My Addled Brain

So, Friday was the concert at Skippers Smokehouse (brought to you by Downtown West Events, Paragon Music, and sticksoffire.com). I rolled in about 7:30, in order to ensure I could make the start the show with a drink in hand. This is my natural reaction to live shows featuring bands I’ve never heard of before, because as we all know, booze makes everything better.

I arrived, saying hello to Tommy and Wifey (whom I had previously met once in passing), and meeting Joel, his wife, and Wendy for the first time. Not long afterwards, the irreprecible Kate arrived, and the circle of Tampa blogger hotties was complete. Conversation was had (indulge me while I attempt to pull an L here) including the popularity of “Mommy” bloggers, dinner with James Dobson, the butchering of Ozzy Osborne, male cattiness, dancing the jitterbug, and unenthusiastic 14 year-old groupies.

I guess that wasn’t very L-like, considering every one of these topics actually had something to do with what was going on. But I digress.

During the show, Kate kept getting text messages - while she said they were just from her friends checking up on her, I happened to sneak a glance at one of them while she was gawking at the perfect coiffure of the roadie/dad for Hat Trick Heroes:

From: Jerry
Come home, Ben misses you. We rented “The Notebook”. Boy, is the couch comfy.

Not really sure what that’s about.

Oh, there was also some music (brought to you by Downtown West Events, Paragon Music, and sticksoffire.com). Rappongi’s Ace was a good surprise - kinda a White-Stripes-ish duo with more blues rock leanings. And while I’m all for guys playing music to get chicks, you don’t have to invite them on stage to sing with you in order to close the deal, guys. Leave Yoko in the audience and stick with what really works. The previously-mentioned Hat Trick Heroes brought energy and a couple of cover songs (in addition to their own tracks) that, honestly, must be seen to be believed, including a rendition of LA Woman that had Jim Morrison spinning in his bed in Paris.

As for the headliners (brought to you by Downtown West Events, Paragon Music, and sticksoffire.com), there are really only two things I can say about them:

1. The bassist looked like he needed a doctor after the first four songs on stage. Somebody schedule that man a triple-bypass, stat.
2. “Child Eaters” might be the finest punk song ever written. With the possible exception of every other punk song ever written. Pairing it with a three-dollar toy doll was nothing short of pure genius.

I’d like to thank Tommy for the invitation and a fun evening. I’d like to thank Joel for the beer and conversation, Wendy for being fun and not scared of my hairline, and Kate for being willing to give all this up for Focus on the Family socials and Bill Frist rallies. You go, girl. (And you can read her take on the evening as well).

This post was brought to you by Downtown West Events, Paragon Music, and sticksoffire.com.

One of my more favorite pasttimes these days has been clicking the random link on the TBBF listing here. Not only does it give me occasional valuable insight into the minds of fellow local bloggers, it adds my referral count to the pages that I see, a win-win if ever I heard. Sometimes, I run across a long-forgotten site. Sometimes, I read something I can’t possibly relate to. But sometimes, I run into gold, my friends.

It is with this in mind that I happily thank Seminole Heights, a blog dedicated to - well, I would tell you, but that would spoil the surprise. (Hint: It’s bloody obvious what it’s about, now isn’t it?) He mentioned El Taconazo, a mexican restaurant in the heart of the little district that could, and since I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, I decided to pop on down for lunch.

To say it’s the best mexican I’ve eaten since living in Houston would be an understatement. It would be more apt to just post my reaction to their steak burrito, stuffed to the gills with grilled asada, onions, and real pico de gallo, but one cannot properly post grunts and moans of delight without conjuring images of badly written web erotica, so suffice it to say that it has replaced Vallarta’s as my new favorite place to get my tortilla-wrapped grub on.

In addition to having good culinary taste, he also runs a damn fine blog in it’s own right, and I wholeheartedly applaud his efforts to make his neighborhood a better place to live. I am genuinely jealous of the fact that he lives in a real, honest to God community of people who work together, instead of people who sequester themselves in their homes, only knowing their neighbors from distant waves. (There’s a rant on this subject brewing in me somewhere in the future.) Welcome to the regular lineup, and if I see you at El Taconazo (I assume you wear a name badge at all times bearing the name of your site, just like me), I’ll buy you a Jarritos lime-limon.

