Tag: Love

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Matters of the Heart

Justin J. Pearson + Oceana Gilliam (Photo: Courtesy Justin J. Pearson + Oceana Gilliam)

The annual big freeze seems to have gone, but what could have dispensed with the cold Memphis weather? Perhaps it’s all the love in the air. With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, be uplifted by the stories of three Bluff City couples who navigated their own twisty, windy paths to love. Their tales will thaw both the frostiest days, and our cold, frozen hearts.

Justin J. Pearson + Oceana R. Gilliam

Oceana Gilliam says she met Justin Pearson in 2016 at Princeton University. “Justin and I, we both did this program together called the … what is it?”

“Policy International Affairs Junior Summer Institute,” says Justin, finishing her thought, as the couple are prone to do.

“We were both juniors in college going into our senior year,” Oceana continues. “I was really smitten, I think, when I first saw him, because even then, when we were just in college, he would have on his suit. When he would introduce himself, he would stand up and say, ‘Hello, I’m Justin J. Pearson.’ I was just like, oh my God, I really love that. He was always so kind. He’s always so sweet.”

“She was this very cute Black girl who was speaking Russian and singing in Russian at this program,” Justin recalls. “There was a song that I had just learned by Leon Bridges. One of the lines is ‘Brown skin girl with the polka-dot dress on.’ I love the song and I remember sending that to her, so I liked her a lot.”

Oceana, who was “born and raised in South Central,” Los Angeles, went to grad school at UCLA, while Pearson was all the way across North America at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, before leading the charge to stop the Byhalia Pipeline with Memphis Community Against the Pipeline. (After their victory, the environmental justice organization changed its name to reflect a wider focus on pollution.) “Even though we didn’t get together, it’s like the flame never went away,” says Justin. “Which is why I kept pursuing, probably more than she was. I was in the DMs between 2016 and literally 2020.

“We reconnected because I actually went to L.A. and I saw her for 30 minutes before I gave a speech. She was in grad school at UCLA getting her master’s in public policy. And so anytime I would talk to her — which was very little over those few years — she was just doing some amazing stuff for policy and political science things. But then we had Covid, and we had the summer of Black Death with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, these lynchings going on. She was protesting a lot in Los Angeles, and I was starting to get more engaged and involved in things in Memphis because we just moved back home. Then we had the pipeline fight in Memphis, and we really started to connect and bond and talk. She was a big support system during that time, too.”

“We really, really connected during the pandemic — we’re one of those pandemic bae couples,” says Oceana. “It was such a difficult and hard time. He was someone that I could really turn to, and he was always there for me. … We would literally be working with each other — I’ll be on a work meeting, he’ll be on a work call, but we have our Zooms on or our FaceTime on mute. We spend hours and hours together.”

When Justin broached the subject of running for the Tennessee House of Representatives to Gilliam, “At that point I could really see it,” she says. “He was already doing a lot of great work with MCAP, and I saw how he spoke out against trying to build this pipeline between people’s homes and take land. And so when he decided to say, ‘Hey, I want to run for office,’ I was with him fully and completely. I feel like that was a great path for him. He’s really passionate about this work, but he’s also very genuine. He’s very serious.

“Just from my own experience, being around other type of politicians, what I really appreciate about Justin the most is that the work that he does, he really does it from the heart. After going around with him, door knocking, meeting people in Westwood and other parts of Memphis and Millington, people really, really love Justin.”

As Justin grappled with the decision to run for office, the couple took a road trip from L.A. to Memphis. “You’re on the diving board and you’re like, am I really going to jump? We kept getting all these signs that this is the right thing to do. I remember, I was driving and I was like, ‘We going to do it, right? We going to do it? We were in Texas, and this huge cross kind of appeared out of nowhere, seemingly. And it was like, yeah, we’re going to do this thing.”

After Justin won a special election in 2023, Oceana was going to return to Los Angeles, but instead got caught up in what Justin calls “the most wild week ever known to humanity,” where he was sworn in to the house, brought the post-Covenant School shooting protests against gun violence onto the State House floor, and was then impeached and temporarily expelled from the Legislature. “That was such a difficult time,” she says. “I was in the gallery every single day with him. It was really something else.”

Justin and Oceana got engaged at her birthday party in 2023. They plan on tying the knot in the spring of 2025. “You get triumphs, or you get tragedies, that bring people together,” says Pearson. — Chris McCoy

Amir Hadadzadeh and Sepideh Dashti (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Sepideh Dashti + Amir Hadadzadeh

Amir Hadadzadeh and Sepideh Dashti met some 10 years ago in Iran — they’d met a few times actually, but mostly in passing. Amir’s university friend married Sepideh’s sister, so they were bound to get to know each other one day.

At the time, Amir was studying in Canada, and Sepideh was still in Iran. On a visit back home, Amir had been tasked with dropping off something from his friend and his wife to Sepideh. “I knocked on the door,” Amir reminisces, “and someone — Sepideh — just opened the door a little bit and a hand came out, grabbed the thing, and went in. She didn’t even show her face.” This day, it turned out, wouldn’t be the day that Amir and Sepideh got to know each other, but they laugh about it now.

Instead, Amir says he kept thinking about her while he was studying for his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He was drawn to her seriousness. “She didn’t care about any guy. I mean, there was no one,” he says. “And then I decided to call, so it started from there.”

“Actually, we would chat [over Skype and Yahoo Messenger],” Sepideh corrects. “We were too shy to talk.”

But in 2009, the internet in Iran was not stable as the government sought to tighten its control. “We would start to chat with each other. And in the middle of the chat, the government decided to shut down the internet,” Amir says, “and we were not able to really have a deep conversation. It was very tough for us.”

“The internet shutdown happened,” Sepideh says, “and that was a moment we felt that [we would make a good couple] because then our conversations stopped for several days and I remember Amir’s sister called me and said, ‘Amir is very worried for you and asked me to tell you not to go outside because they arrested someone for protesting the election.’”

And so, Amir and Sepideh kept chatting, sending messages when the internet allowed, and eventually graduated to phone calls and video calls after the shyness wore off. After a few months, Amir returned to Iran and proposed. “She accepted,” Amir says. They had about a month together before Amir returned to Canada, and they could only see each other a few hours a day. “Sometimes we had to be sneaky,” Amir says with a smirk.

