Blurbex

I went to the movies at Baywalk on Saturday night — saw The Dark Knight, but there’s been enough about that — and as a loyal, long-time resident of the ’burg, I must say I was embarrassed.

Muvico Baywalk 20 is going to seed. Worst of all, the hallways heading into the theaters stink — they reek like a giant bin of dirty sweat sox being washed in perm solution. The joint has smelled like dirty feet for awhile, and it gets worse every time I’m there.

I’m not an expert on this sort of thing, but perhaps management might want to hire a night crew to clean the carpets.

So far the stench has not wafted into the actual theaters — and the popcorn smell masks it in the lobby — but it’s only a matter of time.

I made my usual men’s room stop before the movie, and after washing (well, rinsing) my hands tried to get a slice of paper towel too dry them off. I hit up four of the dispensers. Nothing came out. Empty, all of them. I dried my hands on my pants, and went to tell the manager. I wasn’t mad, but I was a little sad.

Wanna go to a poetry slam next Monday?

I said yes, as I wasn’t going to disappoint a friend, even if it meant (as I thought it might) having to suffer through self-absorbed poseurs with limited knowledge ranting about how fucked up the world is while having little in the way of honest answers or solutions. But because I’d never been to a poetry slam – or any other kind of reading – before, I was honestly intrigued.

When we arrived at Studio@620 a little after 8 p.m. last night, only two or three people were in the audience, sitting patiently in front of a stage bearing two microphone stands. The host for the evening, David, didn’t bother using either mic as he circled the chairs and delivered a brief history of poetry slams (they apparently emerged as a response to the academic beats like Kerouac). He then warmed up those in attendance with a poem titled “Fuck a Poet,” which brought a smile to my face as it addressed all of the unspoken prejudices I harbored about spoken-word artists — self-styled tortured artists articulating their unfathomable ennui. As I listened, the thought crossed my mind, “Was this just irony designed to pander to close-minded first-timers?” No, I decided. David had admitted that spoken-word poets are, by the nature of what they do, egotistical. And so his words rang sincere as he knocked himself and his fellow artists down a few notches with an honest reality check.

And yet …

While the topics from the seven poets who took the stage over the course of two hours hit upon subjects I might have expected — the Iraq war, religious hypocrisy, former lovers — the quality of their work far exceeded my expectations. I could tell the performers had spent considerable time honing their prose, and I was left admiring this rather unassuming, brave and decidedly unpretentious group I never would have pegged as “artists” had I met them under different circumstances.

So to David, Brian, Patrick, Jimmy, Emma and Ozell (hope I spelled that right) — thank you for an enjoyable, intimate, mind-opening and artistically satisfying evening. While I’m not a poet, I felt I was among friends. Something tells me I’ll be back next month.

Someone should’ve told that to Erotic Lounge owner Bill Schramm (left), who was arrested this weekend by St. Petersburg Police after they found a naked man suspended (quite happily) from the gallery’s ceiling during a risque art show.

According to the Times article, Schramm’s bad day started with an enormous penis statue he had installed in front of his Grand Central District gallery. Responding to a complaint, police told Schramm to remove the penis. He refused, citing “art.”

Fast-forward a few hours: gallery patrons are drinking beer and viewing various erotic paintings and sculptures when police descend upon the storefront. Schramm tries to prevent an officer from entering and he’s slammed to the ground and arrested. The police walk inside, demand identification from patrons and then discover a nude model hanging from the ceiling in some sort of harness.

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Consumer Alert!

Just got a call from a friend of mine with a weird charge on her bank account. It shows up on her bank statement as “Source Limited” and charged her $9.60. She put the company name in Google and it looks like she’s not alone.

I’ve had this happen to me before, and if you buy anything online, I’m sure you have too. If you’re unlucky like me, you didn’t notice for four months and it was a real bitch trying to dispute the charges.

