If Melrose and White Station meet in the championship game of the state AAA boys' high school basketball tournament this weekend, it will be the third straight all-Memphis final.

And once again, hardly anyone from Memphis will see it, even though the two teams, which have already met four times this year in jam-packed games, have several future college starters, including University of Memphis recruit Joe Jackson of White Station.

The state tournament that has become a showcase of Memphis basketball is played in Murfreesboro, 240 miles away. The last time it was played outside of Middle Tennessee was 1974, when Memphis hosted it, and Melrose took the title.

Due to a combination of Memphis dominance, timing, and geography, there isn't much March Madness in Tennessee high school basketball these days.

A Memphis team has won the AAA title in nine of the last 10 years. White Station has five championships, Ridgeway two, and Hamilton and Bartlett one each.

Some school systems in Middle Tennessee, including Nashville, are on spring break this week. But Memphis City Schools doesn't start spring break until March 29th.

If their team makes it to the finals, students usually have to take two days out of school to go see the game. The quarterfinal games start on Thursday afternoon, with the semis on Friday and the finals on Saturday. Once their team loses, most fans go home. The all-Memphis finals have been played in Murfreesboro's 11,520-seat Monte Hale Arena in front of fewer than 1,000 fans, in sharp contrast to the noisy, standing-room-only crowds when the top teams meet in the regular season on their home courts or at nearby neutral sites.

"If it were here, it would be sold out and it would be huge," said Kevin Kane, head of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Unlike last week's Southeastern Conference Tournament in Nashville, where scalpers were getting $400 or more, cost isn't an issue. A $12 ticket gets you into three division final games.

"It's the travel," said Bernard Childress, executive director of the TSSAA. "When we had Spring Fling (the spring sports championships) in Memphis a few years ago, it was the same thing for people from East Tennessee."

Melrose is trying to win the state championship for the first time since 1983. The school has a rich basketball tradition, including stars Larry Finch, Ronnie Robinson, and William Bedford, all of whom went on to play for the University of Memphis.

White Station has tended to send its basketball talent out of town, to schools like Tennessee, which landed Dane Bradshaw and J.P. Prince, and Alabama, which nabbed Ernest Shelton.

Former U of M coach John Calipari recruited nationally and courted "one-and-done" future pros like DaJuan Wagner, Derrick Rose, and Tyreke Evans. New coach Josh Pastner wants to reestablish the hometown base. Stay-at-home star Jackson, a point guard, is considered a likely starter for the Tigers next season.

Childress says there's nothing stopping Memphis from hosting the finals. The contract with Murfreesboro expires next year. Childress would like to sign a two-year contract for the 2012 and 2013 tournaments before then.

"Our board is going to start the bid process at our next meeting, and several cities have expressed interest," he said. "We have heard from Memphis, Chattanooga, Cookeville, and Murfreesboro. The last time Memphis talked to us, FedExForum was being mentioned."

Talk is cheap. The host city must clear its arena for two weeks to accommodate both the boys' and girls' tournaments in all divisions. That could be a problem for Memphis with the Grizzlies and Tigers already sharing the arena, plus special events like the 2010 NCAA women's basketball regional March 27th and 29th.

Kane said he tried to get the TSSAA to move the state football championship game for private schools to Memphis when the finalists were Memphis University School and Christian Brothers. But he ran into resistance from sponsors in Murfreesboro. He believes that the only realistic chance for Memphis is to form an alliance with East Tennessee and lobby the TSSAA board of directors.

"If the board told the directors to move it around, they wouldn't have any choice," he said.

A former college basketball player at Belmont in Nashville, Childress agrees that there could be as many as 10 future college players on the floor, if White Station meets Melrose again on Saturday.

"It would be fun," he said.

Too bad most of us will miss it.

Football fans will see a cleaner and greener fairgrounds and a lot more empty space around Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in September.

In the southwest corner of the fairgrounds, heavy-equipment operators are grooming the former site of Libertyland, turning it into a shady, grassy grove suitable for pregame parties and picnics. Meanwhile, on the fifth floor of City Hall, heavy political operators are performing triage on the property and putting first things first. Which is to say, football and parking, all 5,372 spaces.

City councilman Reid Hedgepeth, a former college football player determined to move the ball on this project, gathered the main players Monday. They included University of Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson, Steve Ehrhart, representing the AutoZone Liberty Bowl, Fred Jones, representing the Southern Heritage Classic, and Robert Lipscomb, representing the city administration.

(The full council was scheduled to take up the issue Tuesday after Flyer deadlines.)

The goal was to get an agreement on Phase One of the "clean and green" of the amusement park site and move on. The next phase includes demolition of the cattle barns and most of the other buildings west of the stadium so they can be replaced with a "Tiger Lawn" (aka "The Great Lawn") from the East Parkway entrance of the fairgrounds to the stadium. Hedgepeth and Lipscomb want to get that much done before the 2010 football season starts and the U of M takes the field under new head coach Larry Porter. The cost is approximately $2 million.

"We're not finalizing the fairgrounds. All we're tying to do is clean the place up," Lipscomb said.

Noting the recent flare-up, mainly by Jones, over fears of lost parking places, Lipscomb added, "If we have this kind of problem cleaning it up, imagine the problem we're going to have advancing the notion of what ought to be there."

Conspicuously absent at the table was Henry Turley, whose group Fair Ground LLC was chosen as developer of the fairgrounds by the city's appointed fairgrounds reuse committee and confirmed by then-mayor Willie Herenton in 2008. Turley, the developer of Harbor Town and Uptown (and a minority stockholder in Contemporary Media, Inc., the Flyer's parent company), has a national reputation as an expert in new urbanism. He has called Fair Ground "the best idea I ever had." But he can't get political support for his plan, which includes big-box retailers like Target and hotels like Hampton Inns to generate taxes that would pay for an amateur team-sports complex and fairgrounds and stadium improvements.

Also absent was anyone from the Memphis Park Commission, which operates the stadium.

Calling the shots, at least for now, are Lipscomb and former city councilman and architect Tom Marshall, who leads a fairgrounds redevelopment group that has the blessing of FedEx executives, the U of M, and most members of the City Council.

No matter who gets the job, it won't be easy. The lineup for the East Parkway side of the fairgrounds is set, with Fairview Middle School, the Salvation Army's Kroc Center for recreation, the grand entrance, and the greensward at the old amusement park. So is most of the north side, with the Children's Museum and the high school football field and track.

That leaves the stadium, the Mid-South Coliseum, and enough asphalt to land airplanes if Memphis International ever shuts down. At Monday's meeting, Marshall had a display board with six reasons to tear down the coliseum. Jones wants it to stay. He's a tough advocate, with friends on the council.

