Reaching Totality
🌔 Look at the moon tonight · Library books · Historic zoning · Red 40 · David Mamet's new book · Knuckles · Oink Oink · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
A packed newsletter today, so I’m going to be breezy up here.
First, a total lunar eclipse, often called a "blood moon," will occur tonight as the Earth aligns directly between the Sun and the Moon, casting a reddish hue on the lunar surface. Totality will last for about an hour starting early Friday morning at 1:26 a.m. No special equipment needed. Just look up.
Second, a story from NewsChannel 5 stuck out to me today. The outlet reported on disorder spilling out into the streets surrounding the Nashville Rescue Mission in Salemtown. One woman spoke to the network about people urinating on her property, trying to get into her front door, and smoking on her front porch.=
What floored me though was the response from Joy Flores, vice president of ministries at the Rescue Mission. "I definitely can see how frustrating it is when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis in the neighborhood," Flores told NC5.
The Mission doesn’t have security guards and instead hires employees trained in de-escalation, trauma-informed care, and mental health first aid. Reassuring. As a result of the carnage, neighborhood residents are considering hiring private security.
Below, Megan covers some local political matters, Jerod reviews David Mamet’s new book, and filmmaker Jay Miller talks about his latest project and the influences behind it.
Onward.
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📚 What’s On The Shelves? Though there aren’t any censorship laws that restrict materials in public libraries, the Rutherford County Library System has taken up the cause. Next Monday, the Rutherford County Library Board will discuss the removal of “material that promotes, encourages, advocates for or normalizes transgenderism or ‘gender confusion’ in minors.” Cody York, a board member who also serves as the county’s Chief Information Officer, has been championing the removal of inappropriate books. “Show your support for protecting children from inappropriate material by wearing a white shirt,” he encouraged in an X posted yesterday.
Last summer, the General Assembly expanded the 2022 Age-Appropriate Materials Act that requires schools to review their library catalogs “to determine whether the material is appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials, and to determine whether the material is suitable for, and consistent with, the educational mission of the school.” Since then, Rutherford’s School Board has removed over 150 books.
Due to a protest that broke out in Tuesday’s House K-12 Subcommittee after members approved Leader Lamberth’s bill to allow schools to refuse the enrollment of illegal immigrants, a new bill to repeal the Age-Appropriate Materials Act was bumped to next Wednesday’s calendar.
🏘️ Historic Zoning Via Preptit Councilmember Jeff Preptit took time over the weekend to address the proposed historic zoning bill that would put the Metro Historic Zoning Commission under the purview of the Planning Department. In his March Newsletter for District 25, he explained what the bill does and doesn’t do.
“First the bill specifically sets minimum qualifications for the Director of the Historic Zoning Commission,” he said, explaining that the change clarifies current code by granting the Director the power to hire staff. “This bill also creates the position of Historic Zoning Administrator in the Metro Planning Department. The HZA will have the same minimum requirements as the Director of Historic Zoning. The HZA will also have the authority to review the demolition permits of historic structures and issue 90 stop work orders.”
Preptit pointed out that the legislation “reorganizes the staff at the Historic Zoning Commission and moves them into the Planning Department” before moving on to what the bill does “NOT” do:
This bill does not get rid of the Historic Zoning Commission or historic zoning. The lead sponsor, CM Benedict, has worked closely with the Historic Commission and Planning Department in crafting the bill the Council is considering. The language of the bill and how it reorganizes staff has been worked on in collaboration with the departments that will be affected.
At the end of his explanation, the council member assured his constituents that “both Planning and Historic Zoning will continue to be independent agencies with independent duties.”
🛑 Red 40 While ongoing discussions about banning synthetic food dyes have taken place at the federal level, a Tennessee bill making its way through the General Assembly could ban Red 40 in school lunches. Yesterday, the Senate Education Committee recommended the passage of a law that requires schools to prohibit food or beverages containing Red 40 from being sold or offered, with an exception for certain events.“Red 40 is not a harmless color additive, it's a synthetic dye derived from petroleum linked to a range of health concerns,” Senate Sponsor Janice Bowling explained to the committee. “Studies have shown that food dyes can contribute to hyperactivity, attention disorders, and behavioral issues in children.”
Whitney and Brandon Cawood, Georgia parents who documented their search for answers after discovering their son's sensitivity to synthetic dyes, testified before the committee. “We tried everything, but in the end, it was removing synthetic dyes that made a difference, something doctors and therapy visits couldn't do,” said Whitney Cawood while rehashing their personal experience. “The child who once struggled with biting, tackling, and outbursts became calm, focused, and emotionally regulated within 48 hours.”