Most of the time these companies are legit, but use some deceptive tactic to get your credit card number. They claim you subscribed to their debt protection service, ringtone downloads, etc. just by clicking on some link or checking a box while you were checking out.

Then there are the companies that are simply fronts for credit card theft. Attorney generals in several states have ongoing investigations into these companies.

Either way, I’m convinced there is a special place in hell for the operators of these scam artists.

So check your statements for this Source Limited company (it looks like several Florida people have been affected) and check with your bank or credit card company on how to get the charges off your account. (Some tips here.)

Anyone else have similar stories?

Remember Pirates, that porn flick that gained local notoriety when reporters found out some of the scenes were shot at the St. Petersburg Pier? The groundbreaking 2005 Digital Playground film made history as the most expensive porn ever produced and is still one of the industry’s top selling movies.Well, Digital Playground will soon release a sequel — Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge — in September and the online buzz is the movie will break the standard porn mold again.

According to press releases, producers spent nearly $10 million on the project and it features all sorts of CGI special effects. There’s also a long list of adult actors, including Pirates original cast member Jesse Jane and award-winning star Belladonna (these links aren’t safe for work).

Check out a preview here (oh, and this link is work-safe).

I’ve attended some lame shit over the years. Poorly planned house parties, disastrous dates, a live sex show in the French Quarter that didn’t feature any actual fucking. But few events have struck me as silly as the Red Bull Flugtag spectacle that took place Saturday at the Tampa Convention Center.

By this point, I’m sure you heard about it. Thirty-six teams built would-be flying machines and ran them off a 30-foot high pier into the notoriously dirty ass Hillsborough River. One or more person piloted the aircraft  and took the plunge. Teammates typically jumped in the brown water after their apparatus for shits and giggles. I stood in the sun, cooking, cringing and losing faith in humanity, myself included.

I kept thinking of that old parental saying about if everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you? In Tampa, apparently that’s the case. Organizers expected a crowd of 50,000 to witness people place themselves in a flimsy contraption and then be willingly hurled into a body of water deemed not fit for swimming. More than 100,000 suckers, myself included, attended.

One of those participants was my coworker, London, the woman pictured working on building an aircraft out of newspaper. Good gawd. Creative Loafing entered the competition as the Bread Winners. Countless hours went into building what they billed as the Flying Cuban Sandwich. “We are closing in on the big day,” reads a message from “The Captain” posted on the Bread Winners’ website July 14. “We still have some work to do in order to make everything originally envisioned a reality, but in another evening we should be all but done.

“The pilot [London] and I spent another night getting some finishing details knocked out after work with a couple of cold beers. We had a mock assembly of our flying Cuban and it was quite a site to behold.”

The damn thing didn’t even have wings. Well, kinda, but they were about as wide as oars. From where I was perched Saturday afternoon it looked like a giant coffin and had me seriously worried that London would not emerge from it, or if she did it would be with some kinda severe spinal or brain injury. Or with a limb missing.

“You know it’s not too late to back out,” I told her about 20 minutes before she took the fall.

“I can’t,” she said, more than a hint of fear in her voice.

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Gotvmail.com has paid ex-coked-out actor Gary Busey to star in 40 (yes, that’s four-zero) ads hawking their business phone services. The ads, which I ran across on Gawker, feature Mr. Joshua speaking directly into the camera, pitching his can’t-miss business ideas. Gawkers highlights include Agt. Pappas’ brilliant idea for hair dye marketed to black bears, allowing the threatened species to look more like polar bears and sneak onto the endangered list. I prefer his stirring rendition of Gotvmail’s theme song:

You have to hand it to Gotvmail; these are sure to get a ton of play across the Web in the next few days. And for all that publicity, I’m sure they only had to shell out an 8-ball or two.

A few days ago, I ripped into TBO.com’s commenters as the worst in the area. I (quietly) received a few whispers and e-mails from people agreeing with me. Yes, differing opinions — even caustic ones — are great for media, but out-and-out libel, racism or cruelness? Those kind of commenters can quickly turn readers off from a website or blog.

