Tag: Chris Herrington

Categories
News News Blog

New Media Venture May Be Home for Calkins, Biggs, Herrington

CREDIT: G. Crescoli, Unsplash

G. Crescoli, Unsplash

Some new news-media venture is in the works in Memphis, sources close to the move said Thursday morning, and it may be the new home for some of The Commercial Appeal’s most-recognized bylines.

Though details are scanty, a read of the tea leaves in a Smart City Memphis blog post said that new venture might be the new home for sports columnists Geoff Calkins, food and dining writer Jennifer Biggs, and editor and columnist Chris Herrington.

Smart City Memphis said Biggs and Herrington have both resigned from The CA. Sports radio station ESPN 92.9 tweeted that Calkins, too, was leaving. Calkins has a show on the station.

New Media Venture May Be Home for Calkins, Biggs, Herrington

Smart City Memphis claimed that while the details weren’t readily available, the new venture seemed to stem from ”an aggressively expanding (The) Memphis Daily News.” However, sources said Thursday morning the new venture is not an outgrowth of that newspaper.

Eric Barnes, publisher of The Daily News, said he could not comment on the situation.

The Smart City Memphis piece harshly criticizes Gannett Co.’s stewardship of The Commercial Appeal, noting “that (Gannett) has in only three years, eviscerated even those fond memories of a time when (the newspaper) mattered so much to the Memphis region.”

A source said the new venture involves many people disappointed in what The CA has become.

Neither Biggs nor Calkins had formally announced their moves Thursday morning. However, the Smart City Memphis post accurately pointed to the resignation of Chris Herrington, an editor at The CA and author of the daily online “The 9:01” column, and of a new place for him to ply his trade. Herrington announced on his personal blog, “Sing All Kinds,” that Wednesday was his final day at The CA.

“In the absence of another compelling opportunity within this city, I may well have been there as long as they would have had me, though, like most Memphians I lament the paper’s shift toward being a corporate cog in a Nashville-centric Tennessee network,” Herrington wrote.

He said, while he can’t divulge much about his new employment situation at the moment, that “I’ll re-emerge later this summer, writing about many of the same topics in many of the same ways, but in different formats and at different frequencies.”

The Flyer will continue to follow this development and will update this story when new information comes to light.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Grit and Bare It

CREDIT: Poster by 816 Creative

On September 24th, Commercial Appeal Grizzlies beat writer Ron Tillery wrote a column previewing the team’s prospects at the center position for 2016. Astute readers could see that Tillery, who’s been covering the Grizzlies since the team’s arrival in Memphis in 2001, was a bit miffed.

He wrote, for example: “Several weeks after the Commercial Appeal learned about Marc Gasol’s return to full basketball activities and requested an interview with the center, the Grizzlies released an ‘injury update’ on their website.

“The report confirmed what the Commercial Appeal learned. The only difference is the franchise wouldn’t allow Gasol to speak with the newspaper. Instead, Gasol produced a statement on the Grizzlies’ website.”

Tillery mentioned the lack of access to Gasol a couple more times in his column, attributing another quote from him, thusly: “… Gasol, as told to the Grizzlies website several weeks after declining an interview request by the Commercial Appeal.”

It may be a sign of things to come. Last Friday, the Grizzlies introduced their new branded-content website, Grind City Media, and announced that they’d hired a writer — highly respected former ESPN columnist Mike Wallace — to create content about the team. The team also hired popular sports-talk radio host Chris Vernon (who recently split with ESPN 92.9 FM) to air his show via Grind City Media.

Nothing particularly wrong with any of this, of course. Increasingly, organizations of various kinds are seeking to control their image and the public’s perceptions of their operation. It’s also another way to monetize the Grizzlies brand.

Similar outfits abound in Memphis, including Higher Ground, Choose 901, Thrillist, and other websites that paint a relentlessly upbeat picture of the city and its businesses. Politicians are also in on the trend, using social media — Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram — to promote themselves. Mayor Strickland, for example, writes a weekly email, chronicling his administration’s accomplishments and activities.

