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We Recommend We Recommend

Corey Mesler’s book signing

“Do you know what madstones are?” he asks. A metaphor, clearly. A joke, probably. Madstones is the name of Corey Mesler’s newest poetry collection, and the Burke’s Book Store owner’s not above a little fun at his own expense. “They’re not actually stones,” he explains. “They’re regurgitated matter from ruminants like cows and goats. You find them in fields. It was once believed they had magical healing properties.”

Mesler connects the idea to his own work: “It’s thrown up matter that has some kind of numinous presence to it.”

The anklet Barbara Stanwyck wears in Billy Wilder’s noir masterpiece, Double Indemnity; TV cowboys; words by Frost and Bukowski; Klaus Kinski’s fever dreams; dogs: These are a few items from the buffet table. Mesler’s regurgitations are a tangle of old movie stars, TV shows, stories from the nightlife and bright midwinter mornings. “Inauguration Day 2017” begins with crows and beetles and “it will end badly.”

Madstones

“Pop culture is really where I live,” Mesler says. “I’d rather watch Double Indemnity than read Proust.

“The title poem means a lot to me because it’s the jumping off point for the book. But I like to keep something for the end. And toward the end, there’s a poem that kind of speaks for the book. It’s called ‘Let’s Do This.’

“Let’s throw a party and invite those people who insult us, who are so edgy they have no middle,” he writes. “Let’s assume we’re all in this together, making it up as we go along, singing the old songs, believing in the newest and best revolutions.”

Mesler’s hosting a booksigning event on his home turf. He’ll be reading selections from Madstones Thursday, November 15th at Burke’s.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Kevin McDonald’s comedy workshop

Some people are born funny. Some achieve funniness. Others have funniness thrust upon them. Shakespeare sort of said that. And so did Kids in the Hall co-founder Kevin McDonald, who’s coming to perform stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, and an improv jam with Memphis’ own Bluff City Liars.

“It’s going to be a great workshop,” says comedian and Bluff City Liar Benny Elbows-Frederick. “The Kids in the Hall is one of the greatest sketch shows of all time, and Kevin’s going to teach how they wrote it. The fact that the sketches written in the workshop will be performed on the show Sunday night is icing on the cake.” There are sprinkles on that icing too. Some Memphians who take part in the workshops will also get to perform some of the developed sketches alongside McDonald.

Kevin McDonald

“Honestly, we just got an email from him out of the blue,” Frederick explains. “Someone must have told him about our shows at TheatreWorks. It was a little weird getting an email from someone I’d watched so much growing up. I was a little skeptical that maybe it was a prank.”

Don’t think you’re funny enough to jam with one of the Kids? McDonald has some tips. “I think to be more spontaneously funny you have to attempt to be funny all the time,” he says. “If you try making people laugh a lot, it soon becomes natural to at least try to be funny a lot. You also figure out what jokes work and which ones do not. The more you try comedy, the easier it becomes and the less afraid of it you get.”

The other way of being spontaneously funny is to be born a funny person, McDonald says: “However, no workshop in the world can help you with that. A good workshop can make you funnier — but I believe you are either born naturally funny or you are not.”

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Opinion The Last Word

The News From Hell: Keeping Up With DT

CREDIT: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Remember Brent Kavanaugh? Or was it Bart? Those noxious hearings seem so long ago, I can hardly remember. I seem to recall something about the rollicking activities of Bart and his bros P.J., Squi, and Tobin having a “drink until you puke” contest during Beach Week on a private island somewhere. In between alcohol-fueled episodes of bird-dogging teenage girls, Kavanaugh’s Krewe was directly responsible for the banning of beer on the beach because girls kept getting sand in their Schlitz.

It seems Burt may have received serious mental impairment from Beach Week, because 30 years later, he sat in front of a Senate sub-committee and continued to repeat the phrase, “I like beer,” as if it were some sort of alcoholic zombie mantra.