If the football crowd has its way, parking will reign, millions more dollars will be poured into the stadium for fans who don't come and for handicapped seating that isn't needed, and the U of M will cross its fingers that a new coach and players can turn the program around and get Memphis into a Bowl Championship Series conference — the latest Holy Grail.

Turley's mixed bag is also a long shot. A "Target tax" or "Trader Joe's tax" would probably pass in some affluent precincts in Midtown, but big-box retailers always run into resistance. His sports model is Bridges, the nonprofit that brings private and public schools together for season-opening football games, only he wants to do it regularly.

In a town where public more often than not means poor (schools, the Med, MATA, etc.), Memphis may not be ready for that leap of faith. We prefer our racial reconciliation and happy endings in small doses, à la The Blind Side — or on the sports page or the football field.

Tourism itself may not be recession proof, but the lure of entertainment districts, convention centers, and sports facilities as visitor magnets is as irresistible as free beer.

Two years after former mayor Willie Herenton proposed one, a new downtown convention center is creeping back into the news. So is Beale Street, thanks to a fresh audit of John Elkington and Performa Entertainment. And so is the fairgrounds, which was the subject of a Memphis City Council committee meeting last week.

Tourism harnesses the power of other people's money, not to mention the Food Network and the Discovery Channel. It plays to our strengths. The payoff is packed hotels and restaurants. An economic stimulus package that works. Fun for everyone.

There's big money and upside in tourism, but there are a lot of traps too.

Trap one: What's your niche? Scott Robinson is head coach of the Germantown swim team. He and 1,500 coaches, parents, and swimmers from Tennessee, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle spent four days in Nashville last week at the short-course championships. The city-owned Centennial Sportsplex has an aquatic center that works for them (as well as an ice-skating rink and indoor/outdoor tennis courts).

"Pools here in Memphis don't have the capacity to handle that many people in one meet," Robinson said. "To keep the meet within a reasonable time frame, they use two pools. We have pools that size here with movable bulkheads, but they can't handle the spectators."

It took three-and-a-half days to run all the events. That's four hotel nights if you're keeping score. The meet was the fourth one in four weeks in Nashville. Make that 16 hotel nights. The University of Memphis used to host a long-course meet but stopped bidding on it five years ago.

The heavy hitters in the Memphis fairgrounds discussions are the tenants of the football stadium. That leaves 355 non-football days a year. What would you put at the fairgrounds that the Mike Rose Soccer Complex, First Horizon baseball fields, and the Racquet Club of Memphis don't already offer?

Trap two: Tourism is not a solution to a budget crisis. Because of special districts and financing arrangements, tourism taxes pay the debt on stadiums and arenas and convention facilities and promote more tourism. The plans for the fairgrounds, Graceland, and the Bass Pro Pyramid all envision keeping the "tax increment" inside the special district. Money for schools and police and trash pickup comes from unrestricted taxes.

Trap three: Tourism draws cities into an arms race with their neighbors to build new convention centers. Nashville is a heavyweight with a firm base in the vibrant country music industry. Memphis is a middleweight with one foot in the musical past, a bipolar downtown with the convention center and the Pyramid at one end and the Peabody, Beale Street, and FedExForum at the other end, and a history of squandering money on white elephants.

Trap four: gentrification. Lower Broadway in Nashville looked like it was hosting a Chi Omega sorority convention last Saturday. We ate grilled bologna sandwiches and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon at Robert's honky-tonk and saw Alison Krauss at the Ryman Auditorium, but the pitfalls of progress were obvious too. From hamburgers at Earnestine and Hazel's on South Main to Beale Street blues to Harry Connick at the Cannon Center, Memphis more than held its own.

Trap five: Tourism and entertainment is not enough. A downtown needs a business base. New Orleans is in the same boat as Memphis. Nashville has new skyscrapers and corporate headquarters and the state capitol. The main reason we were in Nashville several times recently was work and a nice payday. The fun was a bonus. Memphis business consultant Don Hutson tells his audiences to move toward abundance and away from scarcity. Nashville still has an abundance of abundance.

Trap six: The back-story doesn't matter to visitors, but it does matter to the city. Elkington and the Beale Street club owners deserve credit for turning nothing in 1982 into something today. They do not deserve an exclusive call on profits for eternity. The Watkins Uiberall audit addresses past claims that may or may not be worth pursuing, not political shenanigans and corruption. The city, which provides services, should legitimately expect lease payments. Casinos pay 12 percent in state and local taxes in Mississippi, and that's one of the smaller cuts in a capital-intensive industry that generates a lot of cash.

Serve no wine before its time, and the same goes for memoirs.

Everyone may have a story but not necessarily a story that the rest of us want to hear. The good ones have perspective, emotional highs and lows, sharp writing, strange places, revealing glimpses of famous people, and humor.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson is known to many Memphians as the author of a book about Cajun Country and a biography of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz as well as a former columnist and award-winning reporter for The Commercial Appeal.

Now she has written a memoir called Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, which comes out next week. It's a good one.

After writing thousands of columns and driving a million miles to write about other people, she has earned memoirist's rights. We meet her ex-husband Jimmy Johnson, the creator of the comic strip "Arlo and Janis"; the late humorist Lewis Grizzard and his fans at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who hated Johnson; and an author who, by her own description, has always been harder on herself than anyone else could be.

This book probably would never have been written but for a tragedy. Enchanted Evening Barbie (the doll was on many a Christmas wish list in 1964) started out as a funny, upbeat Christmas story but took a different turn after Johnson's husband, Don Grierson, died suddenly last March. The blues came down hard, leaving her heartbroken and struggling to get out of bed.

Never one to embrace social media or modern convenience — she uses a rotary-dial telephone and burns wood in a potbellied stove — she pretty much went off the grid for several months, hunkered down in her little farm house and "Le Jardin" at the end of a dirt road in a hollow near Pickwick Lake. She was a widow with three sad dogs, six acres, a second house in Louisiana with a tangled mortgage, a publishing contract to fulfill, almost no income, and a weekly column to write.

What once seemed like an unbearable burden became instead her salvation. She forced herself to sit down at her computer and write, and after a while the words started flowing. Not maudlin, not self-pitying, but with the stab of reality and the true pulse of life, like the songs by her musical favorites Hank Williams and Lucinda Williams.

She writes about her childhood in Montgomery, Alabama, college boyfriends at Auburn, a bittersweet marriage to Johnson (she reveals that she may look like Janis but is a lot more like Arlo), the time Sonny Bono called to ask her why she hated him, and the well-paid hell of succeeding Grizzard. Be careful what you wish for.

