Despite the inevitable tag hoisted around Hillary Clinton, believe it or not, not every Democrat supports her candidacy in 2016. So just like the case around six years ago, there are those in the party looking for the "anti-Hillary," if you will. For many, Elizabeth Warren was the ideal candidate to take her on.

But that won't be happening. Or probably not. The freshman U.S. Senator from Massachusetts announced yesterday that she has no intention for running for higher office, at least not until she finishes up her first term, which isn't for five more years.

But as every article reporting on this development adds, a guy by the name of Barack Obama said the same thing early into his one and only term as Senator.

Still, the news may disappoint those progressives who consider her a hero for economic populism. Then again, Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders says he's still mulling over a run.

In other news - It's going to be 82 degrees today and around those same conditions through the weekend. Though some (most?) of you may dig that, can't there be a happy medium between these spring like temperatures in December and what the rest of the country is going through right now? Probably not, says George Luber, Associate Director for Climate Change with the Centers for Disease Control who gave a speech on climate change in Tampa on Tuesday night. He says the extreme weather - and hotter weather -is going to be our reality forever, unless we make drastic changes.

This reporter has spent some quality time this week with both Kathleen Peters and David Jolly, the two leading contenders for the GOP nomination for Congress in the CD special election to be held next month. Trying to be ever so helpful, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted a new website yesterday calling on voters to ask the Republicans their thoughts on such divisive events as the government shutdown and personalities like Ted Cruz.

And after a barrage of negative embarrassing news accounts about their homeless services division, Hillsborough County officials say they're getting out of that business, but will continue to fund nonprofits working on the vexing issue. County Administrator Mike Merrill said yesterday he believes the county can "end homelessness in a business-like way."

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Sometimes, seeing a local act perform without having any expectations beforehand pays off. On very rare occasions, you’re left reeling, struck by a sense of revelation — the feeling that you’re witnessing fresh uncharted talent that could blow up and out of the scene at any moment.

That’s how I felt when I discovered The Real Clash. I’d stopped to hear them out of curiosity: Just how good could a hip-hop ensemble from St. Petersburg College actually be?

I was captivated within the first few minutes.

The instrumentalists were focused and locked in tight. They knew how to step back and let things breathe while the two verse-trading emcees and sultry-voiced vocalist took the spotlight, and when to step in and turn the mix and energy up. The nine-piece held it down like pros in a way that seemed effortless, demonstrating the sort of easy chemistry and dynamic stage presence that some veteran bands still have trouble achieving, and brimmed with an infectious exuberance and upbeat vigor that filled the room.

I had to find out more.

The Real Clash grew out of SPC’s two-year Music Industry Recording Arts (MIRA) program, which is dedicated to delivering real-world training to its students, all within a collaborative environment.

Lead instructor and department administrator Mark Matthews designed the program from scratch more than six years ago, drawing from a wellspring of experience writing music for film and TV in LA. He’s made a point of only hiring educators with professional credibility.

“Not to put academics down, because they can teach you how to play and how to be a good musician, but it’s hard for somebody who’s never been out there to teach you how to make a living as a musician,” Matthews asserts.

MIRA students gain relevant skills and insight generally missing from bigger pricier schools like Full Sail, not to mention free access to three versatile state-of-the-art audio production suites/classrooms.

“These students need to know what they’re up against when they get out there. And every single person we have on staff has ‘made a noise for money.’”

MIRA courses are organized so that students from all three “specialty tracks” (performance, composition and production) are required to work with students in contrasting tracks, using what they’ve learned about technology and recording to collaborate on live campus showcases and MIRA compilation CDs issued at each semester’s end. Students learn how to manage projects in both live and studio settings, how to seek out the right people to get desired results (which means enlisting help from artists outside their specialty), and how to be successful when working with people they may not know or like.

“Once you get to Tech 4, the last semester of the program, you’ve worked with, if not everyone there, then alongside them, and you’ve grown and evolved together,” explains The Real Clash’s frontman/lyricist Rashad “Shadcore” Harrell. This means that most of the Real Clash members had already established working relationships before they were approached to join the ensemble co-founded by Rashad and fellow MIRA producer/lyricist Jay “Jay Acolyte” Wilson.

The twosome originally planned to follow the school’s already-existing model for rock and jazz ensembles: establish the curriculum for hip-hop, then pass the torch to a new group after a semester. But they wanted to write their own material. “That’s what made us different from the jump,” says Rashad. “All the other ensembles do covers; we wanted to do original compositions.”

They also wanted to enlist real instrumentalists. “I always felt like there was something more that could happen from having a live band behind you. The energy is just different,” Jay stresses, and Rashad agrees. “It’s just more electrifying with those live acoustic sounds coming from behind your ears. And there’s so much more you can do on the fly.”

They didn’t want just anybody to sign up, however, so they brainstormed a wish list of potential candidates and began reaching out. Everyone they contacted came on board, and the lineup has remained almost the same to this day, with the exception of recently added keyboardist Jordan Walker.

Months later, they’d written, played and recorded some first-rate material, delivered buzz-worthy performances around the SPC campus, and were trying to figure out what to do once the semester was done and credit earned. Their creativity was still flowing, chemistry swiftly growing, everyone was having a good time, so why quit?

“You will be doing yourself a disservice if you cut it off after this semester is over,” Rashad remembers Matthews saying after he saw the ensemble perform at a campus event. “You should take it outside of these four walls.” Matthews’ encouragement solidified the band’s decision to make The Real Clash a full-fledged (off-campus) group.

“The Real Clash are representative of our goal — to teach the kids how to band together,” Matthews explains. “What I really love about it, and the payoff for me, is that they did it themselves. We provided the forum, we provided the room for them to rehearse, and we provide a mentor, in their case [SPC instructor and La Lucha bassist] Alejandro Areñas. But they wrote all their own material, they worked at it, perfected it, and brought it out to the public, and the public likes it. What’s more perfect than that?”

A few members of The Real Clash are still enrolled in the MIRA program, others have graduated and juggle full-time jobs, internships, other bands, solo careers, family. But as Rashad puts it, “Everyone makes the time for this because we all really enjoy playing together. There’s no egos, nobody stepping on each others’ toes … we realize there’s enough room for everyone to get their shine. And when that happens, the whole group shines.

“One thing we couldn’t predict was how the chemistry was going to flow. We all knew each other’s work just from being in the program. But you don’t know until you get together and see, if it’s going to work,” says Rashad, “But it works so good, it gels so good.”

The name, originally The Real Clash of the Titans (for the SPC mascot), mostly represents a clash of styles. “But not in a bad way, or in a way that doesn’t work; it’s going against what you might expect,” Rashad says. This includes diving into other genres — funk, reggae, Latin, rock, R&B — to get to the Real Clash’s eclectic sound. “Jay came up with a tagline we’ve adopted. ‘This is hip-hop redefined.’ That’s how I approach composing something new and whenever we talk about the live performance, I think, how can we redefine the status quo?”

This includes tearing down stereotypes about what, exactly, hip-hop is. Rashad isn’t trying to work a message into every song, but he recognizes the power his words can have and uses them as wisely as possible. “Just being the way I was raised, I’m gonna try to say something substantial, something that could enrich your life, enrich your thinking, make you a better person or make you want to pay it forward or say something nice or encouraging to the next person. As a lyricist, I’m going to try to say that as creatively as possible. I hate it when you can predict what an artist is gonna rhyme.”

Lyrics are thought-provoking and intelligent but not always serious; trademark set-closing track “Effigy” comments on hip-hop clichés, posturing, and staying true to yourself no matter what your background. The chorus —“This what hip-hop looks like, thought it was all thugged out like Suge Knight? All I need is a beat and a good mic, putting stereotypes to bed like, ‘Good Night!’”— seems to sum it up perfectly. “It’s definitely about trying to make people think something different,” Jay says.

The group is diverse in background and age (from 21-year-old guitarist Andrew Roden to 44-year-old drummer Mark Vance), but that diversity — and their easygoing camaraderie — helps them complement each other’s strengths. Rashad takes command of the crowd as soon as he steps to the stage, all bluster and punchlines, while Jay brings the more deliberate flowing, laid-back creeper attack. Eliana Blanchard is the soaring vocal anchor and hype gal in their midst, not to mention an eye-catching stunner with flowing hair and a 100-watt smile. Jordan adds sonic layering, texturing and grooves, while Mark trades off drumming and percussive duties with Travis Young, also a beat-boxing whiz. Bassist Taylor Gilchrist covers the low-end frequencies, DJ Rollin Covell complements the rhythm section with digi turntable scratches, sound effects, and audio samples, and Roden adds rocking guitar riffs and searing solos.

The band is currently a dozen tracks deep on a debut album for 2014, but haven’t set a concrete release date yet. They have a title, however: Clash Wednesday. “That’s the day that we practice; we get together on Wednesdays and make the magic happen,” Rashad explains.

The Real Clash has played several off-campus gigs since their first this past April. While the biggest one so far — opening for Method Mad and Redman at Cuban Club last month — wasn’t quite what any of them expected (the set was cut short and they were only able to play three songs), they all seemed to take something from the experience. Plus, they were exposed to a new appreciative audience and got to unleash a brand new track, “The Kraken,” that got everyone’s attention.

“Looking back at the video, I see us performing and lights flashing.” Rashad says optimistically. “Everyone was trying to get a shot of us. I just thought that was pretty cool.”

Listen to "Embrace" below and click here to download the track for a donation, with all funds to go to the Typhoon Haiyan relief fund.

The Real Clash @ Typhoon Haiyan Benefit Show, with GreyMarket, Hussar, Mutespeak, Catatonic Scripts, The Black Marys, Broke Bones, Sat., Dec. 7, 6 p.m.-midnight, Local 662, St. Petersburg, $5 suggested donation.

The Real Clash on Wordpress.

The Real Clash on Facebook.

The Real Clash on Twitter.

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This Thursday poses far too many options when it comes to music. In St. Pete, you've got the NOLA-bred eclectic rock brew of The Revivalists at Local 662, or the holiday-themed Cloak + Dagger show at The Bends, with special guest spinner Jesse Scotto.

