Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

“Anatomy Eats” Dinner Serves Up the Whole Animal

Heart tacos. Kidney fried rice. Bone marrow ice cream. Not items that you would see on your traditional restaurant menu. But for those seeking something new to eat, Dr. Jonathan Reisman is bringing his Anatomy Eats dinner series to Oxford, Mississippi in October.

The doctor and foodie launched his Anatomy Eats series in Philadelphia, and has used the events as a platform to showcase how various animal organs function and are used in cuisine. In essence, it’s both a fine dining experience, and a lesson in anatomy and physiology.

“We always had liver when I was a kid and I hated it,” says Reisman. “But then in medical school, I started learning more about organs, how complicated and amazing they are, and how they function to keep us healthy. And the biology and complexity of these organs is similar between humans and animals. It got me thinking about all these kind of unorthodox parts of the animal that are used for cooking.”

At a barbecue, Reisman’s wife introduced him to chef Ari Miller (who runs Musi BYOB in Philadelphia), and the two got to talking about their medicinal and culinary backgrounds. They both had an interest in exploring underutilized parts of the animal, and eventually partnered to host several Anatomy Eats dinners together.

Dr. Jonathan Reisman (Credit: Anatomy Eats)

“Each dinner was based on a bodily system,” says Reisman. “For example, we did a cardiovascular-themed dinner, where we served hearts cooked in three different ways, and some bone marrow dishes. We’ve also done dinners focused around the digestive system, or the musculoskeletal system.”

After several successful dinners in Pennsylvania, Reisman is looking to connect with new chefs around the country to put their unique spin on future anatomy dinners. Next up on October 2nd and 3rd are dinners hosted alongside Halima Salazar and Dria Price of Gimbia’s Kitchen. As part of the event, Reisman will dissect a cow heart and discuss the other physiological aspects of the animals used as part of the courses.

“For the culinary side, Halima is Nigerian and Dria is from Mississippi,” says Reisman. “So, they’ll be exploring an overlap of West African and Southern cuisine, and how culinary styles of each background complement each other. The menu includes two kinds of tacos, with cow heart strips in either a peanut marinade or balsamic vinegar. There’s hog’s head cheese as part of a charcuterie board, and we’ve got a traditional Nigerian recipe called pepper soup, which will have intestines and liver in a spicy broth with calabash, nutmeg, and lemongrass.”

Other courses include beef kidney fried rice combined with sweet creamy honey beans, and Gbegiri and pounded yam: pureed black-eyed peas and beef tongue stew with crispy pounded yam balls.

So far, Reisman says that his Anatomy Eats dinners have garnered plenty of interest. For others, he recognizes that his dinner menus might seem unappealing. But he argues that diners don’t need an adventurous palate to enjoy one of the Anatomy Eats courses.

“I think liver is the most recognizable thing that we serve,” he says, “and it probably has the strongest taste of any internal organ. So, I think it’s a misconception that you need to be brave to try many of these things; heart, kidney, and bone marrow should all have tastes which are pleasing to people who eat more traditional meat dishes. So, you can still use the whole animal, be sustainable, and enjoy the whole experience.”

Looking forward, Reisman hopes to connect with many more chefs around the country who can share their unique culinary experiences. After all, says Reisman, there are so many different ways to sustainably cook animals that aren’t common in most of the United States.

“I’ve traveled a lot, both recreationally and for work,” says Reisman. “I toured through India volunteering at hospitals, lived in Russia at one point, and did some work as a doctor on ships in the arctic and near Alaska. Every place I’ve had the opportunity to see new approaches to food.”

Reisman was most impressed by traditional native Alaskan techniques.

“They take meat-based cuisine to an incredible extreme,” he says. While working in Alaska, he tried plenty of seal heart and seal blubber. “The blubber they render down into an oil, which is kind of used as an all-purpose dip, flavoring, seasoning.”

And another interesting dish? Whale meat.

