Tag: Katrina Coleman

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We Recommend We Recommend

Katrina Coleman’s You Look Like Returns to Memphis’ Comedy Scene

A bygone You Look Like show at P&H. (Photo: Courtesy Katrina Coleman)

“You look like Midtown women love you and not just because they have 100 cat boxes to fill.”

Any idea who comedian Katrina Coleman could be talking about here? Yep! The very publication you’re reading right now: the Memphis Flyer. And they’re right, and we did, in fact, chuckle. We also asked for it. After all, they’re bringing back their You Look Like series, where all the jokes start with “You look like,” and we could not pass up being a part of the fun.

You Look Like began back in 2015, Coleman says. “I would go into parties or social groups, and I would start it in sort of a round-robin way. It was a thing I thought was fun. And another comic Tony Oler pulled me aside and said, ‘This would make a great show.’ He got me to sit down and write the format.” 

The format is simple: Comedians go head to head in tournament-style rounds and ping-pong “You look like” jokes back and forth for five minutes at a time. It’s fast-paced, loud, with lots of (voluntary) crowd participation. Everything’s voted on by the audience. Volunteers get to have “You look like” jokes thrown at them, too, and folks can even write down their own jokes on slips of paper to be read at the end. “Someone told me once, ‘You look like you can’t have a car with a sunroof because you’re triggered by glass ceilings,’” Coleman says. “It feels like a roast show, but they don’t know anything, so it’s just perception. It could be a completely made-up story. Although you will learn about yourself — like you definitely learn about yourself.”

The show was a hit, so much so that it was a monthly series at the old P&H Cafe, got a webseries made by Craig Brewer, and spread to four other cities — Austin, Denver, Houston, and Atlanta. Illuminati Bath and Body even made a “You Look Like” burn cream and lip balm. “It was actually really good for sunburns,” Coleman says, “and when someone lost their round, they’d get a little dab of it to soothe the pain.” 

But in 2020, all that momentum came to a halt because, well, you know why. Now, though, in the grand year of 2024, You Look Like returns. “It’s a game I love to play,” Coleman says, “and I love to watch and I love to host the show. And I missed it. My fellow comics around town kept telling me that they missed it, too.” 

For this comeback show, the players will be Allison McArthur, Lamon, Big Mickey, Charlie Vergos, and Natalie Rhodes. The winner will get one of Coleman’s classic crowns. “It’s whatever piece of headwear I can find,” they add. “I hot glue a lot of stuff to it. It usually lights up. It’s always the most insane thing.”

Coleman says the goal is for You Look Like to return to being a monthly series, this go-around at Hi Tone (RIP P&H). For now, the comics will be local, but as the show regains its momentum, Coleman plans to bring in people from other cities, too. 

You Look Like, Hi Tone, 282 N. Cleveland, Saturday, January 20, 9 p.m., $10.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

What This White Comic Found at Their Kids’ School isn’t Funny. It’s Racist.

Katrina Coleman sits at their home with their children. (Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50)

Every school day, I pick up my two kids. I walk to the door of my youngest’s elementary school and we walk back to the car. We drive to pick up the oldest and head home, talking about their respective days.

Recently, though, I was late picking up the oldest because someone decided to add stickers to the dumpsters where my youngest has to pass to get to my car. In big black and white letters, one read: IT’S OK TO BE WHITE and another said: BLACK LIVES MURDER WHITE CHILDREN. 

I couldn’t help but say, “OH WHAT THE F—” out loud and then I told my youngest kid to wait.  But he jumped right in, and together, we scraped off four of the former and two of the latter. I cussed and sweated as we worked, and I told my son we had to get them off before anyone else saw what these *expletive deleted* put near his school. 

We took an example of each into the office to tell the nice lady who calls us adults Mom and Dad but knows all the kids’ names that a white supremacist group had been through. I tried to keep it businesslike, suggesting that the maintenance staff keep an eye out in case there were more. 

But the truth is that I also spoke in that grown-up tone because a second-grader was in the office and I didn’t want him to be curious and ask what I’d given the nice lady.  

In 2022, nearly 70 years after Brown v. Board of education, I had to hand a Black woman, who cares deeply for children, hateful propaganda. We both tried to pretend it was regular vandalism. Neither of us wanted the child to know he was being threatened. 

She murmured, “Oh my God, why would anyone do this?”

Photo illustration of the two stickers Coleman found on school grounds. MLK50 distorted the images of the stickers to avoid amplifying the racist messages they intend to spread.

Why indeed? 

I live in Rozelle-Annesdale, where I frequently see Black Lives Matter yard signs on our street. Our neighborhood is next to Cooper-Young, where the city’s LGBT community center sits and where every other yard has a BLM sign and several houses have large artistic pieces supporting BLM.

Reports of these stickers keep popping up on social media in the Cooper-Young district. Presumably, the area is being targeted for being whatever “woke” means to racists. Funny how closely linked are the dual rages at a rainbow crosswalk and Black Lives Matter. It’s almost like the anger isn’t logical. 

I see you people. I grew up in West Memphis and Marion, across the river in Arkansas, back when it was still very segregated. I recognize the code words. The sly jokes meant to obscure anti-Black feelings. The small disrespects done to Black people. You’re angry that you’re not kings and need to blame someone. So, of course, you do the most radical thing you can think of — you put stickers on a dumpster for 7-year-olds to read. That will show them. 

This isn’t the first time. In January, at my middle schooler’s campus, about a dozen “IT’S OK TO BE WHITE” stickers showed up on the fence posts; then earlier this month, another few appeared on the backs of signs. My youngest thought I was insane when I parked and jumped out of the car to claw them off. When I took an intact sticker to the faculty, I leaned in to assert, “This is absolutely a white supremacist slogan. They have been all around the area.” 

I wanted to be sure the staff didn’t presume that maybe it was some musical band sticker or a TikTok challenge by kids trying to be edgy. I couldn’t let this slip into that space where people convince themselves that what they’re seeing may not be what they think it is. I wanted to pull the alarm as hard as I could. I didn’t want to scare the faculty, but I wanted them to take it seriously. No child deserves to start their school day in racial violence. 

Memphis-Shelby County Schools serve a 74% Black student body in a 64% Black city and a 54% Black county. If you have a kid in MSCS, you know that the educators and staff have absolutely stepped up at every opportunity to provide a safe place for the kids. They’ve twisted themselves in knots to focus on getting young people what they need, whether it’s virtual science demonstrations via Microsoft Teams or shoes that don’t pinch. During learning from home because of the pandemic, meals were provided, devices were distributed. There was even a number to call for parents to be tutored so we could support our kids with homework help. My seventh- and fifth-grader have been cared for in ways I never knew a public school could provide. In times when it felt like the entire country went insane, I turned to school superintendent Dr. Joris Ray in his press conferences. MSCS is an incredible boon to the children lucky enough to attend. 

Children should be protected. The mom in me cannot ever understand how anyone could hurt a child. We don’t value a baby because they’re “diverse”, we value them because they are a BABY. (My Southerness means all people under voting age are babies, but babies can include anyone younger than me, anyone who needs protection.)  Black kids don’t need to earn our protection by being relatable. They’re just babies.

One of Coleman’s children uses a plastic spatula to remove the stickers that have been appearing around Memphis with white supremacist messages. (Photo by Katrina Coleman)

All kids are sweet and weird and a pain in the butt and eat all the damn cookies when you aren’t looking. There’s nothing they have to do to deserve our care. There’s nothing they can do to lose it. 

Standing near the stink of an elementary school dumpster (rotten honeybuns and hot milk are a MIX, let me tell you), scraping off white supremacist propaganda, all I could think was that a person like this – someone who saw the need to put a child in their place, to establish dominance over a kid who has enough on their plate just learning to tie their shoes and remember that I comes before E but not all the time – should not be given any consideration. What kind of foul coward slips in the dark of night to proclaim something akin to the 14 words? What manner of bully has to threaten a small, powerless human being with anonymous words? 

It made me laugh when I ranted and raved back at home to my husband, as I was cleaning adhesive from my fingernails, that this was basically, “You will not replace us” in some really weak inkjet formatting. I was tearful and angry. 

What made me laugh is that they will replace us. The kids, that is. This world will be theirs. My fellow mayo moms and ranch dressing dads and provolone parents have a choice. Every single time we uncomfortably chuckle at a racist joke or walk past a sticker insisting that asking for rights is akin to murder, we are complicit. I probably can’t tell the people that cranked these stickers out on address labels with their Canon home inkjets anything. They’re too far gone to be reasoned with.

I can tell you that taking a moment to scrape off a sticker full of hate will tell your kid all they need to know. We may not be able to do big things. We can’t change a racist system all at once. But when we come across something vile and harmful, we do have a choice. 

We can scoff and say, “Oh that’s terrible,” or we can teach our kids to take ‘em down. 

Katrina Coleman is a parent of two and a comedian. They produced the Memphis Comedy Festival as well as the You Look Like show. 

This story is brought to you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today. MLK50 is also supported by these generous donors.

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Opinion The Last Word

These Hands … Remembering Lisa Michaels

CREDIT: Courtesy Katrina Coleman

Seems I can’t feel things without a drink and darkness to hide in.

On our way to a trans benefit in Louisville, Kentucky, I felt the usual protectiveness I always felt around Lisa. As was the road routine, I headed into a rest stop to scope things out while she waited in the car. While heading back to give the safe go-ahead that she could pee in peace, I saw through the window that some large dude in overalls and no shirt was talkin’ to my girl and I all but kicked that door open, these hands in mid-flight.

Courtesy Katrina Coleman

Katrina Coleman (left) and Lisa Michaels in Louisville, Kentucky

I heard him exclaim,

“I just love that purple hair!”

“Thank you, pumpkin!”

So my hands were set to rest, not to be thrown that hour.

We made our way into town and to the arts district before the show. Found a taco place we agreed on and we sat to eat.

Enter a middle-aged couple. Clearly on a weekend motorcycle trip, they asked us about our business and found out we did comedy. We heard a great deal about their kids and what they loved.

“I got a joke,” the man said.

“Lemme hear it,” Lisa responded.

“Okay, so a traveling salesman comes across a house. He knocks, and a little boy of about eight answers the door. He’s standin’ there in six-inch stilettos, fishnet pantyhose, red lipstick on.”

I started to get hot. How fucking dare this person hurt my Lisa or make her feel lesser in any goddam way! I could feel the anger rise in me like a tide. My hands knelt on the starting block ready to fly at a moment’s notice.

So you saw she’s trans and thought you could play some game to hurt her, I thought. I’ll whip your ass in front of your wife and tag your children in my goddam Instagram post you piece of …

“The salesman says, ‘Are your parents home?’ And the little boy says (with a dramatic drag off the cigarette), ‘What the fuck do you think?'”

Lisa lost her fuckin’ mind laughing and I was one second behind her. They asked us to meet them later at some random place across the river. My hands never flew anywhere.

No matter how many times I was ready to fight for her, it was never needed. Somehow she made instant connections with any stranger. We went to the river because she loved rivers. We did a show because she loved shows. I learned that the American Sign Language for trans is a mash-up of “becoming” and “self.”

There are a lot more stories like this one, from every trip and from every show.

In Louisville, after the show, I took one hit and was stoned as hell (like a baby, she’d say) in the living room of some witch we met, who naturally loved her. I lay on the floor talking with them about how living is the thing we all share so what else possibly matters, because she loved doing that, too.

I’m a junkyard dog that got adopted by a fae. She will always be the Sarah to my Hoggle. I would love to untangle her necklace or fix her brakes again.

I never had a big sister. Never had a muse. Never had a Lisa Michaels and never will again.

Then again, I always will. My hands love her.

Lisa Michaels, Memphis comedienne and self-styled “Purple Haired Tramazon,” died last month. Katrina Coleman is co-creator and producer of the You Look Like comedy show.

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Cover Feature News

Taco Time! Eleven Memphians Share Their Favorite Local Tacos

CREDIT: Jesse Davis

Ah, tacos. Who doesn’t love ’em? A hard shell or a soft corn or flour tortilla can be the perfect, handheld vessel for any number of fillings. With the simplest of ingredients (black beans, lettuce, tomatoes) to the more unique (lamb, goat), local restaurants are making some damn-good, flavor-packed delights. We’ve asked a few folks to share their favorites. Read on, and you’ll see why every day can be Taco Tuesday in Memphis.

Fried Fish and Shrimp Tacos at Elena’s Taco Shop

Kim Vodicka — poet

This is tough because, though I love the tacos at pretty much any hole-in-the-wall restaurant or busted-ass taco truck on Summer Avenue, I wanna say Elena’s is my fave just because it stands out the most. It’s a totally different thing because it’s beach tacos, but like wow the fried fish and shrimp are excellent, especially if you get decadent and combine the two on one taco.

Jesse Davis

Their tacos remind me of the ones I had on tour in San Diego a few years ago, which were exceptional.

Maybe the best part of the whole thing is they have, like, 17,000 sauces to choose from. Pre-virus, they would set the sauces out on their own little buffet-like setup, and that’s really what made me fall madly in love. I am a fool for some sauce.

Elena’s Taco Shop is at 6105 Summer Avenue; 417-7915

Justin Fox Burks

Juan’s Tacos with Black Beans at Global Café

Justin Fox Burks — cookbook author, food blogger, photographer

There’s no magic tricks, no smoke, and no mirrors involved in this straightforward dish, and with just five ingredients, there’s nowhere to hide. Juan’s Tacos ($8.95 for four vegan tacos) feature perfectly seasoned vegan black beans inside a double layer of super-soft corn tortillas. These stellar tacos are topped with spicy house-made tomatillo salsa, red onion, and fresh cilantro. Ask them to add avocado because … avocado.

Don’t sleep on the fried plantains and a side of rice to round out your meal. If you want something “wow” to wash it all down, you can’t beat The Messy MangoRita (also a Juan specialty), which features a whole dang mango doused in hot sauce as a garnish. And hey, it’s all vegan, too!

I’m the Chubby Vegetarian, and I approve this taco.

Global Café is at 1350 Concourse Avenue, Suite 157; 512-6890

El Mero Taco/Facebook

Fried Chicken Taco at El Mero Taco

Cristina McCarter — owner, City Tasting Tours

My favorite taco is the fried chicken taco from El Mero Taco. It’s the combo of juicy fried chicken and that damn queso with that pop of fresh jalapeño pepper for me. It’s tacos like that that I will randomly crave. You know it’s good if you drive to the ‘Dova for it. But they are in my neighborhood a lot, too. So I’ll grab a six pack of beer while picking up my tacos and brisket quesadilla. Now I want a taco!

El Mero Taco is at 8100 Macon Station #102, Cordova, or elmerotaco.com/foodtruck; 308-1661

Enrique Reyes with the asada taco from La Guadalupana

Asada Taco at La Guadalupana

Enrique Reyes — Mexican wrestling promoter

The asada taco at La Guadalupana Mexican restaurant is Enrique Reyes’ favorite taco when he and his wife go out to eat.

“La Guadalapuna is my favorite restaurant,” says Reyes, who organizes La Lucha Libre wrestling matches in Memphis, as well as makes the colorful masks worn by wrestlers. “The food is so delicious there.”

He likes to eat at home. “My girl cooks for me, but when she doesn’t cook, I go straight to La Guadalupana … once a week, something like that.”

Carne asada, Mexican steak, is his favorite dish there, but if Reyes orders a taco, it’s the asada taco, which is “just steak and onions and cilantro.” He puts guacamole on top, “’cause that makes the difference in the flavor.”

Asked how many he eats at a time, Reyes says, “Really, only four. You order with guacamole, it makes it a little bigger. I don’t eat too much. I’m good with four tacos.”

And Reyes doesn’t use any utensils when he eats tacos. “Just pick it up like a real Mexican. You never eat tacos with a fork.” — Michael Donahue

La Guadalupana is at 4818 Summer Avenue; 685-6857

Colin Butler

Al Pastor Taco at Picosos

Colin Butler — DJ for Big Ass Truck, radio DJ on WYXR at Crosstown Concourse

I’m partial to the tacos al pastor at Picosos. Pastor, I think it means “shepherd’s style.” Basically, they grill that pork on a spit, like gyro meat, and they slice it off. It’s based on lamb shawarma brought by Lebanese immigrants to Mexico. So some of the spices used in al pastor include coriander, hot pepper corns, cumin, chiles, garlic. They marinate the meat in that and then they pile it up on a spit and it rotates and cooks.

They hand-make their own corn tortillas there. And they use double tortillas. They stuff that full of meat, and then use chopped onion, cilantro, and jalapeño, which is typical for street tacos.

Between the homemade tortillas, doubled, the flavor of the meat, and the fresh toppings, to me, they’re the best tacos in town. It comes with your typical red salsa, a badass salsa verde, and more of a smoky, kind of chili-based sauce. They’ll give you all three if you ask for them.

It’s super simple. They’ll give you a small bowl of limes, too. And I always ask for crema, like sour cream but different. I like the way the sour cream contrasts with the more acidic stuff.

Picosos is at 3937 Summer Avenue; 323-7003

Katrina Coleman

Chorizo Taco at Tacos El Gordo

Katrina Coleman — comedian

I haven’t left my house much, lately. Working from home, I depend on my husband to bring treasures from the Outside. One day, he came home with five street tacos from Tacos El Gordo. The beef and chicken were good, but Memphis, THE CHORIZO.

On Madison, the lot of the Marathon has an orange box on wheels. I been sleepin’ on it.

Grilled corn tortillas filled with meat, onions, and cilantro. Served with cucumber and carrot slices that are pickled so lightly, it seems as if they heard of the concept once in a dream. The red chile sauce is good, but the green will light you up like Montag himself decided you were obscene. The sausage inside is perfectly seasoned. Tossed on the grill with the onions, the texture of the tortilla and minimal crisp of the meat makes such a delightful chewing experience that one might consider that no other food has ever been good.

If you haven’t been, I have to say: WAKE UP, SHEEPLE. Treat yourself to the only chorizo ever to be perfect.

Tacos El Gordo is at 1675 Madison Avenue; 801-0936

Bianca Phillips

Black Bean Tacos at Evelyn & Olive

Black Bean Tacos at Evelyn & Olive

Bianca Phillips — communications coordinator, Crosstown Arts

This year has been a wild one, and if there was ever a time to make sure you’re putting the cleanest, most wholesome food into your body, it’s now. Greasy comfort food may be calling, but whole-food, plant-based options will provide the nutrition you need to keep your immune system strong.

Lucky for you, the black bean tacos at Evelyn & Olive are both healthy and comforting. They’re like the taco equivalent of a grandma hug, which you can’t get right now thanks to social distancing, so accept a hug in the form of a vegan taco instead. Two crispy taco shells are generously stuffed with seasoned black beans, sautéed tofu, crunchy cabbage slaw, and sweet-and-tangy kiwi salsa. They’re served with sides of fluffy Jamaican rice and peas and cool, refreshing cucumber-tomato salad.

Evelyn & Olive is open for dine-in or takeout, and when you order to-go, they thoughtfully package all the taco components separately so you can avoid the dreaded soggy takeout taco. Build your own tacos at home, queue up Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” and enjoy with a stiff Jamaican rum punch for maximum comfort effect.

Evelyn & Olive is at 630 Madison Avenue; 748-5422

Julie Ray

Goat Taco at La Guadalupana

Noelia Garcia — associate artistic director at New Ballet Ensemble and School

Happy goats perform dramatic joyous dances to the glee of onlookers — much like the fancy footwork of a Spanish dancer. Perhaps the secret to Noelia Garcia’s dance superpowers is the $2.75 goat taco at La Guadalupana.

Garcia is the associate artistic director at New Ballet Ensemble and School who studied Spanish dance and flamenco at the Institut del Theatre i Dansa de Barcelona. She lived and worked in Spain, performed throughout Europe, in China, Israel, and the Philippines, and was a founding member of Barcelona’s Increpacion Danza company before landing in Memphis nearly 20 years ago. Her favorite taco is a heaping pile of perfectly seasoned goat meat on two soft corn tortillas topped with onions and cilantro. The meat of this beast has the tender juicy texture of a pot roast with a delightful tangy taste.

Try it. Ewe’ll like it. — Julie Ray

La Guadalupana is at 4818 Summer and 8075 Cordova Road; 685-6857

Laura Jean Hocking

Al Pastor Taco at El Burrito Express

Al Pastor Taco at El Burrito Express

Laura Jean Hocking — filmmaker

“For so long, I thought tacos only had hard shells, and had cheese and sour cream in them,” says filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking. “But a street taco, or a food truck taco, is all about the quality of the protein. It’s this little showcase for meat or chicken or fish with accents, instead of gloppy, Americanized crap all over it.”

Hocking’s favorite Memphis taco truck is El Burrito Express. Ubalto Guzman started the business six years ago. “I used to be a contractor,” he says. “We moved from California to Memphis to get into the food business. This is a family business. It’s me and my wife, son, and daughter.”

Laura Jean Hocking

An El Burrito Express taco plate includes five tacos with your choice of meat. Hocking’s favorite is al pastor, marinated pork said to descend from shawarma brought to Mexico by 19th century Lebanese immigrants.

“I like al pastor because I’m a big pineapple fan. I love the subtleness of the pineapple in pastor. It’s very savory and juicy. It’s a new discovery for me. I had never had pastor until we went to L.A. in September 2019. Generally, I’m a pescatarian, but when I run into meat products that are very good, like a Soul Burger or some Bar-B-Q Shop glazed ribs, I’ll have them. Now, pastor is on the list because life is short.” — Chris McCoy

El Burrito Express is at 1675 Madison Avenue; 428-9626

Samuel X. Cicci

Smoked Brisket Taco at Elwood’s Shack

Cara Greenstein — food and lifestyle blogger

Stretching or, as I would argue, elevating the definition of a “taco,” Elwood’s Shack delivers a singular sensation you simply can’t miss on its menu: the smoked brisket taco.

Upon placing in the pizza oven, a single flour tortilla puffs into a pillowy yet crispy foundation for an unconventional combination of delicate field greens (no shredded iceberg to be found here), sliced avocado, pico de gallo, shredded mozzarella, and creamy horseradish. A generous portion of smoked brisket, a perfected in-house recipe that takes center stage across Elwood’s menu, brings this open-faced phenomenon back to its barbecue Memphis roots.

If you ask how many tacos come in an order at the counter, don’t be underwhelmed when they tell you “one.” One taco from the Shack is just right.

Elwood’s Shack is at 4523 Summer Avenue; 761-9898

Jon W. Sparks

Barbacoa Lamb Taco at Tortilleria La Unica

The workers of R.E. Michel Company — HVAC distributors

Tortilleria La Unica recently moved across the street to its new home at 5015 Summer in a one-time Wendy’s. It still has the Mexican fare that made it popular, particularly among the working people out in that area. Among those is the crew at R.E. Michel Company, a distributor of HVAC equipment. One of the bunch is Dave Godbout, a self-described Destroyer of Tacos who is particularly fond of La Unica’s offerings. A recent lunch spread at the warehouse had half a dozen varieties from chicken to beef to lamb to pork.

“It’s a perfect combination of food,” Godbout says. “You’ve got salsa with tomatoes that has lycopene in it. You’ve got cilantro, which is good for detoxifying. You got a little bit of fat, a little bit of protein, a lot of carbs. It’s the perfect street food, and especially in our area, it’s the most readily available food you can get.”

“I love tacos, Americanized, authentic, it doesn’t matter,” says manager James Hoffman. “I didn’t even like cilantro until I got older and now I love it more and more. And we do a lot of business in the Hispanic community and they send us tacos from their local taco truck all the time. Man, this lamb taco is really good!” — Jon W. Sparks

Tortilleria La Unica is at 5015 Summer Avenue; 685-0097

Categories
Cover Feature News

VENT! Nine Memphians Let It All Hang Out

CREDIT: Joey Miller

Times are tough. We’re stuck inside a lot. And when we go out, we’re either walking the dog or making quick trips to stores while wearing masks. We can’t shake hands. We can’t hug. We can’t hang in bars like we used to. Restaurant servers and bartenders are wearing masks and gloves. There are no sports. The parks are controlled. Not to mention, the president seems to get loonier every day. Everything is just … screwed up.

Sooo … we asked nine Memphians to just let it out. Vent. Spill it. Doesn’t matter what you want to rant about, just do it — and send it to us. They did. And below are the results. Enjoy!

Kemba Ford
Politician/Consultant
For the last several years, I have had opportunities to work in Texas and California, often traveling for many months away from the city I call home. 

Kemba Ford

I tend to believe that I returned with fresh eyes and a bit more objectivity with which to view all things Memphis. After spending the first half of 2017 in Houston, I returned home to a small bit of fanfare: reuniting with family, a well-attended cocktail party at the Grawemeyer Estate in Midtown, and lunch and dinner invitations with friends — many of whom amazed I returned at all. 

So, I linked up with a friend for lunch Downtown on a beautiful weekday afternoon in late May of that year. I absolutely love Memphis during the month of May. The mild weather and only a 30 percent chance of mosquitoes create a great vibe along the riverfront, and after lunch I walked along Main Street to chill at my friend’s condo with a divine view of the river. 

A glass of wine later, we were watching some random golf tournament on TV, when suddenly: Breaking News! Apparently, several people tried to rob the front desk/check-in of the Sheraton Hotel Downtown and shots were fired in the lobby. The suspects fled the scene on foot; one guy was said to have on a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and a female suspect was said to have on flip-flops. Downtown was on lockdown. Wow!

My immediate reaction: Who robs a hotel front desk that really doesn’t do cash business? At 2 p.m. in broad daylight, two blocks from 201 Poplar? In flip-flops and a Cowboys shirt? Were they just riding around, passing the Sheraton, and decided this would be a good come-up? My mind was melting, and the only conclusion I could come up with is they must not “GAF” (give a fuck).  And I needed more wine.

I have played around with this idea or mindset called “IDGAF” (I don’t give a fuck) or “I have Zero (fucks) to give” for a while now. I pitched the idea of a radio show called “GAF” to debate the notion, kind of like a TED Talk but not. My position being that — yeah — it may be cool being unconcerned or unbothered about many things, but there’s too much crazy, stupid mess that happens because errbody has an “IDGAF” attitude.

Let’s pretend we are privy to the conversation these folks had in the car five minutes before they pulled up to that hotel. Anybody GAF that the police headquarters and city jail is a literal stone’s throw away? Anybody GAF that they are not dressed for this? I mean flip-flops, REALLY? Clearly, no one GAF or a thought as to whether the front desk of a hotel would even have cash. Some straight-up tomfoolery here, I thought. If just one person in that car GAF, just one single solitary F, then maybe some unnecessary mess could be deterred. My opinion, just VENTing.

I’m in my mid-40s these days, and surprisingly it’s been a good time. When I tell people my age, they often don’t believe me and ask what I do to look “not old,” I guess. I say, GAF. You gotta GAF, approximately 2 Fs at this age: moving your body and the food you eat. Neither of these is easy when you begin integrating them into your lifestyle, but the reward is there. And it gets easier the more you do it. Finding an activity, you enjoy doing and some green vegetables you can learn to like has helped me tremendously. Thank you, kale, celery, and red bell peppers!

Main point: It is 2020. This is an election year like no other in my lifetime. While it most certainly is not my lane to tell anyone how to vote, I will tell you it is no time for the “IDGAF” attitude. The United States is in the throes of a global pandemic while record unemployment, economic uncertainty, and class and racial divisions openly scar our society. At this moment COVID-19 has taken 90,000 American lives in less than three months. Yeah, mane. … It is time to GAF!

I need you to do me a favor, though. Vote on November 3, 2020.

Joshua McLane
Drummer, HEELS
I’m in a band called HEELS. I miss my band. Before all this bullshit started, we were in a good place. We were on top of our finances and in the middle of writing our next record, and waiting to go on the three tours we had booked over the next two months.

Joshua McLane

Next thing you know, the two biggest things in my life happen: The pandemic was announced and then I found out I was going to be a father. Since I’m not a moron, I want to keep my wife and prodigy (progeny? who cares?) safe from all the dipshits I spent my teens with, the ones who think the virus is some phony libtard conspiracy.

I miss my best friend. HEELS hasn’t been able to practice since this started, and since [HEELS guitarist Brennan Whalen’s] bosses are making him go back to the office, we won’t be anytime soon either. He’s the only person I’ve ever met that instills legitimate hope in me, and I’m in need of some of that shit.

One of the best parts of being in HEELS is that there are only two of us. So, touring is a breeze. Mainly because we both love talking shit. I miss talking shit with the only person who keeps his mouth shut.

I miss listening to podcasts on the road. Now, all podcasts have to be called in and let’s be honest … they fucking suck like that (see also: most stand-up comedy now). I miss all the food. The best part of being on the road is meeting new people and eating their food. It’s cheesy (pun intended), but it’s what makes this country as awesome as it is. I MISS OTHER PLACES.
       
I love this town and I love this country, but I also like not being sick. So, I haven’t gone anywhere but to meet my weed dealer for the last three months. Even that is a cluster-fuck of baggies and gloves and not getting arrested because we live in a backward state. So, I don’t go anywhere.

I don’t need things to be open or for people to go back to work at the fucking mall, though. I have a soul and care for others and, since I’m going to be a father, I can’t chance it. I have to admit that it’s been great with my wife working from home. We’re extremely fortunate that way.

The only thing I truly can’t stand are all the goddamn, mother-fucking dog walkers that are just staring at their goddamn, mother-fucking phones as they drag their tiny, mother-fucking dogs down the goddamn street. Those poor dogs don’t want to be walked, you $80,000-a-year dickhead. What’s worse is when they have some loud-ass conversation on their phone and just yell into the wind. FUCK THAT AND FUCK YOU for doing it. Yeah, I’ve been known to “sing” along with my music when I walk, but at least I feel some shame about it.
     
I do miss hugs. Not as much as many, but more than I did. I enjoy not being touched, though, a lot. Also, I like being able to give someone the proper stink eye when they get too fucking close to me. I think I’m gonna take a nap. End of rant. Be good to each other.

Boo Mitchell
Music Producer
I try not to vent much, but something that really gets under my skin is the lack of courtesy people show each other. Although, I could talk about this in several aspects of our daily lives, today the topic is parking lots. 
Joey Miller

Boo Mitchell

Have you ever been trying to pull into a parking space only to find that someone has left their basket in the middle of the space? The one that really gets me is when someone has parked over the line and taken up two spaces. These actions cause negative effects. Besides being a huge inconvenience, the person gets called a few choice adjectives and nouns. And even though they are long gone and have no idea the tongue lashing they are getting, that negative energy and bad karma is going out into the world.

So, when I’m in a parking lot, I try to build up some blessings of good karma by returning my basket to the basket bin area. It only takes an extra minute or so. And I also make sure to park between the lines.

Small acts of anonymous kindness go a long way. It reminds me of a great philosophical mantra from the guru of comedy, George Carlin: “Don’t Be an Asshole.”

Meghan Stuthard
Writer
Facebook sucks and the Messenger app sucks even more, but it did yield a delightful message from the Flyer’s own Bruce VanWyngarden the other day, asking me if I’d like to bitch about something. How much time you got, Bruce?

If there’s anything to be gained from this quarantine besides retention of one’s health and proof of one’s intelligence, it’s the myriad ways I’ve found to be even more pissed off and tormented than usual.

Meghan Stuthard and friends

It was borne of “quarantini” jokes and escalated with each whiny post from a shitty parent that “we can’t do this sort of psychological damage to our kids! Let them attend a water park with 50 million other snot-nosed brats, because — sans nanny — I am woefully unprepared to raise my own children!” So thanks for the bullhorn, Flyer. It’s from these digital pages that “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” Like Whitman, I am unconstrained, into dudes, and like wine.

I think the obvious choice is to ridicule the dong-bags protesting stay-at-home orders, mock-coughing on grandmas at Kroger, and posting asinine bullshit all over their social media accounts, but they’re too easy of a target. They’re so ignorantly stupid they won’t be able to point their browser to this website anyway, and I figure that anyone reading this is squarely on my side even if their father-in-law isn’t.

But they’re not the only item on my list of things that I want to bitch about. Literally everything pisses me off, and everything that pisses me off is now served up to me in grand quantities while staying at home. TV volume over 16, TV volume on any odd number, washing and folding laundry, waiting on things to microwave or boil, and the fact that I’ve sat outside my house for 60 straight nights and my recently departed neighbor’s (RIP) cats, Pussyfoot and Pussy Willow, still won’t let me pet them. Like, I’m an actual living person who wants to pet them, which is a hell of a lot more than they’re working with currently, and they want no part of it.

