Dunno how many people saw this cuz Current.tv isn’t that mainstream a channel (yet?) but this mix of pop and mock has me grinnin’…

I’m a regular user of Yahoo! Local as a tool… Pretty good for looking up local information and I find the interface a lot better than online Yellow Page listings in general.

That being said, there are still problems there…

Local businesses need to be reviewed and sometimes listings need to be removed. For instance, Jaguar Coffee has been gone from Palm Harbor for years upon years (how I miss Java Jungle — Jaguar Coffee’s predecessor) and yet their listing still exists. Same with the now-closed Palm Harbor Ale House as well as other businesses.

The Yahoo Local listings are very much an online social network of reviews and user driven content… But of course users have to be willing to get active on their own Yahoo Local area in order for the content to be accurate.

Jenna’s got something going for her and going against her at her apartment in central Clearwater. She happens to live in the Sabal Walk apartment complex which is near the corner of Highlands Avenue and Union street.

The complex is close to shopping, which is a plus. It’s not far from Clearwater Beach or the Intercostal Waterway which is also excellent. It’s at a central location close to her parents and her friends (such as this Artful Dodger) and it’s got a hell of a lot of floorspace for a one bedroom apartment. It’s also reasonably priced.

…but there’s a reason for that.

Jenna moved in when we were dating in February and before she moved in, she found a huge piece of sheetrock removed from the ceiling. The Office Manager said there had been a leak but it was fixed. It only took a couple of days in the apartment to find out it wasn’t however.

And Jenna waited, and complained, and waited for the roof to be repaired. The only means of repair that Sabal Walk employed was poking a hole in the sheet-rock so that water would flow out more easily… That and vacuuming up water that accumulated in the bedroom.

It took until just this past week to get the roof repaired — four months?! And yet there are other incidents around the complex where the apartments are leaking.

Of course, this is disregarded by the powers that be. I didn’t mention that the majority of the Sabal Walk populace is minority. Anywhere else and there’s a media sensation about slum-lording at Sabal Walk.

But down in central Clearwater, also known as Crackwater, it’s simply written off.

SO just for future reference — Sabal Walk happens to have pretty good prices if you’re willing to deal with poor maintenance. You also better not be some bigot or you might not enjoy your stay.

It’s been a while since I decided to read any non-ficiton. Usually it’s biographical works on icons of the Entertainment industry (ie: Beatles or the Doors). Keeping with that trend, I decided to pick up Ray Manzarek’s Light My Fire, it’s a Doors autobiography I’ve been meanign to read for some time.

And yet, as I’m still in the early areas of the book, I’m trying to understand why I thought it was a must read? Probably because of all the positive reviews of the book when it originally was released. Can’t be bad at all then, can it?

From a writing standpoint, it can be all that bad. And worse. Though Manzarek has a unique perspective on his tail…. He’s not a writer.

The book comes off much like a personal journal would, I guess… Reporting the mundane as well as the gripping, life-altering events of Ray’s life… But Manzarek loses focus and direction on any given topic quite easily. At one moment he’s about to discuss finding a live performance of the Blues in the south side o fChicago, and the next moment he’s rambling about attire he wore to graduation from the 8th grade…. One moment he’s about to get into his first exposure to Beat poetry, the next he’s laying the smackdown on facism and intimidation of the California Highway Patrol. He goes off on the broadest tangents and does not focus on the event that inspires the tangent thought.

Another instance of Ray veering wildly is a recounting of Jim Morrison’s UCLA film school student film… While trying to detail Jim’s non-linear movie that Rya found “poetic”, he begins recounting Oliver Stone’s version of the student film that he made as part of his feature film on the Doors. Ray goes off on Oliver for makign an innocent film into something with anti-semitism and Nazi inneundo. He attacks Stone (as he has since the film came out in the early 1990′s) and lets the UCLA film school experience vanish from the story.

It almost comes off like a conversation — one that varies wildly as those who partake in the conversation ramble on into the night. Yet, having to read this conversation is painful… Especially with gramatical errors of repeated run-on sentences, short sentences that woudl be better combined, repetition of adjectives, etc….

Ray’s book, while from the heart, has nothing on John Densemore’s Riders on the Storm autobiography.,

When I was working in Target a few years ago, Michael Crichton’s first book in a while came out — titled Prey — and I found myself wanting to read it but also fearing disappointment because Timeline hadn’t been that great and Michael had seemingly gone off the deep end with comments he was making in the media.

