Category: Uncategorized

You need to get your ass down to Wang’s (Main at Gayoso, inside Wang’s China Bistro) 9 to 2 Th-Sat) for some of the best live music in town. I went up there tonight about 9 and this is what I found:

From what I’ve been told, this is just the beginning of things to come. If you go to Wang’s, these will be your bartenders:

Their names are Scarlet and Danielle. Personally, I think they would make better tips if they observed Tube Top Month during June. Anyway, go by there and tell them that Paul Ryburn’s Blog sent you. Thur-Sat, 9-2.

This morning as I was driving to work, I noticed that China Town Imports at 1971 Union is having a going-out-of-business sale. “Everything must go!” said the sign. I’ve never been in there, but a lot of my friends have found some unique gifts and knick-knacks there – if I remember correctly, one bought a glass chess set, and another bought some jewelry. From what I’ve heard, even before the sale their prices were very reasonable. So if you’re a bargain hunter, or if you want to make one last shopping trip before the place is gone for good, you might want to check it out soon.

Speaking of China… there was this really cute Chinese girl in a green and white striped tube top at BBQ Fest on Saturday. I didn’t get a chance to meet her because she was standing in a long line for Willingham’s BBQ, and my friends and I were heading toward the south end of the park. If anyone has the 411 on her, hook a brotha up…

The Memphis Italian Festival starts today and runs through Saturday. It’s at Marquette Park at the corner of Park and Mt.Moriah and runs from 6 pm to 10 pm today and 11 am to 11 pm Friday and Saturday.

I probably won’t go myself, because this is one of those events where it’s not much fun if you don’t know someone in one of the booths (but invitations to booths might change my mind: e-mail me your invitations). Besides, the fest is about a 9-mile drive from my apartment, which means I’d have to severely limit the alcohol intake to be able to drive home, and what fun is that? On the plus side, there would probably be some good tube top sightings, considering it’s an outdoor festival in early June, with highs in the mid-80s.

25% chance I’ll go.

It’s back! For the entire month of June, it will be Tube Top Month right here in this blog. What that means is, every post for the entire month will mention tube tops in some form or fashion, no matter how little relevance tube tops have to the rest of the post. There will also be pictures of tube tops, links to places to buy tube tops, and lots of other fun stuff.

Tube Top Month can be quite educational. For example, at the beginning of Tube Top Month last year, one of my regular blog readers thought a tube top could have straps. “It’s almost a tube top!” she said. Through repeated counseling in the form of blog entries, I finally helped her realize that there’s no such thing as almost a tube top. By the end of the month, she had made progress, but still wasn’t quite there. “Well, if it has straps, and I untie the straps, and the top stays up, it’s a tube top, right?” Sorry, no.

I thought Tube Top Month had been a failure, at least where she was concerned. But my proudest moment came on January 7, 2006, when she showed up at my plate party at the Flying Saucer wearing the outfit pictured below:

And at that point I realized all my hard work had paid off… I was doing my part to make the world a better place, one tube top at a time. And my influence continues to spread… for example, I know that fellow blogger Kat has been wearing more tube tops since she started reading my blog. Even The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet, with whom I rarely see eye to eye on anything, has told me that she’s going to purchase and wear a tube top in celebration of Tube Top Month.

So here’s looking forward to an exciting month of posts… have pics of yourself in a tube top? Send ’em to me and I’ll post ’em! Happy June everybody….

This is going to be a repost, and I apologize for that, because usually I don’t do those.

But this once, I’m going to do it, for two reasons:

1) This weekend I was surfing MySpace… looking at friends’ pages and friends of friends’ pages, and friends of friends of friends’ pages, and I came across the stupidest thing I have ever read in my life… “The Poopshakes Rap.” A girl had written a rap in her MySpace blog about how her dog digs holes in the yard. It’s so bad I’m not even going to quote it or link to it here, but let’s just say this: uninteresting subject material + poor attempts at rhyming + not funny or entertaining at all = a really, really BAD rap.

So, I’ve decided to show all the blogger/rapper wannabes out there how it’s done.

2) This really is one of my favorite posts of all time. It was originally written in April 2005, when my readership was only about 10% of what it is today… so I figure quite a few of you haven’t seen it in the archives.

