Tampa Bay Street Team

The Super Bowl is not a game. It’s a national holiday from moderation, offering sanctuary from dieting, sobriety, and sense. It’s a celebration of all the things foreigners despise, and secretly envy, about Americans: extravagance, overindulgence, consumerism, and idiocy. So, when you hoist your Natural Ice and Stuffed Jalapeno popper as a reality star sings the national anthem before kick off, you are saluting all those Americans who died so that you can enjoy yourself without feeling guilty about getting drunk mid-afternoon on a work night.

This past Super Bowl I was confronted with the difficulty of being surrounded by a group of friends unmotivated to drink beer and watch football. Considering that I didn’t have enough time to report these communists to homeland security agents, I had to motivate them. Some I was able to convince with promises of miniature Kegs of Coors Light, borracho nachos, and football shaped cakes. Others I had give up on as David-Beckham-loving-soccer-fan-bastards. And still others required something more, a themed Super Bowl party.
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You people looked good this week! Here are some photos from the Surge after party at Czar (part of the CLIP film festival) and also from the CL in Concert event at the State Theatre.

My Friday kicked off at a scholarship ceremony. Not that anyone would ever give me a scholarship, it’s just that I knew there would be food and my favorite kind of beer — free. It’s not that I’m cheap. It’s that I’m poor. The problem is that free beer inevitably leads to a field trip to the bars and then a wallet filled only with credit card receipts. So, while all the smart-asses were accepting their awards, I was promising myself that this night I would break off my pricey affair with alcohol, at least until I can afford to resume it.    

I did not make this resolution after waking from a long night of drinking to find that my bed was spinning like a merry-go-round. No, this was a sober decision brought on by another choice to finally end my equally expensive relationship with my shitty Korean car. Sure it was cheap in the beginning and reasonable with gas, but the time and money I’ve wasted on repairs inevitably drove me to end the relationship. I should have walked away from it the first time it gave up on me at a rest stop in the New Mexico desert, but I thought I could work it out. I thought that if I showed the car enough attention, it would give me the same kind of respect. I was wrong. What I’ve learned is that a shitty car will always be a shitty car.

In its place, I bought a ‘94 Ford Ranger to cart my ass across the bay every day. You may be wondering why I’d buy a truck if I was hurting for money. I thought the same thing until I realized the possibilities of the truck’s camper. (more…)

Dreaming of being a rock star is as American as dreaming about having sex with a rock star. I’ve read countless interviews with performers who describe how they were always putting on “shows” when they were younger. They use these anecdotes as evidence that performing is in their blood. What these talented, or just plain lucky, bastards don’t realize is that most every American kid puts on “shows” as a way to get attention. I used to chase my parents around the house while strumming a plastic guitar in my underwear and singing the same verse to “Old McDonald” repeatedly. And yes, I too won a talent contest for a rap I wrote and performed with a group of four white boys at camp.

You could say that being a rock star is in my blood. So why the hell am I not on TRL or dating Miley Cyrus. The problem is that though performing maybe in my blood, musical talent isn’t. I was born with an impaired sense of rhythm. Five separate times I attempted to teach myself the guitar and failed. When I was older, I attempted the bass thinking it would be easier to learn considering it only has four strings. My highlight from this venture was being asked to play bass on an intentionally horrendous, mock hard-rock song called “Sewer of Ass Piss.” Since playing an instrument was out of the question, I did what any talentless performer does: I decided to become a singer. I did in fact write and record a few songs with my sexually explicit boy band, 2 Sr. Real, but hearing my recorded voice was painful even for someone as self-obsessed as me.

The fact that I will never be a rock star has been particularly difficult to accept considering that I have so many other attributes that make me overqualified: I can switch leotards within a matter of seconds, play air guitar against the carefully formed bulge in my tight pants, and underage women eat me up. Unfortunately the world will never know my talents, and I will never seduce as many women as the grungiest of rock stars.  I am reminded of this sad fact every time I go to a rock show. I will never be a rock star and so my only hope is to try and sleep with one.  

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I had a long week. I spent it training to be an instructor in Rhetoric at USF. The course work and mandatory sports coat with leather elbow patches didn’t intimidate me. What worried me was that I was expected to be a role model for over 40 incoming freshman.  This is a particularly daunting task considering that my Google identity includes videos of me chugging beer at CL’s Beer Club and an extensive online account of my attempts to pick up women. Let’s just hope that the pictures of me at that bachelorette party don’t emerge. 

