Month: August 2008

TIME Magazine recently did an online article about the 13 worst vice presidents in US History.  I clicked through them in historical order from the beginning (so first on the list was Aaron Burr), and I knew things were about to get good when I made it to Spiro Agnew (Nixon’s veep) and was only on number 11.

“Well, one of the remaining two has to be Dan Quayle,” I thought.  “But who’s number 13?”  I definitely had someone in mind.

TIME was thinking of the same person.  Number 13 on the list… our very own Darth Cheney.

Here’s a link to a Wikipedia page on the political positions of Joe Biden.

(Edit: I’ve decided to make it “$2 or less” – $2.00 maximum – instead of “under $2” – $1.99 maximum – to get more bars, restaurants and clubs on the list.)

While at Calhoun’s last night, I got an idea for a new project: A list of bars that carry one or more beers for $2 or less, every day. Meaning, not a happy hour special, or a particular day of the week special, or only for certain bar patrons (like ladies’ night). No more than (edit: $2.00), every day, available to every person in the bar of legal drinking age all hours that the bar is open.

Calhoun’s $1.50 PBR inspired this idea. What are others? I’m interested in not only Downtown Memphis bars, and even not only Memphis bars. Memphians will travel for cheap beer.

If you know of anyplace in the US that qualifies, e-mail me and tell me the name of the bar, the beer(s) they sell, and the price. If you have an address or URL that’ll help too. Send ’em to paul@paulryburn.com. More details to come soon.

Yesterday I took a walk and noticed that the parking lot next to 88 Sports Bar (88 N. Main) had been fenced off. GOOD! That lot was a haven for bums to hang out. They’d go buy beer at Jack’s and sit in the parking lot and drink. One less place for them to go. Maybe they’ll move on. Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve thought about giving 88 Sports Bar a try (haven’t been in there yet), but decided against it both times when I saw 5 to 8 bums congregated outside the front door.

Worse news for Barack Obama… the RealClearPolitics “no toss up states” electoral map shows him trailing John McCain for the first time, 274 electoral votes to 264. Latest polls flipped Indiana red, giving McCain the edge, although several states are still within the margin of error. He better hurry up and announce his VP.

The reigning Miss America will serve as honorary duckmaster this Saturday at the Peabody. She’ll march the ducks from 4:45 to 5 PM. If you plan on going, I recommend getting there at least a half hour early to stake out a place to sit or stand with a good view.

The Center for Southern Folklore has a new website, and it’s a ten million percent improvement over the old site. Check it out. Information about upcoming shows at the Center, and about the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival at the end of this month. If you’re a fan of real Memphis and regional music, you’ll want to bookmark their site and check their calendar frequently.

Divine Rags is planning a 5K Unity Run on the streets of Downtown Memphis on Saturday, September 27. There is a $25 entry fee to cover the costs of police blocking off the streets, but listen to this – winner gets a $1,000 store credit. Nice! Go by the store (Main at Pontotoc) if you want to sign up.

Yesterday I got MPACT Memphis’ e-mail summarizing what’s going on in the next month, and their calendar is loaded with good events: A 5K run/walk in Soulsville (tonight); a field trip to the Brooks’ “after hours” party (September 4); lunch bunch gatherings at the Flying Fish (9/5) and Swanky’s Taco Shop (9/9); happy hour at LoLo’s Table (9/9); a forum on crime featuring Larry Godwin and other speakers (9/10); a field trip to get a look at the operations of Hands on Memphis (9/17); a dinner club at Sweet Bistro and Desserterie (9/18); and an “Mpact 101” orientation session at Calhoun’s (9/22). If you’re a young professional looking to get more involved in the community or find people like you to socialize with, check them out at mpactmemphis.org.

Speaking of Calhoun’s, I was in there last night for the first time in a couple of weeks.  Had a good time playing the video crack machine (stupid money-eating trivia games) and watching the Olympics and drinking $1.50 PBR.  Tonight I have a plate party at the Saucer and a bon voyage party at Raiford’s to attend in the early evening.  Not sure what I’ll get into after that.

I feel a rant coming on about the bum situation around 88 Sports Bar.  Maybe I’ll type it up at lunch, or tomorrow if other things occupy me today.

