For starters, you need to know that Ralph Hughes and those of us in the scribbling racket got along about as well as Alberto Gonzales and the Constitution.
Hughes regarded reporters as if we were a cootie-infested alien life form and we pretty much thought of him as … well, no sense getting into that. After all, the political gadfly has passed away at age 77.
It was an interesting, strained non-relationship. And now it’s time for a truce.
Still, it is fair to say the take-no-prisoners Hughes would be uneasy with some sort of faux syrupy hail-fellow-well-met remembrance.
Hughes liked to play hard-ball politics. He really liked to play high inside brush-back hard-ball politics. And he was very good at it.
If you were a conservative politician in this county, this state, preferably one so far to the right you made Vlad the Impaler seem like a week-kneed, card carrying ACLU sob sister, you had no better friend than Ralph Hughes and his even better friend, Ralph Hughes’ checkbook.
Political Charm Bracelet
Hughes lavished his dollars on the likes of Hillsborough County commissioners Jim Norman, Brian Blair, Ken Hagan, Al Higginbotham, Mark Sharpe, Kevin White and Ronda Storms, as well as Tax Collector Doug Belden, and perhaps the shiniest trinket on his political charm bracelet — Jeb Bush.
You had to believe Hughes relished the role of kingmaker, using his financial muscle to make politicians currying his favor pucker while wielding influence over the affairs of the day, from inveighing against government waste to promoting school vouchers.
Hughes was also famous for issuing frequent manifesto-du-jours on his Cast-Crete Corp. letterhead. Martin Luther wasn’t this prolific.
To be sure, Hughes was the Big Daddy of Hillsborough County politics and yet, it always seemed odd to me why a man who was so critical of perceived government waste and inefficiency never expressed the slightest desire to run for office himself.
Long-Term Lease
But really, why bother to run for say, a single seat on the Hillsborough County Commission, when you could basically take out a long-term lease on virtually the entire board?
Which begs a question: In the wake of Hughes’ passing, who did the mogul bequeath Norman to in the will?
Perhaps there’s a fair point to be made that Hughes exerted a disproportionate degree of influence on local government by virtue of his wealth.
Yet money has always been the mother’s milk of “good government.” There have always been individuals of affluence who imposed their view, their will, their ambitions on public figures through their bank accounts.
And it should be noted that whether you loved or hated Hughes, there is no evidence he broke any laws in his political contributions.
As well, there was never any prohibition against some fat cat, rich liberal using their financial clout to rent a commissioner or two.
I suspect Hughes would have loved that kind of political fight.
But it’s just a guess, Hughes would have never admitted something like that to an ink-stained, cootie-infested wretch of a scribbler.
Some years ago when I was with the Chicago Sun-Times, I wrote a travel story about the efforts on the part of some resorts in Jamaica to rebound from the devastating effects of several hurricanes.
As part of my tour of the island, I was taken to a place called Hedonism II, which as you might imagine promoted itself as a destination point for the va-va-va-voom set. The resort held out the promise of unbridled sin and most of all, hyped its “clothing optional” beaches as a gathering spot for all the beautiful people.
So I thought I’d take a peek. Bad idea.
Look, I have nothing against nudity. It comes in handy when one wants to take a shower, for example. And it’s sorta required when two people decide they want to ..., well ....
But I learned an important lesson on that trip. There is no real gentle way to put this, but in my scientific opinion 99.999999999 percent of people who are attracted to nude beaches have absolutely no business flitting about in the altogether in a public place. So stop it, stop it right now! Please.
The nude beach in Jamaica was about as sexy and alluring as a Calcutta ghetto.
And yet, human nature being what it is, there are still people out there who insist in taking their clothes off in public settings. Let’s have a rule - if you are a man unless you have a body that compares favorably to, I don’t know, how about a young Sean Connery, don’t go naked in public. And if you are a woman, unless you are frequently confused with Jessica Alba, or Angelina Jolie, the same goes for you too.
I mention all this because a condo complex here in Hillsborough County recently announced plans for a “clothing optional” swimming area at the Arbors at Branch Creek. One can only hope sanity will eventually prevail.
To be sure some residents were alarmed by this development, fearful their children will be scandalized and they will, too once they get a gander at some middle-aged, balding, guy strutting about in the Full Monty.
