Paul Ryburn's Journal

This is a repeat but since my readership has multiplied x 10 in the past year…

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First of all, congratulations to my former student Naseera (aka The One Normal Person Who Works At Autozone Corporate HQ) and Ron Perrone, Jr., drummer for the Dempseys, who both turn 30 today. Ron has mastered the art of time travel, as he has found a way to jump directly from age 16 to age 30.

Bad weather is moving in, but in case the forecast is wrong (NAH! that never happens) here are some things going on tomorrow night (Saturday, February 18).

– Zydeco Fest on Beale Street, 5 pm to 5 am. You can buy a $12 wristband that gets you into all the clubs, and it looks like even Alfred’s is participating. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is worth going to just for the people-watching. Imagine the street and all the clubs packed with sexy, beautiful women. Got that? Well, keep imagining, because that is definitely NOT the crowd that attends Zydeco Fest. Lots of people come up from Looziana for this. Not Louisiana, but Looziana.

– If you want to be downtown but zydeco isn’t your thing, check out FreeWorld at the Flying Saucer. They should start around 9:30 and are always a good show.

– And over in Midtown at the Hi-Tone, there will be a Save Libertyland benefit with the Luv Clowns, Harlan T. Bobo, and the Minivan Blues Band. I may not have been Libertyland’s biggest fan over the years, but I can explain why it needs to remain open in three words: LIBERTYLAND HIRES ROMANIANS. We need to support local businesses that make it possible for college-age Romanian girls to come to Memphis to live, work, and play. Especially “play.” And there’s now a serious offer on the table to keep the theme park open. So if you’re in Midtown, come by, lend a hand, hear some bands.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll make it to any of these fine events. I have the James Bond party being thrown by neighbors in my building, and I’ll be hanging out with a friend who is about to leave town for 13 weeks.

In local news, the Rapscallions trivia team (minus me) hit TJ Mulligan’s last night and won second place, for which the prize was a $25 bar tab. Meanwhile, while watching the Dempseys I got handed coupons good for a free appetizer and a free drink at Swig. Considering they had to split the tab four ways, I came out better than the team did.

All right – time to get some work done, because I have a week’s vacation next week! Not going anywhere. Downtown Memphis IS my vacation. Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

I’ll be back with a Deal of the Week post on Sunday, and who knows, maybe before that.

Monday night, I was at the Saucer complaining to my friend Bobby that my laptop battery is a couple of years old and can only hold a charge for about 45 minutes. He told me I should check out BatteryGeek.net. They sell external batteries for laptops and DVD players. Now, it’s true that the batteries are more expensive than regular replacement laptop batteries ($169-189) and they are external, which means one more thing to carry around and plug in. But, these batteries can go a massive EIGHT hours or even longer on a charge, which is two to three times what a regular battery can do. I could take my laptop to a coffee shop or restaurant and work all day without plugging in. Pretty cool.

In addition, these batteries plug into the laptops’ AC adapters and are fairly universal. So if you upgrade to a new laptop later on, there’s a very good chance the battery will work with it too.

Looks like BatteryGeek.net gets high satisfaction ratings from customers. They offer a free battery audit: you send them info about your laptop and they’ll tell you what battery you need.

I’m probably going to order one this week. If you use laptops or other rechargeable electronic devices on the road, this might be a worthwhile investment.

Edited by Paul 8:30 PM: Sorry about publishing this multiple times. Apparently when I copied this from e-mail, it added some tags which IE didn’t like… and I wasn’t aware of this, because I was using Firefox. Should be fixed now.

Since I’m one of the few people you have chosen to name by name in your blog, it’d be nice of you to publish these corrections and clarifications. I’ve already been contacted by friends who are concerned about the negative impression that today’s blog entry involving me gives. I don’t think you had any malicious intent in writing it. Still, could you please do a Paul Harvey and tell the audience “the rest of the story”?

Thanks,

Carmel

Corrections and clarifications:

I didn’t show up for trivia last night to get free drinks. To the contrary, I came, as usual, simply to enjoy time with some friends.

