99 Year Sentence

Hey, it worked for Chris Gaines

When hot new country act The Wilkinsons received a nomination last February for the TNN/Music City News Awards' male star of tomorrow, lots of people were stunned—none more so than lead singer Amanda Wilkinson, who is anything but male. It turned out that fans had slotted the two-thirds-male group into that category because no star-of-tomorrow award exists for groups. When notified, Amanda Wilkinson asked, "Does it mean I'll have to grow a goatee?"

A decaf latté, please

Seriously, we writers at the Scene are not a pretentious bunch. We listen to Ol' Dirty Bastard, eat at Manny's House of Pizza, wear old jeans, and drive pick-up trucks. But we could hardly blame you if you thought otherwise after we published our embarrassingly self-congratulatory 10th-anniversary issue this past June. We've since discovered that it's medically impossible to recall that back-slapping edition without wincing painfully. The same goes for a lot of the paper's editorials. Over the past 18 months or so, Bruce Dobie, our otherwise sensible editor, endorsed Don Sundquist, gushed giddily over the pro-gun, anti-gay John McCain, and in an editorial in support of—you guessed it—Christmas shopping, went to bat for crass materialism. Next year, he'll probably come out in favor of Brentwood.

That's $40 more than he pays his writers

Scene editor Bruce Dobie made headlines in The Tennessean last March after he offered file clerk Albert Davis $50 to remove or copy some old files in the paper's private archives. Outraged, the morning daily called the cops on a red-faced but unrepentant Dobie, who, in a travesty of justice, is still a free man. "I don't know whether what Mr. Dobie did was against the law," huffed Tennessean editor Frank Sutherland, "but it was certainly wrong by any moral or business standard."

Give 'em a hand

While remodeling the upper floors of the Metro Courthouse last January, construction workers made an unexpected discovery: a jar containing an ancient pair of severed hands. The unidentified jar, which dated back as far as 1966, was found near a box addressed to FBI headquarters labeled, "Human Hands—Do Not Tip Over." The hands were sent off for identification, but not before a workman on the scene described the mummified mitts as looking "like beef jerky."

Now if we can just get Jim Ridley to shut up about the damn Belcourt

Despite a massive outpouring of community protest, the historic West End apartment building The Jacksonian fell to the wrecking ball at the first of the year. By year's end, it had been replaced by yet another crappy Walgreen's, the kudzu of pharmacies. The Scene got credit for fighting the good fight with its controversial "Save Jack" campaign—but several letters to the editor noted that the paper's efforts seemed to slacken about the time readers called upon the Scene's owners to buy it themselves.

That's what all those wine columns'll do to you

First, Tennessean editor Frank Sutherland helps write Gannett's ethics policy and then, in the kind of foolish arrogance you see only in corporate journalism, proudly splashes it across his paper's front page. But apparently Sutherland did not read his own copy. This past August, In Review's Henry Walker caught old Frank appearing in a campaign video for Al Gore in which the editor spoke warmly of the VP's days at The Tennessean. Sutherland's embarrassing blunder caught the attention of national media outlets including CNN, Brill's Content, and Columbia Journalism Review—along with, for that matter, everyone else with an eye for such a delicious instance of outright hypocrisy.

Chain of fools

Beech High School baseball coach John Decker Jr. was sent to the showers last March after making a comment that was deemed racially offensive to a student. In a show of remarkably poor taste, Decker held out a chain and asked senior Carlos Jarrett if he wanted to go for a ride—an apparent reference to James Byrd, the black man killed in Jasper, Texas, after being dragged behind a pickup. Jarrett, who is black, didn't laugh.

CMA—Country, My Ass

The Country Music Association shot itself in the foot with a bazooka when it refused to allow country legend George Jones to sing his award-nominated single "Choices" in its entirety on the CMA awards show—this even after Jones' serious injury in a car wreck that almost ended his life. The insult not only made the CMA a laughingstock synonymous with the most short-sighted aspects of the business, it provoked massive and widespread disgust within the industry itself—symbolized by Alan Jackson's defiant rendition of a portion of "Choices" during his own CMA set.

This is no longer your father's Oldsmobile

Boyd Kelly, a 39-year-old Columbia resident, was charged last March with carrying a weapon with the purpose of going armed. According to stupefied onlookers, Kelly got miffed when his 1988 Oldsmobile conked out on him—so he produced an AK-47 assault rifle and pumped the offending vehicle full of lead.

Does Martha Stewart have a recipe for possum flambé?