KOB-TV, the NBC News affiliate in Albuquerque, N.M., had a segment over the weekend on Ernest Alexander, the former Memphis Animal Shelter director who was arrested last week in New Mexico after being indicted on animal cruelty charges here in Memphis.

Alexander was no stranger to Albuquerque; he had once managed that city's animal shelter. Animal-rights activists filed complaints about the shelter in 2003 when Alexander was in charge.

The Smoking Gun, which has long had fun revealing the fussy tour "riders" of pop stars, has gotten hold of Harold Ford Jr.'s contract for his $20,000-a-pop speaking gigs. Page 2 is the rider, a document which typically lays out specific instructions for the artist's accommodations, travel arrangements and the like.

Of note, Ford's rider mentions that he is allergic to shellfish. But what really gives The Smoking Gun a kick are the portions that seem to anticipate "swarms of adoring fans."

Ford demands that when his limo driver picks him up, the chauffeur must be carrying a sign reading "H.F.." Presumably, if the Democrat's name was spelled out, hordes of fans/groupies would be alerted to his impending arrival and swarm him (something that has bedeviled the Jonas Brothers). On the security front, if he is appearing before a packed house, Ford, 39, needs an "alternate entrance & exit at the venue," to, again, apparently avoid the crush of devotees.

The particular contract that The Smoking Gun posts is from Ford's speaking engagement Wednesday at Northwest Missouri State University. His appearance brought yet another round of jeers and guffaws from Ford critics, who jumped on him for seemingly being ignorant of New York City geography. The St. Joseph News-Press originally reported that Ford, in a question about whether the 9/11 terror suspects should be tried in Manhattan, said that he lives "about a block" from the federal courthouse. Said Daily Kos diarist brooklynboy: "Apparently Mr. Ford has no idea where the Federal Courthouse is New York City is."

But why would he travel to conservative rural northwestern Missouri, where people definitely wouldn't know such things, and say that he LIVES A BLOCK FROM THE COURTHOUSE?

The answer, in my view, is simple: Harold Ford is a born liar. In a pathetic attempt to kiss up to the locals in Missouri about his anti-terror bonafides, he attempted to imply that he would be personally impacted by terror trials taking place in New York. He did that even though it is abundantly clear they would be nowhere near either his home or his office.

Back in St. Joe, the News-Press published a correction to its story on Ford's speech, saying that Ford actually lives a mile and a half from the courthouse. The newspaper chalked up the confusion to "a reporter's error."

Does anyone out there actually believe that it was an honest mistake, and not a browbeating phone call from Ford himself or a handler, that occasioned the St. Joe paper's correction?

  

Writing in The Carpetbagger, The New York Times' Academy Awards blog, Melena Ryzik --  last seen trumpeting the Midtown Memphis nightlife scene --  notes that "Blind Side" star Sandra Bullock's accent in the movie has generated some controversy. Ryzik passes along a complaint she received from a Memphis reader:

"Just for the record, those of us here in Memphis are not necessarily impressed with Ms. Bullock's accent," Susanne Nan Bayes Koenig wrote to the Bagger recently to register a complaint. "She sounds like she is from Georgia, where the film was shot. Lovely woman, great work, two states off."

What do my readers think about this? Does Bullock pull off the accent of her character, Leigh Anne Tuohy? Below, I am posting the official "Blind Side" trailer. Below that, I am posting some video of Tuohy being interviewed. Compare and contrast. And discuss.

In a story about small investors getting clobbered in the commercial real estate market, The Wall Street Journal leads with the example of 1023 Cherry Road, the glass-and-steel buildings, nestled in the woods next door to the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, that used to house Holiday Inn and Harrah's Entertainment offices. A consortium of 27 small investors lost their $7 million investment after they were unable to refinance a $14 million loan on the property. The WSJ says, "Cherry Road's collapse is an ominous sign for thousands of other commercial real-estate deals in which mom-and-pop investors pooled their money to get a tiny piece of the action." After that, you'll need a subscription to read on.

Here are a couple of stories we ran last year in The Commercial Appeal about the property: here and here.

The New York Times continues its recent string of Memphis-datelined features (see here and here) with a story in Monday's editions about evangelical Christian churches using mixed-martial arts to minister to young men.

The setting for the story was a Cage Assault MMA show on Beale Street. One of the teams participating in the card was Xtreme Ministries, "a small church near Nashville that doubles as a mixed martial arts academy." Xtreme is one of a growing number of churches -- the story stresses that nearly all of them are white -- that are using cage fighting "to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in."

The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries -- and into the image of Jesus -- in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. "Compassion and love -- we agree with all that stuff, too," said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. "But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter."

The background to this effort is to increase church attendance among young men. Some pastors interviewed for the story say they fear that churches have become too focused on women and children.