Again, nothing wrong with any of this. Except that the public is increasingly being challenged to discern if what they’re reading or listening to or watching was created to push an agenda (or sell tickets or promote the chamber of commerce or garner votes) or if it’s attempting to be objective. Branded content is at its core, public relations, committed to blowing sunshine up your posterior. Journalism, conversely, is committed to reporting all sides, the good and the bad. It’s important that we, as media consumers, know the difference.

When it comes to the Grizzlies, I get it: Sports reporting is entertainment reporting, for the most part — the toy department of journalism. But real — or at least, embarrassing — stories do happen, stories that, say, an NBA franchise might not want getting out to the public. Mike Wallace, for all his admitted talent, won’t be writing about locker-room dissension or scraps on the team plane. He won’t be criticizing the coach’s bench decisions or the front office’s deals. That’s where Tillery or our Kevin Lipe or Chris Herrington or other local sports reporters come in.

The hope is, of course, that the two information streams will overlap and intersect and ultimately expand the reportage on the team to the benefit of its fans. The fear, at least for local sports-media types, is that the team will restrict access to reporters in favor of giving interviews and “scoops” to its own content providers. That kind of adversarial relationship won’t go well for anyone — fans, reporters, and ultimately, the team itself.

As Memphis’ only professional sports franchise, the Grizzlies are a civic asset that brings us the joy of victory, the sweet agony of defeat, the intrigue of locker-room drama, and the god-given right to second-guess the coach. The team would be wise to recognize that we’re big enough to handle all of it. And so are they.

Categories
Flyer Flashback News

Looking Back at the Flyer’s Elvis Coverage

Elvis Presley is alive, and he works at the Memphis Flyer.  

The King has been one of the hardest-working, most-productive characters in the pages of the Memphis Flyer since its beginning.

Google “Elvis” and “Memphis Flyer” and you can feel the internet slow down, sucking bandwidth from Vegas to Tupelo as it thinks of all the times the King has appeared here. 

The Flyer was launched in 1989. Presley died in 1977. So our coverage of the man didn’t begin until a full

12 years after his death. But that barely matters. 

If we could get an accurate count of the names most mentioned in the paper and digital pages of the Flyer, Presley’s would either be high on the list or at the top. No politician — no matter how powerful or impactful or colorful or corrupt or wonderful — has been able to draw the ink in Memphis like Elvis.    

And no one at the Flyer loves Elvis (or Elvis stories, at least) more than Chris Davis, our own Fly on the Wall columnist. Elvis stories fall from the sky across the globe and our Pesky Fly catches them and pools them together in an infinite well of words tagged “Neverending Elvis” 

Here’s a taste of his collection from Britain’s Daily Mail: “A party of friends have admitted they were all shook up when the King’s face appeared in the ashes of a garden fire.” 

Also, the King allows for amazing headline writing: “Elvis is Alive and Living With Tupac and Bruce Lee,” “Elvis vs. Guns,” and “Happy Chinese Elvis, Memphis.”

One of the most-viewed, most-shared Flyer stories is Presley’s fictional obituary written by Chris Herrington and Greg Akers in 2007, the 30th anniversary of his death. Presley didn’t die in 1977, the story said. No, he “died Monday, August 6th [2007], of cardiac arrest, at his Horn Lake, Mississippi, home. He was 72 years old.”

Presley barely survived his near-fatal overdose of drugs in 1977, according to the obit. He fired his longtime manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker and bought a ranch in Horn Lake. He opened and closed a fast food chain called Gladys’ Kitchen. He turned Graceland into a Cadillac dealership. He bought the company that made Mountain Valley Spring Water. He recorded duets with Dolly Parton and Tina Turner, and he reunited the Million Dollar Quartet. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, landed an NFL team in Memphis, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and returned to music and the movies. Only after that and more, as our obituary read, did Presley die.

Presley’s spirit has survived in Memphis thanks in large part to his home, Graceland. His real story has been preserved and told there to hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit the home each year. They come to Memphis just to walk through the gates of Graceland, to play Elvis Bingo, hear lectures, or hold a candle in the annual graveside vigil that officially closes out Elvis Week. 

