“National interests” are the prize at stake. (Photo: James Vallee | Dreamstime.com)
“Mr. Netanyahu faces a delicate calculation — how to respond to Iran in order not to look weak, while trying to avoid alienating the Biden administration and other allies already impatient with Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.”
Yeah, this is virtually nothing: a random, utterly forgettable quote pulled from The New York Times — from the basic corporate coverage of our present-moment violence, as the world shimmies on brink of … uh, World War III. It’s the forgettable quotes, especially in regard to ongoing war, that may be the most dangerous because all they do is solidify a collective sense of normalcy. My term for it is “accepted insanity.” We have the technological and psychological capacity to kill not simply thousands or even millions of people but the whole human race, but let’s talk about it in terms of strategy, tactics, and public relations! Let’s talk about it as though we’re covering a bunch of 10-year-old boys throwing stones. Which one’s going to win?
That’s the key issue here: winning. When two cowboys face off in an armed confrontation, the one who draws and fires fastest, hitting the other guy in the stomach or wherever, wins. He gets to walk away with a self-satisfied smirk.
I’m not singling out the Times story quoted above as uniquely problematic in its coverage of the latest turn of events in the Middle East, but rather as representative of the accepted insanity of endless war — the reduction of war to an abstraction, virtually always involving clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and describing murder (including mass murder) as retaliation, self-defense, “show of force,” etc., etc. “National interests” are the prize at stake. Human lives are just bargaining chips, except, of course, when the bad guys kill them.
The Times story, for instance, steps beyond its abstraction of the Israel-Iran confrontation at one point. Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing several Iranian officers, the story informs us. Iran retaliated two weeks later, firing 300 drones and missiles at Israel, almost all of which were shot down, and very little damage was caused. The Times notes: “The only serious casualty was a 7-year-old girl, Amina al-Hasoni, who was badly wounded.”
War affects children! Yes, yes, yes it does. My heart goes out to Amina al-Hasoni. But my God — some 13,000 children have been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza, and thousands more injured, not to mention orphaned. And some are simply missing, lying under the rubble. What are their names?
What if war were covered the way street crime is covered — not as an abstraction, but with awareness that it’s a profound social problem? What if war were covered with external awareness, i.e. with wisdom that transcends political platitudes — rather than in obeisance to those platitudes?
Here, for instance, is CNBC reporting on the Israel-Iran confrontation. Noting that Israel has pledged to “exact a price” from Iran in response to the missile attack, CNBC then quotes President Biden condemning the attack and adding that the United States “will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people.”
Can you believe that his words didn’t make me feel safer? I’d been pondering not just the possibility but the likely reality of World War III, and to read these words — “take all necessary action to protect our people” — made the wolves start to howl in my own soul.
Platitudes plus nukes? Biden wasn’t talking about transcending war and shunning the country’s trillion-dollar military budget. Presumably, he was talking about using it, putting it to work to “protect” us — you know, to “defeat” our declared enemy (Iran, apparently), no matter the price exacted on Planet Earth, including on you and me. How about some media coverage that doesn’t blow this off with a shrug?
Coverage of war requires awareness of the lies that prop it up politically. For instance, as World Beyond War has put it: “According to myth, war is ‘natural.’ Yet a great deal of conditioning is needed to prepare most people to take part in war, and a great deal of mental suffering is common among those who have taken part.”
In other words, war is not a product of human evolution — humanity finally becoming mature enough to fight itself in an organized, collective fashion — but essentially the opposite of that: an unevolved aspect of who we are … an embedded failure to evolve, you might say.
So many veterans, as the World Beyond War quote implies, often bear the burden of this truth well beyond their time of service. They are forced to face, on their own, the psychological and spiritual implications of what they did — of following orders, of participating in the dehumanization and murder of alleged enemies. In the wake of wars, vet suicide rates can be horrific. While such psycho-spiritual trauma is officially defined as a mental illness — post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — others with deeper understanding, including many vets, call it moral injury. Following orders forced them to act beyond their own humanity: When you dehumanize others, you dehumanize yourself.
This is the accepted insanity the corporate media cover with such win-lose abstraction, even when we’re on the brink of World War III. Multiply moral injury by several billion human beings and what you could wind up with is human extinction.
Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.
The inaugural RiverBeat Music Festival drew throngs to the Mississippi last weekend. Most on the MEMernet agreed Tom Lee Park was amazing and the production value was second-to-none.
But being Memphis and that park in particular, detractors complained the crowd was smaller than Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Festival and that hurt Downtown businesses. Others griped that ticket prices didn’t match the lineup.
Drama
If you are looking for a local drama rabbit hole to fall into, head over to the Memphis subreddit and look for “Fox and Cat Vintage drama.” The basic story is there to get you started. Then, follow the links to fall as far as you’d like. Yowza.
Beer Prediction
Posted to Reddit by u/etherian1
“Only a matter of time before someone turns Germantown Lumber into a brewery/tap room,” u/etherian1 predicted on Reddit.
It’s a fitting prophecy for our beer-soaked issue, focused on the winners of our 2024 Beer Bracket Challenge.
“First round on me for whoever can will this into existence,” wrote u/HeyYouGuuys.
