Paul Ryburn's Journal

The other day I went to Walgreens and paid for my purchase with a 20. Among the change I got back was a two dollar bill. It has been several years since I last saw one. Thomas Jefferson’s picture is on the front of the bill.

According to Wikipedia it isn’t valuable beyond the $2 value, but I think I’ll hold on to it anyway.

After seeing the AccuWeather banner on my mother’s homepage, I decided I wanted one for myself. So I signed up with AccuWeather and have added a small weather banner on the left side of this blog (you may need to scroll down to see it). It’s not as nice as the one on my mother’s page (I simply don’t have the room for the full-size banner), but it will at least give you the current temperature and radar image for Memphis, as well as links to hourly and daily forecasts. Hope you enjoy it.

Glad I don’t live in Tulsa… they’re having a nasty ice storm over there. It’s going to be a rainy mess here in Memphis today, but the temperature is going to remain in the 60s, which means I get to wear shorts.

Hmmm… my mother’s list of links is giving me an idea for some things I could do with the left and right window panes of this blog. I may do some rearranging over the next week.

So I met up with Semi-Charmed Kat at the Saucer tonight. We sat in the couch area (actually, the two wing-back chairs next to the couch) in the indoor section, for those of you familiar with the Saucer.

About 20 minutes after we sat down, our entertainment arrived, sitting on the loveseat across from us. It was a 50ish man, dressed very professionally in a blazer and button-up shirt. Or, at least he would have portrayed a professional image had he not had about 10 drinks too many. He brought a bum in with him. Professional Man held a gift bag containing his evening’s shopping; Bum held a garbage bag containing his life’s possessions. Amazingly, management didn’t throw the bum out.

Professional Man bought Bum a beer. Now, I’ll admit, I’ve bought a bum a beer downtown before. Not very often, but I have. But, when I have, I’ve bought the bum the cheapest damn beer I could find. Professional Man bought his bum a Chimay. That’s an $11 beer.

Also, when I buy a bum a beer, I hand it to him and gesture that it’s time for him to go – far, far away. Professional Man, on the other hand, sat on the couch with Bum and they drank their Chimays and Professional Man talked and whenever he wanted to emphasize a point, he touched Bum lovingly on the arm. I’m not kidding, there was some genuine affection there. The kind of affection that comes to the surface after 10+ beers.

Shortly thereafter, they left. Together. I’m guessing Professional Man got him some bum lovin’ tonight. And when I say “bum lovin’,” I mean “bum” in both the American and the British sense of the word.

– Thanks to the Nuh-Uh Girl for sending me this Memphis Business Journal article on Spindini, the new restaurant set to open soon in the former Glass House space on South Main. It will be centered around a wood-burning oven and Judd Grisanti will be cooking right out in the open where people can watch. Pizzas will be $12-13 and entrees $13-29. There will be a $5 martini every day and over 80 wines. They will be one of the few restaurants downtown with ample parking, and they will keep a small glass art space in the front, a bit of continuity from the Glass House days. Article says they should open around the 15th.

– Also on the MBJ’s site today, there are plans for BB King’s to open a third floor. I’ve heard about this for a while, as one of BB’s managers lives in my building. It will be a space where you can go to have a conversation without having to talk over the music. The manager told me that they want to target locals for the 3rd floor (which seems to be a popular strategy these days, the Majestic Grille, EP’s Delta Kitchen and Sauces having already done it).

– The Memphis chapter of The Recording Academy is hosting an “Up Close and Personal” session with Big Jon Platt on Thursday, January 18. Platt is the Executive Vice President/Head of Urban, Creative, West Coast for EMI Publishing, and is one of the big dogs in the industry having worked with names like Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Beyonce and Usher. He works with emerging artists and established stars. Seating is limited to 50 and you must RSVP to reserve a seat. Free for Recording Academy members, $20 to the general public. Call 901-525-1340 or e-mail memphis@grammy.com to reserve a seat.

– There will be a parade downtown on Monday for MLK Day. It will start at 10:15 AM and will start at Main and Auction, go south on Main to North Parkway, west on North Parkway to Front, south on Front to Beale, and east on Beale to Handy Park. For more info see Eyewitness News’ site.

