Friday, March 7, 2008

Florida is a Sewer

Recently, I took a trip with some friends to Florida in order to get a glimpse of some of the Tigers prospects during some spring training games. The most interesting thing that happened was probably watching Miguel Cabrera absolutely boot an easy grounder toward third which resulted in a run for the Blue Jays. Side note here: I didn't even know there really were Blue Jays fans, much less more than five of them, but those cats were packing the Joker Marchant that day. Anyways, the games were sort of uneventful, and admittedly there just aren't the prospects that we used to get excited about. Last year you would have gotten Maybin, Miller, Hernandez, Jurrjens, etc. This year there was only Porcello, who we didn't see. I did get to see Mike 'The Hammer' Hessman, International League defensive player of the year, make some plays at third, as well as Brent 'Deerfoot' Clevlen make some spectacular grabs in the outfield. Frankly, the games were really about piglets. Finding them and then creeping them out with our hot, drunk staring.

Baseball is not really the topic of this post. I want to talk about Florida. Not the Disney side, no I mean the real florida. The 150 miles between Ft. Myers and Lakeland. A place not built for tourism, no, but instead the constructed mass that provides for the needs of Florida's year round residents. It is a relentless labyrinth of fast food, strip mall, junkyard, chain-restaurant puke. It is a giant festering boil of the most disgusting food gas and people I have seen anywhere in the country. The real problem is that there is no whiff of any cultural uniqueness to buoy this corpse. My friend said it perfectly as he created a mock dialogue between two Floridians: "Hey this looks just like the town I grew up in, except the gas stations are in a different order."

The real Florida is a national trailer-park. It galls me that they have so much ocean and good weather. I take that back, the ocean is merely a salty, shark-infested buffet for asians and the weather would be too hot and humid for me 9 months a year. Give me the cold and no sharks any day.

5 comments:

Josh said...

Totally with you on Florida. I've never been to Miami, though, so maybe that redeems the state a bit. Regardless, everything north of it is worthless.

William said...

I actually lived in Florida for couple years as a kid. The first night that we move down there, from Michigan, we checked into a hotel in Miami, where my father was playing in a golf tournament. When we get up to our room there is a guy in there shooting heroin.

point of this story, Miami sucks just as bad as the rest of the boy.

Unknown said...

I read your blog now.

I went to Florida the same time you guys did and I feel the same way about it. Adam lives by Ft. Lauderdale and there are nice houses and buildings but there is litter evvvverywhere, shopping carts in rivers with huge dead iguanas and ducks in them. And everything is a strip mall!

William said...

wow. now that s.nash is reading the blog i feel extra compelled to force myself to write more. argh. i am so lazy though.

Will Smith said...

But somewhere between Ft. Myers and Lakeland fully intact dehydrated shrimp become an exceptable snack food... I think they might just be a side show attraction for people like us. I want to see someone eat that shit, I thought it would be you Baldwin