My trivia team The Rapscallions suffered another narrow loss at the Saucer last night. If we had known that Charlie Brown’s father was a barber, we would have finished in the money. It kills me that I missed that – when I was a kid I collected Peanuts comic books and must have had close to 100 of them by the late ’70s.
Met a very cool tour group last night – a group of about 25 people from 18-35 traveling across America. They started in Los Angeles, then went to Amarillo and visited the restaurant where you get a 72 oz. steak for free if you can eat it in one hour, then they went to Dallas to see a rodeo. They had been to Graceland yesterday and were chilling out at the Saucer, before leaving for N’awlins in the morning. They’ll wrap it up in New York on September 11. They were all partiers and most of them were international – quite a few Australian girls who were really hot, as well as some Japanese, a Swede and a couple of Americans. That sounds like a really fun tour. They told me the name of the company that runs it – Conaxis or Connexis or something like that. If anyone has the exact spelling or more info let me know. They got to choose between a Northern tour (which would have covered Yellowstone Park and stuff like that) or the Southern tour, which was the L.A. – Dallas – Memphis route.
We asked the Australians if it was hard to get enough time off work to go on the tour. They said, “Well, we get four weeks vacation a year. I mean, you don’t get it right after you start a job, but after you’ve been there a year or two, four weeks.” At the last company I worked as a full-time permanent employee, you had to be there FIFTEEN YEARS to get four weeks vacation. Corporate America sucks.
Later I was hanging out at the Tap Room with my buddies Chris and IQ. Maurice was bartending, which meant there was excellent TV on – “Family Guy” specifically. As the ending credits rolled, I noticed that the theme song was composed by Walter Murphy. Is that the same Walter Murphy who composed “A Fifth of Beethoven” from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack? That was one of my favorite disco songs of all time – I remember really tearing it up on the dance floor when Jive played it on Sunday nights at Six-1-Six back in the ’90s. I never get to dance to it anymore though – Raiford has never had it on his playlist.
It was good seeing The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet II last night at the Tap Room. The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet II had a tube top on.
Tonight the Sal Crocker Quintet will provide an evening of jazz at Court Square from 6 to 8 pm. I’ll probably catch the first 30 minutes or an hour, then go to the Saucer to see my waitresses. Tomorrow night is the last Peabody rooftop party, with entertainment by Rusty Lemon. I’ll be there from about 7:30 to 9:00, then head over to the Saucer to catch The Dempseys.
The Southern Folklore Fest, presented by the Center for Southern Folklore, will be held Saturday and Sunday on the Main Street Mall and inside the Center itself. Click the link and scroll down for a list of which bands will be on which stages at which times. I won’t be there Saturday afternoon because I promised a Romanian I’d take her to the mall, but I should be there for the rest of it. This is one of the few events that is allowed to interrupt my Sunday drinking schedule.
Also, if you like to see live bands, DingoFest on Beale Street this weekend might be worth checking out.
Item currently on my wish list: A DVD set of the week John Lennon and Yoko Ono hosted the Mike Douglas Show, June 14-18, 1972. They booked radical guests like activist Jerry Rubin, Black Panther Bobby Seale, and comedian George Carlin. John and Yoko also sang three songs on each show, including a performance of “Imagine” and a jam with Chuck Berry, one of John’s major influences. Amazon has it for $229 if anyone wants to buy me a Christmas gift. Actually, my birthday is November 18, so why wait for Christmas?
All right. Enough electronic panhandling. Time to publish this post, eat lunch, and get back to the cubicle.