Paul Ryburn's Journal

Up too late this morning to do a real post, but I just wanted you to know, there’s a 6-minute video coming, about half of which is a bum playing a harmonica.

There will probably be a post at lunchtime.

The Memphis City Council reports that the Center City Commission has narrowed its search for a new CEO to eight candidates, four of whom are from Memphis. Among the finalists are Andy Kitsinger, the CCC’s current vice-president of planning and development; City Council member and former Mayor Pro Tem Myron Lowery; attorney and former CCC Board Chairman Paul Morris; and Rick Masson, executive director of the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. There are also candidates from Las Vegas, San Jose, Orlando, and Apple Valley, CA who will be interviewing.

The Memphis Farmers Market will have its first Dinner Tour tomorrow, Wednesday, April 21, at Felicia Suzanne’s at 6:30 PM. The dinner will feature MFM products including Pecans from Delta Pecans, Goat Cheese from Bonnie Blue Farm, Produce from Whitton Flower & Produce Company, Short Ribs from Neola Farms, Organic Chicken from West Wind Farms, and Honey from Peace Bee Farm. $30 fee does not include spirits, but you can bring your own or take advantage of their Lolonis wine special – choice of four wines from the winery for $7.50 a glass or $30 a bottle. Call (901) 523-0877 for reservations. Here’s a link to an interview with Felicia about the dinner.

There’s also going to be a wine dinner tomorrow night at Mesquite Chop House. 1st course: Mesquite grilled duck spring salad; 2nd course: savory smoked beef tenderloin crepe; 3rd course: Neiman Farms slow roasted pork; 4th course: lemon ice box pie, with mango sorbet. Each course will be paired with wine. $55, call 901-527-5337 for reservations.

The Peabody has now announced its Thursday night rooftop party lineup through July 1. Here it is:

April 22: Rhoney G
April 29: Party Planet
May 6: Dr. Zarr’s Amazing Funk Monster
May 13: Kevin & Bethany Paige
May 20: The Venus Mission
May 27: Andy Childs
June 3: Mudflap Kings
June 10: Gabby Johnson
June 17: The Living Daylights
June 24: Taco and Da Mofos
July 1: Aquanet

I have more details about the Beale Street East End grand opening party that will take place Thursday the 22nd from 6 to 9 PM. You can buy $5 wristbands, which get you

• Admission to all the East End clubs
• 2 for 1 drink specials at all the East End clubs
• Appetizer samplers. Free food? Wonder if the Nuh-Uh Girl will show up.
• Art show at the Withers Gallery

MPACT Memphis gets 1/3 of the wristband proceeds for the night. The event also benefits Volunteer Memphis and Knowledge Quest.

I still have more, but it’s time for trivia.  It’ll have to wait until later tonight or tomorrow.

The Commercial Appeal had an article this morning listing the winners of last Saturday’s Hot Wing Fest. “You Are the Ranch Beneath My Wings” took first, “Wing-a-Palooza” took second, and “Bell Bottom Barbeque” took third. Zane Bryson from the Buccaneer team won the hot wing eating contest, eating 55 wings.

Looking for a job? I know of a recruiter looking for Outlook support analysts (i.e. help desk) at $15/hour for a 3-6 month contract. Shoot me an e-mail at paul@paulryburn.com if interested, and I’ll get you in touch with her.

South of Beale’s Sunday brunch menu is now online. Have a look at it here. Brunch starts this Sunday, April 25… you could hit their brunch early, then walk up to Beale Street for Wine Race at 1.

You may have heard that Circa is having an intimate 4-course wine dinner for 16 tomorrow night, April 21. The dinner is sold out, but John Bragg announced that the menu will be available in the main dining room as well. Here it is:

First Course
“Crab-Mango”
Chilled Jumbo Lump Crabmeat and Fresh Mango with Chive Aioli and Cumin Tuiles

Second Course
Crispy Snapper
with Sweet Corn, Edamame and Tomato with Lobster Beurre Blanc

Third Course
Duck Breast
Roast Magret Breast with Sweet Soy Braised Baby Bok Choy and Candied Orange Sauce

Dessert
Chevre Cheesecake
with Honey-Almond Florentine

Fare paired with 4 Wines

$50 per person
(plus tax and gratuity)

Got more to post, but it’ll have to wait until 5.  I’ll be at trivia tonight, 7 PM at the Saucer.

I know this is going out kind of late, but it’s a weekly event, so if you can’t make it tonight you can make it next Monday or a future Monday: There’s a new Monday Night Beer Run meeting at Bardog Tavern. Meet at 6:45, then at 7 depart for a 3 mile run/walk along the Memphis Riverwalk. Then, return to Bardog for beer and food. For those who participate, there’s $1.50 PBR, $7 spaghetti, $9 spaghetti and meatballs.