But even more exciting are two shows presented by Thx Management that are taking place just blocks from each other in downtown Tampa, both free, and lined up in such a way that you can make it to both, if you are so inclined.

The December edition of Rock the Park is headed up by Easter Island, an Athens/Atlanta five-piece that has, over the past few years, been drawing a healthy buzz for producing a mix of dreamy atmospheric pop and darker-tinged shoe-gazy rock as mysterious and majestic as their moniker suggests, and driven by the songwriting of co-leaders/brothers Eathan and Asher Paynewhich. Space-funk disco-slinging Displace and all-genre-fusing sextet Dropin Pickup add their own respective sounds to the bill. Rock the Park is held from 6 to 9:30 p.m., for free, at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in downtown Tampa.

Kicking off shortly after Rock the Park at The Hub is Pompeya, a quartet from Moscow, Russia that makes surprisingly warm grooving indie pop coming from such cold climes. Pompeya formed in 2007, is currently backing their first U.S. release and second full-length overall, Tropical, and take sonic cues from strutting ‘70s disco and urgent yet buoyant New Wave, their songs full of cooing vocals, funky basslines, riffy guitars and synth lines that vary between sharp strains of melody or hazy atmospherics. For fans of Toro Y Moi. Starts at 9:30 p.m. Sun Signs open.

And as mentioned earlier, both of these shows are free. Check out a few tracks by Easter Island and Pompeya after the jump...

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David Jolley has become the first candidate in the race to succeed Bill Young in Congress to air a television ad, and he's prominently featuring his two biggest endorsement "gets" - former St. Pete Mayor Rick Baker and Young's surviving widow, Beverly.

Also featured in the ad are a couple of military veterans. Jolly told CL earlier this week that many wounded military veterans are good friends of his and that he would be using them in his first campaign ad. Congressman Young was well known for his strong advocacy of veterans and the military defense establishment.

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Two draft ordinances that might have rolled back the hours that bars, nightclubs and restaurants in Tampa could serve alcohol — from the current 3 a.m. back to midnight — died at today's Tampa City Council meeting.

The 5-2 vote against even convening a workshop on the matter came after the board received an overwhelmingly negative response from members of the public who spoke out today. Only Yolie Capin and Mary Mulhern supported moving forward.

Though the media and the audience were focused on the potential loss of prime business hours for local establishments, Council members said they regretted how the issue had been communicated to the masses. Per today's meeting, the original intent was simply to put some common sense regulations into law that would provide the city leverage over bad business owners who were causing problems. Specific motivation came after there was anger and frustration throughout the city that no one had the authority to shut down Ybor City's Club Empire in the fall of 2011 after a shooting incident left one man dead and another wounded. It was not the first time violence had occurred there.

If the ordinances had passed, club, bar and restaurant owners would have been required to purchase a permit that would have allowed them to continue serving alcohol from midnight until 3 a.m. Having the permit would give the city control over those clubs, so if incidents like fights, underage drinking or other violations were reported at a bar, the city could always deny the bar's request to have its permit renewed.

Although Ybor City was the original epicenter of the problems that initiated the discussion, it's the intense concentration of bars and restaurants along South Howard Avenue that has been a major concern of council members like Capin and Mulhern, who said on Thursday that she's seen her neighborhood transform itself into a bar district in recent years.

But Mulhern cautioned a concerned public that "every bar that is now open later than midnight would be grandfathered in and would not lose" their ability to serve drinks until 3 a.m. "No one is going to lose their rights and hours that we have if we passed this. I think people need to understand that."

Councilman Mike Suarez fell back on quoting the 1967 Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke. "What we have here is a failure to communicate," he admitted, saying that the draft ordinance that the city's legal department composed had a lot of "different issues" that the council had previously not discussed.

Bar owners and Ybor denizens packed Council chambers to speak out on the ordinance. Walter Aye with the Ybor City Development Corporation called the ordinances a "sweep regulation which imposes a fine on people whether they’ve done anything or not."

"I think the ordinance is a bad approach," opined Ron Rotella from the Westshore Business Alliance. "It's bad for business."

Many other speakers said cutting back the hours for selling alcohol would hurt bartenders, waiters and others who are not exactly thriving in this post-recession economy.

Councilman Frank Reddick said that the tone of the public hearing had compelled him to not even want to support holding a workshop on the issue in two months. "We got council members who want to be cops with uniforms," he proclaimed, adding that he wanted to kill the ordinance outright.

That offended Capin, who reminded him that in fact there was no real ordinance to vote up or down on (the proposal was a draft). She also scoffed at the idea that the council never advises local businesses how run their shops, referring specifically to ordinances on minority hiring.

Council Chairman Charlie Miranda voted with the majority against holding a workshop on the proposal on Feb. 27. However, after the vote he immediately announced that he wanted Capin to convene a task force to start over on creating a proposal to deal with establishments that serve alcohol. Capin said she would do so, but not until after the new year because she will be dealing with a medical situation in the coming weeks. (Capin did not elaborate.)

In an ironic twist referred to by Council member Lisa Montelione, the debate took place exactly 80 years to the day since the repeal of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned the sale of alcohol in the U.S.

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 05
Rock the Park w/Easter Island/Displace/Droppin’ Pickup One of the benefits of occasionally helping out Ms. Polk on Music Week is the opportunity to randomly discover bands I would probably have never heard. Easter Island fits the bill. The Athens/Atlanta five-piece falls squarely and unapologetically into the realm of dream pop. The group’s pillowy wall of sound is made up of ringing guitars, spectral vocals and gauzy hooks that are a cut above. Remember, these RtP gigs run from 6:30 to 9 p.m., and are always free. (Curtis Hixon Park, Tampa) —Eric Snider

Pompeya Surprising that such warm grooving indie pop comes from Moscow, Russia’s cold climes. The four members of Pompeya (formed in 2007, currently backing their first U.S. release and second full-length overall, Tropical) take sonic cues from strutting ’70s disco and urgent yet buoyant New Wave, their songs full of cooing vocals, funky basslines, riffy guitars and synth lines that vary between sharp strains of melody or hazy atmospherics. For fans of Toro Y Moi. (The Hub, downtown Tampa)

Kill Devil Hill The term “supergroup” gets tossed around pretty casually these days — has for a long time, really — and it’s been used to describe Kill Devil Hill. The band includes Vinny Appice (formerly of Black Sabbath and Dio) and bassist Rex Brown (Pantera, Down). You decide whether that constitutes, um, super. To my ears, KDH’s sound bears a notable resemblance to Alice in Chains. (State Theatre, St. Petersburg) —ES

The Revivalists w/Jillette Johnson/G2P/Polar Summer The ever-evolving sound of New Orleans has continued to expand beyond the city’s Creole-based culture, incorporating influences from far and wide. The Revivalists are not so much a NOLA band as a rock seven-piece influenced by the place they call home. Lead singer David Shaw, for instance, moved to the Crescent City from Ohio in 2007. The ensemble — which includes pedal steel and two horns — mixes funk and jam into its rock firmament, and is said to throw a fun party, which might be the most New Orleans thing about ’em. The eclectic bill also includes contemplative, piano-centric singer/songwriter Jillette Johnson, who’s out of New York, and the Tampa funk-rock band G2P. (Local 662, St. Petersburg) —ES

Zoogma w/Ghost Owl Atlanta-based electro-jamming rock band Zoogma has a name that’s fun to say out loud (hold the “O” for an extra looong time) and an impressive grassroots fanbase nurtured through exhaustive touring. These fans donated more than 16k to help Zoogma record a second album (they have no label support), and this tour backs the end results, Anthems 4 Androids. (Crowbar, Ybor City)

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 06
Far Too Loud A special edition of #POUND Fridays featuring Brighton, England EDM music maker Far Too Loud (the pseudonym of Oli Cash), who wheels and deals bombastic, tension-and-release dancefloor jams with big funky basslines and whirring synths. (Amphitheatre, Ybor City)

Consider the Source NYC’s Consider the Source plays the kind of hyper-busy world fusion that can dazzle you as well as drive you batty — probably within the same set; or the same song, for that matter. The trio incorporates everything from prog-rock to funk to Middle Eastern sounds into its nervous mélange. (Dunedin Brewery, Dunedin) —ES

emma’s revolution Pat Humphries and Sandy O comprise Emma’s Revolution, an activist folk act that generously incorporates elements of satire and even a bit of faux Vaudeville. (Craftsman House Gallery, St. Petersburg) —ES

Alabama Shakes This Southern gritty soulful female-fronted rock band won a Grammy this year, and the show has been sold out for weeks. (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)

Donny & Marie Christmas Hey, I got ya wholesome right he-uh. Donny, 55, and Marie, 54, Osmond — the brother/sister team from Ogden, Utah — have encountered some serious career ups and downs, but they’ve never strayed from the kind of fresh-faced entertainment that first made them teen stars in the ’70s. (Tampa Bay Times Forum, Tampa) —ES

Huey Lewis and The News For a band so synonymous with the ’80s, Huey Lewis and the News certainly didn’t fit any established mold. They were clean-cut and down-to-earth when flash and androgyny were the coins of the realm. They made straightforward, hooky rock not tethered to fashion. So a reasonable takeaway would be that songs like “Heart of Rock & Roll,”“Heart & Soul” and “I Want a New Drug” have a timeless, enduring quality. To which I would respond: Nope. Stuff sounds hopelessly dated. (Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater) —ES

Pontiak w/Early Forms/Permanent Makeup The three Carney brothers vanned their way out of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia with lo-fi, sludgy psychedelia favoring relentless guitar drones, slow tempos and elliptical songcraft. It all adds up to Pontiak’s impressive originality. Early Forms’ post-Sonic Youth sound and Permanent Makeup’s sinewy noise-rock provide a fitting complement. My guess is you’ll want to bring earplugs and quality bud. (New World Brewery, Ybor City) —ES [page]