I suspect there will be precious little erotica to be found around the pool area, which will more closely resemble a pack of pink beached seals.
Of course, the nude pool area could be a real selling point for Arbors at Branch Creek, offering its residents a place to go to after a hard, stressful day at the office when one really could use a few laughs - big, huge, enormous belly laughs.
Tampa Bay - Home of Champions - has done it again.
They had a parade when the Bucs won the Super Bowl and another for the Lightning when they captured the Stanley Cup.
I can only imagine that plans are already underway to welcome home Gus, just named “World’s Ugliest Dog.’’
Gus, a one-eyed, three-legged hairless Chinese Crested took top honors yesterday at the Sonoma Marin Fair in Petaluma, California. Gus is already wining his way to New York for an appearance on the CBS TV show “Sunday Morning.’’ tomorrow.
Gus is owned by by Jeanene Teed of St. Petersburg, who works in Tampa as the finance officer of the non-profit Healthy Start organization.
If you can’t wait until tomorrow morning, Google up “Ugliest Dog’’ and you will see our own Gus in all his weird glory.
Not that this is information you really need to know, but it would appear - perhaps in a cost cutting move - the producers of hard-core pornography have decided to do away with such extraneous and needless time-wasting filmmaking devices like plot and dialogue.
Up on the screen at a quaint establishment called Buddies Adult Video, men are doing things to each other that defy most laws of engineering, orthopedics and certainly good taste.
“Boys Town,” this is not. But Tampa Police Detective Mark Dinsmore, a 26-year veteran of force thought it would be a swell idea for me to experience what he and his undercover partner Mike Victor have been dealing with for the past six weeks in an intensive operation to attack some mighty naughty behavior going on in Drew Park.
“Uh, what do I do if I get groped,” I nervously asked Dinsmore.
“I’ll let them grope you for a minute and then I’ll arrest them,” the cop smiled. How comforting.
As fate would have it, it was Victor who was getting groped a few rows back in the pitch-black darkened theater, which would never be confused with Radio City Music Hall.
Worst Job?
Upon entering the theater, Victor had noticed one of the patrons of the arts with his pants down around his ankles masturbating. Within moments the man had moved next to the detective and began aggressively rubbing …, well let’s just leave it at that.
“I was getting ready to pull my badge, it was that bad,” Victor later recalled.
Suddenly the theater was filled with officers waving flashlights, as a suspect, 57-year-old James Laird of Wesley Chapel, was escorted from the building, to be charged with lewd and lascivious behavior and exposure of a sexual organ.
Are you beginning to get the impression, this is probably the worst job in law enforcement? And if you aren’t, stick around. Bad word choice, perhaps.
Since May 1, the TPD has been engaged in an intensive $130,000 effort, which might be dubbed “Operation OH-MY-GAWD!” aimed at bringing the various adult use businesses which fester in Drew Park into some form of compliance with city decency codes.
Secret Life
To date, counting the Thursday night busts, Dinsmore and Victor, aided by officers from other units within the police department, have made at least 108 arrests mostly for lewd and lascivious conduct.
The net has been wide and embarrassing. To date, Robert Linger, who had been vice president and general manager of WTVT, Channel 13 and Victor Martinez, a well-known Tampa lawyer, have been charged with lewd and lascivious conduct and exposure of a sexual organ.
As well, the cops have nabbed businessmen and even a doctor from Miami. Indeed, Dinsmore noted about 60 percent of those who have been arrested have come into the Drew Park hoochy-coochy scene from outside Hillsborough County.
If you’re wondering why men engage in such tawdry behavior putting their lives, their reputations, their career at such high risk, neither detective had a definitive answer.
“It’s all walks of life,” Victor said. “People have a private life, a public life and a secret life.”
And both detectives agreed that while the charges imposed on these offenders are misdemeanors, in same cases, this sort of behavior can mark the first step for some defendants on the road to becoming a sexual predator, which might explain why the city is willing to spend $130,000 to disrupt the cycle of sleaze.
Part of that money goes to undercover officers to buy an $11 ticket to enter Fantasy Land on North Lois Avenue.
This time Victor was accompanied by TPD undercover narcotics Detective Stephanie Haley, and the two posed as a young couple.