In a seller’s market, buyers can end up getting the short end of the stick. Housing inventories have yet to revert to normal levels, and the demand is high for mid-price homes, often driving multiple offers on many properties. If a buyer is lucky enough to get an accepted offer, they still need to contend with the reality of higher interest rates taking a bite out of their household income (unless they’re an all-cash buyer).
So, what’s a buyer to do? Before you start looking at homes, you need to know three key numbers: what the bank will lend you, what you can afford, and what you’re willing to pay. It’s essential to understand the difference between these three numbers, or you might end up biting off more than you can chew.
1. What Will the Bank Lend You?
Unless you’re holding enough cash to buy a house outright, your first step is getting preapproved for a mortgage. This is especially important in a hot real estate market. When there are multiple offers on the table, sellers may reject offers outright that aren’t accompanied by a preapproval letter.
But don’t take the first mortgage deal you’re offered. Even if you have an existing relationship with your local credit union or community bank, it’s in your best interest to get at least one comparison quote before you sign on for a mortgage. A rate difference of as little as 0.25 percent can really add up over 30 years. While you can shop different lenders for the best terms and rates, a better option is to use a mortgage broker. They can save you time by shopping different lenders on your behalf.
Because brokers work with multiple lenders, they often have more flexibility in how they structure your loan. They can alter terms like cash down, interest rates, closing credits, and loan duration, which will likely result in a mortgage that better fits your financial needs.
2. What Can You Afford?
Unfortunately, regardless of which lender you work with, you can’t rely on them to tell you what you can afford. While they will tell you what they will lend you, that is by no means a bellwether for what you should spend because the calculation they perform is essentially a measure of risk, not a measure of cash flow.
Credit scores are used as an indicator of how much risk a lender assumes when they sell you a mortgage. Not only can a very low credit score impact your ability to get a mortgage, but it will also factor into the interest rate you’ll pay. The lower your score, the higher your interest rate will be. That translates into a larger mortgage payment overall.
3. What Are You Willing to Pay?
The last number you need to know is what you’re realistically willing to pay.
This number will change from property to property, depending on what features the home has and what projects you may have to take on. Understand that in a seller’s market, you’ll likely have to pay above list price, and you may have to pay above the property’s appraised value.
If you’re willing to pay more than the appraised value of the home, you’ll need more cash in the deal because your lender won’t cover the gap between the offer price and the appraised value with a mortgage.
This can put you in a sticky situation if you have little leftover cash to cover the unexpected expenses that inevitably come with home ownership.
Keep a Healthy Cash Reserve on Hand
Home buying is a stressful process, but owning a home without adequate cash reserves is a recipe for disaster. Regardless of the condition of the real estate market, it’s important to keep a healthy cash reserve on hand to handle emergency expenses without going into credit card debt.
It’s a tough market for buyers right now. But if you go into the home buying process armed with the appropriate information, you’ll be well positioned to make a strong offer on a property that meets your needs and budget. In the end, your perfect house is probably the one that allows you to sleep soundly in the short term and helps you build value over the long term.
Gene Gard, CFA, CFP, CFT-I, is a Partner and Private Wealth Manager withCreative Planning. Creative Planning is one of the nation’s largest Registered Investment Advisory firms providing comprehensive wealth management services to ensure all elements of a client’s financial life are working together, including investments, taxes, estate planning, and risk management. For more information or to request a free, no-obligation consultation, visit CreativePlanning.com.
Nathan McHenry and Carly Crawford (Photo: Tony Isbell)
Quark Theatre is gearing up to finish off its season in the coming weeks with the regional premiere of Constellations by Nick Payne, opening Friday, May 10th.
“I have been calling this a multiversal love story,” says director Tony Isbell. “Because it’s about two characters — Roland and Marianne — and the story is they meet, they go on a date, they hit it off, they fall in love, they break up, they get back together, and they deal with some very serious issues along the way and some very funny issues. But it’s not that straightforward: We follow their relationship through the lens of the multiverse. … It jumps to different universes and it occasionally jumps back and forwards in time as well. So there’s a lot going on.”
At just about 80 minutes, the play, Isbell says, feels like a montage sequence. “Like short scenes cut together,” he says. “But these two actors [Carly Crawford and Nathan McHenry] are phenomenal because when they switch universes there’s no technical aspect — there’s not necessarily a scene change or sound change. It’s all conveyed by the actors and just something as simple as a change of tone of voice or a change of their posture or the way they’re relating to each other. And the amazing thing is you can almost always tell when there’s a change, when they jump through the universe, not only because they end up repeating some of the same lines but just because of the nuance they bring to the characters as they move from universe to universe.
“I call it a love story because that’s really what it is. The most important thing here is the relationship between these two people and how much chemistry they have and how much the audience roots for them. Because they’re both really likable people most of the time, and in a couple of universes, they’re not so nice, but most of the time they’re really likable and the audience is really rooting for them. I think people will just really be fascinated by the show.”
Isbell hopes this production follows the success this season has offered so far with The Wasp and The Sound Inside. “In terms of audience we’ve just done really well,” he says. “This has been our most successful season, and we’d like to continue that with this show.”
Tickets for Constellations can be purchased at quarktheatre.com. Performances run Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m., May 10th through May 26th.
Constellations, Theatre South at First Congo, 1000 Cooper St., Friday, May 10-May 26, $20.
