HAPPYTOWN

;You liked him as a convicted felon; you loved him as the outspoken, media-hungry head of the ACLU Central Chapter; now get ready for George Crossley, on-air personality!

;;Beginning Sept. 1, Crossley will host the People-Power Hour every Saturday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on NewsTalk WAMT 1190-AM, the local Fox affiliate. You know and love 1190 as the home of such luminaries as Bill O'Reilly and Doug Guetzloe; now it's the place to hear Crossley spew liberal filth! Huzzah!

;;What tectonic shift in the alignment of good and evil landed ex-evangelist Crossley among the wingnuts? Fox's desire to be "fair and balanced," says Crossley.

;"They were more than willing to have me on there, since they have Doug Guetzloe on," he says. "They are willing to have someone from the other side, too."

;The first show will be all about Orlando CopWatch [see "Watching the watchers," Aug. 2], Crossley's group of videocam-wielding police monitors. The following week's roundtable will be on the state of the ACLU, which, according to Crossley, ain't what it used to be. (There's a movement afoot to oust or at least censure him as the Central Chapter prez, but you didn't hear that from us.)

;;Best part? Crossley says he'll be borrowing "liberally" from this here very column and the pages of this here paper. Which automatically makes the show totally awesome.

;;If topless canoeing is wrong, ;we don't want to be right. But it is wrong, at least in Lake Lawsona.

;;Tom Levine, Orlando's second-favorite former mayoral candidate (our very own Billy Manes is still No. 1 on that score), found out about paddling in the buff the hard way.

;;Somehow, on Aug. 13, Levine convinced an otherwise sensible woman to shed her top, get in a canoe and paddle out into the lake as a promo for his book, Paradise Interrupted, which apparently opens with a scene featuring a nude babe stroking her way down the Econlockhatchee. Levine's cohort, Dave Segal, was photographing the lass when the constabulary showed up.

;"Dave was getting these really nice shots and suddenly the police showed up in the form of one uniformed officer," says Levine. No one was arrested, but the woman was forced to get dressed, which is just a crying shame, really.

;Levine has big plans regarding clothing-free canoeing: He envisions an entire flotilla of nudes on the Econ to promote river conservation, recreation and naked women, three issues near and dear to this column's heart. So we've vowed to help him recruit. If you'd like to be a naked canoeist, send your photo and contact info to [email protected], or snail it to 100 W. Livingston Street, Orlando 32801. We'll pass it on. It's all on the up-and-up, really.

;Prior to the meddling fingers ;of the city's legal department doing their codifying racket on the pedicab biz, there was a sort of gentleman's rule about the trade: The cuter the person pedaling, the higher the fare.

;;But no longer. Now pedicab fares are scrubbed clean of sexual innuendo.

;;"We've been running on tips up until now," warns Catherine Ojeda Figueroa of the Redi Pedi Cab Company.

;;Ojeda Figueroa seemed to be the only opponent of the new legislation at the Aug. 6 meeting on the ordinance's first read, nervously declaring some nonsense about most of her bikers not being able to obtain Florida drivers licenses because they were "in college." But after some huffing and puffing between commissioners Patty Sheehan and Robert Stuart, the ordinance was altered to allow use of streets with speed limits of 35 mph (it was 30 originally) and Ojeda Figueroa jumped the fence.

;;"We can't get stiffed anymore," she told us in a phone call, referring to a new clause that requires the pedicabbers to list their rates. She says that in Key West they charge $1 a minute, and that her company is considering doing the same.

;;We are considering calling a taxi driven by some fat guy. Might as well.

;Remember all of that Sentinel-backed hullabaloo about our dying arena: the carefully couched speeches about how we really deserve those U2/Madonna shows, the spewage about how our arena isn't as cool as the other kids' and we know it? Turns out it's all poop. A lot of people use, and apparently enjoy, the Amway Arena. Too bad Rich DeVos isn't among them; we could have saved a couple hundred million dollars.

;;Buried in Jim Abbott's "Soundboard" column in the Aug. 17 Sentinel was this little tidbit that might have provided some perspective if revealed, say, a month ago: The Amway Arena finished at No. 3 in a Pollstar ranking of the highest-grossing arenas for the first half of 2007. That's right, only New York's Madison Square Garden and the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., sold more tickets to crappy arena shows than our impossibly outdated arena that constantly loses out to other Florida venues.

;We don't listen to the ;Monsters on Real Radio 104.1, because our lobotomies were unsuccessful. So it's out of a sense of journalistic duty more than anything that we report yet another beatdown of O-Rock 105.9's Drew Garabo Aug. 22 by a Monster.

;;You'll recall that Garabo took a hit from Blackbean (now absent from the Monsters roster) a while back while doing a remote downtown. But this time it was Russ Rollins who allegedly took a swipe at Garabo, reportedly knocking the glasses off his face in the parking lot outside WFTV Channel 9 where both were scheduled – at adjacent times – to record public service announcements for Channel 9's Family Connection, an outreach initiative to prevent, among other things, violence.

;Garabo filed an assault report with the cops, although their lips are sealed, as the investigation has yet to be assigned.

;;Sure, there's bad blood between the two former co-workers (plus, Russ used to date a certain somebody who might or might not be Garabo's morning co-host). But honestly, Russ, why must you and your minions continue to roll around town like Pabst-addled frat boys?

;;In response to the allegations, Rollins told the Sentinel's dreamy Scott Maxwell, "Listen, I'm 270 pounds. If I knocked the glasses off his face, his whole head would turn around." See, size does matter.

;We close this week by noting that, Clint Curtis, D-Mars, is back in the ring. Everyone's favorite spaceball (see "Is this man crazy?" Aug. 10, 2006) sent us a press release last week announcing his intention to once again challenge Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Jack Abramoff's Butt, for the 24th congressional district. Because, you know, Feeney stole it in 2006, just like Feeney engineered the theft of the 2000 presidential election and maybe had some dude killed.

;;The campaign kickoff is Aug. 31 at the Winter Springs Civic Center. Don your tinfoil hat and get out there!