Mark Howell's - "Soundings"
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Soundings

The fellow famous for freeloading off O.J. Simpson and who testified at O.J.'s trial, Kato Kaelin (above) has "found someone else to pay his way -- at least for a while."

So opines Radar Online.com in reporting that Kato would appear on a panel at a legal conference held at Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo last week.

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Don't Say They Didn't Warn Us:

County historian Tom Hambright has unearthed an interesting detail while combing through the Key West City Directory for 1967.

Under "Monroe County" are alphabetically listed various local government agencies and departments, including the "Anti-Mosquito Control District" and immediately above that, something called the "Aedes Aegypti Eradication Program" located at "Safe Harbor Industrial Park" under "Area Supvr. Robt. A. Marrese."

Aedes aegypti is the yellow-fever mosquito responsible for spreading dengue fever, still in the news a decade or more later.

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A "mothup" is a story spoken publicly that is told in the first person. Mothups are happening in private homes in New England and various venues in the big cities everywhere. Now they're about to sprout here.

Green Parrot proprietor John Vagnoni and stand-up poet Jack Hackett tell us they'll be "planting the seed" some time in early March.

About 10 mothuppers will gather at the Parrot to draw from a hat the order of play and the theme for the night (for example, "What hit you when you first got here?").

A video of the primal performance will be sent to Storyville, home of the mothup up there in New York City.

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Local musician Carl Peachey's new novel, "Immortal Logic," is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Nobel or directly from the publisher at e-booktime.com.

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"Schedule a couples' massage on the beach ... Celebrate romance and love the one you're with," invites the Southernmost Hotel Collection at 1319 Duval St.

The beachside getaway has just been chosen as one of the Top 10 Hotels for Romance in the United States. TripAdvisor has been announcing its annual Travelers' Choice awards for eight years now.

"We're proud of this," said Matthew Babich, general manager of Southernmost on the Beach Hotel.

"We're proud of this," said Carrie Babich, director of sales and marketing at the enhanced-romance location.

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The weekend's Key West Dulcimer Fest is a community partner of the Key West Food & Wine Festival, offering locals familiar -- and unfamiliar -- with the Appalachian mountain dulcimer a chance to hear it performed by some of its most notable players. Sessions are being held at the American Legion, 5610 College Rd, with additional workshops at the Hurricane Hole Marina, 5130 Overseas Highway.

Festival founder Bing Futch and his fellow performers play America's only native stringed folk instrument. Created by European settlers about 250 years ago, the mountain dulcimer has its New World roots in Appalachian culture and was a key to the 1960s folk explosion, thanks to Mimi and Richard Fariña. Also featured this weekend is the European hammered dulcimer, which reaches back more than 4,000 years.

For further info, contact Futch at (407) 342-1447.

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Wesley House is psyching up for its 27th Annual Valentine's Day Party on Sunday, Feb. 14, at the Curry Mansion Inn. As always, there will be music, dancing, a buffet and open bar.

Prudential Knight and Gardner Realty is once again putting together a silent auction and needs your help. If you have an item -- big or small -- to donate, call 304-4287 or 809-5000.

For the party, get your tickets online at keystix.com.

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The movie "Misconceptions," shot in St. Petersburg, Fla., for $3 million last year, has premiered in New York City and gotten a good review from Variety. It's a satire created by two school friends of local movie maven Harvey Rochman, who co-produced the film.

The story's about a gay couple who arrange to have a surrogate baby carried by a Southern fundamentalist woman who doesn't know anything about them until they turn up to oversee her pregnancy (original title: "Bedevilled Eggs").

Movies continue to drive Harvey. "Three hundred people sitting in a darkened room for three hours responding emotionally to sound and light," he says, "is the closest this secular world gets to a religious epiphany."

His next movie project? The life of St. Augustine, "warts and all."

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Plant Clinics have been established as a free community service by UF/IFAS/Monroe County Extension Services so that master gardeners can assist Monroe County citizens with plant and/or insect problems.

In Key West, those with sick plants for diagnosis or insects for identification can bring them to free plant clinics on two Mondays in February -- Feb. 1 and 22 -- from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Monroe County Extension office, Suite 2-260, 2nd floor in the Gato Building, 1100 Simonton St.

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The home school high school known as HS2 is holding a Super Bowl party next Sunday, Feb. 7, at the BottleCap Lounge, 1128 Simonton St. Events start at 4:30 p.m. with an 8-foot projection screen and 10 TVs, plus drink specials, wings and sliders.

Raffle and game proceeds go to the school.

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Here is Charles Darwin on God, on the laws of nature and the death of his daughter Annie at the age of 10:

"It has always appeared to me more satisfactory to look at the immense amount of pain and suffering in this world as the inevitable result of the natural sequence of events, i.e. general laws, rather than from the direct intervention of God ... Thank God she suffered hardly at all, and expired as tranquilly as a little angel. She was my favorite child; her cordiality, openness, buoyant joyousness and strong affection made her most lovable. Poor dear little soul."

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Last November, retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington gave a speech at Fort Leavenworth, sponsored by the Command and General Staff College Foundation, in which he compared tactics used by U.S. intelligence in Vietnam, the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War with the tactics indulged in at the request of former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq:

"There was no room on our team for charlatans who believed in sleep deprivation, inducing hypothermia, stress positions, face slapping, forced nudity, water boarding, blaring heavy metal music or other amateurish, ineffective and ethically flawed tricks."

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Entertainment Weekly points out that, when total box-office numbers are adjusted to mitigate ticket-price inflation, James ("Titanic") Cameron's latest movie, "Avatar," hailed as the top grosser of all time, sinks to No. 34, just above Disney's "Pinocchio" of 1940.

When domestic gross earnings alone are adjusted, however, "Gone With the Wind" (1939) remains the big earner, at $1.49 billion over 70 years.

Second is "Star Wars" (1977) at $1.31 billion.

Third is "The Sound of Music" (1965) at $1.05 billion.

Fourth is "E.T." (1982) at $1.04 billion.

Fifth is "The Ten Commandments" (1956) at $963 million.

"Titanic" (1997) is sixth at $943 million.

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'OK, I'll bite," writes reader David Lybrand in response to Warren Abbey's pairing of city commissioners with the movie stars of yesteryear last week.

This is Lybrand's list of today's actors to play the commission:

Mayor Craig Cates -- Ed Harris

Mark Rossi -- Kevin James

Clayton Lopez -- Lawrence Fishburn

Teri Johnston -- Jody Foster

Barry Gibson -- Clive Owen

Billy Wardlow -- Robert De Niro

Jimmy Weekley -- Jason Bateman

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Quote for the Week:

"Key West is on the road to economic recovery and the nation will soon follow. That is my prediction made in full recognition that I'm lousy at picking horses and stocks and you may want to take it with a grain of salt -- or perhaps allow yourself the luxury of hope that my prediction of early recovery is correct. Let's keep our fingers crossed."

-- Ed Swift, III,

"Going Out on a Limb,"

open letter, Fall 2009