Downtown Memphis Blog

Because I bought this for $3.

I’m framing the first one.

Not exactly ideal plating, as I got it to go (obviously), but I swear to god it’s one of the best chicken dishes ever.

Medallions of chicken breast, mushrooms, and garlic, saut?ed in olive oil and finished with Greek lemon sauce. Lightly topped with a mixture of Feta, Mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Served with choice of side item

I HIGHLY suggest it.

www.cafe61memphis.com

Ugh.

halcook

What a fucking joke. MATA’s moment of truth has come and gone, and like every public “Service” in Memphis, it failed.

The Trolley, which could have been GREAT for Memphis, was crippled with dumb routes and dumb schedules. In a city in which bars are open until 3am, and Beale Street bars are open until 5am, you stop the trolley at 11pm on weekdays and 1am on weekends?

Good call.

And you craftily designed the Madison trolley line to serve the literally tens of people who commute between the medical center and downtown, while not making it long enough to reach any of the popular nightspots in midtown.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/juice/2008/06/haters-plan-to.html

The Juice* continues to mourn George Carlin’s untimely passing, since we have obviously been influenced by his culture-bashing ways, but we find it hilarious that he manages to stir things up even in death.

The Westboro Baptist Church — the highly-opionated activist group that is best known not for its piousness but rather for being the jackholes that demonstrate the funerals of American soldiers with signs like “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for IEDs” — plans to picket Carlin’s funeral, according to a faxed press release that landed in our basket here this morning.

“George Carlin is in Hell. Deal with it,” the release reads. “You will soon join him. America is Doomed. We will picket George Carlin’s funeral. Amen.”

The Kansas-based group calls Carlin a “filthy blasphemer, obscene potty-mouth skeptic, agnostic, and profane atheist’” who “made lots of money making fun of God.” That’s why we loved him!

The Church, which bills itself as touting “religious opinion and Bible commentary on current events”? has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. We would have never guessed.

Carlin will apparently be joined in hell by “lying propagandist” Keith Olbermann and “fellow filth-monger” Jerry Seinfeld. And The Juice*, we suspect.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Posted by Josh Gillin at 3:28:48 PM on June 25, 2008
in Oh no they di’n't , RIP | Permalink

So he stops bitching. My friend Tony, from Hoop’s Bar, used to be a bit more, eh, aggressive with people. This resulted in some pretty goddamn amusing stories. I’ve witnessed quite a few first hand, and we always talk about writing them down, but we’re both lazy alcoholics. I decided I would write one right now.

Tony used to work in a bar on Beale street. Half of his shifts were in the middle of the week. During the winter, they were particularly slow, so I would go in there and hang out because I don’t really like people, so I like it when it’s dead.

This was one of those shifts. It was late fall, business on Beale and downtown in general was starting to fall off significantly, aka my favorite time of year. I stopped by the bar Tony worked at right after work, around 7 or 8pm, and we were sitting there bullshitting and watching the tourists on Beale.

I was sitting at the first bar stool, the cook at the time, Amy, was sitting at the second, and Tony was behind the bar. I had only been there for a few minutes, working on my first Newcastle, when some crackhead walks in, carrying a Beale Street “Big Ass Beer”. Every bar on Beale has the policy that you can’t bring a beer in with you, though you can walk down the street with a beer, as they don’t want people buying a beer outside, then camping out at their bar, taking up space, and not buying shit.

Tony says “You can’t bring that in here, you have to finish it outside.”, and the guys starts giving him shit. He asks for his name, and Tony says, “Why?”

Crackhead: Why? That’s a funny name! What’s your last name Why?

Tony: My last name is “Get the fuck out”

CH: I just want to know about your name, why.

T: It’s too early for this shit. Pretty please, with sugar on top, get the fuck out, or I’m going to mace you.

At this point, Tony produces a can of Fox Labs OC. This is mean shit. It’s the hottest pepper spray available.

CH: Hit me, big man!

Knowing what’s going to happen very, very soon, I roll out the left, towards the door, to get out of the line of fire. Amy goes the other way.

Predictably, Tony maces him. But not just a quick burst. Tony’s not that kind of guy. He continues to unleash a stream of pepper spray for a solid 45-60 seconds. About 30 seconds in, the crackhead has the presence of mind to bring his hand up to his face and cover his eyes while screaming “Ahhhh!”. Tony diverts the stream from his eyes, and starts spraying it in his now wide-open mouth.

The crackhead has a moment of clarity, and decides that leaving is the best way to stop the endless stream of pepper spray. He walks out the door, and for a few seconds, seems unaffected. This is because OC takes a few seconds to build up to full “OH SHIT I WANT TO KILL MYSELF, PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP BURNING” status.

After 10-15 seconds, he falls to the ground screaming “Ahhhhhh!”. Tony throws me the door keys and I lock the door. The crackhead gets up a few minutes later, and stumbles around, telling tourists that we maced him for no reason. No one gives a shit, of course, since he’s a crackhead. He finally stumbles off about 10 minutes later.

What a perfect way to start the night.

Antipsychotics are expensive. This is what happens when they aren’t available.

This is Tony the night before, sporting the Hoop’s Bar team gloves.

And Tony after the pub olympics.

And a bonus pic of Hoop:

The Pub Olympics by Hoop’s Bar went down Sunday, Tony got a ton of great footage, particularly of the bike race. As soon as he gets it up, I’ll mirror it here, it’s pretty goddamn entertaining.

On an interwebs related note, check out www.hulu.com, it’s a site where you can stream entire episodes of TV shows, watch full length films, and check out excerpts of both.

It’s completely legit, it’s backed up by the networks btw, I’m not advocating piracy (well, not in this particular case…)

Overall, it’s a great site. It’s very cool to be able to legally and easily stream TV shows, as opposed to fucking with torrents and maintaining a ratio and worrying about getting a letter from the MPAA. It’s not perfect, but it represents an amazing advance in the way the networks distribute content. A few small improvements would make a huge difference in overall usability. Since I’m self important and think everyone wants to hear my opinion, I’ll tell you all about it.

First off, it needs some kind of cache for slower connections. My DSL is full of fail and AIDS, so I have to open a vid, then pause it for five minutes to get smooth playback. Some kind of integrated cache for the top video in your queue would be great.

The highest res I’ve seen is 480i. I understand, from a bandwidth standpoint, and I don’t particularly care, since I don’t have an HD vid card anyway, but I’m sure it’s a common complaint.

Also, the selection isn’t great. Stuff is added all the time, but there’s still a limited amount of shows, and an even more limited amount of episodes. More networks getting on board would solve the issue of shows, but the episodes are a more complex matter. I understand not wanting to upload every single episode of a series, as that’s probably going to hurt DVD sales. On the other hand, they are selling advertising there, and I assume a lot of people will still want the box sets with extras and in high quality. Also, a lot of people don’t know or care to know how to get video from their computer onto their TV, and don’t care to watch TV on a smaller screen when they have a bigscreen TV sitting right there. It will be interesting to see how it works out, hopefully they keep the ads limited.

Overall, I like it a lot, I’m definately going to be a frequent visitor.

May Joe Pesci rest his soul.

This flying fucking rock probably doesn’t deserve him anyway. He made too much sense.