As many music lovers savor memories of hearing their favorite bands on the Mississippi’s shores at last weekend’s RiverBeat Music Festival, another such experience is just heating up: the Sunset Jazz series at Court Square. And while the performances, taking place once a month from May through October, may lack strobe lights, flame cannons, or the feeling of a weaponized kick drum rattling your chest, they will offer their own kind of fireworks: the sheer virtuosity of the series’ featured artists.
The musicianship is top-notch partly because the series’ producer and curator, Deborah Swiney, is a seasoned jazz singer herself. After she released her 2017 album, I Remember Rio, there were precious few jazz-friendly venues in which to promote it — so she took matters into her own hands.
“I had been wanting to do something at Court Square Park forever,” she recalls. “It’s a beautiful park, with the gazebo there to use as a stage. So I contacted Penelope Huston at Downtown Memphis and threw the idea out there, and she loved it. We did a pop-up event and had a great turnout, far beyond what we would have ever imagined. So I did a couple more.”
Pivoting from her own work to the likes of Chris Parker and Kelley Hurt, who had only just premiered their stunning No Tears Suite in Little Rock, those other 2018 pop-ups set a tone of eclecticism and quality that has continued to mark the series, now in its fifth year (after a two-year break during the worst of Covid). “I try to do something different each time,” Swiney says.
Ted Ludwig This year’s lineup carries on that tradition, while keeping the focus firmly on Memphis-based artists. Season opener Ted Ludwig (appearing on Mother’s Day) has become a fixture at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, for instance, with his trio often backing talent visiting from elsewhere (as in this Wednesday’s performance with New York saxophonist and composer Jim Snidero). “To me, he’s one of the top guitar players around,” says Swiney, “and we have a bunch of great guitarists in Memphis. He grew up in New Orleans and won the Louis Armstrong Award in high school there, then studied with the great pianist Ellis Marsalis.”
Ekpe & the African Jazz Ensemble June’s concert will feature the more international side of Memphis jazz with percussionist Ekpe Abioto’s African Jazz Ensemble, one of the few local groups who pursue the sounds of contemporary Africa. “Ekpe also has a great resume, and he does a lot of studio work,” says Swiney. “He played on my Rio album and if someone needs a percussionist here it’s likely to be either Ekpe or Felix Hernandez.” While Abioto’s ensemble is often known to delve into Afrobeat territory, Swiney says, “he’s likely to focus more on the jazz part for this series.”
Stephen M. Lee While many parents and aspiring young players know of Lee as a teacher, some may not realize that he’s a world-class pianist in his own right. He studied under fellow Memphian Donald Brown in his college years, then went on to develop a career in New York for over a decade. When he received the Steinway and Sons Top Teacher Certificate Award in 2017, he returned to Memphis and founded the Memphis Jazz Workshop to fill in gaps in public school music education here. The program has been a great success. Swiney sees his July performance as a chance to showcase “more straight-ahead jazz.”
Soul Ingredient After Lee’s July performance, the following month will present the best of what his educational efforts have wrought. Soul Ingredient collects some the Memphis Jazz Workshop’s finest young players into a powerhouse ensemble. “Have you ever heard these guys?” exclaims Swiney. “I heard them at an event last year, and had I been in another room and not seen that these were kids, you couldn’t have convinced me that they were so young. Of course, all their instructors are professional musicians and you can just tell they’re getting taught by some of the best top players.”
Soul Ingredient (Photo: Elizabeth Fitzgerald)
Patrice Williamson Memphis doesn’t see enough of the singer featured in the September Sunset Jazz show, possibly because she teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston. But Jazz Times magazine wrote that “Patrice Williamson isn’t a singer, she’s a one-woman jazz sampler. She is a woman of many voices, each distinctly intriguing, all distinctly her own.” Growing up in Memphis, Williamson’s father introduced her to both gospel and the music of greats like Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Lena Horne, and that blend influences her singing to this day.
Patrice Williamson (Photo: D&D Pro Imaging)
Brian “Breeze” Cayolle Further cementing the close ties between New Orleans and Memphis, this Crescent City-native has been a fixture in Memphis since Hurricane Katrina nudged him northward. “He brings a bit of New Orleans wherever he goes,” says Swiney of the clarinetist and saxophonist, who held down Wednesday nights at Lafayette’s Music Room for years. “He’s played with a bunch of people and he’s quite celebrated,” Swiney adds. Cayolle will wrap up this year’s Sunset Jazz series on October 13th.
The World Championship Hot Wing Contest and Festival was back on Riverside Drive for the first time since 2017. The festival, which was held April 20th, was on Tiger Lane for many years after leaving Riverside Drive.
A total of 3,000 people attended the 22nd annual festival, says founder Paul Gagliano. All except one year, the event has benefited the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis. Not counting this year, it’s raised more than $300,000 for the charity.
Gagliano recalled that first contest: “I asked the guy that had the Poplar Lounge if he would put up the parking lot and a little money.”
Paul Gagliano, David Hunnam, Pat Hunnam, Michelle HunnamKilgore Trout, Joseph Wilson, Brennan Powers
He then went into the bar and told people his plans for a hot wing contest. They looked at Gagliano like he was crazy, but seven people took part. It was a hot wing contest, but, Gagliano says, “They were grilling deer meat and all kinds of meat.”
