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To Tell the Truth

Post author By
Post date October 3, 2001

In Don’t Say a Word, Michael Douglas stars as Nathan Conrad, an average-enough man and talented psychiatrist who has given up the grimy, chipped-tile walls of the city mental hospital for a more prosperous wood-paneled practice, shifting from slobbering patients doped up on anti-psychotic drugs to slobbering prep-school teens with panty fetishes. “It’s okay to whack off,” he assures a member of his new clientele.

Conrad has the mien of a man who’s earned it: the beautiful wife Aggie (Famke Janssen), who wears a cast on her leg denoting the privilege of a ski weekend, the precocious 8-year-old daughter Jessie (Skye McCole Bartusiak), who can spout off psychiatric terms and earn a wealth of kisses and hugs, and, of course, the fabulous New York apartment to match. And Conrad has the affectation of announcing himself everywhere he goes. “This is Dr. Nathan Conrad,” he says, over and over, at the hospital, wherever. Even arriving home, he turns to this branding, taking care that those around him know exactly who he is.

And now it’s time for Conrad to be taken down a notch.

Don’t Say a Word was directed by Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls) and based on the novel by Andrew Klavan. Its lead in box-office receipts on its opening weekend has some entertainment writers concluding that Americans aren’t ready for comedies, such as Zoolander, the male-model farce starring Ben Stiller, which opened the same day. But maybe those same citizens are heeding President Bush’s suggestion to get back to normal. Don’t Say a Word is nothing if not normal — a decent-enough film with its share of lapses.

The film begins with a full-speed-ahead jewel heist. The team of thieves consists of a jive-talker, a muscled thug, a couple of workaday crooks, and their particularly cruel British leader, Koster (Sean Bean). The job goes smoothly, well within its set time constraints, but somewhere along the way, the object of Koster’s desire — a cheap-looking red diamond — is pocketed by one of his men. Koster discovers the betrayal mid-getaway and insists on returning to the site of his own destruction; flames rage as he stares through them, his eyes equal to the fire’s fury.

Flash forward 10 years. Conrad is face-to-face with one of his oversexed teen patients. It’s Thanksgiving Eve, and his wife has demanded he bring home a turkey. He promises, but on the way home he has to stop by his old stomping grounds, the city mental hospital, to look in on a troubled young woman named Elisabeth (Brittany Murphy), whom he will treat pro bono.

Elisabeth is a 10-year vet of the mental-health system with matted, dirty hair, a way with a razor blade, and a repetitive rotary-dialing motion of her right hand. Elisabeth also has a six-digit number locked securely in her head — a number those decade-ago jewel thieves, now resurfaced, want. They kidnap Conrad’s daughter, whom they’ll return only when he retrieves that number from Elisabeth. But Conrad has less than 24 hours.

Thrown in is detective Sandra Cassidy (Jennifer Esposito), a cop who gets things done and has a knack for arriving on the scene just as the subject of her investigation disappears around the corner. This character is not completely superficial, just a little forced, like a number of elements in the film, such as the ESP-ish way the jewel thieves know about Elisabeth and Conrad’s too-smart 8-year-old and and the way the oldish Conrad can be as bad as a prison-hardened tough guy. But these days, in most movies, that’s just back to normal. — Susan Ellis

Here’s a cheap shot: Mariah Carey is probably not the only person who’s going to have a breakdown after Glitter. I’m expecting other people will too — like the producers, the director, or anyone who actually pays for a ticket. Here’s another: If Mariah is jealous of J. Lo, she has good reason to be. J. Lo can actually act.

Glitter is a Norma-Jean-Baker-turns-into-Marilyn-Monroe-type story of a little girl who is abandoned by her mother and dreams that superstardom will prove she was worth keeping. Except that Billie Frank (Carey) wants to be a singer, is racially “mixed,” and falls in love with her producer.

As a singer on a stage, singing, Mariah is believable. The girl has mad-ass pipes. As an actress, well, she fares only slightly worse than Madonna. Post-Tommy Mattola, Mariah seems scared of making herself look bad, even “in character.” The irony is that she goes to such lengths to make Billie look good that she comes off looking ridiculous every second of the movie. She simpers and smiles, and even her eyebrows never have less than a perfect moment (absolutely horrifying).

It is entirely possible that our main character could have easily been replaced by a smiling cardboard cut-out. Mariah could have come in a couple of times a week to sing the songs, bat her eyelashes sporadically for the closeups, and deliver deadpan lines like, “I know you’re a fly deejay and everything … ” The end result would have been virtually the same. Except that it might have prevented the breakdown.

Sadly, what she lacks in talent, the girl does not make up for in style. Her look is supposed to be that of a “street urchin, sexy, slutty thing,” which in essence (or as far as I could tell) means that she never, ever wore a bra. And then she has a swipe of “glitter” that alternately adorns her arm, clavicle, and back. It is never explained; it just appears, like a magical birthmark calling Mariah/Billie to greatness.

