Author: Davis Christopher

Cute, right?

Crosstown — Ariya Mann says someone has stolen her new bifocals and the Memphis Police Department won’t even take her report.

“It’s shocking,’ Mann said. “They just look at me and laugh. Right in my face. They tell me to go home and look in the mirror and things like that. One officer even had the audacity to say, ‘Miss Mann, nobody’s stolen your glasses,’ when I know full well that they did. Because I know I put them down on the coffee table in the living room and they’re not there now. What else could have possibly happened?”

Mann says she suspects gang activity. The glasses, she explains, were only a month old, but the $68 Kate Spade frames have a vintage 1950’s look. “They’re so adorbs,” She said, pulling up a photo on Google images, and adding that she’s not usually the type of person who just goes around saying “adorbs.”

Mann, who appeared to be wearing a pair of Kate Spade glasses pushed up high on her head at the time of this interview, claims to have lost all faith in local law enforcement.

Midtown Woman Furious MPD Won’t Find Her Glasses

“You know, I wasn’t even going to call the police until I heard the news report about how they found Sir Elton John’s glasses when they were stolen from the Rock and Soul Museum last week,” Mann said. “I know I’m just an ordinary person. I never even wrote one version of ‘Candle in the Wind,’ let alone two versions. But I certainly didn’t expect to be treated like a crazy person.”

When asked if the glasses on top of her head might indeed be the missing pair Mann became embarrassed. “Well, look at that,” she said, laughing at herself. “I guess this one’s on me.

“There’s still the matter of my pickup truck that was stolen in 1996,” Mann concluded, adjusting her recovered spectacles. “That’s way bigger than any old Rocket Man glasses, and the police never found that either. I’m not sure they even tried.”

Mug Shot

Memphis TV station WMC, AKA Action News 5, was taken into police custody Tuesday after stabbing rival TV Station WREG, News Channel 3, with what police are describing as a “big fucking samurai sword.”

Witnesses at the scene say Action News 5 was trying on a Kim Kardashian brand hairpiece valued at $39.95 when News Channel 3 snuck up behind the unsuspecting station and snatched the wig right off its head.

“Lord, you should have heard Channel 5 holler,” said WKNO Channel 10. The public television station was enjoying margaritas and an order of guacamole fries on the patio at Cafe Olé when the fight broke out.

“It sounded like somebody was being murdered,” WKNO said. “And then that samurai sword came out, and we thought somebody was going to be murdered.”

WMC’s neighbors greeted the news with mixed reactions.

“I kinda think WREG is a little bit jealous of WMC,” says unlicensed massage therapist Carl Masutra who lives in a van that he parks behind a popular fast food restaurant on Union Ave. “And if somebody was trying to snatch their wig, I think they’ve got a right to stand their ground.”

Brenda Dishwalla of Dishwalla Interiors says she’s shocked by the behavior of both news stations.

“Which one is supposed to be ‘on your side?'” Dishwalla asked. “Is it WMC ‘on your side’ or WREG ‘on your side?’ Because it doesn’t sound to me like either of these stations is on my side. And who the hell goes around carrying a samurai sword?”

Channel 3 was taken to the hospital where it was treated for minor injuries. WMC was questioned and released on its own recognizance. Although graffiti was spotted near the scene, no gang involvement is currently suspected, and no formal charges have been brought against either station. 

• Ted Flanagan says he would be equally happy with two 6-packs

Memphis transplant Ted Flanagan, originally of Clinton, Iowa, has officially announced that he’s poised to significantly increase the amount of beer in his refrigerator. He may even acquire an additional Igloo cooler, pending a favorable response to his application for PILOT incentives.

Prior to leaving for the corner convenience store Flanagan stopped by an ATM to get cash for lottery scratch cards and, while doing, he also applied for Memphis’ Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program. According to his application Flanagan was at least buying a twelve pack and potentially as much as a case of cheap domestic beer. “Look,” he said, “I’m a big fan of Memphis. And given the chance, I’d like to make this next beer purchase in Memphis too. But the fact is, I’m already considering a trip to Walmart in West Memphis, which is just like Memphis but further west. And if this doesn’t work out I can always buy and possibly even drink the beer while I’m in Arkansas.”