Good tweet this afternoon from @watchdogon3: “I went out with a woman that resembled the Sterick Building in downtown Memphis. She was tall and vacant.” Haha nice one.

I’ve been told that there will be an article in the Commercial Appeal tomorrow listing the winners of Hot Wing Fest. You’d think the festival would post that info on, um, maybe, its website? Just sayin’.

Beale Street Merchants Association has a page with some basic info about Wine Race. It happens next Sunday, April 25, beginning at 1 PM. The best event, Queen of the Vine, is the first event, so it’s a good idea to be there on time. Insider’s recommendation: Get a large Call-a-Cab from Wet Willie’s.

Free lunchtime events this week Downtown, presented by the CCC:

• Tuesday: Country musician Trey Jewell in Court Square, 11:45-1:15
• Wednesday: 40-member John Woods Choral Ensemble, Peabody Place at Main, 12:30-1:30
• Thursday: Earth Day farmer’s market in front of City Hall, presented by Mayor Wharton’s office and the Memphis Farmers Market. 20 vendors, produce, flowers, treats, 10-2
• Jam session with Holly Cole and Jeff Hulett, Court Square, 11:45-1:15

Memphis Connect has a good article by guest blogger Penelope McDowell on MPACT Memphis. She explains how she moved to Memphis, knowing hardly anyone, and quickly met a large group of friends through MPACT. I’m not real involved in the organization anymore, but I highly recommend it if you’re looking to get more involved in the community and/or to meet other young professionals 20-40s.

As my friend Bicycle Bobby would say, “Damn! Pint Nite!”  Time to head up there.

Eating Wise Guys Pizza for the first time today.  Work bought it for us to celebrate the move to our new HQ in Horn Lake… OMG this pizza is SO GOOD.  Eating a slice of Chicago style deep dish, and it’s actually made me violate one of my long-standing beliefs in life, that pizza should never be eaten with a knife and fork.  Downtowners, this is actually worth a field trip.  #freefoodwonderifthenuhuhgirlwillshowup Oh wait, she doesn’t work here.

I have about a 5 minute longer drive home from work, so I’ll be about 5 minutes later than usual to Pint Nite tonight.  On the upside, I have much better dining and shopping options at lunchtime than I did in the crappy #memphisairport neighborhood where I worked before.  You know, I thought I’d hate working in Northern Mississippi but it’s actually not so bad.  Now that I think about it, I know a lot of very cool people from the Southaven/Horn Lake area.

… and one not so cool person, who this morning tweeted, “What’s even hotter than fake tattoo sleeves?  Ed Hardy shirts with fake tattoo sleeves!  Duh!”  Oh just shoot me now. #douche #douche #douche #douche #douche #douche

Good Facebook page to become a fan of:  “901 Sightings,” which posts funny, interesting and random things seen around the Memphis area.

Thanks to those of you who e-mailed and told me how to batch resize photos in iPhoto:  All you have to do is export them and change the batch setting as you do.  Picasa for Mac does it too.

That’s all for now… looking forward to some Pint Nite beer after work.

It’s 5:42 AM and I can’t sleep, so I guess I’ll do a post.  Today’s the first day at work in the new building.  Not sure if we’ll have Internet access, so there may not be a lunchtime post… maybe a quick one from the WordPress app on my phone.

Question for Mac owners:  What’s the best program to use to download a large number of images from my camera, batch resize them to 1600 x 1200, and view and edit them (for minor changes like rotate 90 degrees, adjust hue/saturation/lightness, etc.)?  iPhoto is the default but if there’s a batch resize option in there, I don’t see it.  For large photo galleries like Hot Wing Fest, I use the netbook where I have Windows tools I’m familiar with, but I’d rather do it on my MacBook.  If you have suggestions, shoot ’em to paul@paulryburn.com.

I still have more pics to post, but I need to wait until some of the current photo posts age and fall off the blog’s front page… there are well over 30 pics on it right now, last I checked.  I have a pic of Danny drinking a beer with his twin, and I have a couple of new pics of Brick.  There can never be too much Brick on this blog.

Other than BBQ Fest, this weekend that just ended is probably my favorite festival weekend of the year.  Weather was perfect.  Good weather for the first rooftop party, Hot Wing Fest, and Crawfish Fest?  When’s the last time that happened?  Think we’ll have good weather for Music Fest too?  Coming up next weekend – Memphis Brewfest and Beale Street Wine Race.  Two more very good spring events.  Neither is food-based so we’ll probably see a little less of the Nuh-Uh Girl this weekend.

Attn pro wrestling fans:  May be an interesting night to turn on WWE Monday Night Raw.  Both the RAW and Smackdown rosters toured Europe last week.  Due to the volcano in Iceland shutting down many European airports, the RAW crew will almost certainly be stranded and not able to make it to New Jersey for this week’s show.  The Smackdown crew may be able to catch a flight out of Madrid, and make it to the U.S. in time to cover for the RAW crew.  They may beam interviews from the RAW crew out of Europe via satellite.  First time they’ve ever had this big of a travel snafu.