“We had plenty of whale meat and blubber, much of it raw. There’s a traditional dish called Mikigaq that I had a lot, which is whale meat fermented in whale blood. There are just so many interesting ways to approach and create food, and Anatomy Eats hopefully will show people different ways to do that.”

Anatomy of Fine Dining with Dr. Jonathan Reisman will take place at Snackbar in Oxford, MS, on October 2nd and 3rd at 6:00 p.m. Click here for tickets and more information.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Oxford Film Festival Announces 2022 Winners

Disfluency by director Anna Baumgarten and The First Step by Brandon Kramer won the top jury prizes at the 19th annual Oxford Film Festival.

The narrative feature jury, which consisted of NPR film critic Tim Gordon, Indie Memphis programmer Kayla Myers, and SAGindie development manager Eliza Hajkova, said of Best Narrative Feature winner Disfluency, “With subtlety and a distinct sense of place, this film thoughtfully explores the nuances of reeling from and beginning the ongoing process of healing from trauma. This deeply empathetic film also manages to assert the possibilities of language outside of the spoken word through showcasing how forms of communication like ASL allow us to be open and embody our truth in ways that our voice may not.”

The documentary feature jury of Jean Anne Lauer, Fantastic Fest programmer; Nat Dykeman, Lake County Film Festival founder; and Rachel Morgan, creative director of the Sidewalk Film Festival, said, “As they advocate at the highest levels of government for the First Step Act, Van Jones and team remind us that everyone has the responsibility to recognize humanity and dignity in each other across the perceived differences and backgrounds that presently serve to divide us. The First Step documents the tenuous nature of coalition building around social justice issues, offering no easy solutions to complex problems, and at the same time refusing to accept inaction as a path forward.”

Winners of the feature film and documentary competitions are awarded $15,000 camera rental packages from Panavision.

The Audience Award for best feature went to Krimes by director Alysa Nahmias. Ashley E. Gibson won the Best Mississippi Feature for The Fearless 11.

In the short film categories, “Bainne” by Jack Reynor won for the best national short, and Nolan Dean’s “Nighthawks” won for Best Mississippi short. The music video award went to “Every Breath You Take” by Emily White, directed by Hunter Heath.

The $1,000 screenplay competition was won by Nando by Luis Agusto Figueroa.

The in-person portion of the Oxford Film Festival was held last weekend. You can access the full schedule of films, including the winners, in the virtual portion of the festival, which runs through this weekend. You can sign up for the virtual festival on the Oxford Film Festival website.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Soul on Film: Oxford Film Festival

After two years wracked by the pandemic, the Oxford Film Festival is returning for 2022 with parties, events, and a full program of more than 118 films. “We are excited to present this year’s films and special events to our local film fans here in Oxford, the state of Mississippi, and nearby in Memphis, as well. We have diligently built a program that includes discovery titles; award winners; festival favorites from Venice, Toronto, Sundance, Berlin, and SXSW film festivals; enlightening, innovative, and entertaining features and shorts that should inspire everyone to immerse themselves in the Oxford Film Festival world once again,” says Jim Brunzell, interim executive director, who took over the running of the festival after longtime director Melanie Addington accepted a position with the Tallgrass Film Center in Wichita, Kansas.

The 19th annual festival begins on Wednesday, March 23rd, with The Automat by director Lisa Hurwitz. The documentary is about a unique piece of American culinary and cultural history: Horn & Hardart, a beloved restaurant chain that proved highly influential to the development of American fast food. The tiny lunchrooms scattered from coast to coast served half a million patrons a day during their peak in the 1940s. They pioneered the “automat” concept, where fresh dishes were kept warm in small cubicles, and patrons could insert coins into slots to buy individual servings of staples like Salisbury steak and mac and cheese. Horn & Hardart are often cited as the inspiration for what would become Starbucks. The film features a new song by film comedy legend and longtime automat fan Mel Brooks.

