Ah, fine dining and sparkling repartee!

I'm either going to have to start giving these their own label or start wearing an iPod with headphones when I eat out. Maybe I'm being followed by camera crews. At any rate, here is yet another overheard restaurant conversation, this time at a nearby Chinese restaurant. I swear to God that everything you're about to read is 100% true and actually happened. The dialogue is as close to verbatim as I could get without actually taping it (I took notes on index cards, which I carry with me at all times because of situations just like this).

Let's meet our cast first:
DAD - Wears a mechanic's shirt and has a jet-black pompadour that sticks out over his forehead like a diving board. Everywhere he goes, DAD's hair arrives five minutes before he does.
MOM - Easily 400 pounds, she is totally engrossd in watching a movie on a portable DVD player. Oddly, she is the only person at the table who doesn't eat anything the whole time.
AUNT (?) - She's related somehow but I can't tell how because she kinda looks like both DAD and MOM.
DAUGHTER - She has brown hair.
SON-IN-LAW - He has a shaved head.
BABY - Belongs to DAUGHTER and SON-IN-LAW.
EVERYBODY - Speaks with the thickest, stereotypical New Yawk accents heard in captivity since "All In The Family" went off the air.

Early on...
DAD - You know what I oughta do? I oughta give give him a fresh one (makes backhand slap motion). Just like that.
AUNT - Ya see? That's ya problem. Always looking for a fight. Ya ya own worst enemy.
DAD - Ahhh, I'm not talkin' about a fight. I'm talkin' about givin' him a fresh one (makes backhand slap motion again). C'mere Darlene...like this...
AUNT - G'head! Hit ya own daughter in public, ya psycho!
DAD - ...give him a fresh one. Right across the eye! Just like that!
MOM - (continues watching movie)

A little later
DAD - I'm gonna burn it. When I get home, I'll just burn it.
SON-IN-LAW - Ya can't burn it.
DAD - Whaddya talkin' about? In the backyard, I'll take a barrel, I'll make a fire and I'll burn it and we'll be done wit' it.
DAUGHTER - Dad, ya can't burn things in the back yard.
DAD - I burn things all the time! Gimme one good reason why I can't just burn it.
DAUGHTER - Ya not allowed. It's illegal. They don't do that here.
DAD - It's illegal?? To burn trash in my own backyard is illegal?
DAUGHTER - Yeah. You can get a fine.
DAD - These people are savages!
MOM - (continues watching movie)

Still later...
MOM - (is continuing to watch the movie)
DAD - Ooh! Ooh! This is a good part! Watch this, everybody! Watch this!
SON-IN-LAW - I like this part!
DAD - Turn it around! Turn it...c'mon turn...so they can see it!
MOM - They're not even watching it!
DAD - 'Cause they can't see it! Now turn it...turn...c'mon...
AUNT & DAUGHTER - (are talking to each other, ignoring the movie)
DAD - Aww, they missed it! Ya missed it 'cuz ya too busy yappin', you two! Now we gotta rewind it. Rewind it!
MOM - I don't wanna rewind it! Don't touch it!
AUNT - I don't even care. We saw that movie already, like eight times.
DAD - (to nobody in particular) Ya know what? I oughta give ya a fresh one, ya know that? A fresh one! (makes backhand slap motion)
SON-IN-LAW - Come on, rewind it!
MOM - (fairly panicked) No! Don't!! Aww, look ya stopped it!! Now I gotta start all over again!
DAUGHTER - Ma, ya don't hafta start all over. Just hit "resume". Remember? I showed ya.
MOM - Forget it. I'm turning it off.
SON-IN-LAW - Aww, don't turn it off!
DAD - Fresh one. The whole lotta ya. I oughta give ya each a fresh one. Fresh one, fresh one, fresh one, fresh one (makes four accompanying backhand slap motions). Just like that.
MOM - (turns DVD player back on)

Some time a bit later, a waitress of Asian descent comes over to the table and plays with the BABY...
MOM - Aww, lookit! Lookit how cute!
DAUGHTER - He's got a new friend! (to BABY) Ya playin' wit' ya new friend? Hah? Are ya playin' wit' ya new friend?
DAD - Yeah, right, his "new friend". What's his new friend's name? Is it Ching Chang Chong or is it Chong Ching Chang?
SON-IN-LAW - Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
DAUGHTER - Dad!!
DAD -Whaaaat?! If somebody's ya friend, ya oughta learn how to pronounce their name properly, that's all I'm sayin'!

Towards the end, a couple of Tampa cops enter to eat dinner and SON-IN-LAW leaves abruptly...
DAD - Where's he goin? Hey, where ya goin'? Where's he goin'?
DAUGHTER - (calls SON-IN-LAW on cell phone)
DAD - Who is he? Now he's Joey Bagel or somethin'?
DAUGHTER - (on cell phone) Brandon, what are you doing?....Whaddya talking about?
DAD - Hey, Joey Bagel! Come back inside, Mr. Big Time. Ya Kung Poo Poo is gettin' cold!
DAUGHTER - (on cell phone) Ya bein' stupid. Ya know that, right? Ya gonna run and hide every single time you see a cop? What kinda sense does that make? There's a lotta cops in the world, ya know!
DAD - C'mon. Tell him I said to come inside. Did ya tell him? Tell him I said to come inside. Come inside already, Joey Bagel Big Time!
DAUGHTER - (on cell phone) Brandon, ya record was expunged! Do you understand? It's like ya never even did nuthin'! Ya got nuthin' to worry about. C'mon!! (to everybody else at the table) He doesn't know what 'expunged' means.
DAD - That kid. He needs a fresh one, like this (makes backhand slap motion yet again) I oughta give him a fresh one!

and...SCENE!

2nd rehearsal

I only had one rehearsal last week and I don't have one at all this upcoming week, so there's not a lot of news. I am "off book" already, meaning I've memorized all my lines and am practicing an Oklahoma drawl befitting my character's background as a lawyer for a Tulsa-based oil company (awwwl cump'neh).

Overall, it seems like things are going along pretty well at this point. One thing that's happening, and it's a little early in the process for this, is some people are cracking up hysterically when they make mistakes. You see that all the time. It's not Broadway, we're all there to have fun and mistakes can be funny. But no matter what, you can count on having at least one person in the cast who thinks every mispronunciation or dropped line is a chance to turn the whole thing into this:
This relegates everybody else to feeling like a dick if they suggest that 'ha-ha, yeah, that was cute but can we move on please?'. And since (usually) nobody wants to feel like a dick, nobody says anything and a lot of time gets wasted. It doesn't matter that much to me; I'm there one day a week if at all. It's just one of those things that you can count on happening when you do a show.


Since I don't have much else to report, here are some photos from the experience so far.

This is the "theatre". If it looks like a Baptist church, that's because it is. Or was, from when it was built in 1923 until 1994. Now it's known as The Plant City Cornerstone Center. It's really a pretty awesome building. Stained glass windows, a huge pipe organ, pews and on the stage itself is a dunking booth or whatever it's called for baptising folks. Kinda looks like a hot tub.

It also has a balcony that wraps around the three sides facing the stage. It reminds me of the courthouse in "To Kill A Mockingbird".

This is Linda's Crab Shack, my favorite restaurant in downtown Plant City. It's a no-nonsense seafood-and-beer joint that doubles as the local bus station (check out the sign to the left). It's less than a block from The Cornerstone which is nice because I'm pathologically obsessive-compulsive about being on time, which usually means that I'm almost always obnoxiously early every time I go some place. That means that when I get to Plant City 45 minutes to an hour earlier than necessary, I have a place to hang out and relax before rehearsal or the show starts. Although, since I'm now living like a monk and avoiding fried foods and not drinking, it's something of a challenge to find something on the menu.