I’m not the only one to think so. Time writer Lev Grossman recently editorialized on these hostile trolls, highlighting a guest blogger for the Stranger, an alternative weekly out of Seattle, who abruptly quit her gig because commenters had become too cruel. But it’s not just newspapers, he writes, but everything on the web from Flikr to YouTube:

A random example: on June 11, a user called way21337 uploaded a video to YouTube. It’s titled My new gerbil, and it shows, in fact, a black-and-white gerbil snuffling around cutely in somebody’s hand. It is 11 seconds long. By press time, it had acquired 102 comments. Let’s take a look! They begin with NewTyhuss, who writes, “sweet!” Things start going south with comment No. 4: “id hit it.” (Good one, ZRace67!) After a week, we’re down to eldergod: “why dont u shove that gerbil up yur ass and quit posting stupid videos.” bwalhof writes, “kill yourself. fast.” And so on.

Grossman sums up my feelings fairly well:

The horribleness of commenters isn’t really a mystery: Internet anonymity is disinhibiting, and people are basically mean anyway. Nor is it a mystery why the people who run websites put up with commenters: the economic model for Internet content is based on advertising, which means it’s based on traffic volume, and comments mean traffic. They’re part of the things that make online publishing work. TIME.com enables comments on its blogs, including mine.) It’s just hard to tell whether they’re ruining the Web faster than they can save it.

(As for the Stranger blogger, looks like she’s back up with a little extra dough from her employer …)

I always knew Florida contributed disproportionately to Fark.com and News of the Weird entries, but it looks like we’ve earned another distinction: disproportionate effect on global warming.

According to growth management watchdogs 1000 Friends of Florida, Florida’s largest metro areas pump out more greenhouse gases per person than in other large cities. They’re basing the info on a recent report by the Brookings Institution that ranks the carbon emissions of 100 metro areas.

From their press release:

Florida’s metro areas increased their per capita carbon footprints much more dramatically than average in the period between 2000 and 2005. The biggest increase was from transportation, ranging from a 4.6 percent increase in Jacksonville to a whopping 58.6 percent in Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice. By comparison, the average increase in per capita footprint from transportation in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas was 2.4 percent.

Well, damn. Like any Floridian, my first response is to blame the tourists, but I don’t think that explanation flies on this one. It’s our growth patterns. It’s our sprawl. Our short-sighted government leaders.

So, which Florida cities fared the worst in the report?

Jacksonville, Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice and Cape Coral-Fort Myers. Surprisingly, Miami did the best of the Florida cities mentioned, ranking 30th in tons of carbon emited per person.

Good news though: Overall, we aren’t the worst. That distinction goes to folks in places like Lexington (Kentucky), Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Toledo, Louisville, Nashville and Oklahoma City.

Ha! Take that Rusty Belters! Al Gore is gonna run wild on you!

Ahem. As for us in the Tampa Bay area, we rank a mediocre 53rd.

Check out the full report here.

Remember last month when the crack investigative news team at CL debunked the myth of cell phones being able to pop popcorn? For those who missed it, here’s the vid again:

Now, CNN finally gets to the bottom of this viral marketing hoax, including an interview with the CEO behind it all. Their video is here.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau has released its annual report on the most stolen cars in America, and despite overall auto thefts being down (per the FBI’s early version of their Uniform Crime Report), the same old cars have made the list of most-sought-after by car thieves.

According to the NICB, the 1995 Honda Civic (right) was the most stolen car of 2007, maintaining that distinction for the past four years. I drive a ’98 Civic and I’m lucky my car hasn’t been stolen (yet), despite it getting older, uglier and more dented by the day.

All this time I thought driving an ugly old car was a good preventative against it being stolen.