Waiting For The Man: WMNF Tribute To Lou Reed Forty days. That’s how long it will have taken WMNF to stage a Lou Reed tribute show since his death. I prefer to think of it more as reverential homage than timely exploitation. The lineup features the requisite variety found in the station’s long series of tribute shows: Sons of Hippies’ garage-y psychedelia, Sarah Mac Band’s post-folk, Ronny Elliot’s crusty Americana and more. (Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa) —ES

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 07
97X Next Big Thing w/30 Seconds to Mars/A Day to Remember/Stone Temple Pilots with the dude from Linkin Park/Jimmy Eat World/Dirty Heads/Manchester Orchestra/Pepper/Sleepwave/more Jared Leto is generating Oscar buzz for his role as a transsexual drug addict dying of AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club… Wait, this is a music column. Jared Leto is the frontman for the mainstream rock band 30 Seconds to Mars, which is headlining this 13th annual radio-sponsored show. As per usual, the marathon concert presents an array of bands from the modern-rock spectrum. It’s more than tricky to find an act that lives up to the festival’s name. You might hear something new-ish and potentially big-ish on the secondary stage. If I were to head over, I’d pencil in sets by Jimmy Eat World and Manchester Orchestra. (Vinoy Park, St. Petersburg) —ES

Charlie Daniels Angelus Country Concert w/Charlie Daniels Band/Embry Brothers Band/Sweetwater Rain/Confederate Railroad Seventy-seven year old fiddler, guitarist, singer and redneck Charlie Daniels continues to put his name and talents toward supporting The Angelus, a home for the severely handicapped in Hudson. Three veteran country-rock acts join the fun and the cause. Two nights earlier, an event called “Charliepalooza” at the Seminole Hard Rock (which also benefits Angelus), will feature a blackjack tournament and jam session, with Daniels participating. (Dallas Bull, Tampa) —ES

The Wholetones w/The Howlin’ Brothers Marco Island’s The Wholetones stir together neo-bluegrass with Celtic-influenced folk and a smidge of heavy rock. The Howlin’ Brothers — a guitar/banjo/upright bass trio — bring their brand of soulful yee-haw all the way from Nashville. (Ale and the Witch, St. Petersburg) —ES

Danny Brown You have to give it to Danny Brown — the dude is one of a kind. Wild hair, wild eyes, loud and outrageous fashion sense, nasally old school rap mode, overall style and approach to lyrical matters planted firmly within the alt hip-hop realms. He’s not referring to the dance move nor tobacco in “Dip” off third full-length Old, but some pure eye-crossing molly (“I’m grinding on your bitch while I’m grinding on my teeth”), and in “Grown Up,” he waxes on his youth while also appreciating his adult life; the latter won an MTV Woodie Award for Best Video. (State Theatre, St. Petersburg)

Jobsite Rocks! w/Poetry n’ Lotion/Scott Harrell All the usual suspects are accounted for at Jobsite Theater’s 10th annual end of the year party-slash-fundraiser — Poetry n’ Lotion, getting down to dirty brass tacks fusion with their usual nonchalant finesse and Kenny Pullin-led tomfoolery, and Scott Harrell, who’s rolling solo this year and will more than likely be howling wounded odes and spirited barn-burners over acoustic guitar maneuvers. (New World Brewery, Ybor City)

Guardian Alien w/Pan/Zulu Wave/Red Room Cinema The 37-minute piece that constitutes Guardian Angel’s See the World Given to a One Love Entity— the Queens, N.Y. trio’s first album for Thrill Jockey — is essentially a throbbing drone of caterwauling guitar, frenetic drumming and flighty vocals. The music is hypnotic in a mystical/psychedelic way, and my guess is that close, patient listens reveal some intriguing dynamics. Not my thing, but I can see the value. Pan, an instrumental quintet out of South Carolina, works the spunkier side of post-rock, with uplifting melodies and lushly layered guitar/violin textures. The effect is altogether beguiling. Two rising Bay area bands, Zulu Wave and Red Room Cinema, round out an enticing quadruple bill. (Crowbar, Ybor City) —ES

Bradenton Blues Festival Head south for some deep-down-in-the-soul goodness to warm your belly for the holiday season. Among the performers: right-as-rain singer guitarist Johnny Rawls, saxophonist Eddie Shaw and the Wolfgang; Trampled Under Foot, an up-and-coming sibling act led by Danielle, Kris and Nick Schnebelen; and powerhouse vocalist Shemekiah Copeland. The Saturday fest also features food, drink, art and a variety of vendors, all overlooking Manatee River. Visit bradentonbluesfestival.org for details. (Riverwalk, Bradenton) —Julie Garisto

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 08
Megadeth w/Fear Factory/Nonpoint I wonder if Dave Mustaine wishes he’d behaved just well enough to remain in Metallica, who fired the allegedly drunk and disorderly guitarist/songwriter in 1983 after a tenure of less than two years. I wonder because his subsequent band, Megadeth, pales by comparison. Mustaine’s worst decision was to assume vocal duties; his pinched talk-sing, built almost entirely on “attitude,” wears quickly thin. (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg) —ES [page]

The Devil Wears Prada w/The Ghost Inside/Volumes/Texas In July TDWP, a Christian metalcore band hailing from Dayton, Ohio, pairs guttural death vocals by Mike Hranica with the more melodic singing (and occasionally shrieking) of Jeremy DePoyster, ladled over a corrosive rip-and-pound. With three other bands of a similar ilk, the show promises a proper bludgeoning. (State Theatre, St. Petersburg) —ES

MONDAY, DECEMBER 09
Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas In my role as guest columnist, I’m officially dubbing this show the Sleeper of the Week. Sexy, brassy Jessica Hernandez, a Detroit native, is the kind of woman you beg repeatedly for a date, then when she lets you down easy, you still hang around hoping for a glance your way, and maybe a smile. Backed by a sharp quintet of dudes (including a trombonist), Hernandez slinks around the stage, belting out the band’s heady mix of dark-hued soul and timeless rock ’n’ roll, peppered with elements of everything from ska to cabaret. Youtube it. (Local 662, St. Petersburg) —ES

Lyle Lovett Back in the late 1980s, country radio started to loosen the reins a bit and let Lyle Lovett in. He certainly didn’t fit anyone’s notion of a country star, with his craggy face, crooked smile and eraser-head hair. Neither did the native Houstonian conform to musical convention. His style borrowed heavily from acoustic folk, jazz, Western swing and more. Lovett’s career has proven remarkably durable. His most recent album, last year’s Release Me, reached No. 9 on the country chart. Lovett leavens his songs and his stage manner with wry humor. And lest anyone forget: Dude landed Julia Roberts! The two were married for a couple of years in the ’90s. (Tampa Theatre, Tampa) —ES

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11
Melanie Martinez The pixie-ish singer/guitarist was a contestant on The Voice last year. Levine coached her; Aguilera dissed her and even — gasp! — spoke to the waif condescendingly. Martinez puts out a cutie-pie stage vibe and imbues her breathy voice with a dose of slur. (Orpheum, Ybor City) —ES

The Thermals w/Beach Day/Florida Night Heat If you’re like me and have a soft spot for power trios, then The Thermals might be among your favorites. The pogo-inducing, fist-pumpin’ pop-punk band from “pre-Portlandia Portland” formed in 2002, and are backing their sixth LP and debut for Saddle Creek. John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth) produced the visceral return-to-form Desperate Ground, and critics have praised the album as their best since The Body, The Blood, The Machine. In a recent phone interview with CL, Thermals frontman Hutch Harris said he pulled out the four-track to add some organic distortion, which lends beautifully to the about-to-lay-waste tension of his delivery. The album has recurrent themes of violence, influenced by our war-ridden times, and the last two Thermals-directed videos feature grisly action —“Born to Kill” in an interrogation room and “The Sunset” in a boxing ring with fro-licious bassist Kathy Foster and two-time boxing world champion Molly McConnell. Full Thermals Q&A at cltampa.com/music. (Crowbar, Tampa) —JG

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>For brewery owners, the road leading up to opening day is a long and winding one. Following Cycle Brewing and Green Bench Brewing Company, St. Petersburg is getting two more breweries by 2014.

Mike and Leigh Harting, owners of 3 Daughters Brewing, celebrate the opening of their Warehouse Arts District brewery on Sat., Dec. 14 (20, 3-9 p.m., 222 22nd St. S., St. Petersburg, 727-495-6002, 3dbrewing.com). The Hartings expanded into beer about 18 months ago, starting with small batches at their restaurant, Bella Brava, in St. Petersburg under Bella Brava chef and head brewer Ty Weaver.

“It started with Ty’s beer-battered fish,” Leigh Harting said. “Mike asked if it would be better with home-brewed beer. Since Ty is a savant where food and drinks are concerned, he started brewing.”

They couldn’t keep the beer in stock, and with the growing craft beer market, the Hartings decided to open a brewery.

The brewery is housed in an 18,000-square-foot warehouse that will open with seven handcrafted brews.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, we’re on the eve of starting something great.”

The 30-barrel brew house has four fermenters, with two more coming soon.

“We also have a one-barrel system that Ty gets to play with,” she says. “It’s all about expanding the beer portfolio. We’re having a great time.”

Eventually, they hope to put in a canning line.

“We have some kegs for retailers,” Harting says. “But getting our beer out into the community in cans is the promised land.”

She says the local craft beer community provided a lot of support to help get 3 Daughters going.

“There’s a huge, exciting wave of breweries opening. Cigar City couldn’t have been greater or more helpful,” Harting said. “There’s this great community of people all moving craft beer forward.”

St. Pete Brewing Company hopes to open in the next few weeks as well.

“Our brew house arrived last week,” says St. Pete Brewing Company’s head brewer and co-founder Jon McCracken. “It’s a 10-barrel brew house,” McCracken said, adding they they are still assembling it.

In other local brew news: Clearwater’s Pair O’ Dice Brewing celebrated its opening at the end of October, with the brewery and tasting room now officially pouring pints at 4400 118th Ave. N. Ste. 208, Clearwater. (More info at pairodicebrewing.com.)