A little historical background… at the time this was written, John Paul II had been dead for a couple of weeks, and Benedict XVI had not yet been elected. It was one of those periods in history during which there was no Pope. I suggested that maybe it was time for the Papacy to update its image a little bit – instead of chanting in Latin, the new Pope could rap.

POPESTER IN THA HIZZY
(c) 2005-2006 Paul Ryburn. All rights reserved.

Listen up, party people, on your spiritual search
Listen to the grandmaster of the Catholic Church
‘Cause the Vatican is where I make my home
And some people know me as the Bishop of Rome

I’m the P-O-P-E to tha S-T-E-R
And the Popemobile is what they call my car!
The windows are covered in bulletproof glass
So can’t nobody bust a cap up in my ass

As I ride through the crowd, and preach the Word loud
And try my best to make St. Peter proud
‘Cause Peter was the first, he was Popester number one
And a personal acquaintance of God’s only Son

So listen up, party people, you women and you men
I will tell you what is righteous, I will tell you what is sin
Let us all come together on this most holy day
Bend down on our knees, bow our heads, and let’s pray.

Heavenly Father
Heavenly Father
We love thee
We praise thee

You GO God!
You GO God!
Get down
With yo bad self

Get doooooooowwwwwnnnnn……..
(drums)

The Catholic Church, in its infinite knowledge
Brought its leaders together in the Cardinal College
And they elected me, they said I be’s da man
Who can lead the church like no one else can

So I come with blessings for each and every one
The bishops, the priests, the cardinals and the nuns
Looking mighty sexy in my flowing papal robe
I give shout-outs to my dawgs across tha globe

You Italian priests and you bishops from France
Shake it down, shake it like you got a bee in your pants
And you American priests, stand up and make some noise!
You ain’t Michael Jackson, stay away from the young boys

My name is the Pope, I bring the world hope
If you ain’t down with Jesus, you must be smoking dope!
So spread the word across the Holy See
That the man they call the Popester is in tha hizzy!

GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!

GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!

GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER!
GO POPESTER….
Yeah…
Popester in tha hizzy fo shizzy in tha zero zero six, dawg
Know what I’m sayin’?
Werrrd…..

The Rapscallions finished third again in trivia tonight, earning a whopping $10 gift certificate. That brings our grand total to $145.

Interesting fact I learned tonight: There are 4 TRILLION chickens in China. A trillion is a thousand billion. That means there are nearly a thousand Chinese chickens for every human on earth.

Blah. Third place. When did we become such underachievers?

Think I’ll walk to the Tap Room and see if Maurice has The Oblongs on.

That was the name of the most popular drink at Sleep Out’s this past Sunday. According to iDrink.com, a duck fart is 1 ounce each of coffee liqueur, Irish cream, and whiskey. Taste can be described as a White Russian with an extra kick. Duck farts were the cause of much merriment at Sleep Out’s as the evening wore on, much of which I’m not allowed to mention in this blog, but that’s fine because I don’t remember most of it anyway.

One story I am allowed to tell… at one point someone put a mix CD in the bar’s player. A song by Kermit the Frog came on, and I stood up, raised my fists high in the air, and shouted, “Kermit the GODDAMN Frog!” and the entire bar went silent for about 10 seconds.

Duck farts apparently make you smarter. After about four duck farts, I got the #1 score in the bar for the month on their NTN Trivia game, and Sleep Out’s ranked #1 in the nation for the team score for a subsequent game.

Viva la duck fart!

So I’m sitting here at Sleep Out’s and the Formula One race is on TV and I’m watching it and playing NTN Trivia at the same time. One of the Formula One sponsors is Johnnie Walker, and it made me think that Jimmie Walker should have some kind of liquor named after him. Dyn-O-Mite! It would give me something new to write about in “What The Bums Are Drinking This Week.”

Speaking of Johnnie Walker… back in the 1960s there was a professional wrestler called “Rubberman” Johnny Walker. In the ’70s he put on a mask and started calling himself Mr. Wrestling II and challenged Harley Race and Ric Flair for the NWA World title.

Speaking of wrestling… ECW is making a comeback. It will be on the Sci-Fi Channel at 9 PM Central every Tuesday. ECW popularized the “hardcore” style of wrestling in the ’90s, with wrestlers being thrown through burning tables, thumbtacks, etc. It is no longer an independent promotion, but rather it exists under the banner of the WWE. However, its creator, Paul Heyman, will be doing the booking.

Speaking of NTN Trivia… as a bar Sleep Out Louie’s came in 10th then 9th then 6th in the nation last night. Top 5 scores averaged determine the bar score. I have pics in my camera but I don’t have a USB connection to download them to the laptop at the current time.

The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet asked what she’d have to do so that I’d stop referring to her as The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet in my blog. She should apply to NASA to live in the space station for a year. Then, I guess technically, she wouldn’t be The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet anymore. She’d be The Most Annoying Woman In Space.

Attn The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet: Please take your damn dog with you if you go.

John who is sitting here with me at the bar at Sleep Out’s informs me that not only do they sell produce at the Farmer’s Market Saturday mornings at Main and GE Patterson, they sell meat as well. Yesterday he bought steak and ground beef.

John also tells me that Bosco’s has bought 821 S. Main and will be using that building as their main brewery operation. John is just a fountain of useful information.

Except John just told me the wrong answer to a trivia question, costing me 787 points.

Pam, who is also sitting with me at Sleep Out’s, tells me that J.Wag’s is closing. It’s the oldest gay bar in all of Memphis. They’re having some kind of grand closing party tonight.

Which reminds me… in Bucharest, Romania there’s a club called Impaler. It’s named after Vlad The Impaler, who is the real-life historical figure who inspired Count Dracula. It’s probably not the only club in the world named Impaler, but I’d be willing to bet it’s the only non-gay club in the world with that name.

NTN Trivia question that just came up: This country lost 70% of its land in a 1920 treaty. Answer: Hungary, which among other losses was forced to give up Transylvania to Romania. Just think… if the other side had won World War I, I might be blogging about how hot Hungarian girls are.

I guess as a Memphian, I’m supposed to say something about the FedEx-St.Jude Golf Classic going on this week. So here goes.

Golf sucks. And the tournament is way out in East Bumblefuck, and why would anyone want to go out there?

And that concludes the commentary on the FedEx-St.Jude Golf Classic.

And that concludes this drunk post. To use a Mikeyism, it’s been real, it’s been great, but it’s time for Paul to evacuate.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to Steve Cohen’s grand opening today. Allergies have been kicking my ass the past day or so. I just bought the Walgreens version of Claritin-D and hopefully that will help. I had to show my ID and stuff so that they could track that I’m not using the pseudoephedrine in the pills to start a meth lab.

Besides, I’m too busy loading files on my new laptop to go out. I’m using my new iPod for the file transfer – it’s not only a music and video player, but also a 30 GB hard drive. I’m definitely noticing the difference between USB 1.1 and 2.0. On the old computer, which has USB 1.1 ports, it takes about 30 minutes to move a ~1GB folder onto the iPod. On the new computer, which has USB 2.0, the copy takes 3-5 minutes. Never realized it made such a difference.

I’m also abandoning Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail client, except to store backup copies of messages. The reason why? I can forward all my e-mail to my Gmail account, and read it from there. I can still send from Gmail as paul at paulryburn.com, and Gmail’s mail-reading features are far superior to those of Outlook, Thunderbird or any other e-mail client. When I was researching laptops, I remembered that my mother had once sent me her username and password to the Consumer Reports site. But I couldn’t remember when – a month to a month and a half ago, and I didn’t want to waste time digging through stacks of old mail to look for it. I typed “consumer reports” in the Gmail search box, and it found it instantly. I also love the way Gmail threads e-mail conversations, and its contact manager is as good or better than commercial e-mail programs.

How does one dispose of a computer monitor in an environmentally friendly way? I know you’re not supposed to just toss them in the dumpster, although I’m damn tempted to. Given the image quality, I don’t think it would be worth donating to a school or anything.

Plans for today: I’ll probably wander up to No.10’s rooftop and watch the Sunset Symphony fireworks with the neighbors, although it’s not out of the question that I could change my plans and head down to Tom Lee Park. Have a good Memorial Day weekend, and if anything exciting is going on, let me know.

This is short notice, I know, but… the candidate I am endorsing for the District 9 Congressional seat, Steve Cohen, will have his campaign headquarters’ grand opening tomorrow, Saturday, May 27, from 11 AM-2 PM at 1803-1 Union Avenue in Midtown. They’ll have BBQ and music. Steve’s a good guy and will represent the district well. Check out the Issues page of his website to find out what he stands for.