Blues Ball guests watch couple "doing it" in hotel room in full view

I didn’t attend Saturday night’s Blues Ball at the Gibson Lounge, but one of the other local bloggers did. She reports that at one point, about 200 people were all crowded on one side of the Gibson’s roof, staring at the Westin. Why, you ask? Well, because there was a couple having sex in one of the rooms, curtains open, lights on. She writes, “It went on for like 10-15 minutes, EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the roof watching. Then the dude looks up (with chick’s ankles around his neck at this point), and his face was PRICELESS. Everybody on the roof started cheering & he dropped down to the floor & you saw blankets flying. Few minutes later the chick peeked her head up & then the lights went out.”

Blues Ball tickets are massively expensive, but it sounds like attendees got a little something extra for their money.

Come one, SOMEONE on that rooftop had to have a camera that can record video. Someone needs to do an upload to YouTube and send their good friend Paul a link. Unless the chick was ugly, in which case, don’t.

How to make Chinese people laugh at you

Go to a Chinese restaurant and order Egg Foo Young.

A lot of Sunday nights I tend to hang out at the Flying Saucer until about 9:15 in the evening. Then I tab out and hurry to Wang’s so I can order drunk to-go food before Wang’s closes at 9:30.

Well, last night I decided I was in the mood for egg foo young. Which is odd because I HATED eggs growing up – I absolutely refused to eat them. But recently, I’ve developed a taste for them when in omelets, frittatas and similar dishes. So I went to Wang’s and ordered shrimp egg foo young.

And immediately, all the servers and the bartender cracked up laughing.

Apparently egg foo young isn’t a REAL Chinese dish. I kind of knew this already… the “fake” Chinese dishes, including egg foo young, chow mein, and chop suey, are relegated to a tiny corner of the menu. It appears that it’s a sign that when someone orders one of these, that they don’t appreciate “real” Chinese food.

So I let the staff have a laugh at my expense. Really, I didn’t mind. Usually I order from the regular part of the menu, with the Garlic Chicken/Shrimp and the Sha Cha Chicken/Shrimp among my favorites. (My favorite blogger/MILF likes the Sha Cha Chicken too. If we ever meet in person I have no doubt we’ll get along very well, as long as we don’t discuss pro football.) It just so happened that last night, I was hungry for Egg Foo Young.

The great thing about Wang’s is that you always get enough food for two meals, so I have leftovers in the fridge. Not sure how good leftover Egg Foo Young is going to be, though.

More posts still to come.

Get your butts out of here

Earlier this morning I posted about the State of Tennessee’s new smoking ban, which covers most restaurants and bars. I believe that making smoking indoors illegal will cause an increase in another type of crime: littering.

I’m typing this post from the Second Street branch office, aka The Flying Saucer. I live approximately a quarter mile away from the Saucer. On the way down here, I counted the number of cigarette butts that people had carelessly tossed on the sidewalks.

Any guesses as to how many I counted, on my approximately four-block walk?

By the way, I counted only the cig butts within approximately the six feet of my line of sight, not all of the butts on the sidewalks of both sides of the streets. So, really, the number I came up with only reflects a portion of the true number of cigarette butts along my route.

Any guesses?

My route, if it matters, was down Main Street from my apartment building near Madison, south to Union, left on Union, down Union to Second, right on Second, south on Second to the Saucer.

Any final guesses?

OK, I’ll tell you.

445.

FOUR HUNDRED FORTY FIVE. There were so many of them I lost count several times and had to double back and check my count. I looked like legendary Downtown homeless person Scratchy, staring down at the sidewalk and mumbling to myself.

It made me realize something. The main reason I hate smoking is not that it’s a nasty habit. It’s not that it’s an unhealthy habit.

It’s that it’s an OBNOXIOUS habit.

Smokers – not all, but many, probably it would be safe to say, most – treat the world as their ashtray. They’ll finish a cigarette in their car and toss it out the window. They’ll take a smoke break at work and toss the butt on the sidewalk. They’ll have a smoke on their balcony and then toss it over the side.

