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There’s a Party in the Park set for Court Square this afternoon from 4 to 7 PM. The main event of the party will be the presentation of the 2013 Downtown Vision Awards to a few folks who have played a big part in making Downtown what it is today. There will also be live music by the Mighty Souls Brass Band and Darren Jay & the Delta Souls, stilt walkers, and glow dancers.

Tonight is also Feed the Soul, a fundraiser for MIFA, tonight at The Warehouse. This is always a fabulous party with live music, bourbon tastings, a silent auction, oxygen bar and more. Your $45 admission supports one of Memphis’ finest causes.

Tonight is the first of four free movie nights put on by the SMA. Movies will be in the grassy lot (the “Ghost Field”) next to Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main. If it rains, movie will be moved to the Memphis Farmers Market Pavilion. Bring lawn chairs, blankets, dinner and friends. Tonight’s movie is Pitch Perfect. Movies for the next three weeks will be Walk the Line on the 10th, Ghostbusters on the 17th, and Beetlejuice on the 24th.

Last night I was in the Silly Goose and noticed a new item on the menu. “Stoner Pie” is tater tots covered in queso and your choice of chicken, bacon, or chorizo. Sounds tasty and I will give it a try soon.

The @midtownkrogers Twitter account has been un-suspended after the owner changed the profile. It is now clear that the account is a parody and does not really represent the Kroger store on Union. Here’s one of the tweets since the lift of the suspension.

The salad bar is NOT free samples if you need to taste it please ask the deli counter if they give you a bite and they should do it. Thanks!

Take note, Nuh-Uh Girl.

In the news: Ole Miss football players accused of using gay slurs while heckling student actors putting on a performance of “The Laramie Project.” The play is based on the story of Mathew Shepard, a Wyoming student killed in a hate crime. Sad, but not surprising. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Rebels.

Tropical Storm Karen has formed in the Gulf and is headed for the coast. Looks like she’ll strengthen briefly to a hurricane and then make fall around Pensacola. She’ll be to the east of us but a cold front will move through and bring storms anyway. High in the 60s and low around 50 Sunday. That might be my first PBR hoodie day of the season.

Time to hit Publish, run a couple of errands, and get back to an afternoon of programming. I’ll be out at the usual spots about 5:30.

Back from a short hiatus from blog posts. Sorry I missed yesterday. I was in the middle of a long, tedious web update at work, and when lunchtime arrived I was too drained and too tired of seeing a computer screen to try and work up a post.

The Blind Bear rolled out its new chef-inspired menu last night, created by new executive chef David Scott Walker. They have a full menu from open until 11 PM, and then a “Hibernation Menu” during the late-night hours of 11 PM to 2 AM. You can view the menu here. (It’s hard to see, but there are left and right arrows on the sides that will let you scroll through the entire 4-page menu.)

I was pleased to see a Scotch Egg on the menu. I haven’t had one since Dan McGuinness closed 5 years ago. For my first meal on the new menu, I decided to give Chef DSW’s Scotch Egg a try. His egg, he told me, is a little different in that it is poached rather than hard-boiled. It’s encased in smoked breakfast sausage, then deep-fried and served on a bed of sauerkraut and topped with IPA mustard and Moody Ques BBQ sauce.

I had PBR with my dinner, but I thought to myself, that Scotch Egg would go great with the apple pie moonshine they sell at the Bear.

Can’t wait to try some of the other new dishes, including the dry rub wings (also with Moody Ques BBQ sauce), the chicken slider topped with kim chi, and the Common Burger. I noticed that the Bear, which has been nearly dead Monday nights, was fairly busy yesterday, so the new menu is making a difference already.

The Church Health Center posted a new article on what the Affordable Care Act means for the health center. In short, they aren’t going anywhere, and will help fill in the holes left by the act to get health care for those in need.