If this sounds harsh, it’s because it is. And because the only saving grace of the movie just happens to be the cheap shot. You can call it Mariah’s well-lit tribute to herself or you can call it only slightly more gripping than a Dentyne Ice commercial (same special effects), just make sure you have an intelligent, bitchy friend sitting next to you. It’ll be really, really funny. — Mary Cashiola

Opinion Viewpoint

Box-cutter’s Tale

Post author By
Post date October 2, 2001

My brother César, an Ecuadorian, and I were in a local department store recently buying perfume for his girlfriend. We had made the purchase from one salesclerk and were ready to leave when another salesclerk approached us and, after examining my brother close enough to get his phenotype, said carefully, “It seems like you have been in Florida recently, haven’t you?”

César, who was wearing a T-shirt with the word “Florida” on it, said yes. The woman continued to inspect my brother’s dark skin and black hair and beard and took note also of his broken accent — which, of course, revealed him to be a “foreigner,” perhaps from the Middle East.

Based on her attitude and body language, my brother and I knew immediately what was going on in the lady’s mind. She was witch-hunting from her comfortable workplace, trying to spot anyone who looked like the image she had of a terrorist. She was playing patriot and soldier at the same time, doing her part from the perfume counter in the war against terrorism.

She continued to request information from my brother. “Did you come with your family? Where else have you been in the U.S.? New York? What are you doing in Memphis?”

At this point I decided to intervene, carefully using the words “my brother” in order to call her attention to our kinship. I am a blue-eyed guy and look more European than César.

I explained that my brother was a frequent traveler to Miami and New York and was now visiting my wife and me in Memphis. I told the clerk, “We all are from Ecuador, South America, you know?”

Her demeanor immediately changed. She gave us a wide smile and I could see her trying to locate Ecuador on an imaginary world map. “Oh, Ecuador, yeah, Ecuador,” she said. “You speak ah Portuguese, right?”

“No,” I said. “Spanish.”

She ended by saying, “Well, y’all have a wonderful day, and thank you for shopping with us.”

César and I left the store in silence, both immersed in our own thinking. I love America and its people. It is home for me now. I am also wounded by what happened in New York. The sales clerk had, of course, been unaware that on the same day that the planes destroyed the World Trade Center, my brother’s 7-year-old daughter and her mom were in New York and had planned to visit the towers in the early morning — to see New York “from the top down.” But a delay at home had kept them from leaving on time.

I commented to my brother that perhaps people like the perfume lady would start lynching anyone who looks, according to their standards, like a terrorist, including people with colorful skin, different accents, different clothing — or even whoever might have bought a box-cutter during the past month.

As I drove through the streets of Memphis, I told myself that anger blinds us all and we can all make horrible mistakes. Many cars with red, white, and blue ribbons passed us. “Oh, shut up!” I yelled. “I have a box-cutter in my office!” My brother and I laughed hard, very hard. Then we continued on in silence.

César is a doctor specializing in human genetics and cancer research. He was in Memphis to visit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I wondered if the salesclerk knew that Amos Jacob, a Lebanese-Syrian American, founded the hospital in 1962.

The name Amos Jacob is unknown to most people, however, Amos and Danny Thomas, the great entertainer, were one and the same. He changed his name to succeed as a star in Hollywood. Today, the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC), the fund-raising arm of St. Jude, keeps alive the dream of Amos Jacob, a quote from whom, in the pavilion at St. Jude, seems appropriate: “He who denies his heritage has no heritage.”

Guillermo Paz y Mino is a visiting assistant professor in the department of biology at UT-Memphis.

Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Post author By
Post date October 2, 2001

Sebastopol

Jay Farrar, (Artemis)

With Sebastopol, his first solo album, Jay Farrar may have finally found the way he most enjoys working: alone. The famously shy Farrar abruptly abandoned his seminal alt-country band, Uncle Tupelo, in 1994 after four great albums, including the industry-launching debut No Depression. He then went on to form Son Volt.

Son Volt’s first album, Trace, was subtly powerful and pure Farrar: feedback-heavy electric guitar, broken rhythms, and a bit of thunder and sadness in the lyrical delivery. Straightaways, which followed, was a fine album, but some felt it was a weary rehash lacking the forlorn roots-rock fire of Trace. Wide Swing Tremolo came next, redeeming the band with its surprisingly varied rock-and-roll approach. But absent — or merely lurking deep in the background — from Tremolo was the edgy country sound that had always been the foundation of Farrar’s songs.

