Paul Ryburn's Journal

This weekend I was watching TV, and a Harold Ford Jr. campaign commercial came on. He said something that annoyed me a bit, but probably endeared him to quite a few Tennessee voters. He said something like, “My parents brought me up right… they forced me to go to church.”

Ya know… I’m probably in the minority of Southerners on this… but I am determined that if I ever have kids, I will not take them to church, at least until they reach an age when they are old enough to decide for themselves that they want to go, and ask me to take them. Then, I’ll be happy to, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions I have as objectively as I can, and if I don’t know the answers I’ll try to find someone who does.

I just have a serious problem expecting my kids to grow up believing exactly what I believe. Each person has a different path to God. All of them are correct. There are no wrong answers.

I want my kids to find their own path, and I’ll be there to offer support and help them get the resources they need to explore their beliefs.

In Memphis it’s going to be quite a challenge to find a woman who backs me up on this.

Heck, I probably won’t have kids anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

I’ve probably run off even more of my already-declining readership with this post.

So, I went to Cooper-Young Fest on Saturday. It’s the 14th time I’ve been to the annual festival, but this year I did something I’ve never done at a CY Fest before.

I didn’t drink.

Honestly, I got down there and didn’t want or need to. For one thing, I didn’t want to take any chances of getting a DUI – I knew the police would have roadblocks up due to the Southern Heritage Classic that was also going on that night. And besides, I didn’t even want to drink. It was really hot – official temperature in the low 90s, and with the sun reflecting off the asphalt it was probably more like the upper 90s on the street. So I drank lemonade, Gatorade, water, and Mountain Dew throughout the day.

Best T-shirt I saw at CY Fest: “Keep Mount Moriah beautiful.” Leaning against each letter of BEAUTIFUL was a shadow image of a girl doing a stripper pose. Oh, that’s just classic. I should have bought that shirt.

Saw Steve Cohen at the festival and he asked about the blog. Kinda cool to have a future congressman as a blog reader. I also got a “Vote No On 1” sticker and wore it all day. I’m gonna do an entire separate post/rant on that one. Man, how much better a world this would be if only people who attended Cooper-Young Fest were allowed to vote.

It was good seeing my friend Wendy and her new baby. I got some funny looks as I walked around with her and the stroller. It’s not mine. Seriously. I saw Serrabee and she commented, “Nearly everyone our age has strollers.” You know, she’s right. Most of my friends my age own houses, are married, have kids. I chase after 23 year old waitresses and write a blog.

It was good meeting dwayne butcher at CY Fest. I love his pre-CY blog entry.

I stayed 8 hours, on my feet the entire time and was absolutely exhausted when it was over. Drove home, hung out at my friend Chad’s for football and birthday cheesecake (from the Cheesecake Corner, topped with blueberries – so good), then called it a night.

Didn’t take any pics, so no photo album, sorry.

I’m sitting here at the Flying Saucer typing this, enjoying a FREE Kick-Ass Chicken sandwich because I filled up my frequent lunch card with 7 stamps. Speaking of the Saucer, I should mention that The Dempseys will be playing here Thursday night. Right now there’s only a 50% chance I’ll be able to go see them (may have conflicting plans). But that’s OK – if I miss them Thursday, they’ll be at Blues City Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

God this was a boring post. I need to start posting drunk again.

Today I’ve had a couple of songs stuck in my head. One is a TV commercial from about 1980 that has a catchy jingle:

The other song I’ve had in my head all day is “Polythene Pam,” from Abbey Road by the Beatles. In fact, as I’m reading this I’m playing tracks 10-16 of Abbey Road, a medley of song snippets which includes the 1 minute, 12 second “Polythene Pam” among others. Maybe it’s because I have a Chilean friend named Pam that this song came to mind. Here’s the first verse:

Just kidding, Pam. You don’t really look like a man. and you’re a great kisser

I had a great time at Cooper-Young Fest today. I’ll post a full report in the morning from the Union Avenue branch office. Speaking of which, JOSH wants me to let everyone know that he will be bartending and working a double, so he’ll be there all day for Sunday brunch. And I likely will too. Stop by.

Today’s lunchtime post comes to you not from one of my branch offices, but from the main office. My work. The city schools are having a cookout for us, so I’m typing this as I munch on a burger and beans and slaw at my desk.

It’s almost here… my favoritest day of the whole year… tomorrow… Cooper-Young Fest. I plan on getting there around 11, and staying until it ends at 7, and maybe staying later if I hear of any good post-CY parties. I love walking around all day (think I’ll take my pedometer and see how many steps I take – bet it’s 20,000 easily), seeing people I haven’t seen in years, visiting all the booths, eating gyros and turkey legs and thinking “man, pronto pups are disgusting, who would eat those?” and then wanting a pronto pup a few hours (and beers) later.

Trying to figure out what bands I want to see… the only one that jumps out at me is Esque, on the Corona Extra Main Stage at 2:15. Never heard them but all the Midtown hipster bloggers rave about them. Guess I’ll go see what the fuss is about. FreeWorld is playing the First Congo stage at 1:15, but heck, living downtown I can walk down the street and see FreeWorld any time I feel like it.