The all night benders, the shit-faced stupors, along with the alleged sexual assaults, are just the qualities many fine people look for in a Supreme Court Justice. I heard Thurgood Marshall was known to butt-chug some suds while attending keggers at Howard University Law School. I don’t know for sure but many people are saying that. He shouldn’t worry. I understand that Thurgood Marshall is getting more popular every day. He and Frederick Douglass rented a loft in D.C. where they have “brewski orgies” every weekend. Bruce Kavanaugh is still waiting for an invitation.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Jeff Sessions

Trump got his frat-boy “fixer” onto the Supreme Court just in time to quash any pesky subpoenas he might receive to testify before the special counsel. Weren’t the tumultuous Kavanaugh hearings supposed to be the major issue for the Republicans in the mid-terms? Oops. As usual, Trump had to change the subject to make it all about himself. He told his rabid cultists to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” and they did. Either voters believed his racist and maniacal rantings about the caravan filled with ISIS terrorists and horny “big, strong men” walking from Honduras to your town to have their way with your women and spread exotic diseases — or you believed the truth.

Fox News even featured an ex-ICE agent who said the migrants were bringing smallpox, leprosy, and TB, even though smallpox was eradicated in 1980. According to President Norman Bates, Democrats are evil people who “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants to pour in and infest” the nation. When Nancy Pelosi objected to the reference of migrants as “animals,” Trump responded by stating that she “came out in favor of MS-13.” Miraculously, when the election was over, the caravan vanished from the news, except for Trump’s stunt sending 5,000 troops to spend Thanksgiving in West Texas eating turkey and dressing from an MRE pouch.

Trump’s post-election press conference was the most graceless, combative, and condescending yet. Words can’t compare with the YouTube video you should see for yourself. His singling out of CNN’s Jim Acosta as, “A rude, terrible person [who] shouldn’t be working for CNN,” was only the beginning of the cratering of decency. After the press berating, the unforgivably recused Jeff Sessions only lasted an hour. Trump left it to General John Kelly to do the firing. This was expected, but before Trump flew off to France, he installed his pool boy as acting attorney general. The lackey’s name is Matt Whitaker, who looks like a bouncer in a biker bar, but was actually a huckster for World Patent Marketing, a fraudulent invention promotion firm that scammed clients out of $26 million dollars, including the doomed investments from their marketing outreach program for veterans. The FTC shut the company down in 2017 citing “threats, intimidation, and gag clauses,” and froze their assets. Now who doesn’t deserve a job in the White House after that? Especially since Whitaker wrote in USA Today that Hillary should be indicted and appeared on CNN advocating for limitations to the Mueller probe. It’s become obvious that in the lame-duck session, the cornered Trump will do as much damage as possible before the new Congress comes in and demands to see his birth certificate, so expect more Brownshirt rallies.

Cable news pundits assert that Democrats should feel elated for taking back the House, but this election left me disgusted. I’m dismayed that nearly half the country thinks that this sociopath’s blatant racism, sexism, and fear of the “other” is all right by them. This was the most vile, repulsive, and racist campaign in my lifetime, and that was just in Tennessee. The former “image consultant,” Marsha Blackburn, embraced every Trump atrocity, and then some. Her television ads were a disgrace. Sure, Phil Bredesen stepped on his dick with the whole Kavanaugh business, but I naively believed enough people thought he was a good enough governor to be elected. He wasn’t just beaten, he was slaughtered, proving that fear-mongering works among the rural folk. Our little corner of Tennessee was a blue canoe in the midst of a redneck sea. Trump has pledged a “war footing” if the Democrats begin investigating his abuses, meaning nothing gets done for the foreseeable future.

There hasn’t been one calm day since this duck-tailed Colonel Parker clone took office. California is currently experiencing the deadliest fires in its history, on top of the 12 people slaughtered in a bar by a twisted gunman with an illegal extended magazine. Trump has yet to utter a word. He has, however, announced the winners of this year’s Presidential Medal of Freedom awards, including right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia, baseball legend Babe Ruth, and home-boy, Elvis Presley. At least he doesn’t have to worry if they’ll be showing up for the medal ceremony.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Book Features Books

Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller.

