HBR’s new live album, Live in the Northeast is available at hotbutteredrum.net now

On May 30, 2007, the phenomenal live bluegrass-inflected outfit known as Hot Buttered Rum will be making their first trip to the Bluff City. They will be playing the Gibson Beale St. Showcase, and the show starts at 8 PM (don’t be late!). Let’s show Butter some Memphis-style love by getting the Gibson Beale St. Showcase packed for their first visit to the birthplace of rock n’ roll. Let’s show them how Tennessee gets down!

THE INVISIBLE
Hollywood Pictures

A whodunit, to be solved by the victim. Based on the Swedish film, DEN OSYNLIGE (2002) directed by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist (who are now reportedly working on Sarah Michelle Gellar's ADDICTED), and written by Mick Davis from Mats Wahl's novel, this version is again written by Davis with an assist from Christine Roum. The film's director is David S. Goyer, who wrote, executive-produced and directed the television series THRESHOLD (2005-6), along with helming the BLADE movie series, so this is a genre he's got a handle on.

As many of you know, we here at the DivingIn2Memphis.com World Headquarters ( a recently absconded three story building right in the heart of Voodoo Village) strive to keep you in the know with concerts, band interviews and other musical minutiae that should help your daily and nightly plans. Of course, one of our more pressing movements is to completely halt the workforce sitting in offices all day. We are here to make you happy and your bosses, well… not so much. Along these lines, we are now streaming an hour of music brought to you by the guys who form one of the great bands in the city. One day, I’m going to write a book about this collection of five very different souls, but for now, this is what everyone is getting. So, read on and get those headphones ready.

VACANCY
Screen Gems

Why do people flock to see movies where innocent people are terrorized by strangers? Don't they get enough angst in real life?

In VACANCY, a young couple, played by Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, are stranded by the perennial favorite - the broken-down car - at a weird hotel with, oddly, no check-out time. The owners seemingly run a cottage snuff film industry and terrorize our feckless heroes. Did these two people never see PSYCHO?

Don't Mess with Our Chocolate!

Help save our chocolate! Did you know the FDA is considering changing the standards for what does and doesn't qualify as chocolate? Right now cocoa butter is required otherwise it's just not the real thing. Other fats are cheaper so of course chocolate manufacturers want to be able to replace the good stuff with other fats that don't belong in chocolate. The public has the right to weigh in on the subject, but you must submit your comments by April 25th (go to www.dontmesswithourchocolate.com). Tell them that you don't want to lose real chocolate in a sea of wax and tropical oils! Hats off to Guittard for hosting the Don't Mess with Our Chocolate campaign to keep chocolate, chocolate!

Seeing as The Best of the Sports Rant has been constantly searched by users of this site and has been, also, continually in the upper half of articles read, I figured we shell out a Part 2. Well, not exactly a part two because when I went nosing around YouTube.com, I found some video that is just priceless but not exactly a rant. So, while it might stray a little in consistency, it doesn’t stray in hilarity. One of these videos is truly one of the funniest things ever put to film and another one shows how quickly the human psyche can snap (in a funny way). So, with no real discernable introduction to this article, let’s get it on. Check out this link for the first installment. Read It Here

Sometime last week, the Grizzlies did something that we’ve been waiting on for almost six months- they secured themselves the worst record in the NBA. And don’t for a second believe it was as easy as it sounds. First, they had to run out the string better than the Milwaukee Bucks, who at last report were starting a group that consisted of three players from Our Lady Of The Good People But Bad Athletics Varsity High School team in Wabash, Wisconsin, they had to navigate the losses batter than the Edward John Smith led, err Doc Rivers led, Boston Celtics. (By the way, when I Googled ‘NBA Lottery Odds’, the first thing that came up was the interview below with the Celts Basketball Operations Analyst. When people remember back in ten years about how truly bad this Celtics run has been under Rivers and Ainge, that should definitely be one of the bullet points at or near the top of the page. ‘Screw the League office, if anyone knows how the Lottery works it’s the Celtics front office.’ Sadly, Bill Simmons is hitting his shins with a tire iron right now.) But hey, Grizz fans, we got want we wanted.

