The final weekend before the date on which we celebrate the birth of the King of Peace was absolutely great for one moment Friday evening; then it all went, well, back to normal, unfortunately.
FRIDAY, DEC. 19
The Supreme Court rejected Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's motion to delay the start of gay marriages in the state. Hopefully this means our AG will drop the issue and return to flying around the country on the legal firms' dime, screwing with the lives of diverse groups of people instead of just the one.
SATURDAY, DEC. 20
Pinellas law enforcement officers made 16 DUI arrests and wrote more than 100 tickets Friday night. See — light rail could've saved these people a lot of money and humiliation, not to mention adding new jobs to the local economy in the form of seasonal vomit-scrubbers.
A TBO.com story reports the land Tropicana Field sits on may be more valuable to St. Petersburg as real estate than it is as the home of the Rays. Of course, there are times when it seems like a smoldering crater might be a bigger draw than baseball in the 'Burg…
SUNDAY, DEC. 21
A Tarpon Springs police officer who'd previously worked for the NYPD was shot in the early hours of Sunday morning, becoming the first Tarpon Springs cop to be killed in the line of duty since 1969 (and that was an auto accident — the last time an officer was shot and killed in the line of duty was 1926). Our sincerest sympathies to Officer Kondek's family, friends and co-workers. Upon arrest, the suspect, Marco Antonio Parilla, Jr., said he didn't intend for the shooting to happen; he probably didn't intend for his 30 other felony arrests to happen either, one assumes.
And finally, Lightning struck a parking lot outside Raymond James Stadium just after Sunday's Bucs-Packers game, sending several people to the hospital. No one was killed, and several victims of the jolt reportedly enjoyed the experience more than watching the Bucs get shellacked 20-3.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2014.