A year later, they were married. “We only had 10 days to be really close to each other [after the wedding before Amir had to go back to school],” Sepideh says. She was able to get her visa six months later, so they could finally be together in the same country. The day they reunited was April 15, 2011, Amir recalls immediately.

Since then, they’ve moved from Canada to Memphis, with Amir taking a job at the University of Memphis as a professor of mechanical engineering. Sepideh, meanwhile, is something of a multi-hyphenate as an art instructor at the Kroc Center, adjunct faculty at U of M, a Ph.D. candidate in educational psychology and research, and an artist who explores identity, womanhood, and the body. “I always tell her, ‘You are an internationally recognized artist. You should acknowledge that,’” Amir adds when he boasts about his wife’s accomplishments.

“He’s why I can manage,” Sepideh says, “especially with two kids. Honestly. … Like, even, I can say now in our parenting that we are very involved. So I’m very serious and I get mad and angry very easily, so most of the time I ask, ‘Can you manage this?’ I think his humorous sense has helped to engage with kids, make them calm, and make me calm.”

With both their families back in Iran, the two have found support and comfort in each other. “I think sometimes I feel this attachment is too much because when he goes somewhere for a seminar that is not in Memphis, I’m so stressed,” Sepideh says.

“We’ve imagined what would happen if we were back in Iran and discussed that a lot,” Amir says, “and we’ve concluded that we wouldn’t be as happy as what we have here. … I only wish that I would have met her earlier. That’s the only regret that I have. I wish we would have met, I don’t know, 10 years, at least five years earlier. [For now,] I’ll just admire her, love her, try to make her laugh.”

“We hope to grow old together,” Sepideh adds, “and watch our children become independent and lead fulfilling lives, just as our parents wished for us.” — Abigail Morici

Mario + Kristin Linagen-Monterosso (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Mario + Kristin Linagen-Monterosso

I happened to be present the moment sparks flew between Mario Monterosso and Kristin Linagen. As Kristin recounts it, “Mario asked a mutual friend about me, and she said, ‘You know, she’s single now, if you’re asking about her.’ And he reached out to me via social media and said, ‘Hey, I’m playing at DKDC tonight. I’d love to see you.’”

Monterosso, of course, is the celebrated Italian guitarist who moved to Memphis years ago to follow his dream of living in the birthplace of the music he loved most. He soon became an integral part of the roots music scene here. Last May, as James and the Ultrasounds, with me on keys, held court at Bar DKDC, Mario sat in with us and we all did a double take: He was on fire that night.

Yet it was Mario’s winning personality more than his musicianship that caught Kristin’s eye. “You know, it was fate,” she says now. “We went out for a couple cocktail nights, and then he said, ‘Hey, I’d like to take you out. I’d like to court you.’ And I’m a traditional woman, I’m old-fashioned, so I just loved that idea. I thought he was a cool guy.”

Kristin has an ear for music herself. “I love music,” she says. “I played the guitar growing up. I’m not much of a guitar player now, but I picked it up when we first started dating. Just to show him a little bit because I still remember all the songs I grew up playing in high school.”

While her real calling has been her own business, Therapeutic Touch Massage, opened after she studied at the Massage Institute of Memphis, Kristin clearly loves the arts. That may be why Mario decided that they must visit New York together. “After about a month of dating, he said, ‘Hey, I want to take you to New York,’” Kristin recalls. “It was June of last year, and we planned the trip for December. And we said, ‘You know, even if things don’t work out, we’re still going to go together.’ So we made a pact! I mean, we spit on our hands and shook on it and everything. You know, we go all the way!”

Mario smiles at this memory, then adds, “Being in New York with someone I love was always a big thing to me. But I’d never done it before.” Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, his new amore had similar feelings about the Big Apple.

“Three years ago, I had this fantasy of being in New York with a man that I love over Christmas,” recalls Kristin. “And when he asked me to go, I thought, ‘Wow, this man is making my dreams come true. Are we making each other’s dreams come true?’ And by the time December comes along, and we’re all in, I’m thinking, ‘Okay, he loves New York. He loves me. Maybe he will propose?’”

She kept that to herself, though, as they embraced the city’s energy. “He took me to a Broadway show, Some Like it Hot,” Kristin recalls. “Then we walked to Rockefeller Center and experienced the crowd and the Christmas tree and Radio City Music Hall. And then we went to Sardi’s for dinner.”

After their meal, Kristin made a suggestion. “I said, ‘Let’s finish our wine upstairs, more privately, where we can look out the window at the Shubert Theatre. That’ll be fun!’ And of course he loves this idea, because it’s my idea, but he has things planned that I don’t know.”

That’s when Mario excused himself and pretended to visit the restroom. “It was the moment,” he says, “where I was thinking, ‘Do I do it now? Do I do it now?’ The ring was in my pocket!”

“He comes back and goes right into it,” says Kristin. “He just says, ‘Can I be direct with you?’ And he pulled out a red velvet box and said, ‘Kristin, will you marry me?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ And I ran up to the bar. ‘We need two glasses of champagne!’ Everybody applauded and we had a great evening from then on. And then the next morning, I woke up at 4 a.m. with a fever, shivering and sweating. I had gotten the flu!”

It was a perfect moment of “in sickness and in health,” and Mario dutifully cared for his beloved through the rest of their stay. By the time another month went by, Mario and Kristin Linegan-Monterosso had eloped. Nowadays, if you happen to see them, they’re likely to be beaming. — Alex Greene

Categories
Opinion Romance Language

Divorced, Single, and Overwhelmingly Lucky in Love

Can romance be in the cards? (Photo: Daphne Maysonet)

If I wrangled all the romantic encounters I’ve had in the past five weeks, I would seem ridiculous to you. The last five years? You’d think I was daft.

A crushaholic. A codependent. A masochist. A machine. How could anyone look romance in the face — in so many different faces — and not turn to salt when it sours? What kind of person could wake up and march through the rituals of dating again: texting through the butterflies, dressing for dinner, singing the familiar date duets of sibling names, favorite bands, career milestones, pet peeves, major losses, and the embarrassing hope of one day making a life with someone you just met?

