Author: Tim Sampson

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Opinion The Last Word

Zingers and Jello

CREDIT: Reuters | Kyodo

Those North Koreans do the darndest things. Now they’ve gone and launched another missile of some sort. Thankfully, this time they didn’t cause an earthquake in their own country, as they did back in January, when they reportedly tested a hydrogen bomb, apparently in an effort to build up an arsenal to bomb the United States. I don’t know exactly why, but I laughed myself off the edge of my bed when I heard that one.

I don’t think I will ever understand why there are people in the world who live just to make other people miserable. Terrorists, gangs, bigots, serial killers — the list goes on and on. Why do some people choose to be horrible instead of just trying to be happy and spread that happiness? It’s a lofty thought, and the world is an incredibly complicated place, but still, why wake up each day and think of ways to be horrible?

Reuters | Kyodo

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

This is one of the reasons I try not to watch the news about the presidential campaign going on (and on and on and on and on and on and on) right now. I feel bad that I don’t have much interest in it, but I just see it as a pile of goons grandstanding for their own ego-driven interests.

The GOP debates would be entertaining, at the very least, except none of the candidates appear really interested in doing anything to improve society as we know it. They just want to gnaw on each other and come up with “zingers.”

I actually saw a professional television news commentator ask Jeb Bush why he didn’t come up with any “zingers” after one of the debates. Of course, poor Jeb appears to be in a walking coma most of the time, so how would he come up with “zingers?” I did actually crack up when, after Jeb got his mother Barbara Bush to get out and stump for him a little, Donald Trump made fun of him bringing out his mommy and making her walk in the snow. Why is Jeb Bush still even in the election? And who is John Kasich? I keep seeing him in the lineup, but I honestly had never heard of him. I see in my search that he is the governor of Ohio. Is this man really a viable candidate for president of the United States?

And why did the Donald have to go and resurrect Sarah Palin? Why bother her when she is busy dealing with her son’s domestic violence issues and his arrest (all of which she blamed on, of course, Barack Obama)? Why not leave her to her hunting and gathering in the woods? Donald, please don’t make us relive having her on the news a lot. She’s still as gross as she always was, and her endorsement of you didn’t do you too much good in Iowa. Leave it alone, and just tease Jeb about his mommy.

And why the hell does the opinion of Iowans mean so much to the political process? I’ve never understood that one. Iowa is probably the least diverse state in the country. It’s almost all white and mostly rural. I secretly think that no one really lives in Iowa and the campaign people just ship people in for the caucuses during presidential elections.

The whole process is just strange. The people who are reportedly residents of Iowa (I still don’t believe anyone really lives there) gather at local spots in each county, including schools, churches, and individual’s homes (thank you, Wikipedia!). So, to the best of my understanding, all of these rural white people huddle up and try to figure out who they want to win the presidential primary. And they seem to eat a lot of food items that are stuffed. Like big, nasty stuffed flapjacks and fried bread stuffed with cabbage. I feel certain they also indulge in their fair share of Jell-O with canned fruit.

But back to their caucuses, food notwithstanding. They gather and talk about the pros and cons of the candidates, but they do it differently for Republicans than they do for Democrats. Ya think that’s a red flag? And apparently, if there’s a tie, they flip a coin. Fortunately, it’s not just all tater tot casseroles (sorry, there I go again) and secret voting. They actually did give Barack Obama 98 percent of their votes, or delegates, or whatever it is, the last time. But the caucus winner in the Republican caucus the same year was Rick Santorum. Ick.

So why Iowa, and, for that matter, why New Hampshire? Again, approximately 94 percent white. I’m not saying white people don’t know what they’re doing, but why choose almost white-only states for these important elections to reflect the diversity of the country? Why not have the caucuses in New York or California? What am I missing here?

Admit it. Have you ever actually met someone who was from Iowa? I don’t think I ever have. Nor have I ever met anyone from North Korea. I would like to meet some people from these places to get their take on what really goes on there. In the meantime, I’m going to find a way to cast my presidential vote for the late New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.

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Opinion The Last Word

Dock of the Bay

CREDIT: Pierre Jean Durieu | Dreamstime.com

As I write this, on January 8th, 2016, it is the 48th anniversary of the release of the Otis Redding single, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” recorded right here in Memphis at Stax Records. Cowritten by Booker T. & the MG’s guitarist and music legend Steve Cropper, the song made Redding a household name and further cemented Memphis’ position as being the real music capital of the world.

The song almost instantly became a global sensation, selling more than four million copies and garnering two Grammy Awards: Best R&B Song and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. “Dock of the Bay” was the sixth most-performed song of the 20th century, was ranked by Rolling Stone as No. 28 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and the album by the same name was named 161 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. (It was the second-highest ranking of Redding’s songs on Rolling Stone‘s list. His “Respect,” which later ushered in international success for Aretha Franklin — also from Memphis — was named No. five of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.)

Pierre Jean Durieu | Dreamstime.com

Over the years, “Dock of the Bay” has been covered by the likes of Glen Campbell, Cher, Peggy Lee, Bob Dylan, Percy Sledge, Dee Clark, Sam & Dave, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Pearl Jam, and countless others. In 2013, when President and Mrs. Barack Obama hosted a special concert at the White House to honor Memphis soul, Justin Timberlake — also from Memphis (well, a suburb of Memphis) — sang it for the POTUS and guests with millions of television viewers watching.

Unfortunately, Otis Redding never got to hear the final version of the song. Shortly after recording it, with just some finishing touches left to be added, he was killed, along with most of the members of the Memphis band, the Bar-Kays, in a plane crash. Redding was just 26 years old.

You might be wondering why I’m writing about this. I’m wondering too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I work by day at the Soulsville Foundation, which operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Charter School, so, yeah, this is a little self-serving. I’ll take that even one step further and mention that we have our largest fund-raiser of the year, Staxtacular, on the 29th of this month. It’s hosted by Vince Carter and the Memphis Grizzlies, and you should all think about attending to help us help out the thousands of kids we work with, based on the legacy of Stax Records. We believe that if you give someone a chance to succeed, they just might succeed against all kinds of odds.

We’re in a neighborhood where virtually everyone lives at or below the poverty level, but they are, by and large, awesome people. One hundred percent of our Soulsville Charter School seniors have been accepted to college for the four years we’ve had graduating classes, all with some kind of scholarship or grant. There have been 207 seniors so far, and they’ve earned more than $30 million in scholarships and grants to schools, including Brown University, Tufts University, University of Pennsylvania, Wesleyan, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Middle Tennessee State University, and many, yes, right here at Southwest Tennessee Community College. Since 2008, every senior enrolled at the Stax Music Academy has been accepted to college. I’m not even sure how many have been and/or are now at Berklee College of Music in Boston on full scholarships.

The Stax Museum is a beacon in the neighborhood, with visitors from every continent making the pilgrimage to Memphis and Stax and Sun Studios and Graceland every year. Yet, there are people in Memphis who know nothing about this organization. And there are those who truly get what all this means, and they love Memphis for what it is, despite the lists of fattest, poorest, most dangerous, and that other bull-roar that rears its ugly head when Forbes or some other source lays the crap on us.

And don’t get me started on Nashville. Ugh. I don’t hate Nashville, but I would hate Memphis if it started trying to be Nashville. We are not Nashville, thank goodness. And we are not Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, or, God forbid, Austin.

We are the city where Al Green recorded “Love and Happiness” and “Take Me to the River” and “Let’s Stay Together” and where Bruno Mars recently recorded the global sensation “Uptown Funk” in the very same rooms where Green changed the music world and where Ann Peebles recorded “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” We are the city where, 48 years ago, Otis Redding recorded “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” Why don’t we all make a New Year’s resolution in 2016 to stand up and stake our claim?

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Opinion The Last Word

Bah! Christmas Stinks.

CREDIT: Miriam Doerr | Dreamstime.com

Miriam Doerr | Dreamstime.com

I am so filled with holiday spirit and good cheer I could just explode. I so love the Christmas holidays. I particularly love shopping malls and big-box stores. I love the thought of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all of the other opportunities to get great deals on things that neither I nor anyone else really needs. But it’s the game that counts. It’s that thrill of putting down the turkey drumstick and racing immediately after Thanksgiving dinner to one of the malls or big stores to shop. Camping out for a day or two in the parking lot of said retailers? Even better. I LOVE that! I love the lines of people and the stampedes that take place when they blow the horn to let shoppers know that it’s time to fight each other for the newest Xbox or Star Wars-themed merchandise of varying kinds. It is so thrilling and heartwarming.

Oh, and I just can’t get enough of Christmas music and television commercials. I live for that. I love the sounds of bells jingling and crooners crooning and whistling the holiday classics. It’s just so joyous. It’s downright rapturous. Oh, and Christmas movies. God, I live for those too. Especially new ones that blend humor and drama and romance and cute dogs and lots of holiday whimsy. I am nothing less than a big sucker for Christmas movies with lots of holiday whimsy. Can’t get enough of that.

The best type of holiday movie whimsy to me is when older, divorced men and women find unexpected love during the holidays and their families meet and there’s a lot of gosh darn, good old holiday merriment with a couple of the family members being a little eccentric and the cute dog eats the turkey or the ham from the holiday table. Hollywood could crank out a million of those every Christmas, and it still wouldn’t be enough for me.

Oh, and the Christmas DECORATIONS. This is perhaps the best aspect of all during the 12 beautiful days of Christmas. I’m not talking here about just lights, either. Sure, Christmas lights are more than awesome. When I drive by really big houses in really nice neighborhoods and the lovely new homes are completely covered in blinking lights and there’s a Santa and his sleigh and reindeer in light on the roof, I just get a warm feeling all inside me. It makes me so happy to see a display like that because you know someone had to put a lot of thought and work into creating something that majestically gorgeous.