Leaders of Elvis Presley Enterprises hope that a $76 million planned facelift and upgrade of the amenities and facilities around Graceland will keep Elvis tourists coming back to Memphis for years to come.

Keeping that flame alive will hopefully keep Elvis taking care of business right here in the pages of the Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Sweet Thereafter

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Memphis Flyer (our first quarter quell, as it were), I have chosen my personal favorite film from each year since the Flyer began publication. Then, for each of those films, I unearthed and have excerpted some quotes from the review we ran at the time. — Greg Akers

1989: #1 Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch (#2 Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee)

“While all the scenes in Mystery Train are identifiable by anyone living west of Goodlett, their geographical relationship gets altered to a point where we start to trust Jarmusch more than our own memories.” — Jim Newcomb, March 8, 1990

“Filmed primarily at the downtown corner of South Main and Calhoun, Jarmusch does not use the Peabody Hotel, the Mississippi River, Graceland, or most of the other locations that the Chamber of Commerce would thrust before any visiting filmmaker. His domain concerns exactly that territory which is not regularly tread by the masses, and his treatment of Memphis is likely to open a few eyes.”
— Robert Gordon, March 8, 1990

1990: #1 Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (#2 Reversal of Fortune, Barbet Schroeder)

“This may not be De Niro’s best-ever performance, but he’s got that gangster thang down pat. His accent is flawless, his stature is perfect, and, boy, does he give Sansabelt slacks new meaning.”
— The Cinema Sisters, September 27, 1990

1991: #1 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron (#2 The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme)

“Terminator 2 is an Alfa Romeo of a movie: pricey, sleek, fast, and loaded with horsepower. By comparison, the first Terminator was a Volkswagen. On the whole, I’d rather have a Volkswagen — they’re cheap and reliable. But, hey, Alfas can be fun too.” — Ed Weathers, July 11, 1993

1992: #1 Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley (#2 The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann)

“Mamet’s brilliantly stylized look at the American Dream’s brutality as practiced by low-rent real estate salesmen who would put the screws to their mothers to keep their own tawdry jobs doesn’t relax its hard muscle for a moment. In the hands of this extraordinary cast, it is like a male chorus on amphetamines singing a desparate, feverish ode to capitalism and testosterone run amuck.”
— Hadley Hury, October 15, 1992

1993: #1 Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater (#2 Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg)

“Dazed and Confused is a brief trip down memory lane. The characters are not just protagonists and antagonists. They are clear representations of the folks we once knew, and their feelings are those we had years and years ago. Linklater doesn’t, however, urge us to get mushy. He is just asking us to remember.”
— Susan Ellis, November 4, 1993

1994: #1 Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (#2 Ed Wood, Tim Burton)

“Even though Tarantino is known for his bratty insistence on being shocking by way of gratuitous violence and ethnic slurs, it’s the little things that mean so much in a Tarantino film — camera play, dialogue, performances, and music.”
— Susan Ellis, October 20, 1994

1995: #1 Heat, Michael Mann
(#2 Toy Story, John Lasseter)

“I’m sick of lowlifes and I’m sick of being told to find them fascinating by writers and directors who get a perverse testosterone rush in exalting these lives to a larger-than-life heroism with slow-motion, lovingly lingered-over mayhem and death, expertly photographed and disturbingly dehumanizing.”
— Hadley Hury, December 21, 1995

1996: #1 Lone Star, John Sayles
(#2 Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Although Lone Star takes place in a dusty Texas border town, it comes into view like a welcome oasis on the landscape of dog-day action films … Chris Cooper and Sayles’ sensitive framing of the performance produce an arresting character who inhabits a world somewhere between Dostoevsky and Larry McMurtry.”
— Hadley Hury, August 8, 1996

1997: #1 L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson (#2 The Apostle, Robert Duvall)

L.A. Confidential

“L.A. Confidential takes us with it on a descent, and not one frame of this remarkable film tips its hand as to whether we’ll go to hell or, if we do, whether we’ll come back. We end up on the edge of our seat, yearning for two protagonists, both anti-heroes … to gun their way to a compromised moral victory, to make us believe again in at least the possibility of trust.”

