Before I start this post, I have a question for my readers. Which patios in the Downtown core are dog-friendly? New Downtown core residents Monkey Head Maddy and Maya want to be able to day-drink with their parents Robo and Shobo. Send me an email at paul@paulryburn.com if you know of a dog-friendly patio, or hit me up on whichever social network you prefer.
The Best Memphis Burger Festival is the place to be today. It will be in the parking lot next to Minglewood Hall on Madison Avenue in Midtown. There will be judging of burgers in four categories: Veggie, Anything But Cow, Extreme, and Best Memphis Burger. There will also be live bands, a pickle-eating competition for kids, a Kooky Canuck Team Kookamonga eating team challenge, and more. You can’t buy the teams’ burgers, but many of the teams will give out samples in exchange for a donation to Mid-South Spay & Neuter Services. Gates open at 10:30 AM and the festival goes all day until 6. $5 donation to Mid-South Spay & Neuter to get in. Downtowners, this is worth a cab ride, especially on a beautiful day like today.
It’s an exciting day for me because I get to do something I’ve wanted to do for years: Hang out with the Squeal Street BBQ team as they prepare their competition entry. In the past I’ve never been able to do it because I’m on a different BBQ team, the Moody Ques. However, my team isn’t entered in Burger Fest, freeing me up to join Squeal Street for a day. They’re going to give me a T-shirt and everything and I’m going to make a detailed photo album, the way I do for my own team during BBQ Fest.
Random pro wrestling video of the day: Triple H’s debut in WCW as Terror Risin’ (later Terra Ryzing). Thanks to Chef Brian Michael Patrick of Rizzo’s Diner for finding this and posting to Facebook. This would have been 1993ish I believe, and his opponent may possibly win the award for worst hairdo ever. Trips will be in Memphis less than a month from now when Monday Night Raw comes to the FedExForum.
The Midtown Kroger Twitter account is worth a follow if you appreciate accounts like the Burlington Coat Factory one. Good stuff.
In the news: Coke cancels a bottle cap campaign after people found it offensive. It was a Canadian campaign for Vitaminwater. People were supposed to find random words on the bottle caps’ undersides and string them together to make funny sentences. Since the campaign was happening in bi-lingual Canada, two words appeared on each bottle cap: one in English and one in French. Unfortunately the people organizing the campaign didn’t stop to think that relatively innocuous French words have different meanings in English, leading to one person finding “You Retard” on their Vitaminwater cap. “Douche” was also on some caps.
Friday night I was walking down the Main Street Mall, home from work and on my way to the Flying Saucer. I saw a southbound trolley blatantly run a red light at Main and Gayoso. It was traveling at what looked to be close to top speed for a trolley (20-25 MPH maybe?) and it sailed through the light a good 2 seconds after it turned red. Luckily there were no cars heading eastbound on Gayoso. If there had been, there’s a good chance there would have been a wreck. Given that it was raining outside, that trolley was running way too fast for conditions.
I upgraded my iPhone to iOS7 yesterday, after doing the iPad Thursday. Some people don’t like iOS7 but I love it. So clean and fresh. I was worried I’d experience battery problems after upgrading. I did, but not because of the OS; rather, because I couldn’t stop playing with my phone! Thank goodness I have an external charger. If you have the same model I do (16GB iPhone 4s) I see no reason to be afraid of upgrading, although you should allow a couple of hours to get it done. After you upgrade the OS, you’ll want to upgrade your apps because many will have new versions designed for iOS7.
If you have an 8GB iPhone, though, you’re going to have problems. One of the bartenders at the Saucer was asking me why she kept getting “not enough memory” messages during the upgrade, and it’s because the new OS will take nearly half the available space on an 8GB model. It can be done, but if you use your phone as a camera or iPod to much of an extent at all, you’re going to run out of memory. Therefore, if you have an 8GB model I recommend you just go ahead and buy a new phone.
One way you can free up space on your phone is to sync your photos with a Dropbox account. They will automatically be pushed to Dropbox’s Camera Uploads folder when you have the app open and Wi-Fi is present. You will then be free to delete photos from your phone because they’re backed up. Sign up for Dropbox using this link and you get 500 MB extra space and so do I.
I’ve already had one person tell me she is wearing a tube top to Burger Fest today. Hopefully others will too. I will have the camera, and although I’ll be hanging out with Squeal Street I won’t be exclusively in their booth all day. So if you have a tube top on, come find me and take a pic for the blog. Hope to see you down there at what is quickly becoming one of Memphis’ best festivals.