Where have you gone, Betty Smith?

There's a framed portrait on the wall of the local Village Inn of a woman named Betty Smith, who worked as a waitress there from 1962 until 2006. 44 years as a waitress? In one place? Holy crap! I'm 43 so it's literally impossible for me to conceive of doing anything, other than maybe breathing, for 44 years, let alone doing it one place. The root word of waitress is wait. So Betty waited for 44 years. What was she waiting for? Mostly, for you to decide what you want with your pancakes already! Get a move on, sugar!

Anybody who has ever worked for any time at all in a restaurant and has been committed to an insane asylum will tell you that restaurants are just like insane asylums. But the picture on the wall features Betty in her Village Inn uniform (with apron) with a little bit of a beehive hairdo, little glasses and a sweet grandmotherly smile, which indicates she survived by being nice to people while being tougher than she looks and probably didn't sweat small details. The inscription on the bottom of the picture says "A valued employee". Well, no shit. She probably should have been given her own Village Inn. No doubt Betty saw (and took) a lot of crap from people over the years but I'm guessing it never really got to her. Of course, I could be wrong. I suppose it's entirely possible that on day one of year 45 she just snapped: "You know what, I have had it with this place! 16,071 days of this shit is all I can take!" and stormed out.

One has to wonder why Betty never got promoted. As noted waitressologist Mr White points out in 'Reservoir Dogs', waitressing is a hard job. But they do make tips, and Betty looks like the kind of waitress who had people coming to the restaurant and asking to be seated in her section for years and years. The kind of people who would rather wait than be seated in some other waitress's section also known as The kind of people who tip out the ass. Besides, as a waitress, where is there to be promoted to? Cash register attendant? Yawn. And no tips. Hostess? Come now. Is there a less apt named position than 'hostess' in a restaurant? A real hostess should engage you in lively cocktail banter while serving hors d’œuvres and introducing you to other interesting people who are there, maybe playing a little piano. What kind of 'hostess' does little more than find a table that's relatively clean, gives you some menus before handing you off to someone else and then disappearing for the rest of the evening? A restaurant hostess, that's what kind.

I asked the cashier about Betty on my way out. "She was a waitress for a long time. Is she, uh, still around?" "Well, she's not dead, if that's what you mean. She's just retired." I said I was glad and she rolled her eyes and said "people ask that all the time". I was glad not to give her a tip; it's a fair bet her picture won't be hanging on the wall in 40 years. And I hope whenever Betty goes out now, she always gets a clean table, fresh coffee and never has to ask for refills.

Where the streets are insane

I'm convinced that the traffic czars of Tampa Bay are making a concerted effort to drive us all nuts. Consider the following:

• Kennedy Boulevard is closed just west of North Boulevard for some long overdue resurfacing. However, there's no advance notice, at least westbound, that the road is closed until you encounter the sign that says so. No "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD" or even a "DETOUR" sign a half mile or so in advance. Instead, you drive right up to the closure and the only option you have is to turn right on to a circular dirt road that turns into other circular roads that run you past some storage facilities and the University of Tampa varsity softball field. It's like Wile E. Coyote is in charge. I half expected to see one of the roads dead-end at a pile of ball bearings labeled "FREE BIRD SEED!".
• I wind up behind a dump truck every day. It doesn't matter where I'm going or what neighborhoods I'm driving through, I am guaranteed to be stuck behind at least one very slow moving dump truck every day. Whether the trucks are full or not, they only go about 30 MPH at top speed on an open stretch of road. Sometimes you'll see two dump trucks pass each other in opposite directions, and they'll both be empty. You'd think if they were actually doing something productive that they'd flag each other down when that happens: "Listen, don't bother going that way if you're looking for rocks and dirt to carry around. I just came from there and they got nothin'". Since they're not being productive, what are they doing? Torturing me, that's what.
• Consider the intersection of Twiggs and Morgan streets in downtown. I've been driving to my job downtown at least five days a week for more than a year and I always wind up southbound on Morgan and have never, not once, made this light. That's right, I have never just driven through it green. Not one single time in over a year. I am not exaggerating. I get stopped at that red light EVERY...SINGLE...DAY!! How is that even mathematically possible?
• Red lights in general are designed to reduce your brain to a puddle of pulsating goo. If their purpose is to regulate the flow of traffic, why aren't all of them on sensors and not timers? There's a light at the intersection of Jackson and Franklin streets that will stop you at least 50% of the time, even though Franklin is a pedestrians-only walkway between City Hall and a couple of banks at that point and even on Sunday when City Hall and the banks are closed. How often have you found yourself sitting at a red light where maybe one or two cars pass in front of you and you find yourself staring at the back of the car in front of you, your attention drawn to the red glowing taillights, focusing intently on the intricate pattern of the tailight itself until you see...hey, that's the face of a kitty! And...and it looks like it's winking at you and...Meanwhile, there's drool running down your chin, your eyes are half-crossed and you've just been held hostage for four-to-six minutes during which you were incapable of accomplishing one single worthwhile thing.
• Then there's the intersection of Morgan and Kennedy. Drivers in the westbound traffic on Kennedy routinely get caught blocking the north-south traffic on Morgan at this intersection, which is within plain sight of the Tampa Police Department headquarters. They don't have to put a car or even a cop on foot there. Just open the window and yell across Lykes Park to knock it off already.

Before I continue...

... I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to sincerely thank a few people. So if you don't mind, I'd like to take a just a moment to say a quick, but heartfelt Thank You! to...



THE GUY WHO SUDDENLY PEELS OUT
Thank you so much for showing me what cool really is. When you suddenly stomp on the gas pedal of your little piece of shit Toyota for no real reason whatsoever, unleashing the unholy earsplitting whine that only a maxed-out six cylinder engine can emit, it allows me to grasp how truly inadequate I am. Watching you fishtail away, I look forward to the next time I can bask in your close proximity...most likely, one block away at the next red light. Thank you!

THE WAITRESS WHO DECIDES TO TAKE MY ORDER AFTER ALL
You know, I heard you arguing with the other waitress over who had to wait on me and it actually looked like it got kind of heated there for a sec. I sincerely appreciate you taking the high road, rolling your eyes, sighing heavily and stomping over to my table so I can have some scrambled eggs and bacon. After all, I know you're having a crappy night dealing with a bunch of assholes all the time; you told me so when, in an attempt to be polite and make casual conversation I asked you how you were doing. Thank you!