Before five years ago, I wouldn’t believe it. I was married. I’d entered my first real relationship at 18 years old, and it managed to last until 27. In that relationship, I grew up. I learned how to share bills. I learned how to plan meals and iron perfect creases into slacks. I learned how to take someone to the hospital in an emergency. I learned how to confess when my body was doing something decidedly gross. I learned how not to mention — out of the kindness of my heart — when my partner’s body was doing something decidedly gross. I learned how to reveal my fantasies to someone I had to look in the eye every day for presumably the rest of my life. I grew up in other ways: I began my careers in education and publishing. I learned how to drive. I discovered how much I sucked, and then I started therapy.

Eventually, mundane conflicts became irreconcilable. Then, like many: I had a loving marriage that failed.

Failure is a harsh word that someone landed on to describe a break-up. I had an amicable divorce. He’s still among the first people I call for career advice or after an accident. When you’re having coffee together at Waffle House after signing away your lifetime commitment, you’re family.

At a certain point, I had to wonder: Is a bond that brought you joy but didn’t end in partnered bliss a personal shortcoming? Is an ended relationship a failure?

Before it ended, I was afraid no one would ever love me again. I’d had a rough childhood that lacked closeness and affection. I spent a lot of time alone with my drawings or stolen library books, and I won over my teachers to cope. The partner who became my husband was the first person who made me feel understood. All of the evidence suggested I was blowing my one shot at love — that prized grail of the television shows and movies and books that raised me.

I was dead wrong.

Just three weeks after moving to Memphis, someone I’d met on my first night out at the Lamplighter drunkenly yelled, “I’m in love with you!” outside of a bar at a Jack Oblivian show, and I was Midtown baptized. The rest is the history with which I come to you, dear reader.

The years have been stormy weather. I’ve been ghosted. I’ve been broken-hearted. I’ve been deceived. I’ve ridden the low hum of casual disappointment. I’ve talked to friends, I’ve talked to shrinks, and I’ve consulted the stars. I’ve been spun on dance floors. I’ve been driven to buy groceries in freak Memphis snowstorms. I’ve been inspired. I’ve been respected and listened to deeply. I’ve had my wildly imperfect body worshipped. I have been loved. And I’ve done a lot of loving; therefore, I’ve done a lot of losing.

As of a few months ago, I am once again freshly single, and I am once again, dating.

The last one wasn’t suited for the unique demands of being my life partner. The next may not be. I can’t help but feel like the struggle of love — finding and keeping it — isn’t a failure, but a fortune of mine that, like all else, won’t last forever. There will come a time when the phone stops ringing.

So now, I am open to love like a holy fool. The romantic relationship — not critical to leading a fulfilling life, but mysterious and beautiful — a reason to leap if ever there was one.

Join me.

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Cover Feature News

New Rules For Dating, Love, and Sex!

Love and Sex. It’s all so confusing in this world of dating apps and #metoo activism and phone porn and casual hookups. Having sex and falling into a relationship has never been easier — or more difficult, depending on who you ask. Ever helpful, your Memphis Flyer staff has ventured out into the fray, interviewing actual combatants and the occasional expert to give you the lay of the land in 2018. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek (ahem) and some of it is solid advice. But one bit of eternal wisdom still prevails: Be careful. It’s a jungle out there.

12 New Rules

Hey man, it’s 2018, and dating apps are getting old! You’ve met everyone in your age range within a 19-mile radius already, so it’s time to meet your next lovable loser in a new way. Sure, you’re single this Valentine’s Day, but if you learn these fresh rules, you won’t be by, say, Memorial Day. Think about it: Come 2019, you’re not going to want to spend the nuclear holocaust in your sad, pathetic bunker alone. Listen up. Here are …
12 New Rules

1. Discuss your newfound sobriety on various social media platforms. This is going to garner you way more attention and thus land you more dates than drunkenly hitting on someone at the old Melange bar ever did! 

2. Experiment with Snapchat filters to smooth out your skin, make your eyes look brighter, and attract the type of mate who’s into humans with big ears and wagging tongues. Of course, when all your kids join the Furry community, you’ve only yourself to blame, Snap-people. 

3. Honesty is the best policy, so lay all your cards on the table! No, really, lay these Bingo cards on the table. It’s Memphis Eskimo Brother/Eskimo Sister Bingo, and I’m accepting donations to my GoFundMe. 

4. If there’s one thing that always breaks the ice, it’s some good sports talk. Are you Team Tank the Grizzlies or not? Argue with your date about it. Make a scene in public. Fool around later anyway, regardless of whether a consensus was reached. 

5. Be Chandler Parsons. That’s a pretty good rule for dating in 2018. If you can’t be Chandler Parsons, try to have a strong jawline and $94 million on hand. 

6. Support local businesses by having food delivered via UberEats as often as possible. The more your order, the higher the likelihood the driver will call you and ask which crib is yours. Getting someone to come over is half the battle! 

7. Let that lack of originality flag fly! Alert your love interests that you’re a boring hack ahead of time by demanding date ideas on Facebook and ending the post with “… aaaand GO!” 

8. Attend a protest together. Meet at a protest. Meet at a rally. Adopt a rescue dog and flirt with the foster parent. Whatever it is, you’re guaranteed explosive civic-minded sex afterward and, if you’re lucky, a halfway decent egg-white omelet the next morning. 

9. It’s the year we’ve all been waiting for! Now that you’re over 30, your friends’ exes are fair game. Fair, desperate, sad game. Go for it.

10. Get a divorce. If you’re on the fence, go ahead and hop to it! If my research proves true, divorced people are at a higher risk of being in another relationship very quickly. Marriages are like strokes: With each one, the next one becomes more probable. You just have to take that first teensy-weensy step into Divorce Land to get this ball rolling!

11. Date the boss. You’re both screwed if anyone finds out, so let that secrecy serve as the cornerstone of your relationship. Plus, aren’t you running out of options here? 

12. Quit going to the gym. Has that ever worked as a way to meet people? It’s a trick question because, yes, it has probably worked exactly one time: for that sporty couple that lived next door to the Griswolds in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Why would you want to be like them?

Now, there’s no need to thank me. I know you’re blown away by my insight, but this is probably a good time to tell you that I’m not very good at taking my own advice and, come to think of it, was single all of 2017 and thus far in 2018. But this is the year that I take the bullshit by the horns! I’m following these rules, and I’m going to make dreams come true! — Meghan Stuthard

Treat Your Waitress Like A Human

#Metoo is hopefully giving new guidelines on sex and consent to any man out there who might not understand “no” or “stop.” But some of those same men need a sit-down about how they treat their servers. 

