Paul Ryburn's Journal

Once again, I never made it to the Peabody last night after saying I was going to go – went to the Saucer then EP’s, and remained at EP’s until God knows when. It was a good night last night though – got several tube top photos. The previous Thursday I had a blog reader inform me that she had just bought 4 new tube tops… well, she was back at EP’s and had one on. “I’m going commando underneath my tube top!” she told me, although I actually figured it out before she said anything. Here’s a pic – not sure if she would want her identity revealed to the viewing public so I’ve covered her face.

I’ll be out in East Bumblefuck today… got a meeting at Buffalo Wild Wings out there at 1. Been looking at their wing sauce menu, trying to decide what to get. Usually when I order wings I get one step below the hottest sauce – called “extra hot” at many restaurants and called “wild” by BWW. But I’ve been told I’ve been missing out by not experimenting with the other flavors of wings. Hmmm… the parmesan garlic sauce and the Caribbean jerk sauce both sound good… maybe I’ll get 6 of each.

Afterward I’ll probably hit the Wolfchase Mall and get some shopping done, then find a coffee shop with Wi-Fi and get some work done. I definitely don’t want to drive home during rush hour, so I’ll probably be out in East BF until 6:00, 6:30 or longer.

Happy Friday everyone… I doubt there will be 5 posts like there were yesterday, but you never know.

Just checked Amy W’s blog and found that Circa opens today. You can check their website to find out all about them. Quick summary: Dinner entrees in the $teens and $20s, huge wine selection, located in the Pembroke Square building on the Main Street Mall, in the old Market on Main space. John Bragg is chef.

I won’t be able to get by there tonight, as I’ll be out tube top hunting at rooftop parties. I look forward to reading Amy’s review of the place, and trying it myself in the coming weeks.

– My friends and I have been wrestling with the issue of exchanging photos since last Halloween. There are several of us with digital cameras, and we’ve tried exchanging photos by burning CDs, passing flash drives around, and trying free online file-sharing services. Nothing seemed to work very well.

Well, today I decided to do something about it. My hosting service www.GoDaddy.com offers a feature called Online File Folder, where you can buy up to 2 GB of space to use to share files. So today I bought the two gig (it’s inexpensive – only $19.95 a year) and set up an account. Pretty cool service – not only can you upload and download files through Online File Folder’s interface, but you can also connect using Windows Explorer, Mac OS X, or FTP. You can also e-mail people a link to your shared files. Well worth the money to not have any more file-sharing hassles, and now I can share all the tube top photos I’ve taken.

– There are a couple of Mpact Memphis events downtown next week. Monday the Community Involvement Committee will meet at the Cheesecake Corner at 7 PM. You can meet them for dinner, cheesecake and a discussion about bettering the community. If nothing else, it’s an excuse to have a slice of cheesecake (Cheesecake Corner has dozens of flavors) and meet some new people.

Mpact will also participate in the NBA Draft Party at the FedExForum – Thursday, June 28, doors open at 5, party starts at 6. Get the inside scoop from the Grizzlies operations team, and get autographs from the Grizzlies. The Grizzlies dance team, the Beale Street Flippers, and Grizz the team mascot will also be there. Free door prize to the first 1,000 attendees. Music by the Grizzlies house band, Elmo and the Shades and the Grizzlies Jazz Ramblers band. Will be interesting to see who we draft that night… I’d kind of like to see us get Joakim Noah – from what I’ve read he seems unusually mature for his age, has tons of energy and enthusiasm, could help Pau in the paint and could fill a motivational role for the team the way Battier used to.

– Downtown Night at the Westin happens this Monday night from 5:30 to 7:30 in the hotel’s elegant lobby. Happy hour prices (last month I had Crown & Cokes for $4), free appetizers (last month they had enough food to make a meal), and Di Anne Price on the piano.

– Also at the Westin, the new Starbucks is now open. They have a patio, it’s the only Starbucks downtown with street level access and it’s open from 6 AM to 10 PM daily.

– If you’re going to any of the rooftop parties tonight, you may want to stop by the Saucer where Deep Shag will be performing at 9:30. They’re very good. So my schedule tonight will be the Saucer for a friend’s plate party, then the Peabody rooftop, then the Saucer again to catch Deep Shag’s first set, then EP’s. Out for now, time to get a couple hours work done before the evening begins.

Today at 2 PM you can log on to the Memphis Grizzlies website and chat live with new coach Marc Iavaroni. You can also get on the site in advance and submit your questions.

And, although it has nothing to do with the topic of this post, here’s a pic of The Nuh-Uh Sister in a tube top.

Just took a walk to Walgreens and discovered a large number of fire trucks, chief cars, and ambulances headed to 67 Madison.