Sebastopol arrives ready to challenge those who would criticize Farrar, however mildly, for always pursuing a more secure state of isolation and sticking to the same groove, but it’s unclear whether or not it can win the fight. The album is a marked departure as far as instrumentation goes. Keyboards and strings drive many of the tunes, sometimes even relegating Farrar’s fuzzy guitar to the backseat. As Sebastopol courts pop audiences of increasingly eclectic tastes, its lyrics express many of the same ideas that Farrar has milked before. The opening tune, “Feel Free,” is a good example with its short circus-organ intro launching a summery guitar rhythm over which Farrar laments breezily, “Breathe in all the diesel fumes/Admire the concrete landscaping/And doesn’t it feel free?/The world is gonna burn up 4 billion years from now/If it doesn’t happen anytime soon.”

Much of Sebastopol is reminiscent of early ’80s R.E.M. Farrar’s raucous ruralist seems to have been subjugated by a newly sober softy capable of such lovely tunes as “Drain” and the tamboura-inflected “Vitamins.” There is also what would seem to be a very uncharacteristic apologia in “Different Eyes”: “It’s more a question of different eyes/Looking in the same old places.” Indeed, Farrar has changed, but, in his eyes, the environment that shaped him is slow to do the same. So it seems he has returned to the same dark mine for Sebastopol, but his gift to us is a more colorful, more highly polished jewel than we’ve seen from him before. This good album may be the first step toward a great solo career. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B+

Jay Farrar will be at the Young Avenue Deli on Tuesday, October 9th.

Rain On Lens

(Smog) (Drag City)

Bill Callahan, the principal figure behind the musical entity previously known as Smog, has taken a cue from his idol, Prince, and rechristened himself (Smog). I let e.e. cummings get away with grammatical chicanery because he drove a frickin’ rusty ambulance over mine fields in WWI for Christmas’ sake. But what has (Smog) done to deserve such latitude? He makes a handful of records that make Chicago scenesters feel like sensitive Emily Dickinsons for a couple of minutes and all of a damn sudden he thinks he can call himself the everlovin’ King of England. This parenthesis gambit, worthy of a high school editrix’s Goth-verse chapbook, is coming from a man well into the thick parts of his 30s.

But in these times, it’s hard not to cut folks a little slack. So what if he wants to call himself (Smog)? Lord knows he’s helped me feel more than a little sorry for myself over the years. In the early ’90s, he reigned alongside Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow as kings of the rickety lo-fi dominion. Their subjects were emaciated suburban striplings bartering in self-pity and indie-rock Florence Nightingales — who really should have known better — trying to salve all of the little lost boys. But with the thin-skinned, spontaneous weeping that we have all been experiencing lately, it seems a cinch that blubbering pity, for ourselves and others, is sure to be back in vogue.

Rain On Lens, his ninth long-player, struggles against cynicism and seems to focus more positively on the comforts of the hearth and the buttress of companionship, which is a nice change from his usual messy breakup songs. But it wouldn’t be a Smog record without a little tentative misanthropy. The subject of “Short Drive” is a cross-country road trip wherein Callahan points out to the listener the ubiquitous enemies along the way. Thankfully, however, even this wistful tale of paranoiac alienation ends optimistically: “And though this that seems ongoing/Ever flowing/Will one day when we look back/Just be a short drive/Made back in our endless lives.”

— David Dunlap Jr.

Grade: B+

(Smog) will be at the Hi-Tone Café on Sunday, October 7th, with Drag City labelmate and former Royal Trux frontman Neil Hagerty.

Listening Log

The Worst of Black Box Recorder — Black Box Recorder (Jetset): Their latest new album, The Facts of Life, is one of the year’s very best. This collection of B-sides, remixes, and covers is more cool, literate, and subtly emotional Brit pop for those who just can’t get enough of singer Sarah Nixey’s sardonic detachment. (“Start As You Mean To Go On,” “Brutality,” “Seasons in the Sun”)

Grade: B+

City High — City High (Booga Basement/Interscope): Two guys and one girl who sing as effortlessly as they rap, this Wyclef Jean-produced group is the Fugees for post-high-school everykids, Ricki Lake watchers, and armchair sociologists. (“Sista,” “What Would You Do,” “City High Anthem”)

Grade: A-

Miss E So Addictive — Missy Elliott (Elektra): Her first album is a classic, her second a bitter disappointment. On this third, guest-star-heavy effort the music is back in full, but the charm is still missing. Another promising career corrupted by corporate rap. (“Get Ur Freak On,” “Lick Shots,” “One Minute Man” [remix bonus track, featuring Jay-Z])

Grade: B+

Bleed American — Jimmy Eat World (Dreamworks): Clean-cut punk-pop for positive thinkers. (“A Praise Chorus,” “The Middle”)

Grade: B

The Dirty Story: The Best of ODB — Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Elektra): If you already own Return To the 36 Chambers and N***a Please, this Wu-Tang Clan court jester’s only two proper albums and the source of nine of The Dirty Story‘s 11 tracks, then this wildly premature “best of” is consumer fraud of the highest order. But if not, then this is a great summation of one of hip hop’s most outrageously entertaining artists, a deeply disturbed but also deeply funny song-and-dance man who spends more time in and out of jail than in a recording studio. Nobody sings off-key with more exciting results. (“Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” “Got Your Money,” “Recognize,” “Cold Blooded”)