Most get it. Tennessee restaurants can pay an hourly rate as low as $2.13. Your server is hustling, not flirting. But some don’t. To them, servers are Westworld robots built to serve, of course, but also to be viewed, and to, perhaps, hear of a lusty notion that crosses the mind. 

For clear answers on diner conduct, I turned to experts — Hooters girls. Sex (at least sexiness) is threaded in their company’s DNA. Here are some short answers (for Hooters, at least). Look, don’t ogle. Flirt, don’t talk dirty. And never, ever touch a Hooters girl. 

The lunchtime crowd at Hooters downtown last week was largely bearded, hard-hatted, or camouflaged. Despite the environment’s invitation to fun, the crowd was sedate, almost boring. Whoa. Hooters has changed, I thought.

But lunchtime was usually pretty straight, I was told. Though I caught a few eyes flicking up and down at the girls, the guys mostly looked at their phones or watched TV. 

The nighttime crowd was a different story, though. That crowd was why my bartender said she liked to work days. She didn’t say how they were different, exactly, but her deep eye-roll said enough. 

A Midtown server told me that diner conduct hasn’t changed much after #metoo. She never gets hit on at one job, but at the other, “there’s sometimes the drunken ‘take-it-too-far’ dudes that will make comments or try to hit on me [badly].”

Another former server said she never experienced any sexual harassment, really, but for the occasional “you’re hot” written on receipts. But she pointed me to the Missed Connections portion of Memphis Craigslist that had one man searching for a Huey’s waitress with a black hat and hair in a pony tail. “You are absolutely stunning,” the man said. 

But let’s get serious for a minute. 

The restaurant industry has one of the highest rates of sexual harassment, according to a 2014 study by the nonprofit Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROCU). Now, since #metoo, more restaurant workers are coming forward. That study found that 78 percent of the hundreds of female servers interviewed said they’d been sexually harassed by a customer.

But it’s not just customers. Restaurants’ top ranks — owners, chefs, managers — are male-dominated, according to the ROCU report. Females largely comprise front-of-house roles, like servers. This makes restaurants ripe for bad behavior, the report said. 

In 2016, Cheddar’s Casual Cafe paid $450,000 to 15 people here because the company allowed a hostile work environment at its Winchester Road location. Managers sexually harassed female employees, “made requests for sexual favors and explicit sexual comments, and subjected female employees to unwelcome touching.”

— Toby Sells

The Break-Up Expert

If you want to talk about dating, check with Savannah Bearden. She does a comedy show called “The Break-Up Show.”

“It’s an ensemble cast with six of us and we get real stories, real texts, emails, screenshots of Tinder messages people send us, and we read them out loud,” she says. “We give commentary. We re-enact bad dates.”

As far as the material, Bearden says: “No matter what your age, you can understand it.

“I think it’s the realization that certain people actually exist in the world. One of my favorite bad dates that we re-enact: The guy picks the girl up. She’s really already drunk at 6:30 p.m. They go have sushi. The entire date he’s hearing this monologue of racial slurs. She also talks about her mother, who she refers to as a pill popper.

Savannah Bearden

“And then she starts sobbing at the table. It’s so weird. Then he hears her say, ‘I just love Jap food, but I hate Japs.’


”Then he goes to drop her off. He doesn’t want to come inside. He hugs her, and she bites him on the neck and runs out of the car.

“People hear a story like that and they think, ‘This can’t be real.’ Pretty much the thread that runs through the show is, ‘It can’t be real.’

“I would say 75 percent of our show is submissions from dating websites, crazy messages you get and weird interactions. It’s become so pervasive. We’ve never run out of material. As for dating sites, it’s 95 percent men. They’re ridiculous. They say terrible things.

“A guy may write, ‘You’re so beautiful’ and other flowery comments when he messages a woman. “If the girl politely declines, ‘Not interested,’ the guy goes ‘Okay, whatever, bitch.'”

So, what’s Bearden advice for people who date? “I think just be a normal human being. Be someone who wouldn’t freak you out. If your flavor of crazy mixes with another person’s flavor of crazy, I think it all comes down to that.” — Michael Donahue

A Primer on Dating Apps

If you’re looking for companionship, odds are you’re looking online. Apps like Tinder and Bumble, have become indispensable dating tools. After a Facebook post asking for people to share their experiences, I was inundated with responses. Here’s what they had to say about online dating dos and don’ts.

What attracts people to your profile? Appearance certainly counts, but the way you present yourself counts more. The most frequently mentioned turn offs for women were men holding guns and dead animals. (“I don’t know why men are so into posing with dead fish, but they are.”) Men with no pics of themselves is a red flag for women (“That’s a sign that they’re married.”), as are group pics. (“It’s like they’re trying to hide behind their hotter friends.”) As for the guys, they’re sick of seeing selfies with Snapchat filters. (“Can you politely suggest women stop doing this?” read a message with two dozen pics attached.)

The biggest turnoff for both sexes? Trump supporters.

Most men reported feeling like they were expected to send the first message, but women reported sending the first message about half the time. Both sexes reported liking Bumble’s requirement that women send the first message. As one man says, “When guys are hiding behind the internet, they can really be creeps.”

Nearly 100 percent of women report receiving unsolicited penis pics. “They’re not asking for anything in return. They’re just sending them. What satisfaction are they getting? I don’t know.” Another woman said, “I think men think, ‘I like my dick so much, why wouldn’t you like a picture of my dick?'”

One respondent reported receiving an image of a man’s fresh gunshot wound. Others quickly tired of the avalanche of come-ons. “I would be on OK Cupid for a few minutes, and it was just ‘Hello, hello, hello’ And then you get someone who asks if you will pee on them.”

Opening messages that work tend to be conversation starters demonstrating genuine interest, such as questions about mutual interests. “Don’t lead with ‘I think you’re very attractive.’ Lead with ‘I read in your profile that you’re a film buff. What are your favorite films?'”

Try to spell correctly. (“You wouldn’t apply to a job stating that you’re ‘gud @ makin koffee in shit’, so don’t apply for access to my sex organs with ‘luv 2 make out’.”)