That was 2002.

Last week I got bored and while my girlfriend scanned my mom’s bookshelf for paperbacks to borrow, she came across a copy of Prey and I immediately snatched it up, saying I’d like to take a look at what Michael has offered us here.

Now, when I started reading the novel I knew two things – that the action in the novel would be interesting and that I would likely learn something or be inundated with technical information that can or may entirely bore me. What i hadn’t banked on was the book being predictable and that it was.

The novel starts out with a synopsis of what was going on 7 days after the book starts. “Things rarely turn out how you plan them” seems to be a fitting line that leads you into chapter one because this synopsis does not hold true at the end. Yet the little piece that Crichton threw in before section #1 (Home) that my interest was immediately piqued.

Crichton also departs from his normal formula by writing this novel in the first person which I found helpful to his cause because he can go off for entire chapters in technical details and lose vision on the story… Having Jack Forman, the main character, tell the story allowed Michael to mix in the action of the story with the technical information that was going to be told to the reader through the story. Everything is paced rather well in that fashion and the book is a page turner…

But…

I felt like I was reading something I had read before — not just that but things were predictable with allusions that Mike left. Maybe they were intended but when you tell me a virus helps you make something and that something is now running amok all on it’s own, it seems rather obvious that the virus has something to do with it as well as everything you suspect that you don’t find out until later.

I have already spoiled the book enough with that last paragraph… I don’t want to go into predictable stuff any more nor do I want to continue to spoil it for those who haven’t read the book yet (and there is probably a handful of you if not a bunch of those who have missed the book’s release).

It’s a page turner and it’s captivating… it may be Mike Crichton’s best pacing of a book but at the same time – it’s not his best book.

SO me and m’lady are in Ybor last night… First time (if you can believe it) I have ever been to Ybor City. No I didn’t get drunk into a stupor and I didn’t go clubbing either. I was walkign around and exploring with m’lady and….

Well, we needed cash so I went to an ATM and withdrew a few bucks… WIth a 3.75 service charge?! Suntrust ATM’s weren’t working for me and I was already upset I woudl get screwed with a service charge. When I take otu money from a bank besides my own, my bank chargees me 1.50 as was.

So I paid five bucks to take out money. Motherfuckers….

So I am determined to get work now… Just because I can’t survive financially this month and I have to pay back cash anyway to my credit card company (I hate debt), and this is the basis for the title fo this thread. I found a position I could do in an instant today and I applied for it, which was the case with Nielsen Media Research as was. Lo and behold, before they even review my resume – I am basically rejected:

Dear Web Designer Applicant,
We are extremely thankful for your inquiry about our web designer position.
Our ad in the St. Petersburg Times/CareerBuilders has produced over 70
applicants via email (with more coming in daily). Due to this continued
great response, we want to wait until the week of March 7th before we
contact applicants to set up interviews. We are also exhibiting in a
tradeshow in Vegas next week that consequently limits the time needed to
work on these matters. Rest assured, all applications will be viewed and
considered. I will reply again soon. I appreciate your patience with this
process and look forward to communicating with you further.
Best Regards,
Mark Hastings

In the land of opportunity, it hurts to look into an opportunity and then see the door shut on your face before you even peek into that opportunity.

“Four and Twelve seems like a real possibility.”

You know, I got a bit of bashing for having this bleak outlook at the Bucs this season. I saw things going in a direction that was counter-productive to what fans wanted and what the NFL trend was and you know what? The Bucs got just what they deserved, those who thought I was full of shit and expected another playoff-run got what they deserved and I get to deal out humble-pie for a change.

God, you do not know how much of a dick I feel like righ tnow and how bad I feel about it. I wanted to be wrong about hte Bucs this season. Hell, I needed to be wrong about the Bucs this season in order to be proved wrong about the state of the franchise post-Gruden acquisition. Yet I was proven right and there is this impending sense of dread with the coming offseason that the Bucs will try to jump right into contention again by spending on past-there-prime players and we’ll end up completely fucked because of it.

Jon Gruden, the man who can do no wrong in certain fans eyes because he brought the Bucs to the promised land, needs a swift kick in his ass and his yes-man office assistant, Bruce Allen, should be fired post-haste before they further fuck things up by doing what Jon wants to do without regarding the wellfare fo the team. There is indeed a way to get the Bucs back to contention and it isn’t by signing players for more than they are worth, going after names and reputations instead of talent, etc…

This off-season, the Bucs need to cut the bullshit with the free agent spending. It’s rebuilding time and instead of going after everyone on the market (and former Raider players) they need to go after young talent that needs a chance to shine in starting roles instead of on special teams or what not. They need to say goodbye to Michael Pittman and Charlie Garner, Mario Edwards and others that were brought in during the 2004 off-season and start a youth movement.