Chef Gary Williams has announced that the original Florida Street location of DeJaVu will be closed for two weeks while they get the new Main Street location launched. Follow him on Twitter at @dejavuchefgary for updates.

If you’re a Tennessee resident, admission to the National Civil Rights Museum is free on Mondays from 3 to 5 PM.

The Flyer’s theater blog posted tribute to Earnestine & Hazel’s Soul Burger performed by dance troupe Project:Motion.

I’ll be at poker at 8 at the Blind Bear. Poker players: Why not show up early and give the new menu a try?

The website midtownkrogers.com has put up an announcement that the @MidtownKrogers_ (with the _ on the end) is a fake fake account. The real fake account @midtownkrogers will be back as soon as their suspension is lifted. You can also see a complete screen capture of all the @midtownkrogers tweets on the website. Come on, Kroger Corporate, have a sense of humor and request that the account be un-suspended.

For those of you wondering about the new menu roll-out that will happen at the Blind Bear tomorrow, I have confirmed with Jamie that the pepper jack mac & cheese will still be around.

Good article from Lifehacker: 10 Common Tech Questions (and their High-Tech Explanations)

Arkansas lost 45-33 to Texas A&M yesterday, but at least the Hogs looked competitive against a Top 10 team. As opposed to Ole Piss who put up a goose egg against Alabama. It must be embarrassing to be a Rebel fan today. And every day, really.

Arkansas’ next game, against Florida, will be Saturday at 6 PM on ESPN2.

Tamp & Tap is doing their Bluegrass Brunch until 3 today. Crawfish mac & cheese? I may have to check this out.

I almost got to eat at DeJaVu for the first time yesterday. About 4:15 I wandered up there for lunch, but apparently DeJaVu is one of those restaurants that closes between lunch and dinner. “Please come back at 5,” they told me, and I would have except I had a ticket to Memphis Oktoberfest at 5. So I ate at Havana’s Pilon. I hope to try it soon. I see some of my friends ate there last night and had plenty of compliments about the new Creole restaurant.

Speaking of Memphis Oktoberfest, here’s a pic:

I thought the beer festival was very well done. Fest attendees got their choice of a collector’s mug filled with the beer of their choice, or a sampler glass to try five different beers. I got the sampler glass and focused mainly on the seasonal beers. Good stuff! There were a couple of food trucks and authentic Oktoberfest beer-hall music. Once the Arkansas game started, though, I was inside watching TV.

That’s the news for this Sunday. Brunch at the Majestic starts in 5 minutes and I haven’t showered, so it looks like that will not be on the agenda for today. I’ll be at Blind Bear when it opens at noon.

Lots going on today, not surprising since it is a beautiful fall Saturday. The Big Scoop Ice Cream Festival is at AutoZone Park today from 11 to 4. There will be nearly 20 vendors serving all kinds of goodies, including Blue Bell, Yogurt Mountain, La Michoacana, Turner Dairy, Maggie Moo’s, Krispy Kreme, and many more. There will be live entertainment by the Wuvbirds, 3 Artists 1 Yard, STAX Music Academy, Typewriter Ribbon, and Valeria’s Wings. This is an important enough event that regular blog reader MILF2B is making a rare trip north of State Line Road.

From 5 to 10 tonight there will be a big street party at Second and Peabody Place: Memphis Oktoberfest. Beer tastings, a bratwurst-eating competition, food trucks, live music and a lot more. Ticket sales will support Parent Project – Muscular Dystrophy: Leading the Fight to End Duchenne.

At 8 PM tonight, the Eric Hughes Band will celebrate the release of their new CD Drink Up at The Warehouse. Should be some great music and fun times in store for those who attend. The Warehouse is the green building at the northeast corner of Front and G.E. Patterson Avenue, in the South Main District. If you want to hear live music and are in the mood for some real Memphis blues, The Warehouse is the place to go this evening.

(Note: CD packaging is a hard thing to shoot a photo of, especially with an iPhone camera. It took me longer to line up a decent shot of this CD than it did to type the first three paragraphs of this post.)

I found this excellent link in a weekly email I received recently: The Atlantic Cities. If you are into urban life there may very well be articles that interest you. Topics include neighborhoods, housing, jobs and the economy, commutes, urban trends, the arts and lifestyle, technology, and politics. As someone who believes in the heart of a city (and demonstrates it by living there), I find this site to be a must-bookmark.

In the same email I found a link to a site called Logo Garden that lets you design your own logo, for free. Readers of this blog who are working on startup businesses might want to give it a look.

Last night I was at the Blind Bear and I received a food tip from one of my poker buddies. There’s a truck that parks itself at the corner of Chelsea and Thomas (Highway 51) that sells awesome tamales. It’s not walkable from Downtown like most things I blog, but from what he tells me it’s worth the drive. Maybe I should make a list of “not technically Downtown but worth a very short drive” places. The tamale truck and Roxie’s Grocery would be on that list. There’s a soul food place that is also at Chelsea and Thomas (can’t think of the name off the top of my head) that would make the list too. The original DeJaVu on Florida Street would have made the list, but there’s no need to drive there anymore now that the Main Street Mall location is open.

From Gizmodo: The origins of 11 common drinking phrases including “three sheets to the wind,” “groggy,” and “booze.”

I’ll go ahead and use one of those terms in this post. I’m feeling a little groggy this morning. The photo below may provide an explanation.

I’ve been asked “don’t make a big deal of it” but it you look carefully, you may find information about a new product offering at one of Downtown’s bars. Note the Dos Equis Lager with extra limes (which I only drink at one bar) and the first four of 70 tap handles on the wall in the background.

Okay, now that I’m done with the news, back to someone I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I’m going to have to come up with a new nickname for MILF2B in about a month and a half when she pops the kid out. Any suggestions? I already have someone I refer to as my favorite blogger/MILF and I don’t want readers getting them confused. I guess there would still be some differentiation, since MILF2B doesn’t write a blog, which is a good thing, because if she wrote a blog it would suck. It would be all about kids and DeSoto County and would be as much of a cure for insomnia as her Foursquare timeline.

Plans for today: No, I’m not doing the ice cream festival. I’ll kick things off at Panda’s bar at Bardog at 11, then at 5 I’ll head to Memphis Oktoberfest. What to do with the hours in between? Maybe I’ll eat at the new DeJaVu for the first time. If I’m able to walk to South Main after three hours of Oktoberfest, I’ll catch Eric Hughes at The Warehouse. Fun Saturday ahead. Let’s get it started!

Yesterday as I was walking down Main Street Mall, a manager at Aldo’s Pizza Pies stopped me to pass on some IMPORTANT MIMOSA NEWS. On Saturdays and Sundays, Aldo’s will have dollar mimosas. I didn’t get the exact hours but I would assume the special will run during hours when restaurants typically serve weekend brunch. They will also have $4 Bloody Marys and screwdrivers.

The Midtown Kroger parody Twitter account appears to be back at @MidtownKrogers_ and the Flyer has more details.

The Phantom of the Opera (2004) plays the big screen at the Orpheum tonight at 7. This is one of Pat Halloran’s personal movie picks.

Chef David Scott Walker told me last night that the new Blind Bear menu will roll out Monday night. It will retain the old favorites (mac & cheese, Bear Balls, etc.) while being more upscale overall. DSW and Jamie both cringed when someone used the term “gastropub” though. As soon as the menu is up I’ll post a link.

Tonight is South Main Trolley Night, with many of the shops and galleries open 6 to 9, and live entertainment and vendors on the street.

Getting this post done early, because I have something to do at lunch. If more news comes in I’ll do another post 5:30ish.