Wow I’ve been messing around on the computer for an hour and I still have 30 minutes before I leave for work… even had time to play two Super Turbo Sit’n’Go tournaments on Full Tilt as I typed this.  Finished in 8th place out of 9 in the first, and I won the second, so I showed a small profit for my time playing.  Guess I’ll hit Publish and see what else I can find to do until it’s time to leave.

Here are pics from Rajun Cajun today.  God help you if you have dialup because my blog is massive this week.  I’m totally hammered as I type this, so please forgive any typos.  My apologies for those of you reading my blog over dialup or slow DSL.  This is not a good week for you.

The Nuh-Uh Dad and the Nuh-Uh Sister in their gumbo booth

Here’s a pic of the Nuh-Uh Girl eating crawfish.

Okay, quick story.  We had a guest in our hot wing booth last night.  I never met him; I didn’t know he was there until today when our friend Mike told me.  This guest had never read my blog in his life, nor had he met the Nuh-Uh Girl before.  So he was in our booth yesterday at Hot Wing Fest, and he commented, “Who is that girl?  She’s been here two hours and she hasn’t stopped eating.”

I normally don’t like to take a lot of pics of myself to post, but sometimes you have to make an exception.  Here’s a pic of Whitney and me.  Note that Whitney has a tube top on.

Sarah and me

Cayla and me

Terry and friends

Kacy, Christina, Tracy & Co. were at Rajun Cajun.  But only Christina makes my blog, because Christina had a TUBE TOP on!!!

I found it ironic that the Rolaids truck was rolling around outside crawfish fest.  Yeah you could take a Rolaid and get over indigestion, but then what would you have to talk about for the next week?

Jessica and me.  Note that Jessica has a tube top on.

Christy (center, drinking beer) asked me if I knew where she could get cheese fries, because she was ready to chow down.  Unfortunately, there were no cheese fries to be found.

Jean and Bicycle Bobby

Stacy (Stacy? Stacie? hell I don’t know) and me.  Note that Stacy (sp?) has a tube top on.

Extremely drunk as I post this.  And I get to drive to Horn Lake tomorrow.  Going to bed.

As I walked to Hot Wing Fest yesterday, I passed this sign.

If you’re looking to move Downtown, or if you are a renter Downtown looking to buy, this would be worth checking out.  Condos for sale for under $100,000 Downtown are almost unheard of.

The Ques Brothers and our sponsor Kooky Canuck cooked up wings and other goodies yesterday at the 8th annual Southern Hot Wing Fest on South Main.  Here are some pics.

Benjie and Chuck getting the first batch of wings started

Chad and Michael Gross.  I learned yesterday that Michael Gross is a huge wrestling fan and started watching in the early ’80s like I did.

Dynaflow rocking it out

Kerry who writes the I Love Memphis blog, with her roller derby team

Terry and Pam.  Pam didn’t pour out any beer this time.

Kelly (far right) is the only sober person in this pic.

Benjie and Chuck answer one of the judges’ questions

Uncle Ray

Our hot sauce.  People were saying they could feel the burn in their mouth 30 minutes after eating one of our hot wings.

This is why Kooky Canuck is the best sponsor ever – about 3 PM, a Kookamonga burger showed up in our booth.

Later in the day, Edison grilled quail and Korean beef.

The Nuh-Uh Girl stalking her prey

For some reason I didn’t get as many pics of her as usual, but believe me, the Nuh-Uh Girl was eating nearly everything that wasn’t nailed down.

Hot wing eating contest

Angie and Angie.  Note that the Angie on the left has a tube top on.

Clay and Mikey.  This was my second attempt to take this pic.

Moody munching a Pronto Pup

Here’s something you don’t see often – Meghan sitting on her ass texting.

Bicycle Bobby preparing his special recipe onion rings

Full album (162 photos) can be seen here. Well, actually it’s not the full album.  I had to create a certain “hot wing 10 do not use” album with several more pics, for various reasons.  Those pics will be shared with particular individuals.  I also took a few pics before the fest, at the Farmers Market, and afterward at the Saucer.  Will go through those and see if there’s anything good.

Apologies for a mistake I made yesterday, telling people to go to Calhoun’s to buy beer.  I thought it was within the boundaries of the festival and it was not.

Not sure who the winners were – we ran out of beer around 5 PM, so I figured, why should I stay?  I’ll try to find out who won and do a followup post.

Again, thanks to Kooky Canuck for a great time.

Now it’s time for Rajun Cajun Crawfish Fest.  All the camera batteries are fully charged and I’m ready to go again.  I will be there right at noon, and will be there until 6.