— Hadley Hury, October 2, 1997

1998: #1 Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (#2 The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Spielberg is finishing the job he began with Schindler’s List. He’s already shown us why World War II was fought; now he shows us how. … Spielberg’s message is that war is horrifying yet sometimes necessary. And that may be true. But I still prefer the message gleaned from Peter Weir’s 1981 masterpiece, Gallipoli: War is stupid.” — Debbie Gilbert, July 30, 1998

1999: #1 Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson (#2 The End of the Affair, Neil Jordan)

“Magnolia is a film in motion; there’s a cyclical nature where paths are set that will be taken. It’s about fate, not will, where the bad will hurt and good will be redeemed.”
— Susan Ellis, January 13, 2000

2000: #1 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (#2 You Can Count On Me, Kenneth Lonergan)

“Thrilling as art and entertainment, as simple movie pleasure, and as Oscar-baiting ‘prestige’ cinema. Early hype has the film being compared to Star Wars. … An even more apt comparison might be Singin’ in the Rain, a genre celebration that Crouching Tiger at least approaches in its lightness, joy, and the sheer kinetic wonder of its fight/dance set pieces.”
— Chris Herrington, February 1, 2001

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2001: #1 A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg (#2 Amélie,
Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

“What happens when Eyes Wide Shut meets E.T.? What does the audience do? And who is the audience?”
— Chris Herrington, June 28, 2001

2002: #1 City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
(#2 Adaptation., Spike Jonze)

“The mise-en-scène of the film is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyper-stylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.”

— Chris Herrington, April 3, 2003

Lost in Translation

2003: #1 Lost in Translation, Sofia
Coppola (#2 Mystic River, Clint Eastwood)

“Lost in Translation is a film short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with life and nuance and emotion. … What Coppola seems to be going for here is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance.”
— Chris Herrington, October 2, 2003

2004: #1 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry
(#2 Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino)

“This is the best film I’ve seen this year and one of the best in recent memory. Funny, witty, charming, and wise, it runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy without falling into either farce or melodrama. Its insights into human loss and redemption are complicated and difficult, well thought out but with the illusion and feel of absolute spontaneity and authentic in its construction — and then deconstruction — of human feelings and memory.”
— Bo List, March 25, 2004

2005: #1 Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee (#2 Hustle & Flow, Craig Brewer)

“The film is a triumph because it creates characters of humanity and anguish, in a setup that could easily become a target for homophobic ridicule. Jack and Ennis are a brave challenge to the stereotyped image of homosexuals in mainstream films, their relations to their families and to each other are truthful and beautifully captured.” — Ben Popper, January 12, 2006

2006: #1 Children of Men,
Alfonso Cuarón (#2 The Proposition, John Hillcoat)

“As aggressively bleak as Children of Men is, it’s ultimately a movie about hope. It’s a nativity story of sort, complete with a manger. And from city to forest to war zone to a lone boat in the sea, it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.”
— Chris Herrington, January 11, 2007

2007 #1 Zodiac, David Fincher
(#2 There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson)

“[Zodiac is] termite art, too busy burrowing into its story and characters to bother with what you think.”
— Chris Herrington, March 8, 2007

2008: #1 Frozen River, Courtney Hunt (#2 The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan)

“Frozen River is full of observations of those who are living less than paycheck to paycheck: digging through the couch for lunch money for the kids; buying exactly as much gas as you have change in your pocket; popcorn and Tang for dinner. The American Dream is sought after by the dispossessed, the repossessed, and the pissed off.”
— Greg Akers, August 28, 2008

2009: #1 Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze (#2 Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron)

“I know how ridiculous it is to say something like, ‘Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best kids’ movies in the 70 years since The Wizard of Oz.’ So I won’t. But I’m thinking it.”
— Greg Akers, October 15, 2009

2010: #1 Inception, Christopher Nolan (#2 The Social Network,
David Fincher)