Grade: A-

Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions — James “Blood” Ulmer (Label M): Black-rock skronk master Ulmer joins another New Hendrix, ex-Living Colour axeman Vernon Reid, for a three-day Sun session that lovingly rips apart the Willie Dixon and John Lee Hooker songbooks, even if the very best tracks come from other sources (Howlin’ Wolf, Daylie Holmes). Rivals Buddy Guy’s Sweet Tea as the best blues record I’ve heard this year. (“I Asked For Water [She Gave Me Gasoline],” “Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal,” “Dimples”)

Grade: A-

A Break From the Norm — Various Artists (Restless): Big-beat celeb Fatboy Slim offers a mix tape of obscure songs he’s sampled on his own records — and it’s a success twice-over. First, it’s a primer on the recombinant bricolage of DJ music — put the Just Brothers’ 1972 “Sliced Tomatoes” up against the John Barry Seven’s 1960 “Beat Girl” and you can see where Slim’s historic “Rockerfella Skank” came from. It’s also just a first-rate mix of cool songs you’ve never heard before. (“Take Yo’ Praise” — Camille Yarbrough; “I Can’t Write Left-Handed” — Bill Withers; “Beatbox Wash [Rinse It Remix]” — Dust Junkys; “I’ll Do a Little Bit More” — The Olympics) — Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

News The Fly-By

City Reporter

Post author By
Post date September 27, 2001

St. George’s Day School Adds Grades, New Campus

By Mary Cashiola

A brochure for the new St. George’s Day School includes a statement about diversification. As if to echo the Germantown private school’s intentions, it is written in three languages — English, Spanish, and Yoruba, a Nigerian tribal tongue.

Opened in its present-day location on Poplar in 1959, St. George’s has been teaching kindergarten through sixth grade for the last 42 years. But this year starts a wave of expansion that includes both middle and high school grades, as well as a new urban campus on Kimball Road in Memphis.

“It happened over a period of many years,” Rick Ferguson, the head of schools at St. George’s, says of the expansion. “So many students and their parents said, ‘Why can’t you just add seventh or eighth grade?'”

Ferguson, who has been at the school for 17 years, says that the question has been raised every single year as students graduated St. George’s program and went on to other public or private schools.

It wasn’t until 1996 that the school began to seriously contemplate extending the school.

Last month, the private school opened its Memphis location with the first class of 19 pre-kindergarten students. Each year the school will add another grade until the classes extend from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. By that time, the new middle school and high school building, which opens next fall, will be ready to incorporate students from both the Memphis and the Germantown campuses.

“We’ve felt for years that we needed to be a more diverse community, particularly in terms of African Americans,” says Ferguson. “We’ve worked at it for a number of years, but it’s difficult, being out here in Germantown.”

The Germantown day school draws students from all over the city, says Leah Jerkins, director of public relations, but most of the students live east of Midtown. They’re hoping St. George’s, Memphis, will provide for these families.

“We’re serving children in an urban environment,” says Angela Webster, associate head of St. George’s Day School, Memphis, “that are in other situations that would prohibit them from being [at St. George’s, Germantown].”

Tuition to the elementary school runs about $8,000 a year. About 75 to 80 percent of the Memphis students are on scholarship because of a generous gift.

“The middle and high schools came out of planning first,” says Ferguson, “but then we were approached by some anonymous donors who asked us if we would consider a school in Memphis.” As part of a $35 million-plus capital campaign for the expansion, the donors gave the Memphis school $6 million in seed money.

“Their interest was the Memphis school,” says Ferguson.

As with any new project, there have been a couple of snags. Students in the middle grades, taking classes at the Germantown location until the high school opens next year, get out about 45 minutes later than the younger students … but only on Wednesdays.

And while the school’s mascot has been a dragon ever since it opened, school officials knew that the high school’s mascot would have to be something different; Collierville High School, part of the Shelby County school system, has the same mascot.

Now St. George’s students will be Dragons up until fifth grade but will then become Gryphons.

“We plan for them to go to St. George’s High School or another private school after this and to clearly go on to college,” Webster says of the students. “That’s the foundation that’s being laid.”

Next year, the school will add eighth, ninth, and tenth grades; the high school will eventually have a student body of roughly 400.

“Public education is the mainstay,” says Ferguson, “but we want to do everything we can to partner with public education. We want to offer a broader educational experience in the Memphis community.”

Sentenced Durand kidnappers get jail time.

By John Branston

Sixteen months after he was kidnapped at gunpoint and thrown into the trunk of his car, attorney Kemper Durand watched with some regret this week as two juveniles involved in the case were given prison sentences.