I discovered Linda's the last time I did a show in Plant City (Neil Simon's "Fools" in 2004) and I was glad to see it hadn't changed. I have a feeling I needn't have worried, though. When you've got a formula that works as well as seafood/bus station fusion cuisine, you don't screw around with it.

March Madness: Everybody plays!

Basketball is a distant fourth on my list of favorite sports, behind football which is itself a distant third behind baseball and hockey. And NBA basketball might as well not even exist as far as I'm concerned. But I don't think it's reasonably possible to argue that there is a better championship in sports than the NCAA men's basketball tournament. 65 teams enter the tournament and the championship game between the final two teams is almost always a dramatic match-up that comes down to the last few seconds to be decided.
I am, of course, in an office pool. Everybody gets involved with office pools now. Last year, I had a chance of winning the office pool and pocketing over $1000, if only Ohio State had beaten Florida and someone who loves, loves me...I'm talking the big L word here, a serious, sincere, deeply-felt personal bond...and generally doesn't care about sports at all actually rooted against me. That's how much mass appeal the tournament has.
Of course, it should be pointed out that last year's championship game was the rare exception that was not exciting at all. Naturally.
One nice thing about the tournament is that you get to learn all kinds of fun facts about the participating schools. For instance, I learned this past weekend that Western Kentucky University's nickname is the Hilltoppers because that's where the school is located, on top of a hill. Applying that logic to the University of South Florida, they could very well be known as the Next To The Malls. Of course, applying logic to a university in west central Florida that calls itself South Florida...well, there's that.

The Artistry of March Madness

Back in the good ol' days, there was only one company (Topps) producing baseball cards. When a player changed teams and they didn't have time to get a new photo of him in his new uniform, they didn't have the benefit of Photoshop so they would call in someone to do some airbrush alterations. That's right, before they were relegated to painting novelty license plates at the state fair, the airbrush artist was actually an integral part of the baseball card production process. Right now over at The Baseball Card Blog, some of their more...um, distinctive...works are on display in a tournament of awesomeness. You really should go there and check out some of the most breathtakingly beautiful (and by "breathtakingly beautiful" I mean "godawfully hideous") baseball cards of all time. Even if you don't care about baseball cards (or sports at all, for that matter) I think you'll find something to appreciate.

1st rehearsal

Well, our first official rehearsal was Tuesday night and what looked like it was going to be an unusual experience is already taking a turn for the downright surreal. Read the following COMPLETELY TRUE statements and see if you agree:

• Two male roles were not cast at auditions.
• There are two actors playing Granny. I don't know whether they're alternating scenes, acts, performances or what. It hasn't been explained to the group.
• One of those two actors is a male (see first bullet point).

Ok, maybe that's not as surreal as the Lightning being up 4-1 with 11 minutes to play before eventually losing 7-4 but still.

I know I've done nothing but complain so far which makes it sound like I'm miserable doing this, but I'm honestly not. I'm bemused and intrigued to see how this all shakes out.

On a positive note, it looks like director plans to be creative in the use of space which should be fun for actors and audience. The theatre itself is pretty interesting. I'll write about it after the next rehearsal I attend, which will be some time next week.

Diet

Inspired by the accomplishments of others, I've finally decided to take a semi-serious shot at dropping some weight ("Hey, I thought he was already divorced. Hi-yo!!"). I tried Slim-Fast once but didn't really see any results. Possibly because I would add heaping spoonfuls of Nestle's Quik to thicken it up, pour it over a gallon of chocolate chip ice cream and then eat it with a garden trowel. In hindsight, I realize now my level of commitment was probably not where it needed to be.
I'm trying it again because I've finally come to the conclusion that I can no longer eat like a kid all the time. I'm ok with that because I'm childish enough in other aspects of my life to more than compensate. Plus, I think the way the Slim-Fast plan is set up is perfect for my lazy, convenience-and-desire-for-instant-gratification driven lifestyle: Slim-Fast for breakfast and lunch and a "reasonable" dinner. Perfect! Even I have enough discipline to stick with that. So if it works at all, I should reap some benefits.
The timing was perfect for this, being as the holiday and fried cheese (state fair, strawberry festival) seasons are both over and my fridge was empty. So last night I went to the grocery store and loaded up on Slim Fast, skim milk and some "reasonable" menu items (I'm allowing myself to define "reasonable" as "items that are not fundamentally breading, gravy or bleu cheese dressing-based in nature") as well as bananas, grapes and carrots to snack on.
So anyway, we'll see how that goes.

The read thru

Tonight was the first official step towards putting on the show, the initial read-thru. It's exactly what it sounds like; the cast and director get together and read the script right out of the book. Nobody's really trying to act, there's no timing or even chemistry. A couple of people are fooling around with accents and inflections but it's really more of a bonding experience than anything else. It's the first opportunity for everyone to see each other in one room and, let's be honest, size each other up: 'This guy is probably going to be cool, this guy might be a pain in the ass and, ooh, she's kinda cute, etc.' I don't know anybody in the cast but they all seem to know each other. That's to be expected. It's still to be determined what shakes out but I have a feeling I will remain Mr. Outside Guy to a large extent. When not completely comfortable around people I don't know, I can tend to be a little...distant. We'll see.
Tonight was my first opportunity to read the whole script and I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not in the greatest mood. I knew BREWESTER wasn't a huge role but I didn't realize that I'll only be in ONE SCENE. Not only that, but the first scene!! After that, I'm done for the night, folks. I'm pretty sure if I had been fully aware of that fact I probably would have politely opted out. That's the bad news. The good news is I'll only have to drive out to Plant City once a week or so instead of three or four times. And at least I'm getting paid. Oh wait a minute, no, I'm not. Somewhat helping my crappy mood is that the part of me that isn't pissed off is quite amused by the fact that anybody, including me, would be disappointed about not having a bigger role in "The Beverly Hillbillies" fer cryin' out loud. The stage direction that says "BREWSTER exits L", should say "BREWSTER exits L, goes backstage puts his iPod on and chills for an hour and a half" because that's what I'm going to do. There are worse ways to spend an evening, I suppose. For instance, instead of driving out to Plant City tonight and reading a small handful of lines before staring at the wall for an hour I could have hung out with my ne'er do well friends and over-imbibed in green beer. Hey, thanks community theatre!! Maybe on show nights, I'll just do my part, change clothes and go out in the audience. Maybe I'll just do my part, change clothes and go out and have some beers! Hey, I'm feeling better and better about this!
Besides, Alec Baldwin did ok with only being in the first scene of "Glengarry Glen Ross".

Maybe that's how I should handle this. I wonder if they have a set of these in the prop closet.

I knew it!

Daylight savings time has been proven to be at best a myth and possibly a massive scam.

What's important to note here is that I, Clark Brooks, knew it all along. UCSB is just backing me up. It doesn't matter that I've never offered evidence of my own or even made that declaration aloud before, I'm the first guy who knew this was a bunch of baloney.