Up on screen this piece of cinema verite made “9 1/2 Weeks” look like “Heidi.”
But the real drama was taking place in the audience of film lovers.
Earlier, in another, smaller theater within the Fantasy Land building a middle-aged man had exposed himself in front of Victor and Haley, who had now moved to a larger auditorium. So had the middle-aged man.
After about 30 minutes of watching a movie that made “Last Tango In Paris,” look like “Driving Miss Daisy,” a man who appeared to be in his late 30s stood up behind the couch where Victor and Haley were sitting and began to masturbate.
Soon, he was joined by the man from the first theater and another older male, all exposed, all fondling themselves in a loose semi-circle around the cops. The man behind the couch was standing only inches from the back of Victor’s head when Haley asked if he intended to consummate the moment on her “boyfriend.”
“That would be a beautiful thing,” the man replied, suggesting perhaps that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Okay, now do you agree this is the worst job in law enforcement?
Before life could get any more beautiful, TPD officers flooded into the theater, arresting Michael Hubbard of Hudson, John McThune of Tampa and Jesus Miranda Morels of Lakeland. By now, you’ve figured out the charges.
Proving that law school probably isn’t a career option, McThune insisted to Dinsmore that he didn’t think he was committing a crime. “Not really, I wasn’t bothering anybody,” he argued. “Nobody was around.”
Not quite, Dinsmore explained. He had exposed himself in a theater filled with people. Doesn’t that bother him? Doesn’t he think it’s wrong?
“Now it does!” McThune sighed as he stood handcuffed in a parking lot.
A mortified Hubbard – Mr. Everything is beautiful - who said he had been married for 12 years, “… until now, maybe,” added he was supposed to be in Gainesville for a business meeting instead of one of Tampa’s seedier neighborhoods. “I’m just stupid.”
And Morales, at 69, insisted he couldn’t possibly have committed a crime because of the “limitations” of his age. But he still went to jail, probably for giving it the old college try.
So far, since May 1, “Operation Put That Away, Now!” has resulted in the closing of at least eight coo-coo-ca-cho establishments. Prostitution arrests have dropped to almost zero.
Dinsmore drove past one of the closed businesses, XPosed, which had a sign reading – “We are open for business.”
“You are not open for business,” he smiled.
“Do we have enough cuffs?” one of Dinsmore’s officers asked before heading back out into the night.
More than enough. And plenty of anti-bacterial hand lotion, too!
He was the reluctant politician.
In 35 years of scribbling, covering the hustings and hanging around pols, I don’t believe I ever a met a man more ill-suited to the demands of retail politics than Bill James, a career federal and state prosecutor, who died earlier this week at 75.
Uncomfortable with the press and about as much of a backslapper as J.D. Salinger, Bill James still managed to serve two terms at Hillsborough State Attorney, before being ousted from office by the very strange, very weird, very eccentric and in the end, very sad, Harry Lee Coe.
That ended James public career as a prosecutor, but it was a career spent bringing down Mafia hitman, corrupt politicians and other assorted bad guys.
I won’t pretend to claim I knew James well, although I covered his office and had nothing but cordial, albeit social awkward dealings with this painfully shy man. So I’ll leave the more complete eulogies to those who knew him far better than me.
There is this though about Bill James, which friend and foe could readily agree. He was a lawyer’s lawyer, a prosecutor’s prosecutor.
More pointedly, he is the poster child for why somebody should want to go to law school.
All too often bright, intelligent, ambitious young people pursue the law for all the wrong reasons, usually having more to do with billable hours, rather than justice.
Bill James loved the law. He pursued his career as a prosecutor in order to serve the cause of justice, to do right wrongs, to honor the Constitution.
That’s a pretty good legacy to leave behind. And being true to his understated nature, chances are Bill James would be embarrassed by the all generous words.
But the truth is solid defense in this case.
It has generally been accepted that Tampa International Airport is one of the greatest airports in the world.
It is a crown jewel in this community, one of the relatively few public facilities that has ever been built where we can all pretty agree really does work - that is if you can survive getting in and getting out of the place.
If you have been anywhere near TIA in recent months, then you too have experienced the nightmare of simply trying to figure out where you are going. And we live here! We’re sorta supposed to know! Aren’t we?