Business leader Eddie Joe of EJ’s Kwikie Shoppe in Marion, AR, met Flanagan while the two men were waiting to use a RedBox outside of the Union Ave. Walgreens. He has since used social media to encourage his new friend to bring both his money and his astonishing thirst over the bridge to play.

“Ted’s a badass dude,” Joe says. “And I told him I’d totally hook him up with a killer price on some imports.”

Flanagan has a long history of successfully purchasing beers and other adult beverages in Memphis. He had even purchased a craft beer Growler from the Madison Ave. Cash Saver earlier in the day but quickly realized it wasn’t enough. “I’m ready to move on this right now,” he says. “I’m just hoping the city recognizes the value of what I’m trying to do here, and what I’m likely to do if I get really tanked and start throwing my cash around. And I hope they can see fit to meet me halfway.”

Do-It-Downtown President Chelsea Lamar believes that, while PILOTs for beer are unprecedented, Memphians should keep an open mind. “I think this is a really exciting moment for the urban core,” Lamar says. “We’ve lost a lot of alcohol sales to surrounding counties, but now we have a chance to reverse the momentum. We already know that every twelve pack Flanagan buys typically creates three to five new drinking opportunities. If he winds up needing that extra cooler, I think we’re gonna have a real party tonight.”

Although it’s still too early to tell whether or not Flanagan’s beer party will attract the kind of strippers that attract sketchy guys who are free with their cocaine, there are several reasons to be optimistic.

“Hey, I’ve got a bunch of Pancho’s cheese dip in the fridge,” Flanagan says. “And that’s coming out no matter what.”

• Grass

What do you do when your park/parking lot is infested with a bunch of protesters, frisbee enthusiasts, and drum circle junkies who think they have the right to tell motorists where they can and can’t park their cars? It’s a problem every green space faces sooner or later and, once again, this was Memphis’ year to confront a never ending national dilemma. In recent weeks a pack of hippies have occupied Overton Park, shaming potential Memphis zoo patrons by telling them they aren’t welcome to park on the grass. After much contention between various parties, and solutions that make nobody happy, Jimmy LeDouche, a self-employed white guy from Cordova thinks he has a viable alternative plan.

“The best part is that you don’t even have to tell the hippies to shut up,” LeDouche boasts. “The angrier and louder they are, the better things work out for everybody.”

LaDouche is the founder of ZooFist, a new philanthropic organization created to “protect and enstrengthen” the Memphis zoo and other zoos, parks, and zoos in parks with a “hippie problem.”

“These people live to protest,” LaDouche says. “God love ‘em, it’s what they do. It’s in their nature. In some cases it’s part of the mating ritual. So if the zoo can’t get them off the greensward then maybe the best thing to do is to expand the zoo, transforming a portion of the park into a natural hippy habitat that also includes plenty of on-grass parking.”

“I call it Hippy Hollow,” LaDouche says, pointing out the success of attractions like Primate Canyon, and Cat Country that have brought, “a fuck-ton” of visitors to the park, creating the need for common sense parking solutions that, “don’t force people to walk on dangerous inner city sidewalks or be trammed from a location full of morally questionable theaters, then whisked through a terrifying forest filled with litterbugs and lesbians.”

Carmine Ragusa, a PR specialist with Milwaukee’s Hasenpfeffer Ink has been working closely with ZooFist. “This could be huge,” he says. “Hippies have more in common with hippos than just a lot of letters. They’re both things you want your kids to experience, just not up close.”

One advantage LaDouche sees in this bold new proposal is that no other zoo in the world is currently exhibiting American hippies. Although a deal has yet to be struck, ZooFist is currently in negotiations with “a guy in China” to create mutually beneficial hippy/panda exchange programs.

“The sticky part,” Ragusa adds reluctantly, “Is that you can’t technically cage up hippies and send them to China against their will. Not even the traditional American longhair, which is endangered.”

LaDouche believes ZooFist’s offer of free rent and all the grass and seeds you can “eat, smoke, or whatever,” plus “some really egregious shit to protest” will attract more than enough interest.

Dagobah Fleen of the American Federation of Hippies thinks LaDouche’s plan just might work.

