Memphis BBQ Map

Paul posted a link to a damn useful map he found today, showing all the BBQ places in Memphis. Since I know some of my out of town friends would appreciate this information, I figured I’d copy it over to here:

The creator of this map even color coded it. In his words: “Green I recommend without hesitation, Yellow I recommend but have at one time or another had less-than-stellar experiences or food, Red I don’t recommend at all, and Blue I’ve not visited…”

So there you go. I agree with his recommendations for the pitifully few places on that map that I know well. Hey, I don’t get out of downtown much. 🙂

Going to miss the zombies!

Dang! Now I find out that I’m gonna miss the zombies too!

Few posts back I relayed that I was going to a beer festival weekend after next weekend. Today, Paul posted more information about the big zombie attack … and it’s scheduled for that Friday.

I saw the zombies last year when they did it. They come down Beale Street, and then make a left onto Main and come down to right around where I live. It was a lot of fun to watch last year, but a bit chilly out and so there was not a lot of people out on the streets. Since they do it during the South Main Art Trolley Tour, and it’s probably going to be nice and warm out, then this seems like it will be a good one. You know, lots of carnage, riots, random destruction… followed by an afterparty.

I’d even be interested in getting all zombied up myself if I was going to be here. Maybe I could be zombie bum.

Oh well, I hope Paul gets a lot of good pictures.

Game night tonight!

Final Four Logo

Go Tigers!

Planning on watching the game tonight over at the Red Rooster, should be a good time. The Rooster is a nice place, good food, cheap drinks, handy location… I give it the Otto Seal of Approval. This is much like the Good Housekeeping seal, except that it means less housework and more drunken stumbling.

Watched the semi-final games over at Chad’s condo on Friday, and had a much better time there than over at the Flying Saucer. Here’s the thing, watching a game at the Saucer just really sucks. When it’s packed, yes, there is a lot of energy about, but it’s also freakin’ packed. It’s virtually impossible to get a waitress to bring you a beer, if you’re sitting inside then it’s too hot, if you’re sitting outside then it’s too loud from all the crowd, and in either place you can’t see the screens worth a damn. The audio is desynched from the projection screen because of the delay on the non-HD broadcast (and all the screens around the outside are non-HD), it’s hard to see the projection screen anyway during the day because it’s not bright enough… The list goes on. I’m sorry, but when I want to see a game, I kinda want to see the game. Crowd energy is nice, but pointless cheering when I can’t see or hear the damn plays is rather stupid.

This is why I think the Rooster is a better choice. They have a larger bar area with three bars, so getting beer is easy. All the screens around the place (dozens) are widescreen HD. The bar is dark even in the day, so the projectors show up nice and bright. The beer is cheaper on game days than even the Saucer on a Monday, and it’s good beer too. The crowd is just as large, but more into the game (it’s much more of a sports place), so there’s not as much idiocy as the Saucer has on those days…

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Saucer, but it’s not a place I think of when I think of watching sports. It’s a beer bar, in the truest sense. I go there to drink beers and play darts and sit at the window and play trivia… and that’s it. I wouldn’t go there for sports. I wouldn’t go there for food (often). I like the Saucer a lot, but I know its limitations.

Time for a show

Here’s a picture of the sign above the New Daisy Theater on Beale Street. Guess which show I saw tonight?

Marquee above the New Daisy Theater

As Mikey would say, I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.

Henry Rollins was awesome. I highly recommend the show if he’s coming to your town any time soon. Really. Go. Now. Get tickets.

Although the show was slightly too political for my tastes, he uses the politics to jump off into segues about touring around with various bands and into the interesting punk rock scene, such as it is. Since I’m a huge fan of most every band mentioned (although clearly not as huge a fan as Henry is), it’s a hell of a good time. Comedy interspersed with fun stories about global travel to “hotspots” around the world. He also does a fine impression of Christopher Walken (not to mention a damned good impression of Iggy Pop).

So , if you are not particularly conservative (although the neo-cons are quite welcome, it’ll give them something to be pissed off about later), then really, go see the show. Henry is a damn fine storyteller, and an extremely interesting person. It’s a bit of a shame he’s so anti-beer, he’d be a fun person to hang out at a bar and chat with.

Snowing in Memphis

It rarely snows in downtown Memphis, but it’s doing a pretty good job of it right now.

I left work a bit early to avoid the insanity on the streets, and my car was fairly covered by that point. So I quickly came home and took some shots out of my window and on the rooftop.

Looks like it's sticking alright

Unfortunately, the rooftop shots show that there is basically zero visibility. I can’t even see the downtown core from here.