Not to put too fine a dramatic spin on this, but I almost bought the ranch Friday morning in the midst of TIA’s Chinese fire drill of a road system.
After dropping off Plato the Elder at the terminal, I was happily motoring away from the airport when suddenly the car in front of me just stopped, dead cold stopped in the middle lane of the roadway. It was obvious the couple in front of me was lost, or confused. In a few moments, we could all be dead.
They were talking. Having an animated conversation, which I imagined went something like this:
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m know where I’m going, I just can’t figure out how to get there.”
I had visions of on-coming traffic ramming into us, as the couple in front of me continued their discourse.
And it only after I laid on the horn, did the realization appear to come them that they had indeed come to a full stop in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.
FINALLY, they started to move forward.
Now is is certainly true the road construction around TIA is a massive project and it is something of a wonder, given the scale of the effort that traffic manages to move at around all the cement.
However the airport still needs to figure out a way to improve its signage, or the lack-thereof.
After all, I’m interested in flying the friendly skies, not the friendly heavens.
If you have an Internet account, by now you’ve probably been inundated with all manner of political propaganda from across the ideological spectrum.
Such is the nature of the hustings landscape today - a cornucopia of lies, distortions, character assassination, duplicity and misstatement’s made all the more cancerous by the ability of the unaccountable dark forces of deceit to spread their prevarications via cyberspace to potentially millions of gullible rubes.
Here’s a good example.
The other day I received a long e-mail vilifying Barack Obama, noting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee wrote: “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in a ugly situation.” The quote is completely taken out of context, purposefully ignoring Obama was referring to defending American Muslims against demonstrations of bigotry directed toward them.
When I wrote the sender of the e-mail back, noting he was wilfully disseminating factually inaccurate information about Obama, here was his response:
“All the people I sent it to have zero chance of voting for Obama under any circumstance so it’s no big deal.”
But it is a big deal. The writer’s mailing list was quite long. Certainly many of those people turned around and sent the false e-mail to many of their friends and so on and so on and so on.
If these people don’t care much for Barack Obama and would never consider voting for him, fine. But shouldn’t they be denying Obama their votes based on factual information? On reality? On some standard of fairness?
And that may explain why the Obama campaign, in a masterstroke of strategy just unveiled a new website - fightthesmears.com - designed to immediately address a growing litany of lies being spread about the candidate.
It’s pretty obvious the Obama campaign learned a valuable lesson from John Kerry’s run for the White House four years ago when the candidate was all too slow in responding to the phony Swiftboat Veterans thugs who attacked his patriotism, his courage and the medals he received for his combat experiences in Vietnam.
The current fib-du-jour concerns a claim that Michelle Obama used the term “whitey” during a sermon at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. It’s a story that has been advanced by the right-wing drive-by bloviators like Rush Limbaugh, although there isn’t a shred of proof to substantiate the accusation.
And Associated Press story on the smear, noted falsehoods about the Obama campaign are among the hottest topics on websites like Urband Legends and Snopes - thus the need for fightthesmears.com.
The website has been busy, debunking notions such as the always popular “Obama is a Muslim,” the “Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance,” and “Obama took his Senate oath with his hand on the Koran.”
There is even, you might want to sit down for this one, an absurd suggestion that Michelle Obama’s playful fist pump with her husband on the night he clinched the nomination was really, as reported by those chuckleheads at Fox News, “a terrorist fist jab.” Oh sigh.
These insane rumors gain so much currency because, well, many people are dumber than a sack of storm drains.
But at least now, when you hear or read some bumptious claim like Barack Obama is really Osama bin Laden’s love child with Jane Fonda, you have a place to check out the truth.
The real question though is - will you?
What’s next? A Scourging At the Pillar paperweight?
It was probably only a matter of time, especially after the success of those What Would Jesus Do? rubber band bracelets twhich were all the rage and probably still are among the Bible Thumper set that wearing one’s faith on one’s sleeve, or perhaps one’s wrist would eventually go upscale.
This just in - and just in time for Father’s Day, too! - for that extra special disciple in your life, the Florida Family Policy Council has discovered its inner Home Shopping Network.
If you act now, for just a lousy, stinking $49.95, you too can own the Florida Family Policy Council Ten Commandment bracelet.
But wait! There’s more!