Ybor City’s Coppertail Brewing this week began construction on its brewery, to be located at 2601 E. Second Ave., Tampa. Creative Loafing’s Tom Scherberger sampled their “solid, citrusy 5.5 percent IPA made on the pilot brewing system in Ybor that had the hoppiness of West Coast IPAs with an East Coast maltiness.” The brewery is slated to open in March 2014.

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I so wanted Rococo Steak with its stunning setting and sophisticated terrace to have food to match the thrilling wine list, with its top-shelf Champagne Veuve Clicquot and Napa’s Silver Oak Cabernet by the glass. Clearly, some very smart restaurateurs are behind the classy menu.

But as it stands now, the fare at St. Petersburg’s new steakhouse could take a hint from the era that spawned its name. Whereas the Rococo period was characterized by over-the-top creations with an elaborate attention to detail, the dishes coming out of the Rococo kitchen seem disappointingly bland or unbalanced.

And there’s really no excuse for a 7 p.m. reservation to be served its entrees at 9 p.m.

The service staff is ample to a fault; mostly young and not quite comfortable with their very careful training. I assume that in time the attention to detail will eventually seem natural instead of forced. At least the management has set high goals.

The most beautiful presentation of the night is the lobster cocktail appetizer. An absolutely huge claw and knuckle arrive on a mounded bed of crushed ice practically overflowing a handsome free-form glass rectangle full of dips and curves.

Unfortunately, the Indian garam masala spices utterly overwhelm the delicate lobster, and the succulence that is associated with butter-poaching ends up totally muted in the cold presentation. Also, the mango sauce listed on the menu seems to be a no-show. Then, adding insult to injury, one of the dips in the plate can’t hold back the melting ice, and before I notice, a flowing stream of water has snaked its way from the lovely sculptural plate off the table and onto my seat cushion to create a startling lake between my legs. Thank heavens I don’t have to use the chic restroom until later.

The most successful starter is a wedge of goat cheese pie. Because of its lightness, it doesn’t have the tang you usually associate with chèvre, but the pairing with poached Asian pear slices sweet with cinnamon and sugar, a tangle of peppery arugula, and fig balsamic syrup is full of flavor.

The minced organic chicken lollipops are cute balls of poultry that resemble short Tootsie Pops inverted on a bed of caramelized onions and fennel. The menu calls it “slaw,” which is a misnomer. It could use the punch of more fennel and a longer caramelization.

I assume Rococo can deliver on a 40-ounce dry-aged porterhouse, so we try the lean grass-fed filet instead; it’s a fine medium rare, but an acquired taste for those used to corn-fed meat. The accompanying purple potato puff is cute (but gummy) and the house-made sauce is almost nonexistent. Antelope schnitzel lacks taste except for the tiny dots of gremolata and horseradish relish, and a plain grilled salmon fillet comes with asparagus tips that look marinated and reek strongly of vinegar. In general, the food seems out of balance or under-seasoned.

Of the à la carte sides, the creamed corn with Anaheim peppers, sweet onion and chipotle is the tastiest bite of the evening. Artisanal mac and cheese is over-cooked and nondescript even though we opt for a truffle upgrade making this small side $17. With your eyes closed, you can’t identify what you’re eating.

The strangest dish of the night, “Froot Loop” panna cotta, must have seemed like a good idea given the buzz around similarly flavored vodka. But the dense, rubbery dessert that tastes of sugary artificial fruit infusion is only made worse by a garnish of breakfast cereal that most palates eschew by the time they’re old enough to read. I admire the sense of adventure, but this is a grand experiment gone awry.

The salted caramel bread pudding doesn’t fare much better because there’s not enough caramel on the plate to register. Salted caramel should induce swoons, its decadent buttery creaminess leaving you with a hint of the sea on the finish. But what arrives at our table is a bit gooey, which could be forgiven if it weren’t also dull.

By the end of our dinner we are wowed by the design, glad for the knockout wine options, and hopeful for the concept. But when a recent visit elsewhere turns out four-star tastes at $17 a head, it’s practically soul-crushing when a much-anticipated new steakhouse comes up blah at $80 a pop.

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Russell Baze (Christian Bale) is Mr. Bluecollar Workingclass, from his somewhat-clichéd tattoos and goatee to the dinged but not done-in pickup truck. In addition to working the steel mill in Braddock, Penn., he is also a master juggler, balancing his ailing father, Rodney Sr. (Bingo O’Malley), loving girlfriend, Lena (Zoe Saldana), and war veteran kid brother, Rodney Jr. (Casey Affleck), as best he can.

Life deals Russell a bad hand and pours him one drink too many; he’s found guilty of vehicular homicide while under the influence after trying to square his brother’s horse track debt with local wise guy John Petty (Willem Dafoe). After cooking for years while busting his hump at the mill, prison is the crucible in which he’s transformed. He is released into a world in which his father is dead, his brother is broken, and his woman has left him.

While Russell is fixing up the family home, the unemployable Operation Iraqi Freedom vet Rodney is tuning up wannabe hardcases in bareknuckle action for Petty. Rodney is in the red and he wants to square with one last fight, but that involves doing business with inbred sheepfucker and all-around scumbag Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), the meth king of Hill Country. To what lengths will Russell have to go when things go south for the Baze clan?

Out of the Furnace was adapted and written by director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me) on a spec script from first-time screenwriter Brad Ingelsby. It’s an ambitious, somewhat relatable tale of defying family legacy vs. playing the hand you’re dealt — not a bad start by any means.

However …

The lack of denouement is downright infuriating, although hardly that surprising considering the hands-off, deus ex machina fashion in which Russell’s legal issues are handled. Another frustration is the manner in which the film approaches deep and genuine social issues — the perpetual plight of the indentured working class and that of American combat veterans who get to come home — and then goes nowhere with them.

Hey, so you know, there are some shitty situations going on. That’s all, though; feel free to explore them on your own time, I guess.

And is Hollywood’s collective marketing department afraid to package a movie simply as a drama these days? If it’s not a thriller, don’t call it one. This flick offers plenty of tension but it is not a thriller.

The rock-solid cast offers a generous return on investment, considering what they had to work with. Bale turns in another strong performance as a brooding, bearded guy. Harrelson is on fire (seriously, multi-pronged pun not intended) at this point in his career. Affleck emotes well and Dafoe is convincing, though both are underused.

Out of the Furnace is the latest in a long line of movies you want to enjoy but simply can’t. It’s the film that gets your hopes up so high that you absolutely hate it for the disappointment. Kudos to the editor who put the trailer together, because that is something we want to see; we just want it for the full two hours, not the two minutes we got on YouTube. Whether or not it’s better to burn out than fade away, the bottom line is Out of the Furnace lacks the heat to keep audiences sweating.

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Some things I learned about Kanye West from his two-hour avant-hop extravaganza on Saturday night in Tampa, the tail end of his current "Yeezus Tour."

First, that he’s a meticulous and detail-oriented man when it comes to his creative vision, so when his tightly run production falters and that vision isn't realized, he isn’t happy nor is he afraid to show it. (In this case, it was one of the few most real — and likely only unscripted thing — that happened all night, when about 30 seconds into “Send It Up,” Kanye paused, demanded “What happened with the lights?!” then stopped the music altogether, angrily challenging “Somebody come talk to me, tell me why they fucking up the show in Tampa?” as he strode back up the runway towards the stage and what I imagined was a lighting board manned by a frantic group of techs, and sorted it out only a few minutes later. Then he started the track over again. And the spears of white light that shot up through his legs as he performed proved the wait well worth it.)

Second, that he has an eye for stark yet stunning visuals, and his taste runs to the avant-garde, a substantial divergence from what you'd see at a typical arena hip hop show. For the “Yeezus Tour,” the set was anchored by am massive white mountain peak jutting from the stage with a footpath to its zenith, and featured a long walkway extending into the arena floor that led to a wide arrow-shaped platform, its pointed end rising up to become another edifice opposite the mountain — an ideal spot for Kanye to sprawl dramatically bereft while moaning “Coldest Winter” amid faux snow flurries. A dazzling 60-foot-wide LED screen hovered like a moon over the peak, blank white or flashing images or video from the stage or text with stylized definitions of ‘Fighting,’‘Rising,’‘Falling,’‘Searching’ and ‘Finding,’ the blank white sometimes shadowed by billowing fog that made it look like a cloud-strung sky. Other eye catchers included a dozen priestesses/dancers who switched between flowing white robes and nude bodysuits made for interpretive dance, all of them with faces and heads completely covered in a nude stocking with hair peeking out in long trails (Son, you got a panty on your head); rays of white light or pinpoints of colored laserbeams shooting and scattering illumination around the room and onto the stage; sprays of pyrotechnic sparks and flares gouting red flames set off around the peak (and at one point held in the hands of the dancers spread along the mountain path); and even Jesus Christ himself, aka 'White Jesus,' Kanye's icon in a box, trotted out at opportune moments.

Third, he takes himself very, very seriously, and seems to be fighting the war between sharing and hiding his true self, a 'look at me, understand me/don't look at me, you'll never understand me' sort of dichotomy that played out in his stage show. He kept his face completely covered for the majority of it (see observation No. 2), cycled through four different head-encasing masks (intricate couture designs created by avant fashion house Maison Martin Margiela), until Jesus came out to peel back the final one. The whole thing felt like an abstract metaphor speaking of Kanye’s reality; the masks representing his celebrity, his money, his public persona — everything he wears like armor and uses to hide the real man beneath, whose true face/self can ultimately only be seen by the lord (and a room full of 20,000 or so shrieking fans relieved to discover that beneath all those masks there is, indeed, a Kanye West, and not a real good body double).

The concert left me feeling a newfound respect and admiration for Kanye’s talents beyond music. The dude staged a high brow hip hop show not far removed from performance art, brought it to more than 25 cities in the U.S., and everyone (including the fans in the nearly full Tampa Bay Times Forum on this night) seemed to approve wholeheartedly. And he barely showed his face through the whole thing. I’m sorry but that requires some big fat cojones.

