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At first glance, Reese’s Whipps — The Hershey Company’s latest entrée into the candy bar market — looks like a can’t-lose proposition. The formula sounds perfect: Take the delicious peanut-butter-simulating goo of Reese’s Cups, combine it with the high eatability of a 3 Muskateers and forge the results into a bar-like shape. Ecstasy should be mere bites away.

Sadly, it is my duty to report that Whipps just plain suck. And it’s not hard to figure out why. When the taste specialists at Hershey combined the Reese’s Cup with the 3 Muskateers, they forgot something: the Reese’s. Yes, while the packaging promises “Light and Fluffy Peanut Butter Flavored Nougat” [sic], the nougat is surprisingly generic, more like a Publix brand marshmallow than the creamed-peanut genius of a Reese’s.

Don’t think of the Whipps as a failure, Hershey, just a missed opportunity. It’s been 14 years since the debut of Reese’s NutRageous, a similar attempt to merge the Reese’s formula with a rectangular shape that has, to date, failed to capture the public imagination in the way, say, the Snickers bar has. With this most recent misstep, some candy experts are beginning to doubt whether Reese’s will ever succeed in bar form. Prove them wrong, Hershey. Prove them wrong.

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“Light-hearted and funny” is how Sarasota County Republican Party Chairman Eric Robinson describes an ad he produced targeting Democratic county commission candidate Jono Miller in a superb article by Rick Barry over on the Pelican Press website. The ad Robinson refers to? It featured “a ridiculously stumbling, bearded man wearing a pink tutu, with the label ‘Jono Miller’ on a black bar above the image.” Sure sounds “light-hearted and funny,” right?

Unfortunately, scouring YouTube to post the “Miller” video here produced no results. That doesn’t mean there’s not plenty of Sarasota slime out there. This ad — which features a fat actor gobbling ice cream as a stand-in for Democrat and incumbent state representative Keith Fitzgerald — wallows in the gutter as well:

In his piece, Barry pegs the local GOP’s ‘08 electoral success to its flurry of negative advertising in the final days of the campaign, estimating that up to $100,000 was dumped into each race in the home stretch. Local Democrats promise they won’t be outspent next time around.

And Fitzgerald’s position will only be stronger in two years: Florida Democratic legislators recently named him policy chairman, which makes him the third highest-ranking Democrat in the Florida House. Not bad for a guy supposedly “giving taxpayers fits.” (Got to admit: I like me some puns.)

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I can deal with warm and fuzzy Christmas fare all day long (well, okay, not really, but hear me out), but sometimes a holiday artifact inspires such dread that you want to hunker down in a concrete-walled bunker impervious to Yuletide joy. Thomas Kincade’s the Christmas Cottage is just such an unholy nightmare of a film.

You may know Thomas Kincade for his revolutionary method of painting with light, earning him the moniker Thomas Kincade, Painter of Light and also somehow making him “America’s most collected living artist.” (I’m quoting from the Man’s website here, folks. He can’t be exaggerating, can he?) Christmas Cottage marks the Painter of Light’s first foray into motion pictures and, after being held back from theatrical release last year, it finally hits the market in DVD form this week. While you might expect a stark, unflinching look at a world devoid of morality and human kindness, Christmas Cottage — judging by the trailer, at least — is actually gooey, soft-focus cheersploitation. Hide the kids, watch the trailer, then fear for the future of man.

How in the world does this thing feature actual actors? Marcia Gay Harden? Peter O’Toole? Um, Chris Elliott? The most heartrending casting decision, though, involves star and Kincade stand-in Jared Padalecki, who, not so long ago, was lighting up the small screen with his epic turn as Dean Forester on the now-canceled Gilmore Girls. (Okay, so I’m a little obsessed.) First House of Wax, Jared, now this? For shame.

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Yep, this sucker’s going up next spring, right along 41 between 4th Street and Boulevard of the Arts (also known as 6th Street), meaning we here at CL are going to get first-row seats to the construction. According to today’s Herald-Tribune, the complex will include a Waldorf-Astoria and a performing arts center. The city commission voted unanimously to approve the project, despite past reservations about the Proscenium’s impact on Tamiami Trail traffic. I guess the chance to create 6,600 local jobs speaks pretty loudly these days.

Let’s hope the Proscenium lives up to its promise and gets built in a timely manner. Pineapple Square was slated to start going up nearly two years ago and, aside from a Brooks Brothers and a Tastings or two, construction has yet to begin.

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Well, Sarasota, it’s been a solid 320 days since you and I last spoke, since I split from the Creative Loafing family because, gosh, you just don’t turn down four months of no rent in Venice, Italy. (For kicks, you can read my “farewell” column here.) So I spent my springtime in Venice, returned to Sarasota in early May, bounced around as a freelancer for a couple months, then picked up work as a field organizer with the Barack Obama campaign. Funny thing about working for campaigns, though: They end.