Thursday night’s film is intimately connected to Memphis. Soul Kids, a documentary by French director Hugo Sobelman, opens the festival’s opening night. Soul Kids tells the history of the Stax Music Academy, which moved into its permanent home next door to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music 20 years ago this June. The academy helps carry on the tradition of Memphis soul and gospel music by providing high-quality music education to Bluff City high schoolers. The school’s alumni include music stars like MonoNeon. The opening night screening will be followed by a Stax Records-themed party at The Atrium at Mike Overstreet Properties (265 North Lamar in Oxford) featuring the Stax Music Academy Alumni Band, who will show you exactly how they keep the sound alive.

Another intriguing film in this year’s lineup mixes two things the city of Oxford is famous for — literature and music. Lover, Beloved, directed by Michael Tully, is an adaptation of a one-woman show by Suzanne Vega. The “Left of Center” and “Tom’s Diner” singer produced the show based on her ninth studio album, which is a tribute to the life and work of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter novelist Carson McCullers. Vega will be on hand for the screening at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Among the Memphis-related films that will screen during the festival weekend is “Jesus Is Lord,” a new comedy by director Mark Jones. The short film is a hilarious take on Rashomon as various members of a church search committee recall their roles in a selection process that ended with the hiring of their first female minister. “Jesus Is Lord” screens on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. with Carl Andress and Charles Busch’s camp caper comedy The Sixth Reel.

Friday night’s marquee film is the political comedy 18 1/2 by director Dan Mirvish and screenwriter Daniel Moya; it is a period piece set during the Watergate hearings of the 1970s. A transcriptionist named Connie (Willa Fitzgerald) decides to leak her knowledge of Nixon’s missing tapes but can’t get anyone to take her seriously. The cast includes Jon Cryer as H.R. Haldeman and indie film legend Bruce Campbell as Richard Nixon.

Dale Dickey stars in A Love Song, a film about two loves reuniting

The official closing night film is A Love Song, which features a rare lead role by Dale Dickey, a beloved actress who has appeared in True Blood, My Name Is Earl, and Breaking Bad. In A Love Song, she appears as Faye opposite Native-American actor Wes Studi as Lito. The two lost souls, who were lovers long ago, reconnect for a single night at a lakeside campground in this acclaimed film which debuted at Sundance earlier this year. Dickey and director Max Walker-Silverman will be on hand for the film’s Mid-South premiere.

All screenings will take place at Malco Oxford Commons Cinema March 23rd-26th. The virtual aspect of the festival, which the Oxford Film Festival pioneered during the Covid emergency, will run March 27th-April 3rd on the Eventive platform. Visit
ox-film.com for more details and for both in-person and virtual tickets.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup

Reunion

The Oxford Film Festival has announced a lineup of 158 films for its 2021 edition. This year’s festival will be an online/in-person hybrid running March 24-28 and April 1-30. Last year, OFF, led by Melanie Addington, was forced to pioneer the pandemic film festival format while the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic made gathering in person too dangerous. This year, screenings will happen in person for one weekend, March 24-28, at a special outdoor theater created by Malco at the Oxford Commons and a drive-in at Oxford High School. Then, the films will be available virtually on the Eventive platform, which was created by a Memphis-based company.

“As we continue to prepare for next month’s film festival, we want to be very clear about the aggressive steps we are taking in order to make our film festival safe so our patrons can begin to get back to enjoying the movie going experience in the company of other people again,” says executive director Melanie Addington. “Therefore, we are being very careful with a measured approach utilizing the open-air theater we have designed specifically for this purpose—with safety always first, so we all can enjoy one of the best group of films we have ever had this year. We have spent the past year safely providing films via drive-in and will include that experience in this year’s festival. We will monitor COVID and weather concerns and will make changes as needed closer to the event.”

Among the festival’s spotlight screenings is the documentary Horton Foote: The Road To Home. The filmmakers filmed the award-winning screenwriter and playwright at age 90 to piece together the highlights of his seven decade career, which included creating the screenplays for To Kill A Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, and The Trip to Bountiful.

Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup

On the narrative side, artist-turned-director Olivia Peace’s debut comedy Tahara deals with the confusion and exhilaration of two best friends who can’t quite decide if they’re in love or not.

Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup (2)

OFF’s headlining throwback screening is from one of Mississippi’s greatest artists. In 1986, Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, teamed up with Lucasfilm for a mind-bender. Labyrinth stars David Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth, who kidnaps the baby bother of ordinary girl Jennifer Connelly. The revered fantasy classic is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year.

Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup (3)

The competition films include Jake Mahaffy’s arthouse horror Reunion, produced by Memphian Adam Hohenberg.

Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup (4)

You can find out more about the lineup and information on passes, both in-person and virtual, at the Oxford Film Festival website.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Video Shoot at Belly Acres; Second Second Line

Belly Acres chef Rob Ray is headed to cook at the James Beard House in October. His Mushroom State of Mind was one of five winners of the organization’s Better Burger Project.

To celebrate, Belly Acres is inviting all comers to a video shoot of a parody of Jay Z’s and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” on Tuesday, August 25th, 8-10 p.m.

Amurica will be there and everyone is asked to dress in their best “funky Memphis style.” 

• The second Second Line opens today in Oxford, and it looks like the menu has some extra goodies, including fried chicken livers served with hot pepper jelly, chicken andouille gumbo, and cheeseburger “cooter brown style” (no clue).

Check out the menu below.

 
[pdf-1]

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

John Waters’ Rich, Warped Pageant

Is anyone having more fun than John Waters? Having spent nearly a half-century fighting against “the tyranny of good taste,” the cult filmmaker, actor, writer and artist has managed to earn fame and respect of the fully above-ground variety without losing any of his subversive sensibilities: last year, the Lincoln Center celebrated Waters’ career with a retrospective, “50 Years of John Waters: How Much Can You Take?” and he recently received a Grammy nod for the audiobook of his bestselling “hitchhiking memoir,” Carsick.

At 68, Waters’ appetite for the absurd has hardly abated. He still enjoys refracting American culture through his own funhouse mirror. For example, in his latest solo art exhibit, Beverly Hills John, the title piece is a photo illustration of Waters with a hideous facelift.

“I’m still interested in human behavior that I can’t understand,” Waters said during a recent phone interview from his home in Baltimore. “I’ve always been interested in people who have lives more extreme than I do.”

Waters is equal parts curious and generous about people living on the edge – even when, or maybe especially when, they’re in the middle of nowhere. “If I ever hear another elitist jerk use the term flyover people, I’ll punch him in the mouth,” Waters writes in “Carsick.” “My riders were brave and open-minded, and their down-to-earth kindness gave me new faith in how decent Americans can be.”

In his first-ever Mississippi appearance, Waters will close out the Sarah Isom Student Gender Conference this Saturday with a performance of his one-man show, “This Filthy World: Filthier and Dirtier.”

“I’m so excited to be doing this with the gender studies department,” Waters said, adding with uncharacteristic understatement, “I’m a huge feminist.”

You seem like you have a genuine appreciation for American regionalism. Do you think of Baltimore as being Southern?

Yes. I think of it as more southern than northern. I think I joked once that Baltimore is because everybody was moving to the North from the South and they ran out of gas.

Did I identify as Southern? No. I identified with Yippies, and punks, and juvenile delinquents. I didn’t identify geographically. But with Baltimore itself, I most certainly did identify. Everything I was about, in a way, was reflecting that.

Baltimore has very much changed – I don’t think Baltimore has an inferiority complex at all anymore. Not because of me. For many reasons. It’s still a city where they’re not impressed by anything. They never ask me, “What’s Johnny Depp like?” They don’t care.

You’ve never been to Mississippi before — what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Mississippi?

Freedom Fighters. I was in high school then, and I remember being so impressed with all those college kids getting on those buses and going to the South. I’ve been through the South now, and it’s radically different. It’s almost like they really have tried hard to make up for it! But then you see something like what happened last week [at University of Oklahoma] with the fraternity brothers screaming racist songs, and you think, maybe nothing has changed.