Also, his experience and many tours before have taught him how to really use an arena space, both visually and aurally; the view of the stage was amazing anywhere I stood in the arena, and I could always hear what he was rapping, rhyming or saying over the mix, something that Kendrick Lamar still needed to get the hang of in his still very solid warm-up set, which came replete with his own big video screen and full four-piece band.

In tribute to his high brow presentation, and because I don’t have anything more to say about a concert that’s virtually the same from one city to the next (you know the songs, you know the highlights, you know about the one real moment that happened during his stop in Tampa), I’m going to offer a brief analysis of each of the show's screen-themed segments, their respective masks and key wardrobe items, broken up in linear order.

LCD Screen Theme: Fighting
Mask 1: Brown, tricked out in graffiti style, in a haphazard patchwork of beading, fringe, and finely worked metals.
Outfit: Black tank with American flag and eagle combo, airbrushed, brown jeans with more airbrushing designs, thick gem-crusted chain, trademark Louis Vitton high-tops (brown)
Possible theme: Being an American — patriotic, proud, fully dressed the part — but still feeling like an outsider, oppressed, misunderstood.
Songs (in the order played):
On Sight
New Slaves
Send It Up
Mercy

LCD Screen Theme: Rising
Mask 2: Black, covered in glinting black studs.
Outfit: Charcoal grey pants in sleek parachute material, tight at the calves, sagging below the ass with black briefs showing, matching flight jacket, no shirt, brown high tops
Analysis: His ascension — to fame, to power, to greatness, to his destiny. His righteous cry of triumph as he embraces it, his feeling of bitter cold futility about it all when tragedy strikes.
Songs:
Power
Cold
I Don't Like (Chief Keef cover)
Clique
Black Skinhead
I Am a God
Can't Tell Me Nothing
Coldest Winter

LCD Screen Theme: Falling
Mask 3: Black, covered in square white tiles
Outfit: A tunic mixing the shapeless qualities of a mumu, dashiki and an army-issue duffle bag, made of green military surplus material covered in pockets, hanging straps and belts.
Analysis: Stuck in a holding pattern, purgatory, paying a penance with ruthless behavior, fighting demons on he inside but hiding it behind a blank stoic exterior of celebrity, posturing, reaching a breaking point.
Songs
Hold My Liquor
I'm In It
Guilt Trip
Heartless
Blood on the Leaves

[Kanye exits, the mountain cracks open, the priestess processional emerges holding crosses, candles, hanging incense burners and Kanye comes storming back out, new mask adorned.]

LCD Screen Theme: Searching
Mask 4: Mirrored, like a disco ball, and reflecting just as brightly.
Outfit: Floor-length deep green jacket, richly brocaded at the cuffs, shoulders and trim, grey-brown canvas apron/skirt thing with a trailing tie over matching pants, jacket shrugged off in favor of a creamy linen v-neck.
Analysis: Looking in the mirror, doing some self-seeking, re-identifying his place in the world.
Lost in the World
Runaway
Kanye Preach/Rant (Dreamers and Haters, embracing life, etc.)

LCD Screen Theme: Finding
The Mask Removed
Analysis: Realizing his place, embracing it and revealing himself with the blessing of god, his rebirth into who he is today.
Songs
Stronger
Through the Wire (Partial)
Jesus Walks

[Enter ‘White Jesus’, who dramatically pulls off Kanye’s mirror mask, and finally reveals his face.]

Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Partial)
Flashing Lights
All of the Lights
Good Life
Bound 2

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I want to have all his mandingo babies.

I took the train from DC’s Union Station to New York. When I stepped out onto Eighth Avenue, there he was, flexing: standing in front of a mailbox, wearing jeans, kicks looking like the Timberlands all the guys in my neighborhood wore in 1995, and a huge Figaro chain. He’s all greased up and not wearing a shirt. Like everyone else, I clap for him: all that bittersweet chocolate and only small movements, the slight shift of slack muscles turning tense.

I have a scarf and jacket collar covering my face. My Florida-trained skin thins at anything below 50. I worry his nipples could crack off when cabbies wail on horns and startle him. Some lost tribe of something hands out pamphlets. A man dressed as Santa leads a rally for AIDS research. Bus tours. Comedy at Caroline’s. Phantom of the Opera.

Freaks love the voyeur and vice versa. Extroverts love the introverts because no matter how introverted we are, we all want attention. We’re all anxious. Freaks come out at night and all day, too.

And a sideshow doesn’t need a stage. Really, all the world is not a stage, unless that stage is Piaget’s egocentrism: that time when we all, as children, think the world revolves around us. It does. You ain’t got to get naked for it. Ain’t got to be a bearded lady.

Weird doesn’t discriminate. When I was young, I thought (still black) Michael Jackson, in his “Beat It” jacket, was hiding in my closet. I could see the red leather and brown skin through the white metal slats. I insisted my dad was white. (He’s so not white.) I know every word of Cats. The birthmark on my stomach looks like Africa. I’ve been on psychotropic drugs for so many years, I don’t remember what I’m like without them.

Back in Union Station, a guy was so desperate to get on the train, he shoved and danced like a monkey at the opening door — arms flailing, ooh-ooh as he lunged. Two people argued about the Amtrak derailment killing four people hours ago in the Bronx, worried only about the possibility of a delayed train to Albany. The announcer announced “Rahway” and it sounded the same as “Wilmington” did. Near Trenton, a little girl busted out a remix of “It’s a Small World After All” where small becomes dog. “It’s a world of bones, it’s a world of treats. It’s a blue stuffed phone and daddy’s meat …”

People are overstatements: subtle, blatant. Right here and now, I’m in love with a muscle man in New York, and the shiny babies we’d have, and the street corner where no one would notice if we started working on making those babies. I want to walk back to him, tell him I’ll P.T. Barnum with him all the live-long day.

Of course, he could just be brazen. Maybe he needs the money and knows he’s diesel enough to make it this way. Maybe Piaget’s developmental theory came from discoveries during his study of water snails. I heard that once.

And maybe normal doesn’t mean anything anymore. Maybe there’s no standard. Maybe there’s no mean from which to deviate — just good-clean dirty streets and a man with righteous pecs, and that heart that’s supposed to be red as an apple, but, instead, looks pinker with things resembling fingers sticking out from its clenching fist.

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Two photography exhibitions worth a short road trip close this weekend at museums in Winter Park and Lakeland. (Why not make a day of it and wrap up with a locavore feast at the Ravenous Pig or Cask & Larder in Winter Park?)

The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College centers their fall exhibitions on Malick Sidibé, a Malian photographer whose black-and-white studio portraiture and documentary work from the 1960s have earned him international fame. Studio Malick features a thrilling quantity of works — about 150 studio portraits and another 300 or so small pictures of the kind that Sidibé would print at the end of a long night documenting Bamako dance parties and assemble into folders called chemises. The middle- and working-class youth whom Sidibé photographed would come by his studio the next day and pick photos to buy — as a memento of the evening or a gift for a prospective sweetheart — by perusing the chemises.

The exhibition powerfully conveys the aspects of Sidibé’s photography that have made it so iconic in subsequent years. Thanks to the intoxicating cocktail of youth, Malian independence from France, and an influx of music and fashion from abroad, the subjects of Sidibé’s portraits are, for the most part, imbued with energy and hope; that alone would make them interesting. To this great raw material, Sidibé adds a keen and sometimes mischievous eye. Seydou Keïta, a Bamako-based portraitist about 15 years older, was known for doing a similar thing — creating striking portraits of middle-class Malians who showcased their adoption of Western fashions or the rich patterns of their West African dress. As if wanting to go a step further, Sidibé shot his subjects against flatter, more geometric backdrops. Stripes and checkerboards fuse with patterned outfits in photographs with the look of painterly Op Art.

In a documentary film on display in the exhibition, Sidibé (who is now 78 or 77; his birth year is uncertain) explains that his studio functioned as a place where customers could try on different identities. The 1964 portrait “Mr. Dembelé, Secret Agent” offers an especially delightful example. One might ask whether part of the attraction of Sidibé’s photography for American audiences is that it puts on display a type of African identity we can be comfortable with — one based in freedom, consumerism and happiness. A cynic would point out that we give short shrift to other kinds of images of from Africa. An exhibition wall text does a great job of posing a related and complex question: How did all these images of individual people, taken for a basic commercial purpose, become works of art hanging in a gallery? It may be that what appeals to us about Sidibé’s images is the degree to which they work like a mirror — we see ourselves in them, as well as “the other.”

Other fascinating objects on view, in separate exhibitions, include a series of intricately handmade and brilliantly colored paper sculptures of Florida birds by 26-year-old Colombian artist Diana Beltrán Herrera and a selection of prints from CFAM’s collection that presents a who’s who of post-WWII American artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra and Frank Stella.

At the Polk Museum of Art, reGeneration2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today features 105 images by emerging photographers from 31 countries around the world. The exhibition, which began traveling in 2010, was organized by the Swiss photography museum Musée de l’Elysée, along with the Aperture Foundation, and culled from 700 submissions by 120 art schools. It is the follow-up to a successful 2005 exhibition and book, reGeneration.

The exhibition is dense with pictures that deserve more space and careful consideration. At least three major themes emerge. In the category of strong, risk-taking documentary, Jen Osborne (Canadian, born 1984) wows with her photographs of female inmates at Bangu Prison Complex in Rio de Janeiro, which vividly blend beauty and bleakness. Florian Joye (Swiss, born 1979) offers a peek at the second theme, globalism and its quirky discontents, with his photograph of a kitschy hi-tech billboard melding American landmarks into an advertisement for real estate development in Dubai. The third theme, digital dreams, encompasses computer-assisted endeavors that range from the subtle —“I remember,” a dreamy blue-and-white cloudscape by Liu Xiaofang (China, born 1980) — to the hilariously fictional, like a portrait by Barbora Zurkova and Radim Zurek (Czech, born 1987 and 1971) of a young girl whose face has been replaced with Scarlett Johansson’s. Altogether, it’s an eyeful not to be missed.