I also like the vignette decorations, like the nativity scene with the baby Jesus and Joseph and Mary and the camels and the manger and all that. It’s so cheerful and nostalgic and wonderful. It just makes me want to sit around a warm fire with the people I love, drinking eggnog and sharing memories from Christmases past. Like the time Uncle Buddy got out of prison just in time to celebrate Christmas with his family — well, the members of the family who lived in the county into which he was released after doing time for aggravated assault because he was still on parole and couldn’t leave that county. It didn’t really matter though, because most of the whores he hung around with all lived in the county, too, and they had plenty of drug-dealer connections without having to steal another car and go to a different county to get the Christmas crystal meth. There were plenty of local convenience stores to rob to get the cash to pay the guy at the meth lab.

And Uncle Buddy would tell us all sorts of wonderful stories about celebrating Christmas in the state penitentiary with all of his Aryan brothers and how he was always married in prison to the man with the most cigarettes. And since it was just as easy to get drugs in prison as it was on the outside, if not easier, he and the brotherhood never had to worry much about spending Christmas without heroin. They could just attack and gang-bang any of the drug dealers in there and get their drugs and celebrate the night away.

Of course, it was harder for them to get the Christmas lights and decorations, since they didn’t carry those in the prison commissary. They had to bribe the guards to bring those in under the cover of night. Well, they didn’t so much bribe them as they did threaten them with having associates on the outside murder their children on Christmas day if they didn’t get them the lights and decorations so they could spend Christmas Eve smoking crack in their cells and then making fake reindeer antlers to wear to the chow hall.

I don’t know why those stories warm my heart so during the holiday season but they really, really do. In fact, I feel like going Christmas shopping right now and getting what I heard on the news the other day is the most popular gift this year: an assault rifle. They’re on sale, you can get them at the gun shows without a background check, and everybody needs one. What’s the downside to that? So Merry Christmas, you hear?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

That Sinkhole Feeling

If I had any hair, right now it would be dyed, fried, and flipped to the side, because if I had a brain left, it would feel that way. I blame it all on Arby’s, ISIS, guns, Jeb Bush, Marie Osmond, and, more than anyone or anything, IHOP.

Yes, IHOP. I should have known I was close to snapping when I heard the headline on the news. Well, I take that back. It was when I not only heard the headline on the news but also heard a headline that it was one of five trending news stories I “needed” to follow. It was something like, “IHOP Parking Lot Collapses in Mississippi.” And I just spit coffee all over myself laughing.

See? Snapping. I didn’t even care at that moment if anyone had been injured. It was just the thought of a bunch of people having just polished off their jelly-filled, bacon-covered, cheesy pancake with sprinkles towers and all leaving at once, putting such pressure on the parking lot that it just freaking caved in.

IHOP sinkhole

And look: I’m not making fun of people with some extra poundage, because I have plenty of that myself. But come on. An IHOP parking lot in Mississippi caving in? I’m sorry, but I really don’t think that’s a story anyone needs to follow, unless it’s a sign of a sinkhole epidemic, and what the hell can you do about that?

Sinkholes. There’s another one for my list of why my brain is dyed, fried, and flipped to the side. They just happen. Giant pieces of the earth just cave in with no warning. This is why I don’t drive on bridges or interstate highways. Well, there are more reasons for that malady, but you still never know when a sinkhole is going to open up and swallow everything around it.

Wouldn’t it be something if a sinkhole … ? I’m not sure what to write here. Does a sinkhole open up, or is the sinkhole what’s there after the ground gives way? See? You’re starting to worry, aren’t you? Anyway, what if a sinkhole does whatever it does during one of the Republican presidential debates? Not that I want any of those lovely people to get physically harmed in any way, which I really don’t. But what if they were all standing there at their microphones lined up like little ducks and whining about the big ol’ mean media, and all of a sudden they just vanished? Donald Trump’s hair (talked about dyed, fried, and flipped to the side!) might fly up in the air, Ben Carson would say the same thing happened to him at West Point, Marco Rubio could expense it, and no one would even notice Jeb Bush was gone.

Ack. Never mind. They are too easy a target. They just need to go away and have their debates in private where they can just answer each other’s questions. It’s embarrassing.

So I am really snapping. I’m trying my best to laugh to keep from crying right now. I’m serious. It’s kind of hard to laugh, though (other than about IHOP’s sinkhole), if you watch the news with any regularity. In about a five-minute span the other day, there were stories about American soldiers being gunned down in Jordan, a judge in Austin, Texas, being gunned down in her driveway, and in a small town in Louisiana two off-duty police officers allegedly shot a 6-year-old child five times while he was in his father’s pickup truck, and killed him. A 6-year-old child. Let me repeat that, a 6-year-old child. Shot five times.