So, voilà, I’m back. And I’m damn happy to be here.

You’ll hear more from me in the coming days and weeks, of course, and you’ll also have the chance to get to know our new staff writer, Tim Sukits, as well as hear from our cavalcade of regular voices. In the meantime, send me an email (cooper@creativeloafing.com) or give me a call (941-906-7476) and let me know exactly what rules, what sucks and what you want to hear more about. I’m here for you, so let it all out.

Can’t lie, Sarasota: It feels good to be back.

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Please allow myself to introduce … myself. Amanda Schurr here, taking over where Cooper left off in Eventland. I’ll be stopping by this here blogosphere in the coming days, but in the meantime, a parting recommendation for something to do this weekend from the dearly departed:

KNOW YOUR RYE-TS
My belt’s feeling a little tight these days, what with the cookies, the candy canes, the eggnog … oh, the eggnog. In an attempt to fit back into my pants, I’m seriously considering the Manatee County’s Conservation Lands Management Rye Ramble and Hike. The moderate-to-strenuous walk snakes through Parrish’s Rye Preserve, with views of that spot’s old and rare sandy scrub habitat. 9-11 a.m., Rye Preserve, 700 Rye Wilderness Trail, Parrish, free, 748-4501, ext. 4615. –CLB, posthumously

I’ll be back, with my own picks, next week.

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CL editor Max Linsky has the scoop:

We got word late last week that Bodies — yeah, that exhibit with all preserved human specimens — will be landing at Sarasota’s G.WIZ just in time for Christmas. If you haven’t heard of it, the picture above should give you a pretty good idea of why Bodies has been generating so many local headlines since it opened in Tampa in 2004. As the name implies, these are real human bodies on display, preserved through a process that involves liquid silicone rubber.

The exhibit has a health-awareness aspect: One body contains the lung of a long-time smoker, another the organs of an over-eater. Bodies…The Exhibition drew huge crowds at Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry, and while this show is slightly different (it’s called Bodies Revealed, and will be making its second US appearance after three years in Europe), G.WIZ is expecting an average of 1,500 people per day during the limited engagement. No specific end date has been established yet, so don’t dilly-dally. Get there early.

Opens Dec. 21. 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Thurs., 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Fri. and Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun., holiday hours: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 24, closed Dec. 25, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 31, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Jan. 1, G.WIZ, 1000 Boulevard of the Arts, Sarasota, $22, $20 for seniors and $17 for kids 3-18, 877-627-3271 or bodiesrevealed.com.

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Creative Loafing mentions Atomic Holiday Bazaar at every available opportunity, and today — the day after version 2.0 hit the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium — is no different. I just got word from Cemantha Crain, one of the event organizers, that her official count of patrons is 1,150. That number may only represent a small jump from last year’s attendence, but that’s nothing to frown about.

Crain writes in an email:

Everywhere I’ve been today (alright, I’ve only been to work and News and Books, but those count) everyone I’ve seen who went (prolly 10 people so far) all commented how many young people we had.  My favorite New College barista said it was the most young people she’s ever seen in one place in Sarasota. That’s rewarding, considering our primary objective was to create a young-person’s event.

I was most delighted to see old friends who I’d thought had moved away.  I didn’t even think to invite them because I’d thought they had abandoned Sarasota long ago.  But they were back, and truly brought a tear to my eye that they’d found out about Atomic on their own and showed up without realizing Adrien and I were behind it.  That, and, I saw a few sets of punk rock teenagers skulking around sans adults.  They actually chose to attend of their own volition.  Very cool, indeed.

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The wife and I took a journey south on Saturday to catch an afternoon’s worth of Art Basel Miami Beach, the four-day international art extravaganza that commandeers large chunks of Miami Beach real estate every December. The city’s convention center was the epicenter, with hundreds of galleries from around the world displaying work by thousands of visual artists. The focus is supposedly contemporary, but famous names from decades gone by kept cropping up (Basquiat, Warhol, Rauschenberg), the pieces crammed into tight, cluttered booths. The huge numbers this festival does ensured that walking and viewing room was tough to come by, which made it awfully difficult to have any kind of meaningful experience with individual pieces. The effect was like trying to sift through a giant pile of art, with no ability to be drawn in by anything but the most immediately eye-catching.

(more…)

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The inspiration for this week’s underappreciated video comes directly from Supreme Lord Linsky’s coiffure, which I remarked resembled that of Link’s from the classic caveman/stoner comedy Encino Man. (Helpful factoid: In Europe, the film (I’m using the term lightly) was known as California Man.) While I initially steered toward a clip displaying Brendan Fraser’s obssession with “gonzagas,” how could those moments top Pauly Shore’s helpful guide to the SoCal life in the selection below?

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