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I was attending San Francisco State University in 1985 when shantytowns were created on the campus, a form of continuing anti-apartheid protests that rocked college campuses across the country opposing the U.S's support of the racist policies of the South African government. I'm not even sure why it took until that year for the resistance to break out in America, but it did in a big way, and it was an electrifying moment for our generation, many of whom were looking for a cause greater than themselves.

Full divestment was the term used back then, and slowly but surely, university systems began divesting their investment portfolios that included stock in companies that did business with the P. W. Botha-led government.

It would be five more years before Nelson Mandela was finally freed at the age of 71. Although I did not attend, I certainly remembered when he spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in the summer of 1990. The Stadium, home to A's and Raiders games and classic concerts, was packed to the gills with 58,000 people in attendance simply to hear this international icon talk about his new life as a free man. It was the last stop in an eight-city tour of some of America's biggest cities, and it was memorable.

Although he lost 27 years of his life stuck in a small prison cell, he lived 23 years more as a free man and for five years became the president of South Africa. His mark on this world will never be forgotten.

Now on to more frankly pedestrian matters.

Well, they may not even be sure how it happened, but the Tampa City Council ended up facing a hostile crowd in their chambers yesterday paranoid that all of the drinking establishments in this town were all of a sudden going to start getting massively conservative, with a proposed ordinance that could have seen a certain number of them banned from serving booze after midnight. But that prospect did not happen, and likely won't in the future.

Today all of the candidates competing to replace the late Bill Young in Congress will meet up together for the first time at a candidates forum in St. Pete. Yesterday one of those candidates, Republican David Jolly, put on his first commercial ad of the nascent campaign - with former mayor Rick Baker in a featured role.

And speaking of St. Pete - there are a committed groups of activists tired of talking about the poverty rates in Midtown, and are willing to do something about it. Read about the Agenda 2020 plan in this week's CL.

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I remember growing up in Clearwater, lamenting that we had no snow on Christmas.

Kids today — lucky little, um ... darlings — don't have to miss out. Festivities in Clearwater and St. Pete offer real snow to cavort in, and Tampa has its share of Florida-style holiday fun too tonight and tomorrow.

In Clearwater, the 6th Annual Miracle on Cleveland Street wonderland offers Florida’s largest natural snow slide, crafts, train rides, inflatable attractions and an outdoor ice skating rink. Sha Na Na’s Jon “Bowzer” Bauman cruises in to emcee before his holiday gig at 7:30 p.m. at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Festivities kick-off with Mayor George Cretekos lighting not the tree but the all-new Capitol Theatre sign, and the first 250 children 12 and younger will receive a holiday-festooned Winter the dolphin plush toy. Today, 5:30-10 p.m. Free. More info at rutheckerdhall.com.

Tampa’s Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park begins with a countdown to Mayor Bob Buckhorn lighting the tree at 6 p.m., and offers a holiday market and free movie —National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The event is free but attendees are asked to bring a plush bear for the Rough Riders Annual Teddy Bear Drive. 600 N. Ashley Drive, Tampa, tampa.gov.

If you miss those events, 65 tons of snow will fall at North Straub Park at the annual Snowfest celebration, where kids can enjoy other fun activities too. Sat., Dec. 7 at 10:30 a.m. 400 Bayshore Drive S., St. Petersburg, $5 for wristband, stpeteparksrec.org.

The fun kicks off with St. Petersburg’s 87th annual Santa Parade at 10 a.m. The parade promenades from Central Avenue and Fifth Street and heads east to Bayshore Drive, turning north and ending at Fifth Avenue North. In Tampa, the 31st Annual Santa Fest and the Rough Riders Holiday Parade offers more colorful floats, marching bands, dance troops and Mr. Claus himself. It begins at 11 a.m., and after the parade, holiday activities entertainment rock the park at Curtis Hixon. Fun times with interactive games, inflatables, rock climbing wall, make-'n'-take crafts, giveaways and free photos with Santa can be enjoyed.

The Holiday Day Parade route begins at Morgan and Madison streets. Heads west on Madison Street then turns north onto Ashley Drive and ends at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. The best, unobstructed viewing is along Madison Street from Pierce Street to Tampa Street.

Park at Royal Street, 1200 N. Tampa St.; Jackson Street, East Kennedy Boulevard and Jackson Street, and Fort Brooke Garage, 107 N. Franklin St.

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Each year the delightfully snobbish, Literary Review, bestows its "Bad Sex in Fiction Award," to deserving authors. While the review mainly uses the award to remind people that this obscure literary journal exists, the award often just highlights sexual imagery that is beyond the Review's stuffy notions on sexuality and arousal. While the contest is intended as a form of shame, nominees are usually limited to writers who are talented enough to be considered literary. Previous winners include Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and John Updike. The choice to limit this award to literary works was probably wise. Mining through all the romance novels published in a year for bad sex scenes would be as daunting as sifting through ever pornographicsex scene produced in a year for the most unrealistic examples of sex.

This year's winner was Manil Suri's novel The City of Devi. The sex scene that earned Suri the win involved a husband and wife, and a young gay Muslim named Jaz:

Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands — only Karun's body, locked with mine, remains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.

Suri had some stiff competition. Below are excerpts from all of this year's nominees.

-House of Earth by Woody Guthrie:

...Back and forth, side to side, they moved on their bed on the hay. Back and forth, side to side, they moved their hips, their feet, their legs, their whole bodies. Their arms tied into knots like vines climbing trees, and the trees moved and swayed, and there was a time and a rhythm to the blend of the movement. And inside the door of her womb she felt her inner organs and tissues, all her muscles and glands, felt them roll, squeeze, squeeze, and roll, and felt that every inch of her whole being stretched, reached, felt out, felt in, felt all around the shape of his penis. So magnified and so keen were her feelings that her inner nerves could even feel the bumps, the ridges, the pimples, the few stray hairs along the shaft of his male rod.

...And as she sucked the last drops of his blood and his seed into the folds of her innermost soul and self, she felt her whole body lift, pull, squeeze, then lift again, tremble, shake, and quiver, and in her fires of her stomach she strained and moved to bathe his blood into the rumble and the thunder of her own...

-Motherland by William Nicholson:

He feels the intensity of his love for her with each repetition, along with the tingling in his cock, and the profound shock of joy with which he has heard each utterance by her of the word fuck. She seems to know how much this electrifies him. She moves her hips, pushing him deeper into her all the time, and as she does so she whispers, 'Fuck me now, Lawrence. Fuck me now.'

-Secrecy by Rupert Thomson:

I closed my eyes as well and moved inside her, imagining the ribbed flesh, the supple rings of muscle. Mauve and yellow flowers filled the blank screen of my eyelids, the petals loosening and drifting downwards on to smooth grey stone. I kissed the soft bristles in the hollow of her armpit, then I kissed the smaller hollow of her clavicle. I moved up to her mouth, which smelled of ripe melon. Not the wound-red Tuscan watermelon, but the pale-green variety I had bought in Naples once, and which had grown, so I was told, on the wild coast of Barbaria.

-The World Was All Before Them by Matthew Reynolds:

In the dappled shadows the bodies cling and thrust and arc and stretch. Toes splay. Arms prop shoulders from which a torso slopes. Two legs spring into the air. A head flaps from side to side. Fingers tense, hips grip and ankles twine. Forehead bows to forehead and hair touches in the air as eyes look longingly into eyes, thighs vie, lip lips lip and…

But, damn, dammit! — what was this?

Anxiously he began to get the impression that his vas deferens was initiating its rhythmic squeezing too soon, too soon…

But phew she too seemed to be surfing the waves of neuromuscular euphoria, so that as, sweating, panting, he bowed his forehead to her chest, she gripped him tight, her sharp nails stabbing; and then they were grinning and kissing each other's noses, cheeks; and then they lay entangled for a moment, breathing; and then they rose, one after another, went for a piss, came back and settled into bed again.

My Education by Susan Choi:

Until now, my orgasms had been deep and ponderous things; slow to yield to excavation; self-annihilating when they finally did, so that in their wake I felt voided and calm, every yen neutralised, and gazed on whoever had managed the work with benign noninterest. Never had there been this tormenting, self-heightening pleasure, like a hail of hot stones, and yet she seemed to recognise just what had happened, so that before I had even stopped keening she bore down again. She made me come so many times that afternoon that had I been somewhat older, I might have dropped dead. Had I been a doll, she might have twisted off each of my limbs, and sucked the knobs until they glistened, and drilled her tongue into each of the holes.

-The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood:

Reaching behind me, I found the Brie and broke off a fragment, sucking her nipple through it. She tasted almost as she had the day I took the drop of milk on my finger.

Manon smiled when she realised what I was doing.

You know the peasant saying? If you can't imagine how neighbouring vineyards can produce such different wines put one finger in your woman's quim and another up her arse, then taste both and stop asking stupid questions… My fingers found both vineyards. At the front, she tasted salt as anchovy and as delicious. At the rear, bitter like chocolate and smelling strangely of tobacco.

-The Victoria System by Eric Reinhardt:

We made love for five hours. Anxious by nature and always fearing that I will disappoint, I became a different man in this bed — freed of all worries, carried away by an irrational exhilaration.

For me, Victoria was like a deep nocturnal forest that I strode through without knowing where I was going, through woodland, amid ferns, under tall shivering trees, far from any path. There were noises, puddles, odours, dampness, shapes that vanished, treetops overhanging our bodies. I thought of nothing. I let our frolics lead where they would. I experienced moments of fulfilment and astonishment, euphoria and intimidation, and then episodes of grace when Victoria smiled at me, overcome with happiness, as if we were lying in a glade.

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In some ways Emily Southwood was living a modern day fairytale. She had just finished her MFA degree and was packing her things to move in with her fiancé, Robbie, in LA. Then she received a call that changed everything. Robbie landed a job filming a reality show about porn stars.

At first Southwood, who considered herself a sexually liberated and progressive minded woman, thought she could handle her fiancé's job assignment. However, she quickly realized how messy love could be when she spent her days at home, searching for jobs and planning a wedding while Robbie dodged body fluids on porn sets and scouted locations at all-inclusive sex resorts.