If things are going well, the next step is to exchange phone numbers. (“THE PHONE NUMBER IS SACRED! Treat it like the Ark of the Covenant. You wouldn’t smear your dick all over the Ark, so don’t smear it on my phone.”)

A couple of women said rejection at the messaging phase triggered stalking behavior in a man, with one saying the stalking persisted for two and half years, and another reported being physically threatened by a neo-Nazi from Southaven. One woman said she thought the #MeToo movement has had some impact on men’s behavior, but not enough. “Men are being more polite when they use the apps, because they know it can be screen-shotted. But in person, it’s the same old ‘Boys will be boys’ bullshit.”

There are different standards when it comes to setting up a meeting, but the most commonly mentioned time-frame was after a week of exchanging texts. (“Anything beyond that feels like sneakiness.”)

It’s in-person where the real horror stories come out. One woman with a “strict two-drink limit” reported being drugged by a date who ordered her a drink before she arrived. “Never let your drink out of your sight,” she says.

But while it often feels like dating apps are, as one woman put it, “playgrounds for emotionally unavailable, narcissistic clowns,” almost most say the experience has been generally positive. (“Two of the men I met on Tinder are now my really good friends. It proves women and men can be friends with boundaries.”)

One man says he was about to uninstall the app when he got a “detailed and intriguing message” from a woman, and it was “love at first sight. It’s kind of funny that it would happen this way, because neither one of us thought it would.” — Chris McCoy

Dating Etiquette: Survey Says!

Bad teeth, bad breath, and bad attitudes are the top turn-offs in a potential partner, according to the results of a recent Flyer survey of 100 30-ish and younger Memphians. Lies, arrogance, and aggressiveness, along with open-mouth chewing and shrill voices made the list, too. But we didn’t just set out to determine what pushes people’s buttons, we wanted to examine today’s dating etiquette as male and female roles, among other norms, change in society.

When it comes to making the first move, 63 of the respondents said it’s acceptable for the guy or the girl to go for it these days. Still, 61 percent thought that the guy should pick up the bill on the first date, while about a quarter said whoever plans the date should pay for it, and 15 people thought it’s okay to go Dutch.

So, it’s fine for a girl to ask a guy out, but it looks like most agree that the guy should still sponsor the first date no matter what.

We were also interested in learning where young singles go to mingle and meet potential partners. We found that even in the age of Catfish castastrophes and Craigslist Killer casualties, more than 30 percent said they’d still be willing to meet someone online.

Among our respondents, the women were twice as likely as men to look online to meet a significant other.

Other top spots to meet that special someone include social events, school, work, church, and bars.

Once the dating commences, a whopping 74 percent said they prefer to date exclusively, as opposed to dating around. And this was the one question that received almost identical responses from both sexes.

Finally, if you’re looking to get lucky, about 35 out of the 100 folks said they’re comfortable with being intimate with a new partner after two weeks, while 27 percent are ready to knock off some bases on the first date.

— Maya Smith

Memphis: Porn Again

Over at Pornhub, Memphians searched most for the term “ebony” in 2014. That was followed, in order, by “black,” “lesbian,” “cartoon,” and “massage.” The city’s favorite porn star that year? Lisa Ann, whom Pornhub describes as a “perennial MILF favorite.” 

All of these insights, are the thanks to the latest numbers from Pornhub’s number crunchers. The powerhouse porn site keeps up with America’s kinks over at a related site called Pornhub Insights.

In 2017, Tennesseans most commonly misspelled the search term “porn” as “porm.” But so did New Yorkers, Californians, Idahoans, and a bunch more. It’s not as bad, maybe, as commonly misspelling “lebsiam” (Texas), or “ewbony” (Florida), or even “anature” (Mississippi). But the site gave Mississippians props for having the longest average viewing time of folks in any other state.

Last year, Tennesseans searched most for the term “cartoon,” same as Arkansas, Nebraska, and Vermont. These states were outliers, though, as most other states searched for “lesbian,” “step sister,” and “step mom.” Across the southeast, though, “ebony” was the dominant search term, while “teen” and “lesbian” blanketed much of the rest of the country. 

Pornhub Insights also reports that traffic increases in Southeastern Conference (SEC) cities when the students return. Female traffic plunged in Washington, D.C., during the Women’s March this year. Searches for porn star Stormy Daniels skyrocketed after news of her affair with President Donald Trump emerged.

All traffic in Hawaii plummeted 77 percent below normal during the minutes of the missile alert last month, but it surged up 48 percent more than normal in the minutes immediately following it. — TS

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Love

Today’s Music Video Monday is on a Tuesday, and it’s got what the world needs now. 

Ten years ago tomorrow, Memphis-born singer/songwriter Arthur Lee passed away. Lee’s group Love was not the most famous band to come out of the fertile musical ground of the late 1960s, but they left an indelible impression on everyone who heard them. Here’s Lee sporting some killer diamond-shaped shades on American Bandstand in 1966. 

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Love

Lee had his finger on the pulse of California folk rock before it was even a thing. He was equally at home writing sweet, melodic hooks and leading psych rock jams, such as in this show from Copenhagen in 1970.

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Love (3)

Here’s another psychedelic stunner from that same show. 

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Love (4)

In the early aughts, after being overlooked for decades, his music enjoyed a revivial, and Lee came out of retirement. Here he is rocking the Glastonbury Festival in 2003 with a full string section and horn line! 

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Love (5)

In keeping with the tradition of Memphis musicians being more appreciated in England than in the U.S., here’s Lee performing his most famous song “Alone Again Or” for Jools Holland’s BBC show. 

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Love (2)

Thanks to Adam Remsen, Dan Ball, and Greg Roberson for suggesting Lee when I turned to Facebook in search of fresh blood for Music Video Monday. As always, if you have a music video you would like to see in this space, email me at cmccoy@memphisflyer.com, or hit me up on Facebook. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Last Waltz

CREDIT: Trey Harrison

Prosecutor Procedural

If there is a sub-genre of that literary favorite, the police procedural, it might be called the prosecutor procedural, and Operation Tennessee Waltz would be a bestseller.