Cooper-Young Fest is SACRED to me. Nothing is allowed to interfere with my good time. NOTHING. Case in point: One of the Romanians wanted to go to dinner at one of my favorite downtown restaurants Saturday night, but I turned her down because it would have meant leaving CY early. There are very few opportunities in this world that outrank spending time with Romanians, but CYFest is one of them.

I’ll have on my brand-new lime green Residents for a Safer Downtown Memphis T-shirt. If you see me out walking around, stop and say hello. I’ll bring the digital camera, so there may very well be a Cooper-Young photo album on my site next week.

You can find the band schedule for Cooper-Young Fest in this Commercial Appeal article, or you can get check this week’s issue of the Memphis Flyer for a complete program which lists all 400 vendors.

Back to work. Hope to see you at the festival tomorrow!

I don’t usually do inside comments as an entire post, but to a longtime faithful reader of my blog: Susie: I know what you don’t know (in parentheses), and it’s on Tuesday night at 7 if you want to add random knowledge. E-mail me

Thanks to PDS for forwarding me this link to an article on the WREG-TV website: Criminal concerns flowing like beer on Beale. The article quotes Beale Street authorities like Rickey Peete and John Elkington as saying that this is a much more aggressive group of people that are hanging out on Beale now, and there have been increases in aggravated assaults, robberies, drugs, and even a carjacking. My friend and EDU commander Maj. Johnny Currin comments, “When you interject drinking with weapons and drugs, that’s just a formula for some serious things that may happen.”

Question to my readers: Have safety concerns kept you off Beale Street? Has having to stand in long lines to get wanded by metal detectors on Friday and Saturday nights kept you away?

Even better, here’s what I really would like to know: What bars, clubs, restaurants, or shops would you have frequented this summer on Beale Street (let’s say, from Memorial Day on), and how much money would you have spent, that you didn’t spend because of safety concerns and/or security hassles? I would like to put a list together and post it either here or the Residents for a Safer Downtown Memphis site, to show Beale business owners how much this is costing them.

For example: Last summer I hung out in the Tap Room just about every weekend. This summer I’ve been there maybe 3-4 times. I typically spend $10 a night at the Tap Room, so I’d say they’ve lost $200 in business from me since Memorial Day.

I tended to hang out in the Black Diamond (or buy at their outside bar) quite a bit too – have only been there a handful of times this summer as well. I’d estimate their lost revenue from me at about $75-100.

I probably would’ve dropped at least $30-50 at each of Coyote Ugly, Pat O’s, BB King’s, and Silky’s as well this summer. Except for my Monday night visit to Coyote Ugly, and one late-night run through Pat O’s, I haven’t been to any of those places.

I’m also going to estimate lost revenue of $40 from me for Blues City Cafe. Even though I do hang out there a fair amount, there probably would’ve been a few additional times when I would have seen that the Dempseys were playing and come in and spent money, had I already been on the street.

Which businesses have lost revenue from you, and how much? E-mail me and I’ll compile a list and make sure it gets seen. All e-mails will remain anonymous – I just want the place names and dollar amounts.

Tonight is the weekly installment of bums, bands, beer, and pigeons at Court Square, for their weekly concert series from 6 to 8 PM. The Glass will be playing, and I’m looking forward to hearing them. Brad from the Glass is my former barista from Empire Coffee. Wish Empire was still open so I could still get a frozen hot chocolate and take it over to the park.

No posts in a while… sorry. Still having Internet connection problems at home. Let’s see… what has been going on. Well, I went to Coyote Ugly for the first time Monday night. My opinion: Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I’ll give it a 6 out of 10 but I went in expecting to give it a 2. I want to go back on a weekend night and see what it’s like though. One of the girls dancing on the bar squirted my friend with a water gun and made him drop his drink. That’s a clever way to get an extra $6 for another drink, I guess.

Before that, I went to Pint Nite at the Saucer. My favorite waitress was working, and even though I normally hate the benches, I sat there because it was her section. The night was unusual in that none of my regular drinking buddies were there, so I was sitting by myself. I worried that if I got up to use the restroom, I’d lose my seat. So I took out a note card and wrote the following:

It worked. My seat was safe all night. I also got a big smile from the waitress as I came back from the bathroom, so I think she saw it.

Oh. I also stopped by the Black Diamond for a can of PBR. While there, a friend told me that Young Avenue Deli is doing 50-cent PBR cans on Sunday night. That might actually be enough to get me out of downtown!

Speaking of cheap beer, don’t forget that tonight is the first installment of College Night at Alfred’s. 5 cent pitchers until 11 if you have a college ID. I wonder if any of the people who make fake IDs so under-21s can drink can make me a fake college ID.

It’s also the first installment of College Night at Jillian’s/Atlas.

