Paul Ryburn's Journal

Time to roll out another new site.  Introducing the Dog Shirt Shop.

I got the idea for this one after I had some success selling dog shirts and dog jerseys on Hawaiian Shirt Paradise and the College Logo Shopping family of sites.  I checked Amazon, and there is a huge amount of dog apparel out there… and is often the case, it’s incredibly disorganized on Amazon’s site.  Perfect candidate for a storefront.  Among the cool stuff you’ll find there:

• Funny T-shirts including this “I DO IT DOGGY STYLE” shirt
• Dog sports jerseys.  Couldn’t find any for the Tigers, but the Tennessee Titans are represented.  My Arkansas Razorbacks are too.
• Fashion dog shirts like this argyle shirt
• Dog business suits
• And much, much more

As always, the site is in association with Amazon and they handle the secure checkout and the shipping. I never see your name or credit card, just a notification that items were ordered and I made commission.

Getting ready to head to the Saucer for Marci’s last shift… although, it’s a beautiful day, so I’ll probably spend part of it outside as well.

According to this crime report in the CA, officers caught Kenneth Russell, 50, attempting to use a hanger to fish dollars out of a pay-to-park box on a lot at Main and Huling, not far from the restaurant Spindini.  They found three torn, wrinkled dollars in his left sock, so apparently he had some success before the cops arrived.  Here’s Mr. Russell’s mug shot, from the Shelby County “Who’s in Jail?” site:

According to General Sessions and Criminal Court lookup, Mr. Russell has been charged with theft of property under $500 quite a few times in recent years, as well as the occasional motor vehicle burglary.  His other arrests, for possession of drug paraphernalia, may shed some light as to Mr. Russell’s plans for the money he fishes out of parking boxes.

Wow what a crappy drive to work. Wish I could’ve laid in bed and enjoyed the sound of the thunderstorms instead of having to drive in them… how I miss the days of working for myself… well, except for that “no regular paycheck” thing.

Additional information about the Orpheum’s art auction tonight here, including a link to their online preview of the artwork. The Nuh-Uh Girl forwarded me that link, so I have a feeling she’ll show up for the free food.

If you wear Nat Nast or Robert Graham shirts, you can stop by Lansky at the Peabody and pre-order from their fall collection. Robert Graham makes some of the coolest looking shirts ever.

Hip Kitty plays the Peabody rooftop tonight… or more likely, inside, if it continues to rain all day. The band is described on the Facebook event page as “super sexy, in your face, great American rock’n’roll.” $5 cover, ladies free before 8. The Dempseys are scheduled to play the Madison rooftop (edit: May have that wrong, think it may be Delta Highway), but I don’t think there’s an alternate location in the case of rain there, so I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

That’s the news for now, back to the daily grind…

People have been telling me about the hot wings at Calhoun’s for a while. Tonight I finally got down there and tried them. I must admit, I was skeptical… the wings were recommended by Calhoun’s regulars, not always the most objective bunch. They’ll tell you Calhoun’s school lunchroom pizza is the best pizza in Memphis.

Their wing recommendation, though, was right on the money. I tried the habanera honey wings. Not normally a fan of “honey” wings but Max said they were the hottest ones. They were outstanding! So hot they almost made me cry, perfect with blue cheese. Comparable to Three Mile Island wings from Hooters in hotness, except that Calhoun’s wings had actual meat on them. Highly recommended.

The Dempseys play Downtown Huey’s Sunday night at 8:30. Best place to hear them Downtown, plus it’s their Friday so they’re always in a fun mood.

At the Saucer blogging from my phone. Thanks to Jeff for the Jager shot. One of the girls is wearing a “Bag it at the Saucer” tank top, which I think is an artifact from the old Sunday Night Swill promotion that I wish they’d bring back. I told her she should wear it on Fridays and Saturdays because a lot of people bag it at the Saucer on weekends.

Forgot to post this earlier on… the Flyer will have a happy hour tonight at the Silly Goose.  $2 domestic longnecks, $3 wells, $4 flatbreads.  Drawing for two tickets to the August 20 O.A.R. show at the Mud Island Ampitheatre.

I’ll definitely be there… should arrive around 5:30.  Hope to see you there!

Not much Downtown news to post today, so I thought I’d mention a free tool that helped me recently.

I needed to build an application to place locations on Google Maps.  So I was in the process of learning the Google Maps API, geocoding, latitudes, longitudes, and all that jazz.

While I was doing that, I learned of a free store locator offered by the website Zip-Codes.com.  You simply sign up for an account, import your list of stores or locations via a CSV file, and Zip-Codes.com will geocode them for you.  It will then give you several lines of Javascript to add to your site, and voila – your locations appear on a Google Map, you can search them by city/state or ZIP code, and it will even give you driving directions to the locations.  Pretty cool for the price of free.  I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to put stuff on Google Maps but doesn’t want to do any programming.

Why do they offer this for free?  Well, because the resulting Google Map contains a “powered by Zip-Codes.com” link.  They’re hoping your site’s visitors click through to their site and buy some of their zip code search products.

They say the script can even be pasted into Facebook and MySpace pages, although I haven’t tried this.

Cool tool.  I can think of a lot of uses for this.

The Orpheum is having an auction to benefit local artists and to fund the Orpheum’s student art program. Local artists have a chance to display and sell their work at the auction, with 75% of the proceeds doing to the artist and the other 25% to the Orpheum’s student program. The auction will be Thursday night, July 16, with a silent auction beginning at 5 PM and a live auction taking place at 7. During this time there will be happy hour drink prices and complimentary hors d’oeuvres. Free food… wonder if the Nuh-Uh Girl will show up? For more info call Kate Hackett at 529-4224 or e-mail hackett@orpheum-memphis.com.

For those whom I’ve given a date for TubeTopalooza… hold up, probably going to have to change it. I have a good friend who’s throwing another event that day, and I don’t feel right about double-booking the date, even though his event is daytime and TubeTopalooza is night. Let me talk to my co-planners and see if we can figure out some alternate arrangement.

Lots going on tonight… Mpact happy hour at Grill 83 at 6… SMA meeting at the Orpheum, social at 6 and presentation at 6:45… and of course it’s trivia night at the Saucer. Our team scored our first $50 toward our next party with a first-place victory last Tuesday… hopefully we’ll push that to $100 tonight.

The Power House e-mailed me this week’s film for their Midnight Matinee series, to be held this Friday, July 17, doors opening at 11:15 PM. Hmmm the film choices they make certainly are interesting to say the least. I have a birthday party to attend that night, but based on their first two selections I may have to pay more attention to the Midnight Matinee series in the future… and I’m not even a movie person. Details of this Friday’s movie below.

TEETH

Starring: Jess Weixler, John Hensley
Directed By: Mitchell Lichenstein
94 minutes; 2008; Rated R

In this horror black-comedy film, high school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group’s most active participant. A stranger to her own body, a forced sexual encounter causes innocent Dawn to discover she has a hidden curse– an adaptation– that may turn out to be an asset.