And that’s just one of the ways in which smoking is obnoxious. Another, obviously, is that smokers expect the rest of the world to be okay with the cancer-causing chemicals they release as they indulge their habit. They expect the people behind them at Walgreens or Circle K to wait and wait and wait as the cashier looks for the EXACT kind of cigs they want – menthol, lights, 100s, soft pack. No, wait, I mean, hard pack. No, the extra talls. Do you have any lighters with that? Oh, you don’t? Do you sell matches? Nonsmoker who hangs out with a group of smokers? Congratulations, you’ll get to play the role of the asshole holding an entire row of empty seats for seemingly nobody, because all your friends have gone outside to smoke (unless you’re like me and have publicly stated that you won’t do it).

You know, thinking about it, farting in public makes more sense as a socially acceptable behavior than smoking in public does. But there isn’t a billion-dollar industry buying every conceivable type of ad to convince you how cool farting is.

Anyway, getting back to the issue of all the cigarette butts on the streets: I’d like to see the nonsmoking law supplemented with a new, tougher littering law: $1,000 for first offense of failure to dispose of cigarette butts in a proper receptacle, jail time for second and subsequent offenses. I’d also like to suggest a $250 “Crime Stoppers” reward for anyone who captures a smoker littering via video camera or cell phone video, where the video leads to a successful conviction.

I’m making a lot of friends today huh?

If you don’t believe me about the number of cigarette butts I counted: Take a walk this evening and see for yourself. ESPECIALLY Downtown. I’m serious, I did NOT make that number up, although I admit it may be off by a dozen or so, high or low, because I kept losing count.

More posts to come this afternoon.

Daily News story: Cafe Francisco closes

I mentioned that I heard a rumor this weekend that Cafe Francisco in the Pinch District had closed its doors for good. My contact at the Memphis Daily News was kind enough to send my a link to a story his paper did on Francisco’s closing last Wednesday. Owner Julie Ray notes that the neighborhood has been in a holding pattern for years – it’s impossible to get anything moving until the city figures out what to do with the Pyramid. This, of course, can be blamed on King Willie, who has been in negotiations with Bass Pro Shops for three years, and who has refused to hear proposals on alternative uses for the arena. One more reason why this city would be better off without Willie as mayor.

Got lots more to blog about today – or tomorrow, if I don’t have time to get to it all. Topics include

  • Cheap beer, 2-for-1 appetizers, and Mikey the Monk
  • How to make Chinese people laugh at you
  • Burgers for bums
  • Why the new anti-smoking law will cause another type of crime to rise

Most likely I’ll be working from the Second Street branch office this afternoon, and hope to have time to get some or all of these posts in.

Don’t forget about Monday Night Football at EP Delta Kitchen tonight – free chili dogs, free hot wings, free fried mushrooms, beer specials, biggest HDTV in Memphis.

Smokers: Welcome to MY world

Welcome to the first day of October, which for Tennesseans is the first day of the smoking ban in almost all public businesses. This includes all restaurants and bars, except for those which have decided to exclude everyone under 21 (this means employees as well as patrons).

When the bill was in the legislature, I wasn’t sure I was totally in favor of it, since 80% of my friends smoke. But, as a nonsmoker, now that I’ve hung out in a few places that have broken the new law in over the past few months, I’m completely, totally in support of it. Being able to breathe clean, fresh air without having to cough every 15 seconds or so has been WONDERFUL. Nonsmokers like me have been forced to accommodate people’s nicotine addictions for years and years; now smokers get to go out of their way to accommodate us.

Of course, this law will have negative implications for nonsmokers as well: If you’re a nonsmoker at a bar, you’re the one who will be asked to hold everyone’s seats while the 15 people seated around you go outside to smoke.

To this end, I want to inform everyone that I am adopting the following rules, starting today, when I’m out at a bar or restaurant and smokers ask me to hold their seats:

1) I will only hold the seats to my immediately left and right. Seats farther away than that are fair game.

2) If hot babes come up and ask if the seats to my immediate left and right are taken, those seats are fair game too.

3) I will hold the seats to my left and right for a maximum of five minutes.

Smokers, welcome to your new smoking section: Outside. Normally I’m not a fan of cold weather, but I’m hoping for the coldest winter on record this year, so that smokers can chill out while they indulge in their filthy, nasty, disgusting habit.