Sometimes Tuesdays are like the anonymous guy in line behind you as you check out at Target who says something good-natured and gives you a little chuckle — you'll forget about it by Wednesday, until something down the road reminds you, and you smile again. Some Tuesdays, on the other hand, are like a wicked drowning riptide you weren't warned about — one whose inexorable grip nearly kills you, before you just barely drag yourself out of it, retching and sore. Those Tuesdays, you don't forget so easily.
Yesterday was somewhere in the middle, I guess.
The highly contested and downright nasty Tampa City Council District 6 runoff election is over, with Guido Maniscalco taking the seat by a nose (and, some might say, the ethical high ground). So it's over, and we have a winner. So, how come it feels like everybody lost?
The Gasparilla International Film Festival kicked off with its annual soiree at the Tampa Theatre, and an impressively outsized crowd. (This is where the Sean Astin height/Hobbit-size joke goes, guys.)
The Rays announced they'll retire late, beloved MLB player, manager and adviser Don Zimmer's uniform number 66 in a pre-game ceremony on opening day. His will be only the third number ever retired by the Rays organization, not including the time not too long ago when several players and management team members gathered in secret in Mesa, Ariz. to burn Joe Maddon's uniform — and him in effigy — behind the Chicago Cubs' spring training complex.
And finally, the apparently immortal hard-rock deities in Van Halen have announced another tour, with a Tampa stop scheduled for September 13. We'll give even odds on whether or not they'll make it to the Tampa date before somebody abandons the tour, David Lee Roth goes back to some Tibetan cliffside cave, and Eddie must return to his cryo-chamber, where son/bassist Wolfgang will stand outside, shoveling cash into the fuel-burner and wondering what it would be like to go to high school or work at a Hardee's or whatever.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.