THE DRIVER OF THE ROLLING BOOMBOX
I want to thank you for sharing the gift of music. Specifically, the gift of heavy bass music. Even more specifically, the shitty, muddled, distorted, shitty, heavy bass music that only you enjoy. Whether it's because you stupidly bought and installed chintzy speakers or you stupidly bought and installed great speakers in your chintzy car, the rattling of your plastic quarterpanels tells us that what you lack in taste you make up for in generosity. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The 'Brero

I went to the Devil Rays game Saturday night, where the theme was the celebration of Cinco De Mayo, which is like Mexican St. Patrick's Day in that everybody pretends to be, and pretends to care about being, a member of a different ethnic group for exactly one day out of the year. A bunch of people from work went and our boss had gotten a suite for us. Now I'm normally not really a suite kind of guy, however I am definitely a sombrero guy, which was the giveaway item at that night's game, in keeping with the theme. I had to have one.
Unfortunately, I was running too late and they had run out of them by the time I got there. I was absolutely crestfallen. However, I don't give up easily and I pride myself on being resourceful. When I really want something important and valuable, be it a tin toy robot or a cheap straw hat, I will ultimately not be denied. I noticed the staff had their own sombreros, so taking a page from the Ed Belfour playbook, I approached a suite attendant named Brandi and said, "Brandi, I will give you one billion dollars for your sombrero". She laughed and declined, which was good because, like Ed Belfour, I clearly did not have one billion dollars nor the ability to get my hands on that much money if called upon to do so. I tried again with an offer of $20 and she said "Oh, you don't have to do that. If you really want it, you can have it". I gave her a business card and said if I could ever do anything for her, she should look me up. That was a pretty easy trade to make since somberero or no sombrero, any time a woman named Brandi ever looks me up for a favor, I'm going to say yes. So I had my own sombrero and it was instantly my most prized and treasured possession, an honor it was sure to hold for at least the next few hours.
Now suitably festively adorned, I felt good about rooting the Rays on to victory (in extra innings) over the Oakland A's. I only had one margarita, very early in the game because I absolutely refuse to drive impaired, but the sombrero helped me feel authentically Mexican enough to cheer in Spanish. As it turns out, I speak world class caliber Spanish and there can be no doubt that my cries of "Arroz con pollo!" and "Diablo frijoles!", "Vios con queso!" and "¿A qué hora es un perro?" helped inspire Ty Wigginton to hit two home runs. That, and the sombrero of course.
Afterwards, a group of us went across the street to Ferg's for chicken wings and more camaraderie. It was fight night in Vegas and Ferg's had the pay per view showing, so I got to witness Floyd Mayweather Jr. enter the ring wearing what? A sombrero! I can't believe a big time boxer was ripping off the Devil Rays for promotional ideas, but there he was. During the fight, we listened to commentary from a man in the back of the room who sounded exactly like Louis Armstrong. I already found this hysterically funny so I didn't turn around to look at him because if I caught a glimpse of anyone standing there wearing a tuxedo and holding a trumpet I would have wet myself. Anyway, Mayweather went on to win the fight, further validating the mojo of the 'brero.
Upon arriving home, I was walking up to the apartment when a woman in the pool noticed the sombrero and yelled out "Happy Cinco De Mayo! Come have some margaritas!", which resulted in Cinco De Mayo lasting deep into Seis De Mayo.
Viva El Sombrero!

Stand Off In The Office

Here's what happened:
Billy has an iPod and a docking station, so he controls the music in the office, which most of the time is fine. Today, he decided we would listen to Jack Johnson because it's very soothing, gentle music. Now, I like Jack Johnson. But there's mellow and then there's mellow. Six hours of nothing but Jack Johnson is please-hook-me-up-to-some-machines-so-my-internal-organs-will-continue-to-function-while-I-fall-ever-deeper-into-a-coma mellow. So I said, "Billy, you've got to put something else on." Of course, since anything either of us ever says is nothing but fuel for an argument (and usually, eventually, a fistfight), he instantly got defensive about it. "Why do you hate Jack Johnson?". I replied "I don't hate Jack Johnson. But we've been listening to him all day and I am literally falling asleep over here." So he said "Fine", which, of course meant "Not fine" and I knew what he was going to put on...sure enough, The Mars Volta. Granted, The Mars Volta's music is not soothing or mellow in any way, but Billy knows that unlike Jack Johnson, I actually do hate The Mars Volta. I have made it crystal clear that I loathe, despise, detest The Mars F'ing Volta. I have threatened on more than one occasion to take his iPod and FedEx it to Vietnam, screeching The Mars Volta the whole way, in the hopes that FAA authorities would actually destroy the package before it ever got on a plane.
I didn't do that today though. Instead, we have one of those soft rubber office toys that you're supposed to squeeze to relieve stress. Except this one has been altered by jamming the butt ends of about 30 pushpins into it so the pointy ends stick out of it at all different angles. I like the irony behind taking this item, designed to soothe and relax and turning it into something you really can't even pick up without hurting yourself and whose only real use now is as a weapon. Anyway, I picked that up and cocked my arm, ready to fire it as hard as I could at Billy. In response, he grabbed his cup of iced tea and aimed it in my direction, ready to douse me and everything in my work area. "Bro, we have fought before", he said, "and we may actually get in serious trouble this time, but I swear to god I will drown you if you throw that thing at me". I glared back at him. "Turn off The Mars Volta and I'll put it down" I wasn't intimidated in the least; I mean I really hate The Mars Volta. This went on for a while, neither one of us willing to blink, let alone give in. But then I think one of us eventually remembered it was our turn to get off at 4:00 so we shut everything down for the day and went home. Or maybe we started fighting about something else. Maybe we actually worked on something. I don't really remember what happened.
I'll tell you what though; he better not start up tomorrow morning with The Mars F'ing Volta or Jack F'ing Johnson.

Stop Big Media

Public Hearing

Date: Monday, April 30, 2007

Time: 4:00 p.m. -11:00 p.m.

Location: Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center

Louise Lykes Ferguson Hall

1010 North W.C. MacInnes Place

Tampa, Florida 33602

http://www.tbpac.org/

Directions: http://www.tbpac.org/welcome/directions/directions.html

The purpose of the hearing is to fully involve the public in the process of the 2006 Quadrennial Broadcast Media Ownership Review that the Commission is currently conducting. This hearing is the fourth in a series of media ownership hearings the Commission intends to hold across the country.The hearing is open to the public, and seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. The hearing format will enable members of the public to participate via “open microphone.” There will be two panels, each followed by a period for public comment. The first panel will provide an overview of the Tampa, Florida media market. The second panel will provide perspectives on media ownership.

http://www.stopbigmedia.com/

I love this bar

I had dinner and drinks tonight with K & R at Skipper's Smokehouse while watching The Bogus Pomp Low Budget Acoustic Orchestra. It was a nice, relaxing way to wind down the weekend and once again, I left Skipper's wondering why I don't go there more often. I have never not had a good time there. The place itself is funky, in that it looks like it was built (actually compiled might be a better word) one wall at a time. The music is always great, the food is good and I love the people who go there. I don't actually know any of them, but that doesn't matter. I love them because as a group, they're thoroughly saturated with un-full-of-shit-edness. And when it comes right down to it, that's really all I want out of people, which isn't that much to ask, if you think about it. I mean honestly, black, white, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, straight, gay, conervative, liberal, hell, even Canadien, I don't care. Be that, be those, whatever you want. I don't need to find common ground between us; just don't be full of shit about being that/those that you are and you and I will get along fine. Oh, that and don't try to convince me to be one of whatever you are. Thanks. Now, try the crab cakes, don't forget to tip your server and be sure to enjoy Walter Trout.

Dry Erase Board

In a professional office environment, a dry erase board is an excellent tool to help keep you organized. Want to know what's written on the one in the office Billy and I share?

THINGS TO DO:

• Something work related
• Something else work related
• "KILL CLARK"
• "TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
• "Get a brain"
• "Not be gay (this is for Clark)"
• "Blow up the building - Twice"
• "Destroy Heather Billy"
• "FIND WISHING MACHINE, WISH TO BE BIG LIKE TOM HANKS (This is for Billy)"
• One other work related thing

I highly recommend this extremely useful tool for your professional office environment.