I did say that I thought girls shouldn’t have to pay for drinks on Valentine’s Day. But I was honestly just joking. My comment was initially directed only to you, not to all of the men on the trivia team. I figured saying that would get your attention and promote some lively discussion. It did.

I only had two beers * the one I purchased and the one a team member kindly offered to purchase for me.

When I observed that my glass was empty, I said this to you jokingly. My pout was exaggerated precisely because I was joking. Joking is a theme here. If I’d really wanted another beer, I’d certainly have paid for one myself.

I was actually armed with plenty of cash and credit cards. The only reason I paid with a dollar and a bit of change was so that I could avoid waiting to sign a credit card slip or to get change for a twenty-dollar bill for my $2.50 beer. Besides, in my view it was an ideal opportunity to get rid of some change. Unlike the situation you’ve encountered many times at Walgreen’s, I wasn’t holding anyone up by counting out the change I was leaving for the waitress. It shouldn’t have annoyed the waitress too much, either, since it wasn’t a huge heap of pennies like a bum might leave.

Also, the trivia question about whether women or men talked more during sex referred specifically to talking “dirty.” I disagreed when you suggested that calling someone “hot” or “baby” was an example of talking dirty. It’s true that I declined to provide examples.

Added by Paul: Carmel was just kidding around last night, as was I when I made this post. Carmel is a good friend and an incredibly good sport about all the teasing I give her in this blog.

Trivia night at the Saucer last night turned out to be a disaster for the Rapscallions. We didn’t win, we didn’t make the top three, and frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we finished in the bottom three.

One problem was that all the questions were Valentine-related, and that fell outside all of our areas of expertise. I’ll post a few sample questions below.

Another problem was that trying to agree on an answer was like herding cats. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with one of the team members back in September 2005, when the Rapscallions first started doing Tuesday night trivia:

Imran: “Paul, look at that team over there. They have SEVEN PEOPLE! How can we possibly compete with them?”

Me: “Imran, there’s no way that team is going to win.”

Ioana: “I am Ioana. I am from Romania. I will be your server this evening”

Me: “Look at them, Imran. They’re all over the place. There are at least three separate conversations going at that table. There is no way they’re going to stop what they’re doing and all focus on the question being asked. They’ll never come up with good consensus answers.”

Five months later, we have become that team. Trying to run around and get suggestions for answers from everyone meant interrupting dart games, conversations about movies, conversations about work, etc. Then I’d have to run back around a second time and say, “These are the answers everyone came up with, which do you think is best?” So when Trivia Guy came around for our response, we were unfocused and just throwing random stuff out.

And then there was the Carmel problem. Let’s post a pic of Carmel, just to make sure everyone knows who I’m talking about:

There ya go. That’s Carmel. So Carmel showed up last night, sat down at the table, and immediately looked at the male members of the team and said, “I don’t think females should have to pay for their own drinks on Valentine’s Day.”

Now, a couple of problems I have with this. First of all, I’m not fond of women playing the “you should buy me drinks” card in general. And secondly, offering Valentine’s Day, a holiday I DETEST, as a reason is not a good idea.

So I ignored her. One of the other team members said, “Oh, honey, of course I’ll buy you a drink. What do you want? Get something good – you don’t have to get the $2.50 Fire Sale (which was Honey Brown last night, one of the worst beers the Saucer has).”

So Carmel was happy. But 30 minutes later, her beer was gone. She looked at me and said, “My glass is empty. Somebody should do something about that.”

“There are people here who can do something about that,” I told her. “They’re called ‘waitresses.’ It’s easy to tell who are the waitresses here, because they wear miniskirts.”

Carmel pouted and one of the other team members bought her a beer.

About 45 minutes later, I ordered a Dogfish Head Raison d’Etre and ordered one for my friend Ish as well. He has excellent taste in beer (he drinks a lot of Duvel and Lindeman’s Framboise), and I wanted to see what he would think of Raison. Carmel looked at me expectingly like, “I’d like a beer too, please.” Again I ignored her, and this time she had to order her own beer.