Can't even see downtown because of the thickness of it

Ah well. Still, I expect some snowballs to be thrown tonight. 🙂

Have fun in Phoenix, Mandy!

Too much sushi…

Is such a thing possible? Yes, it is.

Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv posted this the other day, and I just got around to noticing it:

http://icali.tv/sushi-for-everyone

I did this exact same thing the first time I went to BlueFin. Hey, we were ordering based on the pricing and not really reading it too closely. Me and Mike ended up getting sushi for like 8 people. So I feel her pain.

Nevertheless, I now want some sushi. Damn.

Spin the Wheel!

Went over to the Saucer last night to see my friend Aimee on Wheel of Fortune.

It was a lot of fun, they had reserved the entire beer garden section for the crowd and had the show up on the big screen above the stage. Despite the sound coming from one TV being out of sync with the main screen, it was still quite a good show. I was fairly shocked at the number of people there, it was in the 60+ range. Of course all her family was there, and several of the other teachers from her high school, I just wasn’t expecting that much of a turnout.

Of course, Aimee won, to the tune of $47,500. Which is great, because now she can’t be not telling us anything like she has been doing for the last 3 weeks. 😉

So congratulations, Aimee!

She was also interviewed on the news at 6pm, which was almost as entertaining as the show itself. I missed the interview at the time (arrived late), but my Tivo picked it up for me so I got to watch it this morning.

Afterwards, we had trivia night, which I unfortunately had to depart from early because I really was not entirely well yet. I’ve been sick all week, and though I was past most of it, the combination of two beers and the drugs I had taken was making me quite dizzy. So I went home and collapsed. However, I’m feeling much better this morning, if I could just get over this nasty cough.

On another topic, my dad sent me some pictures of the half-completed piano/bar cabinet that he’s building me, so it should be ready in another month or two. My condo is starting to look like somebody actually has a sense of taste. Well, okay, maybe not, but it’s slowly coming together. I’ll post some pictures of the half-built, but now painted, piano later.

Holy crap, it's cold!

At about 2 pm yesterday, I stepped outside from work and it was nice. About 75 degrees, a bit overcast, raining. When I left work at 4:30 pm, it was 45 degrees.

That’s right, in two hours, it dropped 30 degrees.

It also decided to get so dark in the sky that it looked like night. Okay, so night was only an hour away anyway, but still, it was suddenly dark and cold. It’s like we skipped fall and went straight to winter, all in the space of two hours.

I’m not a winter person. I need heat.

On a plus note, there’s new bars around that are pretty fun, and I’m planning on enjoying them this evening. Although if it’s overly crowded at the Saucer (with the Dempsey’s playing it probably will be), then I might just leave there early and head straight for Hoop’s instead. He better be open, or I’m going to have to drink somewhere else. And I really don’t want that.

Post-vacation weariness

I’ve been unable to think properly for the last week and a half since coming back from St. Pats. Because of this, I’ve sorta slacked off on posting pictures and such. Also, I didn’t take my camera to St. Pats (because I’m an idiot), so I’m just really waiting for everybody else to send me their pictures and thus I can create a compilation.

Still, I have some newer pictures, so I may as well post those instead.

Last week, Mike and Paola had a beer tasting party. It was a hell of a good time, and I’d like to thank them for having it. I look forward to brewing a bunch of new beers up for the next one. They posted some pictures, which I shamelessly stole and stuck into my own web album because this lets me keep things in one place.

On Sunday, we were having brunch at the Majestic, when Mikey gets a call, walks outside, and comes back with a plastic light-up Spuds MacKensie. Naturally, we had to take him on a tour of the town before returning him to his rightful owners. Mikey has more pictures than I do, these were taken using my cell phone, which I’m getting better at using nowadays.

So that was last weekend. I missed Trivia night at the Saucer last night, because a) I was really tired, but mainly because b) I was actually unconscious on the couch at the time. I’ll be there next week though. 🙂

On the plus side, I received my cell phone gear from Cingular, including a data cable (pictured to the right), which I used to modify my phone. See, the LG CU500 I have now is a 3G phone, and thus capable of good data reception. Google Maps Mobile is extremely cool, for example.

However, Cingular annoyingly broke this functionality when they released the phone. After installing any “unapproved” Java application onto the thing, it asks for approval every single time it connects to the damn network, while you’re using that application. With Google Maps, this makes it damn near unusable.

But those clever people over at howardforums.com figured out a way to bypass this. So with the cable and a piece of software called BitPim, I was able to modify the phone to stop asking me those stupid questions. Suddenly Google Maps Mobile and GMail Mobile are the greatest things ever. 🙂

St. Pats pics up soon. 🙂

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