Although the experience jeopardized her relationship, it also gave her an idea. Just as Robbie had used porn to build his professional credits, Southwood would use the experience to launch her literary career. The resulting memoir, Prude, tells the story of a young couple forced to reexamine their notions of sex and love through the lens of the adult industry.

Humans tend to fetishize what a society considers taboo or forbidden. Some theories suggest that the more egalitarian a society is, the more men in such a culture fetishize the degradation of women. That is, the less power men exercise over women in society, the more they seek to control and dominate women during sex. What do you think the prevalence of “degrading” porn says about the society that consumes it?

That theory is in line with some of what has been said about Fifty Shades of Grey—women crave submission in the bedroom as a release from juggling jobs and households. They want to relinquish control and focus on a nice spanking from a rich, handsome, sadomasochist CEO for a wee bit. Perhaps.

I identify with the theory that our brains become immune to what we are seeing and increasingly crave greater stimuli. Porn today certainly seems like a reflection of being desensitized to graphic visuals. First it takes you half a beer to get a buzz, then eventually you need five. A lot of mainstream porn today is definitely a five beer buzz. Maybe even a three day bender.

Romance novels don’t receive nearly as much criticism as porn, even though they depict just as unrealistic of sexual encounters and relationships. If you were a romance writer, do you think Robbie would have as big of a problem with you writing sex scenes about fantasy men as you had with him filming porn?

I completely agree that romance novels, not to mention Rom Com’s —here’s looking at you, Love Freaking Happens, play a huge and often disastrous role in shaping female expectations. Would Robbie have trouble with me writing these types of fictional tales? No, probably not. He may feel occasional pressure to be buff, rich, and forever brandishing roses. But he’s much better than me at not taking things on. And he never seems to feel inclined to get Brazilians, either. Weird.

In Prude you mention your partiality toward lesbian porn though you entertain little interest in having sex with other women. A surprising number of straight women admit this same preference. Their rationalization often boils down to how much more comfortable they are watching two women. Do you think this stems from the fact that women are programmed to view males’ sexuality as having both the potential for pleasure and pain? That is to say, do you think lesbian porn eases many female viewers’ suspicions that the female actresses are being forced into having rough sex against their wills?

That feeling of “a safe fantasy” could be part of it on a subconscious level. But mostly I just think lesbian porn tends to focus more on female sexual pleasure. Our bodies are the main event. I think men similarly get pleasure from seeing their physiological selves reflected, which is the focus in lots of hetero porn. Case in point: the money shot. But it’s less taboo in our culture for women to admit they enjoy looking at our own sex than for men to.

In Shakespeare’s time, a comedy was a lighthearted story that ended in marriage. This motif persists to this day. Even if a couple doesn’t get married at the end of a romantic comedy, the implication is often that they will live happily ever after. While your book doesn’t technically end with marriage, your impeding nuptials help build the tension. Would this book have worked structurally if your relationship didn’t have marriage looming as an end point?

Prude is essentially a comedy. I think the marriage plot helped move things along and heighten the stakes of our tale. This was a happy coincidence in the structure of my book, since it’s really just the way it happened. If our engagement hadn’t endured, I probably wouldn’t have been so psyched to write a tragedy, a la: “How porn ruined my marriage.” That would have been a serious downer.

In Prude, it’s obvious that you and Robbie love each other and have a solid relationship. What isn’t as clear is why either of you wanted to get married, especially since you claimed that your life plan, pre-Robbie, never included much room for someone else. He even joked about how you used to tell him you weren’t the marrying kind. Why was marriage so important to your characters and their relationship?

Robbie was always stoked on marriage. He liked the gesture of a big, inked commitment to live up to. I didn’t see why at first. To me, marriage seemed archaic, redundant. But ultimately I agreed that it’s useful to make goals. We discussed how signing a contract doesn’t mean everything will necessarily work out, but it solidifies the common aim. We came together on our values. We also both really like parties. The cocktails and sloppy 4am dance moves were definitely part of the incentive.

In the book, the marriage is important to our characters because it grounds the idea that we don’t have to see everything the same exact way, but we have to communicate and strive toward our goal—to live harmoniously with each other. Marriage, like porn, is something many people assume they share perspectives on. Until they’re suddenly all up in misunderstandings about it.

When you criticized Robbie for how porn potentially exploits some girls and how he was profiting off this exploitation, he made the point that reality shows do the same thing. Reality shows exploit “contestants” who think these shows will lead to mainstream fame without fully considering the consequences of their exposure. If you weren’t in a relationship with Robbie, which profession would you consider more unethical or exploitive: filming a reality show or filming porn?

I don’t think either porn or reality TV are necessarily unethical. But like all products, both can be created less than honorably. The Real Housewives can get pretty nasty. The garment industry can be awful as well.

Do you think you would have landed a book deal if Robbie had not filmed porn, if your book merely dealt with the troubles a young couple experiences before getting married? Do you think you used porn to help launch your mainstream literary career in the same way Robbie used porn to advance his mainstream videography career?

I wouldn’t have landed this book deal, no. For Prude, the framework of porn is inextricable. I definitely used the topic to launch my literary career. I’ve probably now used porn for career advancement to a greater extent than Robbie has.

That said, this book was not an easy sell and I didn’t go looking to write about porn. This experience pushed me to explore an uncomfortable (for me) topic that I would have rather avoided. As a writer, I know to dig into that stuff. If, for example, Robbie’s job filming The Deadliest Catch had forced me to confront my fear of loved ones dying, I would have probably wound up writing about that. Would that have garnered a book deal? Who knows.

At one point in Prude, you question your insecurities, writing: “Maybe our society only craves hard-core smut because aspiring to monogamy is so ass-backward and fucked-up. Maybe it’s marriage I should be wary of, and porn is just bringing its inadequacies to the surface.” If monogamy wasn’t the current relationship standard in western society, do you think porn would be as popular?

Oh boy, that requires serious speculation. I dare imagine that it might be less popular, yeah. I think the solitary nature of our society affects porn consumption as much as anything. We spend a lot of time alone on smart phones and laptops. Maybe the sheer community factor of living in different types of unions other than two-by-two might make porn less popular. But wait, am I going down a dangerous road of polyamorous assumptions here. Abort! Abort!

Did you start writing Prude while these events were taking place?

I didn’t record these events while they were taking place. At one point while I was ranting about porn, Robbie even said to me: “I bet you’ll write about this one day.” I told him where to shove it. Back then, I was just living through it.

A year or so afterwards, I started blogging about Robbie working alongside porn stars and thought about putting together a book pitch. Those original blogs are much less honest than where I eventually arrived. For the longest time, I had trouble being perceived as the jealous/crazy girl and even admitting that Robbie filming porn made me uncomfortable. In the end, the crazy/jealous/uncool stuff is the bulk of my story!

Did Robbie really get the job offer to shoot porn for a network reality show days before you were scheduled to move from Canada to his apartment in LA? In what ways did you manipulate time to shape reality into a more narrative structure?

Yup, that’s 100% accurate. In places, I altered the sequence of events to better suit the narrative, but that wasn’t one of them. The porn Robbie filmed was really repetitive and since I didn’t keep a journal (nor did he), we sometimes couldn’t remember whether, say, the MILF stuff was in June or October. Re-watching Webdreams was sometimes a help. Of course, it, too, is heavily edited.

Presumably you held back certain details, and made certain omissions that would have compromised the integrity of your relationship with Robbie, even if only by limiting the detail with which you described your sexual fantasies or experiences with previous partners. How do these omissions compare to Robbie’s omission that he had a one-night-stand the week you broke up with him and were sleeping with your ex? Can an author be trusted to write faithfully about a relationship he or she is currently in?

In Prude, I tried my very best to be transparent and let the reader into my experience. I shared a lot of myself. I also tried to use the best and juiciest possible details to push the story forward—like Robbie’s omission, though how empirically no worse than my sleeping with my ex at the time, fed my amped up jealousy in that moment. I didn’t use details for mere confession sake, and I probably wouldn’t have revealed, say, an ex fantasy, unless it was absolutely vital to the story. But Robbie was really open to whatever I needed to use; we discussed everything.

If you found out today that Robbie had protected sex with an adult performer while he was shooting porn, would this moment of infidelity change how good of a husband and father you now consider him to be? What would this insight into his past reveal about the present man?

That would be an extremely difficult scenario. It wouldn’t change the fact that he’s been a great father and husband to me. But it would change my trust level going forward. Lets just say we’d probably be hoofing it to the therapist’s office.

Why did you wait until one of the final chapters of Prude to offer dueling perspectives of what Robbie was doing on a porn set juxtaposed with your own experiences with temptation?

One difficult element of writing Prude was that Robbie was the one on set, so all of the porn details were secondhand. I went into Robbie’s perspective in Gonzo at the beginning to give the reader a taste of his world. And I used that tactic again at the end to show our two perspectives and heighten the tension. But I thought it might stretch the reader’s credibility to play with perspective too often in a memoir. If I had written this as a novel, I would have gone there more for sure.

Although you tell Robbie at first that you are comfortable with him filming porn, you eventually change your mind. How would you have reacted if, after writing much of Prude, Robbie told you he had changed his mind; he was no longer comfortable with you writing about your relationship, or about your sexual fantasies and experiences with previous partners? How would you have dealt with his request?

If Robbie had changed his mind about Prude, I wouldn’t have published it. We talked continuously about our comfort level with sharing all of this, so it’s hard to imagine him changing his mind in the final hour. In any case, I would never have proceeded with such an intimate story about him without his permission. He read every word, many times.

We need only look at the popularity of shaved genitals or the growing prevalence of anal sex to see how porn influences our sex lives. What has been less examined is how our relationships are shaped by mainstream depictions of love and romance. In what ways would you hope Prude shapes modern relationships?

Oh boy, that’s lofty! I hope Prude encourages people to communicate more about sexual expectations and porn. I also hope it encourages folks to use so-called plateau moments in a relationship, like an engagement, to really get to know each other. I’m glad we spent eight months talking about foursomes instead of flower arrangements. It was way more revealing.