If ever there was a book that’s right in my wheelhouse it’s this bookseller’s memoir. I was sent by God to review it. The Diary of a Bookseller is just that, a sincerely rendered, day-to-day year in the life of an antiquarian bookseller in a small Scottish town. I was prepared to enjoy the particular and peculiar differences between what he does regularly in his used bookstore, across the pond, as compared to what I have done in mine over the past 30 years at Burke’s. But, what I found more interesting is that his days are so similar to mine. His customers could be our customers. His worries are assuredly our worries. His joys are our joys. Even his stock is somewhat similar to our stock, both weighted toward local histories and writers, both a mix of used books and select new books. The similarities pile up; I won’t bore you with others.

It’s hard for me to determine whether or not this book is for anyone who doesn’t work in a bookstore, especially an antiquarian bookstore. But, part of the charm, or at least guilty pleasure of the book, is Bythell’s dour humor and his barbed tongue. He dishes on his employees: “Nicky arrived at 9:13 a.m., wearing the black Canadian ski suit that she bought in the charity shop in Port William for £5. This is her standard uniform between the months of November and April. It is a padded onesie, designed for skiing, and it makes her look like the lost Teletubby.” Or later this, about another: “I have a feeling that ‘outraged’ may well be her factory setting.” He dishes on his customers: “A customer came to the counter and said, ‘I’ve looked under the W section of the fiction and I can’t find anything by Rider Haggard.’ I suggested that he have a look under the H section.”

His store is called The Bookshop and it is in Wigtown. His stock is eclectic, everything from cheap Agatha Christie mysteries to pricey and scarce histories from the 16th and 17th centuries. His insights into the buying and selling of used and rare books were as exciting, for this reader, as his sarcastic quips.

In general, in his daily diary, he talks about the books he’s acquired, what he’s reading, the friends he’s made in the business, his partner Anna, his fishing trips, the store’s faulty heating, the estate sales he travels to in search of new stock, and what irritates him. Many things irritate him; his sardonic wit overrides everything. He also notes how many online orders the shop received and how many they were able to fulfill (we do this daily also) and how many customers he had that day and how much money they pulled in. In a singularly British manner, it’s a quaint way to concoct a book.

Of course, working with the public is a constant source of good material for anyone writing a memoir. People are fascinating, ridiculous and sublime, predictably drab or constantly unpredictable, funny and sad, sharp and dull. A year spent noting the passing parade, especially if one is a lively observer, as Blythell is, makes for entertaining reading. Hemingway said, “This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it.” Blythell sees, and he also has a keen waggishness which makes his reflections funny and memorable and this book a hoot.

Finally, it’s also the observation of small, human scenes like this which makes the author a delightful companion through a year of bookselling: “When the old man in the crumpled suit came to the counter to pay for the copy of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, I discreetly pointed out that his fly was open. He glanced down — as if for confirmation of this — then looked back at me and said, ‘A dead bird can’t fall out of its nest,’ and left the shop, fly still agape.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Nightcaps

CREDIT: Ivan Mateev | Dreamstime.com

Late one night last week, I wound up at the bar at Catherine & Mary’s. It was about an hour before closing, and, on a whim, I decided to meet friends for a quick drink. I was already wearing my pajamas — Target pajamas, the type that look more like work-out wear than lingerie — and, I am ashamed to write today, I just put on a jean jacket and a pair of clogs before heading out the door. Truth is, I was tired, both from work and from recent sinus surgery, and it seemed easier to go with the flow than to stay home as-is or get dressed back up before driving Downtown.

My friends didn’t blink. Neither did the bartender, when I blurted out my obvious fashion faux pas. I pointed to my PJs, and he nodded knowingly and whipped together a deliciously foamy concoction of blood orange juice and gin, topped with a rosemary sprig and served in a coupe glass. That one drink made me feel like my pajamas were a chic, clever joke that he, my friends, and I were all in on. And within an hour, I was back home and climbing into bed, where that dreamy taste of gin, blood orange, and herbs quickly sent me off to slumberland.