Me Against The Mighty Beast

When I first saw it come into view, most of it's hulking body was still beneath the surface of the oily water. It sat there, unblinking and unseeing, it's proximity daring, mocking me. I readied the metal trident in my hand and hoisted it to the attack position. I picked out what I thought to be the most vulnerable spot and thrust the trident downward with great force, my shoulder straining as I did so. Not with a sense of anger, but a sense of purpose the shiny steel tines found their mark and pierced the tight, blistered skin of my adversary. So true was my aim that there was no resistance, no attempt to escape. Victory, this day, was mine uncontested. So I put it on a bun with some brown mustard and chopped onions. Man, I love hot dogs!

A short conversation about nutrition

"You shouldn't drink so much soda. Soda has zero nutritional value"
"You're wrong. It's made from fruit like grapes and oranges and the meat from the exotic cola tree, so it has all the cool food groups in it. Plus it tastes good."
"Well, did you know that drinking a soda every day will result in an additional two pounds of weight gained over the course of a year?"
"Wow, seriously? That's pretty good!"
"What's good about gaining two pounds from drinking soda?"
"Are you kidding? I can eat whatever I want and as long as I drink a soda every day, I'll only gain a measly two pounds over a whole year? I'll take it!"
"You're not listening. What I said was..."
"So, I could order, like, five whole cheeseburgers..no, cheese pizzas...no! Five whole cheeseCAKES at one sitting and as long as I remember to wash them down with a delicious ice-cold Pepsi, I will gain virtually no weight whatsoever!"
"Of course not. That's stupid."
"You said that drinking soda every day is an important part of effectively managing your weight."
"That is not at all what I said."
"I believe your exact words were 'A soda a day keeps more than 2 pounds of fat a year away', which is a very catchy slogan. Nice job."
"Listen to me and this time pay attention..."
"Oh have a soda and relax, fatass."

iHate My iPod

The funniest (heh-heh) thing happened tonight. I had (giggle) plugged my iPod into my computer to upload some new media and when I came back to see how it was going, I (chuckle) looked at the status bar and thought "My, that's odd...I shouldn't have quite that much storage space left". But guess what (ha ha!)? When the update was finished and I went to access the new stuff, well, that (HA HA HA HA!) was the only thing on there. AT ALL! EVERYTHING ELSE WAS GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?!?! GONE!!!! HA HA HA HAAA!!! ISN'T THAT FUNNY?!?!? GYAAARRRRGHHHHH...

Sorry about that; my brain just exploded a little bit.

Say what you will about cheap crappy AM portable radios, but I've never heard of one losing a couple thousand songs and videos.

Just when I think I'm sophisticated...

...something comes along to remind me just what a big, dumb ham-and-egger I really am.

Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay was selected to be part of the program at the 5th Annual Ybor Festival Of The Moving Image so I have spent good chunks of the last few days (Thursday night, Friday night and all day and night Saturday) with the Ten at the Top team wandering around Ybor City and experiencing everything. We saw some truly amazing films, met some interesting people and saw some very cool things in Ybor that I didn't even know existed. But just when I thought maybe I wasn't completely out of my element among talented, intelligent sophisticated people, I attended a performance by Pat Oleszko, 99% of which sailed completely unobstructed over my enormous empty cranium. Highlights included inflatable clothing, a short film about Napoleon performed entirely by knees and dance students dressed as cigars that marched, wiggled and rolled around on the floor under the direction of Oleszko. All of this was met enthusiastically by the clever and creative people in the audience. I, on the other hand, was stuck clicking my little brain remote control back and forth between channels "Huh?" and "Wha...?". It ended with an interpretation of the classic fable 'The Emperor's New Clothes" where Olezsko took a pair of scissors and cut the suit off of a man made to resemble George Bush to the tune of patritic marching music and then spit red, white and blue paint on his naked body. Even I was able to get that one.

This isn't the first time I've felt frustrated and insufficiently intelligent by art. I once saw a performance of "Jaques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" that made me feel the same way. Oh well. I suppose it's good to be reminded of your inadequacy now and then; it keeps you grounded. So I guess it's back to fart jokes.

Other notes from the festival:

• Screenings and performances take place all over Ybor City in some fantastic venues, including the Silver Meteor Gallery, a 55 seat black box theatre named for the Amtrak passenger train that passes within feet of it's front door.
• "Ten at the Top..." is offically being presented today at 3:30 and I can't go because I have to work, a fact that has me literally feeling sick because I feel like I am letting my team down.
• Artist/writer Dr. Ferdie Pacheco (aka"The Fight Doctor") is a storytelling machine. I got to spend time with him last night and once he got rolling, it was like he had no off switch...not that I minded. He was fascinating, ribald and hilarious! And he barely touched on his relationship with Muhammed Ali. My personal favorite was his recounting of bandleader Artie Shaw's four month marriage to Lana Turner: "Once they got out of bed, he realized he'd married a flower pot". Somebody (Tampa Theatre?) needs to set him up with a lecture series.
• Ybor City is also hosting a biker weekend. So mingling with the filmmakers, artists, film geeks and one guy who dresses like a pirate for some unknown reason, are scads of leatherclad, tattooed biker people.
• I'm a huge supporter of shameless self-promotion but planting an audience member to ask questions for the purpose of hijacking a panel discussion on filmmaking just so you can pimp your film is tacky and classless ("I want to hear more about the mockumentary, that I'm in, by the way"). Yeah, I'm looking at you, bumper-sticker hander-outers.

I want to fight everyone in the world

I firmly believe that the world deserves a completely undisputed champion fighter (me). For once and for all, we must be able to point to someone (me) and say that person (me) is the best in the world at fighting. I want to earn this honor, not merely have it thrust upon me (me). But how can we truly say that someone (me) is a world champion if they don't beat every single opponent in the world? There is no other way: I (me) must fight every person in the world.
This will take a long time, a number of years probably, but I have it all planned out. I will start by fighting babies. They'll be easy to defeat and I can save time by fighting four and five of them at a time. Plus, there's a lot of them and I will want to vanquish as many as possible before they're capable of sitting upright, walking and otherwise defending themselves. That way when they get older and come to me seeking revenge, I will be able to say "Nuh uh, Junior. I defeated you fairly and squarely when you were but a mewling milk-fed infant. No rematches, no do-overs". Then I will fight the elderly and the infirm, again for the sake of practicality: I should be able to defeat them two, maybe three at a time, saving me some time. After that, it will become considerably more difficult.
I've spent a great deal of time weighing the pros and cons and have decided to fight all the women in the world before taking on the men. This is because it's been my experience that most times when men fight, it's always about preening and posturing and not being embarrassed. However, when women get angry enough to fight, their intent is to accomplish nothing less than total annihilation of their opponent. I'll need all of my strength to fight them. Afterwards, there's little doubt that I'll be wounded and short of breath but should have plenty left in the tank to take out a bunch of guys whose entire concern begins and ends with "dude, not the face". Besides, ladies first.
Then, I will face my final opponent, Shaquille O'Neal, in a worldwide cable tv pay-per-view spectacular. Everyone in the world will be rooting for me, in spite of the fact that I will have beaten every single one of you up. You'll say things like "you know, that guy whipped my ass when I was a baby but I totally respect him and everything he stands for" and "yeah, me too". Because nobody wants to see the guy who beat them up get taken by some chump who can't even hit 50% of his free throws. Damn Shaq, bend your knees!!
After it's all over, I will take a year off to drive around the world in my new Cadillac convertible, wearing my gold crown and signing autographs, not fighting. Finally, you'll have a world champion you can all be proud of (me).

