Ring of Fire Things turned rotten Sunday night at The Pyramid, the site of a World Wrestling Federation event. The night’s schedule of bouts was cut short when fans started throwing cups, bottles, ice, and anything else they could get their hands on. According to Tony Brooks, host of the Sunday Night Slam wrestling talk-show on WSFZ Supersport1030, fans probably just got restless because the action wasn’t up to par. “It was the biggest farce I’ve ever seen,” says Brooks. “It was a very lame card in terms of wrestling.” Jerry Lawler, on the other hand, blames the rebellion on fans of World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Ted Turner’s rival to the WWF. “There was this segment of WCW fans that were there basically to cause trouble,” says Lawler, who is affiliated with the WWF. Whatever the cause, Lawler says the final match was called off when one of the wrestlers was hit by a bottle and left the ring. Folding chairs, yes. Hurled bottles, no way. Mean Streets WMC Channel 5 trumpeted its “Big Story” Sunday with teasers about “high tech” thieves invading Memphis. Turns out two neighbors in Cordova had reported their garage doors mysteriously opening, which prompted a breathless three-minute story on the possibility of thieves using electronic “decoders” to open garage doors. At the end of the report we learn that police had told the homeowners that it was “unlikely” that thieves had opened their doors, and that they had no reports of any such criminal activity in Memphis. Tomorrow’s “Big Story:” mysterious doorbell-ringing in Bartlett. Remember Him? In 1993, Zell Dean Moses, working as a representative of the Heritage Trust, came to Memphis with plans to purchase Central Station as part of multi-million-dollar entertainment development. It never happened, and Heritage International Inns, a related company, filed for bankruptcy in 1994, owing area creditors over $1 million. In a lengthy article titled “Heater firm’s promises leave cities steaming,” the Knoxville News-Sentinel recently detailed this and other of Moses’ ill-fated projects, which lately have included promising, but not delivering, plants to manufacture tankless water-heaters in East Tennessee. Among the litigation Moses is currently involved in is a $100 million libel lawsuit against the Memphis Business Journal and reporter Jonathan Scott, who wrote three articles about Moses’ post-Memphis exploits in Boca Raton, Atlanta, Hilton Head, and East Tennessee. “He [Scott] has no business printing news in Memphis, Tenn., that has nothing to do with Memphis, Tenn.,” Moses told the News-Sentinel. “I gleefully look forward to the day that I ram it down his throat.” n		Flyer Wins Disclosure Lawsuit by Phil Campbell tate Chancellor Floyd Peete ordered last Thursday that the city disclose to The Memphis Flyer the details behind an out-of-court settlement that the city wants to keep confidential. The Flyer filed a lawsuit in state court in early November over records the city insisted were part of a confidential agreement settled in September. The case was that of Adam Pollow, a 29-year-old student of the University of Memphis who died after allegedly being mistreated by Memphis police officers. In early 1993, Pollow was eating dinner at Bennigan’s in East Memphis when he began choking. The police were called because the manager Adam Pollow thought he was on drugs, according to the suit. Pollow was put in a restrictive police constraint called a hog-tie, which is so potentially dangerous that police director Walter Winfrey banned the practice in 1994. Pollow, left in the back of the police squad car, choked on his own vomit. The lawsuit claims that the officers initially ignored his pleas for help, but eventually took him to the hospital. Pollow died three days later. The city settled with the Pollow family before the trial began, drawing up a settlement agreement that stipulated details be kept confidential. City chief administrative officer Rick Masson approved the confidentiality pact the city made with the Pollow family. Two of the three city attorneys who made depositions for the Flyer said they didn’t think the state public-records act applied when they made the confidentiality agreement; a third said he wasn’t familiar enough with state sunshine laws to say. U.S. District Judge Julia Gibbons, who oversaw the lawsuit, entered a confidentiality order regarding certain documents in the hogtying case, and that has proved to be the Flyer’s biggest problem in obtaining the documents, which it began requesting in late September. All along, the city has contended that the settlement is confidential because of Gibbons’ order, that she essentially allowed the settlement details to be sealed from public inspection. Assistant City Attorney Sara Hall told Chancellor Peete that she was stuck “between a rock and a hard place” in the city’s “inability to comply” with the Tennessee Open Records Act. According to a letter Gibbons wrote to Flyer editor Dennis Freeland, however, the settlement agreement was not bound by the court. “I am not sure where you obtained your information that the details of the settlement were sealed under court order, but this is incorrect,” the judge wrote. “We were pleased that the court ruled in our favor,” says Flyer editor Dennis Freeland. “We still don’t know the extent of the settlement the city made in private, but we believe in the principle that the city should not make deals with taxpayer money that the public doesn’t know about.” When the Flyer first petitioned in Chancellor Peete’s court for the information, the city remanded the case to Gibbons’ court. The newsweekly successfully requested the case be put back in Peete’s court. Flyer attorney Russell Headrick has asked that the city pay for more than $5,000 in his fees, the cost of the city’s time-consuming legal maneuver. Peete declared last week that the documents that the city has kept secret were, in fact, public. He ordered Hall to release the documents by noon on Friday “to the extent that the documents are not protected by protective order or some other order from the federal judge.” And the Flyer’s suit isn’t quite over yet. The city has filed a motion in Gibbons’ court that the judge agree to modify the confidential settlement agreement. It’s uncertain how long it will take Gibbons to do that. n Sampson To Leave Memphis Magazine by Jim Hanas Contemporary Media, Inc. (CMI), the parent company of both The Memphis Flyer and Memphis magazine, announced Tuesday that Tim Sampson will be leaving his position as editor of Memphis. Tim Sampson Sampson joined CMI in 1988 as the founding editor of the Flyer, a position he held until September 1992, when he took over the editorship of Memphis. During Sampson’s tenure, the magazine has won 17 national awards for excellence from the City and Regional Magazine Association, as well as numerous Ozzie design awards and honors from the Society of Professional Journalists. His popular weekly column in the Flyer – “We Recommend” – has garnered him several “Best Local Newspaper Columnist” awards in various readers’ polls, and in 1995 a collection of his columns was published in the book All Mimes Must Die. “This has been a very difficult decision,” says Sampson, who will join the local Doug Carpenter Advertising firm in January. “During my time here, I have accomplished many of the things I set out to do with the magazine, and now I look forward to the challenge of working in another field. Still, leaving CMI is like leaving family, and I wish the company continued success.” “As founding editor of the Flyer, Tim was responsible for building the foundation the publications rests upon today,” says Kenneth Neill, CEO of Contemporary Media. “And during his tenure at Memphis, he brought the same wit, flair, and genius to the magazine.” Sampson’s replacement has not yet been named. “Replacing someone with Tim’s talent and vision will not be easy,” says Bruce VanWyngar-den, CMI’s associate publisher for editorial. “We will take our time and evaluate our options. It’s an open-ended search at this point.” Fans of “We Recommend” will be happy to know that, despite his departure from CMI, Sampson will continue to write his weekly column for the Flyer. n

