Tag: Prince Mongo

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Music Fest, Mongo, and Mulan

Posted to Facebook by Beale Street Music Festival

Memphis on the internet.

Music Fest

Beale Street Music Festival brought thousands to Liberty Park this weekend for the first time in two years. But Nextdoor user Ben Nelson didn’t know.

“Lots of loud noise near the Liberty Bowl,” he wrote. “I didn’t think there were football games this time of year…. Anyone know what the heck is going on??”

Commenters answered the question many times, complained about the noise, complained they weren’t notified of the event, complained about the complainers, and, of course, complained about the redesign of Tom Lee Park.

Tweet of the Week

Posted to Twitter by @MayorMongo

“I will be announcing my full intentions on buying MySpace tomorrow,” tweeted Mayor Prince Mongo.

Big Bad What?

Posted to Facebook By Mulan

News broke last week that a Nashville company bought Cooper-Young buildings now housing Mulan and Margaritas. Owners plan to install a Big Bad Breakfast restaurant where Mulan is now.

But Mulan responded on Facebook with this: “Big bad nothing but a sad rumor going around. Mulan isn’t going anywhere. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads.”

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Fly on the Wall 1395

Frosty’s Got a Gun

Have you ever stopped to think about some of the things that go on in the popular holiday song “Frosty the Snowman?” Like that part where Frosty leads the children down the streets of town right to a traffic cop. And he “only paused a moment when he heard him holler, ‘STOP!'” Have you ever wondered how Frosty could just flat-out ignore a policeman’s direct order and get away with it?

Well, he’s a snowman, so he’s white obviously. But that’s only part of the troubling story. What we didn’t know until this ad for Bass Pro’s $49.99 holiday inflatables came out: Frosty, the “happy, jolly soul” immortalized in song, isn’t an ordinary enchanted snowman. He’s a seven-foot-tall enchanted snowman packing major heat. It’s all visions of sugarplums until your childhood fantasies start fighting back.

Neverending Mongo

Prince Mongo shows up in the strangest places. Last week, his name popped up in a post for the feminist blog Jezebel. Mongo told the author, who was in Memphis to shop at thrift stores, about the time he won an insurance settlement and used the money to rent a hot-air balloon and buy a bunch of expensive radio equipment to broadcast from said balloon and how said radio equipment had to be thrown from the balloon to make it lighter as the balloon approached power lines.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1387

Mongo, 2015

It wouldn’t be an election without a bid from Memphis’ favorite space alien/candidate, Prince Mongo. A new “Mongo for Mayor” bumper sticker lists a number of things the Prince promises to accomplish if elected. When it comes to politicians, we should “hang’ um.”

Or “flush’ um.”

A third option printed so faintly it won’t photograph says we should “fill potholes with politician bones,” which seems practical, if a bit extreme. If elected, Mayor Mongo would also arm frogs with machine guns, apparently.  

#Wigsnatch

For months, Fly on the Wall has been trying to answer the great question of our age: Where do all the tumbleweaves come from? Perhaps this story will shed some more light on the matter. According to Middle Tennessee news reports, an angry woman recently attempted to hit the owner of C & K Beauty and Wig Store in Murfreesboro with her car. The attempted vehicular assault occurred after the woman tried to return a bag of hair extensions. The store’s owner said she couldn’t grant a refund because the bag was open, and the hair was damaged. Police say the car’s license number tracked back to Memphis.

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Fly on the Wall 1353

Secretly Admired?

Somebody at The Charlotte Observer has been sipping on some sizzurp and listening to Isaac Hayes records. A recent article slugged “Memphis for Romance?” notes that the Bluff City “has always had serious commitments to its music — world-famous blues, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, and all things Elvis.” But where most travel stories stop, this one keeps going, and you can almost hear the porn funk in the background as the author writes about our renowned barbecue, chicken, and pork. “But on Valentine’s Day, the city falls head over heels, dimming the lights and putting on a slow-playing record for all the local and visiting sweethearts looking for a special day or evening. It’s a sexy city gone romantic.” Right on.

Mississippi, Our Neighbor

Mississippi legislators have put forward a bill for a service that’s being called Venison Harvesting Program for Inmate Consumption. If passed, deer meat could be what inmates are having for dinner, solving a problem that probably doesn’t exist. “It costs $1.56 a day to feed an inmate,” Rankin County Chief Deputy Eddie Thompson was quoted as saying. According to media reports, the bill would make hunters feel better about killing more than they can use.

Mongo Says

As more and more area politicians dip their toes into the mayoral campaign waters, your Pesky Fly has begun to stalk social media pages operated by Memphis’ perennially barefoot candidate Prince Mongo, just to see what the old alien might be up to these days. Turns out Mongo’s been visiting retirement centers and learning valuable life lessons, like this one, which he recently shared on Facebook: “Spirits just learned a hard lesson: NEVER go to the Sr. Center and bring up Deflate-gate and try to explain to hard of hearing old men about playing with under inflated balls, NEVER!!!” Sounds like a platform coming together.