But here’s what really got me. When Carmel’s check came, for the one beer no one had bought her, she took out a dollar and then had to fish out a bunch of change from her purse to cover the rest of the cost. She was so sure she could work the free-beer angle that she didn’t even bother to bring money. Which makes me all the happier I didn’t buy her anything. Watching her count up change to pay for that beer reminded me of the bums on Beale Street at $1 PBR night at the Tap Room.

Anyway, on th the questions themselves. We were at something of a disadvantage in that several of the questions deal with female behavior or female opinions on love and sex, and we only had two women on our team – Carmel and the Nuh-Uh Girl. (Although, the Nuh-Uh Girl didn’t go “Nuh UHHHH!!!!….” this week so I’m not sure that nickname is going to stick. The Nuh-Uh Girl also didn’t bring her cute blonde friend this week.)

One question was multiple-choice – what percentage of valentines (meaning, cards) are purchased by women – 45%, 65%, or 85%? We correctly guessed 85%. Husbands/boyfriends purchase all kinds of stupid crap – flowers, candy, teddy bears – to get their Valentine’s Day obligation out of the way. But we don’t buy cards. Because then, we’d have to write a personal note inside the cards, which is more work than we generally feel like doing.

Another multiple-choice question – what percentage of women say they would prefer a good night’s sleep to sex – 26%, 46%, or 66%? I tended to believe 26%, because in my experience women are some horny critters. But Carmel and the Nuh-Uh Girl both insisted it was 66%, so we went with that. We were both wrong – it was 46%.

Another question – who talks more during sex, men or women? Carmel was insistent on “women,” so we went with it and got that one right. “What do you say?” we asked her. “Something like, ‘Oh baby, you’re so hot, I want you?'” Carmel indicated that it was MUCH MUCH MUCH dirtier than that, but declined to give examples. Too bad, I might have re-thought the free-beer thing if she had.

Another question – “what are the chambers of the heart called?” When Trivia Guy came by, we told him, “auricles and ventricles,” and he looked at us funny and said, “All right, I’ll give it to you.” A minute later, while he was still making his rounds, we realized the reason for the funny look – it’s atria and ventricles. “I’ll run over and tell him,” said one of the team members. WHY???? He already gave us the points. Why change the answer, and risk changing it to something wrong? Donald Trump would fire your ass if you pulled a stunt like that on The Apprentice.

We were so bad last night that the Sissy Bitches team would’ve beaten us if they had been there. I can tell I’m going to have to turn into the Trivia Nazi next week and get things under control.

Other notes:

– After we got home last night, I promptly turned around and went back out to see my one true Valentine – my mug at the Tap Room.

– I’m taking the night off tonight, but a faction of the trivia team/Sunday drunks will be at Sleep Out Louie’s to play NTN around 7.

– I’ve been invited to a James Bond party in my building Saturday night. “Hot chicks in slinky dresses” is how it was described to me. Yessss! I’m using Zydeco Fest on Beale Street as an excuse not to get dressed up myself. Apparently the organizers of the party asked, “Paul… is that the guy who was dressed up as a Flying Saucer waitress on Halloween?” Four months later and that’s still being talked about.

All right, that’s enough for now. Off to work.

Click here for complete Super Bowl picture album

Thanks to my friend Bobby for pointing this out last night.

Valentine’s Day is a great way to walk around the office and notice the desks/cubicles of your female co-workers. If you see flowers/balloons/stuffed bears/etc., you know they have a husband or boyfriend. If you don’t see any of that stuff, there’s a good chance they’re single.

Not that I recommend dating your co-workers (in general, it’s a very BAD idea) but it’s useful info to have for the future. People DO leave jobs, after all.

Philip Cruzen, the Ptolemy Krewe board member who saw my post about their website being down, sent the following e-mail and gave me permission to post it:

Hey
I’ve started reading your blog alot in the last two months. I read your part about the Ptolemy website being down. I am on the Ptolemy board of directors. I don’t know why it is down/expired, but I sent word to the folks who can get it taken care of. Thanks. I doubt anyone would have noticed anytime soon.

