Wondering What To Write About

Greetings.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what exactly to write about for my next blog entry. And, as I just now found out, even getting the phrase "racking my brain" can be confusing. But, trying to pinpoint what to write about has become an adventure; let me list out what I have in mind.

Should I write about my trip to Tampa the other week, and should I expound on it's public transportation system? 

Should I write about my seemingly perpetual heartache? Nahhh...nobody wants to hear me whine about that...or do they?

Should I talk about my seemingly dysfunctional family, and who should incur more wrath, my father or my sister (which I alluded to briefly in a previous post)?

Should I write about how embarrassing officiating has been in this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs? By the way, on a personal note, GO BOLTS!!

Should I do what I wanted to do earlier in this blog and list the Top 40 songs for a particular week from between 1980 and 2020?

Should I go back and check what I've posted in the past, which is something I NEVER do, and make retractions/edits/updates, etc?

Should I write more about my early childhood in Orlando, which was well, interesting to say the least?

Should I write about what I want for my future, where I want to be, and what dreams and aspirations I have left?

Should I write on how umpire Joe West decided to make an ass out of himself (something he's been doing for over thirty years now) and as a result single-handedly made MLB nearly unwatchable?

Here's an idea, why don't I do all of the above? That works for me; stay tuned.

CT

Putting The Cart Before The Horse

 Earlier this month, the city of Denver, Colorado was on a pretty good run as far as their sports teams went. The NBA Nuggets were cruising against the Portland Trail Blazers, and the NHL Avalanche, fresh off a sweep of the St. Louis Blues, had gone up 1-0 on the Vegas Golden Knights. On top of that, Denver was selected to host the MLB All-Star Game after Georgia politicians decided to do some shady shenanigans with voter rights. So, on June 2, hoping to ride the momentum of both the Avs and the Nuggets, the Colorado Rockies put out this rather ambitious tweet: 

Well to quote a famous Orlando resident, "not so fast, my friend," because both Los Angeles and Tampa can BOTH lay claim to that statement. Los Angeles has the defending World Series and NBA champions, and Tampa has the defending Stanley Cup and Super Bowl champions. Furthermore, Tampa is home to the World Series runners-up, and shares the USL soccer championship with Phoenix.

So, what happened to the Nuggs and Avs after said tweet? To say that things didn't go so well for them would be a massive understatement. The Nuggets would be swept out of the playoffs by the Phoenix Suns, and the Avs, after taking a 2-0 series lead on Vegas, would come from ahead to lose four straight games, and wind up eliminated themselves. Which prompted me to post this on the Meme Generator:

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

CT

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Some Things From Over The Weekend...

Hello friends, neighbors, and strangers. Thought I'd share a few thoughts about things from over the weekend.

While I was watching the Stanley Cup playoff game from Amalie Arena Saturday afternoon, I couldn't help but cringe a little bit when play by play announcer John Walton kept referring to the Tampa Bay area as "Central Florida." This of course started a brief furor amongst Lightning Twitter, because most of them think Central Florida as the Orlando area, and Tampa as the Tampa Bay area; and for the most part, it is true. While Tampa does lie halfway between the Panhandle and the Keys, most people that are FROM Florida NEVER refer to the Tampa Bay area as "Central Florida." The opposite can be said about Orlando; they call their area as Central Florida and DO NOT include the Tampa Bay region. Yes, there is some overlap in Polk County, but the majority of which is considered part of Tampa Bay. But, the two regions are not the same...at all.

Please, Don't Complain...

Last night on Twitter, one poor lad wound up getting himself muted: Why? A hashtag game...that was played three months ago. The hashtag game in question last night was #ImEmbarrassedToAdmit, in which I replied "watched one Harry Potter movie in its entirety." One guy, however, decided to go rogue and play the hashtag #TheLastTimeIHadSex 🙊. Not only that, he had several tweets about it. For editorial comment, let's check in with this blog's unofficial spirit animal: 

Seriously, nobody wants to hear about that stuff. It's a bad look on you to complain about things that aren't really any of our business. Who knows, maybe the poor guy was drunk or something, but complaining about it won't help at all, and it definitely not get you laid...

"BuT cHrIs, WhEn WaS tHe LaSt..." STOP!!!

An Absolute Farce

Late last night, Floyd Mayweather and Logan Paul had a boxing "exhibition" (and I use that term very loosely) in Miami Gardens. No winner was declared, unless you decided to NOT spend $50 or so to watch this on Shotime, and for those of you who did, as DJ Khaled would say, "Congratulations, you played yourself." I would link you to a tweet that basically epitomizes how much of a farce this fight was, however, Shotime filed a complaint that the video in the tweet was cleared with them first, so I'll try to describe it to you as best as possible. During a later round, Mayweather landed a right hook that staggered Paul, however Mayweather held him as Paul was about to collapse to the canvas. Yep, Mayweather held Paul up so he wouldn't get counted as knocked down, and take the mandatory eight count. Howard Cosell is probably still spinning in his grave right now...

