Month: July 2019

 
Amalie Arena, the Ice Palace of Tampa, Florida.

Reflecting on the history and the Ice Palace that is Amalie Arena

I’ve got a phrase in my head. It’s a pretentious intro to a Tampa Bay Lightning hockey game. Something to be used repeatedly to give weight to the event and where it’s being played (as well as merit to the person saying it).

Weight comes to words with repetition. Sometimes it’s dubious, sometimes it’s forgettable, sometimes it goes down into the history books and is engraved in society (or, in this case, sports culture).

Along the banks of the Garrison Channel at the heart of Tampa, Florida. We welcome you to the hall of the venerable ice palace known as Amalie Arena for a night of Tampa Bay Lightning hockey.

To see that turn of phrase might lead Joe Q. Average to wonder what the hell venerable means (here’s your answer). Others of the Tampa Bay area (specifically younger generations and transplants of recent years) may be curious (or scoff) at Amalie Arena being called an “ice palace”. That just happens to be the building’s original name. That fact isn’t news for long-time Lightning fans. This fall will be the building’s 23rd anniversary of its opening.

And yet we’re left to wonder about the story behind the name Ice Palace.

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Movies, Men of Service, and Near Suicide

A very random question tied to two highly different films of the 1980s

I wonder how bad it would have been if Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon franchise) crossed paths with Frank Slade (Al Pacino in The Scent of a Woman)?

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Background music to chill to can be round on this playlist

Do you want an extensive playlist of liter tunes to listen to while you’re at work or perhaps while you are studying? Want a playlist of music that you can pipe in as background music during a social engagement (that doesn’t DISTRACT)?

I’ve been putting together an extensive stream of music on Spotiy for the last yea-and-a-half or so. It’s almost entirely indie artists covering the genres of rock, pop, country, blues and folk among others. There is no explicit content either.

It’s chill music, plain and simple.

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Tampa Bay Lightning playoff preview April 1996

An image from Tampa BayLightning history and the 1996 NHL Playoffs

Preceding this image with a history lesson of Tampa Bay sports would seem fitting, as the Buccaneers were a joke or oh-so-long and the fledgling Tampa Bay Lightning did not see their first competitions until 1995-96. It’s that latter point that this whole post and this image are based on.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

From the Declaration of Independence, Tendered on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

243 years later, I ask we stop justifying countering of the self-evident truths the United States was founded upon. We are the many, not the few.

Fireworks or Kellog’s? You decide

 if your lust in early July is for the snap, crackle, and pop from fireworks, might I suggest you go with the alternative means to accomplish such: Rice