In case you're wondering, it's perfectly ok to make a claim like this without substantiating it, as proven by Chick-Fil-A's assertion that they invented the chicken sandwich. Chick-Fil-A has only been around since 1946 and it's virtually impossible to believe that nobody ever considered putting a piece of chicken between two pieces of bread prior to that. In fact, there are persistent rumors that at least ten years prior to Chick-Fil-A's inception that the Nazis had teams of chefs running around the world looking for all sorts of poultry sandwich artifacts. Word was that Hitler had gone nuts on the subject. He was crazy. He was obsessed with the chicken sandwich. One could certainly understand Hitler's interest in the subject: the Bible speaks of the chicken sandwich leveling mountains and laying waste to entire regions. An army which carries the chicken sandwich before it...is invincible. DON'T LOOK AT IT, MARIAN!! DON'T LOOK INSIDE THE CHICKEN SANDWICH!!

Anyway, Daylight Savings Time is bogus. Let's do something about it and sleep in next spring.

I hear more things...

As I mentioned before, I frequently find myself hearing things when I'm out and about. I don't consider it eavesdropping; it's honestly not my intent to listen to other people's private business. I guess I just have good ears. I can't help hearing what I hear. And sometimes I hear truly amazing things (to me, anyway) that make me wish I was participating in the conversation and 100 miles away at the same time. Such as tonight, at dinner, when I heard this snippet of dialogue from a nearby table:

"Me and Bobby had two shots of Jack as soon as we got to the funeral home."

Rough day for a couple of undertakers? Honoring a dearly departed drinking buddy? Country music songwriters on a dinner break?
The mind fairly boggles.

Looks like it's on...

As promised, here are the details regarding the situation I hinted about last night. I auditioned for, and was cast in, a community theatre play. Specifically, I'm playing a character named "Brewster" in Plant City Entertainment's (PCE) production of ...wait for it, wait for it... "The Beverly Hillbillies". I actually think that's funnier than any joke I could write here. I just got the word tonight which is why I didn't know if this subject would live beyond a single post. But since I'm in it now, I will blog about the experience and hopefully give you a glimpse into the exciting backstage world of small town community theatre. Had I not been cast, I'd have written a single post about how unfair the audition process was, how directors are idiots who can't recognize talent and how I was glad I didn't get the part.

I've acted in shows before, including "Barefoot In The Park, "Grease" and "Bleacher Bums". And this is actually my second go-around with PCE, having done Neil Simon's "Fools" there in 2004. I think my character was 'Fool #5' or something like that. I even won an award for that one! So I enjoy acting but the problem is, until recently my job schedule has been so overwhelmingly demanding that doing a show was simply not a possibility. But now that my schedule is under control I'm able to jump back into it and this show makes perfect sense for me to do so; any good actor sincerely dedicated to their craft will tell you that if you can't do Shakespeare, look for something with a score by Flatt & Scruggs. I auditioned for the role of Mr. Drysdale, thinking it would be fun to play an outright, over-the-top villian. But as I read the script the other night, he's not the malevolent presence I thought he was. He's more like Colonel Klink; an authority figure to be defied at all opportunities but essentially a harmless doofus. I don't remember that from watching the show but I never really was into the Beverly Hillbillies. I much preferred the surrealistic anarchy of Green Acres. I don't think it's possible to be a fan of both. Anyway, I don't know much at all about this Brewster character. I'll find out more on Monday at the first read-through. I hope he has some funny lines or a hot make out scene with Elly May.
Stay tuned...

Coming Soon...maybe

Starting tomorrow, there will be a new, on-going series of adventures featured on this blog. Unless there is not. I won't know until tomorrow night. I also can't tell you what it is because that would a) jinx it and b) spoil the surprise. So tomorrow will either Chapter 1 of an exciting new serial feature or just another tedious one-off post.

Stay tuned (this is what's known in the biz as a "teaser" and everywhere else as a "bunch of needless hype leading up to a nothing")!

A short conversation about religion

"Hey dude, you got a little...a little..schmutz...right there on your forehead. Just so you know."

"Uh, thanks. It's Ash Wednesday, you ass. Just so you know."

"Oh geez, I'm sorry! I didn't even realize..."

"Yeah, well, if you would bother to learn a little something about important things like how other people express their religious faith, you wouldn't have to apologize."

"Ok, sure. Thanks for the heads-up. Oh, and I really hope your religion practices a Booger Hanging Out Of Your Nose Thursday or A Small Piece Of Broccoli Stuck In Your Teeth Saturday because if not, you're on your own from here on out, buddy."

(I know this post isn't timely --CB)

As seen at the Florida Strawberry Festival

I visited the Florida Strawberry Festival today and brought back a couple of interesting images. First we have a chef enjoying a corn dog... ...although it looks more like a corn dog enjoying a chef. Hi-yo!!!






And for the ladies, here's a glimpse at an amenity that is simply not available to you:Yep, that's exactly what you think it is.


Now, who says this blog isn't classy?

Here Comes The Sun...damn it

One of the things I hate most about the sun is it's dependability. It seems you can't go more than a day or two without it rising in the east, bringing it's stupid life-sustaining light and heat, thus creating optimal conditions for getting out of bed. The kind of conditions that cause me to have days like the one I had Monday:

• Getting ready to leave the house (at the last possible second of course), I could not find my wallet. Obviously, I can't leave the house without it so I was starting the day running late. I hate being late. Worse, I live alone so I couldn't even enjoy the simple pleasure of placing blame for my problems on someone else. I finally found it but when I went to leave, all of a sudden I was like Jimi Hendrix at the Red House; my key wouldn't work. After what seemed like forever trying to force it in without breaking it, it finally worked, but it made me really late and really stressed. Like I said, I hate being late, even to places I don't want to go, such as...
  
• Work. Meh. You know the old saying: If you don't have something nice to say, you must be talking about your job. On the way home, I stopped at the...
  
• Grocery store where I was buying six items so I was definitely Express Lane eligible. There was just one guy in front of me and I thought I'd be out of there in no time. Unfortunately, he was buying hot dogs (hot dogs, why do you haunt me so?!?) that were ringing up at $2.29 a pack. He insisted that they should have been $1.99 a pack (yes, your math is correct; we're talking about a difference of .30). The bagger went to check the price and came back and informed the cashier and the customer that there were indeed hot dogs on sale for $1.99 but this gentleman had picked the deluxe "bun length" hot dogs, which were correctly ringing up at $2.29. This led to a debate about what the true intent behind the term "bun length" should be, highlighted by the customer holding up the package of hot dogs next to a package of buns and declaring that it didn't look to him that these hot dogs were the same length as the buns anyway. The bagger went over and got another package of buns which were in fact shorter than the hot dogs in question. The customer thought this was an unfair comparison, since he was not buying that brand of buns. Eventually a manager had to come over and explain that "bun length" was a descriptive term and not an officially recognized unit of measurement (reminder: .30). First of all, why is there such a thing as hot dogs that aren't bun length? Who in the world would possibly want such a thing? Scratch that, I don't care. So first of all, I want out of there in the worst way and would gladly contribute the .30 necessary to resolve the situation, except this had obviously become a point of principle to the schmuck with the hot dogs and he would have undoubtedly refused the gesture which would have caused me to roll my eyes so hard that they might have become permanently retracted into my skull. It was finally resolved when the manager told the cashier to give him the hot dogs for the discounted price, which is exactly the way everyone involved, including me and the 15 poor, doomed bastards now behind me, knew it would end. Unfortunately, the end result for me was that people who hadn't even planned on grocery shopping that day had come in, bought five times more stuff than me, gone home and cooked it all up and sent their kids to college in the time it took me to get through the "express lane" and get home where...
  