Grizzard was a curmudgeonly, chauvinistic, and wildly popular professional Southerner. One of his books is titled Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself. Resented by Grizzard's friends at the paper and all but forced out of her gig in Atlanta, Johnson titles one of her chapters "Grizzard Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself."

"My second column was about a gay country music singer from Tupelo," she writes. "That was all it took. Letters arrived by the bushel, angry letters, most of them telling me to go back to Mississippi, do not collect $200."

It's one of the only instances of score settling in a book that, like a country song, has episodes of Momma, friendship, and violence but also leaves some things unsaid.

Her last assignment in Atlanta was writing cutlines for a photo spread on a county fair. That's cub reporter stuff. She got the message, did the job, quit, and drove to Iuka and Fishtrap Hollow. I met her there a couple of weeks ago to swap a piece of Alaskan salmon for some CDs. We ate lunch with Frank and Eddie Thomas, the brothers from Iuka who produced the bluesy four-CD set Angels on the Backroads. The Mississippi Delta has nothing on Iuka when it comes to contemporary literary and musical talent.

Don Grierson was handy with tools and built a raised bridge across the creek next to the house. As a 2008 Christmas gift, the Thomas brothers hand-stamped a brass plaque for it with his name. They screwed it onto the bridge at his memorial service, which featured all Hank Williams all the time. The acoustics are very good in a hollow, and the songs of loneliness and tears, Rheta writes, filled the spring air "so we did not have to."

Having a "conversation" with Shelby County residents about consolidation is like having a conversation with your spouse or significant other about your relationship.

You can talk yourself into believing you're being grown up and tactful, but sooner or later — probably sooner — you are going to be in deep trouble.

Might as well come right out and say, "Does this new dress make me look fat?" or "You know, that marriage therapist on Oprah said some interesting things" or "I'm thinking of hiking the Appalachian Trail to clear my head."

All of your delicacy is for naught. Within three milliseconds, the response will be, "So what's your point?" In short order you are busted, just like Memphis and consolidation proponents, whoever they are, are going to be busted.

I have no hard position on the merits of consolidating city and county governments. As a reporter, I've read at least 100 stories and columns about it in the last 25 years. Sometimes on certain issues, there is something to be said for Greater Memphis speaking with one voice. If the One Great Leader of consolidated government were someone on the order of FedEx founder Fred Smith, it would be one thing. But if it were someone on the order of Willie Herenton, it would be another thing. As for tax fairness, that depends on where you happen to be standing when the deal is done.

Anyone with an ounce of civic and political awareness knows this. And that is why the niceties of the "conversation" about reinventing government will crash headlong into the realities of "What's in it for me?" if and when it comes to a vote this year.

I thought of this last week when I was interviewing Bill Rhodes, the chief executive of AutoZone, for a story in one of our sister publications. He's a good story if you're trying to sell the positives of Memphis. In addition to running a Fortune 500 company, Rhodes, a 44-year-old Craigmont High School graduate, is chairman of the board of Memphis Tomorrow, the top-tier leadership "do tank" that has a vested interest in the conversation about consolidation. On the morning of our interview, however, political farce in Memphis and Shelby County was in full flower on the front page of The Commercial Appeal. Politicians were going rogue faster than Sarah Palin can say "hopey-changey thing."

Interim county mayor Joe Ford was "pissed off" about something and might or might not decide to run. County commissioner Mike Ritz took it upon himself to write a civil rights complaint to the Justice Department and give state government an out on the Med. County commissioner and constitutional law professor Steve Mulroy was elevating the demolished Zippin Pippin roller coaster to the importance of Marbury v. Madison.

Two observations are relevant to the consolidation conversation. One, if you were visiting Memphis last week and saw these stories you might wonder if this place had anything better to do. Two, for some people, "One Memphis" isn't going to trump political self-interest and a job.

If consolidation has any prospects in a referendum, then sooner or later backers are going to have to drop their on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand facade, get off the high road, and engage in retail politics. The resistance of entrenched county politicians could play in their favor with voters tired of the same-old, same-old. Getting people to vote for higher taxes — the likely impact of consolidation on county residents — could be just short of miraculous, but having a conversation isn't going to move the ball.

Maybe proponents don't want to be identified, or don't want to disturb a sleeping giant, or are planting a thousand seeds that will bloom in the summer. Or maybe there is no plan.

Americans enjoy a good show. Coy is out; in-your-face is in. Nothing is off limits in public conversation any more. Every time I turned on the TV last week, Jenny Sanford was outing her husband, the governor of South Carolina, as a cheap creep. Liberals were ripping into Palin and the Tea Party and conservatives were ripping into Obama. Our national town hall meeting runs on charismatic figures, plain talk, and bold positions — the simpler the better.

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them mad, and just stir them up was sound political advice when Robert Penn Warren wrote All the King's Men 70 years ago, and it's good advice today.

The city of Memphis, Shelby County, and Tennessee state government are all facing a budget crisis. Solving it is going to be difficult because so many options are off the table.

It's tempting to turn away from such matters. It's complicated. It's overblown. It will resolve itself. It's out of my hands. But a government budget has a lot in common with a personal budget or a household budget. Here are the pros and cons of some options:

Blame someone, such as your roommate, spouse, or former mayor Willie Herenton. Momentarily satisfying but ineffective and ignores certain facts. In his first mayoral term, way back in 1992, Herenton proposed merging city and county government by having Memphis government disappear. In his second term he took a different tack called the Formula For Fairness. In his fourth term he advocated shifting school funding to Shelby County. In his fifth term he took himself out of the picture.

Nickel and dime your way to prosperity. Sweeping the change off your dresser, like the $50 annual wheel tax in Shelby County, doesn't raise big bucks.

Don't pay your bills. Thousands of Shelby County residents have walked away from a home mortgage. The owner's problem becomes the bank's problem which becomes government's problem.

Tap your savings. Known as "reserves" in government lingo, the city of Memphis and the school board and the state have already done this. The downside is higher credit costs and risk.

Tax sinners. Tennessee already has a state lottery and has recently raised taxes on tobacco and alcohol.

Sell the family jewels and other assets. Again, the former Memphis mayor proposed selling parks and even suggested wringing more money out of Memphis Light, Gas & Water, for which he was roundly criticized.

Go after deadbeats. The city and county collect delinquent taxes in-house and via a contract with an outside firm.

Ask your relatives. "Uncle" Governor Phil Bredesen says no.

Be less generous. Memphis and Shelby County grant more tax freezes than everyone else in the state combined. The upside is jobs and downtown development. The downside is that a freeze of 10 or 15 years becomes an entitlement and the properties never go back on the tax rolls. In a city that relies on property taxes for revenue, this is huge. Most of the downtown anchors are hospitals, public buildings, or businesses with a tax freeze.