“Nolan has created a complex, challenging cinematic world but one that is thought through and whose rules are well-communicated. But the ingenuity of the film’s concept never supersedes an emotional underpinning that pays off mightily.”
— Chris Herrington, July 15, 2010

2011: #1 The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick (#2 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson)

“The Tree of Life encompasses a level of artistic ambition increasingly rare in modern American movies — Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood might be the closest recent comparison, and I’m not sure it’s all that close. This is a massive achievement. An imperfect film, perhaps, but an utterly essential one.”
— Chris Herrington, June 23, 2011

2012: #1 Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow (#2 Lincoln, Steven Spielberg)

“Zero Dark Thirty is essentially an investigative procedural about an obsessive search for knowledge, not unlike such touchstones as Zodiac or All the President’s Men. And it has an impressive, immersive experiential heft, making much better use of its nearly three-hour running time than any competing award-season behemoth.”
— Chris Herrington, January 10, 2013 

2013: #1 12 Years a Slave, Steve
McQueen (#2 Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón)

“Slavery bent human beings into grotesque shapes, on both sides of the whip. But 12 Years a Slave is more concerned with the end of it. McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are black. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t be notable but is. If you consider 12 Years a Slave with The Butler and Fruitvale Station, you can see a by-God trend of black filmmakers making mainstream movies about the black experience, something else that shouldn’t be worth mentioning but is.”
— Greg Akers, October 31, 2013

Categories
Flyer Flashback News

Death/Rebirth

When the Flyer first reported on its website in December 2012 that local rock club the Hi-Tone Café was closing, you would have thought we broke the news that Midtown itself had shut down.

Before his early 2013 cover story on Hi-Tone’s last night in business, former Flyer music editor Chris Herrington put up a simple post that confirmed the Hi-Tone’s Poplar location would be closing its doors. Some of our readers’ reactions were more than a little dramatic.

The sign from the old Hi-Tone

“It is time that we wake up and realize the truth. Memphis is a dying city, and its music scene is dying along with the rest of it. Our leadership has probably waited too late to reverse the trend, but if there is to be any hope at all, action must be taken now. The city should enact significant discounts on license fees and local taxes for businesses that routinely book live music, as opposed to DJs,” said a commenter by the name Progressive Memphis.

Dogrell3000 also weighed in: “It is unfortunately true. Memphis is dying and so is the Memphis music scene. This is a sign of the times. Unless you are Atlanta, Nashville, or New Orleans (major southern cities), your city is dying along with the death of the middle class.”

It seemed a harsh reaction, but when Herrington profiled the last night at the Hi-Tone for a cover story in February 2013, his story made it clear that the club was more than just a rock-and-roll club. It was a Midtown institution.  

New Hi-Tone in Crosstown

After recapping a show that showed the strength of what the Hi-Tone was capable of, Herrington pointed out some of the problems that led to its closure. The building’s unreliable cooling made it notoriously hot in the summer, which discouraged some touring bands.

“Heating/air was obviously a big, big issue,” said Hi-Tone owner Jonathan Kiersky. “With the lease [issues], I wasn’t really interested in spending more money on someone else’s building on a constant basis.”

“That building is pretty old and beat up,” said Chris Walker, who currently helps run audio/visual for the NBA’s Houston Rockets but who has operated Memphis clubs, such as Barristers and Last Place on Earth, and has booked shows at many other local venues, including the Hi-Tone. “I think the roof was giving [Kiersky] problems. It’s hard to have climate control in there.”

The size of the club and the difficulties of the Memphis market also complicated things.

“One of the issues with being right in the middle of the country is you’re going to get a million booking requests. On any given day, we’d get anywhere from five to 80. What that ends up meaning, if you’re going to be a 350-days-a-year rock venue, is putting a lot of stuff in your club that you’re not that interested in doing or maybe it doesn’t make financial sense to do a certain band on a Tuesday,” Kiersky says. “In Memphis, the seven-shows-a-week concept is really, really hard. There were very few weeks where we could have six good shows in a week and actually hit our numbers on all of them.”