• The girls called and suggested we go to the casino. The crowd was pretty light so it wasn't overwhelmingly smokey like it usually is. I played poker while they played the slots electric gaming machines. I'm no Gadzooks, but I sat down with exactly $60.00 in chips and walked out 3 hours later with exactly $59.00, which I don't think is too shabby. That's a lot of entertainment for a buck and overall, we had a lot of fun there. So that part of my day was pretty great. Of course, this all happened well after the sun had gone down.

Woooooooo!

Last Saturday, I went to see the Second City Touring Company's "One Nation Under Blog" here at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (I would have written this sooner but I've been sick). If you're not familiar with The Second City, click this link and prepare to be astonished by the names you see listed. The last time I saw one of their shows was in Chicago and the cast featured Scott Adsit, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and Kevin Dorff. They do sketch comedy, satirical songs and improv (which I could take or leave), sort of like "Saturday Night Live", only without bands and funny.

I have a question though; when did we as a nation forget how to laugh? I don't mean in a abstract, mourning-the-loss-of-our-collective-sense-of-humor way, I mean the practical application of our ability to laugh. When did we officially replace 'ha ha ha' with 'woooooooo!'? There was quite a bit of 'woooooooo!'-ing going on all night long and it actually started to be a little distracting. You hear 'woooooooo!' a lot on tv shows with live studio audiences. "Married With Children" used to be 22 minutes of non-stop 'woooooooo!'. The modern standard bearer is probably "Mad TV" (which I have made numerous attempts to appreciate but just can't get into). Actually, maybe laughter hasn't been replaced. Maybe 'woooooooo!' is a seperate reaction to something else. After all, the root of really good comedy is shock or surprise such as a pie in the face or a character saying or doing something unexpected; "I did not expect that to happen! Ha ha ha!". However, much of what is passed off as comedy is actually based on familiarity such as "Saturday Night Live" and "Mad TV" relying almost entirely on recurring characters, celebrity impressions and media parodies or "Married With Children" relying almost entirely on Al Bundy's hatred of his wife and Kelly Bundy's breasts: "I see something I recognize and this pleases me! Woooooooo!". Sort of like playing peek-a-boo with a toddler. So maybe 'woooooooo!' as a reaction to pleasurable stimulus is just a byproduct of the (d)evolutionary process. In which case, as our collective IQ continues to shrink, we'll be hearing more of it. At some point, the next comedic genius is going to be somebody who just comes out on stage and jingles his keys and makes fart noises with his mouth.

Baby it's cold outside

Ok, it isn't. It's 72 degrees, pleasant by just about anybody's standards. But the other night we had a small cold snap. For the most part, that's winter in Florida. Temperatures in the 70's with the occassional front pushing it down to the 50's. Often we might go as low as the 30's once or twice. It's a given that winter is completely miserable elsewhere and so we locals don't really even use the word 'winter', usually just referring to this time of the year as 'the season', which is short for either 'tourist season' or 'the season we live for while we feel like we're being immolated the rest of the year'.
As someone who was born and raised on the shores of Lake Michigan, where you'd undoubtedly see people at the beach if it was 50 degrees in February, I'm always amused when it gets chilly here. Aside from hurricanes, it's the only time the tv news leads off with the weather forecast. And you see people walking around bundled up like they're going out to shoo caribou away from the Alaskan pipeline. I don't even know where people find that clothing around here. I don't think I even own a jacket that zips up.
But like I said, it does dip down into the 30's once in a while and I don't care where you live, when you're within 10 degrees of water turning solid, it is cold. I have friends who are native Floridians who have never been through a truly hellish (ie: standard) winter and think that when we get freeze warnings that they are walking a mile in the shoes of the poor, pasty northerners. Sometimes they'll say naively foolish things to me about how they feel like they're missing out on something and would like to experience it just once. It's for them that I present this very short list of things that make winter almost everywhere besides Florida so unredeemingly miserable:

• Snow - If you've never seen snow, you're not missing much. Unless you ski, it's vastly overrated. Pretty while it falls and for the first day or so when it's on the ground, it quickly degenrates as it gets compacted and dirty and turns into slush, a sloppy, filthy, gray goop whose only purpose is to find it's way into your footwear and make you sad. If you want to simulate the snow experience for yourself, take off your shows, put on some wool socks and go into your bathroom with a 50 pound block of ice and a cheese grater. Rapidly rub the cheese grater over the ice so flurries of ice shavings fly all around you. Lovely, right? Now, once the ice is all gone, make your toilet overflow all over the bathroom floor and walk around in the resulting muck for six hours. That's snow.
• Your car - You know how you hate getting up early? Imagine getting up at least a half hour earlier just so you can get dressed, go outside and start your car (that's if you're lucky and the battery isn't dead) and letting it run so it's not colder than a mausoleum in deep space and so your windshield wipers thaw enough to actually be almost 50% functional. They won't be so you might as well just scrape your windshield before going back inside and getting undressed so you can get ready for getting dressed again, this time for work. If it's an especially good day, your driveway will not have been plowed shut by the department of transportation clearing the roads the night before. Otherwise you have to shovel it clear yourself. Of course, you could just gun it and try to drive through the blockade if you're feeling adventurous. Or lazy. Then you're out on the streets with a bunch of assholes who've apparently never seen snow or ice before, in spite of living there their whole goddamned lives, and either drive too slow or too fast, placing your life in danger and making regularly irritating traffic completely insufferable. Yeah, you'd probably better get up a whole hour earlier than normal.
• Power outages - When the power goes out for extended periods of time here you get hot and sticky, your food spoils and you can't watch tv. Up north, there's a very real possibility you could die to death. Even if you have a fireplace to keep you warm, you're still in considerable danger.

There's more of course, but honestly do you need to hear about it? No, no you don't. Trust me, you're really not missing anything.

Bleh

Karma (or is it Kharma?) has a way of biting you in the ass, and I don't mean in an enjoyable manner.

For example, last week I called in sick to work on Monday. I was fine, I just woke up when the alarm went off, didn't feel like working, thought about how nice it would be not to get out of bed and just...didn't. After a quick call to the boss's voice mail sounding pathetically horrible (which is easy to do if it's the first thing you do when you first wake up), i went back to sleep. Later I ate a real breakfast. I had lunch, did some laundry in an empty laundry room and watched re-runs of "Strangers With Candy". In short, it was great. So great, I did the same thing again on Tuesday (minus the laundry), effectively giving myself a four day weekend. And of course the best thing about long weekends is the resulting short weeks.

I'm pretty sure you can already see how this is going to end.

Bottom line: I got sick for real on Wednesday and have been congested and groggy and sneezing and coughing and farting (note: not everything is necessarily a byproduct of this particular illness) since.

Sometimes Kharma (or is it Karma?) kinda sucks.

Another expression of true love

Here we have another public testament to true devotion:

A simple statement "Alichia -N- Kevin", etched in stone. Ok, it's a concrete sidewalk but concrete is just like stone, only man-made. Someone...Kevin? Alichia? A mutual friend?...happened upon this spot while the cement was still wet and recognized the opportunity to make a statement to the world, linking their two names together forever. Personally, I'd like to think that kevin and Alichia did it together. Perhaps they shared a sly smile and looked around to make sure nobody was looking before they committed their petty act of vandalism, a crime so charming that the mason who poured the cement pardoned it himself by pretending not to notice as they walked away holding hands and silently humming the same song of young love in their heads and in their hearts.

But wait!

Upon closer examination, what do we find?