Sad news to report this morning. The @midtownkrogers Twitter account has been suspended. It was bound to happen, because corporate America has no sense of humor. I gave the account an appropriate obituary this morning on Twitter:

RIP @midtownkrogers ur tweets contained much #information and grate deals about prodcuts at krogers #krogertweets

An October 4 event called “Love, Memphis” at Kudzu’s will raise funds for the children of Kenya. HIV and AIDS have taken their toll, leaving children orphaned and families broken. The $5 admission and 10 percent of bar sales will go toward food, school supplies, medical supplies, and stipends for teachers traveling to Kenya. “The hope is to assist with long-term sustainability projects, such as access to clean water, agriculture and a means of selling the wares they create on-site. This fundraiser is the first step, and every penny will go toward lifesaving work.” Visit the Help the Least of These website for more information.

Grizzlies owner Robert Pera takes on Tony Allen in a game of one-on-one Saturday at the Grizzlies’ practice facility in the FedExForum. If Allen wins (which is likely), Pera will donate $100,000 to St.Jude. The game will be closed to the public, but will be streaming on grizzlies.com and 92.9 FM ESPN. Zach Randolph will be the referee.

DeJaVu (it appears that’s the correct capitalization) chef Gary Williams is now on Twitter. Follow him at @dejavuchefgary. The restaurant’s new Main Street location just north of Union has been doing strong business since it opened on Tuesday.

Jay Etkin, whose gallery at Main and Huling was the anchor of South Main Trolley Night for years, is opening a new gallery in Cooper-Young.

That’ll do it for this Thursday. Time to grab some lasagna for lunch, then an afternoon of programming and an evening of drinking PBR.

The biggest news of the day is that the Memphis Flyer’s annual Best of Memphis issue has hit the stands. For those who are new to Memphis, this poll is as close to a definitive guide to the true best of Memphis as you can get. It is tons more credible than the Commercial Appeal’s Memphis Most poll, which is a shameless rip-off.

However, if you’re new to Memphis, I would recommend using the Flyer poll as a starting point from which you can continue to explore. For example, Huey’s has won Best Burger for years. I disagree. I think Huey’s has a very good burger with the best marketing. If you’re new to Memphis and want a good burger, you can’t go wrong with Huey’s. But I would encourage you to read the Best Memphis Burger blog to find other burgers you might like even better.

By the way, the winners are being tweeted on the @MemphisFlyer Twitter account today.

I’ll say it once again: If you’re not following @midtownkrogers on Twitter, you are missing out. This is a tweet from yesterday:

Fires are dangerous if youar in a fire in a krogers always keep #safe and go the closed hidrant and spray the fire down. #krogerfires

And here’s one from Saturday:

We have hot food here and you can cash a check here if you work here but no pharmacy. Other krogers have pharmacys but not us. #nophramacy

Information just doesn’t get much better than that.

Speaking of Midtown groceries, Cash Saver is hosting a Brooklyn Brewery sampling and growler fill event tonight from 5 to 7. The Fuzzy Brew blog has details.

Tomorrow is the second in the fall series of Peabody rooftop parties, and one of my favorite bands will be performing: Aquanet. This band does covers from 1980s hair bands in full costume. If you like Poison, Ratt, Winger, Bon Jovi, Warrant, Cinderella, and Motley Crue, this act is a must-see. Admission is $10 and includes your first drink and a buffet of fried green tomatoes and po’boy sandwiches. Drink special is Cruzan rum with choice of mixer for $4. Those in VIP will have a second buffet of chicken Bourbon en croute, muffalettas, and red beans & rice with andouille sausage. Doors open at 6. Ladies free until 7. There will be two more parties in the fall series, on October 17 and 31.

I’ll be at Blind Bear trivia tonight at 8. Charles is out of town, so a member of my former 2005-11 trivia team is stepping in to call trivia. I don’t know if I will play, but I will be there for moral support and to put anything unintentionally funny he says on Twitter. I was there last night for poker and was doing well for a while until Hurricane Bean blew through and changed the required skill level to play from poker to bingo.

