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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.

My “I bought a laptop” post seems to be drawing a lot of hits from an AMD message board this morning, so I want to follow up with a comment.

One of my main concerns in buying a new computer was making sure it could run the new 64-bit Windows that is supposed to be coming out by the end of 2006. So I started researching Intel processors – will they be able to run it or not? Couldn’t find anyplace on the web that simply says, yes, this chip will be able to run it, or no, this chip won’t. After an hour of reading, I think their dual-core chips will be able to run 64-bit Windows, and I think their Pentium M chips won’t be able to – but I’m still not sure.

AMD, on the other hand, put “64” at the end of all its chips’ names. No doubt they’ll be good to go. That’s a major reason why I went with a laptop with an AMD processor, rather than going for “Intel Inside” as I have in the past.

AMD’s marketing department is smarter than Intel’s marketing department when it comes to naming chips.

I forgot to mention something very important when I did my lunchtime post, discussing last night’s activities. I forgot to mention that the bear is back: The Gone Fishing video game is once again available on Beale Street.

Last year, I wasted stacks of dollars on the Tap Room’s stupid video crack machine, which had a game called “Gone Fishing.” Fish jump out of a frozen pond, and a polar bear swings a bat and attempts to hit them as far down the ice as possible. It was completely stupid. Yet I spent a lot of time with that bear. At one point I had the high score and 7 of the 10 high scores.

Then one day I walked into the Tap Room and the video crack machine was gone, replaced by a different video crack machine with different games. I was sad. I thought I’d never see the bear again.

But last night, I walked into the Black Diamond and ordered my usual PBR in a can. At the time I didn’t know anyone there (the BB King people hadn’t arrived yet), and I decided to see what games were on their video crack machine. And lo and behold, there was Gone Fishing. The bear and I were reunited at last.

I foresee a lot of nights at the Diamond in my future.

Sunday, as I was flipping through the paper looking for the Deal of the Week, I came across a really good price on a Gateway laptop at Office Depot. I ended up choosing a digital camera as the Deal insteal, simply because I had already selected a very similar laptop as a Deal in a previous week.

But as the days rolled on, I kept going back to Office Depot’s site and looking at that laptop. And thinking, hmmm… my computers are both four years old… they’re gonna have to be replaced within the year… why would I want to pass this up? So today after work, I went to the downtown Office Depot and bought it.

It’s a Gateway MX6440, with an AMD Turion 64 processor. The “Turion” designation means that the chip is optimized for laptop use (preserving battery life and such – similar to Intel’s Centrino chip), and the “64” ensures that I’ll be able to upgrade to the new version of Windows that is rumored to be coming out around the end of the year. It has a gig of RAM, and a 100 GB hard drive, with built-in wireless, four USB ports, a CD/DVD player/burner, and a 15.4″ widescreen. The price? $799 after rebate. Not bad at all.

I intend for the new laptop to replace both my current computers. I don’t see the point of having a desktop PC anymore when wireless is available all over town. So as soon as I get my data moved over to my new laptop, the old computers are outta here. Actually, that’s not true… I’ll keep the old laptop as a backup in case the new one breaks. As for the desktop PC… hmmm… maybe I’ll turn it into a Linux box or something. What I’m really looking forward to is getting rid of this crummy 19″ CRT monitor. I hate it so much that I want to take a baseball bat to it. I guess I could donate it to a school or something, but the poor kid who has to use that piece of crap will be guaranteed to need glasses after a year or so.

After I got home I realized I needed to download and install software – Firefox, ZoneAlarm, AVG Anti-Virus, WeatherBug, Google Earth. So I fired it up and got ready to install, only to find that there weren’t any wireless networks in range of my apartment that I could mooch from. Then I thought, wait a minute. The Saucer has wireless. And beer. And waitresses. So I went up there and downloaded all the essential stuff I need. Except for my data, it’s ready to go.

And as an added bonus, my external battery back from BatteryGeek will work with the new laptop, extending the 3-hour battery to a total of 8-9 hours.

I love it. As my friend Ish would say, “AWESOME AWESOME!”

Today’s lunchtime Wi-Fi location: High Point Coffee at Union and Belvedere. I like this place: It has the feel of a Starbucks and similar drink menu, but it also has free wireless Internet (Starbucks charges for theirs) and a TV tuned to CNN Headline News.

Just ate lunch at Pei Wei Asian Diner, also at the corner of Union and Belvedere. Here’s a copy of their menu. I had the Spicy Korean signature dish with chicken, and it was good. Pei Wei opened about two weeks ago. One word of caution – that place fills up fast. I got there at 11:15 and it was already half-full. By the time I left people were jockeying for position to get tables. You’ll do well to go for either an early or a late lunch, rather than right at noon.

Hmmm… since Pei-Wei is Asian-themed, maybe they could create an additional source of income by selling that video I mentioned in a post last month, that teaches guys how to seduce Asian girls. “Ah, so GI! You like make ficky-ficky with sexy Oriental girl? Well, now you can…” I actually knew a guy once who probably owned that tape. He had a thing for Japanese girls. “J-girls,” he called them.

I wonder if there’s a video on how to seduce “Ro-girls”?

Couple of downtown nightspots to keep your eye on…

Last weekend I bumped into one of the employees at Wang’s at Main and Gayoso. For those of you who didn’t catch my post about Wang’s a couple of weeks ago, they’re going to start having live music 9 to 2 Thursdays-Saturdays. She said their new sound stage is almost complete, and they pumped some serious money into it. She also told me they’re going to be booking some musical acts that are very well-known here in Memphis. Out of respect to her, I don’t want to spill the beans, but keep an eye on Wang’s next weekend or the weekend after, and be on the lookout for ads/announcements in the Flyer and other entertainment news sources.

Last night I had the pleasure of talking to several employees of BB King’s club on Beale – a couple of my neighbors on my rooftop, and then later in the evening, several servers who were having an after-work beer at the Black Diamond. All of them told me that BB’s is really making an effort to reach out to the locals here in Memphis and give them a unique experience that they can’t get in any other club. I was really impressed with them – they seemed like a big family and had a personal passion for the club. Downtowners, if you haven’t been to BB’s in a while, it’s worth a second look, based on all that I heard last night. I’ll try to get by there sometime soon.

Lunchtime over. Back to the cubicle.

I’m at Otherlands in Midtown, using their Wi-Fi to do a lunch hour blog post. First time I’ve been in here in a while… they’ve really improved this place. They got rid of the gift shop and converted the whole thing into seating. Cool!

Hang on, here’s e-mail. “A friend posted a new comment about you on MySpace.” And because I’m not at work and therefore outside the city schools’ goddamn content filter, I can actually log into MySpace and read the comment. Again, cool!

Ah… my MySpace friend sent me a pic. Let’s post it:

If you’ve seen my victory dance upon winning NTN Trivia games at Sleep Out’s recently, you’ll understand the appropriateness of this image.

Speaking of trivia… The Flying Saucer has finally upgraded its Tuesday night trivia prizes. Before, there was one $25 gift certificate, and second and third place got whatever assorted crap the beer distributors dumped on the Saucer (T-shirts, glasses, etc.) Now they’re doing it right… $50 gift certificate for first place, $25 for second, and $10 for third. That’s what Mulligan’s has always done, except I rarely go to Mulligan’s trivia because they don’t have waitresses in miniskirts and the place just generally sucks. Anyway, the Rapscallions broke their losing streak last night, placing third and picking up the $10 certificate. That brings our grand total to $135.

However, we’re going to need to schedule that party sooner than we thought – the certificates now expire three months from date of issue, rather than a year. That means we have until August 23 at the latest. I recommend that we wait until early July or later though, to give us time to add a couple of $50s to the pile, and to see if the Saucer makes any interesting waitress hiring decisions around that time.

Before going to trivia, I attended a private party at The Majestic to celebrate their grand opening. Free food, free booze, and a big band playing upstairs. I tried a strawberry basil martini, and spent a while talking to the chef, who has done personal chef work for a couple of the Grizzlies.

A friend of mine recommends the following Majestic dish: Grilled pork tenderloin with sugar glazed carrots and onions for $14. Portions tend to be large for the entrees, so order this one when you’re hungry.

Also at the Majestic, another friend and I discussed doing something for Steve Cohen, who is running for Congress. I volunteered for one of Cohen’s campaigns about 10 years ago and have always admired his integrity and persistence. We want to do something to rally support for him among downtowners. If anyone wants to help plan this shoot me an e-mail.

After I left trivia night, I walked to the Tap Room, where Maurice always has good TV on. I discovered a new show on the Cartoon Network called The Oblongs which is pretty funny. It’s about a family who lives near a toxic swamp. It comes on at 10 PM Central time.

New Memphis blog worth bookmarking: Memphis Wine Events. Not affiliated with any one particular group, it’s simply a resource to keep Memphians informed of wine-related events around town.

Two of the three links in this post won’t make it through the city schools’ content filter. I’ve already checked. Only the Cohen link will make it. Memphis Wine Events is hosted on Blogspot, and the filter thinks all Blogspot blogs contain objectionable material. The filter doesn’t like The Oblongs because it’s on a network that shows “adult” shows.

On the other hand, MY blog gets through the content filter just fine. Welcome, kids! Be sure to come back next week for the beginning of Tube Top Month!

Plans for the rest of this week:

Thursday night – Peabody rooftop

Friday night – South Main Trolley Art Tour

Saturday – It’s Sunset Symphony but I most likely won’t make plans. I’ll just show up on the roof and see which of my neighbors are there to hang out with.

Sunday – Sit at Kimberley’s bar at Sleep Out’s and drink champagne-flavored orange juice and play NTN Trivia and do my victory dance. I’ll be there around 11:00, most likely.

Monday – Memorial Day, which probably will turn into a bonus Sunday unless I come up with alternate plans.

And now, back for an exciting afternoon of sitting in a cubicle. Whoopee. I got an e-mail from a First Tennessee employee – they call their cubicles “loser cruisers” over there. Have a good afternoon everybody….

Click here for the rest of the pics

This is my first attempt using the Coppermine photo gallery software on my server, so I hope everything turned out all right. If there are any problems with the pics let me know. Thanks to Chad for supplying the first 14 pics in the album; the ones after that are mine. If you want any of these in a 5.1 megapixel size, shoot me an e-mail.

It’s time to go international with one of this blog’s most popular features, “What the bums are drinking this week.”

Now, we already know what the bums in Memphis are drinking this week: Mad Dog 20/20 fortified wine. But over in merry old England, the bums drink Mad Dogs & Englishmen Shiraz Cabernet, pictured below.

Just kidding… this isn’t a bum wine. And it isn’t even English. This is the wine my friends Chad and the Nuh-Uh Girl ordered Tuesday night at Meditrina, the new restaurant on Union. It’s a Spanish shiraz/cabernet blend, and it received good reviews from those at the table.

Here’s a pic of the striped bass that the Nuh-Uh Girl ordered.

I had a couple of bites of it and it was really good. Meditrina is definitely a restaurant you should check out next time you’re downtown.