(Edit: Dammit, I thought I posted this last night, but forgot to hit Publish.  Sorry.)

Welcome to the latest edition of “Reading the Flyer so you don’t have to,” where I go through this week’s issue of the Memphis Flyer and mention events of note to Downtown Memphians.

– p. 14: Glad to see Calhoun’s Sports Bar advertising in the Flyer. Their ad mentions that they have free bar snacks every day, 2 for 1 domestic bottles during happy hour, and $1.50 PBR every day.

– p.15: The Memphis Zoo is having a Zoo Brew fundraiser Friday, August 29. 30 beers to taste, appetizers from Cindy Krag catering, exhibit/sale by pottery artist Hayden Hall. $15 for non-members, a mere 30% of the non-member cost of the overpriced fundraiser at the Dixon the following Friday. Too bad the Memphis Zoo fundraiser is on a Friday, when Big Foot Lodge bartender Meghan works; otherwise, she could stop by and visit her relatives.

– p.16: East BumbleFest as I call it, AKA the fair for Cordovans and Germantowners who are too scared to go to the Mid-South Fair, AKA the Delta Fair and Music Festival, will be at the Agricenter August 29-Sept. 7.

– p. 24: There’s an ad from Bardog Tavern, the new locals’ bar going in on Monroe between Front and Main, telling readers to “start holding your breath.” Looks like we won’t have much longer to wait.

– p. 27: Tug’s at the River Inn on Mud Island is now offering “Good Ol’ Fashioned Sunday Fried Chicken,” with a fried breast, thigh and drumstick, turnip greens, creamy potatoes, and peach cobbler all day for $12.95. Sounds like a great place to eat after church. Or even better, skip church, sleep in and just go straight there. That way you can stay out later drinking Saturday night.

– p. 39: Widespread Panic plays the Mud Island Ampitheatre October 15. Tickets on sale this Friday at 10 AM through Ticketmaster.

– p. 42: Freekbass plays Blues City this Friday and Saturday. Bootsy Collins calls Freekbass “the new spiritual warrior for Funk.”

– p. 44: The Orpheum is already apologizing in advance for Avenue Q, which will run September 30-October 5. Tickets on sale Friday at 10 AM, orpheum-memphis.com. The Nuh-Uh Girl described this as “Sesame Street for Adults.”

– Back page: 2 condos at the Claridge will be auctioned this Sunday, regardless of price.

Tonight I met my BFFs Kristin and Darbi for dinner at Downtown Huey’s.  I got there before they did, so I grabbed a beer at the bar.  As I looked around the room, I noticed this sign on the wall advertising the musical entertainment for this Sunday, August 24:

8:30 PM – 12:30 AM:  THE DEMPSEYS

Oh.  Hell.  Yeah.  Guess it’s going to be a late Sunday night for me.

While there I tried Huey’s own “Golden Nugget Ale,” which the waitress described as a cross between Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Stella Artois.  It was pretty good.  Give one a try the next time you’re there.

Two more posts to come this evening or tomorrow morning, depending on how much I feel like typing tonight.  I’m home very early tonight, so I’m going to work on my next website/store (this is the “controversial” one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago).  If I get bored building the site I’ll jump over and do posts.

I just got a notification that Art on Tap tickets are on sale.  That’s the Dixon’s annual fundraiser, outside in their gardens.  You get a souvenir beer glass and 3 hours to fill it as many times as you want with about 125 different beers from many different distributors, plus local brewers.  It’s an event I’ve really looked forward to the past couple of years.

That said, I’m probably not going this year.  The Dixon jacked the price for non-members to an astronomical $50.  If I remember correctly, tickets were $25 in 2006 and $35 last year.  That’s quite a price increase, especially considering that most of the distributors ran out of beer 30 minutes before the end of the party last year, not to mention that the food was not that great (such as the chips and salsa that Blue Coast Burrito “generously” provided).  Hopefully this year they’ve worked out those kinks, but they need to demonstrate that they have before raising the price by such a large amount.