– Oh good Lord… David Gest is getting his own reality show. It will be shown on British TV, but will be filmed here in Memphis, following him around on his day-to-day routine. Why would ANYONE want to watch David Gest? So if you’re out in downtown Memphis, now you have to be prepared to be annoyed not only by Gest himself, but a camera crew as well. I still haven’t forgetten his “Be My Gest” campaign where he fed the homeless on Christmas Day 2004. I predicted it would be a disaster, and it was. From what I heard, if someone had brought a video camera they could have filmed footage for some new DVDs in the “Bum Fights” series.

– My WeatherBug is chirping… heavy rain is expected this weekend, and there’s a flash flood watch until Sunday night.

– Got an e-mail from a Romanian reader who lives in Memphis… she was hoping the Romanians who lived downtown this summer were still here. Unfortunately, they’re not. If you’re a Romanian living in Memphis, she’d like to meet you, just to have someone from back home to talk to – shoot me an e-mail and I’ll forward it to her.

– One of my regular blog readers pointed out that I may have trouble getting a date to the Monty Python SPAMALOT show for which I have free tickets, because the show is on February 13, the day before Valentine’s Day. “On the other hand,” she writes, “some guys dump their girlfriends just before the big holiday, so they won’t be obligated to buy gifts or flowers or dinner or whatever.” So maybe I’ll have a chance to find someone after all.

– Plans for the 3-day weekend: Hang out with Semi-Charmed Kat tonight, do some consulting work tomorrow and then network with the media conference people at TJ Mulligans, brunch at Sleep Out’s on Sunday (where I will likely kick Skippy’s ass in NTN Trivia again), Pint Nite at the Saucer on Monday. All right, got a million other things to get done on the computer before I go out, so I’m outta here.

My friends at the Orpheum e-mailed me and asked if I’d help get the word out about Monty Python’s SPAMALOT, a musical coming to the Orpheum February 13-18.

SPAMALOT is based on – or as they like to say, “ripped off” from – the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was voted as the best British film of all time by the United Kingdom arm of Amazon.com and the Internet Movie Database. “Telling the legendary tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and their quest for the Holy Grail,” the press release reads, “Monty Python’s SPAMALOT features a chorus line of dancing divas and knights, flatulent Frenchmen, killer rabbits and one legless knight.” It is currently one of the hottest shows on Broadway and picked up three Tony awards in 2005.

For more information about SPAMALOT, you can go to the Orpheum’s website or the show’s official website. To buy tickets, visit Ticketmaster.

As a reward for this “public-service announcement,” I now find myself holding two press tickets to SPAMALOT’s opening night (hey, at least I’m honest enough to tell you when I’m accepting bribes in exchange for blog publicity). Opening night is on a Tuesday, so trivia team, I’ll be absent on the 13th. Also, I guess I’ll have to find a date, since I have an extra ticket. Oh, well, I’ve got a month to figure it out.

Here are a couple of pics from the show:

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I went to see a Pink Floyd tribute band called Pulse, who played at Neil’s in Midtown. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much; I was just going to support one of my co-workers who is the band’s drummer. Well, I was in for a surprise. Pulse had one of the most elaborate stage setups I’ve ever seen – 7 people in all, including two female singers. They performed magnificent versions of Pink Floyd’s songs – “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” “Have a Cigar,” “Dark Side of the Moon/Eclipse,” “Run Like Hell,” and many more.

Well, they’ll be back at Neil’s this Saturday, January 13, from 9 PM to 1 AM. They’ve added a third female singer, and the drummer has a new set of drums he’s eager to break in. I won’t be able to make it this time, because I want to stay downtown and network with the people here for the media conference. But, if you’re looking for something to do and you like Pink Floyd’s music, this is well worth checking out. Neil’s is at the corner of Madison and McLean in Midtown and they have a full liquor bar and food menu. The band will be in the back room, and unless they’ve changed it from last time, cover is $5.