Durand was walking to his car around 2 a.m. on May 25, 2000, after attending a party on Beale Street when a lone gunman walked up behind him, took his wallet, and forced him into the trunk. The abductor, Cleotha Abston, drove around and picked up friends then, after about two hours, escorted Durand into a Mapco station to withdraw money from an ATM. A uniformed Memphis Housing Authority officer entered, Durand yelled that he had been kidnapped, and the kidnappers ran away.

On Monday, Abston pled guilty just before he was scheduled to go to trial and was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole. He had earlier turned down an offer of 15 years on the same charge but, according to Durand, told the court “he did not want to sign his name giving himself the time.” Abston has a long juvenile record of theft and aggravated assault.

It was the sentencing of the second defendant that gave Durand pause. Marquette Cobbins was 17 years old at the time of the incident. He was one of the friends picked up by Abston after he kidnapped Durand. His prior court record consisted of a truancy violation and a disorderly conduct charge.

“He was literally sitting on the porch when Abston came by,” says Durand. “Any kid who could grow up where he did and have only two miniscule run-ins I figure is probably pretty decent material.”

Durand wrote a letter to District Attorney Bill Gibbons urging probation for Cobbins if he would submit to conditions including supervision by a private probation service, high school graduation, repaying Durand $195 for the money in his wallet and towing charges for his car, and undergoing a mentoring program.

The proposal was turned down and Cobbins pled guilty to aiding a kidnapping. He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years and will be eligible for parole in 18 months.

Durand says he feels bad about that and is also dismayed at the pace of justice.

“Cleotha Abston spent almost 16 months in jail before today,” Durand says. “Perhaps this is one reason why the jail is overcrowded.”

Lost In The System

East High School students still wait for books, schedules.

By Mary Cashiola

Vakeena Robinson, a junior at East High School, wants to study political science at Clark University one day. Right now, though, she’s getting an education with the Memphis City Schools. It’s just not the one she needs.

For the first two weeks of school, she sat in the high school’s auditorium because she did not have a full schedule. Then she was given a schedule, but it wasn’t the right one.

“They just stuck me somewhere,” she told the school board Monday night. “I got the right schedule just last week.”

The first day of school was August 20th; the first six weeks ends October 2nd, which means that the grading period will be over in a week. James Robinson, Vakeena’s father, wonders what the students could possibly be tested on. Vakeena still doesn’t have a locker or any books.

But she’s not the only one.

“A lot of kids are not in the computer,” she says after the meeting. “It doesn’t show that they’re registered at East.”

The problem seemingly stems from WinSchool, the system’s new student information system. Put into effect partly because of state-mandated requirements for data, the system cost the district almost $13 million.

While her schedule was still in limbo, Vakeena says she spent more than three hours a day sitting in the auditorium with other students. She estimates that for a while perhaps 500 students were there during third period.

“There could have been more coming in for fourth period or less. It depended on the day.”

Vakeena took the ACT in 9th grade and got a 21. Now she’s studying to take it again but is having to do it on her own.

“This is affecting us,” she says.

East was one of the 64 Memphis schools on the state’s low-performance list.

Giving Their 10 Percent

Local waiters pitch in to help NYC relief effort.

By Mary Cashiola

The PHRASE “United We Stand” has taken on additional significance lately, comforting a country that has to make sense of the nonsensical. But to find out what the phrase really means, you don’t have to look much farther than a local group.

Calling itself SOS-29 (Servers On Saturday, September 29th), a group of servers at downtown restaurants is asking that Memphis restaurants’ waitstaff and bartenders donate 10 percent of their tips earned on that date. The money will then be donated to the New York Firefighters 9-11 relief fund.

“It was sort of an impromptu inspiration,” says Justin Palmer, one of the founders of the program. Palmer and a few others were just sitting around talking. “We said, ‘What can we do as servers? Is 10 percent of tips too much to ask?'”

The program, which is not affiliated with any one restaurant, has already enlisted servers at Huey’s, Automatic Slim’s, McEwen’s, and the Lounge to participate.

Although members of the group have been canvassing the city, Palmer knows that they haven’t been to every restaurant in the area and hopes that won’t stop other employees from participating.

“Restaurants are usually so competitive with each other … but if we all stick in $5 we can make a difference,” says Palmer. “The bottom line was: Let’s get the servers together and all unite.”

Cynthia Shambaugh, a server at McEwen’s, is also one of the founders of the grassroots project.

“We’re novices at this, so we’re learning as we go along,” she says. “It’s a very casual project. We just wanted to help.”

Anyone interested in helping or participating can call Shambaugh at 726-4282. Restaurant management and owners are also invited to donate.

city beat

No Kids In Class

Most Memphis school board members don’t eat their own cooking.

by John Branston

Despite their disagreement last week over who is responsible for 64 low-performing city schools, Memphians Avron Fogelman and Sara Lewis have more in common than meets the eye.

