Paul Ryburn's Journal

So I came home this afternoon, and as I walked into my apartment building I found the following posted next to the elevator:

Needless to say, I couldn’t give two flying shits about meeting this guy… but since he said the magic words, I’ll go up there and drink his free beer. I don’t feel an ounce of guilt about doing this either.

Fellow blogger Charly sent me the following e-mail:

“You seriously need to enable comments. Comments are the best part of having a blog in the first place. Duh.

:)”

I actually have thought about enabling comments in the past couple of weeks. I’ve thought about it quite a bit. Really, I have no problems with about 98% of my readers leaving comments, and I think the back-and-forth exchange they’d offer could be a lot of fun. I also think it would be good to give other people the ability to contribute when I do “what’s going on around downtown” or “good places to eat” or those kinds of posts.

Let me think about it for a few days. It’s the other 2% that concern me.

Fellow bloggers: How do you handle comments? Do you use “moderated” comments, where you have to approve them before they appear? Do you require users to register (so you can see who they are) before they’re allowed to leave comments? Have you had major problems with people leaving undesirable comments that you’ve had to go in and remove? Have you ever had to ban people’s IP addresses, so they can’t leave comments at all?

Readers: Have you ever read this blog and wished for the ability to leave comments?

You’ll have to e-mail me your responses since I don’t have comments turned on yet.

Hours ago I said I was too tired to post, and here I am posting again for the third time tonight. My neighbor and I went to LoLo’s for dinner, and I remembered an old favorite I hadn’t had in a while – Hangar One Lime vodka, Sprite, and cranberry. Just to make sure it was as good as I remembered, I had three of them.

For dinner I had the pan-seared scallops with mashed potatoes. I’m not exactly sure how they make those potatoes but they work really well with the scallops. Definitely a dish I’d recommend. My neighbor had the pork chop, which was HUGE, with mashed sweet potatoes, and she cleaned her plate so I’m assuming that means she liked it. We sat at the bar, which is the thing to do at LoLo’s because their bartenders are quite possibly the best in all of downtown, and believe me, I spend quite a bit of time sitting at bars, so I should know.

Time for bed, although I don’t know how well I’ll sleep, considering I’m jumping out of my skin with excitement at the thought of going to work tomorrow and sitting in front of a computer screen all day.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I went to the Corkscrew and bought a bottle of Rogue Imperial Pilsner, which is the beer that sells for $30 a bottle at the Saucer. It sat in my fridge for a month, until this past Friday night when I was hanging out at my apartment with The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet after trolley tour. I was running low on wine, so I popped open the expensive beer.

Here’s the verdict: I’ve had a couple of other Rogue beers at the Saucer, in the $10 range, and the Imperial Pilsner is comparable in quality to those. Is it worth thirty bucks? HELL no. Not even if it’s served by a cute waitress in a miniskirt. Not even if she stands on top of a very gusty air duct as she serves it.

Is it worth the $13.99 I paid for it at the Corkscrew? Hmmm… that’s a tough call. It was a tasty beer (although unusally hoppy for a pilsner) and at 8.8% alcohol content it will F you up. I guess it was worth it to try it one time. However, for that price I could have bought TWO 12-packs of PBR cans at Rite Aid, and still had a dollar left over.

So there ya go… never did make it to the Majestic tonight. I ended up hanging out on the roof and drinking Red Bull and vodka with one of my new neighbors, and now we’re about to head to LoLo’s Table to get a bite to eat.

This weekend I happened upon one of the funniest blogs I have ever read… so, yeah., written by my friend Charly who lives here in Memphis. Interesting fact I learned about her while reading her blog: She wipes her ass with kitchen napkins when she runs out of toilet paper. Oh, and I learned that she spells “Charly” with a “y” and not an “ie.” Anyway, check it out if you’re looking for something to read… she writes what she feels and doesn’t give a damn if it pisses people off, and I respect that.

Blah… I started to type a weekend wrap-up, but I’m just too tired. I think I’ll walk down to the Majestic and sit at the bar and watch the Grizzlies game. Maybe I’ll make another post later tonight, but don’t count on it.

Go read Charly’s blog… and don’t forget to vote tomorrow, if you didn’t early-vote already… and if you vote in the Democratic primary, vote for Kevin Gallagher for Criminal Court Clerk.

If you had been fortunate enough to walk down the Main Street Mall about 10 this morning, you would have heard the following:

“Ruh. Yeah. Alco… Huh. Pow. Eat. Yeah. Rah. Some… You. Roh. Roh. What. Me. Talk. Hey. Rohroh. It. See. Yeah. Sir. Ineeda… Me. Me. Huh. Huh! It’s… Ruh. Ruh… Here. The. Look. Hah. Roh…”

These were the words of linguistic master and downtown resident Toothless Crackhead, who has invented a brand new language. Looking incredibly sharp in his ripped, stained white T-shirt, TC was inventing new words as he walked down the street slobbering. Currently, TC is the only one who speaks this new language, but that’s fine since he was having a conversation with himself.

It remains to be seen if his new language will catch on and replace English as the mother tongue here in the United States, but at any rate, we should feel fortunate to have such an impressive linguist in our city.

One of the “benefits” (and I use that term very lightly) of living downtown is that every time you walk out the door, you’re treated to a show: The bum-and-pigeon show. And boy, are they out today.

A few minutes ago, I decided I needed some caffeine and walked up the Main Street Mall to Jack’s for a Mountain Dew. While on my way, I got hit up by a bum with one of the most unique lines I had ever heard: “Hey man, want to get a Mother’s Day card?” He wasn’t a vendor with a big stack of them that he was selling. He was a bum, and he had ONE. He probably found it in a dumpster, or maybe he slipped it under his shirt while in Walgreens and walked out with it. I’m sure my mother would be thrilled to receive a Mother’s Day card that I bought from a bum.

In line behind me at Jack’s was another bum, trying to buy a 24-ounce can of Busch beer. The total was something like $1.40, and he had $1.24. “Ain’t you got nothin’ for a dollar?” he asked. And then as I was walking out the door: “Brother-man! Hey, bro! Lemme get sixteen cent from ya!” After he got kicked out of the store, he commented to another bum, waiting for him at the Jefferson Avenue trolley stop: “I’m sixteen cent short, mayne.”

As for the pigeons, they’re just being pigeons, walking around Court Square and the surrounding area, looking stupid and hoping someone will feed them.

I’m wondering if my number of encounters with bums today will hit double digits. They seem to all flow into town around this time of year because they know that May is a profitable month to hit people up here in Memphis. A friend and I have thought about starting a business selling bum repellent – packaged in cans like Off bug spray, but to keep bums away rather than mosquitoes. Seems like that would be a hot-selling item downtown…

This morning I was surfing around and came across a really good Memphis blog – Dining with Monkeys, written by a Memphis mom who dines at local restaurants with her husband and two kids, and writes reviews. Well-written and worth checking out for some tips on where to eat.

I liked her unique blog template, which I could tell wasn’t one of the standard templates you can choose when creating a Blogger blog. As I scrolled through her site, I found that the template was created by Baby Jane Blogs, who will design a custom template for you. Check out Baby Jane’s portfolio – she’s done some really nice work. And her prices are EXTREMELY reasonable – $85 for full design, $90 for new blog setup with full design.

Her work is so good that I’m considering having her design a custom template for me. Although, since I’m a web developer myself it feels a little bit odd to pay someone else to design a template. But if she can do it better, faster, and more creatively, why not… I’m going to give this one some thought.

On a related note… if anyone in the Memphis area is an expert on creating Blogger templates and would be willing to give me a lesson or two, I’d happily pay whatever hourly consulting rate you ask. This is something I’ve been trying to learn for a while, but because I’m being pulled in a million different directions I’ve never been able to concentrate on it. I need a jump-start and sometimes personal tutoring is the best way to make that happen. E-mail me if you’re interested.

So last night I hit the South Main Trolley Tour with the Most Annoying Woman On The Planet, and get this… she wasn’t annoying. She showed up on time, she didn’t bring her damn dog or some random doofus she met at a bar, and we actually had a really good time talking about what’s going on in our lives. I guess I’m going to have to give her a new nickname.

Trolley Tour tip: The places that put out the best free food and wine are not the art galleries. They’re the real estate offices that are trying to sell you a condo downtown. So go to those places first and fill up. And I have absolutely NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER pretending to be interested in a condo for 15 minutes while I pig out and down several glasses of wine. And if there’s a tip jar, I don’t leave a tip. Those condo people are making more than enough money off downtowners already.

After Trolley Tour, we walked to the Majestic to eat. I had the asian-spiced, tempura-fried onion rings with horseradish dip. They were ENORMOUS and I finished maybe a quarter of them. This would be a good appetizer for two or three people to share. My friend had the cornmeal-crusted, crispy calamari with red pepper basil aioli, and she liked it as well. Both appetizers were a value at $6 each.

More info about tonight’s party at the Butler Street Bazaar (scroll down to the previous blog entry if you haven’t read about it already)…

…for a $10 fee on top of the $10 party cover you can “scavenge.” This is the Bazaar’s swan song (Brett has sold the building) and he’s trying to get rid of everything inside – chairs, lamps, mattresses, carpet, cabinet, lockers, cabinets, desks, etc. For the $10 fee you’re welcome to take as much as you want home. Now that’s a deal! So if you’re looking for some inexpensive stuff for your home, I suggest your arrive right at 9 (before everything gets picked over) and bring a truck or van.

This is going to make for some interesting people-watching tonight as well. When you give Memphians the opportunity to get stuff for free or nearly-free, a very interesting cast of characters tend to show up. I can see people yelling, arguing with each other, playing tug-of-war with items they both want. The good news is, this will all be over by 9:30 when everything in the Bazaar is picked over, and then the party can really begin.

In addition to the Dempseys, the Gamble Brothers, juggling, and comedy, I found out they’ll also be showing the film Automusik Can Do No Wrong, starring the local avant-garde band Automusik. If you haven’t seen this film, you gotta… it is completely hilarious.

Now, I know that some people will have a schedule conflict tonight because a well-known semi-annual party is happening in Midtown. Here’s my take on it… if you want to be seen on the Memphis social circuit and maybe get your pic in RSVP magazine, go to Midtown. If you want to laugh and have fun and have a good time with a diverse group of wonderful people, go to the Bazaar tonight.

Don’t forget… crawfish and beer (and waitresses!) at the Saucer today at 2, and Grizzlies vs. Dallas at 4:30.

There’s going to be a Scavengers’ Ball at the Butler Street Bazaar, Saturday night April 29 from 9:00 until 2:00. This is the first time I’ve heard about any event at the Bazaar in almost two years. If you’ve never been to a party at the Bazaar, you ought to check this out – they always draw a diverse, eclectic crowd and have a wide array of entertainment. $10 cover, and for $10 more you get all you can drink, so they’re speaking the language of downtowners. Furthermore, for another $10 you can scavenge. Not exactly sure what that means, but according to the announcement in the Center City Commission’s weekly bulletin they have a warehouse filled with furniture, books, clothing, building supplies, and kitchenware, and I’m guessing the scavenging might have something to do with that.

The great thing about parties at the Bazaar is the diversity in entertainment, and this one appears to be no exception. They’ll have comedy, juggling, film screenings, a silent auction, and bands. The bands are listed as the Gamble Brothers and the Dempseys, according to the CCC’s bulletin – but I checked the Dempseys’ website and this event is not listed, and they are listed as playing an event in Oxford at 5 pm that day. If anyone can confirm or deny that they’ll be there, let me know. This event, however, is worth going to, Dempseys or no Dempseys. It benefits Hope House, so it’s for a good cause as well. (Edited at 1:50 pm to add: Brad from the Dempseys just e-mailed me back. They WILL be at the show.)

The only thing that makes me sad about this event is that I won’t be able to walk down the street to the Monkey and pop in for a drink, like I was able to do for previous Bazaar events in 2003-2004. Earnestine & Hazel’s is still there though. Looks like I may be doing some sitting at Nate’s upstairs bar Saturday night. Whew… with the crawfish party at the Saucer in the early afternoon and the Grizzlies game in the late afternoon, Saturday is beginning to look like a very full day.

The Bazaar is at 11 W. Butler in the South Main district. To get to it, go south on Front Street. Turn right on the street just before the light at GE Patterson (where the Corkscrew is). Drive up that street like you’re heading toward the Lofts and the Tennessee Brewery, and you’ll see a warehouse on the right – that’s the Bazaar.

HIGHLY recommended event. I hope to see you there.