I understand it’s a fundraiser and the Dixon is a worthy cause, but at $50 they’ve pushed it above the acceptable price limit in my mind, especially since I’d spend extra cabbing it down there and back with friends.  It’s just not worth it for what I’d get in return.  Also, I could not care less about being seen at the right social events and chasing down RSVP photographers the way East Bumblefuck Kat and her friends do.  So I’m going to remain Downtown that night.  Maybe I’ll have a beer tasting of my own – I’ll go to Calhoun’s and taste their PBR for a buck fitty a glass.

I had an outstanding meal last night… after trivia we went to the Downtown Blue Monkey to eat.  I had the jerk shrimp po-boy with twice baked potato as my side item.  That was probably the best shrimp po-boy I’ve had in Downtown Memphis, topped with tomato, lettuce, and remoulade sauce.  And the twice-baked potato… I’ve been saying for years that the potato is the key to the entire operation at the Monkey.  If you’ve never had one, you owe it to yourself to skip the fries next time you’re at the Monkey and get the twice-baked potato instead.

Other food notes… one rule most of my friends and I live by is that everything’s better with bacon.  Monday morning Dr. Booze reported on a bar that sells bacon-infused vodka.  Well, here’s another example of “everything’s better with bacon”… my friend Air Traffic Mike went to Big Foot Lodge and ordered the fried ham and cheese sandwich.  It’s slices of cheese wrapped up in thinly sliced ham, deep fried and served on a sandwich.  Mmmm.  I thought there was no way to improve upon the fried ham and cheese, but Mike did… “and top it off with bacon.”  Great job, Mike.

Dr. Booze also posted a wine crossword puzzle recently, if you get bored and feel like doing something other than your job at work today.

A new group called Change Memphis has formed to educate voters on proposed amendments to the city charter, and to increase voter education and turnout in general.  It’s the baby of New Path, which has done an excellent job educating the public and getting progressive, service-minded individuals elected, and the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center.  Now, the MSPJC and I may disagree strongly on the issue of panhandling Downtown, but educating voters is always a good thing.  Check out their website, and if you want to help they’re looking for volunteers for school visits, phone bank, and canvassing.

Cancel that big restaurant announcement I promised you a little over a week ago… that deal fell through.  However, I may have some big news about a Downtown restaurant/bar to report later today or tomorrow, to make up for it.  Check back for details.

I woke up this morning to 36 unread messages in my Inbox.  If you’ve e-mailed me in the past day, sorry if I haven’t responded yet.  I’ll try to catch up today.

We went to the Monkey after trivia last night as a goodbye dinner to our friend Angie, who returns to Monterrey, Mexico after spending two months here.  Hang on, let’s post a pic of Angie.

There ya go.  That’s Angie.  On the left, obviously.  It’s been a pleasure having her here the past two months, and we already miss her.  She’ll be able to follow the activities of the gang via my blog and Facebook from her home in Mexico.  Hopefully she’ll return soon.

Rumor has it that Barack Obama will announce his running mate today.

All right.  Time for work.  I’m meeting with the Memphis Chamber at lunch.  They asked for my advice on blogging, Facebook and other Web 2.0 stuff.  Not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’m certainly willing to give it a try.  Anyway, that means I’ll be tied up at lunch, so I’m not sure there will be a lunchtime post.  If anything particularly newsworthy comes along I’ll try to find time.

Friday night I finished work on my latest website… I linked to it from all my other sites but never got around to announcing it here on the blog.  So here it is:

College Logo Watches, as you might guess from the name, sells watches featuring the logos of major colleges and universities… about 100 of them total.  They have watches in all sizes and styles, from cheap plastic kids’ watches to beautiful executive models.

There’s a new blogger in town… check out Buck’s Blog.  Buck lives in Cordova and works Downtown, and started a new blog recently.  I’m especially proud of his blog because he took a lot of advice from my How to start a blog series of articles.  Looking forward to keeping up with Buck via his blog in the future.