Ivan Mateev | Dreamstime.com

French Connection

The next night, I was all dressed up — striped pajama bottoms, an old T-shirt, and wool slippers — with nowhere to go. Instead of heading back out, I turned to the internet, where I found dozens of bedtime cocktails to taste-test. Nightcaps, it turns out, are really a thing. The trick is to just have one — too much alcohol at bedtime, doctors warn, and you can have overly vivid dreams, night sweats, disturbed REM patterns, and insomnia.

My current favorite, which is particularly perfect for these cooler nights, is the Hot Chai Toddy. I found the drink on a spirits website called Supercall; apparently, it originated at a British bar called the Gin Garden. First, you brew a cup of Chai, which I did using a new electric water kettle. While that’s happening, simmer one and ¾ ounces of apple juice with a cinnamon stick and a spoonful of honey. Pour the tea and the apple juice concoction into a mug, then stir in one and ¾ ounces of gin. Squeeze a lemon over it, or add a few lemon slices to the mug. Sip, then slide into bed.

Then there’s cognac. If you’re drinking this distilled wine straight, look for bottles with the VSOP rating, which signals that the cognac was aged at least four years (the acronym stands for “very superior old pale”). I tried an ounce solo one night; the next, I combined cognac and amaretto liqueur (one and a half ounces of the former and ¾ ounce of the latter). Traditionally served over ice in an old fashioned glass, this drink, called the French Connection, had depth, due to the cognac, while the almondy taste of the liqueur reminded me of marzipan.

This weekend, I discovered the Lavender Honey Cream Cocktail, a sophisticated milkshake-like drink that required making lavender honey syrup, which is easier than it sounds, but still, something I saved for my less somnolent hours since it involved turning on the stove. The following night, I was ready — and so I combined one and a half ounces vodka, one ounce of heavy cream, an egg white, and an ounce of lavender honey syrup in an ice-filled cocktail shaker and gently shook it for 30 seconds. Then, I strained the drink into a cocktail glass and retired to the living room, where I put on a Nina Simone album and lit a scented candle from Anthropologie. Nina sounded theatrically melancholy; I sipped my drink and felt my eyelids grow heavy. Perhaps it did the trick too well — I didn’t manage to rinse my glass or the cocktail shaker before conking out, which meant that both items had to soak in the sink the following morning.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Changes at Interim and Evelyn & Olive.

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

David Todd, the newish chef of Interim, has a tattoo of a hamburger and hotdog robbing a bank. To him, it means “grub life,” as if to say this path is inevitable. He also has another tattoo of a cat DJing and spinning a pizza, so there’s that too.

But back to that “grub life” thing, Todd says he’s spent the last 22 years (he’s 40) working in various restaurants — both high- and low-end — all around town. He was recommended to the Interim job by the restaurant’s former chef David Krog.

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

David Todd

“I told [the owners] I absolutely, 100 percent can do this job. They had heard good things,” he says. “We had a conversation about food, my vision of food. It went from there.”

Todd, who’s been at Interim now about three months, says it took some time for his culinary vision to gel, but maturity and sobriety helped him focus on the number one thing for him: flavor.

Todd says he’s got the taste version of photographic memory, so he can match up flavors of things he’s eaten sometimes years apart.

Interim’s new Duck BBQ sandwich

It’s helped him punch up Interim’s menu, with such dishes as the Duck BBQ sandwich, with duck confit, golden raisin barbecue sauce, kale slaw, and a pretzel bun. “It’s Memphis in a nutshell,” he says. “It’s fancy, but it’s barbecue.”

Interim’s new Braised Short Rib

Another Todd original is the Braised Short Rib with sweet potato, carrot puree, haricot vert, honey-thyme demi-glace.

A couple dishes he didn’t touch were the Mac & Cheese Casserole and the Crispy Gulf Oysters. That was part of the owner’s edict to stabilize and reconnect. Meaning, Todd brought consistency to the restaurant. For example, that beloved Mac & Cheese did not have a set recipe. He created one. As far as reconnecting, Todd vowed to make his existing customers happy, while energizing his new customers.

He also had to connect with his new staff. He was well aware he was the third chef at Interim in a year. “You have to treat people with respect, put in the hours,” he says.