Oh dear! "Alichia -N- Kevin ARE Idiots". What we initially saw as a couple's declaration of the enduring union of their two souls has been revealed to be commentary on the intellectual shortcomings of two individuals. Someone...Kevin's mischievous litte sister? Alicihia's scorned former lover? Some random smartass with a stick?...came across this spot within moments of Kevin and/or Alichia and desecrated their monument of love for the sake of a cheap laugh, one that will be there for the foreseeable future. Personally, I'd like to think the underpaid day laborer who would just like to be able to take a friggin' smoke break without some assholes messing up his work did it. Perhaps he rationalized that sure, he could have very easily taken his trowel and smoothed it all over again but maybe fighting fire with fire would finally teach these punks with their goddamn hip-hop music a lesson, one that would actually be better taught with a foot in their ass.

Happy Valentines Month, everybody!

An expression of true love

I don't know who Becky is, but she is obviously one lucky, lucky lady.

The Governator's All Star Performance

Saw this on Conan the other night...

My cat makes that exact same face when he smells something he doesn't like. Of course, my cat isn't governor of California, although this video significantly weakens my argument as to why he shouldn't be.

Look! Up in the sky!

Tonight, there is truly excitement in the air...and I'm not speaking metaphorically. That's right! Instead of the same tired, old birds, bats, chemtrails and high-speed dirigible races, there's actually interesting activity taking place above our heads.

For nerds - A total eclipse of the moon tonight is expected to be visible across the United States and much of the world. The moon will enter Earth's umbral shadow (the full shadow) at 8:43 p.m. ET (that's 7:43 p.m. Central, 6:43 p.m. Mountain and 5:43 p.m. Pacific) tonight. This will be the last lunar eclipse until 2010, by which time sentinent iPod robots could be our slavemasters and we probably won't be allowed to cast our eyes upward so you'd better enjoy it tonight.

For everybody else - Some time after 9:30 p.m, the US Military, apparently under the guidance of General Jerry Bruckheimer, is going to make their first attempt to shoot down that broken satellite that's going to crash to earth soon. The USS Lake Erie, a missile cruiser with an Aegis weapons system, will launch an SM-3 tactical missile toward the satellite from somewhere west of Hawaii. If they miss, they'll try again on Thursday or Friday. Of course, they're doing this out of concern for our safety and not in an attempt to test weaponry that could come in handy against a sentinent iPod robot army in the near future.

Why does everybody hate Applebee's?

TGIFridays. Houlihan's. Bennigan's. Chili's. Applebee's. Aren't they all pretty much the same place? Sure they are. They're all corporate chain restaurants that desperately want you to believe that they're just an old-fashioned neighborhood bar & grill. If somebody blindfolded you and took you into one of them and then took the blindfold off and told you to tell them where you are, you'd probably be hard pressed to answer right away. They all have the same random knick-knacks pasted to the wall, they're all staffed by the same sullen college kids who won't be there when you go back in six months and they all serve the same $7.50 bacon cheeseburgers and the same chicken tenders with the same honey mustard dressing.

Yet when groups of people talk about where to get something to eat, rarely does Applebee's get mentioned. And if it does, the suggestion is met with scorn and derision. Why does everybody hate Applebee's?

Well, not me, of course. I mean, yes, of course I hate Applebee's too. But in my case, I know why. It's because there was one in Sarasota that had a Bob Natal baseball bat on the wall. Bob Natal, a lifetime .197 hitter, was my favorite baseball player at the time. I badly wanted that bat and offered to buy or trade for it but the manager said no, they weren't allowed to sell any of the "decor (his word, not mine) because it was against corporate policy. I'm pretty sure the manager of a real neighborhod bar & grill would have at least considered it and I know he wouldn't have refused it outright because it's against corporate policy because a real neighborhood bar & grill doesn't have corporate policies. Hell, a really good neighborhood bar & grill doesn't have policies at all. My kind of neighborhood bar & grill lets you do pretty much whatever you want, as long as it's not hurting someone else and so if you want one of their baseball bats, as long as it isn't for hitting a fellow bar patron, you're damn well welcome to it! Unless the other bar patron in question deserves it because he's a pain in the ass or some other valid reason, in which case you're still welcome to it.

But why does everyone else hate Applebee's? Well, here are a couple of possible reasons.

• The name - Most people hate apples (be honest now, when was the last time you craved an apple that wasn't deep fried, baked in a sweet, sugary pie or slathered in caramel?) and most people hate bees (ooh, sting-ey!). Put them together and you're just asking for enmity.


• Riblets - Applebee's signature menu item is Riblets, which are small barbecued spare ribs. The problem there is threefold:

1. "Riblet" sounds like the noise a frog makes.


2. It also sounds like something you use to hold iron girders together.


3. As I said, they're small. People who enjoy barbecued spare ribs don't like them small. There's a reason that gag on the Flintstones where Fred orders a rack of ribs so huge it tips his car over is so popular; People who enjoy spare ribs fantasize about that exact thing happening to them every day of their lives.
   

• That commercial where the high school team loses the big game and pulls into Applebee's for a post-game meal, only to find it closed, until a couple of dedicated employees decide to stay late to serve the valiant local heroes - Good god, how can you not hate that?

So those are three possible factors that spring to mind immediately. I don't know, there might be others. There might even be people out there who love Applebee's. I don't know any of them though.

PS: I eventually met Bob Natal and he gave me one of his bats himself. So take that, Jeff, the Applebee's manager on Fruitville Road in Sarasota or whatever your name was.

I'm pretty sure these pants are going to be fine

It takes a lot for a pair of pants to impress me. I put a lot of careful consideration into the purchase of pants. It's just something I feel I have to do. Believe me, I've been let down by pants before, plenty of times. Pants with not enough legs, pants with too many legs, pants with no legs whatsoever (also known as 'skirts'). Pants that already had somebody else's keys in the pocket. Pants that already had somebody else's legs in the parts where the legs go (these would probably be called sleeves if we were talking about shirts, but we're not talking about shirts here, are we? No, we are not. Try to keep up). Pants that were the wrong color. Unsuitable pants of all kinds. But so far, I have to admit these pants are doing a fine job of covering my legs and genitals. But not only that; they're doing just a super job of covering my ass too. See, that's where too many people let their guard down. They forget to make sure the pants are covering their ass. That's how people wind up parading around in assless pants and everything just goes straight to hell. You tell them, "Hey idiot, where's the rest of your pants, you idiot? The ass covering part, I mean. Idiot!" Then they try to put their own spin on things by saying that they're chaps, not pants. You helpfully try to correct them by yelling, "Hey idiot, feeling a little draft back there? Did you forget something this morning? Such as, I don't know, maybe some kind of a garment that covers up YOUR ASS? Damn, idiot!!" Then they point out that they're actually wearing pants underneath their assless, so-called "chaps", which is true, but you ignore that and keep calling them an idiot. That's when they usually get all angry and the next thing you know, you're being escorted out and informed that your presence is no longer welcome at the gay rodeo. What's the world coming to when people at a gay rodeo won't listen to a guy who knows and cares about what's supposed to go into...and not come out of...a successful pair of pants?

A short conversation about principles

"Look out, that guy isn't stopping."

"It's all right, we have the right of way."

"Well...yeah. That's fine, but while the right of way and rule of law may prove useful in determining fault after an accident, it doesn't prevent the accident itself."

"Don't worry about it. He's the one who's supposed to stop. See? there are signs everywhere."

"I agree. But it would appear he either hasn't noticed those signs or he doesn't care."