However, many thieves steal certain cars for their parts rather than their bling factor. Cars that have long-term reliability (like Hondas), as well as cars with several-year streaks without a major redesign, can be valuable because their components last a long time and can be interchangeable between model-years.

Other old cars on the list (more…)

Wanna wipe your butt with the U.S. Constitution? We suggest U.S. Constitution Toilet Paper, a brand spanking new ”product” that you can own for the ultral low price of $8 a roll.

Here’s the hilarious sales pitch:

Don’t just tell people that America’s leaders are wiping their butts with the Constitution, hand them a roll of US Constitution Toilet Paper! This custom designed TP looks like the US Constitution, but the words have been updated to reflect the actual modus operandi of our modern government. Highlights include a revised Presidential Oath of Office, tricameral Congress, and Bill of Privileges.

For many people, seeing the Constitution on a roll of TP is sobering. Wiping with the Constitution can be a very emotional experience. US Constitution Toilet Paper causes many people to ponder what our Founders wanted, what America has become, and whether we have lived up to our ideals.

The toilet paper itself is fairly plush. It is printed using soy ink which is organic and biodegradable. This is fully-functional, usable TP! Each roll is individually shrink wrapped for protection during transit.

…Federal Budget Toilet Paper coming soon!

One of the reasons some people are loath to forgo their cars for the morning commute is the certain powerlessness that comes with it.  What if you take the carpool to work and suddenly become ill, or little Johnny breaks a leg at school, or the boss wants you to work overtime for those TPS reports?

That’s where the Emergency Ride Home program comes in.

If you walk, ride a bike or carpool to work at least two days a week, and an emergency comes up, you may be able to get a free cab ride home. Of course, there are some restrictions — it only covers about $100 in cab fare and you have to be registered with Bay Area Commuter Services. Nice deal, eh? And, apparently, you can use it up to eight times a year.

Click here to register.

(h/t to Creative Tampa Bay for the info)

It was a good intentioned idea. Really.

On Saturday, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office let area residents turn in their rusty, broken and unwanted guns for a brand-new $25 giftcard to Publix or Wal-Mart.

True, it was a little badly-timed considering the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that unequivocally gives us, the common folk, the right to bear arms. (Bear arms, not bare arms, mind you.) But something else struck me: If the deputies were trying to rid the streets of guns, why did they hand out Wal-Mart giftcards? Doesn’t Wal-Mart sell guns and amunition?

Last day for Salvia, folks. The ban on the psychoactive substance takes effect tomorrow; if you’re found in possession of the mild hallucinogen, you could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

I know at least one retailer is staying open until midnight to sell his stash of the soon-to-be-illegal weed. Perhaps you can convince some store owners to give you an eleventh-hour deal.

By the way, if you don’t know what Salvia is, or what it’s like to smoke it, check out my story on the subject here.

(Photo Credit: Randy Heine)

On the drive to work this morning, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Ian Beckles (of WDAE’s Ron and Ian Show) asked his co-hosts what they thought he’d be getting in pension per month once he turns 55 (for his 10 years of service in the NFL). The guesses ranged from $2,500 to $10,000. The answer: $240.00.

I’m not ashamed to say it: I love ABBA. And I was really hoping that Mamma Mia!, the upcoming movie based on the hit Broadway musical, would be good. But the trailer doesn’t leave me with much hope:

Will George Carlin’s recent death have the same media half-life as Tim Russert’s? And will those who got bent out shape over the Russert coverage feel the same about Carlin, or is Carlin’s antihero status a mitigating factor? And the fact that he could be really, really funny: 

The reviews for Pixar’s latest animated release, WALL-E, have been overwhelmingly positive. Off-the-charts glowing, in fact. Take this one excerpt from Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times:

Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, “Wall-E” gains strength from embracing contradictions that would destroy other films. Directed by Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote and directed the Oscar-winning “Finding Nemo,” “Wall-E” is the latest Pixar film to manage what’s become next door to impossible for anyone else: appealing to the broadest possible audience without insulting anyone’s intelligence.