While under the complete knowledge that anything Soccer will turn most Americans away quicker than a Courtney Love on-stage photo shoot (or a Pat Summitt cheerleading spread), I am still going to recommend this book to all. Soccer, while a hardcore pastime of mine, has not yet entered that phase of most teenaged and adult Americans. And no, David Beckham isn’t going to change that in the near future. But, as far as comedy goes, this book is a nonstop laugher. And, in the way the English treat their extraordinarily wealthy hero’s, there is also a lesson to be learned by all American sports fans.

(Editor’s Note: This article was taken, in part, from the BBC.com news site. We have an RSS feed here at DivingIn2Memphis.com and this is an explanation of what exactly an RSS feed is. One important note- RSS feeds are another reason why you should either use Mozilla as your web browser or get an Apple computer as both of these already have RSS news feeds built into their web browsers. Read on and we hope that you will subscribe to not only our RSS feed but also BBC.com’s feed as well.)

News feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as its published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.

Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that makes you believe that we CAN make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time.

A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers.

When Lisa was last in Louisiana, she stopped off for an impromptu photo shoot. Below are some more of her wonderful photography. All of these images were taken in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Enjoy. And as always, to reach Lisa about her work, email photoeye22@gmail.com.

It really was the perfect way to start a weekend that was following a kick in the pants type week. I was all set up to go to Marena’s and do a restaurant review of a place that had not only intrigued me, but had also been highly recommended by my father. I called and made the earliest possible reservation for a Friday night, knowing good and well the place would be packed by the time I finished my meal (which it was) and relegating my bevy of note taking devices (notepad and voice recorder to name a few) with me back to the car before I looked like the homeless version of Michael Donahue (without the legendary hair). As I walked in the beautifully decorated interior I was met by the two most important people of the night- Chef/ Owner Morteza Gerani who would be preparing my meal and server extraordinaire Alice Reed who, well, we’ll get to that in a second. Like I said, the décor was perfect for someone who had a hectic week. I sat down next to the window in the front room and took a huge sigh of relief as a glass of Nero D’Avola was brought to my table. Things were looking up mightily already.

Author: Sarah Vowell
ISBN: 9780743260039
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2005
Publication Date: April 4, 2005
Pages: 272

Throughout my life I have enjoyed reading. However, I generally duck out of any “what are you reading?” conversations. See, I read fluff. The stuff usually reserved for a beach vacation or a day at the pool. So, when people are stating how they are just tearing through the new biography about John Adams or raving that they can’t put down the new political book about winning back the middle class I slip away, head down. I can not bear to respond, “Oh! I am just loving Bergdorf Blondes! It’s so spiritual how much they think about their hair!” I believe the last nonfiction book that I read was about The Doors. And, let’s face it, with the amount of drugs they were on it is doubtful how much is, in fact, nonfiction.

The next time you find yourself needing a Southern food fix, look no further than the Soul Fish Café at 862 S. Cooper. This tiny, diner-like joint fries up the best catfish in town, among other things. I’m not the biggest of catfish fans, however Soul Fish Café prepares it to a perfect golden brown, crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, with just the right amount of seasoning, without it being the slightest bit greasy. I might even go as far as to say that Soul Fish Café is the Mack Daddy of Fry Daddy. Their fries and hushpuppies are no exception. The menu is not very extensive but the prices are certainly right. They also offer about eight different beers and a few red and white wines.

When I was going through some of my old books a couple of days ago, I ran across a book, Big Drops, that while having one of the more hilarious unintentional comedy titles is a book that shows the biggest waterfalls and rapids that a kayaker can go down in the United States. It was also a book that my father, ever the humorist that he is, kept religiously in the bathroom when I was a kid. While he was a semi-professional kayaker at one point in his life, I never thought for one second that the book was there to remind him of the glory years. Anyways, it underscored a greater point and that was that it was the perfect bathroom reading full of short chapters with the only continuity being that it was about rivers and kayaks. So, here’s a list of some great bathroom reading- books that you can pick up time and again without having to reread or even pick a particular page.