Author: paulryburn

Last night I was talking to one of my blog’s readers. “You did a month on tube tops,” she said. “Why don’t you do a month where you focus on a different part of the body – and I have a suggestion. Feet.”

Feet?

“Sure,” she said. “You could take pictures of feet, and write about who has nice feet and who has ugly feet. Tube Top Month may have drawn a lot of men to your blog, but women like feet. If you want to get a lot of female readers, you should do a month about feet.”

Um… thanks, but no.

This may surprise a lot of people since I’m not known to be a Justin Timberlake fan, but as far as I’m concerned JT needs to come back to Downtown Memphis soon and often. Take a look at the pics below and I think you’ll see why.

These are pics taken at the Flying Saucer about an hour before the show. Do you notice something unusual about the pictures?

Scroll up and take another look.

Do you see it?

If you spend much time at the Saucer at all it should be obvious.

Okay, here it is.

Normally the Saucer crowd is about 80% dudes… it’s actually been nicknamed “The Flying Sausage” because of this. However, the night of the Justin Timberlake show, the Saucer crowd was about 80% women. Specifically, gorgeous women in sexy outfits. It was wonderful. Truly the greatest night in the 10-year history of the bar.

And it was like that all over Downtown. My friend Pete (not Trivia Pete, but the other Pete) was sitting in Superior Bar on Beale Street, and beautiful women were coming in and out, coming right up and talking to him.

If that’s the kind of crowd Justin draws, then I’d like to invite him to come back any time he wants. MEMPHIS LOVES YOU JUSTIN!!! COME BACK SOON!!!

National Night Out yesterday in Court Square was a great event – speeches by Mayor Herenton and Police Chief Godwin, good music, free hot dogs and drinks, and games with the Memphis Grizzlies organization. We gave out a lot of cards promoting the Handling-Panhandling forum, and we now have at least 4 cops reading the forum.

Apologies to Uptown Memphis, who invited me to their Night Out party (and they had beer!), which I wasn’t able to make, due to obligations to the trivia team.

Congrats to The Rapscallions, who took second place at trivia last night. That raises our total gift certificate stash to $70, to be spent in conjunction with two upcoming plate parties at the Saucer. As you can see from the picture above, Pete the Trivia Guy was mightily impressed with our knowledge.

With the other Downtown team disbanded, Cliff Clay-vin and Yoko officially joined the Rapscallions. They proposed changing the name to “Rapscallions for Gay Polygamy,” an idea shot down in about 0.1 second.

In other news… discovered the website of one of the best blues bands in the city, The Eric Hughes Blues Band. Check it out if you enjoy the blues.

Dead Elvis Week starts this Saturday and runs through Sunday, August 19. Check out the official website for a calendar of events.

Wondering what Adam “Pacman” Jones will be doing while he serves out his year suspension from the NFL? Turn on Spike TV Thursday night at 8 and you’ll find out. He’s signed a contract to be part of TNA Wrestling, the pro-wrestling company that is the closest thing WWE has to a competitor. There are conflicting reports as to whether he will be wrestling. TNA co-founder Jeff Jarrett says Pacman will wrestle (and has been training Pacman in the ring), but the NFL says wrestling would violate his football contract.

The Dempseys play the Madison rooftop tomorrow night. Always a great show, but with a predicted high of 101 I may skip this one.

I’ll post some pics of National Night Out later today.

Every Tuesday in August, RedHook beers will be on $2.50 Fire Sale at the Downtown Flying Saucer. In addition, every time you order one, you can ask for a slip to enter into a contest to win the guitar shown below.

Drawing will be held for the guitar on Tuesday, August 28 and I’m told that you must be present to win. I plan on entering a whole bunch of times between now and the 28th.

I was out at the other Saucer, the one on East Bumblefuck Parkway, just an hour ago… after a meeting with a client, we needed a Wi-Fi connection to go over some stuff.

Back Downtown now, preparing to head to National Night Out in Court Square for a little while. A few hours of sweatin’ with the cops, then I’ll head down the street for trivia night.

FOX 13 did a great job with their panhandling story. In addition to myself, they interviewed Handling-Panhandling co-moderator Mike King and Center City Commission security director Larry Bloom. The report went a long way toward getting the message out that donations to panhandlers generally don’t help the homeless and in fact enable people’s addictions.

Many thanks to Lauren Johnson and her videographer for a fantastic story.

I’m heading out to Bartlett for a client meeting this morning, but will be back Downtown for National Night Out this afternoon in Court Square.

Here is a public display of flowers, located at the trolley stop near Main and Peabody Place:

… and here’s a bum who has picked one of those flowers and is trying to sell it on the street for money. We watched him do this all day yesterday. He’d pick a couple of flowers from public planters, sell them, and then come back to pick more.

And here’s another bum who has also been to the same flower planter:

I bet I saw the “flower man” gimmick being applied at least 30 times last weekend. It’s a wonder there are any flowers left Downtown.

There are flower vendors on Beale who have permits to be there, but they don’t acquire their flowers by picking them from public displays. They also have vendor permits – a standard panhandling permit does not entitle the bearer to sell stuff on public streets.

The Westin is doing its usual post-Orpheum movie party Thursday night August 9 (NOTE: This one’s on a Thursday not a Friday as usual), and this looks like an especially good one.

The Orpheum will show Caddyshack at 7:15. Following the movie there will be a theme party at the Westin’s lobby bar, and they’re encouraging people to dress up. Best dressed golfer wins a $50 bar tab.

This may be of particular interest to fellow bloggers Philip and East Bumblefuck Kat. Their Ptolemy organization did a “golf pros and tennis hoes” party about a year ago (one of the “pay-to-play” parties that Kat yaps about in her blog) with attire pretty much exactly the same as the upcoming Westin event. Some of the people who attended the Ptolemy party may already have the clothes needed to win that bar tab.

There’s also the chance to win a stay in an NBA suite at the Westin, with extra-high doors and extra-long beds, or dinner at the Daily Grill.

Interview with FOX 13 went well. We met them at the Elvis statue at Main and Beale, and wouldn’t you know it, we picked the one day when there weren’t any bums out. I think they found some Downtown before they interviewed us though. Looking forward to seeing it on TV tonight.

FOX 13 is meeting Mike King and me today at noon. They will interview us about Downtown’s panhandling problem and what the Handling-Panhandling online forum is doing about it. We’ve arranged to meet them at a place Downtown where there are just about always people panhandling.

If you’re home tonight, be sure to check out the story. If they put it online, I’ll post a link to it.

Thanks to my friends at Circa for providing the info below on their first wine and food tasting. This sounds like a heck of a deal for $25. If you haven’t been to Circa yet, this might be the perfect excuse to try it out.

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Wine & Food Tasting Circa Style – On Wednesday, August 8, at 7:00 p.m. we will hold our first Circa-style wine event, led by general manager Randy Caparoso. Randy has more than 25 years of experience in the intense art of wine and food matching (check out his best stories www.wineloverspage.com/randysworld).

Please RSVP by calling (901) 522-1488. For only $25 you will be able to try each of these wines paired with our featured dishes: