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I’ve been asked to be a celebrity judge for a holiday event at the Majestic Grille next Thursday, December 18.  Details to come in a second…

… but I had to switch over to my Facebook account to get details of the event, and while there I noticed that one of my friends has updated her “about me” to read, “I am a nicer, younger, cooler version of Martha Stewart.”  Facebook needs a “people I’m embarrassed to admit I know” section as well as a “friends” section.

Anyway… the contest is part of the Majestic Grille’s special showing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on their big screen Thursday night the 18th.  Seating is at 7:30 with a special menu for the event, and the movie begins at 8.  There will be two contests, one for the tackiest Christmas sweater and another for the most authentic character costume for the movie.  I’ll be a judge for those.

Special menu consists of mixed greens salad, bourbon and brown sugar glazed baked ham, stewed green beans, macaroni and cheese, warm biscuits, and sherry trifle plus $19.95 plus tax and gratuity.  The regular menu will be available too.

They’re already filling up with reservations, so call 522-8555 if you want to attend the event.

Last night I visited Hoop’s new place for the first time.  Many Downtowners fondly remember the original Hoop’s Bar, a friendly neighborhood bar that was on the second floor of EP Delta Kitchen.  With a beer pong table, Wii bowling, and one of the most entertaining bar staffs ever, Hoop’s Bar continued to flourish even after EP’s started to go downhill.  Unfortunately, when EP’s closed in September, it had to close too.

Hoop’s new place, however, may be even better.  It’s the Voodoo Room in the basement of Orleans on Front (formerly Cayenne Moon, on Front between Union and Gayoso across from the Butcher Shop).  It has its own private entrance – look for an open door on Front, with steps leading downstairs.  There you’ll find a very groovy speakeasy-style lounge run by Hoop.  I was in there a couple of months ago for Orleans on Front’s grand opening.  Since then Hoop has made some changes to the downstairs to make it more appealing.  In particular, he enlarged the bar so it seats about 10, and the beer pong table has made its return.  He’s working on getting Wii.

Now for the answer to the important question:  They have PBR, and they serve it the way it was meant to be served, in cans.  Price is a reasonable 2 bucks each.

For food, they’ll have Orleans on Front’s menu until 10, and then after that they’ll have the Voodoo Room late-night menu.   That menu is still under construction but here’s what was on it as of last night:  Cheese stix; sweet potato fritters; parmesan fried green tomatoes with comeback sauce; french fries with comeback sauce; Rotel cheese fries; 2 hot dogs; pork chop sandwich; double cheeseburger; triple cheeseburger; blackened chicken sandwich; blackened or cornmeal breaded catfish basket or sandwich; homemade bread pudding with Southern Comfort bourbon sauce.  All the sandwiches, burgers, and dogs come with fries, and Rotel can be added to anything for $1.50.  Again, the menu is still not totally decided at this point.  Appetizers are $4-6.50 and sandwiches and baskets are $5-8, $9 for the triple cheeseburger.

The new bar will be open until 3 every night.  Hoop will be behind the bar Tuesday through Saturday, and Lauren (who also works at Calhoun’s, and used to work at the Saucer) will be there Sundays and Mondays.

Wow… so now I have the Voodoo Room, the Saucer, and Bardog Tavern all within 4 blocks of my front door.  Talk about a power trio of places to get a beer.  And Silly Goose is not far from opening.  And I want to try the new late night menu at Automatic Slim’s sometime soon too.  Downtown just keeps getting better and better!

I’m thinking about getting the triple cheeseburger with Rotel next time I go, just so I can tell my health guru AL that I did.

In other news:  Looks like the issue of what to wear to the ugly sweater party has been resolved… my friend Bicycle Bobby has a hideously ugly green sweater he’s going to give me.  Unfortunately he wants me to meet him at the Saucer tonight to pick it up… the Saucer?  I hate that place!  All that beer is so unhealthy, and the outfits those girls wear are just plain indecent.  I’ll have to spend extra time at church on Sunday to make up for it.  And by “church” I mean “brunch at the Majestic.”

I sent out an e-mail to my trivia team’s e-mail list kicking off the annual “what are we going to do on New Year’s Eve” discussion/argument a few minutes ago.  I’m looking for a better communication method than a Google e-mail list, because we keep leaving people off who aren’t on the trivia team.  What I’m looking for is a web-based contact manager where everyone in our group (whether on the team or not) can add their e-mail addresses.  Then, when someone has something they want to send out to the group, they can go through and check boxes next to names of people they want to invite, or click a “select all” button to check everybody.  It would then produce a list of e-mail addresses that can be pasted into the To: field of any e-mail program.  So far I haven’t found anything like that.  If anyone knows of such a tool let me know.  If I can’t find anything, I may write one using PHP.

More posts to come today – I’ve been asked to be a “celebrity judge” for an event at the Majestic Grille next week, and I’ll have info on a new cheap beer night at Calhoun’s.

Hungry for lasagna, I decided to make the trek through Court Square and onward to Third Street to visit Roma Italian Restaurant.  However, it was not to be… it appears that Roma is no more.  Furthermore, it looks like the space is about to be taken over by someone else, because there is a beer permit hearing sign in the window.  Too bad they didn’t make it… their lasagna was tops.  It just goes to show how important location is.  Third is still a couple of blocks off the beaten path in terms of pedestrian traffic.

So, I walked back down Madison, thinking, “where am I going to eat now?” when I happened upon Smitty’s Place, a little meat-and-two restaurant in the old Conte’s Italian Restaurant location.  I went in and had the turkey and dressing.  Very good food, good-sized portions.  One can never pile up the plate with too much dressing as far as I’m concerned.  Give it a try if you like Blue Plate and Little Tea Room.  I notice that they have ox tails on Sunday.  I’ve never had an ox tail before.

As I walked home, I noticed that Java Wings & Waffles is also closed.  Another one I’ll miss.  They had some good wings there.

Upon returning home, I decided to hit the Hot Chicks with Douchebags site before getting back to work.  They are doing their 2008 Douchie Awards, and I saw that Fung has won the Greatest Crisis of Modernity Award. Good deal – Fung is possibly the most ridiculous looking human being I have ever seen.  I think a lot of the site’s readers would have been very upset if he hadn’t won at least one of this year’s awards.

Going to do a couple more hours work, then hit the Saucer for happy hour.  Red Seal Ale is the Fire Sale today, so those of you who like to see pale ales/hoppy beers on Fire Sale, you’re in luck.

Just a reminder that the Red Rooster’s “Girls’ Night Out” is tonight from 6 to 9 PM.  Girls only during those hours, with drink specials, food, and prize giveaways.  Ladies, if you’re looking for somewhere to go with your best friends tonight after work, this would be a good spot.  Guys will be admitted after 9.

A big win for the Handling-Panhandling forum and the CCC’s Downtown Safety Task Force:  Over the past year we’ve repeatedly posted about one particular parking scammer who pretends that he works on the Premier lot at Main and Beale, as well as other locations around Downtown.  Well, yesterday the CCC safety director informed me that the owner of the lot swore out an Authorization of Agency against the scammer, not only for the Main/Beale lot but for 5 other Premier Parking lots Downtown.  If a police officer catches him on any of those lots in the future, he will now go straight to jail for criminal trespass.  The Downtown security patrol will carry copies of the Authorization of Agency on them at all times, so if they see him on the lots, all they have to do is make a phone call and he gets a ride to 201 Poplar.  This guy is most certainly not homeless, is usually well-dressed with neatly pressed clothes, often the same colors as the actual lot attendants.  Maybe he’ll finally move on now.

Note for people planning holiday/Christmas parties:  If at all possible, make sure everyone knows about them at least a week in advance.  If you announce a party 3-4 days before it happens, a lot of the guests are already going to be committed elsewhere this time of year.  That said, if I have any parties on the 18th to attend that I haven’t been told about, please let me know by the end of the day.  Otherwise I’m going to accept a very interesting invitation that arrived in my e-mail Inbox this morning.  (Edit: Just checked Facebook Events and remembered that’s the night of a very large, can’t-miss private party elsewhere in Downtown.)

Fun night last night!  Mpact Memphis’ holiday party was at a private residence on Mud Island, and it was a lot of fun.  It really drew upon the group’s diversity.  There were a variety of dishes, all prepared by members, which are the kind of dishes they prepare for their own holiday celebrations.  There was also a discussion of Christmas traditions observed by Mpact members, and several charities and nonprofits presented opportunities to donate in someone’s name as alternatives to traditional gift-giving.  I’ll say it once again to my friends who were active with me in Mpact in 2002-04:  It’s fun again.  Time to come back and give it another try.  I hear they’re planning a beer tasting in early ’09.  Hmmm may have to show up for that one.

