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.