For those of you who are attending the National Conference for Media Reform, and feel like going out for a night on the town after you get done with your conference duties, I want to post some recommendations. Now, I know many of you won’t have time to get out after the conference, because there’s a lot of serious work to get done. But, with 3,000 attendees, I figure there have to be SOME partiers in the group. This post is for you.

First of all, my number-one recommendation. If you want to go out and dance, and you want to go to a place that is as REAL as Memphis can get, this is where you need to go:

This is Raiford’s Hollywood Disco. Fellow blogger Mr.Roboto described the owner/DJ, Robert Raiford, as “the crunkest man on Earth” and he is absolutely right. You will never have another experience like Raiford’s. He spins disco, soul, and hip-hop for one of the most diverse crowds you’ll ever see. There are like 100,000 lights in the club. The dance floor lights up and has a stripper pole on it. There are white leather couches to sit on. The club’s signature drink is a quart of Bud Light. If you don’t like the signature drink, too bad, because that’s about all they serve. You can carry in your own liquor and they’ll sell you set-ups. It opens on Friday and Saturday at 10 PM, starts to get busy about midnight, and there will be a looooooong line to get in by 1 AM. It closes around 4:00, 4:30 AM. To get there, take Main to Vance Ave. (three blocks south of Beale) and you’ll see it, just off Main on Vance. Highest possible recommendation. You haven’t been to Memphis until you’ve been to Raiford’s.

Some other recommendations:

• The only place downtown that keeps it real as much as Raiford’s does is Earnestine & Hazel’s, at the corner of Main and GE Patterson. They sell beer and have exactly one menu item – the Soul Burger, which is one of the best burgers in town. They also have the best jukebox in town. This is a former brothel and they have done very little in the way of redecorating. If the upstairs is open (look for an open door in the back left), by all means, go up there and check out the rooms where business was taken care of in the old days. They have a small bar upstairs too, tended by a guy named Nate who is one of my favorite bartenders downtown.
• If you insist on going to Beale Street: Normally I’d list Blues Hall and BB King’s as the best places to hear live music on the street, but I see that The Dempseys are playing Blues City Cafe Friday and Saturday and they are the best band in town. The Pig on Beale and Blues City Cafe have the best ribs. EP’s Delta Kitchen has the best upscale bar menu. King’s Palace Cafe has the best regular bar menu. The Tap Room is a great place to hang out and drink a beer. Pat O’Brien’s and Silky’s are good places to party.
• Bluefin on Main Street (between Gayoso and Peabody) has good sushi and a chilled-out atmosphere with live DJs.
• If you want to meet some friendly locals, check out Sleep Out Louie’s on Union between Front and Main. The regulars there will be happy to talk to you and recommend more good places. On Saturday night they have an acoustic band called Pam & Terry who are very good.
• The Flying Saucer has the biggest beer selection and the best-looking waitresses, but on weekend nights it tends to fill up with frat dudes, and there’s a cover charge. Take a peek in the window, and if it looks like your thing, by all means, go in, it’s a good bar; if it doesn’t look like your scene try Dan McGuinness Pub across the street.
• There are lots of good restaurants on Monroe and Union between Front and Third, and on Second between Union and Peabody Place.
• Peoples (on Beale between Third and Fourth) and Jillian’s (Second at Peabody Place) have pool tables. Jillian’s also has a bowling alley.

There ya go… that’s a list to get you started. I’ll be at the Democracy for America/National Conference for Media Reform mixer at TJ Mulligan’s on Saturday from 6 to 8, so if you see me there, stop and say hello.

(Edited 6:41 PM Wednesday, January 10: I have some updated information. See below in yellow type.)

Happy birthday to my friend Mike, who is also my trivia teammate and one of Downtown’s best home beer brewers. Last night after trivia (we won second place, adding a $25 gift certificate to our stash and bringing the total to $200) we took Mike to a birthday dinner at EP’s. He had attended the South Main Association meeting earlier in the evening and came back with lots of juicy information about Downtown happenings.