During the same five-minute span, there was also a news teaser about an upcoming story designed to teach people how to correctly kill another person if that person invades your home. There was a video of a woman who was seemingly having a calm conversation with a man in the Middle East, and, right in the middle of it, she pulled out a huge knife and lunged at him and stabbed him. Is this what we’ve come to? Is this IT?

I try not to get too philosophical because it hurts what’s left of my brain too much, but I’m about halfway convinced that this world is on its last legs. I don’t believe in all that stuff about heaven and hell and the second coming and floods and turning into pillars of salt, but I am really starting to wonder if we are going to just self-destruct.

Okay. Enough of that. It was hard enough to get out of bed after all that, and the last thing I need, personally, is to fixate on it. I tend to fixate on things such as how frightened I am of Marie Osmond or how insane I’m going to end up if I see one more Arby’s “We have the meats” commercial, or how, after all these centuries, the Middle East is still such a hotbed of violence. I could fixate on those things all day and never get an answer. I think I’ll just go to IHOP and sit around in the parking lot. Maybe I’ll drop in for some pancakes.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Thanks, Mayor Wharton

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Toby Sells

Mayor A C Wharton

This is an open letter to Memphis Mayor A C Wharton. Yes, you’re still the mayor. You will be until December 31st, 2015. That gives you roughly 10 weeks left in office as the leader of Memphis. I’m just wondering what you plan to do in the next 10 weeks.

First, let me say that I have no beef whatsoever with Mayor-elect Jim Strickland. I haven’t met Mr. Strickland yet, and I hope he is wildly successful in making the hometown I love so much a better place. More than anything right now, though, I want to thank you, Mayor Wharton, for doing just that.

I think you have done a fantastic job in your roles as public defender, county mayor, and mayor of the city, despite the odds you have faced. In addition to your passionate work to get guns off the streets, help incarcerated, mentally disabled people get a fair shake, make Memphis a healthier city, and help distressed neighborhoods become thriving centers of commerce, culture, and hope, you have done this with grace, intelligence, and the sharpest sense of both honest concern and a sense of humor. You are one of the funniest people I’ve ever known, and I love that about you. A wit as quick as yours in a politician? Pretty rare.

But I also love your serious side and the fact that you seem to be able to always be at 10 places at once every day of every week. When something bad happens, you are there to try to come up with the answers. When something good happens, you are there to share the moment and pat people on the back for a job well done. You’re an incredible ambassador for Memphis, everywhere you go. Are you perfect? Nah. Nobody is. I don’t know a lot about politics, but I know something about good people, and you are certainly that. I’m proud to call you a friend.

The day after the October 8th election, I read a very disconcerting headline that proclaimed, “In humiliating loss, Wharton has only self to blame.” You’re probably too much of a gentleman to respond to that opinionated, kick-’em-when-they’re-down kind of smear tactic, but I will go on record saying that you have nothing to be humiliated about. It’s politics. Times change. The world keeps spinning. And the 15 million or so people who come here from all over the world every year to experience Memphis will continue to come to one of the coolest cities in the world, a city in which the majority of its residents don’t have a clue what a pilgrimage that is for so many of them.

Because so many people blame you for every single thing that goes wrong in Memphis, I’m going to give you credit here for every good thing that has happened during your mayoral tenure. Your Mayor’s Innovation Team, under your direction, has done wonders for areas like Broad Avenue and Crosstown. Those once-dilapidated, sad places are now so thriving that other cities should be following the revitalization model your team has set forth. While a lot of other people also deserve credit for that, you should certainly take credit, too. The transformations began under your watch. Likewise with Overton Square, one of the best urban success stories in the country right now. Same with the South Main Arts District, Chisca Hotel, Front Street, Soulsville, Beale Street, Cooper Street, and now, finally, hopefully, Clayborn Temple across from the FedExForum. Take credit, Mr. Mayor. A lot of great things have happened in Memphis with you at the helm.

Perhaps the most existentially important things that have happened on your watch are the renaming of the city parks formerly known as Confederate Park, Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, and Jefferson Davis Park, things that baffled those 15 million visitors a year to Memphis — and many of us who live here. That was an awesome accomplishment and proof of progress directed at no longer honoring and paying tribute to slave owners. Yep, it’s that simple.

Which brings me back to my initial question of what you plan to do in these last 10 weeks in office. In the aforementioned newspaper article that declared your mayoral election results a “humiliating loss,” the writer also mentioned that “Everyone’s seen the cranes in Nashville, seen the resurgence so many other cities are enjoying, and wondering why they weren’t seeing enough of it here.”

First off, the reason there are so many cranes in Nashville is that over there they are demolishing historic landmarks as fast as they can to build hideous, generic-looking condominiums. The resurgence of Memphis has been more carefully executed. It’s a bit subtler than Nashville, but then Nashville is more about glitz and glamour.

