Criminal Activity Played for Laughs
🎭 Crime pays for Pat Dixon · Silent passage · New Beetlejuice movie · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
My favorite restaurant in town, Hathorne, announced yesterday that they’ll be serving their last plate on September 8th. In an interview with the Tennessean, founder John Stephenson laid out the plethora of challenges that have made it difficult for the restaurant to stay afloat, pinning particular blame on changing dining habits and tightened consumer spending in the wake of Covid.
Additionally, inflation has increased the cost of goods by 30 percent and labor costs have risen with it. Stephenson tells the paper that out of 40 applicants booked for interviews, only two showed up, despite the restaurant competitively offering line cooks $23 to $24 an hour.
Restaurant turnover is normal for a buzzing city like Nashville, but in this case, I can’t help but read government policy into it.
Onward.
Tennessee-based Comedian Pat Dixon delivers dark wit and crime reports
I encounter a good many people who like to go on tirades about how “cancel culture” is ruining comedy, but disappointingly few of them are funneling money into artists like Pat Dixon. A Tennessee native whose impressive creative career spans twenty-nine years, Dixon’s comedy is a relentless force.
Over the years, he's garnered his own Comedy Central special, appearances on VH1, and regular shows with Compound Media and Censored TV. All the while, he’s taken the time to create original shows—from the burlesque Nearly Naked Lady Hour to a casual, piano-laden livestream on Rumble five nights a week.
He’s a true master of his craft, with a thick moral fiber and a plethora of stories to tell: the antithesis of today’s plastic mockery of the timeless late night talk show host. We spoke for a couple of hours recently, and he told some of those stories—dotted, of course, with remarks that drew guttural laughter.
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🤫 Silent Passage On Tuesday, Mayor O’Connell’s four “public safety” bills passed through the council on first reading without a peep. Despite community pushback, the mayor vows that the legislation is designed to “protect both speech and spaces.” Introduced to combat “political violence” and “unrest” with “buffer zones” and restrictions on suspicious mask wearing, distracting sign placement, and nighttime handbill drops, some argue that the legislation is unnecessary given the permits and protocols already in place. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK
🚔 Prison Breakdown On August 20th, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Trousdale Turner Correctional Center. This Tuesday, local activists gathered in front of the facility and demanded it be shut down. “We had family members who were just shipped bodies who had been killed in this prison here,” said Pastor Venita Lewis. “We had individuals claiming family members being raped here, constant shut down of the prison… no calls out, no calls in, poor staffing, poor food conditions.” Lewis also called for Governor Lee to remove Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada, who assured the group that the conditions are “aggressively improving,” but has “stonewalled” them from getting a walkthrough of the prison.
Trousdale came on the DOJ’s radar as they continue to rack up a heap of state fines for contract violations. Since 2019, Tennessee audits have revealed significant understaffing—one noted that a single correctional officer was responsible for supervising over 300 people—along with other dangerous and poor conditions.
Over the last decade, for-profit prisons have been a hot button issue in Tennessee. CoreCivic, which manages Trousdale, is the world’s largest private prison company, and runs four prisons across the state. Earlier this year, the governor approved a $7 million budget increase to support CoreCivic staffing costs; however, we’re sure to see some pushback from legislators when the General Assembly convenes in January. “Was shocked to arrive at BNA and the first advertisements I see at the baggage claim are for CORECIVIC and GLOCKTOWN???” Rep. Aftyn Behn posted last week. “Come on Nashville: we’re better than guns and private prisons.” MEGAN PODSIEDLIK
📜 Rule Change In 28 days, Metro Council will be enforcing a new rule. At the start of Tuesday’s council meeting, Councilmember Zulfat Suara proposed that Rule 28.1 be adjusted to prohibit out-of-staters from speaking during the public comment period.
The change was initiated in response to the interloping neo-Nazis who used pseudonyms to sign up for a public comment period back in July. After speaking with organizations that work with the “unhoused, undocumented, and other members of the community,” Suara amended her original proposal, which would have reserved the time for Davidson County residents only. Instead, she broadened it to Tennessee residents, and the council passed the rule by voice vote.
Of note: the rule change does not affect the procedure for public hearings, which are held to address specific pieces of legislation on second reading. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK
DEVELOPMENT
- Local group behind Crow's Nest to open upscale restaurant this fall (NBJ)
- New retailers revealed for River North development (NBJ)
- New restaurant, Twenty-First Nashville, opening in Hillsboro Village (Post)
✹ REVIEW: BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (2024)
Much to Hollywood’s relief, the summer box office made a sustained rebound that could indicate the public isn’t quite ready to abandon moviegoing as a national pastime. But considering that 8 of the summer’s top 10 movies are the latest installments of long-in-the-tooth franchises, how long it can stand this ground should be the industry’s most pressing concern. The quality of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Inside Out 2, and Twisters notwithstanding, one can’t shake that they are all, in part, eulogies for a time long past when the movies had an interest in fresh worlds and a respect for their audiences as something more than mindless IP consumers.
Timed to take full advantage of the long Halloween season and its endless merchandising opportunities, the long-gestating Beetlejuice Beetlejuice may be nostalgia bait that reunites Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara while bringing unrivaled Gen Z scream queen Jenna Ortega into the mix for some lucrative torch passing. But director Tim Burton is gleefully in on the joke, the mastermind of this glorious blockbuster valentine to the underworld steeped in gorgeously disgusting practical effects that reminds us all of what we’ve lost in the current moviegoing climate.
Today, no Hollywood studio would bankroll a wide-release movie as unhinged and subversive as 1988’s Beetlejuice, the film that established Burton as a Hollywood visionary and made his Neo-Gothic style a cottage industry. From Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns to his unfairly maligned live-action Dumbo, he has remained one of the American cinema’s most singular satirists even if the Disneyfication of his aesthetic has diminished his pop-culture cachet.
Like its predecessor, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finds humor in an all-encompassing bureaucracy one cannot escape even in death. But, this go around, Burton also takes aim at the activist bromides and art world pretensions that our betters use to fleece us as we distract ourselves with the type of exploitative ghost hunting shows that Ryder’s once rebellious Lydia Deetz finds herself hosting. As the object of Burton’s ire, Justin Theroux’s baby-man-bunned B-list Hollywood skeez proves both the perfect sparring partner for Keaton and the epitome of the White Dudes for Harris posturing the Right wished they thought of.
Somehow, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages to be everything to everyone: a gut-busting sequel that’s worthy of its predecessor, a throwback to a better time, an effective multigenerational family saga, a treatise on broken marriages, and a rejoinder to the Hollywood pandering that has alienated a large swath of former moviegoers. But it’s also the work of a filmmaker who’s rediscovered his powers at a time when Hollywood has no interest in finding anyone else to succeed him as it inches ever closer to needing its own Handbook for the Recently Deceased.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens tonight in theaters.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 Mac Leapahart & JB Strauss @ Dee's Lounge, 6p, $5, Info
🎸 The Red Clay Strays @ Ryman Auditorium, 7p, $25+, Info
🥃 The WhiskyX w/ St. Paul & the Broken Bones @ Marathon Music Works, 7p, $98.69+, Info
🎸 Dennis Parker & Friends: James Taylor Tribute Show @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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