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Fly on the Wall 1327

It’s a Sign

If you have a sign with changeable letters, chances are good that someone will change the letters. This message was conveyed at Otherlands coffee bar.

Neverending Mongo

Once a year Prince Mongo spends an hour in the studio with WHBQ’s MemphiSports Live sports talk radio. During this visit, Mongo tasted Whole Foods’ new Prince Mango sorbet for the first time. This is his response: “Oh my gosh. This is unbelieveable. (smack) I’m certainly going to go over and get a gallon of it. (slurp) I promise them to be expecting me. (smack) Oh, this is wonderful. (slurp) Oh my heavens, this is good. I can’t stop eating it. May I lick the cup?”

Things Named Memphis

The lede-of-the-week award goes to New Orleans’ Times-Picayune for this one sentence tour of the Dirty South: “In what sounds like a Southern crime travelogue, police said a pimp known as ‘Memphis,’ on the run from the law in Mississippi, has been arrested in New Orleans.”

Opposite Day

Hats off to the Memphis Business Journal for the headline “ACA beginning to hurt hospitals in states like Tennessee,” topping a story about how states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid eligibility are “expected to face financial challenges.” In other words, it’s a lack of the ACA in Tennessee that’s causing the problems.

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An Inside Look at Ashlar Hall

An open house doesn’t typically show off peeling paint and bullet holes in glass, but Ashlar Hall isn’t a typical place.

An open house fund-raising event was held there last weekend to raise money for restoring the long-vacant, historic property at 1397 Central, often still referred to as “Prince Mongo’s Castle” after the nightclub Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges operated there in the 1990s.

Now the building’s current owner, Kenny Medlin, wants to transform the old Castle into an administrative property for military veterans.

Visitors ogled the 117-year-old building during the tours, a rare event that brought people out in the hot afternoon. Organizations, some with a military focus, such as Alpha Omega Veterans Services, handed out pamphlets from under a tent.

An autographed George Strait guitar was up for auction to help raise funds. Bluegrass band Rosewater performed for visitors to promote their charity, the Homeless Veterans Project. Donation buckets were scattered around the property.

Old ashtrays still linger on the bar inside Ashlar Hall.

Medlin acquired the building last year after it was transferred to him from its previous owner Hodges. Initially, Shelby County Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter invalidated the transfer after Medlin failed to produce a plan for the property by the January 27th deadline that Potter set. At the time, Medlin had said he wanted to turn the house into a home for terminally ill children.

In February, Potter reversed his decision and upheld the 2013 transfer. But Potter said other groups could still submit their plans for the building.

The Memphis Comic and Fantasy Convention submitted a proposal to turn the property into a center for the arts but pulled out of negotiations to rent the space after conflicts about how much Medlin would charge for rent.

Medlin eventually decided to turn the building into an administrative property for military veterans, using his Urban Renaissance Initiative organization as an underwriter.

“Our goal is to take condemned properties, rehab them for nonprofits, and get them back onto the tax roll. We hope Ashlar Hall becomes the bellwether of those efforts,” Medlin said of the Urban Renaissance Initiative.

Remnants of the building’s former life as a nightclub can still be seen throughout the two-story building: a Laser Music jukebox upstairs, metal-encased CRT TVs in the foyer, ashtrays scattered around the many bar tables.

Futuristic decor such as spaceship light fixtures and random plates of shiny metal were affixed to the walls, leftover from the mansion’s partying days. The many bars within the building still had stacked cups and ashtrays lying around, almost as if the patrons and staff had left in a hurry.

Visitors took pictures in nearly every nook and cranny, finding closets of oddities like a ghillie suit sitting among broken cups and pitchers. The VIP suite on the first floor and the basement were roped off.

Even outside, the neon “ASTLE” (the “C” is missing) remains, giving a glimpse into the property’s former glory.

“We used to hear stories about this place back in the day,” said one visitor, who preferred not to be named. “If only walls could talk.”

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Fly on the Wall

Blues Czar

Over the past week, a number of media outlets have reported that action movie icon Steven Seagal, who lived in Memphis where he recorded the CD Mojo Priest, is having a serious tough-guy bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Seagal has allegedly identified Putin as one of the “great world leaders” and may eventually emigrate. It sure would be a terrible day for American folk-fighting enthusiasts if the last authentic Delta Blues Ninja jumps ship.

Alien Geography

Alien royal/bane to neighborhood associations Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges was back in the news this week when WREG reported on the dilapidated condition of one of his downtown properties: “The three-story building between Front and Central is in such bad shape, it is leaning, not standing straight.” According to Fly on the Wall’s alien technology experts, Mongo was able to locate his buildings between distant streets that don’t run parallel to one another by using a Zambodian molecule stretcher, which may have caused structural damage to both the original building and its counterpart from beyond the shadow dimension.