Charlie horse!!!!

Saturday night, I was climbing the stairs to my apartment when I suddenly felt the back of my right thigh bind up in a knot. I froze in place immedately. It wasn't a full blown charlie horse at that point but I could tell that moving as little as a single inch one way or another might get it there. If you've never had a charlie horse, consider yourself lucky because they hurt like few things in life hurt. I've had them in the middle of the night where my leg seized up so bad it literally threw me out of bed and on to the floor. The guy in the picture there to the right knows what I'm talking about. I've never tried putting on satiny lime green shorts and dragging my butt along the ground as a remedy, but if I thought it might work I would. Take a pair of giant needlenose pliars made out of live hornets, grab hold of one of your muscles and twist as hard as you can and don't stop for at least an hour and you'll get some idea of what 45 seconds of a charlie horse feels like.
So there I was, like one of those poor doomed bastards in a war movie who realizes he's stepped on a land mine and that as a result his next move will be his last. I'm taking quick, shallow breaths ("ohshit, ohshit, ohshit, ohshit..."), standing motionless in mid stair-step like I've been cornered by a cobra waiting to strike. "It's a cramp", I think. "So what I need is a quick shot of pottassium. Do I have bananas upstairs? Shit. No, I'm all out of bananas. It might just be dehydration. Do I have Gatorade? Of course not, unless by Gatorade I mean Heinekens. Hell, just let me have some water!", as though ingesting the first mouthful of any of these substances would instantly save me from cramp hell. I was even willing to drink tap water at this point (tap water in Tampa comes from the Hillsborough river...there are cleaner cesspools).
I eventually eased my way slowly and gingerly up the stairs and got inside without a full-blown charlie horse seizure, even though it was always kind of *there* the rest of the night, like a Russian submarine lurking a few miles off the coast, it's presence reminding you that it could destroy you and your happy American way of life if it decided that it felt like doing so just out of spite.
And that's why I spent $60 on bottled water, Gatorade and fresh bananas on Sunday.

Ranking the ginormous banners of Tampa

If you have something you want to advertise, a product or a service perhaps, a good way to do that is by hanging huge banners on your building. For instance, if Waffle House wanted to let people know about their delicious scattered, smothered and covered hash browns, they could do so by putting a banner featuring the hashbrowns on their building. This would do the trick because the picture on the banner would look soooo delicious, but Waffle Houses are small, one story buildings and the banners I'm talking about would cover them like a pest control tent. And also everybody already knows all about the scattered, smothered and covered so why bother? And so for no purpose whatsoever, here are arbitrary, unneccesary and unintelligible rankings of some of Tampa's incredibly large advertising banners...





WTVT (Channel 13) Tampa's Fox affiliate

For years, Roy Leep was the preeminent weatherman in Tampa. When the radar tower pictured here was originally built, we used to joke that Roy Leep and his dog Scud were inside actually making the weather ("Yes, make it rain for one hour yet again today! More humidity, more! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!!!"). Now that Roy has retired, there are huge banners of the two guys who do the weather now. I think their names are Paul Dellagato (sp?) and Some Other Guy. That just doesn't seem right. Hey, you two guys, get your faces off of Roy leep's radar tower.
GRADE: 6.58


(PS: This is easily the most phallic photo I have ever posted. Good god, look at that thing!)





ST. PETE TIMES FORUM
The Forum, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning "boasts" a six story high banner of goalie Marc Denis, who was acquired from something called the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for Freddy Modin last summer. Last summer, that was a great deal! This spring, all you can say is "oof". Maybe "ouch".
GRADE: P+



WFLA (Channel 8) Tampa's NBC affiliate
I didn't bother looking to see if they have any banners. I should have because I'll bet they do. But I didn't. Shame on me.
GRADE (on me): # @ % &


RAYMOND JAMES STADIUM
Ray Jay is banner nirvanner. Humongous banners featuring logos, players and sponsors are everywhere you look, inside and out. But about that logo: this is a big, bad NFL franchise. They even won the Superbowl a few years ago. So what's with the skull guy's combover? Look at him; he's got swords, a football and scary grin on his face...and two sad little wisps of hair inadequately covering his boney pate. I bet he drives a sports car or a massive SUV too. Hey, skeleton logo; you're popular, successful and you have huge advertising banners. Stop being so insecure!
GRADE: X = B2TP> 5.6798

Moonlight Chopper Serenade: All paranoids please report to the dance floor

There has been a police helicopter flying around in my neighborhood, looking for something or someone, for the last 2 1/2 hours. Earlier it was much nearer to my place, with the droning 'neeeooOOOWWMM!' sound coming and going in wide, low flying cricles. Now, it seems to be hovering in one spot, a bit further south but I can still hear it. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it always makes me feel uneasy. For one thing, the sound of helicopters overhead reminds me of the scene in Goodfellas where Henry Hill is constantly seeing them overhead as he tries to go about his business; the best capture of pure, raving (and ultimately, totally justified) paranoia ever captured on film. The other thing is, when the cops are looking this long for something or someone in your neighborhood, you can't help but wonder what the hell is going on. Who's out there and what have they done? I'll watch the news tonight and look in the paper tomorrow but there probably won't be a single mention of it. And that's pretty creepy in it's own right.

A short conversation about sharing

"Hey, I'm starving. Can I have some of these chips?"

"No, those are mine and I don't have very many left."

"Oh really? (picks up can and shakes it violently 10 or 12 times) There, now you have lots. But I don't want any though. Thanks."

Live to ride, ride to crash

The girls and I celebrated Easter this evening with dinner at Rick's On The River. Rick's has, easily, without question, the most culturally, racially, whatever you want, diverse clientele of any dining/drinking establishment in Tampa Bay. Young, old, white, blacks, hispanics of all persuasions, bikers, boaters, bankers. If you're looking for some or all of those people, Rick's is the only place you'll find them.
Another group that enjoys Rick's? Assholes!
Tonight during dinner, we were treated to the sight of some...well, asshole riding his obviously very expensive motorcycle through the crowded patio dining area. He took a left turn between two tables to ride down the steps you see in this picture. He hesitated at the top of the steps, as though he was contemplating whether or not this was a good idea. But come on, this is an asshole we're talking about here! Assholes don't do contemplation so you know he'd already made up his mind that this was the greatest idea ever. He gave it a little gas and the front tire went off the top step. However, the angle of the steps is about 45 degrees, which was steep enough for the cycle to bottom out with the rear wire still on the ground and the front wheel hovering. What to do, what to do? Well, if you're an asshole, you already know the answer; give 'er more gas!! HELL'S YEAH!, which he did. This got him down the stairs where he then turned the cycle over on it's side just before smashing into some parked cars that were right about where the person who took this picture must have been standing. It was like "Jackass" as dinner theatre! The wannabe biker (I call him a wannabe because I don't think actual bikers treat their obviously very expensive motorcycles like that. Plus, actual bikers who witnessed this were laughing at -not with- him). After some extended negotiation, his wife or girlfriend (no doubt he refers to her as his 'bitch'...when she isn't around) got him to give up the keys and ride home with her in their obviously very expensive Cadillac Escalade, leaving the obviously very expensive motorcycle behind. I was disappointed, hoping he'd try it again (you know he wanted to), this time launching the cycle at full speed off the top step, missing the cars and plowing full speed into the river. It would have been the best Easter ever.

