blackout/#shavethepanda/Saturday news

“There are only three times it’s acceptable to start drinking before 11 AM. When you’re at a casino, on spring break, or at BBQ Fest.”

I started drinking at 10:45 yesterday at Bardog. Oops.

Nice to have a bar around the corner that opens at 8 AM weekdays though.

So, I hung out there from 10:45 until about 5:30 yesterday, making excellent use of my vacation day. Then I decided to take a “halftime” nap and make it a late night, which I rarely do on a Friday. About 9 PM I woke up, got dressed, and went back out.

I live on the Main Street Mall just south of Madison. I walked out the front door and headed south, planning to go back to Bardog to see who was there, then hit the Flying Saucer and Blind Bear. I was even considering a late-night Purple Haze trip.

As I approached Monroe, though, I noticed something. South of Family Dollar, about a half a block south of Monroe, it was pitch black. The light at Union was out. The light at Gayoso was out. The light at Peabody Place was out. All the lights in the buildings were out. All the employees at DejaVu, next door to Family Dollar and the northernmost business on Main to have lost power, were out on the patio looking around like, “WTF do we do now?”

I went in Bardog, which had power, and checked Twitter. There had been some kind of explosion near Second and G.E. Patterson apparently, which had blown manhole covers off, and which had cut power from the South Main district all the way to Monroe. MLGW did not expect to have power restored for several more hours. The city closed Beale Street about 10. People were stuck in elevators at the Peabody and the Westin. Must’ve sucked to be driving Downtown last night, since Memphians treat broken traffic lights more like NASCAR than a four-way stop.

So, Bardog was the place to be last night. The staff was working the #shavethepanda movement. In case you missed it, bartender Amanda “Panda” Parks will have her head shaved if $10,000 is raised for St. Jude by tomorrow afternoon at 3 PM. Aldo started a leader board for those who contributed $100 or more to #shavethepanda.

shavethepanda

 

The Moody Ques BBQ team is already represented on the board by the team president and “Mr. Load-in.” Any other Moody Ques want to step up and get in on this? Also, I notice Squeal Street is only represented once on the board. I guess they only care about sick children half as much as we do.

With no place to go but Bardog, we all hunkered down and proceeded to get crazy drunk. Stuff like this happened:

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Okay, let’s get to the news. If you like craft beer, there’s a new Twitter account you should follow: @GrindCityCraft. This account tweets about craft beer in Memphis.

The Orpheum has announced an addition to the 2014-15 schedule. RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles will run at the Orpheum for two nights only, April 11-12, 2015. RAIN features the Beatles’ full discography onstage, including the songs they recorded after they quit doing live concerts in August 1966. Some of their most challenging works to reproduce onstage were recorded after they stopped doing concerts, but they are successfully performed in RAIN. Tickets go on sale Friday, August 29.

The Woodruff-Fontaine House sale is going on until 3 PM today in Victorian Village.

There are three Elvis Week events happening Downtown today. An Elvis bus tour departs from Econo Lodge (Third at Court) at noon today and it costs $35 to take the tour. The champions’ reception for “Images of the King” happens at Jerry Lee Lewis Cafe today at 3. At 8 the Orpheum will show “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is,” a remastered film of Elvis performances with outtakes that have never been seen before onscreen. Terry Blackwood and the Imperials will perform live along with Elvis on the screen. Elvis artifacts will be on display in the lobby. Tickets are $35 or $89 VIP.

Dionne Warwick’s show at the Cannon Center tonight has been cancelled. She has been placed on vocal rest by her doctors.

WREG has a photo gallery of last night’s Downtown blackout.

Great match I saw recently on the WWE Network: WCW Bash at the Beach 1999. Chris Kanyon, Diamond Dallas Page, and Bam Bam Bigelow defended the WCW tag team titles against Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn. Excellent match. Don’t ask me how three men can defend tag team titles against two men, because there was pretty much no logic in the way WCW was booked that year. Check it out if you’re a subscriber. Ba da bing, ba da bang, ba da bam.

Plans for today: As usual, I will lead off at Panda’s bar at Bardog at 11. This may be the last time we see Panda with hair on her Saturday shift. But will she really shave it off? She’s requiring a minimum of $10,000 to shave her head. To put this in perspective:

  • $4500 was raised to shave Brittany Bloom’s head at the first Bardog alley party
  • $2500 was raised to cut off the late, great Jay Hollingsworth’s ponytail the year after that
  • $1500 was raised to shave Tawni Bell’s head the following year

So Panda is requiring more than twice as much as has ever been raised. She purposely set the bar that high, figuring she’d keep her hair. But it looks like people with deep pockets are going to be getting out their checkbooks, so it is likely the panda will be shaved.

Time to take a shower and get ready for Saturday at Bardog.