So I definitely have a film I’m looking forward to seeing this Friday.

Drugs, of course!

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement just released its latest report on some of the more common drugs found in dead Floridians. Researchers at the state’s Office of Vital Statistics compiled toxicology reports on the 8,620 people who died last year with drugs in their system (whether it was the direct cause of death or simply present in their system).

Some highlights for the morbidly curious:

• The top three drugs found in dead people were ethyl alcohol (as in beer, wine, liquor), benzodiazepines (like Xanax, Valium, Rohypnol), and cocaine (see: Chris Farley).

• The drugs that caused the most deaths were cocaine, methadone, all benzodiazepines, oxycodone, ethyl alcohol, hydrocodone and morphine.

• The most lethal drug was (surprise!) heroin.

• Cocaine deaths have slowly increased since tracking began in 1987.

• Researchers found more prescription drugs than illicit drugs in dead Floridians, both as a cause of death and just being present in the body.

Take a look at the full report here.

(Photo Credit: PRNewsFoto/Medco Health Solutions, Inc.)

Just called Ticketmaster to check on prices for a story I was writing — no, I wouldn’t actually use Ticketmaster — and the computer voice came on. The computer voice introduced herself: “My name is Kelly, I’ll be helping you with your order.”

I was so thankful that Ticketmaster went out of its way to humanize the process. Kelly had a very sexy voice, although she did tend to monotone a bit. I tried to get her number, but she didn’t even dignify it with an answer. And I think Gladys took over for Kelly a few times — I swear I heard some phrases in a different voice. Gladys’ voice wasn’t as sexy as Kelly’s.

Can demonstration cooking sell-out a stadium? Probably not, but considering how much people shelled out for Food Network’s old lady, uhm, Grande Dame last week, Top Chef’s tour of 20 cities might generate a little buzz. I think it’ll depend on who the “four cheftestants” turn out to be. Anyone buying a ticket — Sept. 20, here in Tampa — for a Lisa, Mark, Nimma and Nikki cook-a-long? Me neither.

Matt Butcher, of Orlando, performing Sat., June 14, New World Brewery, Ybor City. Photos by Alfie.

Tampa singer/songwriter Will Quinlan and his ace, twang backup unit the Diviners packed New World Brewery in Ybor City on Saturday for the CD release party of the band’s strikingly poignant new CD Navasota. Quinlan went on shortly after midnight and turned in a moving set of songs inspired by the life and death of his mother. He also debuted new numbers that were equally impressive. Navasota co-producer/guitar bad ass/Nationals band member/singer-songwriter Steve Connelly sat in on lap steel.

Never-let-you-down Bradenton alt-country ensemble Have Gun, Will Travel elated the audience with a first-rate serving of folk-rock, as did opener Matt Butcher, who, in addition to entertaining with a clutch of solid originals, wowed attendees with a gorgeous, fresh rendition of the Bob Dylan standard “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

A slew of local talent showed up for the show: Ronny Elliott, his buddy/Nationals band mate/singer-songwriter Walt Bucklin; Car Bomb Driver frontman Dave Reeder; Daylight District bassist Tim Heller; Nessie leader Scott Harrell and his buddy/bassist Joey Neill; Poetry ‘n Lotion guitarist Matt E. Lee and Sean “Crash” Mitchell were all present, and probably more, which I simply failed to spot/recognize.

New Granada chief/Zillionaire drummer Keith Ulrey, who assembled Saturday’s impressive show, was also in attendance. He told he’s excited about Win Win Winter’s debut album, which is scheduled to drop in October. Look for a Creative Loafing feature on the local indie rockers to coincide with the disc’s release.

OK, that’s all for now in regards to the homegrown talent. What’s your band up to? Shoot me an email.

Matt Burke, of Have Gun, Will Travel.

Will Quinlan at closing time.

Cross-posted from Tampa Calling.