TOP OF THE WEEK: (Only 7 weeks of annoying political ads left!)

First we had pill mills. We got rid of them but unfortunately in Clearwater and elsewhere, a few of them have weaseled their way back. We passed some laws directed at those drug pushers with a medical license but now the unforeseen consequences have reared their ugly head. Persons with legitimate prescriptions of controlled substances have been turned into gypsies forced to go from drug store to drug store in search of their needed medications. And no, you can’t search for the drug you need on line. In fact, a pharmacist from a chain store won’t even contact another store in their chain to see if that store might have it. So you plow on to the next store – to the neglect of your job, your family and gosh knows what else. Pharmacists like to paint themselves as the white knights in all of this – horseradish! What we need and need now is a task force at a minimum on the state level (the federal level would be better) to strike a reasonable balance between folks who legitimately require certain medications and drug pushers – those with and without a medical license.

Around the Bay –

1. It’s all about glass houses. When you sling the mud in a political race, you better have a clean kitchen yourself – a lesson apparently lost on the Mayor of Largo.

2. Duke Power won’t like it, but one of the better things to come out of the 2014 legislature was a tax holiday for energy efficient appliances. The holiday is just around the corner (Sept. 19-21) – a good time to replace a couple of gas guzzlers in the kitchen or utility room.

3. Let’s try to understand this. Garnett Stokes, an educator who knows the school and is the well-respected interim president of the university doesn’t make the cut for FSU president. Meanwhile, a state legislator with no educational experience is a finalist. This whole process smells worse than a bunch of stolen Publix seafood.

4. Clearwater’s signature event, Jazz Holiday, is just over a month away. In addition to some cool music and being a place to see and be seen, the event has also produced some of the best poster artwork over the years. Some thirty years of great posters grace offices and homes around the county and beyond.

5. Our Rants and Raves focus group (comprised of three old, cranky people) points out that Waldo spelled backwards is odlaw. (Margin of error – an extra d)

The Diamond, the Media and Other Stuff –

6. The Astros dump solid baseball man Bo Porter for basically being honest about what a lousy job the organization as a whole has done. The problem with the Astros lays one step above the dugout and hopefully ownership will deal with that in the off season.

7. While we’re on this best hits of a decade jag: are you old enough to remember the fifties? If so, here are three pieces of that decade’s classic wax as they used to say on the radio. For us, it would be the Drifter’s soulful There Goes My Baby; add in the Diamond’s rollicking Little Darlin’ and Bobby Darin’s Dream Lover. Your fifties favorites?

8. Further notes to the above three fifties hits. All topped out at number two on the national charts – all blocked from the top spot by an Elvis Presley hit. And at two minutes thirty one seconds, Darin’s was the longest of the three – at a time when any record longer than three minutes simply didn’t get played on the radio. Things changed, all three could be played with almost two minutes left over in the time it took to play 1972’s mega hit American Pie.

9. Last week, we mentioned Keith Olbermann’s show moving to the 5 p.m. time slot on ESPN 2. This puts it in direct competition with Tony Reali’s Around the Horn on ESPN. Love Reali, but are we the only ones who don’t understand the premise of this show? And how will Reali’s departure from PTI change the chemistry on that show?

10. There are only two things wrong with MLB’s reviews of calls – they take too long and they still don’t get them right. Recent Mets game saw a call at second base missed so badly even the Mets announcers, whose team benefited from the play, were astounded.

IN CLOSING:

One can’t help of thinking of NFL legend Dandy Don Meredith’s oft sung refrain in conjunction with this Roger Goodell mess, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over”.