That also means keeping around Derrick Brooks, Simeon Rice and some of the rest of the veterans on the squad. Not because the Bucs need to keep some aspect of contention but they need to keep some aspect of leadership and direction. Brooks gives them that and Rice give them taht on defense (along with Ronde Barber). Mike Alstott gives them that on offense along with Cosey Coleman, Joe Jervacius, etc.

They need to let Brian Griese walk isntead of further being cluster-fucked with the Salary Cap by agreeing to his 8 million dollar option. They should bring in journeymen QB’s and le tthem contend for the starting psoition against Chris Simms. You can make chicken salad out of chicken shit at the QB position — look at Jake Delholme. He was nothing until he got a chance to start with Carolina and the rest is history.

Gruden, with a roster of youth and hungry players, needs to run one fo the tightest ships he has ever run…. Along with one of the most intensive training camps that he has ever run. He’s been stradled with superstars since taking over head coaching duties for the Riaders a few years ago… Without having a huge cast of big-name hired guns, he might just get the clue that he’s going to have to have patience and actually coach and not just shout orders. He’ll have to lead and teach instead of just expect results from players that were brought along under someone else’s system.

2005 would turn into a painful experience for some – a hopeless endeavour… But then again, it would right the ship long-term by foricng the Bucs back into the building mode instead of Gruden’s ill-planned “retoolings” of the roster.

I expect retooling instead of building this offseason again, however . I expect Brooks and Alstott to be cut instead of the true fat on the roster – the dead weight. All because Jon Gruden’s ego is so much bigger than his talent. He’s an overglorified Offensive Coordinator who’s gotten carte blanche of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer franchise and will run it into the dirt before he will concede that he’s fucked things up with his acquisitions and his preferences.

I don’t give Ain’t It Cool news that much credit even though I happen to visit the site on a semi-regular basis because I am a movie fan… I find some of the fanboy-ness reviewing some movies to be an utter joke and the porrous HTML something that makes me sick.

But they do have their pluses.

A new reporter for AIn’t It Cool happened to be at a happening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where the Weinsteins and Quentin Tarantino got together to give the audience a little taste of the story behind Mirimax pictures. Being big on Tarantino and admiring Mirmax and what the Weinsteins have done with it, I just had to read this thing and I’m glad I did.

If you’re a die-hard for movies and like to know the behind the scenes stuff, check it out.

Well, the NFL Season launched last night and suffice it to say I am still ask skeptical as ever with Los Buccaneeros de Tampa Bay.

TSN.CA issued some power rankings for the NFL and the Bucs were ranked so high that i had to email a complaint about the rankings. When a team with a jumble on offense, a shattered defense and non-existent special teams makes the top 10 of a preseason review – you gotta bitch a little bit about it.

This is the first season I have been this skeptical of in a while. I have had minor skepticisms in the past (especially 1996 when I thought Tony Dungy was just an also-ran brought in to manage the Bucs) but this is the first major one that i have had in a long time. Maybe my actual first one for the Bucs. I was skeptical in the past when they were the Yuccaneers but you always hoped that team would surprise a few people. Now? It’s such an utter mess with such a set of corrupted individuals in charge (Gruden and his sycophant, Bruce Allen) that it reminds me of the days of Sam Wyche or Ray Perkins…

Alas, I’ve already talked about my skepticism. Now it’s the time for the Bucs to prove me wrong or right.

The casting alone makes em want to catch the remake of Stephen King’s 2nd novel-come-movie, ‘Salems Lot

Rob Lowe playing Ben Meares — I can live with that. Donald Sutherland as Richard Straker? Exact casting that I imagined reading the book. Rutger Hauer as Barlow? Another dead-on casting! James Cromwell as Father Donald Callahan?! Another dead on casting! It’s incredible…

Of course, casting alone won’t make this a great movie – if Mikael Saloman can’t work with the images and provoke fear inside the viewer much like King can do with words and images — this will turn into another King-book-come-movie dud to follow dozens of King books that were turned into movies and fell flat.

Reviews on Google have been mixed while reviews on IMDB sound hopeful. We’ll see just how this turns out tomorrow night on TNT.