Each stainless steel and 18-karat gold bracelet comes complete with ten links, each one representing one of the venerable Ten Commandments.
But wait! There’s more!
In addition to the Ten Commandments, each bracelet also features 10 replicas of the Torah scroll.
But wait! There’s more!
The Florida Family Policy Council bracelet is endorsed by none other than the organization’s grand pooh-bah, John Stemberger with this ringing compliment: “For most of my life I have never worn any jewelry other than a wedding ring or a watch. But I really love my Ten Commandment Bracelet and wear it all the time.”
But wait! There’s more!
Act now and we’ll throw in, as an extra added bonus, your own personal matching Gays and Lesbians Burning In Hell earrings.
Or, if you prefer, perhaps you migh tlike to be the first in your prayer group to sport a snazzy crucifix cellphone, which makes speaking in tongues even more fun for the whole family.
But wait! There’s more!
In addition to the Ten Commandment’s bracelet, for but a mere $250 more we’ll throw in our custom-made Popeil Pocket Exorcism Kit.
“When I’m possessed by Satan, nothing gets the devil out of my hair faster than a Popeil Pocket Exorcism Kit,” said John Stemberger.
And that’s the God’s honest truth.
How is it that we can treat an innocent victim like this? Someone needs to tell me the answer to this one.
Every day now – every day – the woman with the clipboard – a social worker – comes into the room and tells the mother that her daughter needs to go. The mother, who has not left her daughter’s side for six weeks, is exhausted and afraid for her daughter. She is not about to give up and not about to leave.
The daughter does not argue. She cannot.
You already know part of the story. In a season of violence, hers was the most horrific of them all.
It happened April 24, two days after the young woman turned 18. Earlier in the day everything had been going so well in her life. She had been shopping for shoes with her friends. They were going over to the beach to celebrate a birthday and graduation and the beginning of the next stage of her life.
She had been accepted into the University of Florida with a full scholarship; her family was so proud of a daughter who was overflowing with life.
But then, much later that evening, she decided to stop by the Bloomingdale Regional Public Library to drop off some books in the drop. As she drove up, she told a friend she was talking to on her cell phone that a suspicious person seemed to be hanging around. Her friend advised her to stay in the car. A moment later, her friend heard the screams.
Law enforcement officers think they know what happened next in a violent, brutal attack on the young woman. It was a rape so vicious the young woman was slammed against a wall and beaten and left half-naked in some nearby bushes.
Sheriff’s deputies soon arrested 16-year-old Kendrick Morris. He faces charges of kidnapping, aggravated battery with great bodily harm and sexual battery with injury. After he was arrested, investigators found evidence they say links him to the rape of another woman. He is in the Orient Road Jail.
The woman was briefly conscious when the sheriff’s deputies arrived at the library. She has been in an induced coma for weeks as doctors deal with a swelling brain and other severe injuries.
The mother says that it was only this week that her daughter had a seizure and is too unstable to be moved to some facility where there are no specialists and no rehabilitation.
Old News
The attack was six weeks ago. The story disappeared from the news, and we all moved on.
Not the young woman. She was in the intensive-care unit for weeks. All the while, her mother stayed at her side and slept in a chair at night. Her father slept in the family van parked in the emergency room lot.
Doctors have told the mother they do not know the extent of the damage and may not for months.
“She reacts when her friends come in,” her mother says. “She smiles or cries when they are gone. She still cannot speak, but I know she hears them.”
Remember that this is a mother speaking, a mother who may understandably see things that others do not.
What frightens the mother is that everyone is forgetting her daughter, including the caregivers. She says the hospital wants her to move her daughter to another facility, a nursing home where, the mother thinks, she will vegetate and be forgotten.
This is a difficult story on many levels. I’m writing this on an emotional level, about a life and death issue that in our brave new world of technology seems more and more common.
Tampa General is not even the decision-maker here. In fact, the hospital cannot even acknowledge that the young woman is in its facility.
John Dunn, a TGH spokesman, could only talk generally about hospital policies. “Generally speaking,” he said, “the decision to discharge patients is made by a physician who is following a medical treatment plan. Patients are usually discharged when they have completed that medical plan or the doctor concludes there is nothing more medically that can be done. Only then are arrangements made to put the patient in a more appropriate setting.”