Toward the end of the cover story, Herrington hints that Kiersky was close to signing a lease on two bays in the Crosstown Shoppes strip on Cleveland, with the hopes of creating one 4,500-square-foot venue. Luckily for the Memphis music scene, the deal went through. Kiersky reopened the new Hi-Tone on May 6th.

And while this Hi-Tone doesn’t have $2 slices of pizza or the famed Hi-Tone brunch, it’s safe to say that Kiersky has picked up right where he left off. He’s added a BBQ chef, and, perhaps most importantly, the shows have kept on coming.

So far in 2014, Kiersky has brought dozens of bands to the Hi-Tone, including Future Islands, the Zombies, and the Flamin’ Groovies. So much for the Memphis music scene never recovering.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Changes at the Flyer

The only way to make sense out of change is plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. — Alan Watts

A few weeks back, staff writer Hannah Sayle left the Flyer to take a managing editor position at Minneapolis City Pages. Hannah had been with us for four years. She was a good reporter, and we miss her humor and enthusiastic profanity at staff meetings.

A week or so after Hannah announced her departure, our film and music editor, Chris Herrington, accepted a job as entertainment editor at The Commercial Appeal. Chris was with the Flyer for 13 years, winning several national awards for music and film criticism, and in his spare time creating the best local Grizzlies blog, “Beyond the Arc.” He was a hard-working triple threat, and left us with some big shoes to fill. Literally.

Now, in this issue, senior editor and City Beat columnist John Branston bids farewell, succumbing at last to the lure of big bucks on the professional squash circuit. I kid. He’s just changing gears, trying other directions. Read his final column on page 10 to get the straight dope. John had hundreds of connections and sources, a “no bullshit” attitude, and an old-fashioned reporter’s dogged persistence. We’ll miss the hell out of him.

So what are we going to do? Keep dancing, that’s what.

We’ve hired SBNation Grizzlies blogger Kevin Lipe to handle our Grizzlies coverage. Kevin’s a gifted writer with a droll sense of humor. You can find him at BeyondtheArc, starting this week.

Greg Akers, who reviews films for us while not editing our sister business publication, MBQ, takes over this week as Flyer film and television editor. He’s wicked smart and funny and knows a lot more about movies and TV than you do.

Joe Boone, who’s written about music for the Flyer and other publications for years, moves into the music editor slot, bringing a couple decades of hands-on experience as a Memphis musician and studio hand. He will, he will rock you.

We’ve also hired a couple of new columnists, who will alternate weeks. They are former “I Love Memphis” blogger Kerry Crawford and Fox 13 newsman Les Smith. Les’ first column will run next week; Kerry’s, the week after. I can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with.

Finally, we have hired Toby Sells as our newest staff reporter. Toby’s been reporting for The Commercial Appeal for the past four years. Prior to that, he wrote for the Memphis Business Journal. He is an excellent writer with deep sources in city and county government, and he likes beer. Should be a good fit.

So, yeah. We’re plunging into change here at the Flyer, saying farewell to former colleagues and friends, and welcoming some fresh voices and new energy. As the great poet Sonny Bono once wrote, “the beat goes on.”

Care to dance?

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

ESPN Gives Gay (and Herrington) Some Love

CREDIT: ESPN.com

From ESPN.com: Chris Herrington of the Memphis Flyer took the night off from being a journalist to sit in the stands and cheer with friends. He picked a good one:

“I couldn’t have asked for a better game to take off the media pass and act a fool. It was great fun to be on my feet with the fans when Rudy Gay hit that game winner last night.

“What made it even better was the awesome video the blasted from the Jumbotron seconds after Rudy hit the shot: Rudy dancing and smiling to Usher’s ‘Yeah’ while Kyle Lowry and Hakim Warrick backed him up like the Pips to Rudy’s Gladys. I don’t think the team has shown that before – and should probably be judicious in its use — but in that moment, it was perfect …

See the article and the game-winning clip here, and check out the rest of Chris’ column at Beyond the Arc.