Speaking of animals, here’s something. Midtown is full of owls, something that absolutely does not piss me off. I’m so enchanted by the owls that I googled which owls are native to our area and found the Barred Owl, whose hoot sounds like, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” That’s a real thing. It was on allaboutbirds.org. And that’s what my neighborhood owls’ hoots sound like.

My roommate, upon hearing this, says, “That’s not a thing, and it’s probably a barn owl.” It was on allaboutbirds.org, David. A fucking bird expert wrote that, I repeated it, and I’m such a dim-witted dolt that I can’t possibly discern a barn owl’s “hoot-hoot!” from “WHO COOKS FOR YOU? WHO COOKS FOR US ALL”?

And then this guy, again, bearing in mind that he corrected me, because, again, he thinks I’m the idiot, is outside a few nights later trying to attract an owl by — get this — wrapping a piece of deli turkey around an old cat toy shaped like a mouse.

The same species, sex, and race that brought you star-spangled pants, truck nutz, and white pride tiki torches now thinks that he is superior to the owl and can attract it with sandwich meat and cat toys, forgetting that the owl, a stone-cold killing machine, has been honing its ability to differentiate a live mouse from a fake mouse for eons. We caved and bought a remote-controlled mouse. Upping our game.

Outside of the purchases I’ve made online, shopping has been sullied for me by our friendly neighborhood Kroger. People are strolling along and pawing every box of Wheat Thins like they can tell from feeling the outside of the box if Nabisco made that batch extra-wheaty. Peep the bestial behavior that has ravaged the meat section. Note the fact that the frozen pizza aisle looks like the firebombing of Dresden, but the produce section, brimming with vitamins, is as untouched as a pack of masks in the White House. Kroger shoppers’ only redeeming quality is their love of boxed red wine. This I know because it’s never there and I have to buy Pinot Grigio and drink it over ice like some sort of Arkansan.

I’m excited to get through this and come out on the other side. I look forward to rolling my eyes in public at bars again, leaving mean-ass notes on the windshields of the small-wienered dipshits who double-park, and loudly defending Mötley Crüe to anyone with a pulse. Bitching into the void isn’t as fun and an audience whose reaction I can’t gauge makes me wonder if there’s even a point in bitching. HAH! Dumb-ass question. Bitching is always a pleasure. Yawp!

Leon Gray
Administrator, Juvenile Court
Now that I’m over 60, I sometimes long for the days of my youth, when everything was simpler — at least to me. Being a native Memphian, I have some fond — and some not so fond — memories of growing up in the Bluff City. Ironically, one of the biggest news events of the late 1960s, the sanitation strike which ultimately led to the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., taught us very little about the value of clean streets and neighborhoods in the 21st century.

Leon Gray

I am rarely angered by little things, but seeing a motorist toss a cup complete with lid and straw out their car window and onto our streets makes me want to scream out my car window at them. And that’s just the beginning. Whole bags of fast food remains get tossed or just laid down outside the vehicle in a retail store parking lot — with trash cans just feet away. What has happened to these people? And why is MY CITY their dumping ground??

Speaking of dumping, many of our neighbors have made the sides of lesser traveled roads and spaces behind closed commercial buildings dump-sites for everything from unwanted furniture and appliances to worn tires and automobile parts. This has got to STOP!!!

Where are the days of the Memphis City Beautiful Commission? When was the last time Memphis could claim the Cleanest City in America award? Where is our hometown pride — or at least decency? And why aren’t more citizens and elected officials angry about this trash on streets problem, like I am?

On its face, the solution seems simple: Get people to discard their trash in the appropriate places. So how do we get there, and where would getting there be prioritized in the midst of a pandemic? It should be right up there near the top. How about using a marketing campaign? Messaging is everything, and like Corey B. Trotz, when you start putting the message out there, you can’t stop.

People are generally followers, so our leaders must set the tone that promotes the steps for them to follow. “I’m Memphis Proud” would be a great theme! “Don’t Trash Our Streets” would be another. Solid messaging creates bonds to all kinds of products. Why wouldn’t we be able to create a positive bond between our city and its residents?

We live in an age where media platforms dominate the communication connections between most everyone. So let’s tell everybody that Memphis Pride is “a thing,” and it should be their thing. Let’s solicit help from all of our 700 thousand or so neighbors not to trash our city — and add teeth with citations and fines.

I’m sick of this filth, but I’m also just as sick of watching nobody do anything about it. So, if by chance you read this, join me in this crusade to try and clean up our city and restore the pride in our neighbors. Write your elected officials and tell them this is a priority. Finally, let’s teach our kids to always try and leave our shared spaces better than we found them.

Katrina Coleman
Comedian
Dear Reader,
Today I come to you full of righteous fury. I am not the type of fellow to feel righteousness at hatred of a kind or at differences from my own morals. I cannot come to you with some wide and deep mythos of which to beat you down with my fervor.

Katrina Coleman

No, dear reader, I have but one anger to speak of. Babies don’t need shoes.

Firstly, we have to define baby. In the Southern sense, babies are all humans younger or dumber than you perceive yourself to be. For this discourse, babies are the non-bipedal, pre-toddling, lumps-of-reflex-and-occasional-gassy-smiles.

Secondly, we must define shoes. House slippers are not shoes unless you are a patron of a “no shoes, no shirt, no service” establishment. Shoes are not socks with rubber bottoms. Shoes are not and will never be the end points of footie pajamas. Shoes are soled enclosures of a foot.

Now that that is established, we must get into the argument. Babies do not need shoes. Stop doing it.

Child abuse takes many forms, and on a scale of one to Mommie Dearest, shoes on babies is a three. At a five, Child Protective Services  is called to evaluate your home. That means if I see your baby in shoes and also being lightly pinched (two on the scale), I will absolutely be making that phone call.

Imagine if you will, being a small baby without the ability to walk. Imagine the proctors of your care strapping weights with adorable buckles to the feet that literally only exist to kick. Imaging for one moment being tickled pink over a ceiling fan and having your ability to enjoy it hampered by great, laced anchors. You are left to impotently twitch your lower extremities and hope upon hope that your upper extremities can flail in the appropriate joyfulness to express how much you love watching that magical, spinny wonder do its thing.

Add the prospect that no baby fully understands walking until it happens. Therefore, they are unable to consent to the indignity. If I had thought that walking would involve the tight and heavy nonsense of shoes, I would still be begging to be picked up to this day.

Shoes are a prison that modern humans have built to give themselves the illusion of security and status. I, myself, only bind myself with the strictures of those podal corsets when society demands. For what end does society demand? Basic etiquette or flat classism?

To subject an innocent child to such strictures would be to insist a babe in arms could utter ”please“ and ”thank you” before “Mama.” It is a show of means, not unlike a Romani coin belt. A baby shod is much like a prized horse sored, only to show the wealth and breeding of their steward. How dare we hobble our young like rebellious horses? How dare we dress them as small adults before they have even considered the mystery of the potty?

And, finally, if all these arguments fall short for you, dear reader, how dare you deprive me of the joy of seeing those scrumptious little toes? I think your baby is loud and weird and could easily be thrown in the river if it annoys me. You would block that perfect defense of tiny little feetsies? How dare you keep that from me, and how dare you leave your baby without the protection of cute widdle piggies that I’m going to nom nom nom and forget anything about rivers or baby throwing?

Don’t you love your child? Don’t make me throw your kid in the river. Babies don’t need shoes.

Sonya Mull
Activist
This ‘Rona has made many mundane areas of life more poignant, and, some, more grievous. Take, for example, spitting in public. When I was a wee child, Aunt Carrie told me to hold my breath and walk the other way when I saw sputum on the ground to avoid catching T.B. — or something. People used to think the story was hyperbole, but I’ve held to the practice and taught it to my kids. Now, COVID has made people a bit more appreciative of her public health announcements. (She was a nurse in a T.B. ward.)

Sonya Mull

Supposedly, this COVID-19 thingamajig has given all of us time to pause — to put the brakes on the speedy hustle and bustle. So, why wouldn’t I think Memphis drivers would emerge from this with a calmer approach? In the past few days, while I was driving around town searching for unusual trees, I discovered that Memphis drivers are shoddier than ever — too fast, too aggressive, and far less courteous.

A few years ago, I predicted that the conditions of transportation would become worse with the resurgence of muscle cars. Not to my surprise, I now hear drag racing just about every night in my neighborhood. Where are the police when you need them? (No, not all cops are bad cops, and I know a lot of great ones, but the bad ones can be horrendous and their bad deeds overshadow a lot of the good. I’ve had horrendous, Sandra Bland-type experiences with officers right here in Memphis. This is not that story, however.)

It’s kinda funny, but it seems that COVID has brought many of my pet peeves to a head all at once — things like people not washing their hands after using the restroom, and coughing and sneezing into the open air. These were always icky.

Many of those close to me have contracted the virus, and I have several family members in health professions, yet COVID has had its silver linings for me. It has afforded me time and space to BE. I wish that each of us on this planet would BE STILL and KNOW — learn to reconnect with the Divine — however we define it. By default, Mother Earth had begun to heal herself. Like the body, our kindred planet has the capacity of self-healing, if given time and space.

I am so frustrated that people are so anxious to rush back into the “rat race” — going nowhere. That sounds pretty disgusting to me. Haven’t you noticed the air is cleaner?

Meanwhile, some people want to spread their toxicity and pollute the town hall square while carrying guns. Here’s a thought: If you have to protest something, why not protest the government’s overreach in punishing black men, women, boys, and girls? In the protesters’ minds, it’s okay for the privacy and rights of black citizens to be obliterated and lives decimated by the police, but don’t dare stop these protesters from buying garden tools!

I’m not saying that people don’t have rights to protest, and honestly, I don’t really care that they want to protest about something so stupid. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy of these people. Sure, the hypocrisy exists on both sides of the coin, but these neo-protesters’ anti-government sentiment only extends to the point where they are affected. Heck, I actually concur with them on some points. I am definitely opposed to big brother’s omnipresence and I don’t want to live some dystopian, Orwellian novel.

Chris Davis
Writer/Musician
I’ve got a big ol’ bone to pick with WREG, “News Channel 3,” their reporter Luke Jones, and his recent story about a massive uptick in opioid-related overdoses and deaths.

Chris Davis

“Almost 400 overdoses in 30 days,” Jones wrote in a tweet slugged NARCAN NEEDED, suggesting a shortage of Narcan/naloxone, a life-saving opioid antagonist with the ability to reverse respiratory depression. So far so good, right? Unfortunately the tweet wrapped with the most ignorant question possible: “Are stimulus checks at least partly to blame?”

Let me answer that question for you, Luke. No, the stimulus checks weren’t “partly to blame” for 400 overdoses and 56 resulting deaths. Also, hell no, and “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’d frame this kind of tragedy in such a harmful way when there’s so much good research delving into the root causes of abuse.”