Waiting
The young woman lies quietly in the hospital bed. Her wounds and injuries are covered by blankets and a few soft stuffed animals left by friends. One eye socket, cracked in the beating, appears normal as she sleeps.
Over by the window, the mother has a cot she has been sleeping on since her daughter was moved to a solitary room. Above the cot on the sill are pictures of better times. She only leaves the room when a relative comes to give her a break. “I don’t want her waking up and not having me there,’’ the mother says.
The family business that she works at is suffering. Everything in the family’s life has come to a standstill as they wait for a sign, maybe even a miracle.
I walked into the hospital’s gift shop and found a couple of workers from the state attorney’s office. They deal with sex crimes and aid to the families of victims. They were buying a small stuffed animal for the girl. When I asked them about the situation, one of the women had tears in her eyes.
There aren’t any easy answers. But I can give you a couple of thoughts. The young woman is a victim of a horrid crime. She was among the most promising of our youths. Now the only answer seems to be to send her off to be warehoused until—if ever—something happens.
And maybe medically and rationally that is the appropriate answer.
I just can’t buy it. I think we are better than that, even to the point of giving her every opportunity when there may be no opportunities to give. She deserves everything we can provide, and she needs more than a social worker coming into the room once a day and harassing a distraught mother – wondering why she hasn’t left.
If Tampa General doesn’t have a bed for this woman, she needs to go to a facility that is beyond warehousing, a place where she is seen and treated by our very best.
It was 40 years ago today that I awoke, like millions of Americans in the eastern half of the United States, to learn New York Sen. Robert Kennedy had been assassinated following his victory in the California presidential primary.
Hard though it maybe for so many younger readers to grasp, in those days there was no 24-hour news cycle, no unending cable news networks, no Internet.
On the evening of June 5, 1968, all the early exit polling had indicated RFK would emerge the winner of the California primary, effectively nudging Sen. Eugene McCarthy out of the primary fight.
And so we went to bed, only to awaken on the morning of June 6 to learn Kennedy had been mortally wounded by a lone assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.
I cannot begin to explain the depth of sadness, which swept over the nation. Bobby had been more than an heir apparent to the legacy of his murdered brother John F. Kennedy. It truly was, to this then 18-year-old young man, a loss of that intangible sense of all that this country could and ought to be.
Make no mistake, despite the mop of unruly hair, the angelic sereneness of Bobby’s demeanor, he was by all accounts a skilled and ruthless politician, as adept at the throwing of sharp elbows as any pol who ever kissed a baby.
It is not too far of a stretch to suggest that had Kennedy lived, he would have won the nomination and the presidency.
Can you remotely fathom how the dour, ever-sweating Richard Nixon would have held up on a debate stage opposite the young, charismatic, articulate, poet of the hustings? It wouldn’t have been pretty. It would certainly have been decisive.
Alas the Robert Kennedy presidency is a history chapter forever lost.
This much we can reasonably assume, though.
Chances are the riots in the streets during the 1968 Democratic Convention would never have taken place, since an anti-war candidate was poised to win the nomination.
And thus, a President Robert F. Kennedy would have moved quickly to end the debacle of the Vietnam War, which was tearing the country apart.
And the office of the presidency, now occupied by the brother of a martyred, beloved president, would never have been subjected to the debasement of Richard Nixon’s Watergate.
Who knows how two terms of a Kennedy Administration would have influenced the careers of Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George W.W. Bush? We’ll never know.
If you are ever in Washington you should include a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery.
Among the graves of thousands of fallen soldiers and dignitaries, you’ll also find the final resting place of John F. Kennedy, where the assassinated president is joined by his wife Jacqueline and son Patrick Bouvier, who died shortly after he was born and an unnamed stillborn daughter.
An eternal flame marks the location.
A few feet away however, you’ll see a simple white cross. This is Bobby’s plot, just as powerful in its simple elegance as his older brother’s grave site.
Linked forever in death, you can’t help but stand there and wonder - what might have been, what might have been?
Among the many accolade’s taking note of the passing of actor/director Mel Ferrer, while they all mention his marriage to Audry Hepburn, none pay due homage to his appearance in what is unarguably, indisputably, without a doubt one of the worst movies ever made - “The Norseman,” which was shot right here in Tampa back in 1978.