The scarier thing, I think, is a racist who’s still racist but they don’t say it out loud. They are more dangerous than the Ku Klux Klan, because they get in power…The ones who are the closet liberals—no, fake liberals—who know that it’s politically incorrect to say that stuff, but they still think it, they’re the scary ones.

The solution to all racism, I think, is travel. Because you can’t be a racist and travel. I know I’d have a hard time selling that to the courts as punishment for a hate crime—“You are sentenced to three months in Europe!” It’ll never get proven. But I know I’m right.

You’ve said that the reason you wanted to hitchhike across the country was because you’re not on social media, and this would be a good way to meet people.

I’m on my computer all day long, it’s not like I’m a luddite. I’m not on Facebook because I work 10 hours a day, and I’m not bleeding my material. I put that in a book where you have to buy it — I’m not giving away my good jokes.

And I have enough friends. I don’t want new friends. I want to be harder to reach.

You wrote in Carsick about what a challenge it was for you to decide to do something so risky, where you had to give up control. Do you think people would be surprised to learn how regimented you are in how you approach your work?

I don’t know that people would be surprised. I think in the beginning of my career they thought, yes, I took dope and lived in a trailer, which maybe I did. But they thought my movies were how I lived my life. None of us were like that at all. We were playing parts.

I don’t think, anymore, people think that. I think people generally understand me. I’m hardly a misunderstood artist who’s gonna cut off my ear. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. So, I think I am understood. Nobody gets mad at what I say anymore, no matter what I say.

I’m not mean. I don’t get busted anymore. Well, still the MPAA gave me an NC-17 rating for my last movie…so still that was a hassle, the same old thing.

What astounds me is parents now come to my shows with their angry fucking kids as a last-ditch effort to bond, and I find that very moving. I don’t know if it works.

I wouldn’t want to sit next to my mother during the show…I think it’s a very uncomfortable show to sit through with your parents. But people have changed—people are much more open about everything. But I still think it would be difficult to sit next to my mom, if she were still alive, and have her hear my whole show.

You’re a voracious reader and writer – you said in your book Role Models that “being rich is the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you could afford it.”

There’s two things I think being rich is: It’s being able to buy every book without looking at the price, and never being around assholes. And I have worked that out. I am NEVER around assholes. And that’s rich.

How did you work that last part out?

It took me years to figure out how to do that. Slowly. It’s a slow process.

But you do it by making your own rules and being successful enough that you don’t have to deal with people who want to stop you. And by choosing where you go, and doing research, and knowing how to stay in a life that is what you want.

I always wanted bohemia. But I realized a long time ago that the only way left for me is to be an insider, not an outsider anymore. Because everybody now wants to be an outsider. I’ve switched. When I was young, nobody said they wanted to be an outsider—that was a dirty word!

But today, every single person thinks they’re an outsider. So now I want to say, “I’m in power.” That’s the only perverse thing I have left.

Waters will perform his one-man show, “This Filthy World,” at the Gertrude C. Ford Center at the University of Mississippi on Saturday, March 28th at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets are free and available through the UM Box Office. Call: 662-915-7411

Categories
News The Fly-By

A Look Back at the Fight Between a Faulkner Statue and a Tree

In the January 23, 1997, issue of the Memphis Flyer, Phil Campbell detailed a struggle between a tree and a writer’s statue in Oxford, Mississippi.

The proposed statue would be a tribute to William Faulkner, the Nobel Prize-winning author from Oxford, who penned Southern classics such as The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, among many others. The writer was born in New Albany and bought a home in Oxford for his family in 1930 that he called “Rowan Oak.” Despite this, however, the town had not done much to pay homage to him, according to the article.

“Even Square Books, the town’s popular bookstore, displays more photos of one-time Oxford resident John Grisham than it does of Faulkner,” the story read.

The statue was set to be built with $70,000 raised by businesses and the Oxford Board of Aldermen, one that would show Faulkner “standing with dignity, with a pipe in his mouth, looking off into the distance, sporting his signature tweed coat and baggy britches.”

Faulkner’s oldest-living relative at the time, his nephew Jimmy Faulkner, gave his approval for the project until Oxford residents became upset with how the project began to unfold.