As far as your question on the blog about the dues, they are 330 if paid after Dec 2 (300 if before). That gets you into 7+ parties each year for free, all of which you get to drink for free I believe. Plus you get to ride on the floats in 2-3 parades (Liberty Bowl, St. Patrick’s Day, and Kemet Jubilee parade in May). If we have just 7 parties and 2 parades, that works out to about $36 a party. I doubt most folks can go out 9 times and spend that little. I know I can’t. We also have a Happy Hour every month at a different location (month 1 downtown, month 2 midtown, month 3 east memphis, etc). I hope that explains what’s going on. Currently we have over 70 members and we expect to pick up another 25+ by the end of the month. I hope my long answer gives you a better understanding. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Thanks for the info, Philip.

In case you’re wondering who REALLY matters at Sleep Out Louie’s, these pics should tell you:

Pics taken at their wedding anniversary, Sunday, February 5, 2006. Here’s the happy couple, and a pic of Joy eating the top of their wedding cake:

Congratulations John & Joy.

Super Bowl pics are coming soon, seriously. I have now downloaded them from my camera. All that remains to be done is to create thumbnails and an index page.

Saturday night I hung out with fellow blogger Kat, who writes a blog called Semi-Charmed Life. Quite an interesting evening indeed, and I gained a lot of insight into how women’s minds work.

Kat lives in East Bumblefuck (specifically, the Southwind area) but used to live and work downtown (well, she lived on Mud Island, which residents of downtown proper don’t consider part of downtown, but whatever) and loves coming down here. So a couple of weeks ago, we agreed to meet up on a Tuesday night, for Drinking Liberally’s special State of the Union event.

Well, as it turned out, she got a last-minute assignment at work and had to cancel. And it was then I realized that Kat is different from most women.

Most females 25 and under that I know would have simply not shown up, and then the next day when I contacted them to find out what happened, they would have gone, “Oh yeah. I had to work. Sorry… but some other time, ok? Call me (giggle)”

Kat, on the other hand, contacted me as soon as she found out she couldn’t make it, explained why, and then said something to the effect of, “But I definitely want to get together and meet up with you soon. You seem like a cool person who I should get to know.” And over the next week and a half she made an effort to stay in touch, and we eventually made plans to get together Saturday night (she had her wisdom teeth out the week before, so she couldn’t do it any sooner).

WOMEN: Scroll back up and re-read the paragraph above. This is how you cancel and re-schedule plans with someone. Let’s review: She had the COURTESY to let me know she couldn’t make it as soon as she found out. She let me know that she seriously WANTED to reschedule. And in the days that followed she made EFFORT to make that happen.

So anyway, we met up around 9 pm at Sleep Out Louie’s. Kat told me about some of her and her friends’ adventures coming downtown and getting hit on by guys. “We carry fake engagement rings,” she told me. “That way, if we’re getting a lot of unwanted attention, we can put the rings on.” She also told me that there is indeed a “reject hotline”, a local phone number she and her friends give out to guys whom they don’t want to give their real number to, and when you call it, you get a message like, “Sorry, you’ve been rejected.” I always wondered if women really did that stuff.

Note to self: From now on, anytime I get a girl’s phone number, I’m going to call it immediately and see if her cell rings.

She also told me that she and her friends refer to a small tattoo a woman has on the small of her back (sometimes lower, just above her butt crack) as a “tramp stamp,” an expression of her inner slut. Makes sense – I’ve always heard that the small of the back is a sexual energy center, and that’s why it’s a popular spot for tattoos.

I asked Kat her opinion on guys buying women drinks at bars. It’s been my experience that buying women drinks – I’m referring to women I’ve never met before – tends to be a waste of money. Discussing this with Kat helped me refine my opinion on this matter. Here it is:

If you see a woman and decide that you’d like to buy her a drink simply for the purpose of making her happy, making her feel good, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. If, on the other hand, you buy a woman a drink and then expect a particular response from her (to stick around and talk with you, to give you her number, to go out with you), that’s a bad thing.