The final chapter was written last week when Michael Hooks Jr. was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Hooks’ attorney, Glen Reid, said his client was not part of Tennessee Waltz, and prosecutor Tim DiScenza agreed. But Hooks had the misfortune to be part of a small-time corruption case involving bogus invoices to Shelby County Juvenile Court, which led, through his partners Tim Willis and Barry Myers, to Roscoe Dixon, John Ford, and the FBI undercover operation that came to be known as Tennessee Waltz.

Like any good novel, that story had money, deception, corrupt power, famous names, bag men, lucky breaks, moral ambiguity, courtroom suspense, and the threat of physical violence. It began late in 2002 and consumed the resources of the FBI, federal courts, prosecutors, and the media for more than five years. The timeline that follows is based on trial testimony, transcripts of taped conversations, and interviews with prosecutors, investigators, and defense attorneys conducted after the investigation became public on May 26, 2005.

2000-2001: Tim Willis and Barry Myers, politically ambitious young men, meet while working on a campaign. Myers, a Roscoe Dixon protégé wise to the ways of state legislators, tells him, “You need to be able to take care of people.” Two more young men on the make, Shelby County administrator Calvin Williams and Darrell Catron, get Myers a job at Juvenile Court. Catron and Willis devise an embezzlement scheme involving bogus invoices.

2002: The FBI and agent Brian Burns begin an investigation of Juvenile Court. Federal agencies, while not without their own politics, are considered, by unwritten agreement, less political than elected district attorney generals such as Shelby County D.A. Bill Gibbons. Willis, who already has a Mississippi conviction for credit-card fraud, compounds his problems by lying to the grand jury.

January and February 2003: Willis and Catron agree to cooperate with the government. Catron pleads guilty to embezzlement, but his sentencing is postponed. Willis is not charged but instead tells investigators about corruption in local and state government. His information is deemed credible, and the FBI pays him $34,000 in 2003 to tape conversations with public officials. He records incriminating conversations with Myers and Williams about Dixon, John Ford, Kathryn Bowers, Michael Hooks Sr., and others.

Summer 2003: The FBI’s interest shifts from Juvenile Court to the state legislature in Nashville. Agents entrust Willis to offer Dixon a payoff for influencing a children’s dental contract. As is the case with all undercover witnesses, they are gambling that he will not betray them. They are especially worried about Ford, who is believed to have connections nearly everywhere. Local FBI agents come up with the name Tennessee Waltz. The proposal is vetted in Washington, D.C., with the FBI’s public corruption unit, which must approve undercovers, and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, which must approve wiretaps. A deputy of Attorney General John Ashcroft, a Republican from Missouri, gives the approval.

Fall 2003: The FBI designates retired agent Joe Carroll and a young African-American undercover specialist known as L.C. McNeil to set up a fake company called E-Cycle Management to try to get legislation helping it do business in Tennessee.

2004: Willis, now making $77,000 a year plus expenses, tells state lawmakers he is lobbying for E-Cycle and has “a little discretionary money to take care of folks.” In February, he makes a videotaped payment to Dixon. Willis introduces lawmakers to Carroll, who is using the fake name Joe Carson. Ironically, “Joe Carson” has done previous well-publicized FBI undercovers of public corruption in other states within the last 10 years. By May, Dixon is suspicious of the large amounts of money E-Cycle is throwing around but apparently does not Google “Joe Carson” and “FBI agent.” McNeil, meanwhile, is getting a wealth of incriminating information from taped conversations with the talkative Myers. Near the end of the legislative session, E-Cycle has Dixon withdraw its bill.

January 2005: Carson is working hard on Chattanooga senator Ward Crutchfield and his bag man, Charles Love, while McNeil has forged a friendship with Ford. McNeil is also taping Michael Hooks Sr., who is eager to make money off of Shelby County contracts. Dixon, meanwhile, has quit the legislature to take a full-time job as a top assistant to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, whose past campaigns he managed. This opens new doors but also complicates matters for the FBI.

Spring 2005: Ford is taped several times taking payoffs from McNeil. In a meeting at his office in Memphis, a suspicious Ford threatens to shoot Willis, who is terrified. Prosecutors and the FBI decide they must wrap up the investigation for two reasons. One, they fear it will be exposed and someone will get hurt; two, they can’t allow E-Cycle’s legislation to come to a floor vote and they are running out of excuses. On May 13th, agent Mark Jackson gives Dixon a last chance to confess, but he sticks to his lies. A few days later, prosecutors and the FBI set a date of May 26th for top-secret indictments of Dixon, Ford, Myers, Bowers, Chris Newton, Crutchfield, and Love. On May 25th, they get one last surprise: Harold Ford Jr. announces he is running for Senate, throwing an unintended political theme and Ford angle into the story, which will get national media attention.

Summer and Fall 2005: The dominoes begin to fall. Newton, Myers, and Love plead guilty. Myers will provide key testimony against Dixon and Bowers. Love will incriminate Crutchfield. Williams, who is not named in the May indictment, insists that he is writing a tell-all book about Willis and political corruption in Shelby County.

2006: Dixon goes on trial in June. Jurors hear several hours of tapes and testimony on the stand from Myers and Willis, whose credibility is not shaken by Dixon’s attorney. Dixon himself testifies and admits that he took payments. His alibi is destroyed by Tim DiScenza, whose courtroom presentation spares none of the dirty details on the tapes. Dixon is convicted and sentenced to 63 months in prison. The government sends a message that it is willing, even eager, to take more cases to trial. In August, Michael Hooks Sr. pleads guilty to bribery, leaving an arsenal of incriminating tapes forever out of the public view. The nephew of civil rights legend Dr. Benjamin Hooks is sentenced to 26 months in prison.

January 2007: Williams goes to trial. Willis testifies against him. Like Dixon, Williams takes the stand in his own defense. And, like Dixon, he is convicted of extortion in connection with a grant for a community program in Memphis. He is sentenced to 33 months in prison.

June 2007: Ford goes to trial. The key witnesses against him are Willis and his old “friend” McNeil. But Ford’s biggest problem is the collection of videotapes that show him taking a series of clandestine $10,000 payments. He is convicted on one count of extortion and sentenced to 66 months in prison. Later in 2007, Crutchfield and Bowers change their pleas to guilty.