After a week of training, one thing was certain: I needed a disguise. Something that would make me look tough. Naturally my mind wandered to actors, whose job it is to obscure their perverse lifestyles in order to appear tough on screen; maybe I needed a six-shooter or one of those mean-looking bandolier belts strapped across my chest. Or maybe I should be a little more subtle.  From experience I know I look particularly threatening in a wig and a fake mustache that would put Charles Bronson to shame.

I thought over these foolproof schemes to appear as a respectable member of society as I drank heavily at Limey’s Friday during this month’s beer club.

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“Everyone assumes skaters are bad kids,” said Bobbie Clothier as a gang of longhaired kids circled her, assaulting each other with firecracker poppers Saturday night. “The bad ones are the ones who don’t skate and hangout outside the skateparks. Nothing good happens after midnight or outside a skatepark.”From my own experience, I knew this was true. The kids who are too uncoordinated to skate sit in the bleachers talking shit or taking walks to the woods to smoke. But, judging by how rowdy these skaters were, I’d hate to run into their bad counterparts. Not that these kids were mean-spirited. They just had the kind of energy that makes you dizzy just watching them run around screaming like ballistic missiles.

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“Who is 420?” asked a sightseeing couple last Wednesday. They had stayed in Ybor City later than they should have and suddenly found themselves surrounded by mild-mannered dope fiends giggling their way to The Improv for the 420 Friendly Comedy Show.

Emma and I were trying to hand out the last few tickets to the show. We kept running into people who acted offended that we assumed they were interested in a pot friendly show, or those, like the vacationing couple, who thought 420 was the name of a hip-hopper who their children might enjoy.

We quickly decided if someone had to ask what 420 meant, they weren’t interested in comedy dedicated to extended monologues about how pot should be the U.S’s weapon against subduing terrorism, as well as spats about the perfection of Doritos.

The problem was that Emma and I were trying to be politically correct, (more…)

I was on the phone with my interior designer about a set of stackable leather chairs when my eyes locked on my soul mate. I dropped the phone and unfurled the most glorious pair of silver pants this side of the Milky Way.

I was in the middle of working “The Best Garage Sale Ever,” at Vitale Studios. Considering the number of art pieces sold, and the fact that John Vitale was as excited as a young artist drawing his first live nude, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more art sales gallivanting as garage sales.

Art was just one of many commodities cleaned out of these hipsters’ studios and put on sale. This was the crème de la crème of trendy second-hand goods. Thrift store hunters didn’t have to search through racks of Christmas sweaters that smelled of nursing homes and mothballs to find the perfectly ironically hip shirt. Cool stuff was everywhere: a bamboo furniture set, shelves of high-fashion high heels in supermodel sizes, art supplies, treasure trolls, designs and shirts by Blue Lucy, rhinestone belts, lighting equipment, Japanese lanterns, long coats with fake fur collars, knitted scarves and, of course, my luscious silver pants.

I didn’t ask permission before taking the pants in the bathroom and getting naked.

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“What makes you qualified to lead a street team?” asked Steve at Yeoman’s Road Pub on Thursday — the site of this month’s Beer Club.

“Um,” I said, sipping my beer. “I drink a lot?”

“That seems to be a reoccurring trend with Creative Loafing.”

Alright, so maybe CL was sponsoring the Craft Beer Expo on Saturday, starting a new wine club and gearing up for our annual Beer Fest, but it couldn’t be such a bad thing for a company to be synonymous with drinking.

“When I’m bartending, I remember most of my customers by what they drink, not their name,” said Crystal, one of the volunteers pouring Michelob’s Porter, Fire Rock Pale Ale, Longboard Island Lager and Longhammer IPA at Beer Club.

Apparently my name was also becoming associated with drinking, as more than a few beer club members told the pourers that I said they could have extra drinks. CL’s staff writer, Wade Tatangelo tried this tactic but quickly reverted to swindling free drinks by using his standard go-to line, “I write Bar Tab.” This was the kind of fringe benefit I have always craved as a writer. Like a food critic getting free meals or a travel writer getting free vacations, I want to be admitted into various forums where women appear nude in groups by simply saying, “It’s alright. I’m doing research for my novel, Panty Raid.”

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“I feel like I’m in a three-way!” I said Friday at the grand opening of Tekila Rocks, where I kept getting jostled by gargantuan boobage and ladies grinding like it was their job. I had heard of women keeping cash in their cleavage, but I had never seen them used to holster cell phones. This was the kind of eye-level cleavage with enough energy to potentially knock you out if it got moving fast enough.

I have never actually been in a three-way, but I’m fairly positive that the only major difference between Tekila Rocks’ dance floor and the sex act is that you couldn’t get pregnant on the dance floor. Then again, I’ve been wrong before. (more…)