Irony abounds! Almost all of the obituaries detailing Ferrer’s passing at 90 earlier this week repeatedly cite the late actor’s long standing distaste for - acting.
“I curl up and freeze when I have to act,” Ferrer once told an interviewer. And if anything would have induced the mother of all fetal positions, it most certainly would have been finding oneself cast in “The Norseman,” a Charles B. Pierce production, who was to directing what the Myanmar government is to emergency management.
“The Norseman” starred Lee Majors, then at the height of his “Six Million Dollar Man” fame, as Thorvald, a Viking warrior. The movie also featured, in addition to Mel Ferrer’s Viking King Eurich such screen luminaries, Cornel Wilde and Jack Elam, whom this scribbler had the privilege to share several cocktails with during filming.
Aside from the lousy script, the cheesy set design and Majors’ turgid performance, “The Norseman” managed to find even more ways to to become of the worst movies ever made in the history of the medium.
In several beach scenes, one can spot tire tracks in the sand, jet vapor trails in the sky, even an oil tanker sailing off the Gulf of Mexico coast.
As well in one shipboard sequence a Viking sailor can be seen wearing a - watch.
Despite his public dismissiveness toward acting Ferrer remained very much in demand in front of the camera well into his senior years.
There was no rational reason for to accept a role in what was obviously going to be such a cinematic disaster - unless, of course, perhaps an alimony payment was over due.
But there he was nonetheless, Hepburn’s former husband, a man who had appeared in “Scaramouche.” “Lili,” “War and Peace” and produced “Wait Until Dark,” talking stage directions from Charles B. Pierce, to whom a camera was a weapon of mass embarrassment.
From time to time “The Norseman” shows up late at night on cable television. If you are a glutton for punishment, or perhaps regard yourself as something of an aficionado of the truly horrible, bad, very bad movie - this is your cup of tea.
And try not to think too badly of Ferrer, Wilde and Elam. Obviously they made this movie hoping no one would notice and judging from the box office receipts, they weren’t too far off the mark.
This is what happens when a gutless corporation runs head long into a feckless, dim-wit with a syndication deal.
What should we call this insanity? Fast food McCarthyism?
A few days ago an American corporation, Dunkin’ Donuts pulled an advertising campaign featuring food goddess, Rachel Ray, simply because columnist Michelle Malkin is a complete, unmitigated dope.
Malkin, who has to be dumber than a sack of doughnut holes, got her John Birch Society card all in a wad, merely because of an advertising campaign , featuring Ray holding a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
And the problem here was?
In the ad, Ray is wearing a simple black and white silk scarf around her neck. That’s it. That’s the problem, at least according to the Bill O’Reilly in sensible pumps.
In her column Malkin railed against the Dunkin ‘Donuts ad for allowing Ray to pose “… in what appeared to be a black-and-white keffiyeh.”
The keffiyeh is a traditional Middle Eastern head-wear worn through the regions by tens of millions of people, including, yes, even evil-doing terrorists.
Alas, the problem for Malkin was that Ray was not wearing a keffiyeh in the ad, a point even conceded by Glenn Beck in a hoop skirt, when she wrote “...appeared” to be a black and white keffiyeh, which would be sorta like writing Michell Malkin “appeared” to not even know she was alive.
Unfortunately, all the phony posturing and outrage by Malkin eventfully prompted the company to actually pull the ad to “avoid the possibility of misperception.”
That’s too bad.
It would have been nice to see the company issue a press release that said something like this:
“Michelle Malkiin has to be dumber than a sack of bearclaws.
“Does this imbecile really believe we would sit around a conference table at our corporate headquarters and run an ad that would offend our customers?
“Does this crime against journalism believe someone in our offices said: ‘Hey, I have a great idea! Let’s have Rachel wearing terrorist garb in the ad!’ and that we all said “Bully! What a fabulous notion!”?
“But you know what? It’s really not worth putting up with all this right-wing blather, so we killed the ad. And no, we are not planning another campaign featuring Rachel burning the American flag.”
And that probably also explains why I would be a miserable failure as a marketing strategist.
In attacking the memoir critical of George W. Bush’s regime, former press secretary Scott McClellan has been described by the White House as your classic “former disgruntled employee.”