Up on the roof - 5

Well, one of the other folks spending the night up here just woke up and yakked on himself. The fact that he chose to stay here instead of driving home intoxicated is admirable so I don't really want to make fun of him. But when he sat up and stared at me all pie-eyed, wearing what looks like a shirt with a collar made of chunks of strained squash, I couldn't help but laugh and laugh and laugh. I reasoned with him to go change his shirt but it still smells kind of like a cider mill gone bad. I hope I can ignore it because I think it's time to shut this down for the night and go to bed, so to speak.

Up on the roof - 4

A woman asked me if I was really going to spend the night up here and I said "yep". I told her I had been in the army so it was no big deal. She asked, "does army training condition you to deal with the elements?" and I said, "no, but it conditions you to be able to fall sleep anywhere".

Downtown Tampa really does have a pretty impressive skyline. If you didn't know better, you might think there was all kinds of exciting activity taking place in those twinkling steel and glass towers.

Up on the roof - 3

I forgot to remember that I'm not crazy about heights. We're on the 6th floor with a waist-high guard rail to keep us safe. We all had to sign waivers to be up here. That's to keep people with a financial stake in the building safe.

It's strange, I didn't use to have problem with heights. I used to love roller coasters and in the army, I rappelled out of helicopters. I don't know how or when it happened but now a 10 foot stepladder makes me queasy.

Up on the roof - 2

Poor Thunderbug. There is no way anybody is going to let him sleep tonight. It's a big party up here and there are quite a few people having a good time. It would be even more festive if the Lightning game that preceded this gala hadn't been so godawful (7-2 loss to the Florida Panthers aka the Shitty City Kitties). Of course, that means I probably won't be sleeping tonight either. No biggie. I kind of figured that would be the case. It's not like I have to work tomorrow. Oh wait, yes I do.

It's kind of nice up here. There's a couple of leather couches, an end table, a fridge, a flat-screen TV with cable and a tent for Bug to sleep in. There's also tons of food and drinks. If you had to live outside, you could do much worse than this.

Up on the roof - 1

I am on the roof of the St. Pete Times Forum. In case you weren't aware, it's become a yearly tradition for Lightning mascot Thunderbug (pictured here) to ascend to the roof of the Forum and live there until the first home playoff game sells out. Through various associations with various associates, I got an invitation to come up here tonight. I figured it would be fun to have 3 or 14 beers and see what goes on when you spend the night on the roof of a large building in downtown Tampa. So here goes nothing.

Coming soon: Something cool!

Tonight, on this very site, I will be blogging from the top of a prominent Tampa landmark. Outdoors, against the elements, with the majestic Tampa skyline as my nightlight. I can't tell you where (yet) or how this is going to happen but the experience will be documented right here, on this blog. To my knowledge, this is something that has never happened before so I think it's going to be awesome! It could be, anyway. It should at least be interesting. I hope it will be. It might suck. No telling.
Anyway, somewhere between awesome and suck, tune in to see for yourself.

Laundry time is coming up again...

...and I'm seriously considering washing my towel. I've only had the one since I moved in here last summer, and while I do laundry at least once a week, for some reason I keep forgetting to throw the towel in there. I think it's probably ok, it still does the job. But lately it makes this disturbing creaking noise when I try to fold it and sometimes I cut myself on it's sharp edges. So I should make a point of washing it one of these days.

Of course, tomorrow is pay day. Maybe I'll go nuts and just buy another one.

Bat wings

Last night, we had dinner at the Proud Lion Pub (I wish they had a web site. I'd have posted a link) where we tried one of their signature menu items: Bat Wings. I don't know if they're called Bat Wings because they're darker than a regular chicken wing or if they're actually made from the wings of small flying mammals that feed on insects or fruit juices, unlike chicken wings which are made from cattle. I think it's probably because of the dark color (mass quantities of bats are probably hard to catch and are not available from most food service suppliers). I don't know the exact recipe, but apparently these wings are fried, then coated with some kind of topping or light batter (HA!) and then fried again. That's right, a restaurant here in Tampa serves double fried chicken wing. Say it with me now: "Praise be! There is a God!!"

Hiss! Scratch! Claw! Meow!

My two best friends in the whole world are both women. We spend a lot of time together. But as is the case any time human beings spend a lot of time together, it becomes easy to get on one another's nerves. More importantly, it becomes easy to know how to get on one another's nerves. As a result, these two women about whom I care so very deeply will sometimes get in fights. It's never a big deal. They don't happen that often and they never last very long. Here's the problem though: I don't enjoy it. And I think I'm supposed to. A lot.

In spite of commonly held belief, there is not a printed manual that catalogs the standard male responses to visual stimuli, but if there were, I'm pretty sure "WOMEN FIGHTING" would get it's own chapter, with huge thumbs (among other appendages) up for approval. But I just don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. I've never enjoyed seeing people I care about in conflict. And I don't want to pick sides, even though I usually think one of them is right, or at least a little more right, than the other. Sure, it might be because these aren't actual physical fights. There's no hair pulling or hitting or garment tearing. But I honestly don't think that would make me feel any better about it. I think I'd still feel awkward, only now I'd feel obligated to keep a supply of Bactine and gauze pads to apply to any fresh wounds. No, these are verbal fights, where words are used to inflict as much harm as any blunt or sharp object. Maybe that's what it is. I enjoy words, written and spoken, and respect the impact they can have, both positive and negative. And maybe hearing them used as tools of destruction by people I care about is just too unsettling. I know what you're going to say ; "Just tune out whatever it is they're saying and pretend they're fighting over you, Clark". Well, of course I've tried that. It doesn't work. Possibly because they often are actually fighting over me. But that's another story.

March Madness, April Sadness

Gambling, even on a relatively small scale like a seemingly benign office bracket pool, is illegal and the handiwork of Satan himself and thus something I would never even condone, let alone participate in. So if a person found themselves watching the championship game with a shot at $1000 only to see it slip right through their fingers, they'd have nobody to blame but themselves, in spite of certain people who rooted for Florida even though this person would have bought them something really nice, like anything she wanted had he won, especially if that person, being originally from Michigan, was born and bred to damn well know better than to ever count on Ohio State being worth a shit when it mattered.

Right?

Yeah, that's what I think too.

A short conversation about super powers

"If I were a superhero, I would be HourMan, and my super power would be hour power. That means I could do whatever I want, fly, be bulletproof, run fast, be on fire, see through shit, anything, for one hour at a time. My costume would have a real working clock on my chest and a watch on each wrist, all set to precisely the exact right time. And my battle cry would be, check this out: 'Knock knock, it's justice time!'. How cool would that be?"

"Well, pretty cool, I guess. But your battle cry doesn't really make a lot of sense. Why not 'Tick-tock, it's justice time!'?"

"Oh yeah. That's so much better."