Throughout the evening we’d see women hovering near the bar in various places we went, and Kat would comment, “Free drinks.” Meaning, the woman was standing near the bar waiting for a guy to come offer to buy her a drink.

So, we tabbed out of Sleep Out’s and stopped in Swig to drink lemon martinis and make fun of some of the patrons who were trying way too hard to look trendy and sophisticated. Then we walked down Beale Street, where we found that people entering Club 152 were being swept with metal-detector wands before being allowed in. “That place has really changed,” Kat said. “My girlfriends and I go there all the time. I like to dance, and they just like to rub up on people.” Really? Kat needs to introduce me to her friends.

It was around this time that I found out that Kat is a Raiford’s virgin. (I know, it’s shocking that the conversation transitioned from “rubbing up on people” to Raiford’s, isn’t it?) She’s driven by and has been curious, but has never gone in. We’re going to have to do something about that soon.

We didn’t see anyplace on Beale that was all that appealing, so we ended up at the Flying Saucer. I knew several customers at the bar who came up and said hello, and of course the waitresses. “That’s something that can work in your favor,” Kat told me. “Women are impressed when they’re out with a guy and he seems to know everybody. You know, when he’s built up a network of social relationships.” I’ll keep that in mind in the future. It makes sense anyway. When I’m downtown I have a home-field advantage of sorts.

Kat is very proud of her 38DD breasts (she refers to them as “the girls”) and uses them to maximum advantage. When we would have a minor disagreement about something during the course of conversation, Kat would stick her chest out and say, “Look Paul, boobs!”, directing my attention to the low-cut top she had on. And whatever we had disagreed upon would immediately be forgotten. A very effective communication strategy. Kat could teach classes for women on how to talk to men.

Kat also told me that she owns several tube tops and would be happy to pose in them when Tube Top Month returns to this blog in June.

She also told me that she has read every one of my 300 or so blog entries, and that she thinks I need to bring back “What the Bums Are Drinking This Week” on a regular basis.

And those were the highlights of the evening, as best as I can remember them considering that I obliterated my brain with alcohol the following day. Very cool person who I look forward to hanging out with again. I highly recommend her blog – it’s something of a female counterpart to mine.

And a few random notes before I bid you all adieu for now:

– Sleep Out’s has a new Sunday bartender (again) – Veronica, who bartended the Tap Room for a while last summer. Veronica RULES. I used to go there on Monday nights and keep her company while the bums came in and dug change out of their pockets to buy $1 PBR.

– Although, I’ll miss Lisa, the outgoing bartender, who RULES as well. She’s being transferred to Rum Boogie, so I guess that will be the place to go for her homemade bloody mary mix.

– As expected, NTN Trivia added several extra hours to my stay at Sleep Out Louie’s. That was an investment that’s really going to pay off for them. My neighbor Chad is Mr. Trivia. He’s either at Sleep Out’s playing NTN, at the Saucer for Tuesday Night Trivia Bowl, at Mulligan’s for Thursday trivia, or trying to round up people for a game of Texas Hold’Em.

– Speaking of trivia… the fact that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day will not stop THE RAPSCALLIONS from dominating Trivia Bowl at the Saucer. Well, at least I’ll be there, don’t know about the rest of the team. Single females who aren’t busy doing V-Day “dating” crap are welcome to join us and be part of the team.

– We had a few new people join us last week, including someone who I refer to as the “nuh-uh girl.” Whenever we’d come up with a potential answer to a question, she’d go “Nuh UHHHH!!!…” She was fun to hang out with though.

– I’ll also be at the Saucer tonight for Pint Night (will be there around 6:30 probably). And Thursday, I’ll be at the Saucer to see The Dempseys (and also to see The Waitresses). And Friday, I’ll be heading to a birthday celebration for a former student of mine at… you guessed it, the Saucer.

That’s it for now… more updates to come throughout the week.