My other small wish is that showing everyone my crazy pants makes someone else feel a little less crazy. Writing Prude was cathartic for me. So hopefully someone with similar issues can relate, have a laugh, and move on.

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This is it, the fourth and final week of Creative Loafing's Holiday Auction for the benefit of The Children's Home.

We've saved some very, very big items for this week, including:

• A beer-lover's wildest dream from Cigar City Brewing (think one very large bottle)

• A fantastic package for fans of Winter the Dolphin

• The always-popular vinyl shopping spree with CL's music editor

• A private trolley tour of St. Pete's Warehouse Arts District (with a glass-blowing finale)

• An incredible array of great stuff swiped from our editors' desks;

And perhaps the most coveted of all…

• The cover of Creative Loafing
.

Check out our eBay page and start your bidding — you've only got till Thurs. Dec. 12 at 5 p.m. to score some amazing holiday gifts and help The Children's Home toward another successful year.

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Head south for some deep-down-in-the-soul goodness to warm your belly this holiday season.

The Bradenton Blues Festival spreads out along the town's scenic Riverwalk, and headliners offer a healthy mix of traditional and contemporary sounds. Highlights include right-as-rain singer guitarist Johnny Rawls (pictured), saxophonist Eddie Shaw and the Wolfgang; Trampled Under Foot, an up-and-coming sibling act led by Danielle, Kris and Nick Schnebelen; and powerhouse vocalist Shemekia Copeland.

The schedule is as follows: Albert Castiglia, 11-11:40 a.m.; Johnny Rawls, 11:55 a.m.-12:55 p.m.; John Nemeth, 1:10-2:10 p.m.; Anthony Gomes, 2:25-3:25 p.m.; Trampled Underfoot, 3:40-4:40 p.m.; Eddie Shaw and the Wolfgang, 4:55-6:05 p.m.; Shemekia Copeland, 6:20-7:35 p.m., and Doug Deming, Dennis Gruenling and the Jewel Tones perform between acts.

You can catch Blues on Main featuring Sarasota Slim with food and beverage vendors, and handmade crafters this Saturday, 5-11 p.m., on Old Main Street. In the evening, Tarpon Pointe Blues with Chris Duarte takes place 7 p.m.-midnight at Tarpon Pointe Grill & Tiki Bar, 801 Riverside Drive East, Bradenton.

Cap it all of on Sunday with the Gospel Blues Brunch 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on Old Main Street and free concert with by the West Coast Black Theater Troupe from noon to 1 p.m.

Siesta Key Trolley will offer rides all weekend — Friday 5-9 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Pedicab service is Saturday 9 a.m.-midnight, provided by Sun Ride Pedicabs. There are more than 2,000 parking spaces within a five-minute walk or a short 5-10 minute with a free trolley ride to the Blues Festival site.

Award-winner Rawls also brings his smooth vocals and fretboard chops for a limited engagement show tonight. The performer named Best Male Soul Blues Artist by the Blues Foundation and Blues Trail Marker honoree hits at The Brickyard, 427 12th St. W., at 7 p.m.

Make a weekend of it by staying overnight. The Hampton Inn, a recently renovated historic hotel in downtown Bradenton, is just a few steps from the action.

Visit bradentonbluesfestival.org for details.

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When the temperatures start to take a nose dive and it’s finally time to dig out the sweaters (it'll happen someday, I swear), I’ll have one thing on my mind (besides keeping warm): soup! Synonymous with warmth and comfort, no wonder it’s such a popular dish this time of year.

The best part about soup is that it’s so darn easy to make. Seriously. You throw everything into a pot, bring it to a boil, lower it to a simmer, then let it ride for anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours (depending on what you put in it).

With most soup recipes, especially those that need to simmer for a long period of time, a lid is required during cooking to prevent the liquid from evaporating (or else you’ll just have a pot of soggy vegetables). Also, you’ll notice that soup is always cooked in a pot or saucepan with high sides instead of in a sauté pan with low sides. Why? The high sides prevent some of the moisture from leaving the pot and evaporating, while pans with low sides are designed to help wick moisture away — which is why they are great for making pan sauces and reductions.

Curried Cauliflower and Apple Soup is a creamy, dreamy dish using currently abundant seasonal produce. Cauliflower is a great base for a pureed soup because, when blended, it acquires a creamed consistency; hence no cream (or the added calorie count) is needed. The Madras curry gives the recipe an Eastern twist and a pop of flavor, but feel free to omit it or change it up with your favorite curry blend.

Curried Cauliflower-Apple Soup

Makes about 4 cups

Ingredients

Directions

In a medium saucepan or pot, heat the coconut oil over medium-low heat. When hot, add onion, ginger, thyme, and spices to pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion has started to soften.

Add the apple, garlic, and cauliflower to the pot, stir to combine and let sauté for about 2 minutes. Then add the broth and coconut milk, and bring to a heavy simmer or light boil. When bubbling, lower heat to a simmer, and cook, covered with a lid, until the cauliflower is very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. When the cauliflower and apple are cooked, remove pot from the heat and let it cool down for a few minutes.

When soup has cooled a bit, put it in a blender or food processor and purée it until smooth. Do this in batches if needed. If using a blender, make sure the hole in the top is open and blend the soup with a kitchen towel firmly over the hole holding down the top; this will prevent the steam from popping the top off of the blender when it’s first turned on.

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The five men and women who will be on the ballot next year in the race to succeed the late Bill Young in Florida's 13th Congressional District gathered en masse for the first time today at a candidates' forum held by the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club in St. Petersburg.

Republicans David Jolly, Kathleen Peters and Mark Bircher were joined by Democrat Alex Sink and Libertarian candidate Lucas Overby at the forum, all taking turns to talk about their respective candidacies and fielding questions from a jam-packed crowd at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club.

By far the most accomplished speaker was Sink, which should not be a surprise considering she has run twice for statewide office and seriously considered a third time, before announcing in September that she would not run again for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Unlike 2010, when she seemed befuddled on how to respond to the contentious debate about the Affordable Care Act, Sink criticized the problems with HealthCare.gov but said it is now the law.

"The rollout has been a disaster, the administration has failed us, but I believe that Americans deserve the right to health insurance and affordable healthcare," she said to applause from the audience, which seemed to be in her camp.

Sink said that she had heard "amazing and incredible stories" about Bill Young's staff. She added that when she took over as chief financial officer for the state in 2007 she didn't make a complete overhaul of the staff there, implying that she might keep some of his staffers employed if she were to win the seat.

Sink has it relatively easy for now, as she isn't running in a contested primary.

That's not the case for the three Republicans in the race. They are in a march against time to get their name and message out before the primary less than six weeks from now.

Retired Marine Corps brigadier general Mark Bircher was the first GOP candidate to take the stage. Like David Jolly, Bircher has never run for office. Unlike Jolly, he's not an insider with links to the GOP establishment in Pinellas County, prompting one Tiger Bay member to ask him what he's done in the community.

He said he had volunteered at one point with the public defender's office and has coached Little League. But he said that his deployment overseas in Iraq was in a way serving his community.

He was critical of the Republican Party, saying they have given voters a choice between "big government and bigger government," adding "I think we've lost our way."

The question of what one has done for Pinellas County is a key talking point for State Representative Kathleen Peters' candidacy. It's a question that she and ally Jack Latvala have used to differentiate her not only from Jolly but also from Alex Sink.

Peters does have an impressive resume of service in south and north Pinellas County over the past two decades, and used much of her time at the mic to talk about that experience. A former city council member and then mayor of South Pasadena in Pinellas, she ran for and won her first bid for state office last year, taking the seat vacated when Rick Kriseman opted not to run for re-election and ran instead for mayor of St. Petersburg.

She chided the Obama administration and Congress for allowing the federal deficit to climb so high. "Every city, every county, every state has to have a balanced budget, but why not Congress? The debt and the deficit that they are imposing on future generations is absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable," she said.

She also blasted Washington for failing to address the flood insurance problem that has come Pinellas County's way in the form of the Biggert-Walters Act, a bill passed after Hurricane Katrina to make the government’s flood insurance program solvent and to eliminate taxpayer-backed subsidies needed to pay for catastrophic losses. It hits tens of thousands of households in Pinellas County hard, and thus all of the major candidates in the race have condemned it and vowed to come up with a better solution.

And she had nothing positive to say about the ACA, but did say she didn't agree necessarily with House Republicans voting 40 times to repeal it, at least not without a viable alternative to replace it. She said she had personally experienced problems with discrimination from insurance companies because of a pre-existing condition.

When asked why she left her seat in Tallahassee to run for one in Washington, Peters said she felt she could represent her constituents just as well, if not better, in the nation's capitol as in the state capitol.

Next up was David Jolly, the longtime aide to Congressman Young who has emphasized in his brief time on the campaign trail that he is a "Bill Young Republican." Speaking with confidence, Jolly appeared not to have updated his speech, saying that polls showed him leading the primary, when in fact the latest St. Pete Polls survey has him in a virtual tie with Peters.

The 41-year-old is quite aware of the criticism that Peters and Latvala have rained down on him for being an outsider to Pinellas County, saying, "I don't believe in poll-tested one-line attacks." He told the audience that they would hear him referred to as a lobbyist. But no, he really isn't, he said. "I'm a Pinellas County businessman. I work in finance in Clearwater, I have a communications firm. I run a nonprofit management firm. I have consulted for businesses, and yes, for some of my clients I have been a registered lobbyist."

"This race is going to be about substance, not about attacks," he proclaimed, though it may definitely wind up being about the latter. "This race is going to be about taking on issues, not taking on each other."

Closing out the afternoon was Lucas Overby, a 27-year-old who filed to run for the office long before Congressman Young passed away. He's a Libertarian, but not "that kind of Libertarian," though it wasn't clear what he meant by that. When asked by Kim Black from the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association what he thought about the federal government's role in public education, Overby said he didn't, saying he believed education should be controlled by the states.

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