As the party wound down, my friend Sam asked me, “Hey, do you want to go to the Saucer?”  Do fish like water?  So I drove back to the Downtown core and headed up there.  We hung out for a couple of hours, and I filled him in a lot of details like how I became part of the Sunday brunch crew, how my group of friends all got to know each other, etc.  Sam took off about 11, and I hung out at the bar for a little while, then my friend Kacy saw me and said to come join her group.

After a little while, someone suggested a venue change to Bardog.  I’m always up for Bardog, so I said I’d meet them there.  They took a cab from Saucer to Bardog, a 3-block trip.  Geez.  I refused to take part in the cab ride and walked there to meet them.

We ended up sitting in the corner booth near the kitchen.  Kacy and her date had been to Felicia Suzanne’s for dinner and raved about it.  “The service was impeccable,” she told me.  “We had 5 people waiting on us.  I’ve eaten there maybe 30 times and the food is always so consistently good.”

I tried to get some of the Bud Light and Miller Lite drinkers at the table to upgrade to PBR, but didn’t have much luck.  They left about 1:30 and I moved to the bar, where some of the Saucer waitresses had come for a drink after their shift ended.  One more PBR and I was home as the clock struck 2.

7 hours’ sleep and I was in front of the computer at 9 AM this morning, ready to get started on the personal finance software I plan to unveil in early January.  The program is just so brilliant.  I can’t wait to get it out there.

In summary, life is good.  I’ll probably be out somewhere tonight, not sure where.

The Memphis Flyer recently interviewed foodie/mom Patty Dougherty to get her opinion on the best brunch in Memphis.  Her response?

“Majestic Grille,” she answers without hesitation. “It’s great value, and the food is fantastic.”

Read the full article, with information on the Majestic Grille’s Dec. 20 Brunch with Santa, here.

More info on the Shrine Building resident looking for a roommate:  It’s Unit 302, and he’s asking for $800 + utilities.  Electricity averages about $100, cable about $30.  The building has a rooftop, indoor pool, and sauna.  He’s looking for someone mature and responsible who can live there about 9-12 months, preferably a male.  He doesn’t allow pets because this is a condo and pets can hurt resale value.  As I said in an earlier post, the Shrine is right in the heart of the Downtown core and is super convenient to everything.  If interested shoot me an e-mail (paul@paulryburn.com) and I’ll pass it along.

I got an answer as to what the “lose the shoes, find the pickle” slogan for the Mpact holiday party means.  It’s an Austrian and German tradition in which a pickle ornament is hidden somewhere on the Christmas tree.  Whoever finds the pickle gets a special present.  The pickle is hard to find because it’s about the same color as the tree.  Those wacky Austrians and Germans.  Other Austrian and German traditions include eating schnitzel and losing world wars.

Want to see a cool place to work?  Blogger and tech evanglist Guy Kawasaki recently visited the headquarters of Zappos, a little Internet retail startup that sells shoes and does about a billion a year in revenue.  Check out the pictures of their company HQ. This is a place I would love to work.  Some of it is perhaps a little over the top, such as the dance machine in the lobby, but there is no doubt that you would have to have a big personality to work there.  Note that they provide business books to their employees, that they have fun even with trash, and especially note how the employees are dressed.  Oh, and note that collaboration spaces are generally not boring conference rooms (although they do have one, for people who expect to see that kind of thing).  Why can’t Memphis companies be this interesting?

Still prepping for my 1:15 meeting at the Second Street branch office… I hope the Fire Sale’s good today.

Another business meeting at the Saucer today.  I’m sure that will prompt an “ugh Downtowners” comment from one of my Facebook friends again.  This one concerns the personal finance software I’ve talked about for the past week… we’re going to make plans to make final revisions and then get the program to market.  More details to come soon.  I’m excited about it because we’re going to be doing the kind of viral marketing Seth Godin talks about in his books.

B.B. King plays his club tonight.  I’ve heard the show is sold out.  The rumor is that this may be his last show, due to the fact that he’s 83 and his diabetes is getting worse.  Several celebrities are said to be attending the event tonight.  Justin Timberlake and Sheryl Crow are among the names I’ve heard dropped.

Metro Memphis got its first Panera yesterday. A location opened out in Collierville, and one is coming to Laurelwood soon.  They say they plan to eventually open 12 locations in Memphis, and I’ve heard talk that one of them may be Downtown.  I wonder how well a Panera would do in the core considering we already have Blues City Pastry… perhaps one would work well toward the north end of the core (maybe in the ground floor of the Lincoln-American Tower?) or in the Pinch, which has been hurting for a bakery/coffee shop since Cafe Francisco closed.