Outta here for now. Happy Wednesday and don’t forget to pick up a copy of the Flyer.

I wanted most of my lunchtime post to be about my experience at Mad Earl poker, so I held some stuff back. Let’s get the rest of the news out in this second Tuesday post.

The RDC has removed fencing at Beale Street Landing. This will give walkers and joggers access to the sidewalk running along Riverside Drive.

One of my readers emailed in response to my negative experience with Yellow Cab Sunday. You can call them in advance and schedule a pickup time. So I could have called at 8 AM when I got up to request a 10:30 pickup. Did not know that. She says they’re usually on time if not 5 minutes early. Maybe I’ll give that a try, but the cab company is definitely at two strikes with me.

AutoZone Park will screen Hocus Pocus on its big screen Saturday, October 26 at 6:00. The 1993 movie is about three modern-day witches in Salem, Mass. and is rated PG but is said to be family-friendly. Kids can dress in Halloween costumes, and there will be trick-or-treating and a limited number of hayrides along the ballpark’s warning track. Tickets are $6 in advance or $20 for a Family Four Pack in advance; $10 individual tickets at the gate. Go to www.memphisredbirds.com to get tickets.

MATA has received a $2.2 million grant to improve the Main Street trolley line, as reported by the MBJ.

A few things I learned about the block of Madison between Second and Third while playing poker at the Mad Earl last night:

1) A new wing place is close to opening in the old Thai Bistro space. Wing joints traditionally haven’t done well on that block, but now it’s reaching critical mass where there are enough active businesses for them all to do well.

2) Havana’s Pilon will soon expand into the building next door, eliminating the issue of limited seating.

3) Something is about to happen with the old Burger King restaurant at Second and Maggie H. Isabel. I’m not 100% sure I am cleared to blog what will be going in there, but it will be the first time that location has had much going on since 1993.

And that’s the rest of the news. On my way out to the Saucer for happy hour, then over to the Blind Bear for poker.

Last night I played poker at the Mad Earl for the first time. I’ll share my thoughts on the game at the end of this post, but first of all I want to mention a charity poker tournament I was told about while playing. It will be this Saturday, September 28, at the Hard Rock Cafe to benefit Mid-South Pride. The grand prize will be $500 in Amazon gift cards, with 2nd through 8th place also receiving prizes. Pre-registration and mixer at 4 PM, and play begins at 6. $35 pre-registration, $45 at the door if space available (limited to 50 players), $20 add-ons and re-entry. Go to midsouthpride.org for more details.

The first annual Memphis Tattoo Arts Convention happens Friday-Sunday, October 18-20 at the Cook Convention Center. There will be tattoo contests, seminars, live music, vendors, and of course tattoo artists. Featured artists include Amy Nicoletto from LA Ink, Alli Baker from Best Ink, and James Vaughn from Ink Master. Reverend Horton Heat will play Friday the 18th at 9 PM.

The remainder of this post will be a review of my experience playing poker at the Mad Earl. They have games at 6:30 and 8:30 on Monday, run by the River Rat Rounders. I have played at the other Downtown locations that run live poker nights (Silly Goose, Blind Bear, Double J, Jerry Lee Lewis). My assessment of Mad Earl poker is that it’s not better or worse, but different, and everyone who enjoys the aforementioned games should try Mad Earl at least once to see if they like it.

The first-place prize in the games is an Amazon gift card. That’s a good prize because people from out of town who stop in and play will have a much easier time redeeming their prize than if they win bar bucks. Starting stack is 1500 – only 30 big blinds at the first level of 25/50 – but there are a ton of ways to earn extra chips. These include using your card guard, bringing a new player, wearing River Rat apparel, putting a sticker on your car, arriving early to help set up, answering trivia questions, buying the featured shot, buying food, putting money in the jukebox, checking in on Facebook, and bringing cash game or tournament slips from Harrah’s. By the time I got all the “extras” I’d qualified for, I had a starting stack of 4000, or 80 big blinds. Matt who runs the game told me that the Nuh-Uh Girl is usually there on Mondays, although this week she’s in California. Since you get extra chips for buying food, I would imagine she’s the chip leader at the tables most weeks.