In addition to obvious triggers like pain, depression, isolation, and the simple fact that both prescription and black market dope are often readily available, most studies also touch on the common theme of economic hardship, and the kind of hopelessness that goes hand-in-hand with poverty and unemployment.

For example, a 2017 paper published by The National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that for every one percentage point increase in a given county’s unemployment rate, “the opioid death rate per 100,000 rises by 3.6 percent.” This past January, a study published by JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, drew similar conclusions by looking at communities where automotive assembly plants were shut down. The study determined these communities had an 85 percent higher rate of death by overdose than similar communities with still-active automotive assembly plants.

Now, let’s see … Has anything happened recently that might have resulted in sudden, widespread job loss or increased anxiety and feelings of isolation and hopelessness? Could it possibly be COVID-19-related shutdown of the U.S. economy, and quarantine? Kinda sounds like a perfect match.

Now let me back up a bit. I should probably point out that while the tweet was unconscionable, and the write-up was nearly as bad, the full video package contained more detail and ultimately performed the public service of letting people know where to get help if they need it. Kudos. Also, the reporter in question didn’t just come up with the idea of blaming stimulus checks on his own. He was referring directly to a comment made by the Memphis Area Prevention Coalition’s overdose prevention specialist, Josh Well, whose organization is working hard to overcome the obstacle of “lockdown,” in order to get Narcan into the hands of people at risk. But, presuming Jones composes his own tweets, he’s the guy who made the relationship between stimulus checks and overdoses a troubling frame for a heartbreaking story that deserves considerably more context.

It’s conventional wisdom in some quarters that you can’t just give people money. Why? Because they’ll become dependent on handouts, obvs. They’ll spend every cent you give them on sex, booze, and drugs. Why did this become conventional wisdom? Because it makes such a fine, paternalistic excuse for paying poor people poverty wages. Because politicians representing moneyed interests that benefit directly from low-paying jobs tell us it’s the gospel truth every time somebody puts a mic in their hand. Because their words are so frequently repeated and amplified by concerned-looking members of the Fourth Estate, who nod right along.

This happens in spite of study after study showing that it’s all complete horse shit and the best way to help people in need is to provide cash with no strings attached. But we’ve all been conditioned to believe the opposite is true, and this false belief enabled the dismantling and disfigurement of our social safety nets. If anything, this backwards thinking is more to “blame” for the 400 overdoses and 56 deaths than one $1,200 stimulus check in the midst of international disaster.

On a related note, on May 8th — three days before WREG aired its story — a report offering guidance in the administration of life-saving Naloxone (Narcan) was generated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread throughout our country, SAMHSA has received reports that some first responders and law enforcement officers have been more reluctant to administer Naloxone due to fear of potentially contracting the coronavirus,” the report stated. “Further, SAMHSA has received reports that law enforcement and emergency services management has, in some cases, discontinued the carrying of Naloxone by responders.”

Did any of this figure into the 14 percent mortality rate? We don’t know because those questions either weren’t asked or weren’t reported. Instead we were treated to Mr. Well — who may very well have been quoted out of context — seeming to blame the responsible act of social distancing or “lockdown,” as he described Memphis’ “Safer At Home” order.

“We can’t train large groups of people anymore,” he said, “so less people are getting the Narcan (Naloxone).”

By the way, if the life-saving medication was “NEEDED,” as implied by the tweet that launched this rant, no part of the package touched on shortage. “You can get a free Narcan kit anytime by calling [The Memphis Area Prevention Coalition] at (901) 495-5103,” it concluded.

Look. Regardless of whether the daily infection numbers are down or even downward trending, a deadly and capricious virus continues to spread and a considerable number of U.S. citizens still seem to think it’s all a hoax. People are fighting about social distancing. Angry, sometimes-armed mobs are protesting because we’ve shut down all-you-can-eat buffets. Because they think the common courtesy of wearing protective masks limits their freedom somehow.

As easy as it might be to write these people off as idiots and dupes, I can’t blame them for being confused. Our 21st-century news thrives on conflict, and media consumers can get a different story every time they turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper, depending on the political orientation of whoever’s being interviewed at the moment, and whoever’s doing the editing.

That’s why every reporter needs to step up to make sure each piece of information they spread is the best and most accurate information possible, whether it’s directly related to COVID-19 or the result of our public response to the pandemic. If you’re not doing that, you’re contributing to the decades-long war on media credibility, and you’ve got blood on your ledger.

I’m looking at you WREG. You certainly aren’t the only news station allowing bad messages to slip through, intentionally or not. But you’re the one that pissed me off this week, and I really needed to vent.

Brennan Whalen
Guitarist, HEELS
I’m not a complicated man.

I derive joy from the usual things emotionally stunted drunks love: beer and playing music in an environment where I’m not going to catch a world-sieging virus. Sinking hours into video games made for children.

Brennan Whalen

During the day, however, I work in an office. I speak on the phone and email customers with technical support for the things they have or are going to purchase. It can be a slog, and many days the only thing that makes it all feel worth it is the hour I have for lunch.

I work in the Hickory Hill area, and around January, something I love deeply was taken from me. That thing was the last remaining Pizza Hut buffet on Winchester, across the street from the old Hickory Ridge Mall. With the decades-old framed posters on the walls, the plates that had to be shedding BPA into every slice, the parmesan containers that contained nothing resembling parmesan, it wasn’t somewhere you’d feel confident in your immune system. But God I loved it so much.

Every structure in this city is either shiny and new, a respected old building maintained beautifully, or a business crafted in the shell of an old one (my most-frequented pawn shop was obviously a Target from the ’90s). But dead center of all of this was that stupid, fucking roof that, for a fat Southern kid like me, was a shining beacon on a hill. And it’s gone. It will probably end up a cell phone store.
     
To this end, you may ask, “Come on, should a chain restaurant being frequented by one hungover asshole and a rotation of maybe 20 construction workers be kept open just to appease them, considering the costs of keeping such a business open?”

I answer this question with a resounding “Yes,”  because I fucking love that GD Pizza Hut and rational thought will not get in the way of that.

“You should frequent local businesses.” I absolutely do, but until you drop the quality of your food, it will not satisfy my lust for shit pizza that attacks me when my blood is half tequila at 11 a.m. I lived across the street from Dragon China Buffet on Belvedere, for Christ’s sake. I’ll put money into local businesses, but you gotta deliver low-quality fare for my big, stupid gullet.
       
I should be embarrassed that the closing of this establishment has hurt my heart the way it has, but I’m not. I’m a middle-brow neanderthal who yo-yo diets and has zero consistency in his health and well-being, and I want a pan pizza with a big, fucking hair right in the center. 

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Never Seen It: Watching Mad Max: Fury Road with Comedian Katrina Coleman

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road

In the Time of the Rona, I’m reviving my Never Seen It series, in which I convince a cool person to watch a classic film they have somehow missed.

To kick off the revival, I hit up Memphis comedian and You Look Like show producer Katrina Coleman on Twitter, where she’s been doing a nightly movie watch party under the hashtage #cowatch. Our conversation (which happened on the phone, not in real life!) has been edited for length and clarity.

Before Fury Road:

Chris McCoy: How are you holding up?

Katrina Coleman: Good. I made one final grocery trip and put it all up. We stocked up on everything…I’m worried, but we just gotta keep going. [#cowatch] is to keep our spirits up with banter. It’s like, I know what I’m gonna do tonight. I’m going to sit and watch a movie. Do you like to watch it with me and follow along? If it seems like it would interest you, we can all experience the same thing. Actually, one of the rules was not to watch movies like this. I love post-apocalyptic movies, but I was going to stay away from them for a while.

CM: Well, if you’re going to break the rule, this is the one to break it for. What do you know about Mad Max: Fury Road?

KC: I’ve been told over and over again I have to watch it. When it came out in theaters, I was a bad feminist if I didn’t see it. I avoided it because I was I felt like I had to like it…I know the basic plotline, and I’ve seen a lot of the gifs. And I loved Max Max and The Road Warrior.

120 minutes later…

CM: You are now a person who has seen Mad Max: Fury Road. What did you think?

KC: [incoherent screaming] What I have is guttural noises and joy! It is very good! My dad was a truck driver. I love violence. I love yelling. It was a moral story. I was supposed to be tweeting about it, but I kept getting really engrossed with it! Also, my daughter sort of watched it with me. She’s 10, but she has really adult tastes. She was also playing with Legos at the time, so we did talk a little bit about plot and what’s happening and why people do the things they do. But it’s beautiful to watch! I’m a big fan of action porn. It was really well done. I don’t know a lot about movies, but I had so many feelings. Now I want to murder all dudes except for the ones who repeatedly show their loyalty. But to ally yourself, you have to throw yourself out of a moving vehicle and shoot another dude. You could gain my trust!

Nicholas Hoult as Nux.

CM: So like Nux. When starts out and he’s like an incel, kind of like Trump follower, or an alt-right teenage bro.

KC: Actually, what I was seeing was just Lord of the Flies. That’s what happens—unsupervised violence; total, sterile teenage boyhood.

CM: But then by the end, he sacrifices himself for everybody.

Riley Keough as Capable. Keough is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter.

KC: Yeah. But he still doesn’t do a 180, where he’s a completely different person. In his final moment, he asked someone to witness him. In his mind he’s realized that Valhalla waits for him, not for the glory of the warlords, but for the glory of sacrifice. That trait is always there and it’s beautiful, but it was used for good. The idea that these were boys, but they don’t live very long, so they just throw themselves into the machine for the defenses of whatever cause. But all it took, was the one tiny relationship building with him and [Capable]. It might’ve been the first time he fell asleep peacefully with someone. He spoons for the first time and it just changed his whole life.

CM: I love the scene where he eats the bug off of her. He’s like, “Oh! Protein!” It’s such a primate thing to do, to eat a bug off your partner.

KC: They’re tasting life for the first time, in a super base, disgusting way. This movie is very verdant while being like gross. It’s very fleshy. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of life in it. I don’t know how to explain that, but it’s pro-life, in that it is for life. The stakes are very high. It sort of views all lives together as one thing, and then the desert and the violence and the death is another thing. It struck me the moment when Max comes back, he’s covered in blood. He’s like, what is this? It’s mother’s milk—which we’ve already established earlier in the movie is literally human milk—and he uses it to wash the blood off of him. That hit me in a weird way. That part upset me the most… It’s almost like a religious moment.

Never Seen It: Watching Mad Max: Fury Road with Comedian Katrina Coleman (3)

CM: You’re an outspoken feminist. What did you think of this movie from that standpoint?

KC: Well, I have a point of frustration—it’s the concept of the Netflix category, “strong female lead,” like that’s a whole movie. So, like for someone with strong feminist values, it’s just cool to watch a movie where you see people that look like you and your friends. It’s also equal opportunity. Like, the grannies are getting in it! They’re punching folks and shooting people. Everyone’s on an equal level here.

