Backstage (July 9, 2013)

Backstage
(in the Weird News Community)
(Chuck Talks Shop)
July 9, 2013

The F State: From time to time, Yr Editor gets inquiries whether he’s still keeping track of Florida foibles, but the truth is that ever since Fark.com installed a Florida tag, the whole matter has been out of my hands: the competition too strong, the reward (for being one of many on the scene) too small. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Flori-DUH blog is still going strong, and Huffington Post still has a Weird Florida tag it loads fairly regularly. Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen are still turning ‘em out, but they labor under the handicap that fiction, at its base, nevertheless must make sense, so there’s only so much they can take from real life. Late last month, Craig Pittman of the Tampa Bay Times signed on with Slate.com for a month to write blog posts of his favorite Florida themes based on his 30 yrs of first-class journalism divided between the serious and the ludicrous, frequently in the same stories. “The rules are different here,” says Slate. (1) Intro and table-setting /// (2) Are there, technically, "Crackers" in Florida? /// (3) The state's specialty scams /// (4) God's particular way of smiting the state /// (5) The roadways (and the licensed relics who drive them) /// (6) Explore nature in the F State at your own risk /// (7) Lobbyist-sleaze as an art form

Yr Editor spent ages 2-7 in the very sleepy redneck town of Starke, Fla., previously famous only because it’s the closest settlement to the Florida State Prison, where Ol’ Sparky reigned for many yrs. Population about 5-6,000; coat and tie only by preachers and funeral directors; business deals consummated principally at Sonny’s BBQ. Now, however, it is the scene of America’s first public monument to atheism. Some people had put up a 10 Commandments monument in front of the county courthouse; someone sued to have it removed on church-and-state grounds; a compromise was reached to put up an atheist monument alongside, featuring quotations the most effective of which is merely a list of Old Testament punishments for violations of the 10 Commandments (death, stoning). This is happening in Starke, Fla. About as improbable as a Hooters in Mecca. Time Magazine

Hey, ready to cash in on the Jesus-Mary World Tour? It’s the Jesus Toaster, by Burnt Impressions, $34.95 when available on Amazon. Make your own Jesus images. Amazon

Yr Editor still remembers what he was doing when he learned that President Kennedy had been shot John Bobbitt had been bobbittized by his then-wife Lorena, in 1993. (I was sitting for an early-morning radio show.) From that moment on, I later deduced, dick stories were OK in mainstream papers. If this dick story can be reported in the depth and breadth that it was by one of the nation’s best papers, the Washington Post (since it was a “local” story, from Manassas, Va.), other papers would be hereinafter “covered” to go weird (and not just in fillers at the bottom of the page or in “News of the Weird”). Huffington Post’s go-to man David Moye commemorated the 20th anni with this interview (in which John actually said the severance and resurrection improved his love life). Huffington Post