Author: paulryburn

I’ve been asked to update the list of Halloween parties that are open to the public Downtown. Here’s the list – hope I’m not leaving anything off as I do this from memory.

Thursday, October 29

Kooky Canuck – they’ve been handing out tickets, so you may want to stop by beforehand and get one to make sure you get in. Attn trivia team: I have a few extras that I’ll bring tonight. I wonder if Satan will be there Thursday night. I’m not talking about a costume.

Friday, October 30

No public parties that I know of.

Saturday, October 31

Friends for Life “Under the Big Top” party at BRIDGES

Paula & Raiford’s Disco

Bardog Tavern

Silly Goose

Flying Saucer

Hard Rock Cafe

Republic Nightclub

Hollywood Disco

South of Beale

“Cougars & Kittens” party at Spindini

I may add a few more after the Memphis Flyer comes out tomorrow.

Note that Downtown is going to be super packed due to Halloween falling on a Saturday. Expect traffic and premium prices for parking. Best bet is to get down here as early as possible. Many of the places listed above are within a few blocks of each other, so it’s perfect for party-hopping.

Weather update: The Weather Channel is now predicting high 68, low 48, the first time in 5 years that we’ve had temperatures that are normal for Halloween. Also 0% chance of rain, which I like a lot.

If you have the ArtsMemphis iPhone app, check the App Store for an update.  The update will let you save events to your Outlook calendar.

Check Woot.com for bargains throughout the day.

Um yeah OK today’s blog is not going to be terribly interesting, because the combination of RiverArtsFest and the Dempseys at Huey’s yesterday killed nearly every brain cell I had left.

The Memphis Tigers football team gets some national exposure tomorrow night, when their game vs. ECU at the Liberty Bowl is televised on ESPN2. I’ll have to keep my eye on the TV during trivia.

Several earthquakes in the 2.5 to 2.9 range in Arkansas and Missouri within the past 24 hours… hope they aren’t precursors to The Big One.

Congratulations to new mayor AC Wharton who gets sworn in at noon today. Interesting fact: 5 of Wharton’s 13 transition team members are either members of MPACT Memphis or past recipients of the organization’s MPACT Maker awards. If you want to become a community leader and also meet other future community leaders, MPACT is a good place to start.

There were several good food vendors at RiverArtsFest… in addition to Central BBQ, there was an Asian food vendor and a Cajun vendor. I saw people getting food and then looking around suspiciously as though they felt the need to guard it. “Don’t worry, she’s out of town,” I told them, referring to the Nuh-Uh Girl, who spent the weekend in Boston. Had she been in town, she undoubtedly would have staked out the food vendors, waiting for people she knows to go up and order. Then would come the begging: “Can I have that nacho right there? Oooh shrimp fried rice, can I have a shrimp? Can I have some of your pecans? Can I have a bite of your BBQ sandwich?” One of her co-workers at FedEx told me she prowls the halls of her office building at lunchtime, to see who brought back leftovers.

It’s a bad day for my friend John D… his hero Morrissey collapsed on stage this weekend and had to be rushed to the hospital. I imagine John will cope with the news by drowning his sorrows in Bud Light.

Big kudos to all the bartenders at Calhoun’s this weekend… the place was just massively packed during RiverArtsFest, and yet I never had to wait more than a minute for a PBR.

Good seeing Lizzie and George last night… everyone who knows Lizzie (pictured in the previous post), please encourage her to move back to Memphis.

That’s all for now… really not a lot going on during the early part of this week, as everyone is resting up for Halloween. This is one of those days when I slept too late to have time to shower before work, so I’ll have to do that when I get home. I’ll probably be at Pint Nite around 6.

Okay, let me give you the inside scoop on RiverArtsFest in 3 words:  CINNAMON ROASTED PECANS.  There is a vendor called The Nut House (pictured below) set up right next to the National Civil Rights Museum gift shop.  They sell all kinds of nuts and their cinnamon roasted pecans are possibly the best thing I’ve ever eaten.  They make them fresh on-site.  If you’re not into pecans, they have cinnamon roasted peanuts and cashews too.

Here are some more pics from the festival:

Looking north from G.E. Patterson.  The booths were better spaced out this year and thanks to great weather, the festival was packed.

John D enjoying his favorite beverage, an ice cold Bud Light.

Clay lifts Stella the dog up to Calhoun’s window so she can order a beer.

I don’t even want to think about what Terry might have in that cylindrical-shaped bag.

UT fans made Calhoun’s look like a damn carrot patch yesterday.  Reminder to festival-goers today:  Calhoun’s has the NFL package and 10 TVs if you want to drop in and watch a game.  $2 PBR.

Be sure to check out Shane Paris Art if you go to the festival today.  His booth is located right in front of the Arcade on Main Street, second booth south of G.E. Patterson.  Come support the work of a local Downtown artist.  If you can’t make it to the festival today, check out Shane’s web site.

Stella stalking a tennis ball in a parking lot near the festival

My plans for today:  I was going to go to brunch at Sole this morning – seeing Melissa at Paula & Raiford’s Thursday night reminded me that I hadn’t been there in a while.  But that plan changed the moment I found out the Young Guns are playing at 11:55 this morning at RiverArtsFest.  The Young Guns are an absolute MUST SEE.

