Paul Ryburn’s Journal

On Sunday, a friend who recently moved out of town came back for a visit, so the brunch crew decided to celebrate with a visit to Texas de Brazil. On previous trips, I’d always treated the salad bar as an afterthought, a few quick bites before I moved on to the grilled [...]

This car got rear-ended so hard in the Peabody Place parking garage that it crashed through the wall. Thanks to Rebekah for letting me use [...]

Last night, I gathered with friends at the Flying Saucer to celebrate the completion of my 5th plate.

In addition to getting the purple plate on the wall and a $125 bar tab for my plate party, I got a couple of other benefits. For one, I got a “5iver” T-shirt for completion [...]

This afternoon I walked up to the new Pizza Italia location at 164 Union, inside the Benchmark Hotel. I got a slice of Chicago-style pizza, with extra beef and extra pepperoni, to go. When the guy working there found out I lived so close by, he gave me a cup of marinara. [...]

Excellent investigative work by Richard Morgan of the Commercial Appeal, who found out that it’s completely, totally illegal for valet parkers at Downtown restaurants to use cones to block spaces. Each violation of a blocked public parking space is a $21 fine. The city has been missing out on that revenue. Hopefully the law will be [...]

Since March 2009 I’ve had roughly a 20 minute commute home from work every day. Up until this month, I drove home in silence, with nothing to do but think about the evening’s plans and fret about Memphis traffic.

Earlier this month, it occurred to me, “Memphis has two of the best sports talk radio stations anywhere, [...]

The trouble with people who like karaoke is, they don’t understand that people who don’t like karaoke REALLY, REALLY don’t like karaoke.

A few of my friends go to a karaoke night on Saturdays. They’ve been texting and tweeting in recent weeks, trying to convince me to come join them. Last Saturday, one of them tweeted that [...]

I just got back from my morning run to Walgreens for Mountain Dew. As I walked home I noticed a new sign being put up next door to me at 8 S. Main. A new business is about to open there – Classy Nail Salon and Spa. I peeked inside and it looks nearly ready to [...]

Today on my afternoon break, I decided to pull up ESPN’s NCAA basketball home page and catch up on hoops news. There I saw this headline:

NCAA puts Cal basketball on 2 years’ probation

… and I got real, real, real excited. The biggest douchebag in college sports is finally getting what’s coming to him, I [...]

Happy Friday! The big news, of course, is that Shane Battier is once again a Memphis Grizzly. People have been debating the pros and cons of the trade, but I for one am very happy to have him back. Welcome home, Shane. I hope you soon get that Soul Burger you’ve been craving.

There’s a press conference [...]