But of course, it resonates with me that the male representation is just destruction, control, and ownership. “That’s my child! My property!” Compared to the feminine sort of propagation, the mother with the seeds and how that was what she just kept trying to do. Just kept trying to keep planting, just keep going.

The wives who almost want to go back because they value continuing over anything else. The concept of preservation is built in so hard, and that’s why Furiosa just one such character, because she values preservation. But she will destroy to get it, which makes her very specifically non-binary. like her ruthlessness and the moment where she says, no, we’re not going back [for Splendid]. She has to verify that there’s nothing to go back for. She says, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” She went under the wheels. But did you see it? Like that’s what makes her really a trans character. Because it’s usually what makes male characters really striking, when they have the moment of nurturing, the reluctant father figure.

Never Seen It: Watching Mad Max: Fury Road with Comedian Katrina Coleman (2)

CM: Interesting. Yes. That makes me think about Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. He’s like the tough sergeant the whole time, and then like towards the end you find out he’s, like, an elementary school teacher. He gives that energy out just a little bit every now and then…that nurturing energy.

KC: We, as humans, love to see a badass that will take anything’s ass. If we can kind of quietly believe that person would protect us. I think that’s part of what sort of holds us to a hero. Like, if some bad shit went down, this person who just just absolutely opened fire and murdered all these people and cut them in half, they do it to keep me safe.

Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa

CM: And Charlize Theron…

KC: I mean, a performance for the ages! So much of it is non-verbal. I love her as an actress, just full, like, full stop, obviously.

CM: [Cinematographer John Seale] shoots her sometimes like…it’s almost like he’s shooting architecture. She’s just carved out of stone, you know? When I first saw this movie, I compared her performance to Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name.

KC: She’s quiet, and communicates everything with her eyes and micro-expressions. She has such a talent for the smallest things…And then there’s the big meme moment—“That’s bait.” I had never seen it in context.

via GIPHY

Never Seen It: Watching Mad Max: Fury Road with Comedian Katrina Coleman

I also appreciate how every line that Tom Hardy delivered, he sounded like he had just woken up. I know I’ve always been on the fence about that guy, but he’s really great in this.

Tom Hardy as Max Max Rockatansky

CM: Max, though, is almost like a like a sidekick in his own movie.

KC: So, one of my favorite things is the same thing I love about Die Hard. Like, how many hit points does this dude have? How is he standing up?

CM: That’s almost his function as a hero. Luke Skywalker’s function is to fight evil with his lightsaber. Max Rockatansky’s function is to take a punch and keep getting up.

KC: He gets shot literally in the face and is only saved by his crazy ideations of grief.

Courtney Eaton as Cheedo The Fragile

CM: [Cheedo The Fragile], she’s the one who tries to run away, but the other wives talk her out of it. This time, I read that whole scene as a feminist allegory. You know, “Give him another chance! He’ll be good to me this time.”

KC: You know, that is a constant struggle. If we conform enough, if we cater to the patriarchy…It’s usually the older feminist, the ones who’ve been very successful in business, “The Pantsuits”, they call them, who tell us younger feminists to just go with it. Learn to smoke a cigar, learn to take the jokes, learn to deal with it. Yeah. That is super common. And it happens with younger feminists, but absolutely. And I think it’s also been expressed in my colonialization the idea of just go with it to survive. How much is too much? Different people have different levels of how much is too much. Some people can take quite a lot of degradation before they believe it’s worth risking their life.

Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe

CM: So, things have a bit of an apocalyptic feel right now, because of, you know, the plague. How did it feel watching Fury Road in this moment?

KC: It was wild. Comparing my life personally, at this time, has seen very small changes. Earlier, I went to the grocery store, but I saw the world in very different way. I also love post-apocalyptic fiction. I love considering it and thinking about it. Where would I stand? What would it be? How would I maneuver out of this world? The line, “Don’t get addicted to water!” is the one that hit me hard. Even in such a dismal place, propaganda is still working well.

Never Seen It: Watching Mad Max: Fury Road with Comedian Katrina Coleman (5)

What we’re experiencing right now in our country is 100 percent result of propaganda. It’s like, it’s all propaganda’s fault that it’s so scary. There’s a thousand people on the ground with their buckets. Only the first 50 or 60 managed to fill up their buckets with water. The war machines, they don’t have to be as big as flashy as they are. The chrome and shiny warlords don’t have to dress the way they do. It’s just control. And that’s the thing that’s the most upsetting though about watching it, the thing that kinda just brings it home. If the prisoners figured out that they outnumbered the guards, it would be over real quick.

Never Seen It: Watching Mad Max: Fury Road with Comedian Katrina Coleman (4)

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Memphis Comedy Show “You Look Like” Begins Airing on LOL Network

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burkes

Keven Hart’s LOL Network launches a new made-in-Memphis show Tuesday, March 20th. After almost two years spent searching for the right home, Midtown’s favorite insult comedy event, You Look Like, show will be available to comedy fans nationwide.

Memphis Comedy Show ‘You Look Like’ Begins Airing on LOL Network

For the back-story on how filmmaker/TV producer Craig Brewer hooked up with a bunch of Memphis comics to make this series, check out “You Look Like a Cover Story,” originally published in May, 2017.

Justin Fox Burkes

Katrina Coleman

 You Look Like a Cover Story
by CHRIS DAVIS

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks


So a gaggle of comedians from Memphis walk into a bar in Western Arkansas …
No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke. It’s an origin story for Memphis’ most popular monthly, game-based comedy event. You Look Like — so named because the competition’s mean-spirited jokes all begin with the words, “You look like” — recently tickled film and television director Craig Brewer’s funny bone, so now it’s being developed as a streaming digital series.

You Look Like is beginning to look like a comedy institution in the making, but back in the summer of 2015, the embryonic thing that rapidly evolved into You Look Like (YLL), just looked like local funsters Katrina Coleman and Benny Elbows swapping off-the-cuff insults to pass time over a long, boring haul to Fayetteville. Once the other comedians on the evening’s bill were introduced to the concept, they jumped right in and started playing along, too, saying terrible things to each other, such as: “You look like you really believe you’re going to get custody this time,” or “You look like the youth minister who needed a talking to.”

Amanda Walker and Craig Brewer in the bar that inspired Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry

“One time somebody told me I look like Malcolm X-Man,” says Black Nerd Power host Richard Douglas Jones, an early YLL player and convert.

The seminal Arkansas, gig at Nomads Music Lounge (regrettably titled “Memphis in Fay”) started late, in part because the Bluff City comics couldn’t stop playing their fun, new game. When the comedic bloodsport finally broke up, comic and YLL co-founder Tommy Oler grabbed Coleman by the elbow and told her the silly, mean, hilarious thing she’d started needed to grow into something bigger.

“I wasn’t sure. I just thought it was a thing I like to do,” says Coleman. For her, You Look Like was a warm-up exercise — the funny person’s equivalent of a gymnast stretching before a tumbling routine.

Oler took the idea to the P&H Cafe, where he was already hosting a popular Thursday night open mic. The idea was instantly green lit, and it wasn’t long before the eclectic Midtown bar famously associated with poor and hungry artists had to reconfigure its seating to accommodate bigger and bigger crowds turning out for comedy.

“I remember when I’d have 10 or 15 people at one of my shows, and I’d think it was the greatest thing,” Coleman says. “I’d get all excited and call my mom. Now, if there are only 50 or 75 at a show, I wonder if there’s some big concert at Minglewood Hall or something.”

Now, when episodes of the accompanying YLL podcast post late, out-of-town subscribers send grumpy messages. “It’s this really weird show that audiences seem to like and that the comics love to do,” Coleman says, floating a theory: “If you really love somebody, you’ll cut their heart out for a giggle.”

For all the terrible things being said on stage, the love inside the P& H is thick and sticky when, over the course of a week, Brewer and his local production team shoots the entire pilot season for a digital You Look Like series.

“You got robbed,” the winner of one round calls out, chasing down his opponent. “I know. I totally beat you,” the loser shouts back. Nobody’s angry. They’re all in this together.

“I’m not drunk enough to cry,” Coleman announces from the stage as the camera crew prepares to shoot the last five episodes of the 10-episode trial season. “But set your watches.”

Coleman, who certainly looks like the person most responsible for assembling the current big tent of modern Memphis comedy, then gestures to a ridiculous, clearly homemade crown spinning on a turntable just offstage: the winner’s prize.

“It’s still the You Look Like show,” she assures the “studio audience,” acknowledging that, in spite of the many physical upgrades to her show’s homemade aesthetic, “I made that motherfucker in my living room.”

A machine pumps fog into the room, standing in for the P&H’s famously thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Local writer/director Morgan Fox orders the cameras to roll, and the games begin in earnest.

The rules for You Look Like couldn’t be simpler. Two comics stand face to face, trading appearance-based insults: “You look like heroin might improve your life.” Or “You look like the Sorting Hat put you in House of 1,000 Corpses.” Like that. The meaner it gets, the more respect you can feel radiating from the combatants. When a round ends, the audience chooses a winner, and the loser has to gaze into a mirror of shame and play the game over again, solo, hurling insults at him/herself.

Brewer encountered the You Look Like Show while attending the 2016 Memphis Comedy Festival. The Hustle & Flow filmmaker had no idea that such a mature comedy scene had grown up in the artsy little beer joint at the center of his own filmmaker origin story.

For that festival, the show was moved to the Hi-Tone, and Brewer had initially assumed it was put on by a visiting troupe of comics from Chicago.

“I was like, ‘Wow, it’s so great that this touring group came in and did this,'” Brewer says in a phone interview from Los Angeles (where he recently added a new credit to his resume: co-executive producer of the hit show, Empire). Brewer was immediately corrected by fans who told him it was, in fact, a Memphis-based show that had been running for about a year at the P&H.

“Do you know where the P&H is?” someone asked. “Yeah,” Brewer answered. “I think I might know where that is.”

Seeing Brewer at work again inside the P&H causes epic déjà vu. The Madison Avenue bar, with its rotating cast of oddball regulars inspired his first movie, The Poor & Hungry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was still an aspiring filmmaker and part-time bookstore employee, Brewer would go to the bar to write his screenplays, shoot scenes, or screen daily “rushes” on the P&H’s ancient TV.

Although The Poor & Hungry never received wide theatrical distribution, the award-winning digital feature, shot on an impossibly low budget of $20,000 with a two-man crew, became Brewer’s Hollywood calling card. When other wannabes were slinging pitches, he was mailing out VHS tapes of a little movie about life at the P&H Cafe that arguably helped step up Hollywood’s digital shift.

“I felt like grandpa,” Brewer says, shocked but not all that surprised by the revelation that he and YLL shared a creative womb.

The following June, two-months after the comedy festival, Coleman received an unexpected voicemail: “Hi, this is Craig Brewer. I make movies. I saw your show and was wondering if you’d maybe like to get together and talk about it.”

Like any any mother faced with sudden, unknown change, Coleman’s initial response was caution. “Please, please, Hollywood, don’t take my ugly baby away,” she pleads emphatically, recounting her initial worry. “But Craig was great. He walked me through the whole contract and explained everything.” All Coleman really needed was assurance that the live show would be always be hers to do with as she sees fit, which had been the plan all along.

“See, the whole live show fits in this little, pink duffle bag,” Coleman says, giggling. As long as she could continue running it out of the P&H and taking it on the road, Coleman says she was up for just about anything else that might happen.

Brewer has always scouted opportunities for exporting Memphis talent and weirdness. In the 1990s, he shot footage of the city’s burlesque scene, resulting in his early short, Clean Up in Booth B. His team-up with MTV on $5 Cover resulted in Midtown’s rock scene playing a semi-fictionalized version of itself.

Unlike earlier projects, where Brewer was starting from scratch, You Look Like was complete and alive. Adapting it as a digital series was additionally enhanced by an all-local crew he’s been collaborating with for a decade and an uncommonly united comedy scene that’s spent the last five years learning to work together.

It’s like what comic Josh McLane says, making his way from the stage to the writers room: “I get paid the same if I win or lose. All that matters is if it’s funny.” That was the dominant attitude backstage during the YLL shoot, giving the whole event an old-school Memphis wrasslin’ vibe. Unlike wrasslin’, outcomes to the matches weren’t predetermined, but the beefs aren’t real, and everybody’s working together to bring serious pain from the top-rope.

“I’m addicted to this feeling now,” Brewer says, remembering the electricity in the room when the comedians hired to write jokes between rounds gathered around the P&H’s pool tables and built their insult database.

Richard Douglas Jones described the writing process as “completely organic.” When one vein of material ran dry, somebody would open another. “I will reinvent the wheel and run you over with it again and again,” he said. Brewer had one big concern. “There needed to be something positive coming out of You Look Like,” he says. “If you were looking at comedians tearing each other apart, you need to feel that they are friends. So, in a weird way, it could be inspiring.”

The backstage cooperation insured that that would be the case. “I left the experience asking, ‘How can I create that again,'” Brewer asks. “Can I go narrative with it? If we did a TV show, what would it be? And what are the jokes?”

That wasn’t the only feeling Brewer left with. He’d drifted away from the P&H after the passing of its colorful proprietress Wanda Wilson, the big-wigged protector of artists, misfits, and backgammon gamblers. “For a while that place lost its energy,” Brewer laments. Working on YLL assured him that the bar’s original spirit is alive and well under the current management.

So what’s next for YLL? The live show continues as usual but now with a new guest host every month. What happens with the pilot series is anybody’s guess, but there are some interesting possibilities: Maybe it gets snapped up right away by a streaming content provider. Or maybe the original series, like The Poor & Hungry, simply becomes a calling card — something Brewer can screen on his phone when he’s pitching ideas. Maybe a producer likes the web series but wants to know if the show can be adapted as a reality show or narrative comedy. “So many times you walk in with a pitch document, and you just don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Brewer explains. “The network might say, ‘Oh, that’s great, but we want it with Snapchat stars.'”

YLL was a perfect catch for Brewer, who’d been actively looking for right-sized projects for his Memphis-based company BR2 and longtime collaborators like David Harris at Gunpowder & Sky, a production company co-founded by Van Toffler, a former MTV executive instrumental in purchasing Brewer’s Hustle & Flow at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. He sums up YLL’s appeal — particularly for companies looking for unscripted material — in one exclamatory sentence: “Oh my God, you can highlight 20 comedians per season, and it’s already a living thing!”

Brewer thinks a few scenarios seem more likely than others. “These days, there are celebrities who want their Facebook page — or whatever — to be a channel. So there are comedians and celebrities who might buy it just to put on their channel,” he explained.

“And there are networks who might say, ‘Okay, this works on the digital level; what does this look like on the network level?’ But what I really wish is that we can take what we’ve made and just keep making more of that. We just made 10 episodes this first time, but if we do it again, we can make 50. Just plan for three or four solid weeks of work, where we just go in and bang it out.”

Oler, who no longer hosts the live show but remains affiliated with the digital project, says it’s exciting to imagine what YLL might be like as a movie or a sitcom. But he can’t shake the joy of knowing, wherever it goes, it started with a bunch of knuckleheads insulting each other on the patio at Nomads Music Lounge in Fayetteville.

“I’m just really thankful to have had a chance to work on this,” he says. Oler and Coleman are funny co-founders; they don’t agree about much. But they do agree that, given an opportunity to show its stuff, the Memphis comedy scene stood up.

The You Look Like Show is the third Saturday of every month at the P&H Cafe. Doors at 8 p.m. show at 9 p.m.

You Look Like a List
What comprises a perfect you look like insult? It has to walk a fine line between credibility and the absurd. Some require context, some are just funny no matter who they’re aimed at. Here’s a completely subjective list of great You Look Like lines.

You look like:

You support displaying the Confederate flag, but only because you don’t have any other good towels.

You masturbate with ranch dressing.

People who look like their dogs.

The most well adjusted person here, surgically.

One more sandwich and that shirt’s over.

You ask to speak to managers.

You regularly delete your search history.

Your head mole makes all your decisions.

You think the Dakota Access Pipeline is a porn trilogy.

The target audience for Buzzfeed articles.

You pronounce the L in Salmon.

You grew up outside a trailer.

Your spirit animal is a chain wallet.

You fucked up the proposal because you left the ring in your other cargo shorts.

You don’t mind talking to people while they’re using the bathroom.

You broke someone else’s ankle auditioning for Grease.

You were designed by scientists for the purpose of disappointing women.

Birdwatching makes you horny.

Group photos are always your idea.

Your husband hides your yoga pants.

The side bitch of Frankenstein.

God swiped left.

The guy other guys are totally okay letting their girlfriends hang out with.

You’re still waiting to hear back about that job.

Your dad is more proud of his other family.

Categories
Cover Feature News

You Look Like a Cover Story

So a gaggle of comedians from Memphis walk into a bar in Western Arkansas …

No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke. It’s an origin story for Memphis’ most popular monthly, game-based comedy event. You Look Like — so named because the competition’s mean-spirited jokes all begin with the words, “You look like” — recently tickled film and television director Craig Brewer’s funny bone, so now it’s being developed as a streaming digital series.

You Look Like is beginning to look like a comedy institution in the making, but back in the summer of 2015, the embryonic thing that rapidly evolved into You Look Like (YLL), just looked like local funsters Katrina Coleman and Benny Elbows swapping off-the-cuff insults to pass time over a long, boring haul to Fayetteville. Once the other comedians on the evening’s bill were introduced to the concept, they jumped right in and started playing along, too, saying terrible things to each other, such as: “You look like you really believe you’re going to get custody this time,” or “You look like the youth minister who needed a talking to.”

Amanda Walker and Craig Brewer in the bar that inspired Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry

“One time somebody told me I look like Malcolm X-Man,” says Black Nerd Power host Richard Douglas Jones, an early YLL player and convert.

The seminal Arkansas, gig at Nomads Music Lounge (regrettably titled “Memphis in Fay”) started late, in part because the Bluff City comics couldn’t stop playing their fun, new game. When the comedic bloodsport finally broke up, comic and YLL co-founder Tommy Oler grabbed Coleman by the elbow and told her the silly, mean, hilarious thing she’d started needed to grow into something bigger.

“I wasn’t sure. I just thought it was a thing I like to do,” says Coleman. For her, You Look Like was a warm-up exercise — the funny person’s equivalent of a gymnast stretching before a tumbling routine.

Oler took the idea to the P&H Cafe, where he was already hosting a popular Thursday night open mic. The idea was instantly green lit, and it wasn’t long before the eclectic Midtown bar famously associated with poor and hungry artists had to reconfigure its seating to accommodate bigger and bigger crowds turning out for comedy.

“I remember when I’d have 10 or 15 people at one of my shows, and I’d think it was the greatest thing,” Coleman says. “I’d get all excited and call my mom. Now, if there are only 50 or 75 at a show, I wonder if there’s some big concert at Minglewood Hall or something.”

Now, when episodes of the accompanying YLL podcast post late, out-of-town subscribers send grumpy messages. “It’s this really weird show that audiences seem to like and that the comics love to do,” Coleman says, floating a theory: “If you really love somebody, you’ll cut their heart out for a giggle.”

For all the terrible things being said on stage, the love inside the P& H is thick and sticky when, over the course of a week, Brewer and his local production team shoots the entire pilot season for a digital You Look Like series.

“You got robbed,” the winner of one round calls out, chasing down his opponent. “I know. I totally beat you,” the loser shouts back. Nobody’s angry. They’re all in this together.

“I’m not drunk enough to cry,” Coleman announces from the stage as the camera crew prepares to shoot the last five episodes of the 10-episode trial season. “But set your watches.”

Coleman, who certainly looks like the person most responsible for assembling the current big tent of modern Memphis comedy, then gestures to a ridiculous, clearly homemade crown spinning on a turntable just offstage: the winner’s prize.

“It’s still the You Look Like show,” she assures the “studio audience,” acknowledging that, in spite of the many physical upgrades to her show’s homemade aesthetic, “I made that motherfucker in my living room.”

A machine pumps fog into the room, standing in for the P&H’s famously thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Local writer/director Morgan Fox orders the cameras to roll, and the games begin in earnest.

The rules for You Look Like couldn’t be simpler. Two comics stand face to face, trading appearance-based insults: “You look like heroin might improve your life.” Or “You look like the Sorting Hat put you in House of 1,000 Corpses.” Like that. The meaner it gets, the more respect you can feel radiating from the combatants. When a round ends, the audience chooses a winner, and the loser has to gaze into a mirror of shame and play the game over again, solo, hurling insults at him/herself.

Brewer encountered the You Look Like Show while attending the 2016 Memphis Comedy Festival. The Hustle & Flow filmmaker had no idea that such a mature comedy scene had grown up in the artsy little beer joint at the center of his own filmmaker origin story.

For that festival, the show was moved to the Hi-Tone, and Brewer had initially assumed it was put on by a visiting troupe of comics from Chicago.

“I was like, ‘Wow, it’s so great that this touring group came in and did this,'” Brewer says in a phone interview from Los Angeles (where he recently added a new credit to his resume: co-executive producer of the hit show, Empire). Brewer was immediately corrected by fans who told him it was, in fact, a Memphis-based show that had been running for about a year at the P&H.

“Do you know where the P&H is?” someone asked. “Yeah,” Brewer answered. “I think I might know where that is.”

Seeing Brewer at work again inside the P&H causes epic déjà vu. The Madison Avenue bar, with its rotating cast of oddball regulars inspired his first movie, The Poor & Hungry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was still an aspiring filmmaker and part-time bookstore employee, Brewer would go to the bar to write his screenplays, shoot scenes, or screen daily “rushes” on the P&H’s ancient TV.