Raise the sales tax. Big money because it's broad-based. But, at 7 percent, Tennessee already has the second highest rate in the country, and local governments can add another 2.75 percent. Tennessee is one of only 14 states that taxes food.

Impose a state tax on earned income. Big money, broad base. Tennessee is one of nine states without such a tax. The last governor who proposed it, Don Sundquist, was all but ridden out of Nashville on a rail.

Impose a Memphis payroll tax. Birmingham, Louisville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati do it. A 2004 study in Memphis said a 1 percent tax, coupled with a property tax rate reduction, would raise $180 million because it hits a bigger target. The proposal was trounced at the urging of the chamber of commerce.

Consolidate governments. The government equivalent of a couple cutting up some of their credit cards. The "conversation" is under way, but separate votes will be taken in Memphis and in Shelby County outside of Memphis. Possible long-term benefits, but even backers admit there are no short-term savings.

Cut major expenses. Only big cuts mean big savings. That would be schools and police and fire. Courts have upheld the city of Memphis obligation to fund schools. Closing schools is politically unpopular; there are more schools and employees today than there were five years ago when the system had 10,000 more students. Cutting cops and closing fire stations is even more unpopular.

Raise property taxes. Big money, and broadly based, with the notable exception of all the nonprofits, delinquents, foreclosures, and tax freezes. Last year's reappraisal raised taxes by raising home values for thousands of homeowners despite the recession.

With other potential game changers off the table, a property tax increase to cover, if nothing else, the shortfall for Memphis City Schools is likely. Like the sales tax, the mechanism is already in place. The problem is that Memphis already has the highest property taxes in the state, and homeowners who have stayed inside the city and paid their bills will take the hit.

Sister Myotis, whose views on thongs and "good Christian panties" are a Memphis theatrical hit and a YouTube sensation, is headed for New York.

The portly founder and president of "the Honeybee's Ladies Auxiliary at the 80,000-member Good Tidings Apostolic Holiness Christian Fellowship of Saints" aims to plant a sleeper cell of like-minded Southern ladies in the Big Apple. As usual, she'll be joined onstage with Voices of the South partners Velma Needlemeyer (Todd Berry) and Ima Lone (Jenny Odle Madden) under the direction of Jerre Dye in a 22-performance run of Sister Myotis's Bible Camp, which opens June 11th and closes on the Fourth of July.

Sister Myotis' four-minute bit on thongs, in which she passes out "Democrat panties with a godly cotton panel" to thong-wearers in the audience, has been viewed 2,531,000 times on YouTube since it was posted in 2008. Watch it. It's hilarious. Amen.

There's just one problem. "She" is Memphian Steve Swift, a 40-year-old actor working to make ends meet at the Memphis museums system. Needless to say, he does not have the backing of a mega-church. Voices of the South is a shoestring operation, much like the 59-seat off-Broadway Abingdon Theater where the play will run.

Sister Myotis and her friends need a little help. That's where you come in. Memphis is on a nice little creative roll these days, with Memphis: The Musical playing on Broadway, local restaurants featured on the Food Channel, and indie bars written up in the Travel section of The New York Times last week. Swift & Co. need cash or in-kind donations for travel expenses, living expenses, and lodging in New York. Or, Swift says, "We will take your love and support."

He made a low-key appeal last weekend at First Congregational Church before the performance of J&K's Self-Rising Cabaret featuring Madden and the equally talented Kim Justis. He never went into his Sister Myotis character, even when the crowd said "Amen." Pros don't step on each other's lines or steal the spotlight.

If Swift had a penny for every time the thong video has been watched he'd have more than $25,000, which would make this appeal unnecessary. Of course, that's not how "the Interweb," as Sister Myotis calls it, works. All he's gotten from YouTube, which is owned by Google, which is worth a zillion dollars, is a message full of legal boilerplate about "monetized video" in which he would basically give away all his rights.

Swift grew up in a Pentecostal family in Jackson, Tennessee. He went to college at the University of Memphis but almost dropped out because he was afraid of a required course in public speaking. Instead he took Oral Interpretation of Literature, where you could read aloud a poem or short story. He found out he could do that well, and he took an acting class and majored in theater. After college, he took a class on gender in performance in London. Sister Myotis — the name is a genus of bats and was chosen for its sound and uniqueness — debuted as a bit part in a Christmas play in 2002.

"I am a difficult look to cast," says Swift, who is trying to lose weight before going to New York. "For years I bemoaned the fact that I did not drop out of school and move to New York or California. But now I realize that this work I have done here I never would have been able to do in New York."

Sister Myotis was an instant hit, but Swift has modified her character and dialect for seven years. She is about "everything that is not important about church" and is often invited to perform at churches. About one-fourth of her audiences think she really is a woman. Swift will sometimes greet elderly female patrons in character after a show and talk about breasts or weight problems.

The thong video ("about the tamest thing we do") is especially big in Georgia and Texas but has been viewed in Guantanamo.

"I had that video for a year or two before posting it," Swift says. "The moment I let go of it it just kind of took off."

If you've ever watched it, thought of mixing ambrosia with a vibrator, or worn Democrat panties, it's time to buck up. Send $1 to Voices of the South, P.O. Box 11222, Memphis, 38111. Hell, send them $5 or $10. A sleeper cell of Honeybees in New York City could be just what this country needs.

This is a book plug, a rip-off, and a suggestion.

The book is Super Freakonomics, the follow-up to the best-selling Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The rip-off is some of what follows. And the suggestion is that Memphis might profit from Oprah-style group readings of these works.

Among other things, the authors help explain optional schools and skate parks.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a great title is worth a thousand words and a thousand dollars, or in the case of Freakonomics, many thousands of dollars. If you have read this far, you probably have a general idea of what these books are about. If not, it's an unconventional way of looking at human behavior and incentives and questioning numbers. The full title of the follow-up is Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.

(On that last part, the short answer is that it throws off the terrorist profilers. The witty and talented authors are not shy about dispensing a thimble full of common sense in a gallon jug.)

Freakonomics has become a franchise. The authors and various contributors also do a freakonomics blog on The New York Times website. Dubner is a former New York Times Magazine writer and editor, and Levitt is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. Funny is hard. They are both funny and well-informed. And they don't flinch at risqué topics like prostitution and specific acts of prostitution. One of their sources is a Chicago prostitute who earns $400 an hour. How she got into the business and set her price is a story not to be missed.

So much for the plug.

