From The Editor
New Year’s Resolutions...
1
Edwards: To replace Michelangelo's David as the symbol of Sarasota.
Storm: To stay here and keep this community talking about bad art.
Coolidge: To run for City Commission.
McCurdy: To finally get to second base.
2. For the Baltimore Orioles
Bentley: To dress up in Red Sox uniforms and make everyone happy.
Kirschner: To bring a high level of baseball excitement to Sarasota by selling pints of cough medicine spiked with Benzedrine at all our games.
Coolidge: To paint the town orange.
Edwards: I thought the Orioles were cookies.
3. For Art Nadel
Kirschner: To donate his entire estate, consisting of a nine-ball, a box of Tums and a clip tie, to the investors awaiting a notarized statement of his assets.
Bentley: He—and the Moodys—will resolve to work as hard this year to give back all the money as they did to make it.
Edwards: To “give everything to the poor and follow me.”
Coolidge: To quit referring to his brain as “addled” and call it what it really is—sociopathic.
4. For Facebook users
Storm: To return to human contact.
Coolidge: To remember that faces aren’t really friends.
Bentley: To stop sending quizzes about if I were a tree, what kind of tree would I be and to refrain from ever mentioning Mafia Wars again.
Edwards: What’s Facebook?
5. For local actor and
personality Cliff Roles
McCurdy: To finally admit his real family roots are in Aniston, Alabama.
Coolidge: To write the theatrical version of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Edwards: To stop using that phony British accent.
Plunket: Cliff who?
6. For city parking planners
Storm: To start taking their meds again.
Coolidge: To plan even more and implement even less.
Edwards: To require that any new parking structure be completely covered with vegetation.
Bentley: Parking? Who needs stinking parking?
7. For President Barack Obama
Edwards: To be a liberal.
Coolidge: To move from making elegant and inspiring statements to taking elegant and inspiring actions.
McCurdy: To keep his distance from Tiger Woods.
8. For Florida Gov. Charlie Crist
Kirschner: To make his campaign theme song Blowin’ in the Wind.
Bentley: To do public service ads for victims of tanning booths.
Coolidge: To wear a weather vane on his head so he can give his index finger a rest.
9. For the Sarasota Orchestra
Coolidge: To remember Beethoven’s statement that no one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
Edwards: To make sure for years to come that the band plays on.
10. For Sarasota bankers
Edwards: To man up and lend.
McCurdy: To require all loan officers to pass the high school math section of the FCAT.
Coolidge: To act more like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life and less like Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
Storm: To figure out exactly what Shakespeare meant by “neither a borrower or a lender be.”
11. For beachfront property owners
Kirschner: To ask the county commission this question: If tourism is a season, why can’t we shoot them?
Coolidge: To pitch tents on their private beaches for Sarasota’s homeless.
12. For the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
McCurdy: To produce a weekday newspaper big enough to cover the bottom of a macaw cage.
Coolidge: To hire a local female weekly columnist. (Pick me! Pick me!)
Edwards: To aggressively report on arts and culture, which are the heart and soul of this community and the reason that everyone I know reads the paper.
13. For Sarasota city manager
Bob Bartolotta
Kirschner: To leave Sarasota to become city manager of Embryo, a small town on the outskirts of Wishful Thinking.
Plunket: To start house-hunting—in Albuquerque.
Bentley: To find a lock for the petty
cash drawer.
14. For proponents of
near-shore drilling
Storm: To move en masse to the Persian Gulf.
Coolidge: To walk a mile in the inky-black trails of all the stumbling, dragging, staggering birds and sea creatures that suffer and die because of oil spills.
Kirschner: Once they succeed, to turn off the lights—the party’s over.
15. For the homeless in
Five Points Park
Kirschner: To put up with the classical music but demand that the fried possum and corn pone for dinner will have to go.
Coolidge: To every Friday night join hands and sing “This land is my land, this land is your land” for the
enjoyment of passers-by. Gratuities gratefully accepted.
Edwards: To be hired by Republican operatives to help make the protests against Obama’s healthcare plan
look diverse.
16. For the owners of
Sarasota Quay
Storm: To do all they can do to improve the present status of what has become a de facto city park.
Coolidge: To open an Irish pub—call it the Quaygmire—and invite all the bankers in for a free (almost) pint of the good stuff. Jig dancing optional.
Kirschner: To wait for Zeb Portanova to find his passbook savings account so he can buy the place from us for $85 million.
17. For Marshall Rousseau,
acting director of the
Ringling Museum
Storm: To turn the entire museum into a gift shop.
Edwards: To promote Treviso as a great place to have lunch—especially the grilled cheese and tomato sandwich—and the dirty martini.
Bentley: To require all UnGala guests to attend an art history lecture before the party.
Coolidge: To ensure that free admission on Mondays for Florida residents will continue forever.
18. For former Alaska governor
Sarah Palin
McCurdy: To bow to public desire and become a Playboy centerfold.
Kirschner: To invite Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh to go moose hunting in Alaska.
Morgan: To win her election as Queen of White Trash Nation.
Edwards: To read The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, because she seems completely oblivious to the history of women and the damage she is doing to their cause.
Coolidge: Now that she’s written a book, to actually sit down and read one. z