Author: paulryburn

The Memphis Daily News has an article about the River Inn of Harbor Town, a new 28-room boutique hotel on Mud Island.

That place should be a good addition to Downtown. Now, if people want to be right in the middle of the action while staying in a luxury hotel, they can stay in the Downtown core in the Westin, Madison or Peabody. If on the other hand they want to be near the action but want to stay somewhere more peaceful, they can stay at the River Inn and enjoy the tranquility of the Island.

Also curious to see what will happen with Tug’s, one of the restaurants in the new hotel. It’s a casual bar and grill, and will be catering to the Mud Island neighborhood as much as the hotel guests. Wondering if it will become the neighborhood hangout for the Island the way Sleep Out Louie’s was for Downtowners for years and years. I think I’ll give it a little time to develop a regular crowd, then head over there one night and check the place out.

Recap of last night: Rapscallion Party V at the Saucer. Took pics but haven’t downloaded them yet. At 9 we moved to Hoop’s Bar and hung out there. Meant to hang on until 11 and then head into EP’s, to meet up with a friend having a birthday. But by 10:30 I was just too exhausted. The long week had finally caught up to me, and I headed home to an early bedtime.

Today: Arkansas vs. Tennessee at 11:30. Undecided whether to watch this at the Saucer or a friend’s condo. Possible stop at Rum Boogie in the afternoon, then back to the friend’s condo for a housewarming party. After that, who knows.

Hoop’s Bar opened last night, and we were there. Due to its opening I pulled one of my shortest stays at the Saucer in a long while (4:30 to 9). The place is the brainchild of Hooper, pictured above. I first met Hoop back in 2003ish when he bartended Huey’s on Sunday nights when I’d come in to see The Dempseys. After that he moved on to McGuinness, EP’s, and then got his own bar inside EP’s. Some more pics:

Mikey, John D, Chris B and I headed down there right at 9 when the place opened. We ran into our friend Kennedy, DJ at Q107.5, who wants to let everyone know to listen to the radio station on Thursdays to get on the “VEP” list, which gets you free drinks and food at EP’s from 8 to 9 Thursday nights.

I was told several times that Downtowners are invited to bring in stuff that is “weird or funky” to hang on the walls.

S: Great talking with you last night. You’re a good guy. Will do everything I can with this blog to help your future ventures. I’ll stop by your bar sometime.

The hours of the place are still yet to be determined. Bathrooms are out the fire door and around the corner on the second floor of EP’s. I hear the place will have its own kitchen and a separate menu from EP’s.

In other news: Yesterday I walked up to the shopping mall that has sprung up across Main Street from the Convention Center for COGIC week. There were several food vendors and you can always count on getting excellent food when COGIC is in town. Here’s a pic of the BBQ ribs I bought:

Street-People.com has a good story on Trashcan Willie, one of the Downtown bums who has staked out the garbage cans near the Convention Center for COGIC week. Actually, a number of the bums have been pilfering COGIC’s garbage cans and selling what they find on the street. Estes in particular (he’s the one with the pregnant girlfriend, she may have had the baby by now) seems to be having a profitable week.

Played The Window Game yesterday during my extremely short 4 1/2 hour stint at the Saucer. Counted 191 COGIC cars. One of the buses advertised something called The Statue of Liberation Through Christ, which is a Christian tourist attraction, a replica of The Statue of Liberty holding a cross. How fortunate are we to have that, Graceland, and Summer Avenue all in one town? Ain’t no place like Memphis.

That’s enough for one post. I think I’ll take my laptop to the Second Street Branch Office today for my last weekday of freedom. I filled up a free lunch card so it’ll be a cheap day.

Hoop’s Bar opens tonight at 9 PM. It’s on the second floor of the building that houses EP’s, above the Elvis gift shop. It will have its own entrance on Second Street. I’ve been told that this will be a place for people who live in the neighborhood to hang out.

You’re invited to bring something to hang on the wall if you wish, and if you see Hooper congratulate him on the birth of his baby girl, Lea Simone.

Here’s a pic of Hoop’s Bar, taken last week when Hooper and Tony gave us a preview:

Looking forward to it. So here’s my revised plan for tonight:

Afternoon: Saucer
5:30 to 7: Bravo party at Main and Vance
7 to 9: Saucer
9 til: Hoop’s Bar

With a few days of freedom left to enjoy, I have a feeling this could be a late night.