The Cooper-Young Fest schedule of events is out in this week’s Flyer, and ho…ly…crap… they’ve extended it all the way to York this year on the north side. Up until a couple of years ago it stopped at Nelson. Then they extended it one more block north to Evelyn. This year it’s two blocks more north to York. AWESOME.

In case you haven’t read the news, Justin Timberlake will be performing Friday on Beale Street between 7 and 8, for Good Morning America. It’s a free concert. The Beale Street merchants are hoping the crowd sticks around afterward. Wondering exactly what they expect the crowd to spend money on since it’s all bars, and who wants to drink at that hour… other than the bums, and the people still lingering in the Black Diamond from the night before.

My readership is declining… I’m averaging about 190 hits on the weekdays, where I was up in the 230-250 range before Labor Day. Is it because school started? Or do people just not like me anymore… who knows. However, I do know that my number of hits will experience a dramatic pop two weeks from today. Not allowed to say why yet. I have a party to go to that night, which might have something to do with it.

Although, I have picked up at least one new reader in recent days… welcome to my blog! Good to see you out last weekend!

A friend sent me some pics of the Chalk Art Festival last weekend at the Farmers’ Market and asked that I post them, so here ya go (click the link). I didn’t take any of these, so no pics of Romanian waitresses this time around, sorry.

Last Friday’s trip to Raiford’s got me in the mood to go again. I may hit it Friday night – I know I said I want to rest up for Cooper-Young, but you know, I’ll catch up on sleep in October. If I don’t make it Friday night, then Saturday. Maybe both. You never know. My Raiford’s visits tend to go in cycles… I won’t go at all for 3-4 months, then I’ll want to go every night for a while. I’m moving back into the “go every night” phase. The $12 cover is not enough to deter me.

Today’s lunchtime post is brought to you by the free WiFi at Otherlands… wow, for an hour I got quite a bit typed! Time to post and go back to work.

The Nuh-Uh Girl raised a valid point this afternoon. I had previously said I was rooting for Eli in tonight’s game, not because I give a crap about football but because I used to have a bartender named Eli. Well, the Nuh-Uh Girl pointed out that Eli went to Ole Miss. So that’s it. I’m for Peyton.

“Hotty Toddy

We suck!

Ole Miss!

Yay!”

16-14 Colts, going into the 4th as I type this.

Here’s a link to a Commercial Appeal article that is a must-bookmark: The 2006-2007 performing arts calendar, by writer Christopher Blank. It’s a comprehensive calendar listing the schedule of just about every performing arts group in the city. It also contains a good article about the new Hattiloo Theater on Marshall.

Ravi Shankar is performing on October 5 at the Germantown Performing Arts Center. He’s the guy who taught George Harrison from the Beatles how to play the sitar. I bet he’d be worth seeing. God, he’s gotta be pushing 100 now.

Sitting here in the Union Avenue branch office. Just posted Deal of the Week, with good deals on an MP3 player, a laptop, and accounting software. Been a good morning so far… walked out my apartment building’s door and the first person I saw was a Romanian, on her way to buy cigarettes at Walgreens before heading to work. Hmmm. Maybe she’s stalking me.

Apparently because I hang out in bars a lot, everyone thinks I should have an opinion on tonight’s Eli Manning vs. Peyton Manning matchup. I don’t. Well, unless “don’t care” counts as an opinion. Oh, fine. I’ll have an opinion. I’ll pull for Eli because when I hung out at the downtown Blue Monkey for Sunday brunch, my bartender was named Eli. She was a girl though. Game starts at 7:15, which means I’ll probably be sitting in Sleep Out’s watching it. Could go to the Saucer to watch it but the place will be full of AMOGs (Alpha Male Other Guys; it’s a term used on how-to-pick-up-women websites) who take NFL football way too seriously. Actually, it’s kind of fun to watch them watch the game, kind of like it’s fun to go to the zoo and watch the animals. Maybe I will go to the Saucer after all.

Ole Miss lost yesterday. Good. Maybe they should change their cheer to “Hotty Toddy, We Suck!”

Plans for this week: Rooftop party on the roof of my apartment building Thursday night. Cooper-Young Fest on Saturday. Otherwise, the usual stuff – Pint Nite tomorrow, team trivia on Tuesday, Court Square concert series on Wednesday. Friday I will probably take the night off and get some rest. I don’t mess around when it comes to Cooper-Young – I absolutely will not allow myself to wake up with 3 hours sleep and a hangover that morning, like I do most Saturdays.

Time to log off and play the NTN trivia game. See you later!

Philip’s recent blog entries have reminded me how stupid Ole Miss’s “Hotty Toddy” cheer is. I’ve decided that from now on, I will root for ANYONE who plays Ole Miss. Even Texas.

This week I discovered that there’s an animal I had never heard of that is related to alligators, caimans, and crocodiles. It’s called a gharial. Unlike gators and crocs, gharials don’t pose a danger to humans. I think I’d still stay out of their way though.

I’m still at Sleep Out’s. I’m drunk. Jonah wants to use the computer. Guess I’ll post now.