"Well, then an accident would be his fault, not mine."

"Ok...sure...but what if we die in a car accident that could have been prevented if you had simply forfeited your right to be, uh, right? I don't think I'm going to feel a sense of pride, or anything else, if that happens. I mean, I haven't planned what my last words will be but I don't want them to 'Ha ha, take that, living!' Plus, I'm pretty sure if we get to heaven and have to explain what happened, they're not going to let us into regular heaven. There's probably some sort of remedial heaven for the righteous-but-stupid, where instead of a halo, they give you a helmet. I really don't want to go to remedial heaven. So while I gladly acknowledge that you are correct and are well within the established legal paramaters for operating a motor vehicle, could you just let this guy go ahead, just this once, as a personal favor to me. Please?"

"He stopped."

"Oh. Well, step on it then. Let's go."

Team Daddy-O Alley Katz

I am the captain of a Relay For Life team this year. We’re calling ourselves ‘Team Daddy-O Alley Katz’ and our theme is retro bowling. I know, right? Someone actually appointed me to a position of leadership and responsibility, which is about as likely an occurrence as seeing the Hamburglar profiled on America’s Most Wanted. Well, actually, it’s not like I’m completely unqualified. I am sincerely committed to the cause, which is raising money to find a cure for cancer and eliminating it once and for all. I don’t want to just defeat cancer, I want to defeat it and humiliate it in the process. I want to pull down cancer’s pants and make crude, derisive comments about its genitalia. I want to give cancer a swirly in front of all the other diseases. I want to date cancer’s mom just so I can steal all her money, call her a bitch and tell her to go make me sandwiches. So obviously my heart is in the right place.

I’ve taken to my role as team captain and have done my best to motivate my team. I assured them of my sincerity and dedication by telling them that I had already gone so far as to have written “CAPTAIN” on the waistband of all my underwear…in Sharpie. But working with volunteers is a challenge at times. It’s hard to make demands of busy people who are doing stuff for you in their spare time. I have to remind myself to be patient and encouraging when things aren’t moving quite as quickly as I’d like. And actually, our team is doing pretty well so far. But it takes effort to come up with ways to keep everyone interested and enthusiastic without being completely obnoxious about it. I have little doubt that many of them will no longer want to speak to me when it’s all over. I’m basing that on the fact I have no doubt that I’ve already been so obnoxious that some of them don’t even want to speak to me right now.

Relay For Life isn’t really a competition per se, but teams do challenge each other to do a good job as a matter of pride and in the interest of pushing each other to raise as much money as possible. When it’s over, the American Cancer Society recognizes the best teams’ efforts with trophies and prizes. So screw what I said before; it’s totally a competition.
There’s a team in our Relay that’s been at it for years and they win a majority of the awards every year. I’ve decided that I hate them. In my mind, I consider them smug know-it-alls who act like they invented cancer just so they could raise funds to eradicate it and make me feel inadequate in the process as a bonus. Now, you don’t have to tell me what a terrible person I am for feeling this way. I’m already fully aware that resenting a group of people for effectively raising funds to combat a horrible disease is about as reprehensible an act as you can think of. I’m ok with it though, because I want to win trophies and prizes. Besides, it’s not that I don’t want them to raise a lot of money; I just want my team to raise more than they do. So as I was sitting around tonight trying to think of new ways to try to motivate my team, it occurred to me that I should use this unjustified hatred to our advantage and pass it along to the people on my team. I wonder why I haven’t thought of it before; exploiting people’s healthy desire to see their like-minded peers re-cast as severely defeated opponents is not only natural, but repeatedly proven to be a highly successful tactic! Hmm, I think I know why I was selected to be captain…

Anyway, if you’d like to learn more about Relay For Life and contribute to our team’s efforts, I've put yet another link to the site right here.

The Joy of Hot Dogs

Sometimes, you just want a hot dog. There's no logic to this. We all know that no good can come from eating them. But as Americans, they are simply our second favorite phallic food item and we love them as much as they hate us. Bratwursts are great but they're just too Bavarian for us to embrace as our own. Same with the uppity corndog, which is like the hot dog's arrogant, pretentious cousin that got into an Ivy League university (less the product of good breeding than good breading). No sir, we love the good old regular hot dog with working class condiments like mustard, onions and relish (read about anti-ketchup-on-hot-dogs sentiments here, here and here). As such, I found myself craving one today and as such, I had to have one.

Tampa doesn't really have street corner hot dog vendors and very few restuarants serve them. Of course, there's Mel's and I think Checkers has them but the quality of food and service at Checkers, which used to be superior for a fast food joint, has degenerated to the point where I'm not sure you can even call them restaurants anymore. That means your options for getting a hot dog if you're not in the vicinity of Mel's are limited to convenience stores and sporting events. And since there are precious few Tuesday afternoon sporting events until spring training starts, I started looking for a convenience store.

Being born and raised in Michigan, it was drilled into me at a very early age that the best hot dogs were made in Michigan because the state had by far the most stringent quality control standards in the nation when it came to making hot dogs. I don't know if that's common knowledge nationally but I used to hear it all the time from people who were obviously quite proud of it. Oddly enough, I never heard that said about anything else produced in Michigan and remember thinking at an early age, "Really? Hot dog production is where we plant the state flag when it comes to a commitment to excellence?" I mean it's still a hot dog, folks. Someone who makes a point of insisting on only eating hot dogs made in Michigan because they're just soooo much better than the ones made elsewhere is a little like someone facing a firing squad and demanding that they sterilize the bullets first.

Anyway, since I no longer live in Michigan, I've surrendered what little high-mindedness I ever had in regards to hot dogs and I went in search of a convenience store, specifically a 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven is like the Williams-Sonoma of convenience stores when it comes to hot dogs. The dogs themselves are plump and juicy and they have all the condiments you could ever want, including pumps that dispense chili and bright yellow cheese-esque goo. But believe it or not, I actually couldn't find one so I pulled into some generic, dime-a-dozen Pump & Gulp, Shop & Suk, Blo & Go or whatever it was called on Kennedy Avenue. Again, we're talking about hot dogs. There's no reason to think that even the skeeviest convenience store can't serve (what passes for) a decent hot dog.

I got into the car, pulled into traffic and took a bite because I'm such an outstanding driver that I actually drive better while eating a four course meal than most professional ambulance drivers with their hands at ten and two. I was struck immediately by the taste. It wasn't that it was bad. Hell, I was sort of expecting it to be bad. Rather, what struck me was the lack of taste. It was utterly devoid of flavor. I became alarmed immediately. "Is my tongue having a stroke?", I thought. "No wait, I can taste the bun". This realization failed to comfort me. Quite the opposite, actually. "Oh lord, how is that possible? Buns are supposed to be flavorless. The only reason they exist is so you don't get your hands messy. They're edible napkins. And yet, the bun has more flavor than this hot dog? This...this just isn't right." Of course, there was only one thing to do, which was to take another bite to make sure. So I did and the same thing happened again. "No flavor! How is this possible? Every hot dog has a flavor of some sort! Even if it's spoiled...especially if it's spoiled...it's going to taste like...something! Dear God, in what unholy manner of abomination have I just invested .89? More importantly, what is it doing to my innards?" I took another bite and wondered if it was some sort of tubular, meaty, dirty bomb, it's insipidness cleverly disguising a new and painfully lethal strain of botulism that would explode in my stomach. It would be just like the terrorists to try to get to us through our wieners. Bastards! I took the fourth bite and started wondering where the nearest hospital was, just in case. Thankfully, it was just after I'd taken the fifth bite of this Satan's spawn-sage when I finally saw the friendly, familiar green, red and orange glow of a 7-Eleven sign in the distance. "Thank God", I thought. "If I c-can...just...get some..ch-chili...before it's t-too late...". But by then, I looked down and realized that there was just one bite left. So I just gulped it down, went back home and wrote this.

