Paul Ryburn's Journal

At home eating Paul’s Drunkass Food.  Because BARDOG TWEETED THEIR SPECIALS, I knew they had ziti with sausage and cheese and salad.  It’s a great value for $10.99 (I think that was the price).

Although, Bardog wasn’t my first choice for dinner. One of the off-duty girls at the Saucer tonight Facebooked, “I NEED A WAL-MARTING BUDDY IMMEDIATELY. Ya’ll know I hate doing the shit alone. Hit me up, ASAP.”

I responded, “OK, but 1) you have to pick me up at the Saucer; 2) I’m drunk as f**k; and 3) we have to go through a fast food drive thru on the way back. Is there a Popeye’s in West Memphis?”

She didn’t take me up on it, but, Popeye’s. Damn right.

This past weekend I posted a pic of a bar’s dress code that read, “IF IT’S ON JERSEY SHORE, IT’S NOT COMING THROUGH THE DOOR.  No Affliction.  No Ed Hardy.  No Christian Audigier.  No exceptions.”  The club was named Republic but I didn’t think it was the Republic Nightclub that operates in Downtown Memphis.

I have now had it confirmed by a reliable source that the Republic in question is in New Orleans.  The source tells me that the owners are friends of his and the place is great.

And I’m going down there on a work trip the last week of July and staying on Canal Street.  Sounds promising.

Yeah, I don’t have much to report today, so I’ll just suggest a few Monday night options and leave it at that.

Tonight’s the kick-off of the Majestic Grille’s new jazz night.  Starting time is 7 PM.

If you want to play some poker, there are free games at the Silly Goose at 7:30 and 11:30 PM.  These are live games with real felt and real chips, not video poker games.

Trivia with Will at Local Gastropub at 8 PM.  No corkage fee if you bring your own wine.

And, of course, in my opinion the best Monday option of all – Pint Nite at the Flying Saucer.  Almost all their drafts are on sale for $2.75.  That’s where I’ll be after work.

That’s all for now.  Back to work.  Counting the days until my new MacBook arrives.

I wasn’t even going to go out yesterday.  I was going to stay at home, play poker tournaments, and take courses from the online poker training site I joined.

Then something happened that completely changed my life.  I received a text that read, “Dos Equis Lager is the Fire Sale.”  Needless to say, I threw my clothes on and skeedaddled to the Saucer.

The pic below happened after about 8 beers.  Kelly decided to tie the strings of my hoodie into a bow and tie my hair into a ponytail like Pebbles from the Flintstones.  I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It seems like “let’s go eat at Bardog” seemed to be a popular theme yesterday.  The place was pretty packed on Sunday.  They had some excellent specials, including mussels and a filet.  Here’s a pic of Christy chowing down on a sandwich.

Ah, Sunday.  The start of a new week.  Which means it’s time once again for the “Brick” Quote of the Week.

First, however, I have another pic of Brick.  Here she is posing with a bottle of “No Wimps Allowed” habanero hot sauce.

So anyway, Friday night, Brick was working the evening shift, and the manager told her she was cut.  “You can go home,” he told her.  “But before you do, the dining room has to be spotless.”

“I’m on it!” Brick exclaimed.  “I’ve already picked up about ten hundred glasses.”

Just got up.  Time to make my morning run to Walgreens for Mountain Dew.  At 11:00 I’m going to enter a $3.30 tournament on PokerStars with thirty hundred starting chips.  After the tournament I’ll go out.

Earlier this evening, there was a guy walking around the Saucer with a sign that said “Free hugs.”  It looked like he wrote it on the bottom of a pizza box and tied it around his neck.  Here’s a photo of Brick taking advantage of his offer:

By the way, there will be a Brick quote coming tomorrow, as hard as she tries to keep from giving me one.

I never made it to Midtown for the Red Square reunion.  At home now… there’s a Phoenix Club party going on literally outside my window at the Cadre Building.  Not going myself, but after they spend 4 hours there with an open bar, I bet many of them will be good and drunk… and Paula & Raiford’s is right up the street… guess I’ve got my next stop figured out.

I’m now ready to announce the launch of my newest blog – Paul Ryburn’s Poker Blog.

I got the idea for this blog last Saturday, when I played two large tournaments on PokerStars.  I had a notebook handy and took notes on hands where I made mistakes, hands I played well, and any other observations I had about the play of the game.  Afterward I thought, “I’m going to play more tournaments – maybe I should type all my notes into a Word document, so I have them all in one place.”

But then I looked over the notes, and thought, why not make them a blog?  That way, other people can read my notes as well, and we can all learn together.  So I set up WordPress in a new folder and got busy.  A week later, after a lot of tweaks to WordPress’s Atahualpa theme (which is VERY cool by the way), it’s ready for public viewing.

This will allow me to talk about poker more, without boring the 90% of my readership on this blog who don’t care about the game.  I have posts scheduled daily for the next week.  At some point I’ll probably slow down to every other day.

I hope you enjoy the new blog – and don’t worry, I don’t plan on it slowing down the post schedule on this blog at all.

Over on Facebook, there have been some questions about what kind of music will be played at the Red Square Reunion at Nocturnal tonight.  The organizers have confirmed that it will be the music that was played at Red Square from 1991-95.

(Was Red Square open in 1991?  I seem to remember a gay bar called G. Bellington Rumples in that location 1991-92.)

I’m still about 60/40 on whether I’ll hop a cab and go, or remain Downtown.

If you haven’t been keeping your eye on the news, turn on CNN – there was an 8.8 quake in Chile this morning.  Hawaii and the California coast around Malibu could be hit with tsunami waves tonight.

New blog announcement coming this afternoon.  It’s almost ready.

Long-time readers of this blog know I’m not a big fan of dress codes at bars and clubs, but this is a dress code I wholeheartedly support.  “IF IT’S ON JERSEY SHORE, IT’S NOT COMING THROUGH THE DOOR.  No Affliction.  No Ed Hardy.  No Christian Audigier.  No exceptions.”  In other words, no douchebags allowed.  I love it.

I was down south at Calhoun’s for a while last night, and if you’re looking for a premium beer at a very reasonable price, they have New Belgium Blue Paddle on tap for $2.50.  I believe this is an every-day special.  Of course, with PBR on tap for two bucks, I’ll never be drinking the Blue Paddle there, but nevertheless it’s a great deal.

I just don’t get some people.  I rode the trolley back to the core, and on Main just south of Beale I saw Downtown’s most notorious parking scammer.  In the past 8 months, he’s made a total of 5 trips to jail, spending about 5-6 months total there.  He just got out this week after a 60-day sentence for criminal impersonation of a parking attendant.  So what was he doing on Main Street?  Parking cars.  He saw me in the trolley and waved.  I guess I better put 545-COPS on speed dial.

The Majestic Grille has announced a new jazz event.  Every Monday from 7 to 9, the mezzanine will be transformed into the Majestic Jazz Club.  Jazz Collective, a group of 10 of the best musicians in town, will perform.  Owner Deni tells me that these are people who are usually out of town performing with the likes of Tony Bennett and Natalie Cole.  The bar will be open upstairs, and the dinner menu will be available for those who are hungry.

If you’re a fan of dark beer, put Wednesday, March 10 on your calendar.  Ghost River will debut its new Oatmeal Stout at South of Beale from 6 to 8 PM.

Thursday night I got a closer look at the $125-value beer stein that the Saucer awards to people who make it through the Ring of Honor 8 times.  Here’s a pic of Saucer regular Terry holding the stein.

Here’s a closeup view of the stein (click the image to see it in an even larger size):

Makes you want to go out and drink 1600 beers, doesn’t it?

While I was pulling that image off the camera, I discovered another one that I took and forgot to post.  Here’s a pic of the Nuh-Uh Girl eating.

This was at our friend Stephanie’s birthday last Saturday.  The Nuh-Uh Girl discovered that chocolate cake and pretzel go really well together.

Dammit laziness is starting to kick in… I want to go to the Red Square Reunion at Nocturnal tonight, but hopping a cab to Midtown and getting back seems like an awful lot of work.  I’m about 60/40 on whether I’ll go.

Time to get back to work on the new blog I’m creating, which hopefully I will launch later today.