This guy has now done 1,000 of these for some reason

Earlier today, Tampa News Force (TNF) published my 1,000th article.

Wow. What a long, strange whatever it’s been and continues to be.

LONG: The world was a very different place four years ago. The nation was still trying to free itself from the appealing-yet-deadly allure of the Tide Pod Challenge. Nobody had heard of COVID. Almost nobody had heard of TikTok yet. One day, I asked John Jacobs and Josh Santos, the original TNF architects if I could write something for the site and they said yes. My first article was this one, posted on January 8, 2019: Tampa Bay Lightning original season ticket holder still refers to periods as “quarters”

Then John and Josh let me do another one and some more after that and 1,661 days later, here we are.

STRANGE: Since then, we’ve created a kind of Tampa Bay alternate universe where really stupid people engage in truly weird and bad behavior and everybody just kind of accepts it and goes on with their lives. That isn’t very strange. The strange part is that the stuff we don’t make up, that happens in real life, is frequently weirder and worse behavior committed by even stupider people.

WHATEVER: Since I’ve gotten involved with TNF, we publish brand new written satire every single day, we’ve done live stand-up comedy shows, produced sketch videos and movies, walked the red carpet at film festivals, and something I’m especially proud of, we’ve provided creative opportunities for over 60 local performers as actors, writers and comics to make original content. I would put our record against any “legitimate” county government-funded arts organization. Of course, I also have to mention our most recent and current WHATEVER, our monthly residency at the Fringe Theatre in Ybor on the 4th Wednesday of every month (tickets are only $5 and are available here) where we present a totally different show every time.

Anyway, thanks John and Josh for the opportunity to be part of this. It’s literally been life changing for me. And thanks to everybody (anybody?) who has read all (any?) of this. There are several articles written and scheduled for the near future so we’re already working on the next 1,000.