“The FDA safety standards for synthetic dyes are based on studies that are 35 to 70 years old, and how many times have we seen the FDA declare something safe only to reverse course years later or even decades later,” Brandon Cawood posed to the committee. He outlined how recent, peer-reviewed studies have concluded that synthetic dyes “can cause, not correlate, but cause or exacerbate neurological behavioral problems in some children.”
So far, eleven states have banned food dyes. The House Education Administration Subcommittee is set to hear the bill next Tuesday.
DEVELOPMENT
- Four Seasons Hotel Nashville set for new restaurant (NBJ)
- Frito-Lay North America expands operations in Clarksville (NBJ)
- Approval sought for bomb-damaged building rehab project (Post)
- Sylvan Park commercial property listed for sale (Post)
✹ MEET MARTIN RIGGS
From Jay Miller
It was December 2022, a few days after Christmas, and I was home for the holidays. I was sitting alone in my parent’s kitchen, close to midnight, with an active mind but nothing to work on. My family was asleep, with the low hum of the microwave fan on to let remind everyone (me) to keep the volume down. My latest short, MK Ultra Violence, was finally picture-locked after a grueling year-long effort. With the project at a standstill and nothing immediate to work on, an old familiar feeling began to sink in: What’s next?
I opened up a fresh page on my notepad and started jotting down some ideas. With every new project, I strive to do a complete 180 on what I had done previously, while also aiming to challenge myself even more. With MK Ultra Violence being a psychological, conspiratorial horror film, that wouldn’t be hard, and I knew I didn’t want to do another horror film (but would go on to win Best Horror Short at the 2024 Nightmares Film Festival for Jack about a year later).
Then, I was hit with a single image: a street fight, set in a rural Tennessean trailer park, centered on a lean, platinum blonde-haired ex-boxer raising his bloodied fists to protect his swollen, beaten face, his eyes swollen so much he can hardly see, shouting at his opponent for “one more round.” I didn’t know who this man was, what the story was about, or how he got there. The only thing I knew was his name was KNUCKLES. This imagery harkened back to characters I grew up idolizing at a very young age: Rocky Balboa, John McClane, Gabe Walker, and Martin Riggs…
✹ DAVID MAMET'S EVERYWHERE AN OINK OINK
Known for pioneering a clipped and circular style of tense workplace conversations in plays like Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed the Plow, David Mamet spent a good 40 years influencing luminaries like Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. Then, he instantly torched his career with his 2008 Village Voice article, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal.’” A 2013 Emmy nomination for a Phil Spector biopic notwithstanding, no giant of American Letters has fallen so hard, fast, or far.
Yet, as Mamet posits in his latest book, Everywhere an Oink Oink, though he may be on the outs with Hollywood, he’s in a much better place than his former industry is with a large swath of the American public. Part memoir steeped in free association, part catalogue of spicy insider baseball, the book proves that, despite his fall from grace, Mamet could read and write us all under his beloved poker table.
It’s quite telling that those who deigned to read Mamet’s latest opus all opted for the comparison of him as the reader’s conservative uncle at Thanksgiving. Writers prone to such pablum neglect that Mamet’s vitriolic stance against Hollywood and the liberal consensus stems largely from the industry’s post-70s penchant for dramatic and artistic failure. Recalling how the 2007 WGA strike killed many a writing gig on its way to the greater good (including Mamet’s staff on CBS series The Unit), he chides the tendency to be too close to the fantasy of reconciling the Hollywood life with half-formed notions of worker solidarity. For him,“New speak slogans suggesting we ‘embrace our humanity’ are inducements to self-congratulation. But we scream with laughter at the recognition that our beloved ‘humanity’ is a joke.”
Reserving his harshest provocations for Hollywood’s producer class, the Pulitzer Prize winner deviates from the typical conservative influencer groupthink by not merely railing against DEI, but contextualizing it within the power player bubble. “The destruction of the Biz by Diversity Commissars is not the cause, but a result, or corporate degeneracy. The hegemons, as they grow fat, become less sassy, and the confusion about objective (making money by supplying a need) caused by affluence attracts exploiters as the sun calls forth maggots from a dead dog.”
Part of the theatre landscape since the mid-70s, Mamet has earned the right to curmudge. However, those already familiar with his work know his contrarian bravado has remained unwavering. And, for at least a little while, Broadway and Hollywood were all the better for it.
Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood is available from bookstores nationwide.
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.
TONIGHT
🪕 Tim O'Brien @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🎸 Into the Fog @ Dee's Lounge, 9p, $10, Info
🎵 My Morning Jacket Listening Party @ Vinyl Tap, 5p, Free, Info
🥁 LIVE JAZZ: Parker James, Paul DeFiglia, & Anson Hohne @ Vinyl Tap, 7p, No Cover, 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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