After that, I’ll probably hang out at the festival until it closes at 6, with at least one trip to the Nut House for cinnamon roasted pecans, and a trip to Central BBQ’s booth for BBQ nachos.  And, of course, trips to Calhoun’s throughout the day for beer.  After that I’ll head north to the Saucer for another lazy Sunday night with Brittney, then at 8:30 The Dempseys take the stage at Huey’s.  It’s gonna be a long day…

The Young Guns, the teenage band that rocked out Hot Wing Fest in the spring, will perform at RiverArtsFest on South Main at 11:55 tomorrow morning.

A very good festival day. Took several pics which I’ll post later. Typing from my phone. About to head to the Saucer.

RiverArtsFest happens this weekend in South Main, so come on down.  183 artists will have their work for sale, plus live music on four stages, food, and beer.  Come on down.  10 to 7 today (artist booths til 6), 10 to 6 tomorrow.

Be sure to check out the work of my friend Shane Paris who is one of the artists exhibiting.  Look for this logo and you;’ll find his booth:

Also, if you’re into beer and/or football, Calhoun’s Sports Bar has $2 PBR and they have the NCAA package with 10 TVs.  Tomorrow they will have the NFL package.

See you at the festival!  I’ll be down there around 11:30, although in the early hours I’ll be popping in Calhoun’s a lot to see how my Hogs are doing.

I got this question in e-mail and want to address it.

“I know you have a lot of fun playing poker online, but isn’t it terribly risky?  I’m not doubting you’re a skilled player, but everyone gets dealt bad cards some of the time.  Aren’t you worried you’ll lose big and wipe out all your winnings since you started playing?  I’d hate to see you lose so much that you can’t afford to pay your rent, or worse, pay for the Fire Sale at the Saucer.”

Good question.  The key to limiting risk at poker is what’s known as bankroll management.

Your bankroll is the amount of money currently sitting in your online account.  It can be as small or large as you want, depending on how much you’re willing to invest in your hobby.  As of this morning my bankroll on PokerStars sits at $507.83.

When deciding what games to play, I apply bankroll management rules that are slightly modified from what poker pro Chris Ferguson uses.  My rules are as follows, and I’m going to round my bankroll down to $500 for these examples to keep the math easy:

• I can bring a maximum of 5% of my bankroll to the table for any cash ring game where the blinds are fixed.  5% of $500 is $25, so I can buy into cash ring games up to $25.  That means I can buy in for 100 big blinds (the maximum usually allowed) on 10 cent small blind/25 cent big blind games.  If I’m feeling froggy I can step up to the 25 cent/50 cent tables and buy in for 50 big blinds.  Theoretically I could buy into 50 cent/$1 ring games for the minimum of 20 big blinds, but I never like to buy into tables for the minimum.
• If I start winning big at a cash ring game, if at any point my stack exceeds 10% of my total bankroll, I have to get up and leave before the blinds hit me in the next round.  So, in my current situation, if I found myself at a table with a stack of $55, I’d have to leave because it would be approximately 10% of the $555 total I would then have.
• I can pay a maximum of 5% of my total bankroll to enter a single-table (up to 10 players) Sit’n’Go tournament.  So again, $25 is the maximum I can pay to play a SnG.
• I can pay a maximum of 2% of my total bankroll to enter a multi-table (11 to tens of thousands of players) tournament.  2% of $500 is $10, so $10 is the max for me.  There’s a lot more variance due to luck in the large tournaments, so you have to put less of your roll at risk.
• Exception 1:  I can buy into any cash ring game for $1 or less regardless of my bankroll.  So, no matter how bad I’m doing, I’m always allowed to bring 50 big blinds to a 1 cent small blind/2 cent big blind table.
• Exception 2:  I can buy into any single-table Sit’n’Go tournament for up to $1 regardless of my bankroll.
• There is no lower-limit exception for multi-table tournaments.  If I want to play one of those and the 2% rule doesn’t allow it, I have to enter freeroll tournaments.

Following these rules ensures that I never have too much of my bankroll at risk at any one time.  Yeah it sucks to be playing 25 cent big blind tables when I’d rather be sitting next to Daniel Negreanu at the $25 big blind tables, but that’s where I am in the evolution of my poker skills and bankroll.  Also, there’s an advantage to the lower-limit games – there are a lot more fish (bad players) there, from whom it’s easy to win money if you know basic hold’em strategies.

While we’re on the subject of poker, last night was frustrating.  I was too tired to go out, so I stayed home and entered a 1000-person, $4 + 40 cent entry fee multi-table tournament.  Top 104 finishes paid out, with first place getting $750.  After three hours I got dealt pocket Jacks in the big blind and raised all-in after no one else put in a pre-flop raise, figuring it was a good opportunity to build my stack (which was rather small at the time) so I could legitimately challenge for that first place prize.  Everyone folded around to the small blind, who called me with 7-9 (this is an example of the bad players you’ll find at low buy-in games).  The flop came up 2-7-7.  Just my luck.  No help on the turn or river, and I finished in 106th place.  TWO SPOTS away from the money.  I shouldn’t have gone all-in with those Jacks at that stage of the tournament.  Oh well.  At least I only lost $4.40.  There will be another tournament anytime I’m ready for one.  That’s what’s great about online poker.

I happened upon this blog post from something called The Star Scene in Beirut, Lebanon.  The writer of this post has a big problem with women who wear bras with clear straps underneath tube tops.  I couldn’t agree more.  The preferred way to wear a tube top is sans bra.

Only 7 months and 1 week until it’s Tube Top Month again!