew. “Its an unexpected blending of universes between two unhinged artist that both value being themselves over more traditional approaches,” says AWFM.
For the video, AWFM and crew traveled to Los Angeles to work with filmmaker filo5ofi, with whom the rapper had collaborated early in his career. Instead of some some California sun-and-fun street footage for the video, AWFM says “it was filmed in an L.A. hotel in the middle of one of the most unprecedented rain storms in 20 years.”
Stay dry, stay fly, and take a look:
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Bukka White and Jimmy Crosthwait onstage at the the Overton Park Shell in The Blues Society. (Photo: Randall Lyon | courtesy of The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane)
For director Augusta Palmer, The Blues Society is a personal project.
Her father, music writer Robert Palmer, was a member of the group of hippies and weirdos who first brought Black blues artists from Memphis and Mississippi to the Overton Park Shell. They were among the first to acknowledge the deep debt that popular music owed to these artists. Robert Palmer went on to write the bestselling music tome Deep Blues in 1981.
On Friday, May 31, The Blues Society opens in Memphis at Studio on the Square.. The opening weekend will feature a series of Q&A’s with the director and some Memphians involved in the project. On Friday, Grammy-winning author and filmmaker Robert Gordon will moderate a discussion with the director and musicians Jimmy Crosthwait and Chris Wimmer. On Friday, June 1, Indie Memphis executive director Kimel Fryer will moderate a discussion with director Palmer and editor Laura Jean Hocking. On Wednesday, June 5, Robert Gordon will return with Memphis radio legend Henry Nelson.
Barry Lincoln inside Mr. Lincoln's Costume Shoppe.
Mr. Lincoln’s Costume Shoppe, a Midtown landmark for more than three decades, will close on Friday, May 31, 2024.
Barry Lincoln, the longtime owner and shop’s namesake, is retiring after building his business into a must-visit spot for Memphians wanting to look sharp for Halloween.
I interviewed Mr. Lincoln himself about how he got into the costuming business, and why he’s leaving it all behind. But the good news is, he wants to sell the shop. So, maybe this is one Memphis tradition that can continue.