I found a fun new toy to play with recently.  For a while now, I’ve had a widget called Earthquake Watch installed on my Google homepage:

I check it every day to keep up with earthquakes around the world.  However, recently I clicked on the + and – buttons in the upper left corner, and realized what I had – it’s a miniature version of Google Maps, right there on my homepage!  So I’ve had fun the past week zooming in on different parts of the world.  This morning I’ve been zooming in on Kamchatka, which is the peninsula at the far northeastern end of Russia.  Looks like there are plenty of volcanoes on the peninsula, and you can zoom in pretty close on them.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Fun to play with when you get bored at work.

I think the Procter & Gamble company is going a bit overboard with some of their commercials.  This weekend I was watching the Olympics, and one of those Charmin commercials came on with the big bear and the little bear.  The little bear had apparently used inferior-grade toilet paper, and as a result the big bear had to wipe dingleberries off its butt.  Did we really need to see that?  We get it, Charmin is superior toilet paper, we really don’t need the visual demonstration.  Too bad they can’t bring Mr. Whipple back from the dead – now those were some great commercials.

All right.  Time to head to work.  Tonight the Rapscallions dominate trivia at the Saucer, 7 PM.

I felt sick this morning, so I e-mailed the lead dev and told him I was taking a day off, then knocked myself out with NyQuil – that fends off about 90% of potential colds and illnesses for me.  Sure enough, it worked – I woke up around noon feeling much better.  “Oh, cool, I can watch the noon news, I never get to,” I thought, and clicked on the TV and turned to Channel 5.  The news wasn’t on, however – the Olympics were.  That makes sense – the Olympics only happen once every four years and are important enough to pre-empt the news.

The Olympics were not, however, important enough to pre-empt Days of Our Lives, which came on at 1 PM.  Really?  So it’s OK for us not to be informed, but heave forbid we miss our daily dose of mindless trash.  No wonder society is in such a sad state these days.  I left the TV on for the first five minutes and found Waste of Our Lives to be even more unwatchable than I remember.  If my building’s windows opened all the way, I would’ve pitched the TV out the window.

Just checked Real Clear Politics… bad news for Barack Obama today.  In their “no toss-up states” map, Obama now holds a very thin lead over McCain, 275 electoral votes to 263.  He was up in the 320s, but Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado now show McCain leading in the polls (although all are within the margin of error).  This election is far from over.  Those three states, along with Florida, Indiana, and New Hampshire are the ones to watch – Obama and McCain are within 2% of each other in those states.  The Obama campaign is organizing convention watch parties for Thursday, August 28, the night he accepts the nomination.  If there are any local ones, let me know about ’em and I’ll post the info.

A Downtown Memphian is flying out to L.A. this week to compete on Jeopardy.  I’ll post more details about the date the show will air at a later date.

In case you missed the newspaper over the weekend, the Commercial Appeal ran several Downtown-related stories:

• A story on a Downtown Memphis ghost tour offered by Backbeat Tours.  They’re the ones with the old bus that parks outside Blues City Cafe on Beale Street.
• A story on the Ghost River Brewery and its plans for the future.  They are the microbrew arm of Boscos, brewing at the corner of Main and Crump.
• And, today the CA had an article on the dance classes at the Downtown YMCA.

Surfing around today, I noticed that Mpact Memphis has a new website.  Looks good!  Their calendar is starting to fill up with fun things to do, ways to get connected, and ways to spread the good word about Memphis.  I haven’t done anything with them in a while and even let my membership lapse.  I need to re-join and check out what they’re doing these days.

And lastly but not leastly, you may have seen countdown clocks in Downtown bars.  The Saucer used to have one to count down the number of days, hours, and minutes, and seconds until the Olsen twins turned 18.  McGuinness had one counting down to St. Patrick’s Day.  Well, now it looks like Big Foot Lodge will get a clock of its own:

If you sit at Big Foot’s bar when bartender Meghan is working, you’ll have access to this information.  However, it isn’t always delivered in a timely fashion, as you may have to sit there for 8, 10, sometimes even 15 minutes before Meghan rolls her eyes, lets out a loud sigh, and tells you how many hours and minutes are left before her shift is over.  The countdown clock ensures that patrons constantly have access to this important data.  It’s also more accurate, delivering the remaining time down to the second.

All right.  Gonna go take a nap.  Back later if I find more stuff to post.  Wow, it’s almost 3 PM, can’t remember the last time I went that late in the day without posting.