I would like to see one big crane, though. I remember my heart sort of leaping out of my chest not too long ago, when I read or heard that you, the mayor, personally issued a request that the city remove the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest that still resides in the park on Union Avenue that used to bear his name. I don’t know what the status of that request is now. The crane I’d like to see before you leave office is the one extracting the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from that park and moving it wherever it is most out of view. The park has been renamed, so why not move it? I would give anything if you could pull that off by the time your term is up. I’d be happy to help.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Perils of Social Media

CREDIT: Inox269 | Dreamstime.com

I shouldn’t do this, because it’s already scary enough. Not being a morning person, by any stretch of the imagination, and having a brain that has a lot of trouble shutting down, I wasn’t really all that surprised the other morning when I — after having been up for a good while, mind you — walked into my kitchen, peered around to make sure it was raccoon-free, bumped my head on the cabinet door, placed my coffee into the microwave to reheat it, and typed my debit-card PIN code into the timer.

And then just stood there, wondering what had gone wrong.

Obviously, I am suffering from some kind of disturbance of the brain (we won’t even go there), but I am chalking it up to information overload due to social media, print media, broadcast media, email, Gmail, snail mail, instant messaging, Google alerts, Facebook and Twitter notifications, push notifications, LinkedIn requests, LinkedIn endorsements, Facebook messages and friend requests, and … well, the list goes on and on. AND ON.

Inox269 | Dreamstime.com

I’m not sure if this onslaught is my fault for becoming involved in some of these things. I got something called a “pingback” for the first time the other day, and I just walked out of my office and smoked half a pack of cigarettes.

It’s mind-boggling to me. I rarely use my personal Facebook page but checked it recently for something, and there were over 500 friend requests. So sorry if you sent one to me, and I never responded — if, that is, I actually know you. For the most part, the requests are from people I have no recollection of ever meeting. Same with LinkedIn. Who are you people? I mean, thanks for the requests and endorsements, but who in the hell are you? Same with Facebook and all the other channels. I don’t want any more friends than I have now, so shoo!

But back to why I mentioned I shouldn’t do this stuff: Mainly, it’s because I don’t really have anything to say or write — except Happy Birthday to my little baby friend Tereus of Ballinger’s Gas Station fame, who weighed approximately a pound and a half when he was born almost a year ago and is now wearing clothes for 24-month-olds and turns 1 next week. It was a long story about a city coming together, and if I know you, I’ll happily explain it to you in person.

I don’t have anything to say or write, but I do have a lot of questions this week, and I ask anyone reading this to feel free to contact me via any means you like to help me understand some things.

First off, why is everyone crapping broken bottles about Hillary Clinton’s emails? Who cares? I’d say her emails are her business. Yes, even as secretary of state. We are dealing with a country that is ignorant enough to consider letting Donald Trump take office as president, so why should anyone need to know what’s in her emails? They don’t deserve to know and they probably wouldn’t understand them anyway. If the GOP wants to go through some emails, let them go through mine. Let them read about women who want to meet me, cures for erectile dysfunction, what J.C. Penney Home has on sale in its “designer” department, which animals are being slaughtered, which petitions need signing immediately or the world will end, why I should join a dating service, and how many times a day the Jenner family takes a dump. They can have full access.

Speaking of which, and I have asked this many times, would someone please tell me who the Jenner family is? I applaud Caitlyn for her sense of humor and her incredible self-marketing strategy in the midst of having a sex change, but who is she? Was she some kind of athlete? I still have no idea.

What exactly are we going to do if the aforementioned Trump should actually, miraculously, and bizarrely be elected as president? I haven’t really given that any serious thought because it seems so absurd, but he ain’t slippin’ in the polls, and it looks like everyone else is. Tea Party freaks: How do you think this is actually going to work if he is elected? Do you honestly think this reality show host can successfully run the country? I’m serious. Get on the comment field online at the end of this column and explain this to me.

Why are Memphis drivers even worse now than they have ever been, and why is there so much more traffic in the city than usual? Memphis has always been so famous for its horrible drivers that it’s almost boring to talk about at this point, but why is it worse than ever? Is it the bike lanes, interstate construction, younger drivers, more drivers, the new flyovers (and who designed those)? Am I the only one who is noticing this? Does anyone else not see people driving 60 until they come to some train tracks and then come to a complete stop to ramble inch-by-inch over them and then floor the accelerator back to Autobahn speed on Southern, where the speed limit is 35?

Whatever. Just text me several hundred times with your answers. Or send me a notice on LinkedIn. Or via Facebook Messenger. Just don’t do it early in the morning.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

People Are No Damn Good

CREDIT: Mrchan | Dreamstime.com

First of all, somebody needs a good, old-fashioned ass-whipping. I usually don’t condone violence or harming another person physically under any circumstances, but somebody needs an ass-whipping. And that would be whoever it was who broke into Alcenia’s soul food restaurant last week, vandalized it, and stole owner B.J. Tamayo’s new computer. I know it’s hot in Memphis and people are acting like fools and robbing stores and carjacking folks and shooting each other and beating on their spouses and all that stupid, ignorant, inexcusable rigmarole, and I know that no matter what we do as a people that’s never going to come to a complete end. Hopefully, someday, it will slow down a little bit when there’s more economic equality in the world, but that’s not happening any time soon and whoever did this to Alcenia’s needs an ass-whipping.

Here is this tiny, wonderful, usually struggling restaurant where both locals and people from all over the world come for the fried chicken and smothered cabbage and “ghetto aid,” as B.J. calls it, and where she hugs and kisses every customer who comes through the door no matter who they are, and somebody broke in and vandalized it. That’s like breaking into and vandalizing a church or an orphanage or a convent. But come on. Alcenia’s? I’d like to find the person or people who did this and administer the ass-whipping myself. Well, as long as they are bound so they can’t fight, because I’m a chicken and a wimp when it comes to that kind of thing.

Mrchan | Dreamstime.com

If anyone out there has any information about who did this to my beloved Alcenia’s, call that number they show on the news all the time. CrimeStoppers or something. Hold on, I’ll look it up. It’s 528- CASH (2274). And that’s an interesting website. They have an 11-page list of wanted criminals. That’s a lot. I checked to see if there was anyone on there that I knew and could rat out for $1,000 but didn’t recognize anyone. Ironically, there are several people on there whose looks are not altogether unlike the Amish. I guess it’s the new trend of men sporting long beards.

The latest arrest that got my attention was that of the young newlyweds in Mississippi who were arrested for apparently planning to honeymoon in Syria and join ISIS. There’s something really strange about this one. First off, the news reported they were arrested at an airport near Columbus, Mississippi. An airport near Columbus, Mississippi? Really? There’s an airport down there? So I looked that up, too, and sure enough, there is one. It’s the Golden Triangle Regional Airport. Who’da thunk it? It’s kind of odd that they were arrested for “thinking about doing this” and that the evidence consists of things they wrote on social media. Can you actually be arrested for “thinking” about joining a certain group? Even ISIS? And the last I read they were being held without bond. Using a phrase a dear friend of mine coined in regard to torturing would-be terrorists in Mississippi, I wonder if the FBI is gravy-boarding them to get information out of them. I would love to have read more about this, but when I tried, a giant image popped up covering the article with graphics asking me if I planned to buy an external hard drive and which kind would I be most likely to buy. It gave me a range of options including USB/stick drive, computer hard drive, and some others. It also gave me the option to ignore that question and move on to a new one. It never went away.

So I can’t tell you the latest news on the couple in Mississippi who might or might not have been thinking about honeymooning in Syria to join ISIS, because I can’t read news on the computer without being assaulted with pop-up questionnaires and ads for Nexium. And wherever I go online now, this image of a guy in Ireland named “Pa” pops up on the right of the screen with him asking me to be friends with him on Facebook. I mean, I can be looking up a recipe for vichyssoise or looking for deals on raccoon removal, and this dude’s mug is constantly staring at me wanting to be friends. And he has maybe 12 Facebook friends, which, if you are on Facebook intentionally, is not the greatest sign. All I want to know is, why me? Why would he want to be Facebook friends with me? Why can I not read an article about Mississippi millennials planning to honeymoon in Syria to join ISIS without an unwanted questionnaire blocking the article asking me how I store my online files? I guess now that I have entered the word “ISIS” into my computer several times, I will be followed by even more stalkers online. WHY ME? Oh, yes, it’s not just me.

But back to the ass-whipping. If anyone can find out who broke into Alcenia’s and vandalized it, I will personally give you a reward. In the meantime, if you have, or know of anyone who has, a good working computer and the skills to set it up (that would not be me), please give B.J. a call and give it to her. That would kick ass.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Trumped

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I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “bafflement” before, but I am now in a total state of bafflement. I can usually use reason and objective thinking to figure things out, but on this one I am stumped. I can’t seem to be able to think of one single fraction of a reason why anyone claiming to be a member of the human race could possibly think that it would be a good idea for Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States. Is there some kind of Kool-Aid out there that I don’t know about? Have we sunken this low? Is everyone smoking crack? Is this an alien invasion in disguise? Is this an ISIS plot?

Now the next time I travel to another country, I am going to have to tell people again that I am from Canada, so I don’t suffer the shame and humiliation of their knowing I am from a country where this repugnant, nouveau riche cartoon character is leading the polls in his party for the upcoming presidential election.

I don’t know who or what is worse: Trump, his supporters, or the sad state of the Republican Party, if this is the best they have to offer. I never thought these words would cross my mind in any way, shape, or fashion, but I sincerely think I’d rather see Sarah Palin in the White House than Donald Trump. Or Charles Manson. Or — God forbid — someone who is almost as frightening as Trump is: Marie Osmond. She scares the crap out of me on those weight-loss commercials, with the way she points into the camera when trying make a point. Come to think of it, she and Trump maybe have a lot in common. They’re both monsters.

Trump is the sleaziest, worst kind of opportunist, because all he really wants is attention. I don’t think he even wants the job of POTUS at all. He just wants people to pay attention to him. Thus, the hair. I know, I know. It’s an easy target that has been maligned for decades. But if he weren’t just out in the limelight to get attention he would do something to correct that magic carpet ride. After all — and he has said this on camera about two million times in the past week — he IS worth $10 billion. I think he can afford a stylist, but then that would take away from his shtick. And he is nothing but shtick. NOTHING. Other than hateful, racist, laughable comments about immigrants, I haven’t heard him say anything other than his gag-a-maggot claims of how rich he is. But then, I turn away in horror every time I see him on the television screen, so I might be missing something. Anyway, he’s a delusional creep, and it’s a shame even I am paying this much attention to him. Trump, be gone before one of your tacky skyscrapers falls on you.

So I’m going to turn my attention elsewhere and get down on my knees and thank Barack Obama for being the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. How in the hell it took so long for this to happen is anybody’s guess. But at least he did it, and at least he is going to try to do something about the crooked, for-profit, privately owned prison system in this country, where thousands and thousands of people are living like animals because they happened to have been caught with weed or pain pills on them. Oh, how violent and scary they are.

I can’t wait to see what else Obama does during this last period of his presidency. If I were him, I would go nuts. Now that gay marriage is finally legal across the country and he doesn’t have that to worry about, I would start enacting laws that replaced nonviolent drug offenders in the prisons with people who place unwanted telecommunication and scam calls to innocent people’s cell phones.

My phone is like a slot machine some days, with all the dinging from any number of bullshit calls. The other day I got one, and it was a recording from a robot voice telling me this was my final notice and that the IRS was filing a lawsuit against me. Right. I was so skeert. Like the IRS is going to leave an automated message on my cell phone voice mail, and like I make enough money for them to care about anything in my tax return.

So I tried to call back to play a little game. A woman did answer saying, “Hello, Internal Revenue Service,” in an unamerikan accent, and I could actually hear a television and a kid crying in the background. I called back from a landline, and when I tried to lay into her, she hung up. So I tried calling back from my cell phone numerous times but kept getting a fast busy signal and finally a number-disconnected message. Damn! I was all ready to play into her hand and fall for it before I told her my bank’s pin number was 666 and that I was Satan and was on my way to eat her children. But alas, no luck. Does anyone have a number for Donald Trump they can share with me?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Take It Down

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Wave goodbye the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina. And don’t use “heritage and history” as an excuse to keep it there. Just take it down.

Like every other human being who reads and watches the news and has a conscience, I’ve been grappling with the mass murder of nine people in a Bible study group at their church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week. Like millions of others, I have been trying to wrap what’s left of my brain around how a 21-year-old could have so much hate in his heart that he could sit in church with the parishioners for an hour before opening fire on them (sparing the life of one woman so she could explain to people what happened). Like millions of others, I have come to the conclusion that we’ll never quite understand it all. And like millions of others, I keep thinking about how we should progress from here and if there is any possible good that can come from this.

Daseaford | Dreamstime.com

Maybe it’s the fact that this heinous crime has furthered — catapulted, actually — the discussion about why South Carolina has no hate crime laws and whether it should stop flying a Confederate flag on its State House grounds. This controversy engendered an entire new language: Republican Beat Around the Bush Speak.

I just watched Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee try to state his opinion on the matter on one of the Sunday-morning political shows. It was like he was speaking a language that heretofore didn’t exist. He simply made no sense.

I hate to politicize a tragedy like this, but it’s already done. Whether to remove the flag is already a standard question for the presidential hopefuls, and so far the only one to demand its removal, as far as I know, is Mitt Romney, and good for him. The rest of them are hiding behind the tiresome and ancient notion of “states’ rights” and dodging the question.

Same with hate crime bills. I heard one pundit say, “Hate is not a crime.” Maybe it’s time we changed the laws and put hate groups out of business for good, so they don’t influence young people like Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old who confessed to the murders.

Am I missing something here? Does the rest of civilized society have to leave it to the people of one state to decide whether a symbol of hate and slavery should continue to be one of its calling cards?

I guess we could all boycott South Carolina, but that would be an affront to all of the good people who live there, and there are plenty of them. They are the norm. Not everyone in South Carolina is obsessed with the flag being about “heritage and history, not hate” — a repugnant ideology, given the fact that it was created as a symbol for white people to buy, sell, and trade African prisoners and brutalize them whenever the whim struck.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about the Confederate flag waving proudly as a reminder of dear old Dixie is that, while the state lowered the state flag and the American flag to half-mast in recognition of the nine African-American worshippers who were gunned down in their own church by a self-proclaimed racist, a bizarre South Carolina law prevented the lowering of the Confederate flag!

