Our community and state are crazy at the best of times; when the weather decides 45 seconds of spring is enough and moves straight into summer-type conditions, the snowbirds go home right after Easter, symbolic parents leaving us home alone to once again indulge in our humidity-and-substandard-education-fueled idiocy.
FRIDAY, APRIL 10:
This past January, the money collected via Pinellas County's tourism-fueled hotel "bed tax" was up 23% over last year. Insiders credit the upswing to Visit St. Pete Clearwater's ingenious pre-Spring Break campaign aimed at bitter teen-hating Baby Boomers, "Beat The Kids in to Florida."
A Dade City man was the victim of a crime in which 13 of his 15 goats were shot, with only one surviving. The man, who is African American, believes this and other crimes that have occurred on his property are racially motivated. I'm not sure there's a punishment fitting enough for the coward who would kill an animal lover's defenseless animals in order to hurt/frighten/"get to" someone, but feeding parts of the coward to some hungry animals while the coward watches might be a good place to start.
SATURDAY, APRIL 11:
State CFO Jeff Atwater said he will not run for the U.S. Senate. In other words, given a choice between having to juggle the numbers for one of the craziest, least accountable and most populous states and an opportunity to work in Congress, Atwater said to himself, "No question. Have you seen Congress? I'll stick with dirty money in America's Wang, thanks."
"Hundreds" of Tampa Bay residents showed up in their '80s best for a "cattle call" audition to be extra in the Bryan Cranston movie The Infiltrator filming in Tampa. "What, this? I still had this in my closet," said everyone whose fashion sense froze back when they first suspected their high school and early college days might indeed be the best of their lives.
The Lightning's win against the Bruins closed the team's best single regular season ever. Does that mean the not-ball slid into the turned-sideway laundry basket the most times? Mazel Tov! (This is all correct hockey talk, yes?)
SUNDAY, APRIL 12:
And finally, less than a day before the premiere of its first episode, the first four episodes of Game of Thrones' fifth season were leaked online, showing up on various torrenting sites. HBO may not have cared about piracy all that much in the past, but in the wake of its standalone streaming service, those responsible will probably be sent to the company's version of The Wall — watching and archiving unaired episodes of Dane Cook's Tourgasm.