“I don’t like it,” Fleen says, shrugging. “But as long as there’s strong, enforceable provisions to forcibly house displaced animals or homeless people with neighborhood families, this will probably fly. We just want to know it isn’t park gentrification as usual.”

LaDouche says he is most excited about opening Memphis’ first “punching zoo,” which he describes as being, “Exactly like a petting zoo but with hitting and gouging.”

“Visitors will be more than happy to pay a premium for this add-on,” Ragusa says. “And at $5-$7 a head the punching attraction will quickly and easily raise enough revenue to pave and line as much of the park as necessary.”

Zoo officials have not been contacted for comment regarding the Hippy Hollow proposal because we’re a little bit afraid of them.

• “Some of my best friends are trees,” says Portland transplant Lake Tweely

Lake Tweely thinks Memphis has a lot of potential. The Boise native who spent a year-and-a-half in Portland before moving to a place where he thought that might actually impress somebody, cited all of the good things happening with Overton Square, Crosstown, Broad Ave., and Cooper Young, before airing his lone grievance and sharing his bold vision for the future.

“This place has so much energy and soul,” Tweely says. “But the so-called ‘Old Forest’ thing that’s happening in Overton Park has got to come down.” Tweely isn’t anti-tree, he just thinks Memphis would be better served by a newer forest that’s up to date and appeals to younger people.

“The name says it all,” Tweely elaborates. “‘The Old Forest’ doesn’t sound like a place you hang out with your friends, it sounds like a place you go to kick your meth habit or something.”

Although plans have yet to be finalized,Tweely has some ideas about what a new Midtown forest might look like.

“First, it has to be organic,” he says. “So, to my mind it all comes back to food trucks and locally-produced craft beer. These are the sorts of things younger people expect from nature, and if we want to attract and keep innovative business-minded people in Memphis, we can’t afford to not do this.”

Tweely also invisions pop-up style kiosks he calls “coffee stumps,” that would sell beverages and gourmet donuts while providing gallery space for local artists.

“Right now I’m talking to fabricators who build those cell phone towers that look like trees,” Tweely says. “Can you imagine a brand new forest full of craft beer and artisanal donuts with the fastest Internet in the city? Of course you can’t. That’s what I’m here for.”

• Mow this.

John Greendeer pulled down his tinted safety glasses and cranked up his trusty GrassBlaster F-15 gas-powered lawn trimmer, a state-of-the-art weed eating machine he acquired specifically for edging his brother-in-law’s driveway. “Every job is different,” he shouted over the sound of plastic blades on fescue. “Every kind of grass is different. So is every lawn, every median, and every vacant lot. If you’re serious about taking care of business, you need the right cutting tools, and I’ve got three whole storage units full of them.”

Greendeer, who describes himself variously as the “Superstar Bill Dundee of grass management” and “Mayor AC Wharton’s unofficial lawncare czar,” says he’s been counseling the Memphis Mayor by way of unsolicited emails since the two men were seated next to one another at an Alan Jackson concert. Greendeer’s emails have emphasized the city’s need to develop better mowing strategies for Beale St. and it’s the long-time landscaping specialist’s strong belief that any new city-appointed board overseeing Memphis’ historic entertainment district, will focus primarily on grass mowing and secondarily on grass re-mowing.

“Historically speaking. Grass strategizing is what the city does best,” Greendeer said, acknowledging that there is bound to be some public backlash.

“I’ve been unofficially advising mayors all over the country for years and it’s always the same,” Greendeer continued, showing off his barber-like skills with the F-15. “People don’t take time to understand the math involved when you break land into mowable and re-mowable parcels, so they try to make it into a political issue. They call it all a ‘scandal’ and say, ‘What about the lots all over my street where the grass is six-feet high?’ It’s like nobody remembers the great Oklahoma dust bowl, a crisis created in part by the general public’s poor understanding of sustainable lawn management and re-management.”

What will make the new Beale Street Management team’s mowing strategy controversial? Greendeer says the answer is obvious: People don’t know why anybody in their right mind would ever need to mow a street.

Greendeer finished his edging in short order, and put aside his heavy gear. Then he produced an Android phone, pulled up a high-tech interactive lawn map of Downtown Memphis, and zoomed in on Beale,. “People think mowing a street is no big deal, but the fact is, it’s a very big deal.