So, my friend Eric, who wants everyone to know that yesterday was his birthday, managed to turn an upcoming Saturday night house party into the weirdest party EVER. He’s requesting that, in honor of his birthday, each of us memorize some Shakespeare and recite it at the party. If you’re going “WTF?” as you read that, join the club. He says he wants to the group to have some class for a change. Come on, Eric, we’re incapable of having any class, the fact that we hang out with John D should be evidence enough of that.

So if anyone has any particularly tasty Shakespeare quotes that I can use, e-mail ’em to me. Otherwise I guess I’ll do some searching online – I know that the entire works of Shakespeare can be found somewhere on the Internet.

Recap of last night: The Rapscallions took third place in trivia, bringing our total gift certificate stash to $250. One of the waitresses contemplated getting on stage and singing a song, but then stopped and asked, “If I sing, are you going to write about it on your blog?” No, silly – I’m going to pull out my camera, switch it to video mode, record the entire thing, then upload it to YouTube and embed it in my blog. Because I’m high-tech like that.

Plans for the rest of this week:

Today: The Wednesday night episode of “Paul Gets Drunk at the Saucer,” possibly followed by an episode of “Paul Stumbles Over to McGuinness and Drinks More.” If that’s not Must See TV, I don’t know what is. By the way, I’d be stumbling to Hoop’s Bar rather than McGuinness, but HOOPER HASN’T GOT THE PLACE OPEN YET!!!!! HURRY UP!
Thursday: The Thursday night episode, and probably EP’s after that.
Friday: Private party at a Downtown bar. After that I’ll be meeting up with a birthday party going on elsewhere Downtown. Will meet up with them at either Circa, EP’s, or Earnestine & Hazel’s, depending on the time.
Saturday: Arkansas vs. Tennessee at 11:30 AM. I’ll be at the Saucer wearing my Hog Hat. Later in the day, a friend’s housewarming party at his condo, where I’ll have to recite f-ing Shakespeare. Thanks again Eric.
Sunday: Sunday Fun Day, with brunch at McGuinness this week.

Just checked my Gmail and the sponsored ad link up top read, “Who has a crush on you? Click here to find out, it’s scary how accurate it is!” Hmmm… I’m curious if this thing will come up with not only the right name, but the right spelling since it can be spelled with either a “k” or a “c.” All right, it wants my name and my zodiac sign… and my phone number. F that. If that website wants my phone number it can at least buy me a drink first.

One of my blog readers e-mailed with a GREAT idea for a post. A trip down memory lane, listing all of my favorite places where I hung out since moving Downtown 6 years ago, that have since closed their doors. Oh that would be a FUN post to do. Give me a few days to make a list.

All right, time to hit Publish and go read my favorite blogger/MILF’s blog, to see how many times she’s broken up and gotten back together with her dude in the past 24 hours. I’ll put the over/under at 3.

We added a new category to The Window Game for this week: COGIC courtesy cars. It easily won the night, with a grand total of 79 cars passing by the window during the time the people playing the game (the scorecard got passed around several times) were there. Starting today we’ll count COGIC hats too.

Other results from The Window Game: We counted 23 bums, 15 police cars, 7 FUMOTs (f’d up modes of transportation), 8 RUPs (really ugly people), 15 hooptys, 2 appearances by Original Scratchy and 5 by New, Improved Scratchy, 8 cars that made illegal turns, 3 cars that went the wrong way up Second, and 30 buses. When Bicycle Bobby took over the game he decided to add a new category – taxi cabs – and we counted 37 of those. That’s the great thing about The Window Game, you can make it up as you go.

BBQ Clint added a “MILF” category Sunday when he played, and counted two of them. My favorite blogger/MILF was Downtown with her two girls that afternoon, and it’s entirely possible that she accounted for one of the marks on the scorecard.

One of the cooks told me he plays The Window Game at home, where he can see the Exxon at Summer and Graham out his window. Yeah, any place there’s an Exxon parking lot would be a great place to do it. He’s had to modify the categories some – apparently “people talking to themselves” is a hot category in that area.

Wonder if the “Suck My Blog” team will be back at trivia tonight to get their ass handed to them by the Rapscallions again. Heh… hope they didn’t mind my trash-talking last week. I’ve been told that they’re a really good group of people. If I trash-talk someone in my blog it generally means I think a lot of them… look at all the grief I give Pete.

Speaking of which, Pete and I went 1-1 in pool last night, although in his defense he was distracted by a beautiful woman during the game I won.