When you get to the final table at a weekly game, you earn points toward the 12-week league final table that encompasses all the games the River Rat Rounders run. Grand prize at the final table is an entry to the Harrah’s $15,000 Guarantee Tournament in Tunica.

As for the playing experience, I really enjoyed it. Everyone was super-nice, from Matt who was running the game to Clay who runs the Mad Earl (and who played at my table) to the people behind the bar. The players were a mixture of good and inexperienced, typical of what you see in bar games. It seems like there is less random, kamikaze play from people who should know better compared to the other bar poker games Downtown (this is why I’ve quit coming to a few of them). The game was over in just over 2 hours.

The Mad Earl handles latecomers differently than the other Downtown games. They placed stacks at the empty seats, and dealt them in and blinded them off. So, if you want to show up 30 minutes late, you can do that, but you might be starting with a stack of 1250 rather than 1500. I LIKE THAT. LIKE IT A LOT.

They also have two decks running simultaneously so less time is wasted on shuffling. As the dealer dealt, the small blind would be shuffling the other deck, to have it ready for when he/she became the dealer next hand. Of course, as the shots started flowing, people would forget to shuffle, but for a while it worked. As soon as the first person got eliminated from the final table, Matt sat down and dealt for us.

All in all, I enjoyed the game at the Mad Earl. I won’t be there all the time since I have a standing non-poker engagement on Mondays (Pint Nite at the Saucer) but now and then I’ll be back. (Disclosure: When I went to pay my tab after the game, they told me I didn’t have one.)

Oh, one other very important piece of information I forgot to mention: They have PBR on draft.

Downtown poker players: I’ll be playing at the Blind Bear game tonight at 8. I’ll get there a few minutes early, so if you have any questions about the Mad Earl game you can ask me then.

Last night I posted Burger Fest photos. Now, let me tell you about my ride down there. I don’t believe in driving drunk, so I called a cab. Yellow/Checker Cab (the one with the 577-7777 number) is the largest cab company in Memphis. They had some trouble with addresses after installing a new tablet-based GPS system, but I figured that after a year, they must have worked it out. So I called at 10:20 AM and requested a cab to pick me up at 2 South Main, at the intersection of Madison.

There I stood until 10:45. No cab. I called and requested an ETA. All I got was “we’ll get one your way as quick as we can.” At 10:55 I called and told them to just cancel the cab, because I didn’t want to wait any longer. Then I walked down to the Peabody. There were three Yellow/Checker cabs sitting around waiting for passengers. One of those couldn’t have been dispatched to my location a few blocks away? By the time I got to Minglewood Hall it was 11:10, 50 minutes after I called for a cab. I could have walked to Minglewood in 50 minutes.

Several of the people on the Squeal Street team had cab trouble too. I continue to hear that the Taxi Magic app is the way to go, and I will use that next time.

Dining recommendation for today: Chili’s. No I’m not kidding. 100% of today’s net profits (dine-in and carry-out) will be donated to St.Jude.

Yesterday I inquired about dog-friendly patios Downtown. Deni from the Majestic emailed to let me know that their patio has always been dog-friendly. In fact, one time they even had a birthday party for a dog on their patio.

Groupon is offering a deal on the Harlem Globetrotters exhibition Saturday, January 11 at the FedExForum.

That’s it for now. I’ll be at the Flying Saucer for Pint Nite around 5:30. Contemplating whether to give the Mad Earl’s poker night a try – there are 6:30 and 8:30 games, but if I will play it will be the 8:30 one. Amazon gift card is awarded to the winner.