Month: July 2007

I posted about this earlier in the week. Dogfish Head beer tasting at 8 PM Wednesday, July 18 – 5 beers paired with 5 food courses for $25. Although, we’re not sure about the pork tenderloin course – sounds like it will be marinated in Raison d’Etre, but we’re not sure if Raison will also be served with the course. We asked management and they weren’t sure either. Anyway, here’s the info – tickets on sale at the Saucer, and are limited, so buy them in advance before the tasting sells out.

There were two versions of the menu going around – the managers told me that this is the correct version.

The Memphis Business Journal reports that Chick-Fil-A will be giving away free breakfast, lunch and dinner combos at all its restaurants, including the 12 in the Memphis area, on Friday. However, there’s a catch… in order to get the free food, you have to show up at the restaurant fully dressed as a cow. So if you have a spare cow suit lying around, put it on and get some free food this Friday.

And that’s the ONLY thing I have to report today. Geez. What’s happening to this blog?

Thanks to the many people who sent responses to my question yesterday about posting to a wiki (or wiki-like interface on a website) via text message. Sifting through them now.

I have a question, if anyone can help…

A friend of mine came up with a great idea a couple of weeks ago. He wants to take a piece of information that is useful to Downtown Memphians (at least the ones I hang out with), which changes on a daily basis, and allow people to post that piece of information on a website. His idea is that the first person who finds out what this information is for the day would get on the site and post it… so, it would be like a wiki, in that anyone would be able to update the site.

However, I pointed out that most people don’t have computers in front of them when they gain access to this particular piece of information (although a few do). For it to really work, I told him, people would need to be able to send this piece of information as a text message from their cell phones, with some process in place on the back end to update the site to display the most recent message to arrive. I doubt the message would ever be more than 50 characters in length.

So, my question is, is there something out there I can use to set this up? I checked out Twitter, which can display info on the Web via text-message, but you have to register for an account and associate one phone number with it. That won’t work – the message needs to be able to be posted from ANY phone, not just a particular one.

So, anyone know of a service that combines text messaging with the capabilities of a wiki?

A few quick items this morning:

– Yesterday I was walking past Circa and noticed that the sign on their window says that Wi-Fi is available. Cool! As a professional laptopper, I appreciate it when restaurants offer free Wi-Fi – means I can work while I eat lunch. Circa, by the way, is now open for lunch as well as dinner. I hope to get by there this week and give it a try.

– Last night I ran into one of the bartenders from EP Delta Kitchen, and he tells me that they’re doing an ’80s night on Tuesday. Fun!

– The Flying Saucer is holding a Dogfish Head beer tasting Wednesday the 18th. They’ll have a guy in from the brewery, pairing different beers with a 5-course meal. One of the beers is Midas Touch, which has an interesting story behind it… archaeologists excavated an ancient tomb, believed to be of King Midas, and found remnants of a fermented beer-like beverage. They went to the lab and figured out the ingredients and how it must have been made… and they used that process to develop a new beer. So, you can drink the way they drank 2700 years ago.

Tickets are $25 and can be purchased in advance, or you can buy a Dinstuhl’s candy bar at the Saucer for $10, and if it contains a golden ticket you get to attend the tasting for free… all proceeds from the event go to charity, the Madonna Learning Center I think. This really doesn’t sound like a bad deal, $25 for a five-course meal and tastings of five beers. My initial reaction to this event was “hell no” but now I’m actually thinking I might attend.

– This just in from the STAX Museum: Bid on the car Shane Battier drove while he was in Memphis on eBay – a custom 1981 Lincoln Mark VI with a $5,000 Pioneer sound system, 10″ Kenwood Exelon sub-woofers, leopard-print interior and Shane’s autograph and number stitched into the headrests. Auction ends July 14 at 06:00:00 PDT, which would be 8 AM Saturday Central time. There’s a 12-picture slideshow of the car on the eBay auction. All proceeds from the sale of the car benefit after-school music programs and performance opportunities offered at the STAX Academy.

A word about eBay auctions… if you really want this car, go ahead and bid now, BUT… also set your alarm clock for Saturday morning. If you get outbid, you can submit a higher bid at 7:59 AM, one minute before the auction ends. An e-mail will notify the former high bidder that they’ve been outbid… but, by the time they’re able to respond, the auction will be over. This is likely a case where the early bird will get the worm… or in this case, the car, Saturday morning.

– Outta here for now… tonight promises to be an interesting evening, for reasons I won’t go into just yet, and there may be pictures.

Last night I met one of my regular blog readers as I was walking down South Main, and he told me a very interesting rumor: Raiford is planning on having one last big party, to say good-bye. The party would NOT be held at his old building, but at another location downtown.

I’ve been given a date and location, but I’d like to get it confirmed before I post it to a blog that several hundred people read. Also, will the event be open to the public? If not, can an invitation for a certain downtown blogger be arranged?

More details to come after I get confirmation on this.

– Next weekend is your chance to become an expert at dancing to the blues in only two short days. Local dance group NewVoBlues is holding EvoBluesion, a two-day dance workshop, July 14 and 15. In those two days you’ll get to attend 7 classes held by Candace and Reuel, two award-winning dance instructors. You’ll also get to go out dancing with the group at clubs on Beale Street, at the Blue Worm, and wherever else they find. It’s a real bargain at only $60 for the whole weekend, $55 for NewVoBlues members.

– If you live Downtown and own a pet, be sure to check out this article in today’s CA about the new branch office of the Berclair Animal Hospital to open at 668 S. Main. Says they’ll have a play area, as well as an area in the back for exotic animals like birds and reptiles.