The William Faulkner statue in Oxford sits in front of City Hall.

On the plot in front of Oxford City Hall, where the statue was to be raised, sat a magnolia tree. The mayor during that time, John Leslie, privately told the city’s electric department to cut down the tree because “the board of aldermen hoped to pass an ordinance creating a ‘tree board’ that would effectively have prevented the tree from being removed,” Campbell wrote.

Residents wrote letters against the mayor’s actions and two dozen showed up to the tree stump on one particular day, even laying a wreath on the dead tree. The Faulkner family pulled its support of the project after the writer’s daughter, who lived in Virginia, spoke out against the tree being cut down. The nephew originally believed the project had the daughter’s blessing but ended up speaking out against it, even going in front of the board of aldermen.

“Jimmy Faulkner appeared before the board of alderman, with dozens of other people in tow, to protest the mayor’s decision the week after the tree was felled. His presence made a strong statement, given the family’s affection for privacy and general apathy for politics,” the story read.

Some people felt “manipulated,” and the convoluted situation surrounding the fallen tree involved many parties. Joseph Blotner, who wrote a biography on Faulkner, was quoted in the article in favor of the statue.

“In ‘Go Down, Moses’ and other works, Faulkner deplores the disappearance of the big woods in the Delta,” he said in the story. “However, there are many, many magnolia trees in and around Oxford. There is only one native son that brought honor to his town, his state, and his country.”

Despite the controversy, the statue went up as planned. The bronze statue now sits in front of City Hall in Oxford, depicting Faulkner on a bench with his legs crossed and holding a pipe.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Win, Lose, or Draw?

John McCain, the old warrior, came to Oxford, Mississippi, last Friday to punch out an opponent. Barack Obama, the former law professor, came to take part in a conversation that he presumed would favorably showcase his elegance and expertise.

That was the story of the first presidential debate at Ole Miss’ Gertrude Ford Center, and it should have been prefigured by the way in which the previous week had gone. On the previous Wednesday, as we all subsequently learned, Democrat Obama reached out to Republican McCain to see if the two might make a joint statement concerning the ongoing bailout negotiations in Washington.

McCain’s response was to call a press conference in which he made the shocker announcement that he intended to “suspend” campaigning and return to Washington to do … whatever. And this could well mean he would miss the much-ballyhooed one-on-one down in Oxford. Meanwhile, he let it be understood that Obama could follow him to Washington if he cared to.

In the sequel, we all saw the photo-op shots of McCain at the conference table three seats to the right of President Bush, and, sure enough, there was Obama three seats to the left. God only knows what either of them contributed to a dialogue that, as an anxious and stupefied financial world would learn this week, led to no immediate agreement.

Meanwhile, down in Oxford, preparations for the debate went on feverishly if somewhat nervously, in the knowledge that Obama would definitely be down for something — a “town hall” meeting if nothing else. And when, on Friday morning, McCain finally allowed as how he’d be there, too, all seemed well.

If the Arizona senator had wanted center stage, he’d got it, for better or for worse. Had his off-again/on-again attitude toward the debate stamped him as a waffler? Or would he know how to use the spotlight, now that it was turned fully on himself?

In either case, the initiative was McCain’s. If it hadn’t been obvious before, it certainly was when, only minutes before showtime, Cindy McCain came onstage for an unexpected cameo just when Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission for Presidential Debates, was getting ready to say her lines in the ritual dog-and-pony show that preceded the debate proper.

It was obvious in the candidates’ characteristic tics as the debate wore on. As one of the network summaries would note, McCain uttered countless variations on the phrase “Senator Obama doesn’t understand,” meanwhile looking stonily ahead. Obama’s refrain, on the other hand, was agreeable in the extreme, consisting of frequent nods of the head as his adversary talked, followed by equivocations beginning, “Senator McCain [alternately, “John”] is right.”

