Daily Loaf

Every now and then in class, I mention “the library” and look out to see rows of blank faces. Time to explain myself again.

“It’s like the Internet, only it’s printed out,” I tell my students. “It’s this big building across campus . . . surely you’ve seen it? Has a million or so books?”

Blank stares again. “Books! You know, sort of like a blog that’s been printed out?”

There are a couple of Florida writers, longtime bloggers, whose work has now been preserved the old fashioned way: in books. It’s probably not much different than the old days when writers serialized their work in popular magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s.

But for a semi-old fashioned guy like me, it’s so much handier – and more handsome – to tote around books, rather than carrying a laptop. Because this is the kind of writing you want to read aloud to friends and a book is a lot easier than saying, “Hey, hang on. As soon as I open my laptop and link to the network and type in the URL, I got some really funny shit for you.”

In this case, the really funny shit comes from two Florida writers, both in their early 40s, with connections to the Bay Area – Lance Carbuncle from Tampa and Patrick Hughes (at left, in his younger days) from Gainesville by way of (long ago) Tarpon Springs.

Let’s start with Hughes, because his wonderful book, Diary of Indignities (MPress Books, $14.95) has been out for some time.

It’s basically his life story, from his blog, Bad News Hughes. He’s since put that blog into hibernation and now maintains The Domesticated Shithead. The change reflects Hughes’s life, so his Diary is sort of like Pat Hughes: The Early Years. Indeed, from the cover —  a disturbing photobooth portrait of Hughes at 8 (an estimate) — we see the whole catastrophe of his life laid bare.

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Oil slicks have been described as an unpredictable phenomenon, their direction and behavior dependent upon the weather, currents, tides, wind direction, temperatures, and whether the oil is crude or refined.

Given the allegations against our recent House Leadership and the indictment of the entire House’s conduct, the slick move by Republicans during the wee hours of the waning days of session was disappointing but much more predictable. You may remember the late-filed council amendment allowing oil drilling just a few miles off our coasts and its subsequent passage on the floor. As I noted in an April blog entry for The Political Whore, zero notice was given to the amendment’s likely opponents, yet the new language was accompanied by Powerpoint presentations delivered by oil industry representatives. It was a surreal scene for many in the room, drawing comparisons to a Carl Hiaasen novel. Fortunately, the Florida Senate, often the more mature chamber, decided against hearing the amended bill. Unfortunately, the debate isn’t going away. Read the rest of this entry »

As we ruminate further on the decline of newspaper journalism (Holy Smoke! The Detroit papers will be available only online five days of the week!), let’s celebrate something that makes newspapers so important to us – great columnists.

Florida is blessed with several of the best in the nation, and luckily the University Press of Florida has begun a program of preserving great newspaper columns as part of a series on Florida culture, edited by University of South Florida professors Gary Mormino and Raymond Arsenault. Mormino and Arsenault offer a master’s degree  in Florida Studies. Woo hoo!

Jeff Klinkenberg of the St. Petersburg Times is one of Florida’s greatest blessings and his latest collection, Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators (University Press of Florida, $24.95), is another entry in his “Real Florida” crusade against anything false and manufactured with the stench of a theme park attached.

Klinkenberg — that’s him wrestling an alligator at right — hits the road to find off-the-beaten trail people and places, examples of the old, weird and wonderful Florida.

Imagine this scene: You pull up at a desolate Florida Panhandle gas pump to fill up the guzzler. There’s a picture of that bad-ass cop on the pump, warning you that if you drive off without paying you are dogmeat. Then the real-life cop pictured on the gas pump pulls up next to you. What happens next, of course, is a great story.

Great, serendipitious things like that happen to Klinkenberg.

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