– Tube Top Month officially ended several days ago, but the wearing of tube tops through the rest of the season is still encouraged (in a warm climate like Memphis, it’s tube top season ’til mid-October). Here’s an article from the Toronto Star that shows you how to convert a pillowcase into a tube top. Now you have no excuse not to have a tube top – everyone has a spare pillowcase lying around.

– I don’t talk to her much anymore, but I still have former Flying Saucer/Blues City waitress The Romanian Sensation on my Yahoo Messenger contact list. Noticed this morning she had changed her profile pic to one of her in a cap and gown. So it looks like she graduated and got her M.D. I guess I’ll have to refer to her as Dr. Romanian Sensation in the future. And fellow blogger Ptolemy Kat will have to start referring to her as “Dr. Shorty.” Sincere congratulations to the Sensation, if she still reads this blog – becoming a doctor at age 24 is quite an accomplishment.

– Speaking of Ptolemy Kat, she posted a really cool photo album last Monday. The photo descriptions are set up to look like title cards from old silent movies. She used Slide.com to create it.

– Speaking of silent movies… a few months ago I posted that I found some old Our Gang/Little Rascals episodes online. They were so good that I ordered an 11-DVD set of 55 of the best Rascals episodes, and the set contains some silents, made in the 1922-1929 period before the studio was converted for talkies. I’ve only watched a couple of the silents but they seem to be as good as the ones with sound.

The DVDs are also an interesting sociology lesson. I had heard that some of the episodes had been heavily censored when they appeared on TV, and in a few cases outright banned, due to racial dialogue which was acceptable in the ’20s and ’30s but was not by the time of TV syndication in the ’70s and ’80s. The DVDs contain the full, uncensored episodes, and really, the dialogue isn’t that bad. The worst I’ve seen so far is Stymie referring to his dad as “a crap-shootin’ fool,” Farina licking his lips at the thought of eating watermelon, and Buckwheat walking into a dark room where you could only see the whites of his eyes. True, I wouldn’t want to see that kind of stuff in a TV show made in 2007, but can’t the episodes be viewed in the light of “this is how things were 75 years ago and thank goodness they’re not that way now”? It makes me mad that TV censors cut out a lot of the best work of the African-American kids, who were three of the most talented actors in the entire series. Then again, I’ve only viewed about a third of the DVDs, maybe there’s worse stuff I haven’t seen yet.

Trouble is, I don’t own a DVD player, which means I have to watch DVDs on my laptop. Which means I can’t watch the DVDs while I work. I need to get with my friend Dr.TV and get his advice on buying a DVD player. You’ll be hearing more about Dr.TV in the weeks to come… look for a new website with his name on it to roll out by month’s end.

– Otto had a great post on Thursday which is worth a bookmark: All the current Amazon.com deals, by product category and % off. So, for example, you can get a list of all books which are 90% or more off. It’s a virtual bargain bin!

– Hungry. Think I’ll mosey over to Blue Plate Cafe and get some meat loaf. Not sure what the rest of the day holds… meeting some friends on my rooftop, but that’s not until 3 AM. I’ll probably spend some time at either Earnestine & Hazel’s or EP’s at some point tonight.

In this print edition of this week’s Memphis Business Journal, there’s an article about plans for the space formerly occupied by Prince Mongo’s Planet, a nightclub of the 1990s where 14-year-olds could go to get a beer and mingle with belligerent Navy recruits. A developer has a contract on the building and plans to renovate the building (56-60-62 South Front) into an upscale boutique hotel with 34 rooms. It will be called the Grade Hotel.

Furthermore, there will be meeting rooms, a restaurant, a coffee shop and a BOOKSTORE(!!!!) on the ground floor. The developer is hoping to attract students from the U of M law school, which will be moving downtown in 2009, as well as students from nearby medical, dental, and optometry schools, to the coffee shop. He hopes to have clean-up crews in the building by September. The hotel’s grand opening could happen as little as 18 months from then, with the ground-floor businesses open sooner.

Great news for Downtown! Unless you’re a freshman in high school and were hoping Mongo’s would reopen so you’d have a place to drink.

For months I’ve been carrying around a big, bulky wallet – nicknamed the “Costanza wallet” in honor of George’s wallet on Seinfeld. I’ve been considering options for a slimmer, lighter replacement. Well, today I finally found one at Shelton Clothiers.

Bought a brown leather Brighton billfold which seems to weigh about a quarter of what the old wallet weighed. It has enough pockets to hold my cards – especially after I cleaned out my old wallet and found a bunch of junk that didn’t need to be in there, like a Chili’s gift card I received as a Christmas present in 2001. There’s a money clip in the middle. It’s so thin I can’t even tell it’s in my back pocket right now.

Still at the Second Street branch office. The waitresses are walking around. I love it when they do that. Will probably be here until about 5.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend at Cafe Francisco in the Pinch, and as I walked up there I noticed a new street sign at the corner of Main and North Parkway:

North Parkway is no longer called North Parkway. It’s now known as Shadyac Avenue. Not sure what the reason was for the rename – never heard of a famous Mr. Shadyac or Mrs. Shadyac in Memphis. (Edited to add: Several readers have informed me that the street is named after Richard Shadyac, CEO of ALSAC until 2005 and a very successful fund-raiser for St. Jude.)

I do know that they have been planning a re-alignment of the streets in that area due to the St. Jude expansion. I remember reading that North Parkway (now Shadyac) would be closed from Third to Danny Thomas, and North Parkway east of Danny Thomas would be re-routed to flow into what is now Auction.

I assume that the street is still called North Parkway east of Danny Thomas. If anyone has details on this change let me know. The new name has not shown up on any of the major mapping sites yet, so it must have happened fairly recently.