All of this came off unpredictably. In the immediate aftermath, a reporter for the BBC began his TV stand-up with these words: “Whatever the spin doctors will say, the reality is that Barack Obama has always found it hard to match his debating skills with his inspiring oratory. John McCain was far more aggressive on foreign policy. He made his experience count.”

And there was this, from Rhodes College professor (and sometime blogger) Michael Nelson, a longtime pol-watcher who has written several books on political campaigns and the presidency: “McCain didn’t look like an old man!” Meaning that he came off as seasoned rather than doddering.

But the first poll soundings, like one from CBS giving Obama a 14-point edge among uncommitted voters and another from CNN showing a 51-38 percent differential, seemed clearly to lean toward the Democrat.

Some key to this disconjunction may lie in the curve thrown the two aspirants right off the bat by moderator Jim Lehrer, who announced: “Tonight’s [debate] will primarily be about foreign policy and national security, which, by definition, includes the global financial crisis.”

As translated into what actually ensued, what he meant was that issues relating to “foreign policy and national security” weren’t touched, even tangentially, until some 30 minutes into the hour-and-a-half proceedings, when Lehrer happened to ask a more or less pro forma question about the economic impact of spending on the Iraq war.

In the half hour preceding that foot-in-the-door on what had been billed as a foreign policy debate, McCain and Obama traded licks on the ongoing financial crisis, focusing rather more on their standard economic boilerplate than on the current bailout crisis itself.

Each of them deplored the moment in the roundest terms. Obama: “We are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is involved in two wars, and we are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” McCain: “We’re not talking about failure of institutions on Wall Street. We’re talking about failures on Main Street, and people who will lose their jobs, and their credits, and their homes.”

Each candidate touted his own health-care and energy proposals and deplored his opponent’s. Obama got to talk about his proposed middle-class tax cuts to benefit “95 percent” of the public (the percentage who consider themselves “middle class,” it would appear) and his determination to close tax loopholes for the wealthiest few. McCain got to complain about earmarks and pork-barrel spending and what he said was the second highest rate of business tax in the world.

As for the issue of the moment — the threatened insolvency of the nation’s economic structure — both candidates claimed to have done something substantial to fix things.

Obama talked about the four general propositions he had proposed as add-ons to the $700 billion bailout package: enhanced oversight, a means by which taxpayers might recoup their investment, a lid on “golden parachutes” for CEOs, and help for homeowners on foreclosures.

McCain made the case for the efficacy of his own bailout — from the campaign trail. “And yes, I went back to Washington, and I met with my Republicans in the House of Representatives. And they weren’t part of the negotiations, and I understand that. And it was the House Republicans that decided that they would be part of the solution to this problem.”

Whatever.

When asked point-blank by Lehrer, both candidates said they were inclined to vote for the emerging bailout deal, whereby $700 billion of suspect Wall Street securities would be bought up by the federal government (i.e., the taxpayers). In any event, neither would have to right away, inasmuch as the House — all those advance predictions of success notwithstanding — rejected the proposed bailout package 225-208, with 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans voting no.

Once a clean transition was made into foreign policy discussion per se, McCain, whose own military background is so well known, seemed to feel himself on more confident ground. “I have the ability, and the knowledge, and the background to make the right judgments, to keep this country safe and secure,” he said. “I don’t think I need any on-the-job training. I’m ready to go at it right now.”

Obama was more tentative, to the point that some of his hesitations were built into the transcripts that were handed out irregularly to the attendant media: “And part of what we need to do, what the next president has to do — and this is part of our judgment, this is part of how we’re going to keep America safe — is to — to send a message to the world that we are going to invest in issues like education, we are going to invest in issues that — that relate to how ordinary people are able to live out their dreams.”

There were moments of heat, moments of light, and some nice extended dialogues on policy, though — largely at McCain’s insistence — far too much time was devoted to the pluses and minuses of the “surge” and to the Republican candidate’s repeated praise of the “great general” David Petraeus, current commander of American forces in Iraq.