The 5:00 waitress who had the window section showed up and took over my tab. She saw me drinking a Blue Moon, and said, “Do you know how many calories that has? You need to go on a diet. I’m bringing you light beer for the rest of the night.” At least she brought me Amstel Light and not that swill that John D drinks. Later the waitress told me that I needed to order some Rocket Tots so she could eat them. Then she wrote “Paul is a LOSER!!!” on my Window Game scorecard. I hope the Saucer will understand if I don’t vote for them for Best Service in the 2008 Best of Memphis poll. For the remainder of this week I’m going to round up every COGIC saint I can find, bring them in the Saucer, and sit them in her section.

In the news: The federal government now owns the Mt. Moriah Center for the Performing Arts, and Ralph Lunati is going to jail. Apparently it’s a form of prostitution if you have live skank-on-skank sex shows and have an ATM in your club.

Looks like this mess with the City Schools and their Central Nutrition Center is going to keep getting bigger and bigger. When I worked for MCS last spring, I was taken on a tour of the CNC and they spoke of it as if it was their crown jewel. I didn’t meet the director but I met several of the other employees and they all seemed like honest, hard-working people. I hope they come out of this all right. I still have the hairnet I wore when I took the tour.

According to RealClearPolitics’ latest poll analysis, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is gaining ground in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Normally I’m not a fan of Republicans, but as a former Arkansan I can say that Huckabee did a very good job as governor. Still doubt I’ll vote for him though… I can’t stand the thought of a Republican in the White House nominating right-wing Supreme Court justices. At this point I’m undecided but leaning Hillary.

For those of you wondering when I’ll ever get the long-ass Halloween hair cut, I have an appointment for tomorrow at 1 PM. I still plan on keep it long. Just need a maintenance trim since it’s been almost 10 weeks since I got a haircut.

Someone suggested that I go to court and get my middle name changed to something beginning with a “B” so my initials would be “PBR.” That’s not a bad idea.

That’s enough for now. Time to hit Publish and see if Blogger will cooperate. Internet connection is having problems again, so I may take the laptop to the Second Street branch office this afternoon. (Edit: I’m now at the branch office. Chicken tacos for lunch. Redhook ESB is the Fire Sale. I’ve been trying to publish this post for the last two hours.)

Once again I am at wit’s end with the Blogger publishing engine. For the past day I’ve been trying to post, getting a “your publish is taking longer than expected” error message each time. Blogger’s help center is absolutely no help at all. Finally, after much searching, I found a message board where someone got around the problem by changing their FTP server from domain.com to ftp.domain.com. I tried it and that worked. But still, I had hoped that Blogger would get better, and not worse, after they were bought out by Google.

Anyway, that’s why yesterday’s post didn’t show up until this morning.

I forgot to mention how I got the lead for the new job I start next Monday. A couple of weeks ago a local recruiter with JD Resources found me on LinkedIn, and contacted me about a position. She didn’t even know I was job hunting. The position she had was heavy on graphic design, which isn’t my strong point, so I told her I’d pass, but that I was looking and would be happy to hear about other opportunities.

The next week, her boss contacted me with the position I ended up taking – the one located Downtown, where everyone is super-cool and wears jeans to work. So the reason I found such an awesome job is because I was on LinkedIn. If you don’t know what LinkedIn is, it’s a form of social networking (similar to MySpace and Facebook) but geared toward professionals. As with the other services, you can befriend people on LinkedIn. You can write recommendations for them, and you can view opportunities that they have posted. You can also search profiles for people who have particular skills you’re looking for. Whether you’re job hunting or not, if you’re a professional you need to be on LinkedIn.

Big thanks to fellow blogger AngieDawn who got me started on LinkedIn about a year and a half ago. I met Angie five years ago through Mpact Memphis and she has become one of my most important professional contacts in town, and a good friend as well.

MySpace also played a role in my job hunt. A couple of months ago a recruiter from Vaco Technologies here in town asked to add me as a friend. She told me she was using MySpace to make connections here in Memphis, and that she’d like to take me to lunch sometime. I was busy with consulting projects, so I didn’t have time then, but when it came time to job hunt, she was one of the first people I contacted.

Even though JDR got me the job, I must also commend the people at Vaco for treating me VERY well. When I told them I was looking, two of them asked to take me to lunch, and told me to pick the place. I picked Sauces and we had a great time getting to know each other. A few days later, they contacted me saying a client wanted to interview me. So I drove out to their office and they gave me a really nice looking black portfolio so I’d look like a pro in the interview. They briefed me about the company and then drove me out there. I ended up not taking that one, but I was very, very impressed with Vaco and recommend them highly to anyone looking for an IT job. I’ve promoted the recruiter who I talked with – Diane T – to one of my Top Friends on MySpace, so you can get in touch with her there.

Tonight: Pint Nite. Don’t know if I’m feelin’ MN MF’N F @ G.D. EP’s this week. Probably I’ll just hang at the Saucer. I’d probably leave and go hang out at Hoop’s Bar at some point, except that HOOPER HASN’T GOT THE BLASTED PLACE OPEN YET!!!!! Hurry up!

Patriots 24, Colts 20.

Earlier in the day my favorite blogger/MILF wrote on her blog: “I was hoping that my favorite downtowner would be brunching at McGuinness so he could see me all decked out in my Colts gear. He probably wouldn’t have spoken to me, especially since I’m wearing the #18 PROUDLY, and he’s a Manning-Hater.”

Um, we were at Majestic today. I mentioned several times in my blog that that’s where we’d be. Then we moved on to the Saucer and watched New England end Indianapolis’ winning streak. My favorite blogger/MILF’s precious Peyton just couldn’t pull it together in the fourth quarter, while the Patriots stepped up.

Elsewhere in today’s post she mentions buying some cute underwear, and I’d much rather see her in that than the #18 jersey.

Taking a break right now, but I’ll be going back out in a little while to enjoy my last Sunday Fun Day that isn’t followed by a Monday at work.

Hey, the Ole Miss Rebels finally won a game! They scraped by Northwestern State yesterday, and as the #5 team in the Southland Conference, there’s no doubt that NW State is a forced to be reckoned with.

I heard a great quote about Ole Miss a couple of days ago. A friend of mine asked me, “Do you know what time the Ole Miss Possums are playing tomorrow?”

“Don’t you mean the Ole Miss Rebels?” I asked.

“No, they’re the Ole Miss Possums,” he said. “Because they play dead at home, and they get run over on the road.”

Arkansas vs. Tennessee next Saturday. I’m going to be wearing my Hog Hat, of course. I have a feeling I won’t be getting along with the Nuh-Uh Girl, Frank, and some of the other members of the gang that day.

And, of course, today we have the Colts-Patriots game at 3:15. We’ll start the day with brunch at the Majestic, then head over to the Saucer by the time the game starts. Actually, well before the time the game starts, because we’ll have to get a few games of pool in first. Interesting thing about Sundays, I started off the year kicking Skippy’s ass at trivia, and I’m ending it by kicking Pete’s ass at pool.

Recap of yesterday: Dos Equis Special Lager was the Fire Sale. I showed my appreciation by having nine of them in a relatively short amount of time. The trivia team came to a consensus on which waitress we want for Rapscallion Party V. Played the Window Game. Played pool with Clay and BBQ Clint. Relocated to Pearl’s to catch Snozberry. I hated to leave my favorite beer on Fire Sale and Aquanet, but Snozberry are friends and ya gotta support your friends. Unfortunately the nine Fire Sales took effect and I didn’t make it through much of Snoz’s set. Sorry guys. I’m sure everyone thought “he’s heading back to the Saucer” when I left, but no, I went home and crashed!

Thanks to the time change – Daylight Savings Time ENDED this morning – I have an extra hour to kill before the start of Sunday Fun Day. I think I’ll use it to do a load of laundry, so I can wear the “I Love Romanian Girls” shirt two days in a row.

Most Downtowners are familiar with Jimmy, the homeless guy who wanders the streets and constantly scratches his beard (earning him the nickname “Scratchy”). Scratchy may be homeless but he is NOT a bum. He never asks for anything, and if you talk to him he’s a very nice guy. When the Sunday brunch crew was hanging out at Sleep Out Louie’s, we sort of adopted Scratchy as our mascot.

Well, yesterday I saw someone new on the streets: New, Improved Scratchy. New, Improved Scratchy looks and dresses just like Original Scratchy, except he’s a couple of inches taller. But there’s a big difference: New, Improved Scratchy IS a bum. I saw him on the streets for hours yesterday, walking up to people and begging them for money.

They look enough alike that people could easily confuse them. I hope Scratchy doesn’t end up getting a bad rap Downtown for things that New, Improved Scratchy did.