Now the rip-off and the suggestion. If there was ever a city that lends itself to freakonomics, it is Memphis. Hard attitudes. Seemingly unsolvable problems. Racial divides. A genuine desire to do better. A gritty culture. Mistakes often repeated. A city of entrepreneurs. Home of the super-duper freakonomics idea, FedEx.

A few years ago, there was a reading fad. Communities chose a book like To Kill a Mockingbird, and lots of people read it at more or less the same time in the name of betterment, bonding, and literacy. The idea was not new, but Oprah's Book Club helped nudge it along. Group readings of the freakonomics books might nudge Memphis out of its ruts and get people thinking differently.

Take optional schools. Every winter for at least 25 years, hundreds of bundled-up parents have lined up at the Memphis Board of Education to get into the optional schools of their choice.

This behavior is easy to misinterpret. The line is not an endorsement of Memphis City Schools in general. More like the opposite. It is an endorsement of certain schools by certain people. In my day as a young parent, a phone call would announce that "the line" was forming and you better get your ass over there. Once your place in the line was secured, you had to hold it by reporting for roll call every morning until the actual sign-up day. Then your kid got into Grahamwood or White Station or John P. Freeman, and you and your younger children were set for years, thanks to a legacy rule.

Some years the line was unnecessary. There were more spots than candidates. But the mere rumor of a shortage was enough to start the line. Take no chances when your kid's school is at stake and you don't want to pay $10,000 a year for private school.

Of course, if you missed the line you were screwed, if demand exceeded supply. Merely calling more schools optional did not work. The game was rigged in favor of two-parent families who didn't work the night shift and knew the rules, which were not exactly written on stone tablets. In response to complaints, 20 percent of the spots are now awarded by a lottery. But 20 percent is less than 80 percent. "The line" lives. It still pays to pay attention.

Skate parks are another example of more going on than meets the eye. The concept barely existed in Memphis 10 years ago. A small number of proponents worked the media and the Park Commission to generate awareness, support, and funds. Last week, a skate-park story made news when city councilwoman Wanda Halbert objected to its proposed location.

At this point, you might say "huh?" Why the interest? Why the opposition? And what the hell is a skate park? In a word, it's freakonomics.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled against the city of Memphis in the Memphis City Schools funding case last week, but in its ruling, it overstated enrollment by more than 7,000 students.

The error raises doubts about the accuracy of MCS enrollment reports and could give the Memphis City Council some wiggle room in negotiations with the school board.

The appeals court wrote that MCS serves approximately 112,000 students, but the system has not been that large for several years. According to the MCS website, the system has "about 105,000" students. The Tennessee Report Card says the actual number is 104,829 students.

The per-pupil funding (from all sources) for MCS is $10,394. (For comparison, Davidson County/Nashville is $10,495 and Shelby County is $8,198.) Multiply that by 7,171 — the difference between the report card enrollment and the number the appeals court uses — and the result is approximately $75 million.

If the state Court of Appeals, which had months to review this case, doesn't know how many students there are in MCS, you have to wonder whether anyone does.

That should get members of the City Council doing some homework and demanding some answers before raising anyone's taxes and forking over more than $100 million to MCS for last year and this year. If MCS has been overstating its enrollment, then the system may not be due any extra funds.

MCS enrollment has long been a guessing game, with the difficulty compounded by population movement and the fact that there have been three superintendents in the last three years. Kriner Cash is in his second year. Dan Ward had the job in 2007-2008, and Carol Johnson was superintendent from 2003 to 2007.

For reporters, it takes a Freedom of Information Act request to the communications office under Cash to get this basic piece of information. You can find numbers as high as 118,000 and as low as 103,000 in various press reports, report cards, and MCS publications in recent years.

One thing is clear: The trend is down. In 2007, according to the Tennessee Report Card, MCS had 110,753 students.

But fewer students doesn't mean fewer teachers and administrators or school closings. The opposite is true. In 2007, MCS had 6,438 teachers and 359 administrators. In 2009 — with enrollment down 4 percent — MCS had 7,259 teachers and 439 administrators. And instead of closing underused schools, MCS built two new ones — Manassas High School and Douglass High School — which were well under capacity last fall.

The total proposed MCS budget for 2008-2009 was $931,966,343. The state funds 48 percent of that and Shelby County 29 percent.

The city has funded as much as 10 percent in recent years but reduced its contribution in 2008, sparking the lawsuit. Instead of appropriating the $84 million it gave MCS in 2007-2008, the Memphis City Council cut the appropriation to $27 million. MCS wants $57 million in make-up money for 2008-2009 and even more for this year and next year. A special property tax increase could be the only way to get it.

But wait a minute.

The appeals court and the Chancery Court in Memphis ruled that Memphis has a statutory school-funding obligation called "maintenance of effort." But there is an exception, which the appeals court noted near the end of its ruling:

"Revenue derived from local sources must equal or exceed prior year actual revenues — excluding capital outlay and debt service and adjusted for decline in average daily membership."

In other words, revenue can decline if enrollment declines.

The Memphis City Council should bring Superintendent Cash and his lieutenants to City Hall and ask them this:

What is the current enrollment, and how do you know this?

What was the enrollment for the last five years?

Why did MCS build Manassas High School and Douglass High, at a cost of more than $45 million?

What are your plans for closing schools in parts of the city where there are not enough students to fill them?

How much enrollment gain in MCS is due to annexation? Shelby County has been operating schools in annexation areas for years, then turning them over to MCS. Next up in the batting order is Southwind High School, with nearly 1,500 students.

Before we can decide how much funding Memphis schools are entitled to, and how the costs should be borne by city and county taxpayers, we have to have accurate enrollment numbers and an explanation for discrepancies.

On Saturday, I went to the Memphis Zoo and stared down the wolves in the Teton Trek exhibit that opened last year. Nice.

On Saturday night, I went to see George Clooney at Malco's Studio on the Square. Nice.

On Sunday, I went to the open house for the new 390-seat Playhouse on the Square, with a backstage rigging area that goes up seven stories and can fly Peter Pan over the audience. Nice.

Later that afternoon, I went to the Central Library, which opened in 2001, then over to Rhodes College, where tuition, room, and board costs $42,000 a year. Very nice.

And on Monday, I read that the owners of Overton Square can't come up with a deal for developing an empty parking lot in the heart of Midtown and have taken their proposed grocery store, demolition, and new buildings off the table.

So much going on in Midtown, so much investment, so much prosperity and potential, so many opinions, and so little going on at Overton Square. What is wrong with this picture? I asked the anchor tenants with money in the game: Jimmy Tashie of Malco's Studio on the Square and George Falls, owner of Paulette's.

