the 941

One See & Do item that somehow flew under the radar this week:

In honor of its one-year anniversary, the Puerto Rican Chamber of Sarasota-Manatee Counties is throwing two special bashes this weekend. Tonight, a gala event boasting a three-course meal, live music by local band Cache, dignitaries, dancing and a presentation from Mayor Lou Ann Palmer (we’re guessing the last two aren’t interrelated, but si ella baila, please send pictures).

Tomorrow, the fiesta continues at Five Points Park with a community-wide Puerto Rican Art & Cultural Festival. Food vendors, crafts, more dancing and live performances from musicians Puerto Rican Power and Master Joe are all on tap.

And if reggaeton’s not your thing, you can always roll like us: We’ll be the wallflowers in the corner with Coronas in hand.

Rums of Puerto Rico Gala Award & Reception: Tonight, 7 p.m. (9 p.m. awards ceremony), Arosa Restaurant, 1296 First St., Sarasota, $35. 952-5800 or srqfiesta.com for tickets.

Puerto Rican Art & Cultural Festival of Sarasota: Tomorrow, 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m., Five Points Park by Selby Library, Sarasota, free. 952-5800 or srqfiesta.com.

Bookmark to:

Special Valentine’s Day “Lust List” comin’ right up, folks: We’re hard at work on the sweet stuff now…

XOXO,

Joel & Amanda

Bookmark to:

Last night was celebrity encounter night for three of your friends here at CL. Well, make that celebrity near-encounter night.

At about 6:10 last night, Randy Adams — awesome friend of our beloved Amanda’s, former bar manager upstairs at the Gator Club and the Silver Cricket, current ”Scotch Guy,” possessor of one of the all-time porniest-sounding names in town — called to inform us that yes, the Naked Cowboy was still in town: Adams had just spotted him in front of Mel’s Diner on the South Trail.

And that wasn’t all. The sidewalk in front of Mel’s had apparently become star-studded campaign turf for the evening, and was now being graced by none other than Steve Forbes — and the Rev. Rudy Giuliani himself!

Randy hadn’t known the event was going on, but when he saw the crowd gathered outside and the diapered wrangler, he decided to stop by.

Rudy didn’t disappoint.

Emerging from his motorcade to shake hands with his supporters (comprised mostly of blue hairs and families with children, with some cheerleaders in tow), the current prez candidate eventually found Randy and, emanating the kind of class that only a Mel’s campaign stop could allow, smiled. Our correspondent said he looked like Skeletor.

“You got balls,” said Randy.

“Yes,” said Giuliani. “Yes I do.”

(more…)

Bookmark to:

To whom it may concern:

In the last 24 hours, several people have brought it to my attention that a certain singing superstar-bombshell to whom I might have expressed some degree of devotion in the past has now given birth to a bouncing baby boy. My informants’ aims seem innocent enough: Many claim they tell me because they want to share in my pop-cultural interests, or because they suspect I’ll be overjoyed by the news.
Well thanks for the lookout and everything, but this is one newsflash I don’t need. The fact that the son that should’ve been mine is now a reality may well become the most miserable footnote in the annals of my Aguilera worship yet.
You see, since Christina Aguilera’s pregnancy made its first rounds on the gossip circuit, I’ve taken great pains to block the impending delivery from my consciousness. It’s the only way I knew of maintaining the delicate flower I call my balanced emotional state. I cling to that.
Still, the tenacious psychiatric team helping me through this latest storm claim full-on confrontation is the best way of handling one’s demons. So if you haven’t heard yet, I’ll rip the band-aid and bring you the sordid details myself: On Saturday night, a 20.5-inch, 6-pound-2-ounce bundle of human error was delivered at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at 10:05 p.m. to Christina Maria Aguilera, 27, and her troll/husband, 30-year-old record producer Jordan Bratman.
The mistake’s name is Max, which is also the name of my boss and the name I’ll be forced, Tantalus-style, to utter repeatedly for days and days to come.
Happy birthday!

Bookmark to:

As the writers’ strike continues, Creative Loafing has assigned itself the unenviable task of watching the dreck the networks are pumping out. We will do this until it hurts. Then we will do it more.

The Celebrity Apprentice (NBC, 9 p.m.)

Last night marked a particular low in my week of crap viewing: The Celebrity Apprentice, that wretched seventh season of Donald Trump’s reality dabbling, entered my eat-in living room.

I’ll present my field notes in a sec, but first, a disclaimer for those of you who might think I’m unbiased: I don’t like “The Donald,” never have, and I don’t much care for the real estate tycoon’s expanding TV presence, either. His trademark machismo, that masturbatory way he shrinks people when he talks to them, is perhaps the diametric opposite of what I like in my moneyed leaders; his blunt interest in trashing his adversaries always felt like capitalism at its most primitive.

Basically, I think he’s a baboon.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

As the writers’ strike continues, Creative Loafing has assigned itself the unenviable task of watching the dreck the networks are pumping out. We will do this until it hurts. Then we will do it more.