Some of what he told me is below. This is all hearsay based on what was said in a meeting I didn’t go to, so if anything isn’t accurate e-mail me and I’ll correct it. I suppose if I were a real journalist I’d make phone calls and confirm all this stuff, but that’s an awful lot of work.

– The restaurant on Monroe that used to be Mike’s is going to be converted into a neighborhood bar. I hear they’d particularly like to have the residents of the Shrine Building and Number 10 Main (both less than a block away) as regular customers. I asked Mike (my friend, not the restaurant namesake) if it sounded like it was going to be upscale (like, say, LoLo’s Table) or more casual (like Sleep Out Louie’s). He said he thought it would be more like Sleep Out’s. VERY cool… that is very much needed in the neighborhood.

Followup: Mike just sent me a Memphis Business Journal article about the new bar. It will be called Bardog Tavern, will seat 75, and will offer pub food and a full liquor bar. It will be open until 2 weekdays and 3 weekends.

– The shop at Main and Pontotoc, two blocks south of Beale, that used to be a tattoo shop, is going to be converted into an oyster bar. Wow… a new oyster bar and a new neighborhood bar… “businesses that will compete with Sleep Out’s” seems to be the theme of downtown development this month.

– Also, a new restaurant called Condo Club is going to open in the South Main area. I don’t have any more details on this one; if anyone’s got the 411 let me know. Hmmm… I don’t own a condo… I rent an apartment. Wonder if they’ll stop me at the door and say, “I’m sorry, sir, your type isn’t welcome here”? (Edit: Well, I heard the name wrong. It’s Congo Club, with a “g” not a “d.” So I guess I won’t have to worry about my renter status keeping me out.)

– Then Mike dropped the big news on me… up until two years ago there was a festival called Arts in the Park. It was held in October in Audubon Park, and it had the best arts and crafts of any Memphis festival. I could easily spend several hundred dollars there on cool stuff I couldn’t find anywhere else in town. Well, the word is that the festival will be renamed and moved to South Main. AWESOME. Not sure what time of year it will be held. Again, if anyone has more details let me know. Mike, who had never been to the old festival, asked me if it was a drinking/partying festival like Cooper-Young. “No, it wasn’t, not nearly as much,” I replied, “but I guarantee it will become one if they move it downtown.” (Edit: The Memphis Business Journal released a story about this festival today – it’s not a case of them moving Arts in the Park, but starting a new arts festival which will have some of the same characteristics. The fest has some big dogs on board, including Jay Etkin, so it’s off to a good start. They’re looking at the last week in October and the fest would extend from Huling to St.Paul.)

– Mike also e-mailed me this article from Slashdot, indicating that Bran Castle near Brasov, Romania may be up for sale. Legend has it that the castle was the home of Vlad Tepes, who inspired the Dracula character. Maybe I should buy it… it would be a real asset if I cruised the bars in Brasov to pick up beautiful Romanian girls… “Hey baby, let’s go back to my castle for a drink”… come on, no girl could say no to an offer like that.

– Good article in the Commercial Appeal today about Joe Cartwright, the chef at LoLo’s Table. He got his cooking experience in the kitchen with Hop Sing, cooking meals for his Pa and his brothers Hoss and Adam… wait, that’s a different Joe Cartwright. Maybe I need to quit watching so much TV. Anyway, it’s a good article, check it out. Says he went to Arkansas State University and is 26… wonder if Semi-Charmed Kat knows him?

– Speaking of which… looks like I’ll be hanging out with Semi-Charmed Kat Friday night. That will probably lead to some good blogging this weekend, as things tend to get interesting when SCK comes downtown.

– Saturday night I’ve been invited to a Democracy for America/Democracy for Tennessee mixer with the people attending the National Conference for Media Reform. Looking forward to that… not only to meet some of the people attending the conference, but also to meet some of the DFA/DFT members, whom I have not yet interacted with other than being on their mailing list.

– Speaking of the conference: In the next day or two I’m going to be posting some recommendations on what to see and do in Downtown Memphis, for the benefit of conference attendees. It may be up as soon as tonight, definitely no later than Friday lunchtime.

– The conference is the front-page article of this week’s Memphis Flyer, so be sure to grab a copy from one of the boxes.

– Holy crap! Someone finished the 4-pound Sasquatch burger at Big Foot Lodge! And they finished in 11 minutes! How in the world?

All right, tired of typing, so I guess I’ll publish. I have plenty more topics to blog about, so check back.

This month I plan to overhaul one of my other sites, Memphis Wallpaper. This is a site where I’ve posted images of Memphis for you to download and use as your desktop background. Unfortunately I haven’t added any new images in about 2 years. This is partly due to the fact that I didn’t have a working digital camera for much of 2005, and when I did get a new camera, I simply found it too much trouble to post new images… I had to resize them, create database entries, update the index pages, and then FTP everything up to the server.

Well, last night I had a brilliant idea… I’m going to turn Memphis Wallpaper into a blog. The concept will still be the same – Memphis images for your desktop – but I will be publishing the site in blog format, adding a new image (and descriptive text) every few days. I’ll post some of the best of the old images, and I’ll be taking new ones with my digital camera. Due to the fact that I can add search capabilities to a blog, the images should be easier to find than they are on the existing site. And, I’m going to allow comments on the Memphis Wallpaper blog, in order to make it easier for readers to leave feedback and suggest images they want to see.

One thing I’m not going to do on the new site is post the images in different sizes. With the variety of laptops and LCD monitors on the market now, there are simply too many resolutions. So I’m going to post the images at full-size only (5 megapixels) and leave it to the user to resize if they want/need to.

A good thing is that I’ll have a lot more space once I move Memphis Wallpaper to a new server – 100 GB rather than the current 100 MB – so I’ll be able to post a virtually unlimited number of images, whereas before I had to worry about running out of space.

If you want any of the current images on Memphis Wallpaper, grab ’em now. In less than a week the site should be down with an “under construction” label, then shortly after it will reappear as a blog and I’ll begin posting new images.

I’m not done yet! I have a second lunchtime post, with lots of gossip about Downtown bars and restaurants. It should be up within the hour.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got Sen. Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream as a Christmas present. Currently I’m about halfway through it.

Today I was reading chapter 5 (“Opportunity”), and I absolutely loved what Obama had to say about education. Let’s start with this quote, where he says that building a 21st century school system means

“paying teachers what they’re worth. There’s no reason why an experienced, highly qualified, and effective teacher shouldn’t earn $100,000 annually at the peak of his or her career. Highly skilled teachers in such critical fields as math and science – as well as those willing to teach in the toughest urban schools – should be paid even more.”

BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well said, Senator!

Here are some other points he makes in the preceding and following paragraphs:

• We need to remove red tape in the certification process, so, for example, if a chemistry major wants to teach, he or she is able to do it without expensive additional course work;
• Proven teachers need to be given more control over what goes on in their classrooms;
• In exchange for more money, teachers need to become more accountable – and school districts need greater ability to get rid of ineffective teachers;
• Scores on standardized tests do not accurately reflect teacher performance. Therefore, unions, states and school districts should work together to come up with a system combining test scores and peer review that is a fair and accurate tool for evaluation.

Here we have a politician talking about education, and saying things that make sense. That’s refreshing. I also like it that he takes the attitude of “How can we do these things?” rather than “this is a nice wish list, but it’ll never happen because of A, B, C…”

I’m really starting to like this guy. I’m going to reserve judgment until I finish the book, but I will say that based on his views on education, I’m going to have to give him serious consideration if he does indeed run for president in 2008.

One other thing: Steve Cohen fans may want to read this book and pay special attention to Chapter 4 (“Politics”). Obama explains how, once you get to Washington, there are so many forces pulling you so many different directions – lobbyists, the media, your party, etc. – that it’s nearly impossible not to lose the sense of idealism that got you elected. Hopefully Steve will wade the political waters successfully, but it sure doesn’t look like he’ll have an easy time, given the picture Obama paints of the current situation.

And that’s all for now. Getting ready to head up to the Saucer for Tuesday night trivia. Hopefully I’ll be able to file a report tomorrow saying that the Rapscallions added to their accumulated winnings.