All right, this is going to be my attempt to turn a recap of a totally boring night into an interesting post.
All week long at work I’ve been converting code to C#, which is the programming language my company uses. Good language but it tends to go a little crazy with parentheses, brackets, and semicolons. By Friday I was thinking in those terms even when I wasn’t working. So my Friday night plans looked like this:
WalkToBar(Saucer);
if (Saucer.FireSale.Sucks == true)
{
ChangeOfVenue(McGuinness);
}
if (McGuinness.Crowd.HotBabes.Count == 0)
{
ChangeOfVenue(HoopsBar);
}
while (HoopsBar.Inventory.PBRcans > 0)
{
DrinkPBRcan;
}
foreach (bar in DowntownMemphis.bars)
{
foreach (server in bar.Servers)
{
if ((sever.Gender == “F”) && (server.Nationality == “Romanian”))
{
PaulsFavoriteBar = bar;
}
}
}
Downtown was DEAD last night. Started at the Saucer, because I had a $5 gift certificate to spend. Attn UFO Club members: You know those “Important Beer Goddess Video” e-mails they send every week, that most of us usually send straight to the trash can? Well, they’ve started putting links to beer quizzes at the end of some of the videos. Score 7 out of 10 on the quiz and you get a gift certificate, good for one day only, to print out. The beer quizzes are kind of hard, but think about it… you’re taking it on the Internet anyway, so you can pop open a new browser window and use Wikipedia to cheat. So I had two Fire Sales, and minus the gift certificate, my tab was 50 cents. Cheapest tab ever at the Saucer.
Wandered around Downtown for a while and landed at Hoop’s Bar, where I discovered a new item on the menu:
At the bottom of the menu, there it was, the newest drink at Hoop’s Bar – the PBRtini. This drink, of course, consists of PBR poured into a martini glass. Someone asked how much it was. Hooper thought for a minute and said, “$8.50.” Of course, he was joking. If it were on the menu at Swig, they probably WOULD charge $8.50.
Hoop was kind enough to leave the plastic ring can-holder on one of the PBR cans he sold me. I decided to walk through the door to EP’s and wander around their classy restaurant carrying a PBR with the plastic rings on it for a few minutes. I’m sure they loved that.
Also while at Hoop’s, I discovered that Gone Fishing is one of the games on their video crack machine. It’s this stupid game where salmon jump out of a hole in a frozen pond, and a polar bear hits them with a bat, trying to knock them as far down the icy pond as possible. If you hit them at the right angle, the fish bounce and you get extra yardage. The Tap Room had this game on their video crack machine a few years ago and I spent hours and hours in there playing. I pumped a 5 in the Hoop’s Bar machine and started whacking fish until I had “PROF PAUL” on 4 of the 10 high scores. Then I left the remainder of the credits for someone else to play. With that machine in there, I may as well re-route my paycheck to direct deposit into Hoop’s Bar’s corporate account.
Walked out EP’s front door a little after midnight, and walked up Beale to Main and up Main to Peabody Place. There I ran into one of Downtown’s most visible panhandlers, notorious for charging people to park on lots where he doesn’t work and also at metered spaces. Usually he makes a snide comment and then leaves me alone. But this time he came right up to me and started cussing me out. “I got fired from my job at the parking lot because of an e-mail you sent!” he said, or that’s what was left with all the profanity removed.
Now, he didn’t actually have a job. People with “jobs” have ID badges, and fill out W-4 forms, and if they’re parking lot attendants they have uniforms. What really happened was, a couple of the parking lot attendants at a lot at Main and Beale got lazy and allowed the bums on the lot to “help” sometimes. This caused a big problem as the bums felt empowered to come back to the lot when it was unattended and go into business for themselves, as well as charge for parking at the metered spaces on the streets near the lot. People should be able to come Downtown and park and enjoy themselves without having to deal with these morons.
So, Wednesday night I caught this particular panhandler on the lot while there was an attendant there, taking money from people apparently with the attendant’s permission. So I wrote up a post to the Handling-Panhandling forum calling out the lot’s owner by name, linking to the names and pictures of the three worst panhandlers who “work” this lot and requesting that something be done. And something was done. Heh. Thanks to a few friends who helped round up info on these idiots to turn over to the lot’s owner.
One thing we’re working to do on Handling-Panhandling is get the owners of all the parking lots near Beale Street to swear out authorizations of agency against known individuals who run parking scams. With those in place, the cops would be empowered to arrest those guys anytime they are seen on the parking lots – and it would not be a slap-on-the-wrist panhandling citation, but rather a criminal trespass charge that would earn them a free ride to 201.
Let me make one other thing clear – the panhandler who we got “fired” from his parking lot “job” is not homeless. He told us he has a home, and even a computer (he’s tried to join the panhandling forum). He has neat, laundered clothes on every day. He’s able-bodied and fairly intelligent. He’s a slick talker and has a good grasp of persuasion and psychology. There’s no reason why he couldn’t go get a job – a REAL one – except that he sees more economic opportunity in panhandling. I’m tempted to get him one of the open inside sales positions at my company, except I know what it pays per week and it’s probably less than he makes as a bum, especially when you consider that his “earnings” are tax-free.
So anyway, after that unpleasant encounter, I stopped by McGuinness for a beer, but it was positively DEAD, so I gave up for the evening and wandered home.
Plans for today: No idea. The gang is heading to McGuinness at noon to watch the Tiger game but I’m not sure if I’ll make it. Will be at McGuinness for brunch at 11 tomorrow though.