Just how little regard does ESPN have for hockey?

If you've ever wondered what exactly has to happen for something that happens in the NHL to be the lead story on SportsCenter and thought, "Hmm, a player almost dying during a game after having his cartoid artery slashed by a skate should do it", you'd be right! That is, if by 'lead story' you meant the fourth thing mentioned after two regular season college basketball game recaps and a report on the results of a NASCAR pre-season event. Apparently at ESPN, the self-proclaimed "Worldwide Leader In Sports" (or more accurately "Worldwide American Leader Primarily In The Eastern Time Zone Teams That Participate In The Sports That We Broadcast"), even if it bleeds, it doesn't necessarily lead.

Health care isn't the only thing that Canada does beter than America; the video above is from TSN, the Canadian version of ESPN.

Something stronger than shame

I helped out at a yard sale yesterday to raise funds for the American Cancer Society's upcoming Relay For Life event, with which I am involved this year. I'll write more about that later this week, but feel free to click the link to take a glimpse...and contribute (if you already have, Thank You).

Anyway, after the sale was over we still had a few piles of stuff that, understandably, nobody wanted to take back home. So we all split it up and took it to other worthy charitable drop offs. Clothing went to Goodwill and household items went to the Salvation Army. As for me, I loaded up the books and drove them over to the local VA hospital, specifically the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital. It's something I've done before and it's something I dread every single time.

I hope I don't sound self righteous here, mostly because that would be insincere, but it's something stronger than shame that I feel every time I go to the VA hospital. And I find it hard to believe that anybody else wouldn't feel the same way. Whether it's putting an American flag in the front yard, slapping a magnet on a car or voting for the people who say what sounds like the right things, I can't believe anybody can ever enter one of these places and not immediately want to re-examine what it means to "support the troops". A VA hospital is less a place of healing than it is a repository for damaged, lonely, used up people. I frequently hear people in positions of power sermonize about the sanctity of human life. These are people who should visit one of these places and take a good look at what we do with those we send away to do the dirtiest work imaginable when they no longer serve our purposes. Not all of them, of course. Just the ones who inconvenience us by not coming back either unscathed or dead. Those troublesome folks who are still alive but missing pieces of their bodies and/or psyches and are just no good to us anymore. To them we give a wheelchair, a pat on the back and maybe an old, unwanted paperback book or two. And that's not a shame. It's something stronger.

A short conversation about the 2008 presidential race

"Well, it's official. Mitt Romney is out."

"Wait. What? Mitt Romney is gay?"

"Yes. Obviously that's what I meant. He's finally admitted to being a flaming, ultra-conservative, gay Republican. What else could I possibly talking about?"

"That is so brave of him. I am totally voting for him for president now."

"Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay" news

The film is STILL going strong. Here's two new items:

St. Pete Celebrates Area Female Filmmakers

Every month, JimSam Inc. Publishing features authors at an open house sponsored by Wahoo Mortgage of St. Pete. This month's event will celebrate Tampa Bay area Female Filmmakers.

"Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay" producer Renee Warmack will be the special guest. This film will be screened at the Gasparilla Film Festival during a special event celebrating local women. "Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay" captures an unprecedented time in the city of Tampa/Hillsborough County area---where 10 extraordinary women led governmental institutions, in positions traditionally held by men. The women who agreed to be filmed were asked to share the paths they traveled, the risks they took, the decisions they made, and who helped them along the way as they climbed their respective ladders of success. A cornerstone to this film is that it serves as a mentoring tool for young girls who may not realize that they too can reach such high levels of public service.

Renee Warmack is a native of Tampa who holds a masters degree from USF in Public Administration. Due to the success of the film, she formed Renee Warmack Productions, Inc. Renee is also a member of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA); a Tampa Theatre member and member of the League of Women Voters.

The event will be held on Friday, Februrary 22 from 5pm to 8pm at Wahoo Mortgage at 2433 Central Avenue in St. Pete. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.

For more information contact Mona Burrows at Wahoo Mortgage: 727.522.0039, http://www.wahoomortgage.com/ or Renee Warmack at Renee Warmack, M.P.A.: 813-610-3132, tenatthetop@yahoo.com http://www.tenatthetop.com/

And...

"Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay" selected to be shown at 2nd Annual Gasparilla Film Festival

The Gasparilla Film Festival is a unique film festival blending the arts and film making, with a rich cultural backdrop. This year's festival begins on Wednesday, February 27th and concludes on Sunday, March 2nd. "Ten at the Top in Tampa Bay" will be shown on Saturday, March 1st at 5:30 PM at ChannelSide Cinemas (Theatre 3), located at 615 Channelside Drive Tampa Fl 33602

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break XIII

Thirteenth break (halftime - Patriots 7, Giants 3)

• Accura; Drag & Drop - Car commercial. Boring. Also not new. Strike out. 15 for 30.
• Alltel; Wizard - Not a car commercial but see above. 15 for 31.
• Nissan; Murano - See above and above. 15 for 32.
• Mercedes; 2008 C-class - See above and above and above. 15 for 33.
• NFL Network; Get your story straight. Amusing but they've done it before. plus the NFL Network is inherently evil. Soft pop up. 15 for 34.

FINAL BATTING AVERAGE = .441. That is definitely a Hall Of Fame number in baseball. In advertising? Hmmm, not so sure. Overall, I'd have to say it was a disappointing crop this year.

The best: FedEx Pigeons.

Close runner up: Pepsi Justin Timberlake

The worst: The car commercials are terrible but you don't expect anything from them. Beer companies, on the other hand, usually bring their best material to the Superbowl. Budweiser has definitely done better work and Miller didn't even have an ad! So Bud and Miller share the dubious distinction.

Scratch that, I just caught another Sales Genie ad with a talking Chinese panda that recalled this brilliant piece of advertising:

Yeah, I changed my mind. Sales Genie is the worst.

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break XII

Twelfth break

• Pepsi; Justin Timberlake - I'm not a fan but I have to give him credit; he's funny and doesn't take himself seriously. Homer! 14 for 28.
• Doritos; Mousetrap - Weird, random and unexpected. Guy in a mouse suit whoops ass for Doritos. Another single. 15 for 29

Batting average = .517

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break XI

Eleventh break (note: I'm quitting after halftime)

• "...Narnia 2"; Trailer - Not interested. Strike out. 11 for 25
• Planters Nuts; Unibrow girl - She's ugly but guys like nuts. Bleeding single barely gets through the middle. 12 for 26.
• T-Mobile; Barkley and Wade - Charles Barkley abuses his top 5. Everything he does is funny. Double. 13 for 27.

Batting average = .481

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break X

Tenth break

• GMC; Sisyphus - I kept waiting for the boulder to roll back and crush him. No such luck. Fly out. 11 for 23.
• Bud Lite; Foreigners - Man, I hate Carlos Mencia. Whiff. 11 for 24.

Batting average = .458

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break IX

Ninth break

• Careerbuilder.com; Follow your heart - Cool special effects. Could have been better. Sharp grounder to short, thrown out at first. 10 for 21.
• Lifewater; Thriller Lizards. - Is that Rihanna (sp?)? She's hot. She's hot even if that isn't her. So are dancing lizards. 11 for 22.

