Yesterday, I was invited to take in a high school softball game at The Villages High School in Sumter County. It didn’t go well for the Buffalo as Belleview beat them soundly, 12-3.
But I was impressed with the facility as a whole. They had a massive football stadium that’s probably bigger than some FBS schools, along with two practice football/soccer fields. All the fields had field turf as opposed to grass.
I also saw their basketball facility, which had four courts instead of one. I don’t know if that was a practice facility or if they played games there. The goals even had shot clocks.
Didn’t get to see their baseball diamond, but quite an impressive facility from what I did see.
It was the third strongest hurricane (in terms of barometric pressure) to make landfall in the United States, with 1969’s Camile and 1935’s Labor Day Hurricane stronger. But even a storm that strong can have a saving grace.
For several days, the prediction was that Hurricane Michael was going to hit Panama City dead on, with the eye going right over the spring break mecca. But as it made landfall early this midday, the various satellites and radars tracked the eye of this monster storm. The eye wound up missing Panama City just barely to the east.
It is too early to say how bad the damage will be in Florida and in other states with the eye just making landfall a couple of hours ago. There will no doubt be a rebuilding effort, perhaps some question as to whether or not Michael was a Cat 4 or Cat 5 at landfall. (They thought Andrew was a “4” for many years – but after a decade or so of review, they appended the storm category to a 5.) I doubt President Trump will shirk from the challenge of rebuilding like George W. Bush did with Katrina over a decade ago.
Weather and news reporters are good at telling you with these disasters what goes on at the moment – but they are here today and will be gone sometime after tomorrow. For the residents of north Florida and the other states to be affected, here’s to a speedy recovery.
I’m pretty aware that nothing I say on this blog will likely change the world. I only try and comment on the world I see through my eyes. Some might agree – some might not. But I feel what I do here is for a greater good, to serve as a document as to what’s going on in my time.
The events in Jacksonville that took place this past Sunday (captured live on an Internet video stream) hit me in many ways. I’ve been playing the John Madden video games back to when you need a PC to play them. One day in 1990 I went to Radio Shack and bought one of the first computer versions of the game. I didn’t have a PC back then, but my workplace, WTAN, had a PC that I thought would work with it. It didn’t, so I wound up giving the game away.
I’ve also been to Jacksonville Landing before in my radio travels – as one of my radio buddies took me to the Hooters there when I was working for the People’s Radio Network in White Springs.
Fast forward to the 2000’s, the oughts, or whatever was this last decade before the current one. I would religiously watch a reality/sports series called Madden Nation on ESPN. The best gamers back then would ride a version of the “Madden Cruiser” across the country and play games to decide who the champion would be, and a $100,000 prize went to the winner.
The show had some flaws to it. During one season, one player got into a fight with another on the bus, resulting into an ejection the show’s producers had to abruptly explain. As the tournament started to head towards its conclusion, tempers would flare through some spirited trash-talking that gamers would do with each other.
In real-life sports, if trash-talking takes place, there is usually an effort after a point where referees or umpires would step in to tell the players to cease their efforts or be ejected from the game. After a point, the smack becomes useless, because the players are aware that their foe isn’t going to sending them a Christmas card. What shocked me watching the series was the lack of anyone stepping in, a producer or some sort of official to hem the trash-talk in.
I remember thinking that someone would take the ill feelings to an extreme one day, not knowing how prophetic that thought wound up being in 2018.
I can’t help but feel bad for John Madden, who’s now retired at the age of 82. I’m sure he’ll get some of the blame for all of this, wrongly. I don’t think when he created the series with Trip Hawkins back in the 1980’s that he could have ever envisioned a tournament where emotions ran so high that gunshots were fired, fatally, and tragically. My condolences to the victims and their families as well.
The shootings will be used as a political football (no pun intended) for both sides. I can’t help but notice that there is one common thread through all of these shootings, regardless of the motivations of the shooter. That seems to be poor mental health. We are all, on one level or another, addicts to the technological advances of our society. We are all encouraged to consume the technology in a number of ways. Not too many have the courage to tell us the ways all of this consumption harms us.
On days like this Sunday past in Jacksonville, we are reminded of the harms. Then, the games, real and simulated, played on.
Put this story in the “when they think they have you, you have them” category.
I’m living in the southwest part of Largo in the early 1990’s. There’s a local Goodyear tire dealership that offers customers an oil change among the other wares they sell, so one day I go to the store and request one.
With my car elevated on their jack, they tell me that there’s someone other problem with the car. Maybe the tires needed rotating, something like that. I tell them I just came in here for the oil change, so that’s what I will be getting.
Then the repair guy hits me with his scare tactic. He implied that it was against state law not to have these repairs done.