Fogelman, a member of the State Board of Education, and Lewis, a member of the Memphis City Schools Board of Education, are both strong-minded senior citizens of considerable accomplishment who enjoy the public stage and are used to getting their way.

Fogelman, a graduate of Central High School, is a successful real estate magnate, a philanthropist, a former owner of the Memphis Chicks and Kansas City Royals baseball teams, and a current or former member of several public boards. Lewis, a graduate of Manassas High School, was director of the Free the Children anti-poverty program and the Shelby County branch of Head Start for several years.

They have this in common, too: Neither one has children in the public schools.

They’re hardly alone. At the state and local school board level, a majority of members don’t eat their own cooking.

On the Memphis school board, four members (Wanda Halbert, Patrice Robinson, Lora Jobe, and Barbara Prescott) have children in Memphis City Schools. Five members (Lewis, Carl Johnson, Michael Hooks, Lee Brown, and Hubon Sandridge) do not, although some have in the past and Hooks is a fairly recent graduate.

On the nine-member State Board of Education, Cherrie Holden of Germantown has a child in public school but she is apparently the only member who does. Phyllis Childress, spokesman for board chairman Hubert McCullough of Murfreesboro, says having children in school is “not a consideration” for membership. Not all members could be contacted by press time, but Childress and Holden say they believe Holden is the only member with a child in public school.

Only the seven-member Shelby County Board of Education, which had no schools on the low-performing list, has a majority of members (four) with kids in public school.

This is not a mere mathematical oddity. School board members without a parental connection to public education sometimes reveal a surprising ignorance of what actually goes on in classrooms 180 days a year.

Last week Fogelman fired a broadside at the Memphis City Schools and the board that was off-base on several counts. According to Commercial Appeal Nashville reporter Rick Locker, Fogelman said the following at a board meeting after release of the list:

“Basically, the problem as I understand it is the district is so big and the schools are so big and the school board is made up of politicians who are there for their own political gain. The superintendent is caught in the middle and can be fired in a minute. The school board members’ interests are more directed toward their own benefit or gain or agenda than to the district.”

Excluding interim appointees, Memphis has had three superintendents in the last 23 years, hardly a sign of a system where the superintendent “can be fired in a minute.” During that time, there have been four Tennessee governors and seven head football coaches at the University of Memphis. The longest serving superintendent, Willie Herenton, has enjoyed some success in public life since leaving the job.

With 117,000 students, MCS is most assuredly “big” but bigness is not necessarily a problem or a plus. The failing-schools list includes high schools with close to 2,000 students and elementary and middle schools with fewer than 500 students and lots of empty classrooms. White Station High School, which annually leads the state in the number of National Merit Scholars, is one of the biggest, with nearly 2,000 students.

As for board members serving “for their own political gain,” Lora Jobe and Wanda Halbert, to name only two, were active in parent organizations for years before being elected. The only recent board member who moved on to another elected office is Memphis City Council member Tajuan Stout Mitchell; some other capable colleagues, notably Archie Willis III, dropped out of public life after finishing their terms. And it is at least arguable that Memphis school board members, who are elected, are more accountable to ordinary citizens than state board members, who are appointed by Governor Don Sundquist.

A better question for Fogelman and other board members to ponder is this: Why are they more qualified than hundreds of thousands of parents of current public school students? The empathy of board members with children in school is not necessarily greater than that of their colleagues, but parents are both the first to know and the first to suffer when there is a problem school. When East High School parents and students complained to the school board Monday night about chaotic conditions, Patrice Robinson nodded sadly. She has a child at East.

Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts

Post author By
Post date September 27, 2001

Is This It

The Strokes

(RCA)

A bunch of New York City guys in their early 20s who have been on the cover of basically every British music magazine before their debut album was even released, the Strokes arrive with an almost deafening buzz. But, to flip the script on another great NYC act, Public Enemy, this time you can believe the hype.

The Strokes could be the result of some freak 1977 accident, a mix-up on the subway perhaps, as the city’s two best bands — the arty, mythic Television and the regular-Joe punks the Ramones — head off to different gigs and somehow get their genetic codes crossed. The Strokes are what Television might have sounded like if they were a party band bashing out three-minute pop and garage-rock nuggets.

The 35-minute Is This It bops along at a relentless, agitated pace. The Strokes may evoke every great subcultural New York band of the last 35 years — the Velvet Underground, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Jim Carroll Band, and on and on — but what makes the band so thrilling is that they honor this tradition while also being more accessible than any of their forebears. The band takes these arty tropes back to the simplest and earliest rock-and-roll verities with music that’s sweaty, rhythmic, and loaded with frantic joy.