Malco built its four-screen boutique theater in Overton Square 10 years ago after taking a pass — wisely, as it turned out — on Peabody Place downtown.

"We've been in the square since 2000," Tashie said. "There was a lot of talk at that time of bringing in all kinds of new stuff. Of course nothing has happened, other than moving Le Chardonnay and Bayou Bar and Grill over to impact our parking.

"When they moved everybody north of Madison, we knew something was going to happen. It's a shame to have that big parking lot with nothing going on. Finding the best use is subject to a lot of interpretation. What Malco wants is something pedestrian-friendly across Madison. We want something open where people feel it is all connected. A view corridor is an important component so people can look between the buildings and see activity on the north side of Madison.

"I have great respect for all the people saying that Midtown must retain its integrity. Whether they can use all the old buildings, I don't know. A lot of them are going to be difficult to deal with. That's a business decision for an investment group to make.

"Cooper-Young has got a little of the spark that Overton Square used to have but no longer has. You don't want a shopping center storefront look there.

"Our theater is doing fine. We've been very happy with it. If they're making the right kind of movies, then our business is healthy. We like having our film festivals and special showings there. The new Playhouse is a great thing. With that, you have live theater, good restaurants, and a movie theater. It just seems like maybe something good is about to happen."

Paulette's restaurant has been at Overton Square for 35 years.

"I want something over there," Falls said. "It is terrible not having something across the street. Ever since TGI Friday's went out, it just hasn't been the same. I would rather have something that may not be my first choice than nothing at all. The dream come true would be mixed retail and housing, but that's not going to happen.

"The landlord with Fisher Capital in Denver is a great guy, but he's not a developer. He seems to like the idea of the grocery store, and I'm certainly not opposed to it. They spent a lot of money fixing up the old buildings, but it didn't seem to help. I was disappointed when I heard about them withdrawing their proposal. I would love to see the development go through that these guys have planned.

"The movie theater hasn't been what I think some of the former landlords thought it would be. We were told we would have a 10 percent increase. I said I would take 1 percent. The thing is, a movie usually starts at dinnertime. We are doing okay, not what it was in the boom days, but we're doing all right."

Tom Lowe is president of Univest, co-owner of Overton Square.

"I think the economic window of opportunity is limited," he said. "We want to know where the community stands. We don't want to force anything. We're very impressed with Councilman Shea Flinn, and we'll see what he can pull together. We need cooperation, support, and realism from the community."

When Jeff Sanford took over as head of the Center City Commission in 1998, the Pyramid's empty space was being touted as the future home of a Grammy Museum; AutoZone Park and FedExForum and most of Peabody Place had not been built; office buildings were giving way to housing; and the shortcomings of a pedestrian mall were painfully obvious.

In other words, while some things about downtown have changed, some have stayed the same.

Sanford, 67, announced last month that he plans to leave his job in July to go into consulting. So when we sat down this week for an exit interview, it was really only half exit interview and half what's-your-last-act interview.

Exuberantly praised last year by Councilman Joe Brown for his "guts" and, uh, manliness, Sanford is an amiable, low-key guy with a reined-in ego, a small office across the plaza from City Hall, a staff of 15 administrators, and a $3.5 million operating budget. A member of the City Council himself from 1977 to 1983, Sanford reminded me that he still has six months to go and then honed in on nitty-gritty details of downtown infrastructure before we got to the big stuff.

The CCC to-do list for 2010 includes sprucing up streets and alleys, cracking down on panhandlers and sales of single beers and "pesky street behavior," and handing over management of street parking to a private company. A master of finding empty spaces and milking parking meters for a couple of hours on 50 cents, I looked nervously out the window at the mention of this one.

"We have not been very successful in finding the money to implement the 2001 Streetscape Master Plan for 80 square blocks of downtown," he said. "We have spent about $5 million of the $75 million that is needed."

The Center City Commission is a relatively modern invention, dating back some 35 years. What gave it clout was the blessing of key developers and its ability to grant tax freezes as an incentive to develop new properties like Barbaro Flats or fix up old buildings like Lincoln American Tower. Depending on your point of view, the glass is half-full or half-empty. Some $5 billion has been invested downtown in the last 15 years, but the four corners of the intersection of Union and the Main Street mall remain vacant.

"Changing a neighborhood or a city takes decades, not days," he said. "I've had to learn the true meaning of the expression that patience is a virtue."

Here's what he had to say about some hot-button topics.

On Bass Pro: "Given the choices, it is still the best option. It's that or an empty building."

On cars on the mall: "Someone came here and said it could be done for a few thousand dollars, but when you start looking at the details, it isn't easy. It would take $10 million to return cars to the mall. It's like forcing a square peg in a round hole."

On Mud Island park, which went from a $20 million project to a $60 million project while he was a councilman: "One problem has always been coming up with a reason to return. I'm hopeful that plans will include new reasons to make return visits."

On the Sterick Building and other "big empties": "As developers say, it simply doesn't pencil. Not as a hotel, residential, or office. Boarding up broken windows with plywood is not putting the best face on downtown. We need a higher standard."

On whether there is a need for both the CCC and Riverfront Development Corporation: "Next question. I've been asked that before, but I'm not in position to make a judgment."

On consolidation of city and county government: "I have been a proponent since before my council days."

On AutoZone Park: "Look for new ownership of the physical property as well as the team. Something other than it falling back on the taxpayers."

On whether Midtown, Whitehaven, or other areas should have development corporations: "New York has close to 60 CCCs. I see no reason why it couldn't potentially work in other locations."

On future consulting: "I plan to take what I learned here over 12 years and offer my advice to city builders in other cities and maybe even help analyze market opportunities here."

We were out of time. My parking meter had clicked over to red. No ticket. Another revenue opp lost. Take that, CCC.

It was a good year for doing more with less.

Think yoga, sliders, 401(k) accounts, blogs, the airlines, Starbucks, and interim mayors. Also Snuggies, Crocs, and 64-calorie beer, for which there will be special corners in hell.

Think "Hitler's Take on LSU" on YouTube, Lil Rounds and Alexis Grace on American Idol, Ole Miss running back Dexter McCluster (5'9" and 170 pounds) running wild against Tennessee, and the Grizzlies minus Allen Iverson.

Think advertising. Big corporations and the creative teams at their agencies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads for the Super Bowl every year. The Doritos "crystal ball" ad, chosen as one of the best of the lot, created by a pair of thirtysomething brothers, cost just under $2,000.

Think books and movies. Elmore Leonard advises would-be authors to leave out the parts readers skip. Cormac McCarthy, former East Tennesseean, used to write long books like Suttree and All the Pretty Horses with long sentences and paragraphs. His last two novels, No Country for Old Men and The Road, are short books with short sentences and utterances that are barely sentences at all. Both have been made into major movies.

