Blurbex

Wade Tatangelo, SoHo man on the street , reports this incident: I laughed out loud. Couldn’t help it. Her boyfriend glared at me but what the hell? I’m standing in the long morning line at Starbucks in SoHo todayand a woman orders "a 140 degree latte." The woman wanted her latte served at exactly 140 degrees. I’m a new resident of the SoHo district and not yet a regular at its swanky Starbucks. Is it common behavior to request a precise temp for one’s latte? Or was this person just a snooty prick?

Scott Butherus’ "View from the Cheap Seats" spring training blog, Mar. 12: “I’ve got standing rooms for 150,” says a slightly shady Italian with a cardboard sign proclaiming extra tickets. “Set Bucky Dent on fire for your extra ticket,”  I answer back. If Grapefruit League games really are meaningless, you sure couldn’t tell by tonight. The scalpers were out in full force, the stadium was sold out and the police were waiting outside in their armored SWAT vehicle. It may not have had the same atmosphere of playoff time at Fenway, but tonight’s game at City of Palms between the hometown Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees definitely had the air of a game that mattered. Luckily, I was able to get into the game without paying 200 bucks when a nice family with a spare ticket  was willing to part with it for face value and a flaming 1979 Bucky Dent card. (I knew that would sweeten the deal). Once inside I got to check out a view from the rightfield deck, affectionately known as the “white monster” because of the large number of retirees that can be found sitting along the rails during afternoon games. The deck is the latest addition to the park, and with its barstools and drink counters is designed to imitate the seating on top of the Green Monster in Boston. The rest of the stadium was packed, with rows of the Red Sox faithful spilling out into the “Standing Room Only” section of the concourse. As the sign inside the tunnel leading out from under the stands proclaimed, I was in the middle of  “Red Sox Nation.”
Pictured: 13-year-old Dakota lighting Bucky "Flippin’" Dent on fire.

Creative Loafing Senior Writer Eric Snider on last night’s 30-second concert by The Who: “I can’t explain, I can’t explain.” The Who’s lead singer Roger Daltrey managed to croak out a couple of those lines before vacating the stage Tuesday night at the Ford Amphitheatre, leaving Pete Townshend to explain the inexplicable: Roger had a horrible case of bronchitis “on the verge of pneumonia;” the band had to regroup for a bit and would try to give it a go.
After about 10 minutes of backstage commiseration, Townshend came out and canceled. While the crowd grumbled its disapproval (as opposed to raining boos on him or pelting him with beers), a contrite Townshend — arms out, palms pointed upward — said, “We’re so, so, so sorry. Roger sends his apologies.”
He announced a new date for the concert on the spot: March 25. “We’ll do our best to make it up to you,” he added.
The crowd was largely subdued as it filed out of the Ford Amp — a far cry from three decades earlier, when a thunderstorm cut short a Led Zeppelin concert at Tampa Stadium and sparked a riot. Maybe we’re evolving as a species.
Hey, people get sick — rock stars too, especially old rock stars. Singers come down with vocal maladies. The inexplicable part of this debacle was that Daltrey and the rest of the band let it go so far. I’ve been writing about music for about a quarter century, and I’ve seen several day-of cancellations. I have never seen a cancellation 30 seconds into a concert.
Earlier in the day, Daltrey had to know he couldn’t perform. The old college try can be an honorable gambit, but not when people have arranged schedules, gone out to dinner, rented Hummer limos and indulged in other extravagances with the expectation that they would revel in a performance by one of their beloved bands. Daltrey’s move was like getting in line to run a marathon even though he had a cast on his foot.
The Who should’ve shit-canned the show early and got the word out via radio and Internet. No harm done — or not much, anyway. It’s just that simple.
Because I went to The Who with the intention of reviewing the show, I’ll go ahead and do so: The beat on “I Can’t Explain” was a bit plodding. Daltrey’s vocal sounded like hell. The show was way, way too short.