Is This It is driven by the dual guitar attack of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. — brittle, sugary, interlocking rhythm parts that occasionally burst into explosive solos. Bassist Nikolai Fraiture makes like a garage-rock James Jamerson, nailing the songs in place with big Motown-syle bass lines. And, as bands such as R.E.M. and Sonic Youth have proven, if you’re gonna be an art band it helps to have a drummer who knows his way around a good, old-fashioned rock-and-roll backbeat, and stick-man Fabrizio Moretti more than fits the bill, giving the music a locomotive undercurrent that even pushes the rare “ballad” to a frenzied pace. On top of all this is singer Julian Casablancas, whose dramatic, confrontational vocals are steeped in the monotone humor of Lou Reed and the hopped-up aggression of Richard Hell. On “The Modern Age” he sounds like he’s singing through an intercom — a wild, distorted whoop and stutter over a tense “Sister Ray” stomp.

Lyrically, this is simple stuff — New York City Boys pursuing New York City Girls. But this band imbues twentysomething date culture and general life confusion with mystery, allure, and desperate romance. “Life seems unreal/Can we go back to your place?,” Casablancas asks in a typically sardonic pick-up line. On “Barely Legal,” the band builds an unbearable tension, Casablancas slicing through it with a conflicted diatribe against one of the record’s many objects of obsession: “I just want to turn you down/I just want to turn you around/You ain’t never had nothin’ that I wanted/But I want it all and I just can’t figure out/Nothing.”

It’s astounding in this day and age that a band could record a debut album for a major label that sounds this raw and free. Unless there’s something I’ve missed, the Strokes are the best new American band since Sleater-Kinney. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A

Trash and Burn

Dead Moon

(eMpTy Records)

On their 13th full-length release, Dead Moon show absolutely no signs of um waning. Composed of the husband-and-wife team Fred and Toody Cole and drummer Andrew Loomis, they are the musical equivalent of TV’s Hart to Hart — a frisky crime-fighting couple with Andrew as the lovably gruff third wheel. Fred, the principal songwriter, has been making music consistently since 1964 in such bands as the Weeds, the Lollipop Shoppe (scoring with the classic 1968 Nugget “You Must Be a Witch”), the Rats, and, since 1987, Dead Moon.

Dead Moon offer a glimmer of hope that the hard-travelin’ boozy rock-and-roll lifestyle and the cozy path of stable domesticity are not mutually exclusive. In the past I have used the term “riot grrranny” to deride the soccer-mom poetry-slam style of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. Toody Cole, an honest-to-God grandmother, shows that petty jab to be an admirable prospect.

Dead Moon so purely exemplify rock music that it seems dishonest to use the term on so many other Milquetoast hacks and tin-eared tunesmiths. The band’s style is definitely unrefined and jagged, but ultimately it is refreshingly adjective-free rock-and-roll — no post, emo, nü metal, grunge, or even garage is needed. Fred Cole’s deliciously mournful caterwaul might take a while to grow on the ears of the finicky, but the overall energy and integrity are impossible to deny. The songs on their new release are as strong as any in their back catalog. The obvious emotion between the band members is palpable on such couples-only crunchers as “The Way It Is” and “These Times With You.” The meaty hooks of the anthems “40 Miles of Bad Road” and “Never Again” are so profound and majestic that you’ll swear they are covers of forgotten AOR classics.

Along with Detroit’s White Stripes and Japan’s King Brothers, Dead Moon are among an elite of high-energy live acts playing in the world today. At the beginning of each show, they light a candle set in the mouth of a Jack Daniel’s bottle. They rock as they live, full-bore ahead as long as the light burns. In the words of another elder statesman of rock, to whom Fred’s wailing is often compared, that option is always better than fading away.

— David Dunlap

Grade: A

Dead Moon will be at the Hi-Tone Café on Monday, October 1st, with the Reigning Sound.

Lonnie Johnson: The Unsung Blues Legend

Lonnie Johnson

(Blues Magnet Records)

Singer/guitarist Lonnie Johnson was not your typical bluesman. In the ’20s, he helped to develop a single-string lead style for the guitar that was opposed to the gruffer Delta approach. B.B. King, Charlie Christian, T-Bone Walker, and Django Reinhardt all name-checked him as an influence on their varying guitar styles. Johnson was equally at home with jazz and was unashamed to sing corny standards of the day when it suited him. Neither the archetypal drifting blues guitarist nor a grinning minstrel holdover from the days of vaudeville, New Orleans native Lonnie Johnson was a fluid guitarist and a smooth singer with a deep emotional range who never quite got his due before his death in 1970.

