Feel the hate
Wow, I rarely read a movie review in which I could write an essay on why every single line is full of shite ["Bird brained," Film, June 16]. You live in Orlando-fucking-Disney World-Jeb Bush-Terri Schiavo-did-I-say-"fucking"-already FloriDuh and you talk about San Francisco being unrealistic? I diagnose you with severe rectocephaly.
You also say parrots aren't interesting … my guess is I would find any one of the parrots in the film, from Conner to Tupelo, more riveting company than yourself.
You really class yourself as a first-degree assclown when you say goldfish are boring. I have a nearly 2-year-old Shubunkin (alas, named Nemo, not my choice, mine would have been "Sushi") who has more personality than … well … you. It's not that animals lack personalities, it's that you lack sensitivity.
Furthermore, your sneering about Bittner's joblessness fails to recognize that the man could not have survived unless he was bartering and unless people considered what he was giving to be of equal value with what they were giving – free rent, free birdseed, free cappuccinos.
Maybe you're just one of those whacked-out, Jeb Bush-fundy losers who really believed Terri Schiavo was going to get up and tap dance, eh? Whatever contempt you have for my city, bucko, square it, then square it again. Hope a bird poops on your head.
— Chris Leonard, via the Internet
Grow up
I must have higher expectations of your magazine than I should, because I was appalled at your childish, pointless bumbling in Happytown™ [July 7]. Call a Supreme Court justice a bitch for retiring to care for her ailing husband? And wish any bastard, let alone the vice president of our country, [would] die? In print? In a magazine that makes very noble attempts at righteous news coverage? I'm a big fan of the Weekly and Happytown™ in particular (it's the first column I read each week), but more and more lately, the immature tone has been making a regular appearance and has been turning me off, big time. You bitch about the mainstream media being wankers, but you are dropping the ball on your responsibilities. It's time to start walking the talk and grow up.
— Julie Norris, Orlando
Aliens on Vespas
In my admittedly limited imagination I have always held a view of the Weekly's readers, writers and editors as smart, white, liberal, gay/lesbian, Generation Y artists who all arrived in Orlando (actually Kissimmee) three weeks ago and live in fashionable squalor in lofts (we call them garage apartments in Florida) on the fringes of Thornton Park.
But then I picked up the Best of Orlando issue [July 14]. Turns out these are a totally evolved species. A creature with translucent, blue-veined skin, squinty Mr. Magoo eyes blinking in the phosphorescence of plasma screen emissions, muscular thumbs, vestigial pinky fingers.
If you want to know anything about your environs, put down the PlayStation and go outside in the daytime!
But to the real point of this rant: County Road 419 as the best motorcycle road? Does [Bob] Whitby live in Narcoosee? My mind went Dali on me as I imagined a hydrozoan hominid emerging from the bowels of Disney's third shift wearing World War II goggles and desperately attempting to get home before dawn on a lime-green Vespa. I realize he's only been here three weeks, but come on. County Road 419 is a nice lonely stretch of road, agreed. Sport bike riders (coincidence that they are often labeled "squids"?) like the fact that it is semiabandoned most of the time. The Mormons are always picking them out of the weeds on the only real curve on that road. Agreed also that Florida is not the Blue Ridge and we have to work harder to find a nice piece of asphalt. But we do have Sugarloaf Mountain. Ride Highway 455 up to Yalaha some time. Ever hear of Istachatta?
End of rant. Press ESC key and go ride.
— Robert Walker, Orlando
Department of Corrections
The review of the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was attributed to Ian Grey in our July 21 issue was written by Steve Schneider.