And, he says, “Budweiser gave me $1,000 bucks. And that was like a million right there.”
This year, 50 teams took part and competed for $10,000 prize money.
In January, when I asked Dr. Nickalus Khan — the talented young neurosurgeon from Semmes Murphey Clinic who had rebuilt my upper back a year earlier — if I could play golf again, his answer was a reassuring “Absolutely.” When I told my friend John Ryan that my doctor had said I could play golf, his response was: “That’s amazing! You couldn’t before.”
See what I mean?
For six months, I had been working to get my body back in some sort of shape after a bout with lymphoma and a concurrent rebuild of my upper back because of damage from the tumor. I was declared in remission last July — a happy day to be sure — but I’d lost 30 pounds and almost all my muscle tone during the six-month chemo protocol: too much time on my back; too little time moving. I’m in my 70s, and it didn’t take long for me to realize the road to full recovery would be long.
When I began my comeback in July, the slightest exercise made me stiff and sore. Getting out of bed required pushing off the wall into a seated position. My oncologist, Dr. Mike Martin of West Clinic, said my condition was a common one following chemo treatment and that I needed to begin — slowly — working to strengthen my stomach and back muscles.
Getting back into the swing of things (Photos: John Ryan)
Thanks to the fact that I have two very persistent dogs, I resumed walking every day last summer, mostly in Overton Park. When I began, I was winded after 15 minutes, but after three months, I worked my way up to a brisk 35 to 40 minutes with no stress. Progress! I also began something of a fitness regime at home: pushups (at first, from my knees), leg lifts, stretches, sit-ups. As hair returned to my head, strength began to return to my muscles.
What about playing golf again? I used to play at least once a week, but my golf-friends and I got out of the habit during the pandemic. They still play, though less frequently. Now that Covid is a lesser concern and cancer is in my rearview, I began thinking maybe it was time to get myself out on the links again. Perhaps golf could even be a way to accelerate my physical recovery.
Feeling frisky in early January, I tried swinging a 5-iron 100 times. The next morning, the pain in my lower back was nearly intolerable. It was obvious that I would need golf-specific exercises.
I checked in with Dr. Google and found lots of interesting connections between golf and fitness. I learned that golf is often used to rehabilitate people from addiction: “Since golf is a type of exercise that enhances the release of endorphins, it becomes an effective way for patients to recover from substance abuse disorders,” claims a site called Healthy Life Recovery. And I learned, from the same source, that golf is used in the treatment of some mental health disorders: “Golfing enables patients to form and foster cordial relationships based on shared interests, a crucial factor for mental health recovery.”
All good to know, but what about getting my ancient body back in shape to make a full swing at a golf ball and not embarrass myself in front of my friends? You know, the physical stuff (and the pride stuff). As I’d learned the hard way, golf puts a lot of stress on the back muscles. This paragraph from a golf-instruction website sums it up: “The athletic, correct golf swing is a total body movement that requires flexibility, mobility, and stability in a wide range of joints. Utilizing the ground for a powerful hip extension through the shot along with pulling left and delaying release of the clubhead puts a great amount of strain on the body. That is the swing most of us are searching for.”
There’s a huge body of literature online on the subject of how to get your body in “golf shape,” and lots of instructional-video options: “Best Back Exercises for Golfers,” “Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Back While Golfing,” “Rehabilitation of the Back for Golfers.” The list goes on longer than a Dustin Johnson tee shot. I eventually settled on HansenFitnessGolf.com. Coach Mike Hansen has a lo-fi approach, and looks a little lumpy, like the kind of guy who’s not going to be too judgy, even if he can’t see me. He clearly lays out the issues for senior golfers, and for those trying to return to playing golf after injury or illness. I qualified on both counts.
The three major issues that Hansen addresses are, yep, flexibility, mobility, and stability. If we can improve those three areas, he says, we’ll be well underway to finding a real golf swing again. Hansen’s exercises are easily done at home on a carpet or yoga mat and focus mostly on strengthening lower back muscles, stretching and turning the torso, strengthening the knees and thighs, and my favorite, “firing your glutes.” Frankly, mine should have been fired a long time ago. I jest. But anyway, yes, strengthening your butt muscles is important.
After a couple of weeks, I was swinging that 5-iron 100 times a day with no pain cropping up. I still couldn’t turn into a complete back-swing because of the reconstruction of my upper spine, but I felt like maybe I was ready to try the real thing — with a ball. I enlisted my cynical friend John and we drove out to Mirimichi Golf Course and each bought a big bucket of balls to hit on the practice range.
As I rolled a shiny, white Pinnacle into position on the astroturf practice mat with my trusty 5-iron, I got a little nervous. I was worried I might be unable to hit the ball straight with my shortened swing, or worse, shank it horribly. It was my first time on a golf course in 16 months.
I said something to John about not feeling comfortable over the ball and he said, “Just swing smooth and easy and try to make contact. You don’t have to kill it.”
He was right. I focused on just hitting the ball and took what felt like a half-speed swing. I was elated to see the white pellet fly straight, and to feel the joy of flushing a shot right in the middle of the clubface. I hit the remainder of the bucket of balls, maybe 75 or so. Sure, I hit some clunkers, but I hit enough good shots with my new, easy swing that I was eager to try the real thing.
Playing a round of golf is, of course, much different than hitting balls from a mat. There is grass and dirt and trees and water and sand, all of which delight in diverting golf balls from their mission of falling into a hole on a green. I drove to the Links of Riverside on a Sunday afternoon in late February for my first test. Riverside is a modest, nine-hole muni run by the city. Nothing fancy. I figured I’d be able to play by myself with no issues. But nope. As I drove my cart to the first tee, a single golfer was preparing to hit. “Hey,” he said, cheerfully, “Want to play together?”
The guy looked to be about my age and was playing from the old-man tees, so how bad could it be, I thought. “Sure,” I said, “but I have to warn you I haven’t played in more than a year, so I might slow you up.” No worries, he said.
And there weren’t any. We had a great time and I didn’t embarrass myself. After the round, we had a beer in the clubhouse and agreed to play again. I’d made a new friend and was back in the swing of things. You might even say I was rehabbed. Huzzah.
Soul & Spirits’ Hoochie Coochie wins this year’s Beer Bracket. (Photos: Justin Fox Burks)
Soul & Spirits Brewery’s Hoochie Coochie IPA is the best craft beer in Memphis, according to the more than 800 voters of the Memphis Flyer’s 2024 Beer Bracket Challenge, sponsored by City Brew Tours, Eagle Distributing Company, and Cash Saver.
This marks the first time Soul & Spirits has won our challenge. The brewery had not yet opened its doors in 2021 when we last held it. Their win unseats Crosstown Brewing Company, who has held onto the VanWyngarden Cup since 2021. Back then, Crosstown’s Traffic IPA upended Meddlesome Brewing’s three-year reign atop the Flyer’s annual beer bracket contest with its 201 Hoplar.
Soul & Spirits takes home the prestigious VanWyngarden Cup.
Ghost River Golden took top honors in 2017, the first year of the competition. But it’s been IPA all the way since then. That’s five wins for an IPA — apparently the top style in Memphis — almost every year we’ve done this.
Since Soul & Spirits opened in 2021, it’s won top honors — Brewery of the Year — in 2022 and 2023 in the Tennessee Championship of Beers.
“Winning a competition against your peers is really cool but to have people locally vote for us — that this is their favorite beer in Memphis — that means a lot,” says Blair Perry, who co-founded and owns Soul & Spirits with her husband, Ryan Allen. “We’re still really new, so it is nice that people acknowledge that we’re around and like what we’re doing.”
Allen and Perry say Hoochie Coochie IPA started as an American IPA, “but it just turned into chasing a flavor.” When asked what flavor, Allen says “goodness.” Hoochie Coochie’s hops change from batch to batch, he says, based on what’s available.
“But just trust me, we’re going on a road,“ Allen says. “We’re going on a journey.”
Perry says they’re always chasing a “juicy, citrusy flavor with a nice bitterness that makes you want to keep drinking.”
As for the name? It’s fun to say, they note, and one of the first beers they named. But it also fit with the Soul & Spirits naming convention. Memphis-area music plays onto the labels and into the names of Soul & Spirits beers. So conjure up “I’m a Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters next time you sip a pint and search the can label for song references.
Blair Perry, Ryan Allen, and the ever-famous writer Toby Sells
This year was completely different for the Beer Bracket. First up, we opened up the challenge to any brewery in Memphis, any size, whether or not they had beers in stores or not. That brought in Boscos, who, one could argue, blazed the path for craft beer in Memphis. The change also made room for some newcomers like Urban Consequence Brewing, Memphis Filling Station, Cooper House Project, and Memphis-area beer bar and brewpub, Mississippi Ale House.
Gone were any divisions that have, in the past, separated our bracket into very basic beer categories — light, dark, IPA, and seasonal. The beers commingled — stouts vs. IPAs, for example. Though, we made sure no two beers from the same brewery were seeded against one another.
In the end, we had 32 beers from 16 breweries. Each brewery selected two beers for random seeding. (I literally pulled the match-ups out of a hat.) These went right on our bracket. That bad boy was digitized, and over two weeks these beers faced off, fell out, or advanced to the next round.
The final round had Hoochie Coochie up against Cooper House Project’s Midtowner lager, which won a narrow victory over Hampline’s Tandem Pilot double IPA to make the finals. In the end, Hoochie Coochie emerged as the winner, edging out Midtowner by only 130 votes.
The Memphis Flyer Beer Bracket had more than 10,500 votes this year from states across the nation, though most votes came from Midtown Memphis.
You know we love beer at the Flyer. And we know you do, too. (Well, at least hundreds of local voters do, anyhow.) So, we felt a duty to let you know that state lawmakers had you on their minds this year. Here’s rundown of some legislation that could find its way to a pint glass near you.
The Law and Your Beer
It wouldn’t be a regular session of the Tennessee General Assembly if lawmakers didn’t change the way you drink, or try to, anyway.
Lawmakers thought about cold beer, drunk cops, and Sunday sales. They also thought about more serious matters like date rape and treatment programs for DUI offenses. Some ideas worked. Some didn’t.