Epilogue 2008: Michael Hooks Jr. is expected to serve his 30 days, probably in a halfway house, later this year. His father is in the federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama. Ford is supposed to report to prison in Texas on April 28th. Dixon is in a federal prison in Louisiana. Myers is in prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Williams is in prison in Forrest City, Arkansas. Bowers will begin serving her 16-month prison term in June. Crutchfield received home confinement instead of prison time due to health considerations. Newton has served his prison sentence. Catron did not testify at any trials and received probation.

FBI agent Brian Burns was reassigned to Buffalo, New York. His partner, Mark Jackson, was reassigned to Los Angeles. The government says “McNeil” is working on another undercover assignment at an undisclosed location. The government will not say where Willis is or what he is doing.

— John Branston

No Robin Hoods Here

On the night in December 2006 before he was arrested and charged with felonious graft in relation to his service as a Memphis city councilman, Rickey Peete was hanging out with a tableful of reporters and fellow pols in the Hard Rock Café on Beale Street. There had been a show-and-tell featuring Mayor Willie Herenton and Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champ who was Herenton’s scheduled “opponent” in the next night’s charity boxing match.

A mayor’s race would be coming up within months, and, at Peete’s table, the subject easily elided from one species of contenders into another. The councilman began confiding his sense of what he saw as virtually unlimited political prospects not only for himself but for members of his family.

“Just my last name alone is practically a guarantee of victory in Memphis,” the genial Peete said, his infectious Cheshire grin expanding to Brobdingnabian proportions.

Wrong.

Within hours, Peete would be in handcuffs, charged with vote-selling and bribery and on his way to being a two-time loser in federal court, his good name and political career (both painfully rehabilitated after an 1988 bust for extorting money from a developer) ruined anew, and with his very liberty soon to expire.

The federal sting that nailed Peete was called Operation Main Street Sweeper. It was something like a second cousin to the more ballyhooed Tennessee Waltz operation that not long before had baited an assortment of corruptible officials with offers of swag, thereby sweeping in political offenders across the breadth of the state.

One of those had been Kathryn Bowers, who, at the time she was nabbed by the FBI — mid-session in Nashville in May 2005 — was a freshly elected state senator who doubled as chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party. Less than a month before her arrest, she had been gloating on her triumph over party adversaries and the enlarged prospects that had come with her elevation from the state House of Representatives to the more elite senior body.

Within two years, Bowers was an emotional and physical wreck, under a doctor’s care and forced to cop a plea after initial protestations of innocence. “I ask for forgiveness of my bad decisions of receiving money in an inappropriate manner” was the awkward, curiously euphemistic mea culpa she managed to sputter out in February of this year, when she was being sentenced by U.S. district judge Daniel Breen to a 16-month prison term, followed by two years’ probation.

With the possible exception of former state senator John Ford, a millionaire who was already beleaguered on a number of graft fronts at the time that the Tennessee Waltz trap was sprung, the other sting victims (if that’s the right noun) were — by their own lights at least — riding high at the time they were busted.

Roscoe Dixon, the former state senator whose seat Bowers had filled, had vacated it to take a well-paying job as an assistant to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton. And he had spent much of the spring of 2005 in near-successful efforts to get the Shelby County Commission to appoint his erstwhile legislative aide-de-camp, one Barry Myers, to either the state Senate or the state House of Representatives.

The hard-working chairman of that selfsame County Commission for the 2004-’05 term was Michael Hooks Sr. Honorably rehabbed from a drug offense some years back, Hooks had just been a legitimate ballot contender himself for the state Senate seat won by Bowers. His son, Michael Hooks Jr., a respected member of the Memphis school board, was an aspiring actor who, in that same spring of 2005, appeared in a climactic speaking role in the surprise Indie hit Hustle & Flow.

All of the above hopefuls, along with the long revered state senator Ward Crutchfield of Chattanooga and assorted other members of state and local government, would end up under arrest and subject to trial. Most would cop pleas, and all would receive sentences of one kind or another. Those who, like Senator Ford and the hapless Dixon, dared to brazen it out and actually stand trial ended up as big-time losers, getting significant time.

With the exceptions of state representative Chris Newton, a Newport Republican widely regarded by his GOP mates in the legislature as a Democratic fellow traveler, all of those nabbed in the various stings orchestrated by the FBI and the local U.S. Attorney’s Office from 2005 to 2007 were either nominal or highly active Democrats.

A late exception was former county commissioner Bruce Thompson, a Republican who came under investigation in late 2007 for improprieties connected with his brokering a school construction contract. The case against Thompson, however, was not based on a sting per se. The crime, such as it was, had sprung from Thompson’s own machinations, and that fact, as much as his political persuasion, made the ex-commissioner’s legal situation unique.

Numerous local Democrats profess to smell a fish regarding these operations, but it’s difficult to get any, save the indicted themselves, to go on record with their suspicions.

In all fairness, testimony at several of the Tennessee Waltz trials indicated at least perfunctory attempts to recruit Republican legislators. And the audio and video introduced in evidence seemed to confirm that the FBI agents posing as computer entrepreneurs from a company called “E-Cycle” invited GOP members to the “receptions” that were, in reality, fishing expeditions.

To be sure, one or two Republicans got close enough at least to sniff from the bucketloads of cash made available to high-class helpers. State senator Jeff Miller of Knoxville opted out of reelection and decided to add “former” to his title not long after he belatedly declared $1,000 worth of E-Cycle cash as a “campaign contribution.” (And two indictees in recent years — former County Commission administrator Calvin Williams and ex-Juvenile Court aide Darrell Catron — were once regarded by the Shelby County Republican Party as prize recruits from the African-American community.)

The fact remains that the chief indictees of the Tennessee Waltz investigation were disproportionately Democratic, disproportionately black, and disproportionately from Memphis. They also seemed to be disproportionately from that part of the traditional Democratic apparatus known loosely as the “Ford organization.”

There are several ways to construe this fact, but, for comparison’s sake, two of them may be stated as: 1) Such folk were more corruptible than others involved with the trade of politics; or 2) pure and simply, they were targeted. Both these scenarios have their believers. And neither, alas, is subject to definite proof.

It is a fact, attributable to pure coincidence perhaps, that there was a lengthy hiatus in prosecutions of this sort, at least locally, during the two terms of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But during the Republican administrations that came immediately before and, as we have seen, immediately after, prominent Democrats were on the mark statewide.