There were also those who managed to do less with more.

Think big banks, the stimulus, Oprah, Tiger Woods, John "0 for 2008" Calipari, one and done, the movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Congress and health care, Willie Herenton, Michael Jackson, another season of 24, Yahoo, and Tommy West's upcoming prepaid retirement.

Overton Square has some popular restaurants and a nice movie theater and lots of passionate supporters but can't get its act together. Where were the satirical publication The Onion and Christian Lander and his blog "Stuff White People Like" when city councilman Shea Flinn convened a hearing on what to do about the square?

As the Onionists might have written it, the largest ethnic minority group in Memphis, wearing colorful ethnic designer coats and seasonal footwear from Patagonia and L.L. Bean, rallied at City Hall to demand that attention be paid to the need for an ethnic market such Trader Joe's with exotic herbs and wines as well as boutique shoppes in historically significant buildings and parking areas restricted to Subaru Outbacks, bicycles, and skateboards.

Riverfront development and Beale Street Landing stalled as prices went up. The debate between pro-development types and preservationists is well and good, but holding future faceoffs in, say, the Raleigh Springs Mall or Fox Meadows might shed a different light on things.

And some are doing more with more. Gadflys, comedians, and commenters in the blogosphere have had a field day with the pompous and pretentious. The bane of our public boards is conformity and bluff collegiality, which stifles dissent. I sort of miss Carol Chumney and John Vergos on the Memphis City Council and Walter Bailey on the Shelby County Commission. Bash public officials all you want, but at least they own up to their comments and do battle face to face.

Let's hear it for impolitic questions that make the powerful roll their eyes and gnash their teeth or grin and bear it. For years, a tall, plainspoken gentleman dressed in suspenders came to the FedEx annual stockholders meeting to voice his displeasure to Fred Smith. Sometimes the questions were off the wall, and once in a while they were pretty good. As a shareholder, he never got his way, but he always got his say. And I bet he went home happy.

And some prospered through thick and thin and thinner. A decade ago, White Station High School couldn't win a football game but was a basketball and academic powerhouse. New coaches and recruiting changed that, and this year White Station added a state football championship. So did MUS in the private sector, thanks to an infusion of black athletes at skill positions. Behold the emergence of the super schools.

And the super churches. Bellevue Baptist and Hope Presbyterian, among others, combine inner-city outreach with suburban megaplexes offering first-rate musicians performing on a concert stage, spiritual sustenance, motivation, a fitness center, outdoor team sports, adult education, and singles groups.

There's a big management job open at the Med, but filling it is not going to be easy. Anyone want to play captain on the Titanic?

In a commentary in The Commercial Appeal last week, Gene Holcomb, chairman of the board for the Med, said the hospital has no type of service that is profitable and only 10 to 13 percent of its patients are covered by commercial insurance. Without more financial support, he said, "The Med will eventually die a natural death."

A spokesman for the Med told the Flyer that the board of directors is seeking a permanent chief executive for a salary of $450,000 to $500,000 a year, starting in March. The Med, which receives an annual subsidy of around $32 million from Shelby County government, has outsourced its management to FTI Cambio since July 2007.

The executive search will be complicated by at least two factors. As Holcomb said, the hospital's future is uncertain, with its emergency room scheduled to close next year and its very survival at stake. The Med serves indigent patients from Arkansas and Mississippi as well as Tennessee but receives, at best, partial reimbursements from neighboring states.

The second problem is that executive salaries at both nonprofit and for-profit hospitals and hospital systems in this area far exceed the $450,000 to $500,000 that the Med hopes to pay.

It is not clear how much the Med paid to individual corporate officers under its two contracts with FTI Cambio, which included a bonus for cost savings. The IRS Form 990 for 2008 lists "outsourced management services" for $7,377,225 but no specific salaries for a chief executive, chief financial officer, or chief medical officer. Monica Wharton, legal counsel for the Med, said that information could not be obtained. In 2006, the year before FTI Cambio came aboard, the Med's CEO was paid $274,722.

In contrast, the price of executive talent tops $2 million a year at one local nonprofit hospital and $10 million a year at a for-profit system in Memphis, according to a Flyer survey of tax returns, proxy statements, and other public documents.

At nonprofit Baptist Memorial Health Care, according to the 2008 IRS Form 990, 11 executives earned more than $500,000 in total compensation. Baptist has a 32 percent share of the Memphis market. Chief executive Stephen Reynolds received $1,697,000; chief information officer Jerry Brantley received $2,294,000; and chief operating officer David Hogan got $2,392,000.

Nonprofit Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare has a 37 percent market share in Memphis. In 2008, chief executive Gary Shorb received $1,436,000; chief financial officer Christopher McLean received $744,700; and chief operating officer Peggy Troy got $665,000.

Baptist and Methodist compete for lucrative group accounts at corporations such as FedEx and local government entities such as the Memphis City Schools, entities with employees covered by insurance and able to pay their bills. They also battle over territorial rights in Olive Branch, Germantown, and other suburbs.

Bond analysts have noted that both hospital systems reported stronger-than-expected earnings and higher margins in 2009. Their tax-free status is justified by their mission of providing care for all in keeping with the tenets of their respective churches.

Indigent patients are a drag on earnings. If the Med fails, both Baptist and Methodist will get more indigent patients, says Arthur Sutherland, retired physician and founder of the Sutherland Cardiology Clinic.

"Nobody will escape this if the Med were to close," he said.

Here is the compensation for top executives at other hospital systems in the Memphis area:

• North Mississippi Health Services in Tupelo: John Heer, president, $774,000; Gerald Wages, treasurer, $695,000; Rodger Brown, vice president, $306,000.

• Baptist Health, a hospital network in Arkansas separate from Baptist Memorial Health Care: Russell Harrington Jr., CEO, $845,000; Allen Smith, senior VP, $460,000.

• Tenet Health Care, a private hospital network traded on the New York Stock Exchange, where compensation includes stock awards and options: Tenet has 14 percent of the Memphis market and operates St. Francis Hospital. According to Tenet's 2009 company proxy statement, the highest paid officers were: Trevor Fetter, CEO, $11,400,000; Biggs Porter, chief financial officer, $3,407,000; Stephen Newman, chief operating officer, $4,233,000.

• St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a world-famous nonprofit specializing in the treatment of childhood cancer: William Evans, CEO, $711,000; James Downing, VP and scientific director, $604,000; Michael Canarios, CFO, $375,000.

You can probably win a bar bet with this one: Who is the only Memphian to have authored a New York Times number-one best-seller?