I told the guy to either show me the law in writing (which he didn’t, oddly enough) or to report me to whichever agency is in charge of such transgressions should one exist. Either way, an oil change is what I requested, and an oil change is all I will be getting this given day.
I didn’t bother telling him I worked in radio at the time – I was confident I had him beat right then and there. Why play all of your cards when you can get away with playing just one?
With that, he walked away without speaking another word. It just goes to show you that there are times in life when it’s easy to think certain people and situations have you. When those times come, never stop probing for a way out.
Looking west at the sun setting from just outside my then job in Clearwater, FL, November 3, 2015.
We are once again at that point of the year where clocks get shifted in most of the United States. Parts of Arizona and all of Hawaii doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, and now my state of Florida is following suit with a similar design to forego the twice-yearly resetting of clocks an hour, “springing forward” in March, “falling back” in November.
A footnote, if I may. Doing a brief study of the various stories about this article the past couple of days, one thing I’m seeing these news outlets NOT doing is telling the public when the law would be enacted. (Answer: this year, on July 1, 2018.) I took journalism in high school – did terrible at it by the way, mainly because I took the course as a freshman and really didn’t have a grasp of what journalism was at that age. Anyway, one of the things I was taught way back in 1985 is that who, when, where, what, why, and how are the questions EVERY story should answer. Things must have changed in journalism since I took that course, I suppose – something glaringly evident to our current President.
I’ve heard a lot of argument pro and con about the abolition of standard time and the permanent use of Daylight Savings Time. In the winter months, we’ll be in the same time zone as Puerto Rico, and an hour ahead of the rest of the Eastern US. Sunrise in the winter months would be past 8:00 in the morning, but the sun would set no earlier than 6:30 at night.
Personally, I have no opinion. I’ve been through Arizona three times in my life, passing through my way to and back from Las Vegas. I don’t think it would fair of me to pre-judge how things will go, so I’ll just sit back and see what happens. What could go wrong? Not much from what I can see.
It’s the evening of February 14th, a Wednesday, as I type this. Yet again, we’ve had another shooting tragedy, this time at a high school in Broward County, Florida.
I’ve done these kinds of posts too many times. Like many of you, I’m hoping for a day where I never have to see this kind of news ever again. And as I’ve probably said before, I don’t know how you solve this kind of problem.
Do you take away the guns? No. The “bad guys” will still get the guns. The only thing that does is prevents responsible firearm owners from fighting back.
Do you pass tighter gun laws? No. Same problem.
Some on the left say we should stop offering hopes and prayers when these shootings take place, and they might be right. Tonight, I will just hope there is a “place in the sun” where we can get to a point where all of this stops.
Hurricane Matthew earlier in the week as the eye struck the southwestern tip of Haiti.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people liked my first “Oh, We’re Fine” post that I wrote back on September 3rd. I just hope all of you realize that I was talking about another Hurricane that hit last month: Hurricane Hermine.
Yesterday, it was another hurricane’s turn, this one named Matthew. The eye of Matthew was much farther away, missing me by some 200 miles. The storm was a much bigger deal for the east coast of Florida as it was here on the west coast of the state, as Category 4 winds were being projected along the coastline north of West Palm Beach all the way up to Jacksonville.
I’ve been watching these storms come and go since Hurricane David in 1979 when I was almost eight years of age. But on Thursday afternoon, I saw someone I had never seen before. Newsmen like Shepard Smith at Fox News and weathermen like Brian Norcross on The Weather Channel spending airtime making urgent appeals for those in evacuation zones to do just that: evacuate. Then yesterday, National Hurricane Center director Rick Knabb made another such appeal.
Usually, the reporters and weather people give you the information and the public officials make the appeals to the public to flee as needed, and each side usually stays on their side of that hypothetical road. However, there were scattered reports that the people weren’t taking matters seriously, especially in northeast Florida where (as is the case here in Tampa Bay) major hurricanes don’t usually visit.
Even though the storm wasn’t scheduled to hit here, people took the storm seriously in my area. Schools were closed in the event the track did the unthinkable and moved much closer to Tampa Bay. A trip to Walmart I took late Thursday morning was unusually packed for such an hour and day, with a huge bottleneck in the northwest part of the store where water was available for purchase. Unlike a viral video that has made the rounds, the gathering of water bottles at my store was orderly.
I spent the day peering at nearby trees. They shook a bit in winds the gusted to minimal tropical storm force, but as the day progressed, the winds died down.
Life went back to normal here. They will clean up the East coast, might take some time. But things will go on. I do wonder if someday lawmakers will throw fines or imprisonment at those who don’t evacuate, but I give it a few years before that sort of thing becomes law even if lawmakers are so inclined. We don’t think about emergencies until there is one.