I was thinking about bringing this up last week, but my outrage at Best Buy sufficiently distracted me. Fortunately, we have Tommy to bring up this story on the continuing saga of the handcuffed five year old. I highly recommend you watch the entire video. I have. It’s frustrating and heartbreaking to watch this kid and the instructors. Here’s a repost of my comments on SoF, partially because I think it’s well written, but mostly because I’m lazy:

So much for the remote hope that mom would spend her Current Affair money on helping her child. The Trib reports that Akins has hired Willie Gary, known as “The Giant Killer”. I guess the issue that lead to her previous lawyers termination was no so much adequate representation as jeopardising her exclusive with CA by releasing the video to the public. It sure as hell isn’t her concern for her child.

As far as second-guessing the instructors actions - I guess hindsight is 20/20, but when you’re caught in that situation, knowing what you know about the mother, having dealt with her before…I just can’t bring myself to criticize them. How long has this been going on? All year? We’re almost to summer, which leads me to believe that the teacher has had to deal with this behavior all year long. The situation had finally escalated to the point where I honesty believe the school felt there was nothing they could do. It sickens me that a five year old was in handcuffs. But my disgust is reserved entirely for the parent.

Tommy’s got more, better researched stuff, as always. It’s easy for me to criticize, since I do not have any children. But I would hope that I am able to instill even a modest amount of respect in any future child I might be party to (because, try as I might, I cannot actually have a child myself; biology reduces me to cheerleader status for that bit) for others, be they other parents, teachers, or otherwise. Behavior on that scale, to me, is unforgivable.

Oh, happy day. Apparently, the doom-and-gloom scenario surrounding the expansion of the Selmon Expressway has a silver lining after all, thanks to the quick work of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority, who apparently also has a side business manufacturing LSD in their basement. It seems that, in spite of having to spend an extra $78 million in repairs on top of the $350 million the expansion had already cost, they can raise enough money to repay state loans and still have anywhere from 12-40 million left over. And while I laud the efforts of the Authority interim executive director Ralph Mervine to deliver this news with a straight face, at this point, my faith in that roadway has been so undermined, I don’t think they could pay me to drive on that thing. It’s almost taken on Monty Python-esque heights.

Son, when I came here, all this was swamp - and a perfectly good Expressway. Everyone said it was daft to build an expansion to the Expressway on a swamp, but I build it just the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second expansion. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That partially collapsed, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!

I’m glad I’m moving to Pasco, at least in this case - I’ll never have a need to drive on that deathtrap.

Once again, the bullet somehow dodged the city of Tampa, as Jeanne managed to make the constantly-predicted northwestern turn. Once again, I got lucky, and merely ended up with a small leak in the roof and brief power flickers. And once again, MCG has no power. And with the predictions by the power companies that it may take 2-3 times as long to get the power back up everywhere, they may be in for a rather sour week. Or two.

One thing that has become abundantly clear to me: God/Mother Nature/Yahweh/Allah/the religious or natural force of your choice - hates Polk county. They’ve taken the brunt of every storm to pass through the middle of the state this year - that’s three, for those of you keeping score at home. I really have no other explanation for it. Before Jeanne, they were looking at $800 million in damages. I would not be surprised to learn that number has doubled by the time all the assessments are done.

And we still have two months of hurricanes left. Lisa’s looming out in the Atlantic, her future still up in the air.

Real quick, because I may not get another chance to do this for a while - Jeanne is about 50 miles east of me now. The eye should pass a bit north of us, but not by much, and MCG is right along the projected path, along with Jefe and others I know. The wind is already screeching, and I’m rather certain that we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.

Stay safe everyone. Teh 1!!1 and I are gonna find us a nice corner to hide in here shortly.

Alive and well here. Cable’s been out for over 24 hours, so we’ve had to get our news from *gasp* the radio, which mostly consists of channel 8 news, which consist mostly of them bragging how their new weather computer, VIPIR, not only predicted every second of the storm, but is now computing the track of future storms, computing the victor of the presidential election, and making a delicious lobster bisque.

MCG hasn’t quite fared so well - his power was out at last check. So, it’s just him, Emily’s Mom, The Princess, The Madre, The Red Baron, and three dogs, two of which have run out of their Prozac. So, they’re doing well - or they’re dead. But definitely one of the two.