Creative Loafing Music Critic Wade Tatangelo has this to say about The Who’s mini-concert: A plastic beer bottle or a ketchup-covered wiener should’ve whizzed past Pete Townshend’s big schnozz. Where was the righteous rage last night following The Who’s 30-second non-show? Where was the don’t-fuck-with-me rock ’n’ roll spirit? They served us a crock of shit and we gobbled it down.
Sorry, folks, but I can’t help but feel pissed off. Worse, I think we might have been had by a slick moneymaking scheme — one that will now find the Ford Amphitheatre on the receiving end of not one, but two nights of hideously overpriced booze and concession sales. Call me paranoid but I can’t help but think the worst.
My pain goes beyond my professional duties. A bonding experience between Pops and me was on the line. He grappled with traffic for 45 minutes during his drive from St. Petersburg to my place in South Tampa, where he arrived around 6:30 p.m. We grabbed sandwiches and salads at MacDinton’s and polished off a pint each of Guinness. We got on I-275, picked up I-4, got off on Orient Road and snaked around the Florida State Fairgrounds until we found parking hundreds of yards away from the Ford Amp. 
We passed the security check, had our tickets scanned and then drank $10 beers while moseying around the joint during a lackluster set by a band called Rose Hill Drive. I bumped into St. Pete Times pop music critic Sean Daly and we shot the breeze. A rep from Ford Amp checked on Daly and introduced himself to me, but I didn’t catch his name.
Around 8:30 p.m., we took our seats. About 20 minutes later the lights went down. Out came Townshend in shades, Roger Daltrey in black T-shirt and jeans, and the opening riff of The Who classic "I Can’t Explain." My dad smiled at me. Neither one of us had seen The Who before and now here we were, kicking it, father and son — two men of a different generation raised on rock ‘n’ roll.
"I can’t explain," sang Daltrey before clutching his chest and beelining off stage.
Five minutes later, after the bronchitis excuse and the ultra-fast rescheduling, the show was done.
What? 
Daltrey didn’t know that afternoon his voice was shot? How about while doing his vocal warm-ups prior to taking the stage? Boy, he sure sold the bad chest with a dramatic hand gesture (captured in a St. Pete Times photo on 1B).
"I just spent $40 on beer," my dad said as we fast-walked to our car. That’s when the conspiracy theory started gnawing at me. What if Townshend and company contacted the Ford Amphitheatre yesterday morning and reported Daltrey’s bad pipes, but rather than do The Right Thing and cancel, a deal was struck to gather the rather paltry crowd of 9,000 inside for a couple hours of profit-fueling beer sales — before bagging the set and rescheduling?
I’m no promoter or tour manager, but doesn’t it seem odd that a major act like The Who was able to confirm a new date in a matter of minutes?
By the way, when Townshend came back on stage without his guitar he should’ve had his hand over his face to protect that ample nose of his from various, non-lethal debris. But all we, the audience, did was bitch and moan and peacefully exit. The experience was about as rock ‘n’ roll as a night at the opera. Maybe even less rock ‘n’ roll than a night at the opera – at least opera fans boo with passion. When The Who performs March 25 it better be an affair to remember. With half-price beer sales.

Scott Butherus’ "View from the Cheap Seats" spring training blog, Mar. 9: Baseball has a way of keeping people young. It can even save your life: just ask 92-year-old Virginia Bagnall. Virginia was today’s special guest at Dunedin’s Knology Park and had the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch for the hometown Toronto Blue Jays game against the Houston Astros. (And at that age only Roger Clemens has a better fastball.) Afterward I sat down with the 48-year Dunedin resident and Blue Jays fan as she told me how baseball once saved her life. During WWII Virginia was stationed in Iceland, where a German spy assumed her identity in order to infiltrate American forces. The spy looked like Virginia, talked like Virginia and even knew all about Virginia’s background and personal life. The impostor knew the answers to every question posed by American intelligence agents until they asked both women about their favorite sport. Only Virginia, who had grown up as a “rabid Boston Red Sox,” knew the real answer.