Family Matters

My family lives up in the Midwest, in the northern Indiana/southern Michigan area. My mom called yesterday to tell me that my aunt was in the hospital, in fairly serious condition. It looks like she’s going to be ok, but the doctors aren’t exactly sure what the problem was/is, although I have no doubt that it is somehow minivan related. The beauty of this story is that mom called me after spending the weekend in the hospital herself. As it turns out, when my aunt got sick, my cousin wasn’t able to find mom and literally had to call a couple of hospitals to track her down before she could tell her about it. I thought that kind of thing only happened on TV and in movies. I found out this part of the story after calling my cousin to get my sister’s phone number, which I thought I had but oops, I didn’t. Of course, neither she nor my sister (the person with whom I would have shared a womb for nine months had we been twins, which we are not) called me because I’m running around somewhere in Florida, doing whatever it is I do. Which, I think they believe might consist of wagering on jai alai, cruising around in an airboat, screwing up elections, drinking umbrella drinks and not having a telephone. The whole confluence of circumstances makes me think that if my family was made up of characters from movies, I'd be Uncle Buck.
At any rate, I’m apparently harder to find than, well, my mom.

Knock, knock...

Here are two stories involving my front door that happened within the last 24 hours.

Last night, I had just gone to bed when I heard someone trying to open my front door. Sure, it was late, I was tired and the cats are constantly getting into stuff, but the sound of someone trying to turn a doorknob makes a pretty distinctive 'chnnk-chnnk' sound
and that is definitely what I heard. I waited a second to see if they were going to try to break a window but that didn't happen. I guess whoever it was didn't want to get in that badly, which is good. For reasons of my own, I would never consider having a gun and even though I know I have several, I didn't know exactly where the nearest baseball bat was at that hour. We all like to think that if someone breaks into our home we'll have the advantage over the intruder because we know the layout of everything in the dark and the adrenaline would kick in if we were put in a position of having to defend ourselves and/or loved ones turning us into cunning warriors. But these factors are probably negated by the facts that we're going to be nervous to some degree, the person breaking in is obviously pretty desperate, probably prepared for some sort of confrontation and has in all likelihood decided that they won't mind hurting you. In fact, that may be the reason they broke in in the first place...Ah, it was probably just the cats getting into something.

Tonight, I had just gotten home when somebody knocked on the door. Unprepared for company and thus lacking a witty quip, I yelled out the classic "Who is it?" and was answered with "It's Matt and John. We want to talk about The Bible." Wow, Matthew and John are both in The Bible. And since I don't know anybody named Matt and John, at least that travel as a couple, they must expect me to know who they are. What if it's the Matthew and John? This could be the opportunity of a lifetime! Not entirely convinced that it was the Matt and John, I asked again "Who is it?". Again, they replied, "It's Matt and John". I'd had time to think about it now and realized it probably was not the Matt and John so I asked again "Who is it?". "It's, uh, Matt. And John. We said we want to talk to you...". By now I had lost interest in the possible theological merits of this conversation and decided to conduct a social experiment, mainly how many times could I ask "Who is it?" before even the most dedicated door-to-door solicitors of Bible discussion named for participants therein gave up and moved to the next door. The answer is 19. I asked them 19 times "Who is it?" before they got pissed off and gave up. If they're really angry about it and come back later and try to break in, I will hit them with a baseball bat.

Spaghetti & meatballs after 9:00PM + Reality TV = Bad idea

...Unless, of course, you like the idea of spending the whole night dreaming about how you can repair the rift between Ron Jeremy and Vanilla Ice.

Vibro-shave

I bought one of those crazy vibrating razors recently, although I'm not sure why.

That is, I know why I bought it; because now that The Big Companies know that all of us are on to their eight hot dogs / twelve buns in a package swindle, they've changed their bait-and-switch tactics to the shaving game. They make hundreds of different razors and blades, none of which are compatible with each other. They look almost identical, and you're pretty sure they're the ones that go with your particular razor but they're just different enough to not work with anything other than it's own particular brand and model, which is not yours. And since returning an opened package of razor blades is harder than returning an opened home enema kit (trust me), you wind up just buying yet another new razor. That's why I bought one.

What I don't understand is why vibrating is good for shaving (if you know, don't bother trying to explain it to me; reasonable explanations based on thought and logic are completely lost on the likes of me). You'd think when you're maneuvering a piece of steel that's..well, razor sharp...across your face, it's steadiness you'd want, not vibration. It's just one of several things I don't understand about shaving, such as whose bright idea was it to sharpen a hunk of metal and drag it across their face in the name of fashion in the first place?

Anyway, I thought advances in shaving technology were limited to increasing the sheer number of blades involved. In the old days, you had one (1) blade that shaved the hair off your face. Then in the 70s you had the dual blade system where the first blade would hold the whisker up while the second one came along and chopped it off, sort of like an illegal chop block in the NFL. Now, the first blade gives the whisker a dirty look, the second one throws a rock with a note tied around it through the whisker's window as a warning, the third blade roughs up one of the whisker's family members, the fourth and fifth blades jump the whisker in an alley one night, the sixth blade is up state doing a four year stretch for B & E, but it never said anything about that whole mess down by the docks and we appreciate that. Blade seven is the one that actually takes the whisker out, blade eight disposes of the evidence and blade nine, he don't do nothin', but is there to make sure nobody else does nothin' either, capiche? That, plus vibration, is how you shave these days.

Yet another plug for the film...

It's official: "Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay" will be broadcast this Sunday at 4:00 on WEDU.

I'll admit, it's a little scary that this thing that has been looked at by less than ten people in the whole world up to now is actually going to be broadcast on television. That really didn't hit me until yesterday when WEDU put a trailer on their web site.

Anyway, if you can tune in on Sunday afternoon at 4:00, please do so. Don’t worry, they probably won’t make you pledge any money, but if they do, I hear you get a really keen tote bag.

Malled

I needed to buy a new watch and somebody from work recommended the Fossil brand. I could have shopped online, but instead I sucked it up and went to the Fossil store at the International Plaza last Saturday.
Chris Rock was partially right when he said that every town has two malls; the one the white people go to and the one that white people used to go to. International Plaza is a third type of mall; the one where all The Right People go. It’s Tampa’s one-stop shopping destination for people who look like the models in the catalogs from the stores inside the mall. The faces of the stores as well as the shoppers themselves are all freshly scrubbed and peeled. You’ll see lots of ponytails pulled through the backs of khaki baseball caps in carefully choreographed displays of casualness. Many of its patrons are men named Howard and women who spent four years or more in college just so they could eventually marry men named Howard. Basically, if you want to pay $50 for a plastic case to carry your iPod in, this is the place for you. It’s just not the place for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like nice things and I’m willing to pay for them when necessary but I’m (surprisingly) easily intimidated (sometimes) and I’m just not fond of putting myself in situations where dialogue like this can occur:
“May I help you?”
“Um, yeah, I’d like to make an appointment to look at some of these watches, please.”
“All right, why don’t you start filling out this application and the rest of these eligibility forms and we’ll get your request denied in a jiffy, ok?”

Anyway, I escaped without incident and am happy with my new watch. Too bad it didn’t come with a khaki baseball cap!

I'm not goin' to Brandon this time

Last week, I mentioned that I inadvertantly wound up on an expressway from downtown Tampa to Brandon. Yesterday, I was driving in the same vicinity and happened to notice the same entrance ramp, only this time I noticed the sign, which is about the size of a softball diamond, that gives you all the information you would need to know if you were in the position of having to decide whether to get on it or not.
I never said I was smart.