There’s a good article in the Commercial Appeal about Mpact Memphis executive director Gwyn Fisher.  Congrats to Gwyn on the article, and for making Mpact so much fun this year.  I’m looking forward to their “How I Holiday Bash” tonight.  “Lose the shoes and find the pickle” is the tagline for this event.  Don’t ask me; I have no idea what it means either.  The point is, it’s a party where you can share how you celebrate the holidays.  Attn ladies who have been talking about “Christmas tube tops” lately:  This would be a good chance to show them off.

Congrats to the Rapscallions who came from way behind to pick up a second-place finish in trivia last night, bringing our total to $50 for our next party.  Attn Ann: Where was your team last night?  The Weiss Asses won first place, their first trivia victory since 1856, the year that a lot of their members celebrated their 40th birthdays.  I think I’m going to start sitting at window seats, rails, and on couches more often, because I’m tired of dealing with a certain bartender.

Speaking of trivia… I’ve heard that Jillian’s has decided to increase their Thursday night trivia prizes to $100 for first place, $65 for second, and $35 for third.  Not a bad idea, considering that Thursday is a tough night to do trivia.  If they want the night to work, they need to develop a regular following before rooftop party season starts up again in April.  Since they read my blog, I’m going to point something out:  It should never ever take more than two minutes to get a beer at the bar.  If there are problems with the kegs, etc., those need to be sorted out before 7 when trivia starts, not when there are already 15 thirsty people waiting.  With several new locals’ spots open or about to open (Bardog, Voodoo Lounge @ Orleans on Front, Silly Goose), a bar with 200 beers and hot waitresses across the street, and the Rooster competing for game-watching crowds, Jillian’s cannot afford to screw up if it wants a piece of Downtowners’ business.

Panhandler alert:  There’s an extremely aggressive panhandler who goes by the initials “G.M.” who has been going around begging a lot lately.  His opening line is usually something like, “Hey, big dog.  Sir.  Sir.  Scuse me.  Sir.  Hey, look here, big time, I ain’t no bum or nothin’, I’m just trying to get me about fifteen billion dolla so I can put some fuel in my corporate jet.  Can you help me out?”  I can’t believe people are actually giving this guy money.  Of course, he goes through the usual sob story about how he’s going to turn his life around, but you can tell he’s been saying that for 20 years or more.

Time to prepare for my meeting… I can’t find the product manual, which is kind of a problem.  For those going to Mpact’s party, I’ll see you tonight.

Since it’s only the second week, I figure I’d better remind everyone that Bardog Tavern is doing Pint Night on Tuesdays now, with all ten draft beers only $3 from 7 PM to 3 AM.  That’s a discount of a buck or two on most of them.  With PBR it’s a 50 cent upcharge, so unless you really love PBR it’s a good night to drink something else.

Well, there goes my productivity for the afternoon.  Google Maps has lauched its StreetView of Memphis.  You can zoom in on your neighborhood, click the icon that looks like an orange man, and then use the arrows to take a virtual walk around.

Looks like Downtown was shot on a weekend morning, because most of the parking lots are empty.  It was probably shot at least a year ago, because the Red Rooster didn’t yet exist when I “walked” down Second.

Then I took a “walk” around the neighborhood South of the FedExForum.  Some of the bums are known to crash at a house on Allen Street – and when I “walked” down Allen, there they were on the front porch.  Virtual bums!

I’ve already had people e-mail me to say they looked for me in the window of the Flying Saucer, but it apparently hadn’t opened yet.

I got a message on Facebook this morning from a guy who lives in the Shrine Building.  His roommate just moved out and he’s looking for a new one.  Send me an e-mail at paul@paulryburn.com if interested and I’ll pass it on.

I shot him a message back asking for more details about the living space itself… will post those when I get them.  The Shrine is in the heart of the Downtown core, at Front and Monroe.  You’d be a 3-block walk from Autozone Park, less than a block walk to fine dining (Stella, Felicia Suzanne’s, McEwen’s), about 4 blocks to Beale Street and 5 to the FedExForum.  There’s a Walgreens a block away and two small grocery stores (Jack’s and Easy Way) 3 blocks away.  If you want to meet the locals, there’s a friendly bar (Bardog) across the street on Monroe.  Lots of good dining on Union and Second nearby.

After 7 years down here, I can’t imagine living anywhere but the Downtown core.  There’s no place like home.  E-mail me if interested, and I’ll try to get more details about the place.