No doubt, Knoxville bankers Jake and C.H. Butcher were shady operators back in 1983. They were also important components of the Tennessee Democrats’ party-building efforts. Ditto with Memphis congressman Harold Ford (“Senior,” as he has come to be known following the celebrity of his namesake son and congressional successor). Call it another coincidence, but Ford and several fellow defendants who had been connected with the Butchers were acquitted of bank fraud by a rural West Tennessee jury in the first year of the Clinton administration. Did Dan Clancy, the holdover prosecutor and a self-declared Democrat, let up on the throttle (even if only unconsciously), or had the government’s case always been as shockingly weak as it seemed to be? This, too, is a case of you-flips-your-coin-and-you-takes-your-choice.

But even if political bias, at least of the conscious variety, is discarded as a motive in the prosecution of politicians these last several years, there is another factor at work: Most of those indicted and convicted of accepting money for votes or for otherwise boondoggling the public trust (Crutchfield, the Butchers, and Thompson are clear exceptions) stem from working-class origins.

These were not the high-flying and well-protected financial scammers whose schemes, toting up in the stratospheric millions, are often too Byzantine for the public or juries or prosecutors even to comprehend, much less punish. These are basically blue-collar criminals doing low-level, white-collar crimes.

Most, before achieving office, were unused to the ways and mores of legitimately acquired wealth but came to occupy positions that exposed them on a daily basis to influential and privileged people or institutions on whose behalf they were routinely asked to intercede. Familiarity can breed, besides contempt, simple covetousness.

The truly sad fact is that many of those netted in the stings of recent years went down for what, in the scheme of things, amounted to nickels and dimes. But the sadder reality — the bottom line, as it were — is that nobody made them do it. And none of them answered to the name of Robin Hood.

— Jackson Baker

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Dumber and Dumber

Many happy couples believe in soul mates. They will assure your sorry, single ass that, no matter how bad it looks out there, when it comes to love — not just any love, but that magical, life-affirming spiritual unity that grows and matures and sustains you into vigorous old age and whatever version of heaven you choose — there is someone out there for everyone. Even you. All you have to do is find him or her. But if serendipity and geography play major roles in bringing couples together, then is it any less goofy to believe that everyone actually has several soul mates? And is there a happy couple on the planet who hasn’t had times when they’ve imagined what life would be like with that special someone else out there?

At its worst, this serial inability to love the one you’re with is awfully similar to the perpetual sense of possibility that most movies awaken and then squash. If the last relationship didn’t work, maybe the next one will. If you didn’t like Pirates 3, then maybe Sweeney Todd will be decent. Of course, if your thoughts turn too often to what might exist rather than what you have, then maybe you need to confront those impulses directly and see what they say about you.

The ramifications of this terminal dissatisfaction should be the main subject of The Heartbreak Kid, the new Farrelly brothers comedy. Ben Stiller, America’s most enraged Everyman, plays Eddie Cantrow, a luckless bachelor who meets and marries Lily (Malin Akerman) in a whirlwind courtship. On their honeymoon in Mexico, he discovers that he and Lily aren’t compatible financially, recreationally, and, in a couple of brutally weird and cheaply funny scenes, sexually. Soon, Eddie is spending too much time at the hotel bar with Miranda (Michele Monaghan) and thinking about how he’s going to end his current marriage and get with his real sweetheart.

Before we go any further, let me ask this: How many current Farrelly brothers fans have seen Elaine May’s stunning 1972 version of The Heartbreak Kid? Charles Grodin played the Ben Stiller role; May’s daughter, Jeannie Berlin, was astonishing as Grodin’s mismatched spouse; and a 22-year-old Cybill Shepherd was the dismissive, flirty ice princess who inspired Grodin to make the wife swap. That film, ostensibly a comedy, is a squirmy, unflinching look at the human consequences of such terminal indecisiveness and callowness. In fact, May’s film is so icily logical and fearless, so resolutely adult in tone and attitude, that it’s scarcely a comedy. It is, however, one of the great ignored films of the 1970s, and anyone who sees it is not likely to forget it.

The Farrellys, with their unwavering affection for the freaks, geeks, and perverts of the world, should have been a good choice to remake the film. With 2005’s Fever Pitch, they also showed they could make a solid comedy for adults that is free of their typical gross-out gags. But this film is not for adults; it is for teenagers. Like Superbad, its gags are designed to alienate or derail any emotional engagement with the characters. (The conversation piece here is a money shot associated with a jellyfish sting.) The jokes are so far away from the characters’ actions that the film is lost; so many comic firecrackers lit, so few explosions.

It’s hard to grow up; it’s harder to settle down. As the Farrelly brothers’ latest film proves, it’s hardest of all to break out of preconceived notions and even attempt a mature work.

The Heartbreak Kid

Now showing

Mutiple locations

Categories
News

‘Call Me, Harold,’ Chapter Two: Harold Ford Jr.’s in Love Again

Is love truly lovelier the second time around, as vintage songwriters Cahn and Van Heusen insisted? Ask former congressman Harold Ford Jr., whose engagement in the 1990s to one Jennifer Baltimore was canceled. But here is a new report from The New York Post‘s gossip scribe Cindy Adams.:

“GENTS in love brings me to New York businessman Harold Ford, former congressman from Tennessee who is also a maybe senator from Tennessee. He is also, as of Friday, the fiance of fashionista Emily Threlkeld. After their three-year relationship, bachelor Harold was to surprise her in Paris and propose and phone me right afterward at 3 p.m. New York time. He called 7:30.”

Categories
News

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel Are In Love. Awww.

And this time it’s real, dadgummit. The London Daily Mirror says the world’s most important romance is on again, and they have the photos to prove it.

From the Mirror (via the Mail website; it gets confusing when you’re borrowing content): “It looks like things are getting serious for loved-up couple Justin Timberlake and actress Jessica Biel.

“Despite protestations that he didn’t want new love Jessica to accompany him on tour, it seems Justin has been bitten by the love bug.

“The couple shared a tender kiss aboard a luxury speedboat

“The couple were seen kissing aboard a speedboat as Justin touched down in Oslo to continue his European tour.

“The SexyBack singer said he was forced to send the actress back to the U.S. recently because he finds it difficult to focus on his work when he is with her.”

“Sexyback” indeed. Was that song written about her??? More pics and story here.