One staffer he turned to was pastry chef Franck Oysel, whom he calls Interim’s biggest asset and a great sounding board. Todd consulted with Oysel on the menu. Oysel dissuaded him from certain items and convinced him to bring back mussels. Todd’s flourish was to serve those mussels in a coconut curry.

Todd is giving his all into this latest gig. “For me,” he says, “it’s like cracking my chest open and putting my heart out there.”

Interim, 5040 Sanderlin, (818-0821), interimrestaurant.com

When Wayne Lumsden transferred from New York to Memphis for his job, he really didn’t know too much about the city. In fact, he was expecting mountains. But, soon enough, Lumsden, a Jamaican native, settled in and founded the Caribbean Association of Memphis.

His fellow Jamaicans like the dishes at Evelyn & Olive, though they felt they could use some tuning up. That’s what Lumsden has been doing since he took over ownership at the restaurant from Tony Hall and Vicki Newsum in June. He owns the restaurant with his wife, Caroline.

Fans (like me) shouldn’t worry too much. The menu is the same. That terrific Rasta Pasta is still there, as are the popular oxtails and grilled jerk shrimp. Lumsden defines the menu as “American/Jamaican.”

Lumsden says he’s been tweaking the spices and working on the method of cooking to make the meals a bit more authentic. He says Jamaican cooking is mostly stovetop. “It’s stuff we ate as a kid,” he says.

Some of the true Jamaican fare he plans on offering soon: coconut steamed salmon and Caribbean fried chicken. For winter, he’s really going to up the game. “You wouldn’t believe,” he says, as he describes soups with chicken feet and goat’s head.

Lumsden says he’s got a regular clientele from the Evelyn & Olive regulars; he’d like to build on that. He’s using the restaurant’s original menu, making it more authentic. “Your favorite things got better,” he says.

Evelyn & Olive, 630 Madison, (748-5422) evelynandolive.com

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Gordon Ramsay’s in Memphis to Save a Restaurant!

CREDIT: Matthew Preston

Just when you think it’s going to be another typical Wednesday in Memphis, snow starts to fall from the sky, and you look out your window to see Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell on Wheels” 18-wheeler rounding the corner of your office building. The truck is part of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares reboot: 24 Hours to Hell and Back.  Matthew Preston

Gordon Ramsay’s revamped restaurant renovation/intervention show is essentially the same as the original Kitchen Nightmares, but the makeover has been consolidated into a single day, replete with a countdown timer for good measure. The show purports to be a simple kitchen renovation show, and installs known and hidden cameras to record the restaurant in action. Some time later, Gordon Ramsay will show up with a group to dine at that restaurant, in a prosthetic makeup disguise, only to reveal his identity and berate the awfulness of the food mid-meal.

The “Hell on Wheels” truck dishes education and shame in equal measure. It unfolds to become a kitchen where Ramsay’s team teaches the chefs of the restaurant in question how to cook the new menu, and produces a large video board where the restaurant’s staff and patrons witness the hidden footage captured before Ramsay’s arrival. Those videos typically feature pretty gross things, ranging from unsanitary kitchen practices to toxic workplace exchanges, outbursts at patrons, animal infestations, and structural issues with the building.

The Flyer isn’t aware of the restaurant that’ll be featured on 24 Hours to Hell and Back, but candidates on Ramsay’s show tend to be restaurants that were once considered good, located in a desirable and lucrative part of town, and frequently have a strong-headed owner or chef that’s in denial about the business failing, and contributing to that failure with their apathy or toxicity.

As a big time Gordon Ramsay addict, I’m thrilled for Memphis to get airtime on the show. As a dude who works downtown, I’m hoping to become a lunch regular at a revamped restaurant nearby.

Gordon Ramsay’s in Memphis to Save a Restaurant!

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News News Blog

TVA CEO Set to Retire in April

CREDIT: TVA

TVA

CEO Bill Johnson

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) president and CEO Bill Johnson will retire next year, the utility announced Wednesday.

The TVA board will conduct an internal and external search for Johnson’s replacement, which could take a couple of months. He will remain as CEO through the process and help to transition the new leader into the role.