Looks like we’ll be hearing a lot about another hurricane threat in the coming week. This time, a little fella named Matthew churns in the Caribbean. On Friday, the maximum sustained winds were estimated at 115 mph at 11am Eastern time, making it a major hurricane. Then, 12 hours later, Matthew became a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest type of storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The storm is expected to turn north over the weekend, likely hitting Cuba, more than likely also hitting Jamaica. It should (if the current model thinking is correct) pass to the east of Florida, perhaps grazing the east coast of the state. After that, all bets are off as to what it could do. The storm could do a “Hugo” and go into the Carolinas, or run up the Eastern seaboard staying off of land. It could also miss everything entirely, and head out to sea.
So keep an eye on this baby. Hopefully, it spares everybody. Best wishes to all in the Matthew’s path, as it doesn’t seem he is messing around.
Thursday night, I got a call from somebody in Tarpon Springs, Florida, asking me a series of automated questions as to who I will vote for for president in November.
It turns out that if you say you’re undecided, you become some kind of target. Over the last three days, I’ve gotten several calls in the late afternoon and early evening asking me political questions. I refused to participate in any of them, because what part of undecided do these people not understand? It’s like you have to ask permission not to be bothered because you’re undecided.
Your vote is your vote. I don’t care if you’re a Donald Trump supporter, or Hillary Clinton supporter. If you don’t want to tell somebody your vote, that should be your right. If you are undecided, that is also your right. Telling upholster that you are undecided should not proceed you with similar calls asking the same question that you are undecided about.
One outfit out of Pennsylvania with the number 610-901-0002 called me Monday morning. I told them I wasn’t interested.
Mike Pence, Indiana governor, who may be getting an occupational upgrade in a few months.
I’m trying hard not to talk about politics lately, but it was hard to avoid the train wreck that was the RNC convention in Cleveland this past week. Next week, the Democrats have their say in Philadelphia.
Donald Trump picked Indiana “Guv” Mike Pence as his vice-presidential pick, which seems odd on the surface for someone advertising himself as a progressive Conservative. In point of fact, I don’t think Trump is all that progressive, so a non-progressive in Pence makes a lot more sense.
The rumors around who Hillary Clinton will be choosing (as of press time) revolve around Timothy Kaine, who may be a little farther to the left than Hillary is. The more progressive wing of the Democratic party will no doubt cry foul that Elizabeth Warren wasn’t chosen, but Hillary isn’t a true progressive. She only acts like she is.
(Last night, word broke that Kaine is indeed the pick, which will be revealed today.)
The networks love to show you national poll numbers, when in fact the national numbers don’t mean diddly. The November election is not one election, but a series of 50 elections held on the same day. It comes down to the states, and I’ve said in the past that my theory is there’s only three states that really matter to gauge how the election will fare: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Whoever wins two out of three (or three out of three) usually takes the election.
If I remember correctly, Nixon took Ohio and Florida in 1960, but lost. I think that’s the last election that’s happened.
Politic yourselves away, and wake me on election day.
Two things I would do in the wake of the Orlando shooting, and hopefully, the politicos out there are reading this:
First, I’d kick anyone out of the country who willingly and knowingly pledged allegiance to ISIS. Give them the fairest of trials and let their alliance to the Islamic State be absolutely proven, but if found guilty, give them transportation to Canada or Mexico, whichever is the closest border. If you’re a proven terrorist, you’ll have to terrorize from outside our borders, not from within. It seems to me that we don’t need enemies in our own backyards. If you live in America and support ISIS and it can be documented, we don’t need you here.
I am NOT suggesting we go down the road of what Donald Trump is suggesting, and what Joe McCarthy tried in the 1950’s. A supporter of ISIS could be a believer of any religion, and we don’t need these people preying on us, ready to commit treason against their own government.
Second, the AR-15 gun (assuming that this is what was used, as has widely been reported) should be banned in Florida, if not nationwide. I fully realize that gun control isn’t going to solve this problem. Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer. The 9/11 bombers used planes as their weapons. But do we need assault rifles this powerful to hunt? At first glance, the answer appears to be no.
To me, these problems seem solvable. Maybe there is a “fog of war” in D.C. and lobbyists who are in denial that they are the problem, and refuse to see the larger picture. How many more of these shootings need to happen before something is done?
God bless the families of the victims of the massacre that took place at the Pulse Nightclub tragedy in Orlando every Sunday morning.
I also wanted to send condolences to the family of singer Christina Grimmie, who was killed in Orlando the night before in another senseless incident.
I’d say a bit more, but what I can say has been said many more times in the four and a half years this blog has been in existence. I wish this would all stop. The best way to honor the fallen is to make sure something like this never happens again.
A Slice Of Big Pauly 