No Cold Beer for You
Rep. Ron Gant (R-Piperton) knew his legislation “got quite the buzz,” a phrase pounced upon by another GOP lawmaker with “no pun intended!” Har har.
That legislation would have banned the sale of cold beer at stores. So you don’t have to go back and make sure you read that right, here it is again: That legislation would have banned the sale of cold beer at stores.
But when Gant first spoke about the bill, he said “the buzz” about banning cold beer sales was moot. It was part of the original legislation, but after meeting with stakeholders across the state (probably meaning lobbyists for retailers), it was no longer part of his proposal.
He clarified this during an early committee review of the bill. The intent was never to target 12-packs or 24-packs, it was on “high-alcohol, single-serve containers.”
“Some people have educated me on this,” Gant said. “They call them 2x4s or tallboys. You see them laying on the side of the road where they’ve been obviously thrown out. So, we know that they’re being abused, and people are drinking these, and not making it home to enjoy at their house.
“So, there was never going to be any intent — by me as the sponsor — to take away the right and the privilege for the good actors of being able to buy a 12-pack or 24-pack and take that home as responsible adults. I just want to make that clear, you know, for the record. So that everybody feels at ease. But none of that is included in this legislation.”
And feel at ease they did, it seems. Those hard headlines that read like “Proposed Tennessee Bill Bans Selling Cold Beer” (from VinePair) had softened to jokier ones like “Tennessee’s Cold Beer Ban Bill Is Officially On Ice” from Nashville’s News Channel 5.
For many, though, the idea seemed in range and on-brand for the GOP. Memphis Reddit users called it “stupid shit” and “bullshit” and that (sarcastically) these lawmakers were “tackling the real issues.” It also reminded them of another GOP fave: gun control.
“But … but … beer is an inanimate object,” wrote u/Boatshooz. “It doesn’t drink itself. And we don’t need to pass further laws that just hurt responsible drinkers, we just need to enforce existing laws.
“I swear I’ve heard that same argument from those same legislators about something else … can’t remember what it was. Why are they taking the opposite stance with beer?”
The law would, however, create a new group to study alcohol consumption and abuse in the state, with a report due annually. Gant said (but didn’t cite sources for his information) that drunk driving and alcohol consumption has surged in recent years. The bill was passed by the legislature but had not been signed by Gov. Bill Lee as of press time.
Sunday Sales
You’ve been there, probably. You’re headed to your Sunday Funday, walk into the grocery store only to find the beer section dark, maybe with shades drawn over them or a lock on the cooler door.
Then it hits you. That backward-ass state law says I can’t buy beer here until noon. You may even have a thought about some pious state lawmaker sitting in a church somewhere, praying that the law will somehow nudge you out of the beer aisle and into a pew somewhere. Well, those beer lights will remain off on Sunday mornings, at least for another year.
Nashville Democrats Rep. Bob Freeman and Sen. Jeff Yarbro tried to change that. They described the bill simply as “the alignment of the sale of alcohol on Sunday to every other day of the week.” They said many sporting events are overseas and on different time zones. Some venues, they said, would like to sell alcohol to those who want to watch them.
The only real vocal opponent of the bill was Rep. Tom Leatherwood (R-Arlington), the former Shelby County Register of Deeds. He tried hard to marry the Sunday-sales legislation with another Freeman bill focused on preventing sexual assault.
He called them “twin bills” even though they could not have been more different. But still he told his GOP colleagues that limiting Sunday sales could save a life, and someday, maybe, end up on your end-of-life sizzle reel.
“Now, any of us that have drunk the alcohol [yes, he said the alcohol] before … it will just naturally reduce the natural defenses of some. It’ll increase the natural aggressiveness of others,” Leatherwood explained. “Hence, it’s good to be aware of what can happen, as we will hear more about later. If you vote no on this bill, you may never know what young lady you save from sexual assault and harassment, to use the language coming up. You may never know. But then again, on the other hand, in that final judgment we will all face, you may find out who you save by voting no on this bill.”
For his part, Freeman tried to separate the two, saying, “You should be able to drink responsibly without being raped.”
Loaded Cops, Loaded Guns
Sen. Joey Hensley swore he had no idea where the idea came from or how it ended up in his legislation. But there it was, raising almost as many eyebrows as the cold beer ban: We were going to allow drunk cops to carry and use concealed firearms.
“As introduced, allows law enforcement officers to carry a firearm when under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances and certain other circumstances,” reads the bill description on the state website.
Hensley said all he wanted to do was allow everyone to carry weapons on college campuses, for crying out loud. (That idea didn’t even get the support of his GOP colleagues. The bill failed.) The drunk cops thing was added without his knowledge, he told Fox 13. But there it was in black and white pixels and the damage was done.
“TN GOP probably: Wait guys, I’ve got an idea,” tweeted Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville). “I know Missouri one-upped us with their bill arming 3 [year olds], but I think we can counter with arming police officers who are drunk or high. Hear me out on this one …[three clown emojis].”
One supporter, though, over on a forum at tngunowners.com had another take.
“I know many seem to find fault with the concept of being armed and drinking, but really, as long as you’re not impaired,” wrote a user named Defender. “If you feel that strongly against it, maybe we should allow cars at bars or restaurants that serve alcohol.”
