Here in Tampa we have a few "public fixture" kind of guys. We've got this real interesting public fixture who is known as "Crazy Chris". Crazy Chris is just about always at a certain corner next to a busy highway, straddling a bicycle and drinking a beer. He always has this insane smile on his face and shouts all kinds of crazy stuff at people as they drive by. I envy Crazy Chris, not so much because he gets to hang out and drink beer all day, but because he always looks so freaking happy. It's like he's got so much joy he can't control it - it just pours out of him.

Then there's this other public fixture, a talk radio guy, who is known for being extremely trivial, so uninteresting that it's kind of interesting, and incredibly persistent. The guy's name is Mark Larsen and he just won't go away. It just seems like bounces from one AM radio station to another, talking like talk radio guys do, about the most boring stuff you can imagine. I have to admit I have listened to him from time to time, it's kind of like the train wreck thing. I've heard him talk about how much he dislikes one of his fellow talk radio hosts. I've heard him talk about how he doesn't wash his dog more than once a week. I've heard him talk about different kinds of toilet paper. I once heard him talk about how those little "Roma" tomatoes (you know - those little oval shaped ones) are just not good for anything - for about twenty minutes. Like I said, so uninteresting it is interesting.

Well now the guy has made the news. He's working at one of those real low numbered AM stations, down there in the screaming preacher begging for money section. Apparently, about a year ago he told his 14 listeners that if Barack Obama won, he would do the show in blackface. You know what I'm talking about - a white guy paints his face black and imitates a colored guy.

So then he went on to tell a bunch of black people jokes, like how the line of voters at one of the polling places "looked like the line for takeout at Big Tim's Barbecue". Then he apparently scolded a black caller who called to say what a great country America is. He told the guy "You love (America) because you have a man of color going to the White House. Before that, you probably were a malcontent."

So now he's in the news, so it looks like this train wreck is not gonna get cleaned up for a while. And pretty soon I'm gonna be driving down the road listening to him talk about painting furniture or washing fruit or something, because I just can not look away.