Batting average = .500

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break VIII

Eighth break

• Toyota Corolla; Badgers - A doofus's cell phone goes off, causing a mother badger to rip his face off. Beautiful! Another solid single. 10 for 18.
• "Leatherheads"; trailer - Eh. Pop out. 10 for 19.
• Garman; Napoleon - One long short joke. Strikeout. 10 for 20.

Batting average = .500

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break VII

Seventh break

• Budweiser; Rocky - Clydesdale misses the cut, trains to the the theme from Rocky and with the assistance of a Dalmation (presumably named Mickey) makes the team the following year. Single. 8 for 16.
• "Iron Man"; Trailer - I'm looking forward to the movie. This was actually a cool trailer. Bunt single. 9 for 17

Batting average = .529

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break VI

Sixth break

• FedEx; Pigeons - Giant pigeons dropping cargo and causing mayhem. Finally, a home run!! 5 for 13.
• Cars.com; Plan B - Car salesman versus crazy tribal fighter in the ring of death. Good concept, especially if it were true. Single. 6 for 14.
• Tide; Talking Stain - A guy's mayonaise (?) stain upstages him at a job interview. Very funny! Double. 7 for 15.

Batting average = .467

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break V

Fifth break

• "Wanted"; Trailer - Just an ad for a movie. Ground out. 3 for 10.
• G2; Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning & Bill Parcells - Cool effects, kind of funny. Another bloop single just over the 2nd baseman's head. 4 for 10.
• GoDaddy.com; Commercial for a commercial - A little funny but an ad for an ad is annoying. I'll give it to them...no, I won't. They reached base but that's an error and counts against the average. 4 for 11.
• Dell; Red - Nope, nothing special. Fly out. 4 for 12.

Batting average = .333

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break IV

Fourth break (end of the 1st quarter, Giants 3, Patriots 0)

• Bridgestone; Screaming - Anthropomorphic animals freaking out? I'm already on record as being in favor of that. Bloop single. 3 for 7
• Doritos; Kina Gramas (sp?) - Eh. Boring. Nice song but didn't make me want Doritos. Strike 3, looking. 3 for 8.
• Toyota; Cabin - Not a new ad! Boo! Another backwards K. 3 for 9.

Batting average = .333

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break III

Third break:

• Bud Lite; Cheese run - Solid rally, new comedy in the Bud Lite "guys trying to get away with beer drinking mischief without the girls finding out" tradition. Double into the gap. 2 for 5
• Under Armour; The Future - Kinda cool to look at but vaguely fascist in tone. Bunch of athletes participating in some kind of underwear uber alles rally? Creepy. Line out. 2 for 6.

Batting average = .333

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break II

Second break:

• Diet Pepsi Max; What Is Love? - Celebrities, bobbleheads, some guy with a bad combover and an ironic cameo from Chris Kattan. Attababy, solid single up the middle! 1 for 3
• Sales Genie; Ramesh - Boring. Animated. Borderline racist maybe? Pop up in foul territory. 1 for 4

Batting avg. = .250

Blogging the Superbowl ads: Break I

Just for kicks, I'm grading the ads during tonight's game. And because I like baseball better, I'm scoring them in baseball terms. Here's the first batch:

• Bud Lite; Breathing Fire - They've been doing these 'superpowers revoked' commercials for a while now. This was another one of those. Eh. Infield ground out. 0 for 1.
• Audi; Godfather parody - Cute, well done but not particularly memorable. Swing and a miss. 0 for 2.

batting average = .000

More to come!

Steinbrenner Stadium? Sure, why not.

Hillsborough County commissioner Rose Ferlita and Tampa city councilman Charlie Miranda are proposing that Legends Field be re-named George Steinbrenner Stadium in honor of New York Yankees principal owner and part-time Tampa resident George Steinbrenner. If you're a baseball fan who lays the conjoined plagues of outrageous player salaries and lack of competetive balance squarely at Steinbrenner's feet, or if you just happen to have a (healthy) general hatred of the Yankees, you might have a problem with this on first sight. However, the fact of the matter is that Steinbrenner the man has been extremely generous to and supportive of a number of worthwhile endeavors here in Tampa (and elsewhere) for a very long time and is as deserving of anyone of some lifetime recognition. It makes as much sense as anything to name a ballpark after him.
What's really disturbing and off-putting about it is Ferlita's recurrent efforts to shove the New York Yankees down the county's collective throat. In 2006, Ferlita led an unsuccessful bid to have the Yankees included on Tampa's "City of Champions" signage that noted the championships of Tampa Bay's Buccaneers, Lightning and Storm. In attempting to explain the logic behind her idea, Ferlita said the Devil Rays are "out in St. Petersburg. So to me, the Yankees are the home team". Never mind that the Yankees are "home" for about six weeks out of the year or that not one of the Yankees 26 world champions was ever won on behalf of Tampa. Or Tampa Bay for that matter. Regardless of what you think of the Rays' prospects in the future, the odds are still 100% higher that there will be a local parade celebrating a championship for them before there's one for the Yankees. Also never mind the fact that the Yankees have only been "home" in Tampa since 1996. The Cincinnati Reds were the "home" team for 30 years before that. Local government honored the "home" team by neglecting Al Lopez Field, making it untenable and basically driving them out of town to Plant City so they could tear it down and build an ice arena. Ironically, as a result the monument built to honor the achievements of Tampa native Al Lopez was razed...while he was still alive...and the property stayed undeveloped, serving as another parking lot for Bucs games, until Raymond James Stadium was built 10 years later. Ferlita is quoted in the Tampa Tribune as saying "I want to do it as quickly as possible so maybe it would be in concert with their first (2008 spring training) game". What's the urgency? After all, next year there's going to be a new high school in Lutz named after Steinbrenner. I would say that's actually a more significant and profound monument to someone's good works than re-naming a stadium. Why does there need to be a priority placed on establishing a second one? Well, you probably don't get to wear your Yankees cap and pal around with Reggie Jackson and Yogi Berra at some stupid school grand opening, I guess.

Enjoy it. We do.

That's the marketing slogan of WTSP, our local CBS affiliate. I'm not 100% sure what "it" is exactly but there's actually a tradition here in Tampa Bay of our local media embracing the credo as a lifestyle choice and truly partying like rock stars. Names that come to mind immediately include Hugh Smith, Reginald Roundtree, Nancy Alexander, Chris Thomas and Bob Hite. This week, WFLA's Gayle Guyardo was either drunk (according to numerous complaints to WFLA management) or suffering from the flu (according to her) while covering the Gasparilla Parade. That's a picture of her, tears streaming down her face after being briefly yanked off the air and spoken to during the parade. Now, I didn't watch so I don't know. I've seen girls who were drunk who looked like that. I've also seen girls who were sick who looked like that. But honestly, since it's coverage of a parade featuring hundreds of drunk participants viewed by thousands of drunk spectators, who really cares? In fact, it appears that the only people involved who weren't drunk are the people who bothered to call in to complain. Maybe they were jealous? I know if I was wasting a perfectly good Saturday watching a parade on television without being inebriated I could see becoming bitter and vindictive enough to pick up the phone and kill someone else's buzz. But I'd rather look at the bright side of this situation. If she was drunk, she was actually being responsible and conscientous and doing us all a favor. After all, it's when these people are not on the air that they're a threat to our safety.