A short conversation about assholes

"I am just so sick and tired of dealing with assholes, man."
"Wow, could you have possibly uttered a more innocuous, generic statement?"
"What? What do you mean?"
"I mean, is there anybody who would disagree with that? Can you imagine anybody under any circumstances taking the opposing stance?: 'Not me, I love dealing with assholes. They enrich my life and I cherish the opportunities to interact with them every chance I get'. Of course you're sick and tired of dealing with assholes! Everybody's sick and tired of dealing with assholes. That's why they're called assholes!"
"I am sick and tired of dealing with you."

Another negative aspect of the prevalence of cell phones

Aside from the fact that the cell phone has done more to erode what's left of common courtesy than any invention in history, it's also made it harder for the rest to identify the weirdos. Used to be when you saw someone walking down the street and muttering, you knew they were talking to themselves and thus should be avoided. Easy. Now, you don't know if they're holding a phone to their ear on the side of their head you can't see and discussing dinner plans or if they're talking to invisible robots and discussing how to turn your skull into a gravy boat. Worse, they may have one of those incredibly stupid looking clip-on ear phones. So now you don't know if these people are weirdos or just tools (believe me, if you use one of these gimmicks, you are, indeed, a tool. And spare me the safety lecture. Hands-free? More like dignity free).

I guess we'll have to go back to the old days of tag and release when it comes to keeping track of the weirdos. Thanks, cell phones. Thanks a lot.

A short conversation about catchphrases

"Hey listen, don't be that guy, man. Ok? Just...don't be that guy. Seriously."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Don't be that guy that says stupid shit like 'don't be that guy'. Trust me, you do not want to be that guy."

I'm goin' to Brandon

Tonight after work, I was going over to a place in Ybor City to check out the place where we're having the premiere party for "Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay". There's been some recent construction in downtown, with buildings being torn down, new roads added and old roads re-routed. I thought I was heading towards Ybor when I found myself on what looked like an expressway. I realized that it was an expressway, and figured that I had somehow wound up on the new and improved Selmon Crosstown by mistake. "Looks like I'm goin' to Brandon", I chuckled to myself. As I traveled a little further without seeing any exits, I thought "Shit, I am going to Brandon". The longer this went on, the more I repeated this to myself, each time emphasizing a different word as I grew more and more incredulous; "I'm going to Brandon", "I'm going to Brandon". I may have also added an adjective that started with F and ended with ING between "to" and "Brandon". Don't get me wrong, I have no ill will towards Brandon. There's a huge mall there, which is kind of nice. Actually, the whole place looks like it's one huge mall. But I couldn't help wondering who decided that with all the traffic problems we have in this town that a four lane, non-stop, no-exit express route from downtown Tampa to F-ing Brandon is what we need. It's kind of like installing a Weber 6750001 Genesis Gold C Propane Grill at a mosque; it's nice and it may even come in handy sometimes but it's certainly not what anyone would describe as an essential.

Courtesy is dead in the grocery checkout line

So tonight on the way home I stopped at the local Sweetbay for some groceries. I didn't have a lot so I was using one of the smaller hand baskets. The kind you carry, not push. I got my stuff and got in line behind this lady (not this lady; this is just some photo I grabbed off Google. I'm sure this lady is perfectly nice. Look at how swiftly she's unloading her cart!). The lady I was behind tonight loaded all her stuff on the conveyor belt and then started browsing through a magazine while she waited for her groceries to be scanned. The things is, as her groceries moved along the belt, she didn't. She stayed camped out in that same spot, not allowing me to put my groceries up there. I didn't have that much stuff, but it was heavy enough that it would have been nice to not have to hold it if I didn't have to. So now I'm thinking, "What do I do here? Do I say something? I don't want to seem like a wimp who struggles with a lousy 10 pounds of groceries. Or do I just stand here until she realizes that she's holding me up, gets embarrassed, apologizes, laughs a cute, embarrassed laugh and moves up a little bit, allowing me to smile back and chuckle 'Hey, no problem!'. Well, she isn't moving. She is reading that magazine. And I don't mean just the captions under the photos; she's reading articles! What magazine is that anyway? Ashlee and Keith are hooking up? I don't even know who that is. Brad and Angelina are adopting another baby? Ok, I know who that is. But didn't they just adopt a...Jesus, her groceries are almost all bagged up and she isn't budging!!"

Honestly, it's not a huge deal. It's just that I don't understand people being so wrapped up in themselves that they don't notice little things like this going on around them. These are the same people who slow down to 10 miles an hour in the left hand lane because they just realized they want to cut across two lanes of traffic so they can make a right turn. they'd rather impose on everyone else, maybe even put them in mortal danger, because it's just too inconvenient for them to acknowledge that they screwed up and that they should just double back.

Anyway, she eventually did budge enough for me to move up and put my stuff down, but she never even acknowledged me. I think she just finished doing the crossword puzzle and decided to move along. But now I have another dilemma: just what is the correct etiquette for putting that little divider bar thing down? I'm always of the mindset that we don't need barriers between us. See? We can be cool, man. I have my groceries, you have yours and you, me and the groceries, are all just doing our own things. As long as we're not, like, imposing on each other's space, man, it's cool. But inevitably, somebody will not-so-subtly drop that thing in there. They don't make eye contact with you when they do it, but they're still making a declaration that what's theirs is theirs and what's yours is yours and they have no interest in getting the two mixed up. It's like they're saying, "I don't want your hot dogs anyway near my bran flakes, you filthy hot dog-buyer". I know it's pretty stupid to find this offensive but I do anyway. Also, I don't even know whose responsibility it is to lay down the boundary. Is it the leader or the follower? Can somebody please explain the protocol to me? Since I don't know, and since I'm such a free-spirit philosophically opposed to grocery segregation, I usually just let the other person do it. Except tonight, I'm a little pissy now from thinking of all this stuff and I didn't want my salad dressing associating with her ginger ale and Perrier (gee, in addition to celebrity gossip, she really enjoys nearly-flavorless carbonated beverages) so I put that thing down there. But it slipped from my hand and landed with a *THWACK!* that made everybody turn to see what was going on. Oh yeah, and by the time I actually out it down, she had paid and all her stuff was bagged up and put in her cart.

So once again, I'm an ass.

Check it out: I'm legitimate!

What's been said about "Sticks Of Fire"

• Best Of the Bay 2006; Best local blog - Creative Loafing
• "...Tampa's premier blog, Sticks of Fire. This is the one blog that is essential to have on your blog roll or bookmark list. Tommy covers all sorts of topics relevant to Tampa. He also has the best list of Tampa bay area blogs. It is currently featured on the St. Pete Times weblog site." - Seminole Heights
• "Sticks of Fire is not Tampa’s first weblog, nor its most prolific, but it may be the Bay Area’s most decorated. Showered with awards from local free culture papers like the Weekly Plant (or whatever it’s called now) Sticks of Fire is widely considered Tampa’s best blog about Tampa." - Perpetualbeta.com

All of those kudos and credentials, and they choose to interview and profile who?!?

