Complete Starbucks US Store Closure List

Corrected at 11:27 MST. Thanks to my unnamed Starbucks sources.

A few observations:

• Only one store in Arizona is closing.
• Eighty-eight stores in California are closing!
• Ten Tennessee Starbucks stores are closing (including the "Dirty Dexter").

For a complete list, click here. Click here to read my Open Letter to Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz.

Welcome to my neighborhood!

• Hundreds of bales of hay burn
• 11,000 gallons of sewage spills
• Serial child molester chased though neighborhood and captured

It's still nowhere near as exciting as my beloved Memphis! I haven't watched any Arizona local news since I moved here almost two years ago, but I have to confess I can't go too many days without checking up on Cameron and Dee, T-Bates, Brian Teigland, Joe, Donna, Dave, Rockin' Ronnie, "fear-monger" Tim, Jim "Mick" Jagger(s), Tinkerbell, and Mayberry's own town drunk, Otis Campbell.




(A special thank you to my brother who tuned me into this very entertaining addition to the Fox13 team.)

For an inside look at the local news business in Memphis, check out Joe Larkins' new and old blogs.

King Willy Calls It Quits

So, King Willy is stepping down as Mayor of Memphis?! Guess that means we can move back now, right Babe?

It just occurred to me that with the "Honorable" Dr. W W calling it quits (allegedly...I'll believe it when I see it), I might never get a chance to use this clip again. Rats!

Go West, Young Man!

As shocking as it may be to some in the Contemporary Christian Music bubble, the quotation, "Go West, young man!" did not originate with Michael W Smith.

Nor do the famous words belong to 19th Century newspaper mogul and social reformer Horace Greeley, although he is often attributed with the authorship of the phrase since he included it in a popular 1865 editorial and afterwards passed it along as advice to anyone who would ask it of him.

No, the person responsible for the quotation that inspired a nation of restless adventurers was a man named John Soule, and his quote in its entirety is as follows:

Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.

I too, like thousands before me, am taking Soule's (and Greeley's and Smith's) advice and heading West, more specifically Arizona.

Now, for a Southern boy from Tennessee, Arizona might as well be the Moon. The weather's different. The scenery is different. The accent is different. This is going to be a whole new world!

I will miss the trees. I will miss the rain. I will miss the architecture, the landscape, the traditions and the food. Ah, the food, the wonderful fried food! The seasoned, smoked food. The slow-cooked meats and vegetables. Okra, turnip greens, fried chicken...barbecue.

Wonderful barbecue, that sweet meat of the gods - smoked pork shoulders and dry ribs, with countless varieties of authentically Southern dry rubs and sauces and smoking techniques. Just thinking about it is giving me second thoughts...

Of course, I will miss family and friends, but more on that later.

Some interesting notes about Arizona:

• Arizona is the 6th largest state by area.
• Arizona is the known as the "Grand Canyon State".
• Arizona is home to, among many other incredible places, the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon (see previous note). The Grand Canyon is 227 miles long, 1 mile deep, and has an average width of 10 miles.
• Arizona has more parks and national monuments than any other state, more mountains than Switzerland, and more golf courses than Scotland.
• The sun shines in southern Arizona 85% of the time, which is considerably more sunshine than Florida or Hawaii. Arizona also frequently has the hottest and coldest temperatures on the same day. The temperature could be 75 degrees in the desert to 45 degrees in the high country.
• Arizona has the largest percentage of its land set aside and designated as Indian lands.
• The hottest recorded day in Phoenix was June 26, 1990, when the temperature hit 122 degrees.
• Arizona's motto is Ditat Deus (God Enriches)

And He certainly does.

Let's Hear It For The Boys

My hometown, Memphis, has a rich cultural heritage.

Elvis and Rock-n-Roll. WC Handy and the Blues. Barbecue and cotton. MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. Overnight shipping.

But without a doubt, Memphis' greatest cultural gift to the world is that spectacle known as professional wrestling, or rasslin' as it's known down here.

That's right, if you are a fan of WCW, WWE, WWF, AWA, CWA, NWA, ECW, USWA, SmackDown!, Nitro, Thunder, et. al., you have Memphis, Tennessee to thank (or blame). From a tiny little television studio at 1960 Union Avenue, professional rasslin' as we now know it was born. Every Saturday morning, grudges were forged, battles were fought, chairs were tossed, heads were shaved, punches were thrown, bad guys were loathed, good guys were loved, and losers left town. Everybody that was anybody in the rasslin' world got their start in Memphis.

Stumbling across the clip below brought back some fond memories. I remember watching this video for the first time back when I was a little kid who still "believed in" rasslin' and thought, "Wow, these are the coolest dudes ever! They're gonna be bigger than the Moon Dogs, the Rock-n-Roll Express, and the Fabulous Ones."

I was wrong. Dead wrong.

In professional rasslin' there is no more critical marketing component than the promotional video, where the rassler (or rasslers) shows the boys how tough he can talk and ladies how pretty he can walk. If one wants to make it in pro rasslin', they've got to talk good or look good.

Is it any shock that these chums were never seen or heard from again?

Warning: If you have a problem with shirtless, chubby pretty boys in Speedos, do not watch this clip.



The person who provided this video on YouTube aptly described it this way:

Wrestling promotional video for the team of Johnny Wilthoit and Bart Batten - the New Generation. The 80s were a more innocent time, when two men could share a motorcycle ride [and a frolic in the pool and a carriage ride, I might add], shirtless, and nobody would question their sexuality.

The White House Knew It Was Going To Snow And Did Nothing!

It's snowing in Memphis, and there's more to come!

I don't mean to sound like Kanye West or anything, but I am better than any weatherman in this city. My laptop, almanac, and symbiotic relationship with nature is better at weather prognostication than any strange-haired meteorologist with his street level storm tracking satellite and nonsensical certifications. If you want to know what the weather's going to do in the mid-south, just shoot me an email.



Here's James and I enjoying the snow. James comes from a coal mining family in Kentucky. He is a penny pincher, a master gardener, cans some of the most flavorful banana peppers you'll ever taste, and has an unique and unbelievable recipe for cooking Boston Butt in an oven that puts most smoked BBQ shoulders to shame.

I have never seen James without a hat on his head.

Sometimes I can't believe what I hear on the local news. Why do they put people on the air who have no idea what they're talking about.

I just heard a lady talking about Dennis' approach on the Memphis area, and she was hopeful that the Mississippi River bluff would protect us. While the bluff does protect Memphis from a lot of bad weather that travels west to east, I don't think there's any way in the world a bluff located on the westernmost border of our city can protect us from a storm that's moving from the south to the northwest.

Honestly, I'm not so much surprised that someone would be so dumb as to say that, but I am a little shocked that the newscast's producer allowed that portion of the interview to air. Maybe they did it for laughs.

Why does this bother me? Why do I watch TV?