67 Madison is a high-rise (11 stories I think, maybe 12) at Front and Madison that is being converted into luxury apartments. It has caught fire several times in the past year, including one that was big enough for Action News 5 to cover with their chopper. This one appeared to be a minor trash fire and is now out.

I hope all these fires don’t delay the completion of the project. As I’ve said many times before – more apartments – as opposed to more condos – are badly needed downtown.

(How in the world am I going to work the June theme into this post…) If you wear a tube top, you’ll look really hot, much like a fire which is also really hot.

I saw an ad in yesterday’s Memphis Flyer that EP Delta Kitchen is now doing all-you-can eat crawfish and shrimp, boiled in Cajun spices, for $12.99 every Tuesday through the rest of the summer. Yum… crawfish boils are a lot of fun… I used to go to the ones they had at Newby’s years ago. Wonder if they’ll throw taters and corn in too, like Newby’s did… taters that have been boiled in Cajun spice are the best.

Of course, it gets warm on that patio during the summer, and you wouldn’t want to overheat… ladies may want to consider a tube top as an appropriate clothing option for the patio boils.

Dammit, I just realized, Tuesday is trivia night! I may never get to go to this!

Earlier today I posted about a lot of events happening Friday night. Well, this Thursday the 21st looks busy as well. Let’s see what’s going on:

– The Downtown Neighborhood Association will have their monthly meeting at 6:30 PM at the Burch, Porter & Johnson law firm, 130 North Court next door to Court Square Park. The dean of the University of Memphis Law School will discuss the law school’s move Downtown, into the post office space at Front and Madison.

– Bravo Memphis is hosting Bravo Caliente: Wines South of the Border, a fundraiser to benefit the Greater Memphis Arts Council, Thursday from 6 to 8 PM in the penthouse of Pembroke Square, 119 South Main. It will feature a tasting of South American wines and a demonstration of Zumba, the newest Latin-influenced fitness craze. Hors d’ouevres courtesy of Sauces, Dish, Blues City Pastry, Automatic Slim’s, and other area restaurants. Tickets are $25 per person or $45 per couple; call Pat at 901-578-2787 ext. 201 to reserve yours, space is limited.

– Dress for Success Memphis will have a fashion show called Turn Your Closet Inside Out from 7 to 9 PM at Runway Boutique, 522 S. Main. The show will pair Mary Kay cosmetics with creative work outfits that exude personality. Dress for Success helps women in need get business suits and other work-appropriate attire so that they can go out and get the jobs they want. There will be door prizes, a Mary Kay compact featuring the cosmetics on display, valued at $111; and a Runway Boutique gift certificate valued at $50. Admission is your monetary or clothing donation to help Dress for Success. They request that you donate only clothing that is work-appropriate.

– Tube tops are not work appropriate, but they are most definitely appropriate for Thursday night rooftop parties. This week we’ll have John Angotti and Common Ground at the Peabody, Elmo and the Shades at the Madison, and Garry Goin and G3 with Q107.5 at EP’s.

My tentative plan is to hit the Saucer for happy hour, then move to the Peabody rooftop between 7:00 and 7:30, then move to EP’s between 9 and 10.

When’s the last time I posted 4 times in one day? It’s been a while. Off to run a few errands, then it’ll be time for Trivia Bowl at the Saucer.

One of the people who e-mailed me in response to my Google optimization question was Memphian Hugh Hollowell, who writes a blog called A Politically Incorrect Entrepreneur. He has some very good, well-thought-out opinions on what it takes to succeed in the land of the self-employed. If you enjoy reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog, I think you’ll enjoy Hugh.

As an entrepreneur trying to make a living selling tube tops online, I look forward to learning a lot from him. Thanks Hugh for the response to my Google question and for a great blog.

– Gotta admit when I was wrong. Yesterday I went on a tirade against Comcast, angry that my connection speed was slower than that of a 14.4 modem. But, later in the day, I pulled the cable out of my wireless router and plugged it directly into my laptop… and suddenly I had my speedy connection back. The wireless router just needed to be rebooted. So it wasn’t Comcast’s fault after all. Apologies to Comcast for the misunderstanding.

– Received an e-mail this morning about two Downtown events happening this Friday, June 22. The first is the Stax 50th Anniversary concert at The Orpheum, a fundraiser for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Chuck D and Randy Jackson will host, and other acts will include Booker T and the MGs, Isaac Hayes, William Bell and some newly-signed acts. Here’s a link to more info from Paste Magazine. Tickets range from $25 to $1,002, depending on how close you want to get to the celebrities.

– Also on Friday night, Shelton Clothiers will have a second anniversary celebration from 5 to 9. The e-mail didn’t say, but that likely means free appetizers and wine. You know, this past weekend I went to the mall to shop for summer shirts, and today it occurred to me, “Why haven’t I been to Shelton?” They’re known for their suits, but they also have a good selection of comfortable, casual shirts. I’ll have to remember to make it down there this week.

Shelton sells men’s clothing only, but ladies, you can walk a block to the Peabody Place Mall, where Coco & Lilly has a wide variety of tube tops for you to purchase. Or, you can visit the Tube Top Boutique online to do some shopping.

– The CA has an update to the Malco controversy, where a projectionist was suspended for writing a negative review about the new Fantastic Four movie. He’s back on the job, but has put in his two weeks’ notice, feeling that the employer/employee relationship has been damaged. Malco projectionists will now be required to sign confidentiality agreements saying they will not write about movies that they project during advance showings.

Whew! Lots of news today. Thanks to Otto who sent me some good suggestions on Google optimization in response to the previous post – I’m going to try those out this afternoon.

– If you haven’t been to the buffet lunch at Leonard’s BBQ in a while, you may want to go soon… while you still have the chance. A reader told me there’s a For Sale sign in Leonard’s window. He says that the original owners of the Claridge House, at Main and Adams where Leonard’s is located, are selling off the remaining 5% of the building they still own since the Claridge went condo two years ago. Most likely, the reader speculates, someone will buy the restaurant space and offer Leonard’s a new lease, but at much higher rent, which could force them out.

Hope this rumor turns out to be false. Leonard’s is one of the best lunch buffets in town. For $10 (counting the price of a soft drink) you get ribs, shoulder, BBQ chicken, smoked sausage, spaghetti, BBQ beans, corn, bread, several other vegetables (which I can’t remember because I never get them – they take up room on the plate that could be occupied by meat), a salad bar (hey! another place downtown with a salad bar), a couple of desserts of the bread pudding/peach cobbler variety, and soft-serve ice cream.

If you haven’t been, you need to. It’s only open for lunch. If you live Downtown but work out east, it’s worth taking a long lunch and driving down here – just tell the office you have a doctor’s appointment or something. Or, better yet, call in sick for the entire day – you won’t feel like going back to work after lunch at Leonard’s anyway, believe me.

– Another reader e-mailed to let me know that you never have to pay to dial 411 again – Google is implementing a free 411 service that you can call from any phone. It’s in beta in their Google Labs, but it seems to be working pretty well so far. Here’s a link to the 411 on the 411.

Stuff like this makes me think… you remember when Microsoft used to come up with cool innovations like this (or, rather, buy them from people who came up with them)? Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the 21st century.

Which reminds me, I downloaded OpenOffice 2.2, a free office suite that competes with Microsoft Office, and installed it this past weekend. I remember downloading OpenOffice 1 several years ago, and at the time it was a bare-bones word processor and spreadsheet that would get you buy if you were totally broke and couldn’t afford anything better. Well, how times have changed. This weekend I did some editing in OpenOffice Writer 2.2, and it’s every bit as good as Microsoft Word, if not better. And it has the ability to save and read files in Word format, as well as its native format. With OpenOffice and Google Docs available for free, I’m wondering why any individual would pay for MS Office anymore.

– And yet another reader sent me a link to this CA article. If you read all the way to the bottom you’ll see that Collervillians apparently don’t want people from Downtown Memphis in their neighborhood.

– It was good to meet fellow blogger Doc Hancock yesterday, while I was out on the University of Memphis campus looking for tube tops and old friends. It was also good to see Mike Hollihan, who writes the Half-Bakered blog, at Otherlands yesterday where he was playing a cool board game about the Cold War with Pete the Trivia Guy. “It’s about the Cold War from 1945 to 1989,” Pete told me. “One person plays the US and the other plays the Soviet Union.” The goal of the game is to set up spheres of influence so you control as much of the world as possible.

“Well, if you get control of Romania, be sure to send me some girls,” I told Pete.

Of course, we’ll see Pete tonight at 7 for trivia night. Hoping for a big Rapscallion win to add another $50 to our total before we have a party.

– Speaking of Romania: My new store The Romania Store is not doing well in the Google search rankings. Which is odd because a week after I opened my previous Amazon storefront, the Tube Top Boutique, and linked to it from my blog, it started getting 20-35 hits from Google search a day. The Romania store is getting nothing from Google – only direct links from my blog.

The difference is that the Tube Top Boutique is on its own domain and has its own hosting account. Whereas, for new online stores/sites, I decided I didn’t want to waste 7 bucks a month for a hosting account for each site – so I bought a domain/hosting account called “profprsites.com” (PROFPR was my old NTN trivia nickname at Sleep Out Louie’s). I figured I’d park all my new sites in subdirectories of profprsites, and then if a site became successful enough to justify it, I’d move it to its own domain and hosting. But apparently Google doesn’t like the fact that The Romania Store is in a subdirectory of another site. If anyone has search engine optimization experience and has suggestions for getting the store’s search rankings up, please let me know. I may just have to break down and but the store its own hosting.

All right. Time to get some work done!