City Consultant May Be In Federal Trouble

by Phil Campbell

A consulting company hired by the city to improve computer systems with the Memphis Police Department and the Memphis Fire Department is under investigation by a federal grand jury probe for overbilling the Tennessee Valley Authority by $8.1 million.
SCB Computer Technology, Inc., has a $500,000 contract with the city of Memphis to “provide planning, review, and design support for the City’s area data network.” The company is also helping the police and fire departments replace their computer-assisted-dispatching systems.
The contract is being overseen by John Hourican, the city’s director of information systems. Most SCB consultants file invoices with Hourican’s office, but there’s a separate consultant for the police department’s computer system; that consultant files reports with the police department. The city’s contract sets up different pay scales for nine different types of consultants from the company, who make anywhere from $50 to $95 an hour.
Gary McCarter, the company’s chief financial officer, says that nobody in SCB who is involved with the federal probe is working on the contract with the city. “No, sir. No one, whatsoever,” he says.
“That’s not news. I believe it’s been a story that’s been around now,” Hourican says, noting that the federal government first started asking SCB questions as early as last year. “We’ve had a contract with SCB for two or three years now for various projects. We’ve used different people [for SCB] for various contracts. This covers about three or four different areas.
“We keep tabs on what they’re doing. We’re on top of things, I believe,” he adds. n

Baptist Hospital Plans: “Elvis Has Left The Building”