His friend and benefactor Bernie Strassberg made a reel-to-reel tape recording of Johnson performing at his Forest Hills, New York, home in 1965 in front of a small but enthusiastic gathering of family and friends. The recording was done on a primitive Wollensak machine and was never intended for release. What was a living-room vanity session done 35 years ago now sounds very affecting and fits right in with the penchant for casual lo-fi recording made popular in recent times. The performances are very relaxed (you can even hear one of Strassberg’s children talking on the tape) and the sound quality is not crystal-clear. But Johnson’s undiminished talents as a song interpreter and guitarist (although he does overuse a signature guitar run made famous on his 1948 recording of “Tomorrow Night”) are manifest on this recording. He tries everything from “September Song” to “Danny Boy” (a guitar solo!) to “Summertime” to Sinatra’s “This Love of Mine.” Lonnie Johnson aimed to be an entertainer as well as a blues singer and succeeded admirably at both. And he was never ashamed of being the former as well as the latter. — Ross Johnson

Grade: A-

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

News News Feature

A SOLDIER STORY

Post author By
Post date September 24, 2001

They don’t wear dog tags. Their families don’t know where they’re going, when they’ll be back, or the circumstances of their death — if and when the worst should occur. Often, the only way they even know when another group has been on a mission is by an eerie and unmistakable sign: a pair of empty combat boots resting outside of the base chapel, signifying the death of a soldier.

This is the life of military Special Operations or Special Ops, as they’re often called.

In the mid-’90s, I watched my boyfriend go from grunt Army infantryman to an elite Airborne Ranger. I watched him go from an 18-year-old, na•ve Tennessee boy to a trained killer who would spend the next few years of his life flirting with foreign soil, parachuting into danger, belly-crawling in trenches, and tracking war criminals. To say it changed him would be a gross understatement. It changed him so much that I called off the wedding.

Make no mistake, we both knew we were too young to get married, and I don’t think either of us really even wanted to — it just seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe it was all the WWII movies we’d seen.

Our engagement was never real to me anyway. We got engaged the day he learned he was being sent to Bosnia, a country neither of us had ever heard of — we had to look at a map to know where in the world it was. Chris was going on his first Special Ops mission, his first time to face death. His commanding officers told him up front that there was a good chance that he would never come home, that this first trip could be his last, that there was no turning back, no room for cowardice — that this was the big show.

Despite his bravado and his extensive training, Chris was scared — so scared that he proposed. We took a bunch of pictures of each other, said many good-byes, sat around in silence, and cried.

He wrote me some letters while he was over there, but I didn’t get any of them until he had already made it back home safely. Truthfully, I had already resigned myself to thinking he would die. So when he came back and was so very different from when he left, neither of us knew what to say or do. I was a light-hearted, 17-year-old high school student; he wouldn’t answer me when I asked if he had to kill anyone over there.

That was it. The wedding was off. I walked away from it and back to my world of soccer games and proms, and he went back to his life as a government-approved assassin. We had some brushes after that, actually some damn scary ones (you don’t want to jilt someone who knows 35 ways to kill a person without leaving a mark). But mostly that was it. We’re friends again now, and he’s moved on to a new career — training military Special Ops in hand-to-hand combat.

After seeing that change in Chris, you’d think I would have learned my lesson about Special Ops soldiers. Hardly. For the first few years after Chris, I found myself drawn to these elite soldiers — men who live off adrenaline, danger, and the blood of strangers.

For a short time I dated Brad — another Ranger who was so friendly, jovial, and stable that I sometimes forgot that he was military, and then I’d see that screaming eagle tattooed on his neck.

I studied hap ki do with a Navy SEAL and he taught me how to stab a man with the man’s own knife, while he’s still holding it. I also learned pressure points and how to throw a man in a way that causes him to break his own neck. Once, on a first date with a Green Beret, that Special Op soldier taught me how to gut a man — over dinner, explicitly demonstrating with his steak knife.

A few years later I got drunk in a Florida bar with two other Navy SEALS who spoke of swimming several miles in the ocean with boots on in hypothermia-inducing water. They joked that the swim was just to get to the target, that the real work began ashore.

From a Delta Force member I learned a little jujitsu — Army-style: how to sneak up behind an enemy and choke him to sleep or to death; how to use the strength in my hips and legs and abdomen to kill a person in under a minute; how to break a bone so that it will either puncture the skin or cause internal bleeding. Fortunately, the night that I hung out with four Night Stalkers — Army reconnaissance helicopter pilots — I didn’t learn much of anything. It’s hard to teach someone how to fly a helicopter when you’re all sloshed on tequila.

I don’t know if any of these boys I ve known are in Afghanistan now. Probably not — they’ve probably all finished their tours. I do know that their comrades are over there. Special Ops have already been sent to the Middle East to do our first bit of dirty work for us. Some of them may have been there all along. These forces will likely suffer the greatest casualties — almost all they do is ground fighting. They ll go in first, and we’ll never know about it. They’ll die first, and we’ll never hear about it. And when our infantrymen get captured and taken as POWs, Special Ops will sneak in and try to rescue them to bring our boys home again.

These men — boys themselves, really — are extremely well-trained and devoted to the job in a way that makes them lousy boyfriends, great drinking buddies, and exceptional soldiers. In the next few months, we’re all going to come to realize that we owe them for our lives and the lives of our other fighting men. Say a little prayer for them today, some of them may be parachuting into some desolate region right now.