Date Rape
Rep. Freeman’s legislation (discussed earlier here) on alcohol and sexual assault passed this year, was signed by Lee, and will go into effect in January. That law will require anyone who serves alcohol to the public to take a course on the role of alcohol in sexual assault and harassment and on recognizing and reporting signs of human trafficking.
“If any of you remember, several years ago, the horrible rape case on a university campus here locally where a bunch of men carried a passed-out woman past 20 or more individuals that allowed it to happen,” Freeman said. “Not one of them stopped, said anything, felt empowered to do it, [or] understood what they could say.”
After this, the Safe Bar Tennessee program was developed by the Sexual Assault Center of Middle Tennessee. The program’s slogan is “See Something. Do Something.” Such training is already underway in Nashville, including some 50 bars Downtown, Freeman said.
Odds and Ends
Right now, certain folks under 21 can taste alcohol legally in the state. But they can’t drink it. Make sense?
Motlow State Community College, Jack Daniel’s, and Uncle Nearest have developed an associate’s degree in distilling that could produce more professionals in that industry’s workforce. Tasting the product gives students “real-world, practical experience” to “meet the critical need for their industry.” But they have to spit it out.
If you get a third DUI or BUI, you’ll have to wear a transdermal patch that will send a report to law enforcement if you have a drink. The main part of this legislation reduces jail time for the third DUI. Yet that only serves to give more time to commit to a 28-treatment program.
But the stranger, kind of Big Brother-y part of the law would make you wear that tattletale patch under your skin (so many questions) for three months or until your case is resolved, whichever came first. It goes into effect in July.
A bill would have yanked the alcohol license of a venue that served someone who later got into a car wreck that killed someone. It failed. Another bill sounds like it’s from the Prohibition era. It would have reduced “from two to one the number of credible witnesses who must be present when a law enforcement officer destroys an illegal distillery, a still, fermenting equipment, or related property.” It failed, too.
I can’t even think about my bones. I’m not sure why, but envisioning the inside of my body — nerves, muscles, veins, and organs — gives me the ick. I’m the type to faint while a nurse gathers blood for a routine lab test. And I’ve learned my veins are small and hard to find, so even the pushing and prodding of my flesh as they attempt to plump up a good one to poke makes me woozy. Once I was watching a TV show where a character had undergone breast augmentation surgery and described the feeling as having salt rocks in her chest, and I went pale and tingly and had to splash cold water on my face and lie down on the bathroom floor. Until recently, although I’m probably the clumsiest person I know, I’d prided myself on never having broken a bone. All my structural pieces were intact and in working order, aside from some likely weak tendons from many ankle sprains through the years — most recently a gnarly sprain to the left ankle last May (and another the previous December). Walking is harder than one might think.
Today, there are seven prescription bottles on my nightstand, and I am writing this from bed with my left foot iced and elevated on a pile of pillows. Some of you may have noticed I’ve been absent from this space for a few weeks — and a shiny new table of contents with accompanying photos teasing the week’s feature stories took the place of my editorial. We already had plans to occasionally run an illustrated table of contents in lieu of an editor’s note on those pesky weeks when words escaped me, but wound up launching it unannounced. I was down for nearly a week in early April with a flu-like illness, and in my feverish haze was unable to conjure up a column. So the first of the designed table of contents pages was set forth into the world. When I started feeling better, I decided to get dressed and go visit a friend. I’d been cooped up for days, swapping out one pair of pajamas for another, and at that point needed desperately to speak to another human in person before turning into a goblin. I put on some makeup and real pants and my favorite clunky platform Doc Martens (middle-school Shara would think today Shara was so cool with those boots) and left the house — free at last!
As I mentioned above, walking is harder than one might think, especially for a person who is prone to rolling their ankle, and even more especially when that person is wearing heavy platform boots. All I know is I was walking down the sidewalk one second, and the next I was on the ground in pain. When I managed to get that super-cool boot off, my ankle shifted unnaturally and sort of dangled at the end of my leg like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Needless to say, a trip to the emergency room was in order, and what followed was as close to me living my actual nightmares as I’ve yet to get in this life. (I had to think about my bones!)
Medical staff sedated me and attempted to perform a manual “reduction” on the dislocated ankle. A funny aside, one of the medications they gave me before the procedure was propofol, which, a nurse informed me while I was still somewhat alert, was the drug that killed pop star Michael Jackson. After a dose of morphine that didn’t quite do the trick, I saw them coming toward me with another needle and asked, “Is that the Michael Jackson drug?” Then proceeded to sing, “got to be startin’ somethin’ …” as I drifted off to dreamland (I have no recollection of this). The reduction — basically several medical professionals roughly tugging at my foot — was unsuccessful, there was mention of risk of necrosis, and I was rushed to the OR for surgery. I awoke with metal pins in both sides of my heel and two in my shin. The contraption — a multiplanar external fixator, to be exact — holding everything together was bulky, heavy, and increasingly uncomfortable, and I laid up for several days in the hospital awaiting the second surgery, in which I had a titanium plate installed to hold my “blasted” fibula in place. (The surgeon said the mess I made by simply falling looked like a “high-impact” injury. I never half-ass anything.) There’s a pin in there somewhere holding things in place that will have to be removed in a few weeks. So, yeah, a broken fibula and tibia, a dislocated ankle, 30 staples, bionic parts, and seven nights and eight days in the hospital. (I’ll spare you the gruesome photo of my mangled Frankenstein leg.) The past couple of weeks since surgery have been both physically and mentally taxing, as I consider myself an incredibly independent (and stubborn) person — laying around unable to do things on my own is a pain unlike any other. Well, aside from that hospital bill.