Johnson, 64, joined TVA in 2013 as the organization’s second CEO. He is the highest-paid federal employee with a pay and benefits package that tops $6 million.

“He improved TVA’s financial health and operational performance, engaged TVA employees, and established better relationships with our customers, elected officials, industry regulators, and community leaders,” TVA board chairman Richard Howorth said in a statement.

Here’s a list TVA offered of the milestones achieved during Johnson’s tenure:

• TVA debt reduced by $3.5 billion

• reduced the effective price of energy for TVA customers 2 percent from 2013 levels

• diversified TVA’s energy portfolio, and making significant progress toward cleaner energy options

• completed and is bringing online the nation’s first new nuclear power plant of the 21st century, Watts Bar Nuclear Unit 2, and improved the performance of TVA’s entire nuclear fleet

• completed the Paradise combined-cycle natural gas plant ahead of schedule and $220 million under budget

• completed the state-of-the-art Allen combined-cycle plant [in Memphis] for reliability, reduced emissions, and flexibility

• completed the $1 billion clean-air improvement project at Gallatin Fossil Plant

• maintained 99.999 percent reliability in the delivery of TVA power while investing in the power system

• began work on a $300 million multi-year initiative to upgrade the power system’s fiber optic telecommunication system

“TVA has a direct, positive impact on the quality of life in the Tennessee Valley, and I have been privileged and honored to lead this organization and the great people who work here,” said Johnson in a statement.

U.S. Senator Bob Corker said Johnson “has exceeded all expectations.”

“With a focus on economic development, improving rate competitiveness, reducing debt, and increasing customer satisfaction, Bill and his team have ensured TVA will continue to play a critical role in the economic success of the Tennessee Valley for decades to come,” Corker said.

Johnson was also widely criticized for adding luxury jets and a luxury helicopter to the TVA fleet. TVA was also scolded by its own Office of Inspector General for the use of those aircraft.

Maya Smith

TVA CEO Bill Johnson (right) met resistance to the new rate change when he visited Memphis earlier this year.

During his time, TVA was also criticized for drilling wells into the Memphis Sand Aquifer for a plan to pump 3.5 gallons of the city’s famously pure drinking water to cool its new energy plant here. Johnson told Memphis City Council members he would have made another choice if he had the decision to do over.

Johnson’s appearance at Memphis City Hall earlier this year prompted protests over a TVA proposal to change the city’s energy rates.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s executive director Stephen Smith issued this statement in response to today’s announcement:

“For the last six years, Bill Johnson has steered TVA in the direction of serving corporate interests over public interests, evident in preferential rates and rate restructuring for corporate customers which have caused residential and small businesses’ energy bills to rise.

TVA has primarily been focused on serving large corporations’ interest in renewable energy, leaving behind small businesses and households that also want to take advantage of this cleaner, more independent energy choice.

And TVA has been consistently opaque, hiding details about policy decisions from public scrutiny and being less transparent, as we saw with this week’s so-called listening session which was neither web-streamed nor held the same day as the board meeting itself.

We believe it is imperative for the board to appoint a successor with a demonstrated commitment to and interest in public power values.”

Categories
News News Blog

Leaders Work to Revamp Public Art Guidelines

CREDIT: UrbanArt Commission

UrbanArt Commission

UAC’s piece ‘rise’ painted at Humes Preparatory Academy

Leaders in the art community, Memphis City Council staff, and city officials have been working, somewhat quietly, to streamline the rules and processes around public art here.

The city council voted in March to place a 120-day moratorium on art projects going up on public right-of-ways, and then re-approved that measure again last month.

The moratorium exempts projects funded by the city’s Percent-for-Art program, as well as certain ongoing projects by the Downtown Memphis Commission and the Memphis Medical District Collaborative.

It was first put in place after the council publicly criticized one organization’s murals. The council deemed a handful of murals sanctioned by the nonprofit Paint Memphis as offensive and, in some cases, “satanic.” Some of the less popular murals featured Elvis Presley with a snake coming from his orifices, a cow skull, a dancing skeleton, and a zombie.

