At the City of Sarasota’s Police Advisory Panel (PAP) public meeting on Dec. 28, Sgt. Kenneth Castro — a 28-year police veteran — admonished the panel for “disturbing” and “insulting” comments he felt some of its members had made about the Sarasota Police Department (SPD) in prior meetings. The panel — appointed by Sarasota City Commissioners last November in response to the summer 2009 police incident involving a police officer who was videotaped kicking a handcuffed suspect — is tasked with examining the practices of the SPD in connection with the use of force, and its relationship with residents, especially the minority community.

“We cannot allow you to continue to barrage our police officers,” Castro said, adding that such negative talk could affect the morale of the “troops” and possibly “demotivate” them on the job. Read more »

In the current (January) issue of Sarasota Magazine — I’m featured, along with attorney Morgan Bentley, Asolo Rep artistic producing director Michael Donald Edwards, Argus Foundation director Kerry Kirschner, comedian Les McCurdy, and arts critic Richard Storm, and Bob Plunket, Sarasota’s own version of Dominick Dunne — in Pam Daniel’s “New Year’s Resolutions We Can Believe In” column.

In it, we all try to be funny and smart — to varying degrees of success and cruelty! — in telling other people what they should be shooting for and focusing on in 2010 — folks like Art Nadel, Facebook users, Charlie Crist, Sarah Palin, city manager Bob Bartolotta, and more.

I thought I was a little meanie until I met the rest of my esteemed panelists — these guys don’t even think about pulling their punches (or their punchlines)!

Check it out at http://www.sarasotamagazine.com/Articles/Sarasota-Magazine/2010/01/New-Years-Resolutions.asp — or pick up a copy on newsstands today.

The Sarasota Herald Tribune is running an essay of mine in today’s (New Year’s Day, 2010) paper — page 17A for the printaphiliacs among you. (Yes, I think I made that word up!). Or, online at This Year, Let’s Get Happy.

Here’s a snippet:

Do I really want another year of struggling to lose 20 pounds and scrambling to replenish my decimated savings? Isn’t re-caulking the bathtub, reading “Remembrance of Things Past” and clearing out that mess of who-knows-what from under the bed aiming awfully low?

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This article was printed in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on January 1, 2010, page A17.

Though 2009 started on a high note for me with the inauguration of Barack Obama, the rest of the year was full of lows. From nonstop revelations of infidelities among the Lettermans, Woods, et al., to the news about banks that continued to melt down, to the losses of community touchstones such as Sarasota News & Books and the many restaurants and shops that closed for lack of business — not to mention the jobs that kept disappearing and the mortgages that kept defaulting — it’s been a blistering year of heartache and worry.

The crazy-year-that-was has been grueling, with too many of us behaving like hamsters, practically tripping over our own feet, caught on the dizzying wheel of making ends meet.

Time for a little fun, don’t you think? Read more »

The Sarasota Herald Tribune is running an essay of mine in today’s paper —

“If I’d continued on the road I was on,” Hillis says, “I’d be living out on the street myself, or dead.” A tale of redemption.

– in the Op/Ed section, print page 9A, or if you want to read it online, you can do so by clicking these words: Angels with Scissors.

If you have any thoughts or comments about the column, you can comment here on my blog, or post a comment on the H-T website and/or you can send a letter to the editor of the Herald Tribune at editor.letters@heraldtribune.com (be sure to type the word “letter” in the subject line).

Was this a year, or what? I’m a huge fan of settling down on New Year’s Eve, putting on my retro shades, and looking back at the crazy, sweet, and just plain foolish shenanigans of the prior 12 months. And this December 31st will find me, a shot of Sambucca at my side, staring out the window forgiving my myriad faux pas of 2009 and plotting to do better in 2010. But in the meantime, I’m handing out my first annual “Naughty & Nice” awards for the game-changers, newsmakers, do-gooders, and the notorious, vainglorious, and utterly inglorious of our fair city and beyond. Read more »

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune ran a column of mine this morning in its Op/Ed section. Page 9A if you’re reading print … online readers can click on the link below:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20091214/COLUMNIST/912141004

If you’re interested in commenting on the piece — you can do so by writing to: editor.letters@heraldtribune.com. And, of course, you’re welcome to leave a comment on this blog!

It’s a good Monday for me whenever I’m in print — so Happy Monday!

Jiminy Cricket! MC Reality readers — both print and on this blog — I can’t thank you all enough for voting for me in the Creative Loafing Best of the Suncoast 2009 contest. You pulled it off — et voilà — I’m now the Best Columnist on the Suncoast three years running (you guys voted me in, in 2007 and 2008)!!!

MC Coolidge Best Local Columnist!

This column appeared in print in Creative Loafing newspaper 10/7/09.

The topic of cougarsome cuties chasing cuddly cradle-dwellers is about as tasty an intellectual morsel as dining at the Olive Garden is a gastronomic one. Whether or not women d’un certain âge have sex with younger men is a topic as culturally passé as older men using little blue pills to make it through the night. It’s done; it happens. Why all this talk today about something so yesterday?

MC tries (tries being the operative word) to strike a cou-girrrrrl-icious pose.

*Life without books is death.

I don’t pretend to know the business side of running a bookstore/café like Sarasota News & Books, but I do claim to know the emotional side of being one of its patrons.

When I moved back to Sarasota five years ago after living in Boston for years, Sarasota News & Books saved my sanity. Not being a barfly or club-goer, it was at this bookstore that I became a regular, staving off crazy-lonely feelings in the company of books and book-lovers. It was there that I scribbled out the beginnings of an essay entitled Café Chess - Très Sexy that would later launch my (so-called) career as a writer in Sarasota in a column that celebrated the cerebrally-sexy chess players sitting at the café’s outdoor tables. Read more »