Paul Ryburn's Journal

Just noticed that Amazon is doing a one-day-only sale on Bulova watches today.  Many of them are diamond-accented, and are selling for about 45-55% off their retail price today only.  Furthermore, since it’s Amazon you don’t pay sales tax, which means you save another 9.25% if you’re reading this from Tennessee.

If you’re reading this after Wednesday, July 2, 2008, the link above won’t be valid… sorry.

On Sunday, an opinion piece appeared in the Commerical Appeal by writer Skipford M. Blank.  Blank, known as “Skippy” to friends and as “Christopher Blank” to his readers, wrote about paying Memphis dues.  By “paying dues” he means money or possessions given up due to being a burglary or robbery victim in one of the nation’s most crime-ridden cities.  You can read his editorial here.  Blank refers to himself as a “badass,” and I don’t think anyone who has seen Skippy in person would dare disagree.

Street-People.com followed up with an editorial of their own.  Although they agreed with most of what Blank wrote, they made one addition:  Memphis dues include money given to the street people, bums, vagrants and panhandlers who harass you as you try to go about your business in this city.

Two very interesting articles.  Worth a read in your free time.

Had a good beer last night… New Belgium’s Mothership, which is a spiced Belgian-style ale. You can get it in a 22 oz. bottle for $8 at the Saucer. If the price tag seems a bit high, keep in mind that you’re getting almost two regular-sized beers for that amount.

Reminds me of when I used to watch WCW Saturday Night, and commentator Dusty Rhodes would refer to the show as “the mothership” even though it was their #3 show, behind Nitro and Thunder… it would have the worst wrestlers in the entire company competing against each other, and Dusty would comment that they’re “trying to get to the pay winda.”

The Saucer carries two other New Belgium beers now, Fat Tire (which has been requested by many people) and 1554. Both come in 22 oz. bottles.

Congrats to the Rapscallions last night, who won a tie-breaker question to claim first place in trivia, bringing our total to $260 (I think – need to do a count). The tie-breaking question: What percentage of the national budget was spent on national defense in 1945? The correct answer was a whopping 89%. This is the kind of thing Dick Cheney fantasizes about when he’s all alone.

People have asked how my online stores have been doing… just checked the reports for June and figured I’d tell you. My stores are storefronts for Amazon.com, and generate referral fees when someone orders through them (Amazon takes care of the credit card processing and shipping). For June I had 62 items shipped and 71 items ordered from all my stores combined. I get a 6.5% commission on all items shipped during the month (Amazon’s commission rate is a sliding scale between 4% and 8.5% depending on the month’s volume). Of those, 4 were from Pro Wrestling Book and Video, 2 were from American Flag Merchandise, and the other 56 were from the Tube Top Boutique. It’s not that tube tops are more popular than wrestling videos or flags; it’s that the tube top store has been around for a year and Google trusts it as not a fly-by-night, so it rewards the store in search results (it’s been averaging about 500 hits a day). The other stores are less than a month old, so Google is still building trust in them. They’ll be getting hundreds of hits within 6 months, I predict.

There’s an article in the CA this morning about Muvico closing and on the planned renovations for Peabody Place.

More stuff to come, but I’ve got to get to work. There will be another post today.

This morning I ran into the Center City Commission’s safety director, who is in charge of the Downtown safety patrol.  One of the patrol’s major tasks is thwarting aggressive panhandling.  The patrol was originally scheduled to run as a trial program from April 1 to June 30.

The safety director told me that when the patrol has run bums off this past week, the bums have said, “You go ahead and run us off.  We know that you won’t be here anymore after June 30 and we’re going to go right back to doing what we were doing before.”

So there should be an influx of bums into the Downtown area ready to harass people and make some money.  Boy will they be surprised when they find out that the patrol has been renewed for another 12 months.  They may have been able to survive for a few months on their reduced panhandling revenue, but will they really be able to last for another year?

Bye bye bums!  It may be time for some of these MFers to turn to the thing they fear the most: employment.

It’s time to name the BFF (Best Friend Forever) of the Month for July.

But before I do, let me give a shout-out to June BFF of the Month Suzy, who went way above and beyond the call of duty, helping me plan one of the best parties ever.  She was a fantastic BFF throughout the month and I can’t say enough good things about her.

Even though Suzy set an incredibly high standard for BFF of the Month, I have every reason to believe that my choice for July BFF will live up to it.

This month’s pick is a case where I never specifically asked for input from my readers, but nevertheless got plenty. And after weighing it all, I have decided that my readers are absolutely spot-on with their advice.

There were several good contenders…

First we have Melissa, who bartends at one of my favorite restaurants, Itta Bena. She’s smart, fun to be around, looks great in a tube top. Plenty of reasons to vote for her as my BFF.

Then there’s Stephanie, who coordinates the excellent Downtown Alive program for the Center City Commission. She hangs out at the same places I do when she’s off work, and owns more tube tops than anyone I’ve ever seen. Plenty of reasons to vote for her as my BFF.

Then there’s Meghan, trying to regain her BFF status. Reasons to select her include… um……. well, let’s see… uh… er… um… geez, there’s gotta be something…… um…… man this is a tough one. Well, she does bartend at Big Foot, a place where I really enjoy hanging out and drinking.

So those were the main people I posted as candidates for the July BFF of the Month title. June BFF Suzy said I need to make a crown, because it’s only appropriate for her, as the outgoing BFF, to crown the new BFF. I’m workin’ on that. Been busy throwing tube top parties lately, you know.

So anyway… I laid out the choices… and my readers spoke.

And most of them said the same thing. And I agree.

They made the right call.

So… the July BFF of the Month is… NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Not that they didn’t deserve it.  Well, Melissa certainly deserves to be BFF of the Month.

So does Stephanie.

But not this month.

Because most all of my readers told me the same thing…

“GIVE SUZY ANOTHER MONTH!”

So it won’t be necessary to make that crown until the first of August. Meet the BFF of the Month for July, Suzy.

Sunday, July 6 will be the last day of operations for the movie theater in Peabody Place.  Check this Memphis Daily News article (scroll to the bottom) for more details.  One of the last businesses still open in the mall, this moves Belz closer to redesigning the space as Peabody Hotel suites and a new lobby.

Thursday, July 3 is the beginning of an extended weekend for most people. Here’s where you can kick off the weekend with some cheap beer after you get off work:

Speaking of Big Foot, here’s a link to my photo album for their Canada Day 2008 celebration their past Sunday. Selected photos from that album:

Pete posing with a Canadian Mountie

When Canadian beer is only $2 a bottle, you can afford to double-fist them.

In other news: The Memphis Business Journal reports that a new reality TV show, “Real Vice Cops Uncut,” will air on Spike TV beginning in August. The new show was partially filmed in Memphis and focuses on the world of narcotics, prostitution, and gambling. I’m sure they found PLENTY of material to shoot here in Memphis.

Also in the MBJ: KFC rolls out a new “Hotter than Hell” promotion. Between now and July 4, you can get on KFC’s site and check your local temperature and the temp in Hell, Michigan. If you’re the first person from your city to get on the site between 3 and 6 PM and report that your city is hotter than Hell, you can win a $3 voucher for hot wings from KFC.

Only made it through 6 beers at Pint Nite last night. Guess I was tired from the weekend.

Check back later today for the BFF of the Month announcement.

This RV is parked across from Court Square, next to the SpringHill Suites hotel, today:

This RV is here to advertise Project Prevention, a program that gives cash incentives to women who are addicted to crack, alcohol, or other substances who agree to use long-term or permanent birth control.  Their website notes that 11-15% of babies born are substance-exposed, and their mission is to reduce that percentage to zero.

According to their site, the RV is on tour and isn’t supposed to be here until Wednesday, but that’s okay… this thing needs to spend as much time in Memphis as possible.

Here are a few pics from this past Saturday’s Downtowners for Obama rally at the Majestic Grille:

Here’s a crowd shot.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen gave the best speech of the day, covering the major issues and how Obama is the best candidate to address each. He had just come from the Sidney Chism picnic and was sporting a blue Obama T-shirt. Even though Cohen is running for re-election to Congress, he was clearly there to stump for Barack Obama rather than for himself.

John Branston from the Memphis Flyer gives his outlook on this fall’s political race.

A couple of Democratic candidates for Lamar Alexander’s Senate seat were also on hand to speak. The first was Kenneth Eaton.

Bob Tuke (left, posing with Joan) is another candidate for Alexander’s Senate seat. Although analysts consider Alexander’s seat “safe,” both candidates spoke of the importance of Shelby County in bringing the seat into play and possibly taking it away from the Republicans, moving one step closer to the filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the fall.

There were a few more speakers as well. Great event, and the people in the audience who showed up were eager to get involved. The next step to doing that is to go to my.barackobama.com, signing up, and looking around the site and finding the best way you can help.

There was only one tube top in the crowd, although I did find out that a few of Cohen’s campaign staff made it to TubeTopalooza on my rooftop later in the evening. Today’s the final day of Tube Top Month… my, how the month has flown by. I said at the beginning that this was going to be the best Tube Top Month ever, and it has been.

More to come this week, including pics from Big Foot’s Canada Day celebration, Downtown apartments and condos on TV, and who knows what else. Time for me to go to work right now. I’ve been told I’ll finally be taken off The Most Boring Project on Earth this week. And it’s a 4-day work week. And I’m taking the 7th off so I’ll have a 4-day weekend. Triple yay.

Here are the pics from TubeTopalooza, the event held on my rooftop last night to celebrate the end of Tube Top Month in my blog.

The hosts.  Me (center) with my BFF Suzy and TubeTopalooza visionary Kacy.  I couldn’t have done it without these two.

Nor could I have done it without Air Traffic Mike, who supplied Rotel dip, chicken wings, shrimp skewers, gazpacho, and jamblaya.  Thanks Mike for taking the party to the next level… I’m sure guests were expecting maybe a bag of Doritos for food and were pleasantly surprised.

Stephanie (center):  “Maybe if I look as much like a bunny rabbit as possible, I’ll get selected as BFF of the Month of July.”  I guess the girl on the right didn’t get the memo about the dress code.

More tube tops

Complete photo album available here. Thanks to all who helped make this event a success.

Reminder:  June isn’t over yet!  Keep wearing those tube tops!