Cracked Out

Cracked magazine, perennially the Burger King to Mad magazine's McDonald's recently reformatted itself, taking on a hipper and (gasp!) funnier edge. I read the first new issue and liked it enough to go ahead and subscribe. I mean, it wasn't as great as any of the classic era National Lampoons or Spy in it's heyday but it was at least as good as The Onion.
Two issues later, it's over. "New" Cracked, as a magazine, has folded (it lives on as a web site, which is fine unless you've ever tried to take a web site into the bathroom with you. I'm just sayin'...) after a total of three issues.
This leaves a total of exactly zero worthwhile humor magazines in existence. Mad just flat-out stinks now. Each issue is about as thick as a standard comic book and takes lame, half-hearted potshots at whatever the hottest tv shows, movies or products are at the moment (ironically enough, exactly the kind of waste product that used to fill the pages of Cracked). I'd be willing to bet that the issue on the newsstands right now is chock full of jokes about Grey's Anatomy, iPods and Ghost Rider. Cripes, if I wanted that, I'd buy Entertainment Weekly. And I don't want that.

Wow, what a night

Last night, I went to MacDinton's Irish Pub in the South Howard part of town to watch the Lightning game with four co-workers. This was a historic occasion because it was the first time I'd been to MacDinton's for a reason other than seeing the Johnny G Lyon Band and it was the first time I'd gone there when I wasn't already drunk. It was also historic because it was BY FAR my shortest visit there...and most likely my last .
Let me explain.
We started the evening with dinner at the Chipotle Grill in the plaza next door. After dinner, we went across the street to Marble Slab Creamery for ice cream. Then we made our way back across the street to MacDinton's to watch the game. We were there for maybe 20 minutes when somebody mentioned that cars parked in the plaza next door should probably be moved or there was a possibility of being towed. Guess what happened? Three out of the five of us had been towed. Thankfully, I wasn't one of them (Why? I honestly think it's because they took one look at my car, Jeeves, and figured I wouldn't be able to pay to get it out of impound. thank heaven for perception being reality). So I wound up taking everyone who had been towed over to the impound lot, which is not in a nice part of town, where we learned the fee to retrieve their cars was $162, each, in cash, exact change only. Further adding to the fun was remembering halfway there that I had started running a tab at MacDinton's, which meant I had left my credit card behind...and I was low on gas. Bottom line: My co-workers were seperated from $486 and none of us got home before 1:00 in the morning.
These tow truck/impound lot operators are scumbags. There's no other way around that. They're parasitic scumbags who have figured out a way to steal people's property legally and get paid to do it. As a sidebar to this story, when I lived in Sarasota, I managed a movie theatre that lacked adequate parking and our customers often tried to park in the lots of antique shops across the street, all of whom closed by 6:00PM. These merchants didn't like it and started towing cars. Not the friendliest thing to do, but it's their private property, so fine. Whatever. In an effort to be neighborly and respect their property, and save my customers some grief, I went out and bought great big orange traffic cones and used them to block off the driveways to these lots after they closed. One night, one of my employees told me that a guy in a tow truck was outside taking the cones. See, as it turns out, it wasn't really about keeping people out of the parking lots; it was about towing people's cars out of the lots and then basically demanding ransom to get them back. Nice, huh?
To answer the unasked question, yes, the lot was marked as a tow away zone for people who were not customers of the plaza, but remember we started the evening by eating dinner there. And the thing is that South Howard, or SoHo as the euphemeisters would prefer you call it, is the kind of neighborhood where parking the car and exploring the eclectic collection of shops and restaurants should be encouraged. Heck, our group patronized three of them in the hour we were there. But after last night, it's going to be a long time before any of us think about going back.

A short conversation about breast exams

"How often should women have mastectomies?"

"Well, in all but the most extremely rare cases, the most any person can have in their life is two."

"Oh. What? Wait. Are you sure? I would think it would be every six months or at least once a year..."

"Wait, do you mean mammograms?"

"I don't think it really matters whether or not they have children or how old they are. All women should have them."

"Viewer discretion...is advised"

What other four words are capable of inspiring such giddiness and delight in me than the ones listed above that herald the weekly arrival of "24", featuring Jack Bauer and the general mayhem that comes with him? Well, maybe "I love you Clark" would do the trick, but I don't hear that once a week.

I'm not the world's biggest TV fan but Monday nights at 9:00, however, is another story. That is my TV time, the one hour a week for which DVR was invented. I'm not old enough to remember the old movie serials like The Shadow and the Lone Ranger but I have to think that the fans of those old yarns felt the way I do about "24". I spend all week wondering what will happen next (something bad; worse than last week) and how Jack is going to get out of it (he always does, even though you think he might not). Being able to tell a story over a much longer period of time is a distinct advantage TV has over movies. And serial shows, when they're done well, with the right balance of prolonged suspense (cliffhangers) and resolution (payoffs) are ultimately more satisfying than just about all films. "Lost" often hits this mark, but when it misses, it misses big. "24" NEVER fails to deliver.

Critics of the show point out how Bauer has no qualms about breaking rules (and limbs, his or someone else's) to accomplish his mission, as well as concerns about the show's perceived insensitivity towards non-American cultures, since many of the villians are non-American. This causes fans to be defensive about liking the show, for fear of being labeled as jingoistic racist supporters of fascism.

Please.

My enjoyment of "24" makes me no more of any kind of fascist than my enjoyment of the "Grand Theft Auto" video games makes me a cop-killing sociopath.

S Words

I got home very, very late last night from a road trip to south Florida with some co-workers to watch the Lightning play (and let me state for the record that baseball is the only sport you can watch your team get it's ass kicked and still have a good time).

We got down there early enough to do some shopping at the Sawgrass Mills Outlet Mall, which is reportedly the largest outlet mall in the world. Visiting the world's largest anything is certainly an experience but what I was most impressed with was this: there was a store selling samurai swords for $12!

Now, I'm sure these probably weren't exactly Hattori Hanzo quality swords (katanas to be exact) but still. How can you possibly beat a $12 sword? (No, not with a gun, smartass). The price is certainly right and there's apparently no three day waiting period if you want to walk right in and buy one, regardless of how angry you might be. Three of us considered buying them, decided not to, and spent the rest of the night regretting it.

In the relatively short period between the mall visit, the game and the ride home, we thought of literally hundreds of occasions where the swords would have been useful. They would have paid for themselves at the game alone.

One of the many brilliant ideas we had was to become a team of sword guys for hire, kind of like an A-Team that was actually bad ass (the original A-Team was like G.I. Joe; forever firing off clip after clip of ammo and blowing up all kinds of stuff but never actually hurting anybody). We couldn't agree on a team name (I liked Sword Guys, somebody else said Sword Dudes, I think somebody else suggested Sworders, which is just dumb....I don't think they were taking us seriously at this point, which would not have been the case if we'd actually bought the damn things) but I was already visualizing our ads on the sides of HARTline buses all over Tampa: "1-800 ASK-WHOEVER, my a$$! You got problems? You need somebody to do something about them? Call the three guys with the $12 swords!".

Oh, and we would also wear top hats. Damn, we would have been so bad ass.

A short conversation about logos

"Look at that nerd. He's got a friggin' silver-plated Star Trek logo on his car. Friggin' nerd."

"That's not a Star Trek logo. He's driving an Acura. That's just a chrome Acura logo."

"No, it's not. It's the Star Trek emblem that's on their spaceship, the Skywalker, and that Captain Spock and the other guys wear on their shirts."

"I'm telling you, it's an Acura logo. Do you even watch Star Trek?"

"Not as much as you, apparently. Friggin' nerd."