Although The Poor & Hungry never received wide theatrical distribution, the award-winning digital feature, shot on an impossibly low budget of $20,000 with a two-man crew, became Brewer’s Hollywood calling card. When other wannabes were slinging pitches, he was mailing out VHS tapes of a little movie about life at the P&H Cafe that arguably helped step up Hollywood’s digital shift.  

“I felt like grandpa,” Brewer says, shocked but not all that surprised by the revelation that he and YLL shared a creative womb.

The following June, two-months after the comedy festival, Coleman received an unexpected voicemail: “Hi, this is Craig Brewer. I make movies. I saw your show and was wondering if you’d maybe like to get together and talk about it.”

Like any any mother faced with sudden, unknown change, Coleman’s initial response was caution. “Please, please, Hollywood, don’t take my ugly baby away,” she pleads emphatically, recounting her initial worry. “But Craig was great. He walked me through the whole contract and explained everything.” All Coleman really needed was assurance that the live show would be always be hers to do with as she sees fit, which had been the plan all along.

“See, the whole live show fits in this little, pink duffle bag,” Coleman says, giggling. As long as she could continue running it out of the P&H and taking it on the road, Coleman says she was up for just about anything else that might happen.

Brewer has always scouted opportunities for exporting Memphis talent and weirdness. In the 1990s, he shot footage of the city’s burlesque scene, resulting in his early short, Clean Up in Booth B. His team-up with MTV on $5 Cover resulted in Midtown’s rock scene playing a semi-fictionalized version of itself.

Unlike earlier projects, where Brewer was starting from scratch, You Look Like was complete and alive. Adapting it as a digital series was additionally enhanced by an all-local crew he’s been collaborating with for a decade and an uncommonly united comedy scene that’s spent the last five years learning to work together.

It’s like what comic Josh McLane says, making his way from the stage to the writers room: “I get paid the same if I win or lose. All that matters is if it’s funny.” That was the dominant attitude backstage during the YLL shoot, giving the whole event an old-school Memphis wrasslin’ vibe. Unlike wrasslin’, outcomes to the matches weren’t predetermined, but the beefs aren’t real, and everybody’s working together to bring serious pain from the top-rope.

“I’m addicted to this feeling now,” Brewer says, remembering the electricity in the room when the comedians hired to write jokes between rounds gathered around the P&H’s pool tables and built their insult database.

Richard Douglas Jones described the writing process as “completely organic.” When one vein of material ran dry, somebody would open another. “I will reinvent the wheel and run you over with it again and again,” he said. Brewer had one big concern. “There needed to be something positive coming out of You Look Like,” he says. “If you were looking at comedians tearing each other apart, you need to feel that they are friends. So, in a weird way, it could be inspiring.”

The backstage cooperation insured that that would be the case. “I left the experience asking, ‘How can I create that again,'” Brewer asks. “Can I go narrative with it? If we did a TV show, what would it be? And what are the jokes?”

That wasn’t the only feeling Brewer left with. He’d drifted away from the P&H after the passing of its colorful proprietress Wanda Wilson, the big-wigged protector of artists, misfits, and backgammon gamblers. “For a while that place lost its energy,” Brewer laments. Working on YLL assured him that the bar’s original spirit is alive and well under the current management.

So what’s next for YLL? The live show continues as usual but now with a new guest host every month. What happens with the pilot series is anybody’s guess, but there are some interesting possibilities: Maybe it gets snapped up right away by a streaming content provider. Or maybe the original series, like The Poor & Hungry, simply becomes a calling card — something Brewer can screen on his phone when he’s pitching ideas. Maybe a producer likes the web series but wants to know if the show can be adapted as a reality show or narrative comedy. “So many times you walk in with a pitch document, and you just don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Brewer explains. “The network might say, ‘Oh, that’s great, but we want it with Snapchat stars.'”

YLL was a perfect catch for Brewer, who’d been actively looking for right-sized projects for his Memphis-based company BR2 and longtime collaborators like David Harris at Gunpowder & Sky, a production company co-founded by Van Toffler, a former MTV executive instrumental in purchasing Brewer’s Hustle & Flow at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. He sums up YLL‘s appeal — particularly for companies looking for unscripted material — in one exclamatory sentence: “Oh my God, you can highlight 20 comedians per season, and it’s already a living thing!”

Brewer thinks a few scenarios seem more likely than others. “These days, there are celebrities who want their Facebook page — or whatever — to be a channel. So there are comedians and celebrities who might buy it just to put on their channel,” he explained.

“And there are networks who might say, ‘Okay, this works on the digital level; what does this look like on the network level?’ But what I really wish is that we can take what we’ve made and just keep making more of that. We just made 10 episodes this first time, but if we do it again, we can make 50. Just plan for three or four solid weeks of work, where we just go in and bang it out.”

Oler, who no longer hosts the live show but remains affiliated with the digital project, says it’s exciting to imagine what YLL might be like as a movie or a sitcom. But he can’t shake the joy of knowing, wherever it goes, it started with a bunch of knuckleheads insulting each other on the patio at Nomads Music Lounge in Fayetteville.

“I’m just really thankful to have had a chance to work on this,” he says. Oler and Coleman are funny co-founders; they don’t agree about much. But they do agree that, given an opportunity to show its stuff, the Memphis comedy scene stood up.  

The You Look Like Show is the third Saturday of every month at the P&H Cafe. Doors at 8 p.m. show at 9 p.m.

You Look Like a List

What comprises a perfect you look like insult? It has to walk a fine line between credibility and the absurd. Some require context, some are just funny no matter who they’re aimed at. Here’s a completely subjective list of great You Look Like lines.

You look like:

You support displaying the Confederate flag, but only because you don’t have any other good towels.

You masturbate with ranch dressing.

People who look like their dogs.

The most well adjusted person here, surgically.

One more sandwich and that shirt’s over.

You ask to speak to managers.

You regularly delete your search history.

Your head mole makes all your decisions.

You think the Dakota Access Pipeline is a porn trilogy.

The target audience for Buzzfeed articles.

You pronounce the L in Salmon.

You grew up outside a trailer.

Your spirit animal is a chain wallet.

You fucked up the proposal because you left the ring in your other cargo shorts.

You don’t mind talking to people while they’re using the bathroom.

You broke someone else’s ankle auditioning for Grease.

You were designed by scientists for the purpose of disappointing women.

Birdwatching makes you horny.

Group photos are always your idea.

Your husband hides your yoga pants.

The side bitch of Frankenstein.

God swiped left.

The guy other guys are totally okay letting their girlfriends hang out with.

You’re still waiting to hear back about that job.

Your dad is more proud of his other family.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1471

Reading the CA

It’s tempting to just caption this pic “[COMMENT TK],” and leave it at that. But Name of Column has always been one of Fly on the Wall’s favorite columnists. Besides, with The Commercial Appeal‘s parent company, Gannett, dismissing local talent left and right, delaying employee severance pay, and engaging in what some have described as “union busting” tactics, while changing a once acceptable daily into a paper wraith, it’s appropriate to flag this editorial effort as more evidence that all is well and everything’s going according to plan.

Memphis Is Ugly

This clip recently published in The Sacramento Bee announces another BS list for people to click on and get upset about. Memphis was ranked #9 on a list of America’s ugliest cities, as determined by the beautiful professional tourists of Travel & Leisure Magazine based on criteria — does anybody really care?

Verbatim

“You look like heroin might improve your life.” — overheard at the taping for season one of the You Look Like, an insult-based comedy game show created by Memphis comics Katrina Coleman and Tommy Oler. Craig Brewer’s BR2 Productions has teamed with the L.A.-based digital studio Gunpowder and Sky to develop the monthly P&H Cafe-based show/podcast into readymade content for streaming services.

Categories
Music Music Features

P.A. Presents …

Then comedian P.A. Sechler performed in the most recent Memphis Punk Fest, it was one of his first shows. After getting the invitation to join the bill, he ran through a short stand-up set in the time-slot between two punk bands. It made for an unconventional but memorable entrance onto the Memphis comedy scene, so maybe it’s just evolution for Sechler to have assembled a diverse group of musicians and comics for his first “P.A. Presents” show this Friday at the New Daisy.

The Clinton, Mississippi-based indie-rock band Fides tops the music bill, with Katrina Coleman, the mastermind behind the Memphis Comedy Festival, serving as headliner for the comedy portion of the show. The other musical acts jump genres wildly, and include psychedelic rock, synthpop, and punk-influenced electropop on a bill that is already an amalgam of music and comedy. If you like to laugh and dance, then, with three comedians and four vastly different bands, “P. A. Presents” appears to offer a lot of bang for your buck.

“P.A. Presents” is Sechler’s first show as curator, but the Cleveland, Mississippi, transplant says he wants the show to be an experience that wouldn’t be found elsewhere. “It’s not every day you get to play on Beale Street,” Sechler says, and, to make sure the event is special, he has assembled a varied lineup of performers. The Renders, Surfwax, and the Ellie Badge will perform, and Joshua McLane and Christine Marie will keep the momentum rolling with comedy sets between music sets. You might recognize McLane as the drummer of HEELS and as one of the regulars from the popular “You Look Like A” comedy shows, further blurring the line between music and comedy on this bill.

Though there is a cornucopia of homegrown talent on display, the real gem of the night is headliners Fides. The band self-released their second full-length album, Across the Yard, last July, and on the strength of that record alone, they are well worth the price of admission.

Four years after the release of their self-titled first EP, Fides is a tight unit, and it’s clear their time spent in the trenches of restaurants and bars in Mississippi has served them well. Tommy Bobo, Reed Smith, and Cody Sparkman recorded Across the Yard with Jacob Lifsey at the Delta Music Institute, (but I can’t help but wonder what they would do in the hands of someone at High/Low or the Old Vacuum Shop, formerly Rocket Science Audio). The new 12-track album flows along dreamily, with powerful instrumental interludes resolving (I wanted to type “coalescing,” as if there were some powerful occult chemistry at work) into breezily melodic verses. The ease with which the unsigned band manipulates the nuances of their songs bespeaks a lot of time spent playing together. Fides lists Colour Revolt as a major influence, and it’s no surprise, given that both bands are based in Mississippi and Fides formed about the same time Colour Revolt signed, briefly, with Fat Possum Records. And I can’t help but think that Fides owes some thanks to bands like Yo La Tengo and Television for their crisply melodic, dark-but-gentle sound. “Brain” is the stand-out track of Across the Yard, at times tender, at times strong and insistent, as chiming guitars give way to the swell of drums and tastefully applied keyboards.

On the comedy side of the bill, headliner Katrina Coleman is the reason to stick around. For a more in-depth look at the comedian, see Coleman’s 2015 interview with the Flyer‘s own Fly on the Wall, or you can just trust Sechler when he says that Coleman is Memphis comedy royalty. As an integral part of the Memphis Comedy Festival and the “You Look Like A” comedy shows, Coleman has been making Memphis audiences laugh for years.

“It’s going to be fun,” Sechler says, “and that’s what I want.”