Scott Butherus’ "View from the Cheap Seats," Mar. 8: Ahhh! You know it’s springtime in Florida when you can smell the coconut suntan lotion wafting off half-naked bodies basking in the warm sun. OK, so the half-naked bodies belong to middle-aged men with large guts and hairy backs, but it’s a beautiful afternoon all the same. Today was my final stop in Bradenton and McKechnie Field, and I spent it like the rest of the bleacher bums: sprawled out across three rows of bleachers with no shirt, surrounded by sunflower husks and empty beer cups. Hey, when in Rome…
Today marks the midway point for my "Cheap Seats" spring-training project. Thanks to everyone who’s shared their baseball stories and bought me beers at each ballpark that I’ve been to. It has been quite a trip so far, and I am looking forward to the next 10 days with lots of great stuff on deck. Friday I will be in Dunedin at Knology Park and afterward I’ll be doing a tour of the Dunedin Brewery. This weekend I will be in St. Pete at Waterfront Park and the Trop, and next week I’ll be spending spring break with the Twins and Red Sox. If you see me at a game don’t hesitate to strike up a conversation: I always enjoy good ballpark banter. (If you think you can stump me on spring training trivia, I welcome the challenge.
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Scott Butherus’ "View from the Cheap Seats," Mar. 7:
“You think that’s funny? You think you’re funny? You’re a fucking asshole, dude.”
I knew it was coming. I really was asking for it. Today’s adventure brought me to Legends Field in Tampa, the spring training home of the New York Yankees. I thought it would be fun to soil the hallowed grounds of the stadium that was built to be an exact replica (minus the upper bowls) of Yankee Stadium in New York by showing up in Boston Red Sox regalia. I must be suicidal. I was wearing the uniform of the sworn enemy  (although it should be noted that I’m not even a Boston fan). It was like wearing Bloods colors straight into the Crips hood. But then again, I knew it would be like this before I entered the gates. I was ready for all the evil stares, the drunken middle fingers, and all the insults…
“Go back to Boston you dirty bum!”
But why all the hate?  Maybe Yankee fans are just misunderstood. Before the game I spoke with a married retiree couple who shed some light on the subject while rehashing an incident from the night before. “You support your team, I support mine. You say your guy was safe, I said he was out. You call each other some names and then you spend the rest of the game talking baseball. There is no hatred. That’s what being a fan is about.”  Maybe he was right. Maybe it is all in good fun…
“Hey buddy! The ladies’ bathroom is down the walkway.”
Then again maybe not.

Scott Butherus’ "View from the Cheap Seats,"
Mar. 6: If you’ve ever sat in the bleachers and chatted with the folks around you, you know that everyone has a baseball story. A first game, a favorite moment, a personal achievement — probably a story that has been told countless times over countless hotdogs. Since my back is still killing me from my major league workout yesterday, and the air is a little too chilly to make my planned return to Lakeland, I figured I would place myself on the 24-hour DL and instead share my own favorite baseball story.
My story is not so much a time or a specific game, but a place called Baseball City.

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"A View from the Cheap Seats," Scott Butherus’ Spring Training Tour, Mar. 6:
“Number 131, you’re up!” yelled a grizzled coach in a Tigers hat. It was my turn to try and achieve my childhood dream of being a big league ballplayer. Although the chances of that happening were approximately the same as a snowstorm blowing through the Sunshine State, I found myself on a pitcher’s mound in Lakeland at the spring tryouts for the Detroit Tigers.
I wasn’t sure if it was a case of the butterflies or the Kobayashi impression I did at the Pirates game yesterday, but my stomach had the jitters. I guess that was why my first pitch sailed three feet over the catcher’s head, ricocheted off a pole and nearly drilled the handful of catchers waiting on the other end of the battery. I’ll chalk that one up to being rusty and spending the last five years
of my life in front of a computer screen. After that, the rest of my
bullpen session in front of the coaches went well; I spotted my
fastballs, my breaking balls were sharp,and thanks to a little extra   

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Scott Butherus’ "View from the Cheap Seats," Mar. 2: Spring training home opener for the Grapefruit League at the league’s newest ballpark, Brighthouse Networks Field in Clearwater. The Phillies have been training in Clearwater for the past 61 years, the second longest tenure of any Florida team. Brighthouse Field’s most unique feature? The thatched-roof tiki bar that stands just beyond the left field fence, where I enjoyed buckets of beer with a group of diehard Phillie fans who had played hookie in order to hop a plane down to Florida from Pennsylvania — and
met Phillie icons Darren “Dutch” Daulton, Larry “Yes, I was once traded for both Jeff Bagwell and Curt Schilling” Anderson and $900,000 phenom Ryan Howard. (He’s on his cell phone in the photo, probably not worrying about his minutes.) The numerous buckets of beer have taken their toll, so I’ll keep this entry short. Big weekend ahead: Ed Smith tomorrow, McKechnie on Sunday and a Detroit Tigers tryout on Monday. Stay tuned.

Scott Butherus’ View from the Cheap Seats, Day 2:
(Left: Butherus and Pirate Ian Snell)
Today was a baseball day. First stop: the IMG Baseball Academy in Bradenton, where I visited with Tom Pluto. Coach Pluto has been in baseball for the past 41 years, serving in a variety of roles: All-American player in college; coach of several high school and college programs; scout for both the Cleveland Indians and Oakland Athletics. Currently, Pluto works as an instructor with the Academy, where students from around the world combine academic studies with athletic training in a variety of sports. The Academy is also a popular place for marquee athletes to train during the offseason; the All-Star list of attendees includes Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Gary Sheffield and Jason Varitek. When I asked Pluto why Florida consistently produces some of the best young talent in America, he points to the weather. “Kids down here play year-round. When most of the ballfields up north are snowed over, kids in Florida are outside in shorts and a T-shirt…you can construct the most exact replica of a pitching mound in a gym, but it will never be the same as throwing on a grassy field.”

