And the Winner Is …
By J. Lee Austin, MD
After a decade long interim, it was great to return to the Emerald Coast of Florida, where the fun never sets and you get to hear your tax dollars screaming overhead as the Navy’s F-18 “Blues” as the locals call them, streak the roaring sky. It’s an impressive display of power that makes you really glad they’re on your side.

That being said, I have to wonder: With some 800 U.S. military bases planted all over the planet, why can’t we just bring our boys and girls home and stop pestering other countries. Puzzled Aliens may someday equate “democracy spreading” with “global incineration” if we don’t stop. But I digress.

J. Lee is a contributor to Crystal Beach Local News, and is the founder of The Good Help Network, a reader-supported publication.

Speaking of pestering, recurrent, petulant tropical rain systems drenched our vacation to the point that we were reduced to watching classic videos of spasmodic 80’s Rockers simulating seizure activity on stage. I’m guessing that Motley Crue generated more than their fair share of seizures back in the day with their uber-sexy “Girls, Girls, Girls” cutting edge effort of under dressed femmes off the chain and writhing around their handy poles. Not for the timid or faint of heart, that one.

Ditto for seizures from The Rolling Stones’ video called “Living in a Ghost Town” with its high speed, rapid-fire image segments, each culminating in a photo of a deserted town. The 2019 song was supposedly originally about a plague, but as the story goes, the lyrics were changed to fit with the “pandemic” just in time to be released in 2020. I’ll take Unlikely Dystopian Coincidence for a thousand, Alex.

Best Seizure Simulation Award went to Billy Squier for his jerky rendition of “My Kind of Lover.” Honorable mention for his “Everybody Wants You” video … with pretty-hair boy singing the Anthem of Unbridled Narcissism. If you should ever need a laugh at how far we haven’t come, give these frenetic works of art a gander.

The Florida beach was spectacular, with its pillow soft, blinding-white sand squeaking beneath your feet and its water a dreamy cerulean azure that those of us who live on the upper Texas coast can only dream about. For residents of a place called Crystal Beach, with its chronically mousy, milk-chocolate surf, the irony was thick.

On the other side of the ledger, Destin’s clear water was thoroughly littered and clogged with bobbing clumps of slippery, dark green organic matter doing a spot-on imitation of river rock moss. The annoying seaweed invasion worked overtime to tarnish the otherwise sparkling image of paradise, making a simple thing like fishing difficult to impossible. Made me glad I don’t live in a place called Mossy Slimeball Beach.

I guess the major difference though, is access. You can literally drive a 40 foot RV the 26 mile length of the beach of the Bolivar Peninsula without interruption. In most of Florida on the other hand, vehicles on the beach are strictly verboten (Hi Daytona!) and in Okaloosa County, walking a few cubits in either direction will land you on someone else’s private beach for possible interrogation and incarceration. Ok, I may have made that last part up, but you get the idea.

Here’s to freedom … on the beach, and beyond! ~~ j ~~

“Even Napoleon had his Watergate.” ~~ Yogi Berra

[Sept-9-2024]