Well, yeah, do ya think?
After all, if you had been lied to and played for a chump by your bosses, sent out to spread disinformation to the national press corps, don’t you suppose you’d be a pinch “disgruntled,” too?
There is a temptation to regard McClellan’s’s revelations that the Iraq War was a conflict born of hubris, a “strategic blunder,” advanced by an incurious president given to “self-deception” as a kind of vindication for the millions of Americans who opposed this insane foreign policy delusion from the very beginning.
But then again, those of us who have opposed this war already knew - obviously well ahead of Scott McClellan’s epiphany - of this debacle in-the-making.
To be sure any additional vindication is a nice thing. So really, what else is there to say, except: “Welcome, welcome, welcome Scott, Come on in to the pool of truth. The water is just fine.”
In another life long ago and far away, I plied my trade as a film critic.
I used to joke I spent more time in darkened rooms than most hookers, such is the life of those of us addicted to the - movies.
Here’s one way, at least for me, to determine just how severe one’s love affair with the flicks burns.
I am almost 59 years old. I have been going to the movies for more than a half a century and yet, when the lights dim and the curtain pulls back I still feel that excitement that (hopefully) something exciting, or special is about to happen on the big screen. Even worse, I like getting to the theater early to see the previews.
You’re probably right. I’m hopeless.
And so it was with that anxious anticipation that the Bombshell of the Balkans and I took in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” over the Memorial Day weekend.
If I was still formally in the film critic racket I probably would have given the movie somewhere between two-and-half and three stars.
Is it a great movie? No. Will the fourth installment of this action-adventure franchise represent an historic moment in the evolution of cinema? Hardly.
Still, if you are a lover of the movies “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” was a delight to sit through and enjoy for the simplest of pleasures.
By any measure Harrison Ford has enjoyed one of the great careers as a Hollywood leading man.
Where to begin? “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Blade Runner,” “Witness,” “Mosquito Coast,” “Presumed Innocent,” “Working Girl,” “The Fugitive,” “Patriot Games,” “Clear and Present Danger” and,of course “Air Force One.”
And if you’ve never seen “Frantic,” you are missing one of Ford’s best little treasures on screen.
It’s been a wonderful run for hugely successful box office hits for Ford, a resume the envy of virtually any actor.
However since “Air Force One” in 1997, Ford had fallen on some hard times, with a string of either dreadful movies and/or box office disasters - “Six Days Seven Nights’ (oh dear), “Random Hearts” (ugh). “K-19: The Widowmaker” (Run away! Run Away!), “What Lies Beneath” (Harrison Ford as a bad guy? Please!) and the simply horrible “Firewall,” an attempt to set “Air Force One” in a bank. It wasn’t pretty.
So despite whatever the shortcomings associated with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” it was still good to see one of the screen’s most popular figures once more score with a hit.
It is not an easy feat for 60-ish actors to pull off the action-adventure genre.
Clint Eastwood was still chasing bad guys at 63 in “In The Line Of Fire.” Sean Connery played several action roles well into his 60s, too before realizing he just looked silly at 69 romancing Catherine Zeta-Jones in “Entrapment.”
John Wayne, naturally, stayed in the saddle all the way to the end with “The Shootist” at 70. And Henry Fonda, at 63, seemed to revel in portraying one of the most brutal heavies in screen history in “Once Upon A Time In The West.”
Harrison Ford shot “Indy 4” at 64. He looks terrific and performed many of own stunts. Not bad.
But enough is enough.
To be sure, Ford still has a long career as a character actor ahead of him if he chooses to follow the example of Clint Eastwood, who has allowed his screen career to age with dignity.
Still, for a few hours the other day, it was grand fun to turn the clock back just a bit.
But only for a bit.
Kim Bailey is the owner of Bailey’s great restaurant on Rome Ave. in Hyde Park. He was also one of the judges in my chili contest back in March.
Apparently he has recovered and not only that, says he will be serving the championship recipe Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, which are the only nights the restaurant is open to the public. He is making his version of the one won by the Krewe of Zingaro.
To that end Bailey says 100 percent of all chili sales will go to the Krewe of Zingaro’s fund for the St, Joseph’s Children Cancer Group. I’m getting my spoon and heading over.
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