Anyhow, that’s where I’ve been. I’ll be recovering for several more weeks at least but now I’m on the other side of the worst of this ordeal (and mostly out of the pain-killer coma). See you here again soon. In the meantime, don’t break a leg!
Hollywood is not exactly a place where justice flourishes. But aside from all of the sexual assault, and the way some white guys keep failing upward, one of the biggest injustices in Hollywood is the fact that there is no Academy Awards category for stunt work.
I don’t know if you’ve looked at a movie lately, but stunt performers are getting more screen time than ever. Many great pioneers of cinema built their reputations on hair-raising stunts: Think Charlie Chaplin roller-skating backwards on the edge of an abyss in Modern Times, or Buster Keaton riding on a locomotive cow catcher, batting railroad ties off the tracks in The General. Jackie Chan, the king of the Hong Kong stunt performers, has broken so many bones his injuries were shown as outtakes in his film’s credit sequences. Chan’s pain became part of his star attraction.
It’s not like stunt work is not artistic. Look at the greatest film of the 21st century, Mad Max: Fury Road, and tell me the pole cat attack, where the performers are swinging on 20-foot poles mounted on vehicles traveling 80 miles per hour, is not artistic. Even if you do define “art” more narrowly, there’s still the existence of technical categories like Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects. Stunt work is every bit as necessary for the success of the film as the talented professionals in those categories.
And look, if you want to jazz up the rating of the Academy Awards (and who doesn’t want jazzier ratings?), adding categories where Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious could win something is just the ticket.
One person who definitely agrees with me on this, the most pressing issue of our time, is director David Leitch. He’s a former stunt performer himself, having been at one time Brad Pitt’s stunt double of choice, before directing the star in Bullet Train. He’s also the co-creator of the John Wick franchise, which has taken fight choreography into the realm of modern dance. The Fall Guy is his love letter to the world of stunt performers. It’s the rare action movie that really feels like it’s made with love.
It’s also relentlessly inside baseball because there’s nothing film people like more than films about themselves, or “self-reflexivity” in film theory-speak. The Fall Guy is ostensibly based on a TV series from the 1980s starring a post-Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors as a stunt man who solves crimes. (In the 1980s, it was a requirement that every TV star had to solve crimes. But I digress.) In a weird way, The Fall Guy owes a great deal to Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night, the 1971 romantic comedy about a film set that’s always on the verge of falling to pieces but never quite does.
Leitch’s star is Ryan Gosling, and to say he’s perfect for the role of Colt Seavers is a profound understatement. The source material is a notoriously rich vein of Reagan ’80s masculinity, with Majors driving a truck and singing country music between bringing in bounties. Gosling brings some much needed Kenergy to the role. This Colt Seavers cries to Taylor Swift songs. There’s not too many actors who could convincingly make a phone confession of their love to their girlfriend, director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), while also fleeing from assassins in a stolen speedboat.
Jody and Colt met years ago when she was a camera op and he was the preferred stunt double for megastar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). While filming Tom’s latest sci-fi blockbuster, their relationship evolves from a semi-recurring, on-set fling (which is a fairly common thing in the film world) to something more serious. Then, producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) insists Colt do another take of a dangerous high fall. Colt’s luck runs out, and he wakes up on a stretcher with a broken back.
Eighteen months later, Colt is hiding out in Los Angeles, working as a valet at a Mexican restaurant, when Gail catches up with him. Jody is directing her first big feature film, a passion project she and Gail have worked for years to put together. They need Colt for a big stunt, a dangerous cannon roll on a beach. Jody has personally asked for him, Gail says, to support her as she tries to make good on her first big break. More inside baseball: Jody’s “passion project” is apparently a remake of the 1983 movie Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, a 3D debacle so notoriously awful it is nowadays only watched by sick cinematic masochists such as myself.
Colt arrives on set in Sydney and pulls off the spectacular stunt, which in real life broke the Guinness World Record for most on-screen rolls by a car — a fact the film-within-a-film’s stunt coordinator Dan (Winston Duke) points out. But Jody’s not happy to see Colt. She was crushed when he cut off contact after the accident, and tells him via bullhorn as she repeatedly sets him on fire. “That was perfect! Let’s do it again!”
When Colt confronts Gail, she reveals the real reason he’s been brought on board. Tom Ryder has gone missing, and since he and Colt used to be tight, Gail thinks he would be the best at discreetly tracking down the wayward movie star before Jody and Universal Pictures find out he’s gone AWOL.
Gosling and Blunt are breezy and charming, and the supporting cast all understand the assignment. The whole point of the now-forgotten TV series was to cut to the chase, forget about all those pesky story beats, and get to the good stunts. The Fall Guy is at its best when it’s putting its small army of crack stunt performers through their paces with the safety wires and crash bags fully visible for once. It only makes the stunts more harrowing by emphasizing the human frailty of the performers.