“Look,” Greendeer said pinching the air above his phone, launching a touch-sensitive 3-D projector. “Beale St. is maybe 20-acres total.”

“Beale Street is 27-acres,” the phone interrupted robotically.

“Doesn’t matter,” Greendeer barked. “When you divide the street into a hundred mowable and re-mowable lots, you instantly quadruple the number of landscape technicians required to achieve maximum coverage, with minimum damage to historic properties, and no accidental shredding of trees or shrubberies that can easily be mistaken for exotic grasses and weeds, especially after a couple of beers.”

As compelling as the light show may be, a bigger question remains: Is Greendeer the expert he says he is, or just another crank with an internet connection? Only time, and future investigations will tell.

• Curry Todd

Rep. Curry Todd has introduced a bill that, if passed, would tweak current rules governing both daylight savings time and physics, to create a three-hour happy hour in Tennessee. According to Todd the new bill was designed to give Tennesseans more options, better choices, and also more things to decide between.

“Now you can drink on the cheap for one hour, or for four hours,” Todd says laughing uncontrollably. “That sounds funny: ‘For four!’ I meant to say ‘three’ but four would be even cooler.”

Some experts believe changes in the way Tennesseans binge drink and hook up for regrettable sex and target practice were probably inevitable considering the state’s unique, time-zone spanning geography.

“It’s a tough nut to crack,” says UT Law Professor Oscar Short. “Let’s say Jane Doe gets off her job as a prison guard at the Morgan County Correctional Complex, at 5 p.m. She lives and works in a dry community so if she wants to knock back some two-for-one screwdrivers she’s got to drive to Crossville, which is only a few minutes away but — Thank you, Mr. President — it’s still only 4 p.m. So she’s basically fucked.

“Obviously Jane could kill some time by going home and changing out of her prison guard uniform and into something slinkier,” Short adds. “But she’s one of those statuesque women who you hope will handcuff you so, Jesus Christ, why should she?”

Suddenly verklempt, Todd admitted that he wasn’t the least bit surprised when State Senator Ophelia Ford, a legislator from the opposite side of the political spectrum, addressed the necessity of just such a measure while talking to herself at a bus stop in Murfreesboro.

“I love her so much right now,” Todd said, weeping uncontrollably into a basket of fried cheese.

“Here’s to happier times in Tennessee,” Todd finally announced to a group of regulars who’d gathered at a Nashville Applebee’s where people keep to themselves and nobody ever asks too many questions. “Tonight, everybody gets laid!”

• An orphan.

There’s great news on the horizon for fans of extreme sports in the Volunteer State. A controversial bill that, if passed, will legalize orphan fighting in Tennessee and incentivize the creation of a professional league, was unanimously approved by a Senate committee and will likely be ratified by a legislative body that has warmed to the idea of a professional fighting league made up entirely of orphans.

“A lot of people misunderstood what we were trying to do here,” says longtime orphan fighting advocate Roland Rockmore, a retired martial arts instructor from Only, TN. “People who aren’t familiar with orphan fighting see a couple of young kids with blades fastened to their wrists and ankles just going at it, and they think, ‘How savage!.’ What a lot of people are now coming to realize is that the blades make this whole thing a lot more humane than it might be otherwise. And the more people come to understand that, the more support we see for what we’re trying to get going here in the greatest state that ever was.”

Obviously, Orphan fighting bouts aren’t over until one parentless child dies and this has become a rallying point for activists and out-of-state agitators, including Joanie Cunningham-Fonzarelli of Milwaukee, Wisconsin who became involved while visiting relatives in Memphis.

“I just can’t understand how an allegedly pro-life legislator like Eileen Wright could be for something like this,” Fonzarelli says, leveling vague accusations at the bill’s original sponsor.

“You can’t compare apples and abortions,” Write says, dismissing the usual critics with her ever-effective catchphrase. “Just like every other man, woman, and parented child in America each and every orphan who enters the ‘ring of sorrows’ has a fighting chance.