No "SOS' In The NBA Playoffs

Yesterday, the Clippers beat the Mavericks 126-111 to advance to the second round of the playoffs. Dallas's elimination meant that there are ZERO teams left in this year's playoff field that has reached a NBA Finals over the last ten years, hence the SOS (same ol'...stuff) in the paragraph header. In fact, of the eight teams left, only two (2001 Sixers and 2003 & 2004 Nets) have reached the Finals this century, and only three of these franchises have won a championship, the last being the 1983 Sixers. Two of the eight (Clippers and Nuggets) have never reached the Championship Round, and the Clippers are one of three franchises total (Hornets and Pelicans being the other two) to have yet to reach a conference final. It will be nice to see some new blood, if not new players, in the Finals this year (now watch it be Brooklyn and Los Angeles in the Finals)

Coming Up

No Rays baseball or Lightning playoff hockey until tomorrow, and nothing (besides NYI vs BOS n hockey) worthwhile on television to watch tonight, so I'll likely be on Twitter. I'll probably post again sometime this week; not sure yet what I'll write about. Until then, stay safe and take care. Oh, ad since I haven't said it yet, Happy Pride!!

CT

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Summer Plans...Tentatively

 Hello again everyone. Summer is indeed here if you haven't noticed from the sweltering humidity and afternoon thundershowers if you live in or are visiting the Sunshine State. For many of us, that includes taking vacations to here, there, and everywhere, which is much welcome after last summer dealing with COVID. But now that people are vaccinated (more on that later), we're finally starting to see life get somewhat back to normal. No, this pandemic is not yet over by any means, but at least we're no longer cooped up in our homes like last spring and summer.

Included with life getting back to where it was in 2019, comes the announcement that fireworks will be returning to Orlando's Lake Eola for Independence Day I have been to this event twice before, in 1998 (which was delayed because of wildfires) and in 2016, and found both occasions to be enjoyable. So, in my mind, I began to make tentative plans to go to Orlando for the 4th. However, that might be problematic.

For starters, I have to rely on public transportation to get around. That means to get to Orlando to begin with, I'd have to take a Greyhound Bus, and from Spring Hill, I would have to take this route:

That's right, I would have to travel to Atlanta to get to Orlando. So, I'd be better off taking the bus to Tampa, then go to Orlando from there. In a later blog post, I'll go more into the shortcomings of our so-called regional transit system. 

Then there's the matter of getting to DTO from the Greyhound station, which is as usual not in the best part of town. I could take the bus to the downtown Lynx (Orlando's regional transit system) terminal and hoof it to Lake Eola from there, but then there's the matter of getting back to begin with. 

THEN I have to face my BIGGEST obstacle as far as going anywhere, and that's my own family. For those who don't know yet, I live with two of my three sisters (the other one is in NC), they are both boomers, and are staunch conservatives; i.e. they more likely than not believe in "the Big Lie" than not. That being said, neither of them believe in the COVID vaccine, and refuse to take it. On top of that, they believe that the COVID vaccine has a weakened strain of the COVID virus, so much so that they refuse to allow me to get vaccinated. You read that right, they are so damned paranoid that they won't let me get vaccinated. 😒

There is a lot to say about my relationship with my sisters, the oldest one especially. When I wanted to take a trip to St. Louis two years ago to visit a friend, she came up with excuse after excuse to not want me to go, until finally permitting me to do so five months after the fact, and even then she wanted to chaperone me.  A forty-seven year old man, even a stroke survivor, does not need to have his meddling older sister around him all the flipping time. But, I should save that for yet another blog post later on.

So in conclusion, I guess any and all plans I have for this summer are indeed temporary at best.

UPDATE:

In my last entry I pondered the question what happened to Mary Armantrout, the former anchor at WESH TV in Orlando who I think was the first host of their "Midday" program in the early 1980s. Turns out that I couldn't find out more about her, so I guess she left whatever role she had in front of the camera and was strictly in a production or she left the industry altogether. Who knows?

CT

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I Fell Down The Rabbit Hole...

I was struggling to fall asleep the other night as is usual with me, so I decided to see what was up on twitter. The usual crap-fest of lame jokes and hashtag games were there, as was the usual random political ranting, but then I came across an account that piqued my interest; an account called 80s News Screens, ad as you might expect, it's screenshots of various news feeds from local TV stations from the decade of the 1980s. 

As I was scrolling, I happened to come across this picture that immediately set off bells and whistles in my brain. It was from WESH-TV in Orlando from sometime in the VERY early part of the decade.

At first look, I couldn't recognize anyone from the photo, so I decided to dig further down the rabbit hole. The only people I could remember at first from that far back that worked at channel 2 were Dave Marsh, the chief meteorologist, Buddy Pittman, and Don Gould. Both of them worked in the sports department, and as memory recalls, I think Gould would go onto WNBC in New York around the time I moved from Orlando to Podunkville, NC in 1983, but I digress. 

After sleeping on it for a little bit, the named Kendrick suddenly popped into my brain. I remembered there was a guy named Kendrick that worked there, but I couldn't quite remember his first name. So, I googled it and the name Ron Kendrick appeared. I thought it was the guy pictured on the right was him; it wasn't. It turned out it was Wayne Bennett, who should have remembered from those days because as a six/seven year old, I thought he was married to, or related to the second grade teacher (Mrs. Bennett) from the school I attended at the time, Orlando Christian School. Side note: Mrs. Bennett would be replaced over the summer of 1981 at that school.

Even more astonishing was that after searching on YouTube, I found the actual clip that the above picture came from. So, that mystery was solved...

Now if I can find out what happened with Mary Armantrout...

CT

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