teen – Memphis Flyer

It’s time for another intentional tween/teen-friendly Memphis weekend! Keep in mind, my kids are 15, 12, 12, and 10 years old. This weekend will really be focused on fun things to do with the kids as well as enjoying some adult libations. Because who wants to be an adult all the time? Enjoy Memphis!

Muggin Coffeehouse

Okay, it’s Thursday, and this has been the Wednesday-est Thursday ever! FYI: Wednesdays and I haven’t gotten along for a few years now. Humpday just drags so slowly and the most ridiculous things always happen on a Wednesday. And that’s how this Thursday was acting. But whenever I feel irritated by having to be an adult, I make sure I take some time to nurture my inner child. So when I heard that the new Uptown Muggin location had game night on Thursday, I was super excited. Hubby conducted the Pick Up Kids from School Tour, which consisted of one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. I finished up a few emails at work and popped over to Muggin! Hubby and I ordered lattes and the kids ordered every pastry possible and frappes. We played chess (I won), Connect Four (I lost), and Jenga, which was also used to create a domino effect. It was such a good time. All of my kids had smiles on their faces. Hubby and I were able to steal a few proud-parent glances at each other from across the cafe. Everyone was happy. All we were missing was more teenagers and teen parents to talk to!

Grind City Brewing Company

Saturday is fun day! Hubby and I woke up feeling 10 years younger. Because this doesn’t happen often, we wanted to take advantage of this new found youth and do the things we used to do in college. Drink beer and play outdoor sports. While the kids can’t enjoy a cold brewski, they can enjoy some sunshine, Arbo’s cheese dip and chips, and soda. So we packed up the Frisbee and yard darts and headed to Grind City Brewery.

The weather was beautiful and the view was absolutely stunning. After grabbing a few cold beers, we hit the open fields. The kids and I enjoyed leisurely throwing the Frisbee and playing yard darts. But then a gentleman approached us and taught us how to play real Frisbee. Well, the horse poop hit the fan (figuratively). Feeling 10 years younger, and invincible due to the beer, I wasn’t about to be outdone by some ragged teenagers. We played hard. I caught a few Frisbees. My son ripped his pants. Grass-stains became the norm. Someone whined because they were losing, and my beer buzz wore off. As we rehydrated and finished off the last of the Arbo’s cheese dip, we high-fived each other for time well spent.

Farm Burger and Crosstown Brewery

It’s Sunday and all I want to do is chill and read my book. My body aches and my knees are creaking. I’m seriously feeling every millisecond of my age! But as I bask in the soft sunlight peeking in through my bedroom windows, a child knocks on my door. “Mom, have you checked the family Google calendar? I added Farm Burger to it last night. You should have gotten the email, too!” As I lazily close my e-book about Murder Bots, I check my Gmail account. And sure enough, there’s a calendar notification. I ponder. Weigh the pros and cons. Look at the start time of the event. (It’s mid-afternoon.) And I select “Yes.” I hear the kids give shouts of praise through the door and I can only imagine the fist bumps and high-fives they are giving each other.

Later in the afternoon, with my book tucked in my purse, I park at the Crosstown Concourse. The kids announce that they want burgers. So I announced to no one in particular, that I want beer. They will head to Farm Burger, and I will go to Crosstown Brewery. We talk about stranger danger and the importance of sticking together and finding the nearest adult in authority if trouble arises. I also tell them exactly where I will be and remind them to actually answer the phone if I call or text. Soon, we separate. I receive a text from them full of smiles and a table full of food. Great! I continue sipping my stout beer and reading Murder and Mamon. I received another text stating that they’re going to check out the art gallery. Perfect! I continue with my leisure activity. Then I receive a phone call. “Mom, I don’t remember how to use this circular music player?” Huh? Oh, they mean a record player. Yeah, I have work to do!

Patricia Lockhart is a native Memphian who loves to read, write, cook, and eat. Her days are filled with laughter with her four kids and charming husband. By day, she’s a school librarian and writer, but by night … she’s asleep. @realworkwife @memphisismyboyfriend

Early in Dope, Malcolm (Shameik Moore) gets roped into shuttling messages back and forth between a drug dealer named Dom (Rakim Mayers, aka A$AP Rocky) and a beautiful girl named Nakia (Zoë Kravitz). The scene sums up the protagonist’s predicament: He’s caught between worlds. An opening narration by Forest Whitaker—who also happens to be a producer—identifies Malcolm and his friends Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) as geeks. But being a brainy kid in the Bottoms neighborhood of Inglewood, California, ain’t easy. For one thing, the usual nerd nemesis, the bully, is much more heavily armed. In addition to the feuding cliques at school, there are also the Crips and Bloods to keep track of. And your carefully researched essay on pinpointing the date of Ice Cube’s “good day” is probably not enough to get you into Harvard.

In his senior year of high school, Malcolm is pretty much resigned to his geeky fate. With graduation coming up and his grades looking good, his Ivy League goals are tantalizingly close. His performance as a messenger with encyclopedic knowledge of 1990s hip-hop endears him to Dom, who invites Malcolm to his birthday party. Malcolm hesitates, but Jib and Diggy want to live a little before heading out for college, so they manage to navigate the doorman and gain entrance to the coolest party any of them have ever seen. Things are going great until a back-room drug deal goes bad. When the bullets stop flying and most of the partygoers have been hauled away to jail, Malcolm discovers that Dom stashed a bunch of MDMA and a gun in his backpack. And so he and his friends are dragged into an underworld of crime and corruption as they try to unload the dope without getting arrested, killed, or missing their SATs.

With Dope, writer/director Rick Famuyiwa has given the teen-movie genre a 21st-century upgrade. He’s wrapped a lot of different strands into the story’s DNA. The most obvious antecedent is Risky Business, Tom Cruise’s 1983 turn as a squeaky-clean prep-school-kid-turned-accidental-pimp. But that movie was set in the lily-white Chicago neighborhood of North Shore. Dope‘s protagonists are a black kid named after Malcolm X, a Hispanic kid who says anscestry.com told him he was 14 percent African, and a black lesbian who slaps their white hacker friend Will (Blake Anderson) every time he says “nigga”. There’s a little bit of Pulp Fiction in the occasional time-bending flashback and the script’s gleeful wordiness, and a little bit of Spike Lee in the occasional fourth-wall breaking. But there’s much about Dope that is new and fresh. Since smartphones became ubiquitous less than a decade ago, the rules storytellers have been following since Shakespeare have had to change. Lack of communication can no longer be used as plot devices. A couple of quick text messages would have saved Romeo and Juliet from suicide, for example. Dope is one of the first movies I’ve seen where the new realities of electronic communication, not to mention Darknet, Bitcoin, and pervasive surveillance, are seamlessly integrated into a non-sci-fi story.

Just as Risky Business made a star out of Cruise, Dope could easily make a star out of Moore. He’s in almost every scene, and he carries Malcolm’s journey from nervous geek to confident college kid with a confidence many more experienced actors would envy. Revolori, last seen as Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Clemons both nail their parts, as does A$AP Rocky, who could easily make the same leap from rapper to actor that Ludacris did after Hustle & Flow.

My only real criticism of Dope is that it is overstuffed. The opening voice-over seems unnecessary, and soon trails off. There are so many characters and overlapping story lines that some of them feel underdeveloped. But if the worst I can say about your movie is that you have too many ideas, that’s a good place to be. Dope premiered at Sundance alongside another high school movie, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which scored big at the awards ceremony. Both are fine films, but I think the Sundance voters got it wrong. Dope has the makings of a cult classic that high schoolers will be watching for years to come.