I dearly love the South. I was born and raised here. I talk to Europeans and visitors from around the world every day about the virtues of the South: the food, the culture, the laid-back lifestyle, the friendly people, the music, and the feeling they experience when here. And while I think South Carolina ought to remove that flag immediately, I think we in Memphis ought to take a look at ourselves again and remove that monument on Union Avenue to the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest. And I think our school system should incorporate some sort of anti-discrimination curriculum starting in pre-K and going all the way through 12th grade as a way to start stopping all of this racism mess, because right now it seems this country is regressing rather than progressing on the issue.

A great place for South Carolina’s Confederate flag to rest would be in our own National Civil Rights Museum. It could be displayed next to the authentic and chilling Ku Klux Klan robe and hood that are already there. And photos of the remaining all-white country clubs in Memphis should also be in the display. Didn’t think we still had those? Think again. They hide their bigotry behind the guise of “private membership,” but they don’t allow black or Jewish members. Maybe we should ask the families of the nine people murdered in Charleston last week how they feel about that.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (May 28, 2015) …

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Finally, finally, FINALLY! The Memphis Flyer has had the good sense to curb the liberal writings of old men like Tim Sampson and Randy Haspel and change the back page of this paper to something more sensible by adding some female voices. Thank God — and I’m speaking of the God of Christianity who rules this nation and should rule the rest of the world, instead of these so-called prophets like Mohammed — that the paper has finally come to its senses and is now giving voice to women with some conservative values and extremely long necks like mine.

That Sampson guy has been writing his drivel for this paper for 26 years now, and it’s about time he gets limited to write just one piece of garbage each month from now on. I don’t know how you readers have put up with his left-wing musings for this many years. I hope that you will just skip over his soon-to-be monthly “Last Word” column and pay attention to writers like me, who really have something important to add.

Let’s take a look back: Most recently, Sampson verbally defiled pro-American-values crusader Pamela Geller, just because she had the audacity to host a pro-freedom-of-expression art show in which artists and normal God-fearing American citizens were invited to draw cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed at an art gallery in the great, GREAT state of Texas, which (thank God again) gives criminals the death penalty more than any state in the country. They know how to deal with heathens, and I say more power to them.

It’s still a shame that Texas Governor Rick Perry didn’t beat the communist Barack Obama in the last presidential election. Now look where we are: Our taxes are being used right and left to finance food stamps for poor people who are too lazy to get jobs that would allow them to buy their own food and not put the burden on those of us who need to stockpile our millions for when Obama finally destroys the country, which has been his plan all along, because he is a socialist who was not even born in the United States and is, in fact, a radical Muslim from Africa.

Thank God, again, for people like Sarah Palin and me who aren’t afraid to tell the truth about him. Oh, yeah, you’ll be reading much more about this when Sampson’s “Rant” business is sidelined. You better get down on your knees and pray that this new change lasts for a long, long time.

And, no more will you have to be besieged on such a regular basis with his “ranting” about how gay marriage should be legalized in every state or how he thinks voting rights for impoverished blacks and other Democrats are being jeopardized, or his ongoing babbling about how that Soulsville Charter School’s seniors have all been accepted to college for the past four years that it has had graduations — with their inner-city kids receiving more than $30 million in scholarships. To read his biased (because he works there) views, you’d think white kids from wealthy families, who attend Christian-based private schools, don’t achieve anything. It sickens me, and I know it sickens you.

And then there’s the way he goes on and on and ON about how much he loves Memphis and how it’s the coolest city in the world. Give me a break. Most of you reading this live there and you know what a hellhole Memphis is. There’s nothing but crime and people living on welfare there and one black mayor after another. You all know you live in the poorest, most dangerous, most obese city in the United States and that Memphis has nothing to offer upstanding, conservative people of virtue. He thinks places like Wild Bill’s, Ernestine & Hazel’s, Beale Street, and the Blue Worm are all so great, but he never talks about all the great things on Germantown Parkway or the gated subdivisions in the suburbs, where people exercise their God-given freedom to stay away from all that filth that goes on in the city. He and Haspel are just old, white liberal men who are stuck in their hippie days and don’t see the light of what really matters to true Americans.

And speaking of the great Sarah Palin, it is almost criminal the way this paper has allowed Sampson to criticize her for her beliefs, her animal killing, her beautiful and intelligent children, and her stance on American values. She is a true American hero, but to read Sampson, you’d think she isn’t the genius that she really is, no matter what newspapers she reads. And when she says she can see Russia from Alaska, she is telling the truth. She always has and continues to do so on national Fox News, which Sampson also dismisses as right-wing propaganda, which you all know is not true.

So be very, very happy, people, that “The Rant” will be changing soon, albeit not soon enough for those of you who have had to put up with Sampson’s diatribes for so long. I say, so long to him and pay no attention to what he and Haspel write in their new monthly “Last Word” columns.

This column was actually written by Tim Sampson, of course. No conservative publicity whores were harmed in the writing of this column.