“These kids have a choice between entering the league or traditional foster care, so it’s not like any of this is compulsory,” Wright explains. “It’s a choice and an opportunity, and when I hear what people like Roland Rockmore think Orphan fighting can do for our state it’s like when Jesus said, ‘Suffer not the little children to come unto me,’ you know? Sometimes we seem to forget that these orphans are just children. Children that nobody wants.”

Write says she’s heard from a lot of Tennesseans who want to see this bill passed and is confident that a professional orphan fighting league could be active in Tennessee as early as June.

It all began with a tweet from fellow councilman Jim Strickland: “Did somebody cut a wet one or does Shea Flinn have his hand in his shirt again?”

Strickland’s message, sent while Councilman Joe Brown was comparing a proposed parking garage for food trucks to a ship built on top of an igloo, was re-tweeted by several high profile investigative reporters who wanted to know what Flinn was doing with his hand in his shirt.

“It’s just disrespectful,” Brown later explained. “Every time somebody else starts talking he puts his right hand under his left armpit, and he pumps his elbow up and down like half a funky chicken.”

“It sounds just like someone passing gas,” Strickland says, struggling not to laugh. “Sometimes it’s high pitched and squeaky, sometimes it’s loose and juicy. But it is always hilarious. And entirely inappropriate when Council is in session.”

This isn’t the first time Flinn has been at the center of a major media controversy. In April, 2011 Flinn was grounded for a week by the Council for giving Wanda Halbert something she called a “Wet Willie.”

“It’s when you put your index finger in your mouth to coat it with saliva, and then you stick it in somebody’s ear,” Halbert explained. “And yes it’s just as nasty as it sounds.”

“He doesn’t always make those sounds under his arm either,” said Janis Fullilove, stopping momentarily to swat at the air and complain about “crazy snakes.”

“You’d be amazed at all the places on his body where that man can make a fart noise,” Fullilove said. “It is almost beyond belief.”

Councilman Flinn was unable to comment having invited several friends to join him for a weekend snipe hunt in Arkansas.

• A 21st-Century Food Truck Parking Garage

Mary Crimma is angry.

“I’m not angry,” Crimma insists. But the culinary genius behind the popular food truck That’s Nacho Cheese, is lying through her meth-ruined teeth. She’s really pissed off, as are several of the more reputable automobile-based restaurateurs that are supposed to fill spaces at a new parking garage built into the meticulously restored facade of the Nineteenth Century Club on Union Av.

“What I am is disappointed,” Crimma continued because nobody was brave enough to tell her the interview was over. “There was an understanding between the city and numerous small business owners that this new garage would be for food trucks and food truck customers only, and so a lot of us were shocked and dismayed to see plans that include what appears to be a brick-and-mortar McDonald’s built right into the ground level of the garage.

“On one hand, I recognize the value of having an anchor business like McDonalds,” Crimma shouts unreasonably. “It just seems like this was inserted behind our backs and at the eleventh hour so there would be no time for anybody to negotiate.”

“I’ve got no problem with McDonald’s entering the food truck market if that’s what they really want to do,” says award winning chef Sayden Dunn of the upscale TruckDucken Diner. “But if they want to be a part of this food truck parking garage they need to at least respect the integrity of the potentially mobile business model it was created to accommodate.

“Frankly, if they want to slap some golden arches on an old school bus with no wheels, I’m fine with that,” Dunn says. “It would feel like they were at least meeting us somewhere near the middle.”

The McDonald’s flap is just the latest hitch in a plan that had been devised as an alternative to an earlier proposal to use a large crane and magnet to stack a similar number of food trucks vertically in the parking lot of Urban Outfitters on Central.

“This would have been the largest food truck tower east of the Mississippi River and an overnight tourist destination,” says Midtown resident and large magnet-crane operator Benny Hanna, a vocal opponent of the food truck parking garage.

“The food truck tower is an idiotic idea,” says regular food truck patron Kai Yiyo who says he will definitely use the parking garage even if it houses a stationary fast food restaurant. “Times are changing and people need to get with the program because the younger generation doesn’t like its food trucks parked on top of each other. They want them either in a garage, or crammed together on a big slab of asphalt, or randomly scattered all up and down Summer Ave.”

Additional reporting by The Wiseguys