Wife Swap (8 p.m., ABC)

As far as I can tell, there are two root problems with Wife Swap, ABC’s reality show about family dysfunction and the woman’s role therein.

The impossibly idealistic premise is one: Two families, of contrasting backgrounds and value systems, trade matriarchs for several days in an effort to see what they’re missing and/or appreciate what they already have.

Then there’s the inherent letdown: Wife Swap isn’t kinky.

If a title like that isn’t on the Spice channel, what’s left? The dated idea that all of a household’s foibles can be illuminated simply by bringing in a new woman.

Want an example? Try last night’s Flynn/Orris encounter on for size.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

As the writers’ strike continues, Creative Loafing has assigned itself the unenviable task of watching the dreck the networks are pumping out. We will do this until it hurts. Then we will do it more.

Just for Laughs (8 p.m., ABC)

You know how certain crappy TV shows can still seem really funny when you’re under the influence?

Just for Laughs isn’t one of them.

Before last night, I’d never actually sat through this half-hour Canadian import hosted by stand-up C-lister Rick Miller. Featuring sketch pranks played on unsuspecting pedestrians in public parks, gas stations, street corners and parking lots, J4L is essentially Candid Camera lite, a laugh track-inducing way for us to watch normal people get punked.

And if you’re the kind of viewer who finds men in wigs, seeing-eye dogs wearing glasses and TP stuck to shoes the stuff of comic brilliance, then I strongly suggest you tune in. The rest of us will devote 8 o’clock to more entertaining pursuits, like cleaning the fish tank and brushing our teeth. Seriously: Sketches included an empty car driving itself, while senior citizens freaked out in the parking lot (it was an empty vehicle, moved by hidden actors) and a kid getting people to pay for his candy in a convenience store.

One gag made me chuckle in my head maybe once, but only because it involved poop.

“Just think,” said Miller, smiling under his stellar puff-’do, “if nothing’s going your way today, at least you didn’t get caught in any of the gags you just saw.”

To think I would’ve had to tell some kid I wouldn’t buy him candy!

People’s Choice Awards (9 p.m., CBS)

It pretty much jumped the shark before the first award was announced.

“I know, I know. I look great, right?” said Queen Latifah, opening the 34th annual People’s Choice Awards.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

riends, countrymen: Of feta and crosses I sing.
I sing of honor and religion, and a special, special blessing, and many long processions and too much Greek dancing, and of 15,000 people who gathered in Tarpon on a late Sunday morning.
In Tarpon they watched as 59 brothers all dove together, for that special blessing, from His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, a coveted honor.
In Tarpon they watched as one man-child found the cross, the cross of wood and metal, cast into the Spring Bayou, for he was the Chosen, who deserved the Jesus blessing, and they knew he was a hero, because he found the cross faster, and declared him their victor.
And so I sing of victory, which looks something like this:

Dashing, ain’t he? Introducing 18-year-old Chris Kavouklis, senior at Tampa’s Jesuit High and retriever of the 2008 Epiphany cross.
I’ll spare you another round of dactylic epic verse — they’re as exhausting now as they were in high school Latin class! — to say in plain prose that this weekend, I hit the mother lode of quirky cultural events.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

Pink Bus is back! Or, at least its fearless leader, “Crazy James,” is. The Sarasota high alum just completed the first leg of his whirlwind bike tour around the world, stopping in places both urban and barren across the USA.

On no money. With just that Barbie-goes-punk mane to protect him from the rain.

In next week’s CL, I’ll be treating you to some of the million-dollar anecdotes he got from his journey — and relaying some of the essential travel tips gleaned from life on the road. But just for a tease, here’s one left on the cutting-room floor:

TIP #524. Never Have Sex With a Couch Host

Couchsurfing.com connects vagabonds all over the world with a temporary free place to crash. Sure, it’s hippy central, but it’s also a site of vital importance to people like Crazy James. Just don’t make the same mistake he did once, before he left North Dakota:
“A word to any man out there,” whimpers James. “Never get with a girl who collects Danielle Steele books and parakeets. Horrible, horrible.”

Bookmark to:

You heard right: On Thanksgiving, I bid a solemn adieu to one of my nastiest (but longest-lived) habits of all time, and gave up smoking for good.

So far, I’ve made it past the horrible first three days of withdrawal and up to Day 12. It’s been a loooooooong 12 days. Still, frazzled as I am, I’ve been feeling quite proud of myself lately and remain determined to emerge from this whole, painful, meth-addict-on-Intervention-style experience a changed man.

So introducing a brand new Joel, y’all. A Joel who dances a little faster and laughs a little louder; a Joel who has no scruples talking in third-person or being just a wee bit smarter than you. A Joel who has no problem subjecting the masses to his newfound self-righteousness; a Joel willing to…

…Oh Jesus Christ I fucking need a cigarette.

Sound like a Joel you wanna meet? You can read more about my own, private war against nicotine in this week’s upcoming issue. Or you can simply sit back, take a load off, and enjoy the harmonious sounds of me lisping my way through a podcast interview with the formidable Brian Ries:

Download link

Bookmark to: