(Kimball's Unauthorized Perversion)

In 2006 the main building of Gatorland, the one where the door looks like a giant alligator's mouth, burned down; fortunately the alligators were all right because they stayed in the water. Has anyone reading this been to the place since it was rebuilt and reopened? Recently I listened to their information line (800-393-5297); the guy talking on it had a ridiculously exaggerated Southern accent, as if Gatorland expects only redneck visitors. The worst part is how I discovered the phone number; Gabriel Iglesias mentioned it in one of his comedy routines, meaning that a lot of out-of-state folks must know about it by now! I will take issue with Gabby calling Gatorland one of Florida's "alternative parks," though. Owen Godwin built Gatorland back in the 1940s, so it is a more authentic piece of Florida than the artificial "worlds" built for Mickey Mouse, Shamu, and Harry Potter.

Another quirk about central Florida, that I have not noticed anywhere else, is how used car dealers decorate their lots with the flags of Third World countries. Most of the time, the only rhyme or reason I saw for the flags is that they resented countries which were recently in the news. It makes sense when you see a German or Japanese flag over a dealership, because that represents a nation known for producing quality cars, but what about Bolivia, Kuwait, and Somalia? I've recognized their flags at dealerships, but I have never heard of automobiles from there. Once in the Goldenrod neighborhood, I saw a car lot surrounded by Filipino flags; I'm guessing that was the nationality of the owner. Another time, near the Florida Mall, I saw a dealership flying Khmer Rouge flags; if the Cambodians built cars when Pol Pot ran the country, that's news to me!

But the news stories which come from Florida have to be the biggest contributor, to what makes the Sunshine State look odd. Yes, I heard some offbeat stories while I was there, but not enough to make me think my home state was the weirdest. If you had asked me back then which state was the strangest, I would have answered California. But get a load of the news stories I have seen since moving away. In 2007 we had the love triangle story about Lisa Nowak, a veteran NASA astronaut, driving from Houston to Orlando to stalk (and possibly kill) a rival to a male astronaut she had her eye on. The strangest part of the story is that she wore an adult diaper to avoid making any restroom stops on the way. Who else would do that, when there are plenty of truck stops and rest areas along the interstate highways, and she would have to stop anyway to fill up her gas tank, right? In the same year came the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith, in a Broward County hotel. Granted, that didn’t happen in the Orlando area, but most outsiders don’t realize that Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties have a different culture from the rest of the state, so they will tend to lump Broward and Orlando together. More recently there was the tale of Tiger Woods trying to escape from his wife in the Orlando suburb of Windermere, and he ended up hitting a tree and a fire hydrant with his van. No wonder News of the Weird is written by a guy in St. Petersburg, and Fark.com has a page just for Florida news stories. One thing's for sure, even if you never come to Florida, the state is going to entertain you!

A few days after I composed the rough draft for this essay, a sinkhole opened under a Tampa man's bedroom, and he fell into it, never to be seen again.

1. Charlie Crist. He sure seemed like a conservative Republican before he was elected governor, but stopped acting that way after he won. Heck, he left the Republican Party altogether, when he saw a chance to run for the Senate.
2. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Somehow Miami voters thought she was fit to be their representative in Congress, and Democrats in general thought she was fit to lead their party. Oh sure, she's Jewish, and south Florida has the USA's second largest Jewish community, but at the same time she is so hyperpartisan that she would defend Adolf Hitler if he was a Democrat. Is she really the best candidate for those jobs? If Bernard Goldberg ever updates his book on the people who are dividing America, I'm sure Ms. Wasserman-Schultz will be in it.
3. Alan Grayson. I never got an answer when I asked why the voters of Orlando replaced an incumbent Republican with this barking mad liberal in 2008. Evidently the voters realized they had the worst congressman in America, because they voted him out of office at the next opportunity (2010). Even stranger, they gave him another chance in 2012, albeit in a different district from the one he represented the first time. Electing him once can be explained as a mistake, but twice?

I guess since Walt Disney World opened, outsiders have decided that Orlando, like Hollywood, is a place where it can be hard to tell fantasy from reality. Even if they are right, a lot of the folks seem to think I’m mad, for moving from Florida to Kentucky, when they would like to do the opposite. My best answer to them is that after being in the same community for forty years, you are ready for a change, even if it’s a nice place.

Of course those who want to live in Florida often forget about the long, hot summers, the reptiles and the bugs. When I was there, The Orlando Sentinel ran a comic strip about one of our good old boys, called "That's Jake," by Jake Vest. My favorite cartoon had Jake hugging an alligator, with a big snake crawling in the grass nearby, and he shouts, "I just LOVE this humidity! I can't wait to mow the lawn!" Meanwhile in the background, his wife says, "Oh look, Honey, fire ants! I'm going to feed them!" At the bottom of the cartoon, the caption read, "After a week in Chicago in the winter, nothing about Florida seems bad."

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