Amidst all the holiday festivities on South Main Friday, there’s also the opportunity to hear a blues great. Henry Butler, a New Orleans blues piano legend who is an 8-time “Best Blues Instrumentalist – Piano” award nominee, will play The Warehouse on G.E. Patterson at 8 PM. Doors open at 7:30. Butler has been blinded by glaucoma since birth, but still has managed to become not only an award-winning pianist, but an award-winning photographer as well. Advance tickets can be purchased here for $25. Tickets will be $30 at the door. There’s also a $50 VIP ticket that includes a 1-year Blues Foundation membership.
When the president of the Blues Foundation e-mailed me about this event, the first sentence was “Paul I owe you a beer if you’ll mention this.” Now this is a guy who understands how to interact with bloggers.
Interesting article on Wired’s site: Give Thanks? Science supersized your turkey dinner. It discusses how turkeys have been engineered to get bigger and bigger over the years. In 1929, the average turkey weighed 13 pounds; now the average turkey weighs 29 pounds. A lot of it has to do with the corn that both we and the turkeys eat, and Wired’s article discusses changes in corn over the past several centuries as well. I wonder what my health guru AL will think about this.
AL e-mailed me yesterday to ask how much I paid for the individual lemon pies and Sno Balls I bought at the Hostess thrift store. I replied that they were 80 cents apiece. She then said, “You could have bought a pound of frozen spinach or broccoli and gotten 3 meals off of it.” I can’t believe she equates the experience of eating broccoli with that of eating a Sno Ball. I have some weird friends. She claims she’s going to live to 150 because of her diet.
Here’s a link to a video that will remind Downtowners why we love being down here so much, and will help people in the other parts of the city understand why we’re such big fans of our neighborhood. Go ahead, watch it, it’s only 2 minutes, 56 seconds, and you know you’re not doing anything at work today anyway.
Restaurant.com is running a 70% off promotion through the end of the month. Enter promo code THANKS at checkout to get the discount. That means you can get $25 face-value restaurant gift certificates, normally sold for $10, for only $3. You can also save 70% on their Dinner of the Month Club memberships, which make great Christmas gifts.
Speaking of Christmas… I’m working on a Downtown Memphis holiday buyer’s guide post that I hope to have done in time for Black Friday.
Stephanie just about has the December BFF of the Month locked up. Last night she brought me passes to the Holiday Parade’s VIP party. Free food and beer for 6 hours… that’s a good way to get to BFF status.
All right time to get started… I actually have some work to do today. I’m in the process of upgrading the Tube Top Boutique to add eBay listings. That’ll get a bunch more inventory on the site, which goes through some lean months in the winter when it’s not traditionally tube top season (although I think they should be worn all year). I also need to get the aforementioned holiday shopping guide done. I said I was going to eat lunch at Big Foot, but I’m not very hungry right now thanks to some chili cheese tamales that came home with me from Huey’s last night. The party starts later today… I’ll be at Bardog and Big Foot later, and possibly the Saucer and Blues City.