Not John Grisham, who used Memphis as the setting for some of his early novels but never lived closer than Southaven. Not Elvis Presley, whose autobiography doubtless would have been a best-seller if he had gotten around to writing one. Not Kemmons Wilson, who made the cover of Time magazine as the founder of Holiday Inns. And not Shelby Foote, whose three-volume history of the Civil War should be in every serious home library.

The answer is Don Hutson, a motivational speaker, business consultant, and co-author with Ken Blanchard of The One Minute Entrepreneur. As the title suggests, this is no tome. At 130 pages, it would fit neatly into Foote's footnotes or your coat pocket. Each of the 14 chapters is followed by a page of "one minute insights" summarizing key points (sample: "Keep your priorities in order"). The co-authors co-authored it with Ethan Willis, who shares cover billing. The Times, it should be noted, lists best-sellers by categories, one of which is "Advice and How-To."

Still, a best-seller is a best-seller. The One Minute Entrepreneur, like Blanchard's 26-year-old The One Minute Manager, is a modern publishing phenomenon. Books promote seminars and speeches, which sell tapes and more books in bulk orders or at $19.95 per single copy, which builds the brand. Hutson's claim to fame is the culmination of 40 years of hard work in the super-competitive business of sales training. At 64, he makes 75 speeches a year and embraces web-based technologies, blogs, and social media to promote himself.

The book is written as a fictional parable about "Jud," who, like Hutson, graduates from the University of Memphis, becomes a speaker, and starts his own company. Hutson says it's mostly fictional, although there are some real people and some incidents are drawn from his or Blanchard's personal experience. Hutson's company, U.S. Learning, does training for several Fortune 500 companies.

The book, published in 2008, was five years in the making. Hutson pitched it to Blanchard as a book about mentors. Blanchard and his publishing committee, swamped with proposals, were lukewarm. Hutson's proposal went on the back burner. Willis suggested changing the focus to entrepreneurs instead of mentors. Bingo.

"It wasn't so much any negatives about mentoring as it was excitement about entrepreneurship right now, with a lot of people getting laid off and doing their own thing," Hutson says.

The store of American proverbial wisdom goes back at least 250 years to Benjamin Franklin ("Time is money") and Poor Richard's Almanac. Famous practitioners include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain (as prolific a speaker as he was an author), Will Rogers, and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking). Peale and Memphis homebuilder and positive thinker Wallace E. Johnson, author of Work Is My Play, inspired a "Believe in Memphis" civic campaign after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Hutson was browsing through 25-cent books at a yard sale when he came across one written nearly a century ago called The Miracle of Right Thought by someone he'd never heard of, Orison Marden. It changed his life. He has collected 41 more of Marden's books, calls him his literary mentor, and reads him aloud with his wife for daily sustenance.

The public's appetite for self-improvement and inspirational maxims appears to be insatiable. Every celebrity, famous athlete, fallen angel, wronged woman, and aging politician grinds out a book that enjoys a few weeks of display in the book stores and on the "new releases" shelves at the library. It is an easy transition from the sweetness of Hallmark cards to the cynicism of Stephen Colbert's "Word" segment. A new book called Confessions of a Public Speaker, by Scott Berkun, says the real secret is that audience expectations are low, so practice, be early, and don't worry.

Hutson would call a comedian's one-liners "takeaways" (as in the pearls that audience members take away from a long speech) and a contrarian book about public speaking "product differentiation." He is a proponent of both concepts.

But more than ever, in these hard economic times, he believes in mixing hope and advice with wit. Like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, today's audiences are longing for "a little good news." As for whether a speaker should use humor, Hutson invariably says "only if you want to get paid."

Hoping to beat the holiday rush, I did a little fantasy shopping this week. Not for me and mine, but for Memphis. It went something like this:

Good to see you out here, sir. What may I help you with?

I'm looking for game-changers.

Yes, game-changers. I think I know what you mean. We have several possibilities, but this could take a while. How much did you want to spend?

Millions, maybe more.

That's the spirit. You seem to be familiar with the vocabulary of sports. Let's start over there. Football or basketball?

Both.

Coaches or players?

Both. A college football coach who can win seven games a year, put 35,000 people a game in Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, and take the heat off R.C. Johnson and some of the load off Josh Pastner. And a pro basketball team that wins consistently and fills FedExForum like the Tigers and Josh Pastner do and gets people excited like Allen Iverson did.

Sorry, I'm a shopping consultant, not a miracle worker. You ever hear of one-to-a-customer? Or listen to Tommy West's rant? Or see those Iverson jerseys that were shipped this week to Tanzania? What else is on your list?

A game-changer for Shelby County.

That would be the new mayor, Joe Ford. You've heard about the Ford turnaround. This one comes with a lot of mileage and an unusual warranty. Instead of running for a long time, it promises to stop running for good after one year.

What accessories do you recommend?

Might I suggest relevance?

How about something for the new city mayor A C Wharton? He's so popular that he even got an invitation to the White House West Wing when he visited Washington last week. What do you get the man who has everything?

A Ford for a foil isn't enough? How about some help in the kitchen? Just make sure to remind him that he's the head cook.

Anything else?

How about a warmed-over consolidation recipe? We're running a special this year. Our research says it's very popular.

Your research wasn't listening when the County Commission chose a new mayor this month and half the members put their names in nomination for a job that will last eight months. What do you have that will provide lots of jobs?

Well, actually that would be two governments. More local government, not less, is the greatest jobs stimulus we have going. It makes it hard to sell our consolidation game-changer though.

I can see that. What do you have that's educational?

We can set you up with $90 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Sounds good. What's the catch?

Your schools have to be really bad, and you can't just use it to balance your checkbook. Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, says her district spends more money per child than anyone, and their results are at the bottom. So we're packaging this with accountability and political courage.

I'll take it. What's behind that wall over there?

You can't go in there. That's where we keep grand juries. Sort of like Bad Santa's elves, 23 of them and a federal prosecutor, busy all year making nasty indictments for people who've been naughty.

Anyone in particular?

Let's just say you don't want a target letter in with your Christmas cards. If the target is an ex-mayor, then you've got your game-changer. A few years ago they gave one to Rickey Peete and Ed Ford. Did it in December, too. Call them sentimental.

But couldn't the elves say "no" to the prosecutor?

That's very rare. The prosecutor only needs 12 votes, and the elves have been working for more than a year. A target letter usually means you'll get a "gift."

I'm not sure that's the kind of game-changer Memphis needs.

We know. And it's not returnable either. People who get one have been known to make quite a scene. That's why we say, "Be careful what you wish for."