After months of heated debate with Paint Memphis and a vote to remove six murals, the council approved the moratorium. The hold was originally implemented to establish a “road map” or legislation that regulates art in public spaces done by outside entities, chairman Berlin Boyd said at the time.

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Though the council has not been very vocal about their ongoing efforts and quickly reinstated the moratorium at a meeting last month without any discussion, since then, Boyd said the body and others have been working to improve legislation.

Included in the effort, Lauren Kennedy, executive director of the UrbanArt Commission (UAC), has been working with council staff, as well as Nick Oyler, manager of the city’s Bikeway and Pedestrian Program to improve the process of handling public requests for public art.

“The council isn’t trying to stop public art,” Kennedy said. “The goal is to sit back and assess the guidelines for public art on city-owned property. There are good intentions here and this will be useful down the road.”

The Bikeway and Pedestrian Program, which manages the city’s artistic crosswalk/intersection program, is one of many the city divisions that often gets public art requests. Kennedy said the program has strong guidelines in place for handling those requests.

The process, in part, consists of an entity requesting to install an artistic crosswalk/intersection, submitting a design for review, and fulfilling a number of requirements to ensure public safety and proper maintenance associated with the project, Oyler said.

“Perhaps one reason that the program could be described as working is that we have a written guidelines and policy document for the program,” Oyler said. “This sets standards and expectations for everyone involved – the artist, sponsoring entity, and city staff.”

The idea is to develop those guidelines to be applied across different city divisions, Kennedy said.

The new guidelines will lay out the how the city should respond to public art requests, as well as ensure there are opportunities for design review processes to “make sure some of the things that happened in the past don’t come up again,” Kennedy said.

“We want to find a solution to address concerns of the council and administration, but also trying to make sure that the process put in place is friendly enough for people to navigate and doesn’t create too many barriers,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said the goal is to have the guidelines completed before the current moratorium ends in March 2019.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on Tiger Football

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

• Despite currently occupying fourth place in the American Athletic Conference’s West Division, the Tigers could have a chance to win the division as they kick off against SMU Friday night in Texas. A lot must happen, so take a deep breath.

(1) Memphis (3-3 in AAC play) must beat the Mustangs and finish the regular season with a win over Houston. The Cougars are currently tied with SMU (and Tulane) atop the division with a league record of 4-2. Even if Houston beats Tulane this week, two Memphis wins would give the Tigers the tiebreaker with a win over the Cougars on November 23rd. Likewise, a win Friday night would give the Tigers the tiebreaker over SMU. (2) Tulane must lose its final two games, at Houston Thursday night and at home against Navy on November 24th. The Green Wave would win a tiebreaker with Memphis by virtue of their win over the Tigers on September 28th. (Tulane could ruin the fun and eliminate the Tigers with a win at Houston Thursday night.)
Larry Kuzniewski

Brady White

• He’s not Paxton Lynch or Riley Ferguson, but Memphis quarterback Brady White has had a very good season. He currently ranks second in the AAC in pass efficiency, behind Houston’s D’Eriq King but ahead of one McKenzie Milton (UCF’s all-conference QB). He’s thrown 22 touchdown passes and only three interceptions. (Ferguson is the only quarterback in Memphis history to have a season with 20 more TD passes than picks.) With 2,512 yards, White has a chance to become the fifth Memphis quarterback to toss for 3,000 yards in a season. The junior transfer doesn’t do spectacular. He’d be the first to tell you. In basketball terms, White is a facilitator. With Darrell Henderson and Patrick Taylor taking turns behind him and a veteran offensive line in front of him, White’s been tasked to not make game-changing mistakes. For the most part, he’s handled the role with aplomb.


• Deep in the shadow of Henderson’s spectacular season has been a stellar campaign by sophomore wideout Damonte Coxie. The sophomore from Louisiana has caught 58 passes (third in the AAC) for 949 yards (second) and seven touchdowns. Coxie had the impossible assignment of following All-America Anthony Miller as the Tigers’ top downfield threat. With 51 more yards, Coxie will join Miller and Isaac Bruce as the only Memphis receivers with a 1,000-yard season to their credit.