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The Porsche’s top was down, it was almost midnight and he was doing ninety on the Gandy Bridge, but it was still too hot. It was another typical heat wave that sweeps Florida every December, baffling the tourists and mocking the natives. What’s wrong with this state, Joh
Joh
They had met three hours earlier, on the other side of the bay in Tampa ’s Cha
The facility herniated debt, and the fund-raising party was another backhanded effort to get in the black. The aquarium was conceived by politicians and backed with tax revenue, which meant the operation was dumber than dirt when it came to surviving in the real economic world. A marketing corporation hired by the City of Tampa-the same one that advised the city to tear down a perfectly good football stadium and build a new one right next door with tax dollars-concluded that the same strategy was the only way to rescue the aquarium.
“Gentlemen!” the report’s author addressed the city council. “We must destroy the aquarium in order to save the aquarium!”
The proposal was tabled in a close vote.
On this sticky December evening, casino tables crowded the horseshoe crab tank, and a makeshift dance floor squeezed through the mangroves next to the otter pool. The turtle ponds began to fill with crumpled napkins and cigarette butts. The in-house joke: We draw the line at having sex with our animals. Except during bonus pledge hour!
Joh
A valet jumped in the limo and sped off. It was Joh
“And don’t fuck with the stereo! It’s set how I like it!” Joh
Joh
Joh
But Joh
Playboy Joh
But tonight at the aquarium everything was clicking with an unblemished ingenue in a strapless evening dress who had the supermodel prerequisites of being tall and sticklike. She said her name was If.
They flirted on the edge of the dance floor, near the marsh. A disco ball and revolving colored footlights disoriented the egrets, who flew out of their ponds and into the bar and restrooms. At the front of the dance floor was a mobile broadcast booth of local radio station Blitz-99, which was DJing the fund-raiser in a publicity swap. Blitz-99 had the hottest disc jockey in Tampa Bay, Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit.
That really was his name, at least according to files in Hillsborough Circuit Court, where Boris legally changed it in a ploy to get around persistent fines from the Federal Communications Commission. When regulators brushed aside the legal maneuver, the radio station compromised, and each time Boris said his name on the air, the last part of the word “shit” was bleeped out by a horn from a Model T automobile.
Boris objected that the compromise was a sellout of values.
Market research, however, showed the distinct Model T sound increased his name recognition, and the horn became the logo for a line of freebie T-shirts, bumper stickers and beer-can insulators.
In the late 1990s, the biggest things going in radio were shows that featured either mean-spirited, intolerant rants or sophomoric sexual i
Half of Boris’s audience was easily titillated teenagers. His trademark was the call-in confession in which kids graphically described sexual experiences that Boris would grade for arousal and imagination; then he would send them on their way with a plug for God-fearing Americans of European stock. The other half of Boris’s audience was voyeuristic fifty-year-old bigots.
Church groups were enraged, editorial writers had infarctions, city councilmen passed resolutions and then smiled for photographs.
Boris responded with a packed press conference on the steps of City Hall. “It’s First Amendment, baby! I’m an artist!” he yelled, gripping the rubber-ball end of a large brass horn. Dozens of middle school and junior high fans cheered from the sidewalk. Plainclothes Klansmen set up an interactive booth.