Otherwise, it’s flooded around town, downtown’s under about a foot of water, and it’s finally just stopped raining and…erm…winding? Whatever it is, it’s calmed down. Jefe seems all right, and the Padre’s doing ok in South Tampa, so all is kinda right with the world.

Well…shit.

I was all set to take Friday off to enjoy a lovely extended Labor Day weekend, and now this. I guess since Mother Nature’s curveball, Hurricane Charley, was slightly off, wiffing past the Tampa Bay Area, she’s decided to go with the screaming fastball down the gullet for the strikeout. And the worst thing about THIS storm, aside from the fact that it’s much larger and, potentially, more powerful, is that due to the unpredictable nature of it’s track, I think the only way to escape its wrath is to evacuate a minimum safe distance of, say, Kentucky. Chances are decent we’ll end up back at MCG’s again, but that all depends on what Fran decides to do. Oh, wait, I forgot, hurricane damage and loss of life is directly caused by weathermen and the National Hurricane Center - they can control the weather, you know.

Anyway, try and stay safe should you find yourself in it’s path. I may attempt to blog my way through this one - natural disaster blogging is this year’s Survivor.

As Tommy has mentioned, it hasn’t even been a week yet, and already fingers are being pointed as to who’s fault Hurricane Charley is.

No, really. Then again, with a pricetag at 11 billion and climbing, I guess someone really should take the fall for this.

Aside from a serious potential as Michael Moore’s next documentary topic (What is the Bush family’s secret connection to Mother Nature?), some blame the media, and a few apparently want to blame the National Hurricane Center.

Well, in a shocking display of candor, the National Hurricane Center says surprise! Meteorology is, at best, an inexact science - and because of that, warnings had been issued up and down the west coast of Florida, including the Ft. Myers/Punta Gorda area. Which means those residents who feel the state was caught by surprise were more interested in the forecast than the warnings they were given. I don’t recall seeing anything said from any information source that guaranteed you would be fine unless you lived in the Tampa Bay area, or anywhere along the original projected track.

Then again, most of these are “Letters to the Editor” - usually, these are inane ramblings from people who have more time than sense, tossing their random idiotic thoughts out there where people will, hope against hope, read them and agree with them - because deep down, we all want to be loved and respected for being pompus, self-righteous losers.

I wouldn’t know anything about that, natch - I’m a blogger, and everyone knows what I say is not only true, it’s perfect in every way. Or not. But at least I’m not blaming people for the results of nature’s wrath.

But since we, as a society, seem to need a target upon which to finger as the source of our miseries, both individual and collective, I’ve come up with something to help those of you who haven’t quite settled on your target for your wrath - I call it…the Blaminator! Please, utilize the following simple form, which allows you to both settle and reinforce your fears, phobias, and desires.

I blame:
RepublicansDemocratsAl Quedathe left wing mediathe right wing mediaactivist judgesreligious conservativesJesusSatanGary Colemanmy spouseFranceKim Jong IlNew Guineaglobal warmingHollywooddrug dealersBill Gates

For:
destroying this countrygiving in to special intrestsbrainwashing the massesHurricane Charleyearthquakesmy bad creditIraqmy slave-to-fashion attitudemy acneunemploymentalien invasionmy desire to kill all those who cross my pathglobal warminghigh gas priceshigh drug pricescausing my significant other to break up with methis tattoo I got last week while drunka popular browser that does not render HTML properly

Make your choices, Blaminate, then repeat the resulting mantra to yourself, until the desired effect (reassurance, paranoia, or insanity) takes place.

I suppose this will only be news to those who live in a sealed concrete bunker two miles below sea level and rely solely on Jim Rome and this site for their sports information, but the Tampa Bay Lightning are, indeed, your Stanley Cup Champions. As a Bolts fan from the old school (meaning I attended more than one game at the Florida State Fairgrounds, when they brand spanking new and icing was still only for cakes), I’m pumped as hell about this. Reason I haven’t mentioned it before now? I dunno, I just figured others had it covered, so I let them handle it. But the cup is here, and I can’t wait to find out what hijinx the cup will get into this year - you know somebody’s gonna take it to the Mons (NSFM).