We’re (Still) Fat

According to a list compiled by Gallup and Healthways, more than a third of Memphis’ adults are obese, ensuring that the nation’s barbecue and cupcake capital holds onto its title as America’s most obese city of more than one million people. Pardon our sweatpants.

Neverending Elvis

The Bangkok Post reports on a rash of celebrity political candidates in Indonesia: “A white jumpsuit stretched over his bulging belly, an aging crooner known as Indonesia’s Elvis launches into song ahead of elections Wednesday”… “Bro Rhoma I love you, bro Rhoma for Indonesian president,” screamed one woman wearing a purple Muslim headscarf at his Jakarta concert as she danced vigorously.”

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Castles in the Sky

It may not be Hogwarts, but Prince Mongo’s “castle” on Central might be the next best thing for Memphis Harry Potter fans and followers of all sorts of geek culture if the Memphis Comic & Fantasty Convention has its way.

This past weekend, the Memphis Comic & Fantasy Convention team held an open house at the University Club across the street from the historic, long-abandoned Ashlar Hall, where they shared their plans for transforming the castle into a center for the arts.

Ashlar Hall Center for the Arts would offer classes in film-making, comic book design, painting, creative writing, theater, costume design, and more. And Memphis Comic & Fantasy Convention founder Joe Thordarson said they’d also host other weekend festivals.

“If you’re into geek culture, prepare to be spoiled rotten,” Thordarson said. “We could have Harry Potter mini-conventions or steampunk mystery dinners. We would have the ultimate clubhouse.”

Alternatively, Ty Cobb, founder of the Have a Standard Foundation, has dreams of using Ashlar Hall as another location for his CoreFire Commandos training program.

CoreFire Commandos, which Cobb founded in 2001, uses existing training centers in the Kroc Center and Dulins Sports Complex in Cordova to train kids in decision-making and life skills. A team of students is given a fictional scenario, such as the Mississippi River experiencing record flooding, and they must complete an obstacle course, using math and other skills, to solve the problem.

Ashlar Hall was declared a public nuisance because of numerous code violations, and in September, the city agreed to help its current owner, Hodges, find a new owner to donate the property to.

Darth Vader, a TIE pilot, a storm trooper, and a Klingon greet visitors at Saturday’s Ashlar Hall open house hosted by the Memphis Comic & Fantasy Convention.

Shortly after that, a man named Kenny Medlin said Hodges had quitclaimed the property to him, but the move was illegal since the property was being dealt with in Environmental Court. Judge Larry Potter decided to give Medlin a chance however, giving him two weeks to come up with a plan to restore the home. Medlin, who wanted to use the space as a home for kids with cancer, was unable to meet the judge’s request. That deal was voided, and the field was reopened for possible new owners of the property.

Both Thordasen and Cobb will present their plans to Judge Potter at a compliance hearing on February 28th.

Cobb said he was in ongoing talks with Thordarson about possibly collaborating on their plans, but nothing has been decided for certain.

“If we’re all positive and working together, it’s better for all of us and better for Memphis,” Cobb said.

Thordarson acknowledges that the crumbling Ashlar Hall needs a lot of work, but since he works as a contractor, he has managed to get pledges from other contractors to help with the stone work and other needed repairs. Of particular concern are damage to the roof and swimming pool.

And he said his group has been encouraged by the postive reaction from Ashlar Hall’s Central Gardens neighbors.

“We want to reassure them that we’re not looking to change the architecture, and we’re not going to be out there at 4 a.m. with wild stuff going on,” Thordarson said, referring to Ashlar Hall’s time as a nightclub run by Hodges.

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Prince Mongo To Give Up His Memphis “Castle”

Ashlar Hall

  • Ashlar Hall

Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges is apparently looking to give up the keys to his Central Avenue “castle.”

Facebook posts over the last two days from the perennial Memphis mayoral candidate and self-identified native of the planet Zambodia claim he is looking to give up Ashlar Hall, at 1397 Central, to a nonprofit group. Wednesday’s post welcomed “any licensed charitable organization interested in a donation” of the building to leave their intentions in the comments section of the post.

“Will need funding to renovate and operate, the building will not be demolished,” according to the post.

A Tuesday post said he is looking for a charitable organization with funds to renovate and operate already in place. “Business plan and financial statement required,” it said.

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 11,500 people “liked” the post and most of the commenters suggested giving the building to Choose901, the group dedicated to attracting talent to Memphis.

The group launched “Operation Ashlar,” a Facebook drive to “help Prince Mongo choose Choose901.”

“We would turn it into a social hub for young adults and a development center for nonprofits and schools,” says the Choose901 website.