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If you were present at Tuesday’s public flogging of transgender Largo City Manager Steve Stanton, or if you saw it on Bay News 9, maybe the same question occurred to you: How did the City of Largo manage to elect two women as diametrically opposite from one another as Mayor Pat Gerard and Commissioner Mary Gray Black?
Gerard was a staunch supporter of Stanton before and after he told her about his transgender status; she and Stanton had planned to break the news more gradually, but a leak to the media tipped their hand. She was the voice of reason during the proceedings — exasperated, quietly outraged reason.
Black, on the other hand, is the gray-faced martinet who first called for Stanton’s head. At the meeting, speaking in a pinched bureaucratic drone, she continued to fuss over details in the resolution to terminate Stanton — insinuating that he had plotted to keep the changes from being made – even though by that point it was more than clear that she had gotten what she came for, the destruction of Stanton’s career.
I have to hope that more people in Largo and Pinellas, and in Florida as a whole, share Gerard’s tolerant perspective – the perspective that he is to be judged on his performance in the job, not by his gender. But I guess that begs another question: Has Largo let a mob of self-righteous bigots railroad their city government?
And one more: Isn’t anyone in Largo ashamed of their police department’s over-reaction in the case of Nadine Smith? The executive director of Equality Florida was arrested for handing out flyers at Tuesday’s commission meeting. Four cops, a felony charge, more than $5,000 bail for handing out flyers? Looks like Largo is putting itself on the map not just for prejudice but for stamping out free speech. Thanks for shining a bright light on the worst of Pinellas, folks. 

Scott Butherus, a graduate student in multimedia journalism at USF, has embarked upon every baseball fan’s dream vacation: “an 18-day, beer-and-oversize-pretzel-fueled journey into the heart of Florida’s baseball culture,” with a stop at every spring training stadium on the Gulf Coast. But he’s not on vacation; he’s doing his graduate thesis. Titled “A View from the Cheap Seats,” his multimedia project aims, through interviews with players, coaches and fans, to uncover “what makes the game of baseball so special to Floridians.” And his thesis isn’t going to wind up languishing in a library; through an arrangement with USF we’re going to be publishing it, online and in print, in the Mar. 28 issue of Creative Loafing. Meanwhile, you can follow his regular reports from the spring training trail here on Blurbex, starting tomorrow.

Really. It’s a question. Who, or what, do you think is "Overrated?" Anyone who read our "Overrated"
issue of Nov. 22 knows which sacred cows we skewered, or at least
gently braised. And many of you weighed in with your opinions of our
opinions, so many that we are recreating several of the juiciest,
unedited, in their entirety on the jump. Feel free to comment on their
comments, or better yet weigh in with your own "Overrated" nominees.

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So Danny Rolling – the man who brutally assaulted and murdered five University of Florida students 16 years ago – is set to be executed in several minutes. It reminded me of my own personal connection to the case:
My ex-stepfather is a carpenter who used to work in Ocala and Gainesville in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He was one of the carpenters who helped change out the carpets in the Gatorwood Apartments, where two of the students were killed. He later told me investigators had already cleaned the ground-floor apartment, but you could still see bloodstains.
A few years later, when I moved to Central Florida, I worked with him during the summer to earn some extra cash. One afternoon, he was hired again by the apartment buildings to replace the carpet in the apartment again. I can remember kneeling on the carpet, using a power stretcher and looking out the sliding glass window into the thick forest behind the complex. Rolling was in that bush, camping out, before he broke into the apartments and mutilated the students.
I had nightmares for weeks.
—Alex Pickett

Ah, marketing.
This just in from Creative Loafing staffer Joran Oppelt:

CRUSHING THE HUMMER
I arrived at work this morning to find the new marketing materials from Reeves Import Motorcars. They include a detailed scale model of a Hummer H2, along with a small wooden china cabinet and a tiny tea set (including a teapot, cups and saucers). It’s cute. The makings of a little Republican dollhouse, I thought.
But then, I saw the photos and the CD-Rom which accompanied the playset that instruct you on how to correctly "use" it. The campaign is called "CRUSH EVERYTHING," and apparently more info can be found online at www.crusheverything.com, but the long and short is this: You set the cabinet up, put the dishes delicately away inside, and then plow the vehicle through the setting, knocking it over and sending the dishes flying. If you need motivation — you know, some help getting pumped up — there are videos on the CD-Rom, and also on the Web site that feature various Hum-V’s obliterating not only china cabinets but vending machines, the arm of a toll booth and even a port-a-potty.
According to the press release, the team’s "eyes lit up," while coming up with the list of things the vehicle could destroy. Great. Sounds like the planning session for the new Grand Theft Auto video game or a ride at Universal Studios. Something where you might ask the opinion of a 10-year-old boy in order to get closer to your market. It doesn’t sound like the marketing of a vehicle that would ideally safely transport your family
from point A to point B.
I think a better way to vent my frustrations would be to lay into the scale-model Hummer with a hammer. Or better yet, throw it against the wall and watch it explode into tiny pieces. It would at least bring me that much closer to standing up against the monstrosity that is the Hummer. The machismo-monikered glamourization of war that we fuel and drop our  god-fearing and war-mongering children off at soccer with every day.
Crush everything? No, just one thing. One impulse. One idea. As quickly as possible.
Joran Oppelt

WMNF Evening News, Mon. Aug. 21:
During a report on fighting in Central Africa, newscaster Lisa Marzilli stumbled on the phrase "the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
She corrected herself, but we think her blooper should be permanently enshrined. From now on, we recommend that all state documents, flags, press releases, etc. should be modified to read:
"Welcome to Florida: The Democratic Republic of the Condo."

Let’s look at the numbers:
11 protesters.
45,000 festival attendees.
So who gets the attention of the St. Petersburg Times in its reports on this past weekend’s St. Pete Pride parade?
Yup, the protesters. They caused a "spectacle," according to today’s story by Abhi Raghunathan, and it was just a blessing that the police were there to prevent "violence."
What hooey. I was there. "Spectacle" is hardly the word. Anyone who’s been in or near a gay-pride anything in the last, oh, 25 years, would know to expect the arrival of some kind of Fred Phelps-esque Bible-misquoting bunch. OK, this was apparently the first time such a group made an appearance at St. Pete Pride — but given the small impact they actually made, how important was their presence? But oh, the photo op — instead of just confining themselves to the requisite fabulous-drag-queen shot, the Times got to lead Sunday’s City & State section with a big ol’ photo of a Christian brandishing a banner (one that showed a notably hunky Christ getting whupped) while a gay male couple kissed (violently) in the foreground. It wasn’t until the jump page that they ran a crowd photo showing that there were maybe a few other people present (but only one other bit of signage — amazingly enough, a poster for tbt*).
The Trib, on the other hand, did a superior job of covering pride events this year — both in St. Pete and across the country.  Mike  Wells’ Sunday Metro story led with the news that the St. Pete Pride crowd was "the largest in the event’s history"; interviewed storeowners about the economic impact; talked to Winter Pride’s organizer about the future of that Tampa-based event; and gave only passing mention to the protesters, as follows:
"The event also attracted a dozen protesters carrying signs and shouting antigay messages from bullhorns. A few festivalgoers shouted back. Police walked nearby."
That’s all he wrote. And that’s all that puny "spectacle" deserved.

So maybe you’ve noticed by now that there was something different about the print version of this week’s Weekly Planet.
Namely, that it wasn’t called the Weekly Planet.
Thanks to some kind of universal brain fart, we accidentally ran this week’s issue under the name of our sister papers in Atlanta and Charlotte, Creative Loafing, instead of our own.
The error was partly due to the fact that while the editing staffs for Tampa and Sarasota are in Florida, design and production for all four papers in the Creative Loafing chain is done in Atlanta. But such an error has never occurred before, and we here in Tampa should have been more alert.
For Tampa Bay residents who remember that the Planet actually used to be called Creative Loafing, we hope you enjoyed this blast from the past. And here’s the irony: Come this fall, we actually will be changing our name back to Creative Loafing.
We just jumped the gun a little.
PS: Comments on the prospective name change (as well as this week’s premature one) are welcome.

12:30
We had to do the Smores. Decided against the microwave. Though it might have been fun to explode marshmallows over, say, Angela’s car, we doubted it would go over well in the employee kitchen. But nice culinary surprise – marshmallows and graham crackers toast up real good in a toaster oven. Top with Hershey’s and another cracker – and serve to the ‘campers’ – who by now are all out doing what they do every day anyway: smoking outside. OUTSIDE! This is an indoor camp-out people! Scoutmaster Wayne has given up trying to discipline. Hard to tell whether we’ll ever get to the Dirtiest Boy Scout Joke Ever segment of the evening, let along the readings from CL Undressed employee fantasies….
But at least the disco ball and Beach Boys tunes are soothing. (Along with the Deliverance tape, also always bring a disco ball to your campouts, or ins.)