Men ages 18 to 34 are absent from churches, some pastors said, because churches have become more amenable to women and children. "We grew up in a church that had pastel pews," said Tom Skiles, 37, the pastor of Spirit of St. Louis Church in Arnold, Mo. "The men fell asleep."

Classical music producer and ArtsJournal blogger Joseph Horowitz singles out the Memphis Symphony Orchestra as an example for other orchestras to follow as they broaden their mission away from simply performing concerts to providing an array of education and other services to the community. This is a necessity, Horowitz says, because "concert supply outstrips demand." Therefore, an orchestra must come up with creative ways for its full-time employees to fulfill their contractual services, besides producing expensive -- and perhaps poorly attended -- concerts.

Horowitz caught up with Ryan Fleur, the Memphis Symphony's CEO, at a recent orchestra conference, and he recounts some of what the MSO has been doing in what Fleur calls "a cultural shift":

Eighty per cent of the Memphis Symphony's 36 fulltime musicians engage in "approved partnership activities" totaling up to 45 of 266 contracted services per season. They mentor students at an inner-city charter school. They furnish "leadership training" for local corporations. They produce performances outside the concert hall, replacing traditional subscription weeks.

One obstacle for some orchestras in adopting what Horowitz calls "the Memphis model" is getting the musicians' unions to cooperate. These nonperformance services are outside of what a professional musician traditionally has been trained to do. However, musicians are coming around, Horowitz says Fleur told him, because "they believe this redefinition is essential to the survival and necessary transformation of the orchestra."

An editorial in the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., calls for a truce among Southern states in the escalating "water wars." This week, of course, Memphis won a battle in court against Mississippi, which had claimed that Memphis is essentially stealing from the Magnolia State's share of an aquifer that is shared by portions of Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and now Mississippi officials want to try to reach a settlement with the other two states.

Water lawsuits are raging among other states as well, as the Press-Register points out:

Rapid growth in metropolitan areas is putting more and more pressure on water supplies, with the result that seven Southern states now are fighting over water in the courts.

Maybe Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas will set an example for other states by reaching a fair and balanced water-sharing agreement.

The Alabama man who is accused of beating his mother to death and who led Memphis and Mississippi authorities on a 40-minute chase will be returned home. Justin Denson, 30, waived his extradition hearing and will be taken back to Gadsden, Ala., sometime today or Wednesday. Denson was arrested on credit card fraud charges after the chase last Thursday. He is suspected in the death of his 63-year-old mother, Nina Gay Denson, whose body was discovered in her home on Jan. 18. Denson's girlfriend, Molly Stevenson, was arrested in Mississippi a few hours before he was caught.

Does anyone around Memphis remember Cheryle Robinson, now Cheryle Robinson Jackson, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois? The Chicago Sun-Times ran a series of candidate profiles today, and Jackson's briefly mentions her time in Memphis.

FIRST JOB: "Drawing maps on computers freshman year at Northwestern. In Memphis, I worked as a waitress. I almost got fired my first day because I didn't sound Southern enough."

According to her campaign bio, Jackson was born in Chicago but moved to Memphis as an infant with her family in the mid-1960s. The family lived in East Memphis, and Jackson attended White Station High School. After earning her degree at Northwestern, she did graduate work at the University of Memphis, then began her career at WKNO before moving on to National Public Radio. More recently, she was a regional vice president for Amtrak and a press secretary for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and now she is the president of the Chicago Urban League.

The Senate primary in Illinois is Feb. 2. The seat up for grabs is the one formerly held by Barack Obama, and shrouded in controversy around the appointment by Blagojevich of current Sen. Roland Burris. Huffington Post broke down the latest primary polls and said Alexi Giannoulias maintains a comfortable lead on the Democratic side. However, HuffPo adds that Jackson could make up some ground in the next week.


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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a nice profile today of Missouri basketball star Laurence Bowers, a product of St. George's Independent School. The peg for the story is that Mizzou, yours truly's alma mater, hopes to knock off the hated No. 3 Kansas Jayhawks tonight on the road, something that hasn't happened since 1999 (when I was still in school). Bowers figures to be a key part of any Mizzou upset bid; he is filling the shoes of departed teammate and Memphis Grizzlies rookie DeMarre Carroll, blocking shots, rebounding, and generally bringing lots of energy to the floor.

The Post-Dispatch article peaks back at Bowers' upbringing and his longstanding ties to Mizzou coach Mike Anderson, and catches us up with how he's getting along on campus:

He dates an Eritrea-born nurse named Feven Melake ("Great catch," he says), has considered studying nursing himself and rooms not with teammates but friends from his dorm last year.

"I don't want to be just known for basketball," he said. "I think it's important to embrace relationships with people of different cultures and beliefs."