Each man earned style points, and these may have benefited McCain disproportionately, since much of what he had said and done in recent weeks (notoriously his pronouncement, early in the bailout crisis, that the American economy was “fundamentally sound”) had seemed curiously off-point, arousing speculation here and there (and anxiety among his supporters) concerning his age and fitness.

Early in the debate, when Lehrer, playing bad-boy moderator, commanded Obama to direct a rather professorial and abstract criticism to McCain directly, the Arizona senator managed a wry grin and said, “Are you afraid I couldn’t hear him?” When Obama chided McCain for not promising an audience to the prime minister of Spain, the following exchange ensued:

Obama: “If we can’t meet with our friends, I don’t know how we’re going to lead the world in terms of dealing with critical issues like terrorism.”

McCain: “I’m not going to set the White House visitors schedule before I’m president of the United States. I don’t even have a seal.”

More impressively, McCain seemed to have an all-purpose instant recall when he needed it. At one point, after Lehrer had cited a platitude from former president Dwight Eisenhower, McCain responded simultaneously with an apt reference to letters Ike had written as commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the eve of D-Day in World War Two.

Sometimes, however, McCain over-played his hand. When he chastised Obama for talking out loud about the prospect of invading Pakistan, Obama was quick to remind him of a famous indiscretion of his own: “Coming from you, who, you know, in the past has threatened extinction for North Korea and sung songs about bombing Iran [“Bomb, Bomb, Bomb/ Bomb, Bomb Iran!,” to the tune of the old rocker, “Barbara Ann”], I don’t know how credible that is.”

In the end, neither man gained a decisive victory, nor did either commit an error so serious as to undermine his chances. The debate might well be regarded as a draw, though even before the next two presidential forums, this Thursday’s debate in St. Louis between vice-presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden could tilt things one way or the other.

Only one thing is surefire about that one: Win, lose, or draw for Republican Palin, a resurgent Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live will have new fodder for two nights later.

That’s if the congressional version of Deal or No Deal? doesn’t end in disaster between now and then. In which case — literally — all bets are off.

• Former Memphian Babs Chase, now head of foreign press for the State Department, shepherded a large corps of journalists from various countries around Oxford. Sitting at a picnic table last Thursday night on the lawn of the university’s journalism facilities and dining on Southern-fried specialties were Sulaiman Alamin, from Sudan; Ole Nyeng of Denmark; and Jean-Marc Veszely of Belgium.

All were frank to say they hoped for an Obama victory — a reminder of the McCain strategy of trying to stigmatize the Democratic candidate’s support as reflecting a foreign consensus rather than a Middle American one. But all three journalists made it clear they were motivated less by any “celebrity” of Obama’s than by fear and loathing concerning what they see as the disasters of the eight-year Bush administration.

But, asked who they thought would win, the three split, with only Nyeng, the Dane, opining in favor of Obama. Veszely was not prepared to pronounce, and Alamin refused to believe that Americans would actually vote for someone with African ancestry. He saw McCain as the victor, primarily on racial grounds.

“Things here have not changed that much,” said the Sudanese freelancer, though his point would have been disputed by Chancellor Robert Khayat and other University of Mississippi officials, who did their best all week to convince the media, foreign and domestic, that things had indeed changed, not only in America at large but at Ole Miss itself. Once a citadel of segregation but now struggling to redefine itself, the school is, in the words of a letter from Khayat that appeared in every media press packet, “a nurturing and diverse community where people of all races, religions, nationalities, economic groups, and political alliances live, study, and work comfortably together.”

Now that’s something that no major Mississippi official, governmental or academic, would have said backaways.

• Complementing the carnival that was the Ole Miss campus last week were numerous booths, vans, exhibits for the curious, and donors like Anheuser-Busch, which maintained a food-and-drink tent nearby the media facilities and offered exotic enough fare — Portobello mushrooms, Italian sausage cheeseburgers, German beer, and French wine — to attract politicians like Massachusetts senator John Kerry and his Michigan colleague Carl Levin.

Not least among the bounties in this provender-laden tent were Rendezvous ribs, personally supervised and served by restaurateur John Vergos himself.