by Jacqueline Marino

It was 1975, and Elvis Presley was staying in rooms 1801 and 1802 of Baptist Memorial Hospital when Marian Cocke, a registered nurse, first met him. Cocke, who still works at Baptist as an administrative supervisor, remembers he was polite and respectful. The two became close. She says he was “just like my kid.”
Last week, when the hospital announced that it wanted to tear down the building where Cocke cared for the King, she says she had mixed feelings.
“I have many, many memories at Baptist,” she says. “But I can carry the same memories in my heart. I don’t need buildings.”
Twenty years after Elvis’ death, fans still visit rooms 1801, 1802, and 1602, where the King was treated in 1977, five months before he died.
The visits could end soon, however, if the state Health Facilities Commission approves Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp.’s recently unveiled $127 million expansion plan for the Medical Center hospital. Baptist hopes to replace the buildings where Elvis once stayed with a new nine-story, 472-bed, full-service hospital, as well as a community health center at 899 Madison, on the spot where the medical towers now stand.
The project would redirect hospital beds to Baptist Memorial Hospital-East in Germantown, save the system $3 million in utility bills, and bring back obstetrical services, which were discontinued at the Medical Center hospital in the 1970s. However, the plan also requires the demise of Baptist Memorial Hospital’s tangible connection to Elvis, which would come crumbling down along with its two 19-story towers.
As news of the ambitious expansion plan makes its way to Elvis fans around the world, Georgia Anna King, international president of the Elvis Presley International Fan Club, remains hopeful that somehow the building can be saved.
“Of course I want to save it,” she says. “A lot of visitors go there. It would be a waste to demolish it.”
King says she is planning a letter-writing campaign and will be contacting preservationist groups for help.
But some local groups have already excused themselves from the issue, including Memphis Heritage.
“It’s not historic,” says Judith Johnson, executive director of Memphis Heritage. “It’s not listed on the [National] Register [of Historic Places]. Nobody has called us about it.”
Bill Cole, Baptist vice president for marketing and planning, says the hospital hasn’t received any formal requests from anyone wishing to save the building. Once the state approves the expansion, he says the hospital may do something with the new facilities to commemorate Elvis.
“We will look at things to keep that memory intact as long as it doesn’t impede on health care for the city,” Cole says. “That will be first and foremost.” n

Merl Industries Resists Universal Policies Sale

by Jackson Baker

There will be a challenge, it seems, to the December 5th vote by Uni-versal Life Insurance Company stockholders to sell the company’s outstanding insurance policies to the Houston-based American Capitol Insurance Company.
The challenge comes from Merl Industries of Tennessee, Inc., whose own offer to purchase a majority of Memphis-based Universal’s shares has been pending for two years. Stephen M. Andress, a Boston attorney representing Merl, protested in a letter last week to Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks, Universal chairman, that the stockholders’ meeting violated provisions of the Tennessee Business Corporation Act as well as regulations of the state Department of Insurance and Commerce.
Those alleged violations were technical in nature and involved what Andress said were (a) an irregular solicitation of proxies for the meeting and (b) insufficient notice to stockholders regarding what turned out to be, but was not billed in advance as, a sale of assets.
Consequently, Andress’ letter contended, Universal had “no valid authority for the transaction presented at the meeting.” Andress said this week that Merl had not yet filed a complaint asking the Department of Insurance and Commerce to disapprove the estimated $12 million transaction but reserved the right to do so.
Rob Moore, a Department attorney who has monitored Merl’s prior purchase offer, says he had not yet received enough information about either the December 5th stockholders’ meeting or Merl’s complaint to comment. Nor has Universal yet responded to Merl or to Andress.
Merl’s own offer has been stalled, pending a request from the Department for further documentation on a number of details, including how the purchase would be financed. Andress said Monday that the documentation package was ready to be forwarded to the Department.
Meanwhile, Deputy Insurance Commissioner Roy “Skip” Nixon said Tuesday that he has scheduled a December 18th meeting with Hooks to discuss the sale of policies to American Capitol. n

Tattoo Parlors Are Looking Clean

by Phil Campbell

Following a new state law, the Shelby County Health Department is making tougher inspections of tattoo parlors this year. So far – unlike the restaurant inspections – there haven’t been many problems.
The new state law, passed in 1996, requires that all tattoo artists get inspected and receive lessons by a registered nurse in blood-borne pathogens and sterile techniques.
“The main thing we’re looking for is general cleanliness and to make sure the autoclave is working,” says Michael Hopper, the supervisor of rural sanitation, who is in charge of the tattoo parlor inspections. An autoclave is the device that sterilizes the tattoo artist’s equipment.
In the entire county, 14 businesses fall under the new health requirements, though some of these are not real tattoo parlors but permanent-cosmetic stores. Hopper estimates that there are only nine or 10 regular tattoo parlors in the area. The inspector says that each tattoo parlor has an average of three artists, bringing the total number of tattoo artists in Memphis to about 45.
Hopper says Shelby County has been inspecting tattoo parlors for years, long before the new law. Still, the state requirements formalize the procedure, requiring everyone who is already licensed by the county to be licensed by the state.
The tattoo-parlor inspections haven’t produced any violations, unlike the health department’s restaurant inspections, which are far more complicated. A hepatitis epidemic has spurred close media scrutiny of all the restaurants that received poor or failing grades.
When the health department had its first mandatory course in sterile tattooing, Hopper expected the first class to last only an afternoon. But the artists, he says, asked so many questions that they had to reschedule another class the next day.
Tattoo artists have a reason to stay clean, as well as make sure everyone else is legitimate. “If somebody is operating out of the back of their garage, somebody licensed is going to call me. That’s their competition.” n