While shutterbugs in south Florida trying to snap photos of visiting celebs on Super Bowl Sunday, a large pellican enjoyed a few minutes of stardom as he made a unexpected appearance on the pool deck at the Boca Raton Resort & Club‘s beach club. After spending a minute in the pool, the large bird paused for photos as the paparazzi snapped away commenting on his unkempt quoiff of hair and noticibly worn coat of feathers.

Not wanting to be upstaged by any of the activity just down the road in Fort Lauderdale and South Beach, the big bird delighted those who were watching him strut around, obviously proud of illuding security and sneaking in through the front gate. Some spectators commented that he sneaked in almost as casually as Tareq and Michaele Salahi at a White House dinner.

After a few minutes of working the crowd, our feathered friend walked out of the beach and in a matter of seconds, flew due south. No word on whether or not he will play interference during tonight’s big game.

If you have an interest in wild birds, or just want to keep your feathered friends happy, visit my wild bird store! Come on, do it!

I grabbed my trusty Canon PowerShot and headed over and started snapping away. What I captured was several green parrots. You might be wondering, “are parrots native to Florida?” Well, the answer is “no.” According to one report:

In the 1960′s pet parrots became quite popular and there was a huge business importing parrots that were caught in the wild elsewhere. It is thought that the wild parakeets in Florida originated from these birds that somehow got loose before being sold off. Since these birds were not domesticated and already had to fend for themselves in the wild, it was easy for them to adapt to life in Florida and multiply to the flocks present today. (http://www.epet-center.com/wildparakeetsinflorida.html)

Up the road in Palm Beach, parrots have been on the island since the 1940′s when they were imported. The famous Breakers Palm Beach hotel is home to several endangered wild green-cheeked Amazon parrots. Occasionally, some scally-wags will attempt to steal the parrots and sell them at a pet store, but as this article from The Palm Beach Post says, parrot theives face a stiff fine if caught:

Trapping birds on the island can result in a $250 fine for the first offense and $500 for subsequent offenses. Whoever trapped the birds could also face arrest on trespassing charges for going onto Breakers property without permission.

While I enjoyed the beauty of these afternoon visitors, I hope you do as well in the photos that I’m sharing with you below.

Headbanger’s Holiday
Yesterday was Halloween, the one day a year when kids think the world owes them a sugar high. I don’t get the whole “Halloween thing.” Yes, as a child I too dressed up in ridiculous looking costumes, parading down the street and ringing doorbells at night singing silly ditties looking for a handout. Then upon returning home, usually spent the night vomiting due to the excessive candy intake.

Now I spend Halloween with the lights out, the doors bolted, shades drawn and as far away from my house as I could be.

So before heading to Arturo’s in Boca Raton for dinner last night, I took a shower. While exiting, I slipped, slammed my head off the marble sink and went down for the count for about a minute. Happy Halloween.

With a massive headache and a bout with the dizzies I still managed to enjoy a great Italian meal at my new found favorite restaurant.

Today, the headache and dizziness was gone, but I can’t remember stupid stuff! I got lost going to the Boca Beach Club – a place I go to almost daily – had to look up phone numbers of people I call all the time, and couldn’t remember the password to log onto my laptop.

I’m not too concerned about it, after all, they say only the good die young. I’ll be around to 103.

The Flu
One thing I wanted to do today was get a flu shot. I was anticipating getting both the seasonal flu vaccine along with the H1N1 vaccine, but noooooo.

First off, it took visits to five Walgreen’s to finally find one with the vaccines available. Since you can’t get the two shots at the same time, I opted for the seasonal flu one since the line was a lot shorter.

Two and a half hours later, I had my shot. There were people waiting over four hours for the H1N1 vaccine, to which I say, never on a Sunday! So I have to wait till December to get the other shot and with my luck I’ll either have the swine flu by then or there will be no more vaccine available.

The Tube
While watching television this afternoon, I realized that we, the viewers, are getting the shaft!

I was watching a movie on TBS and I noticed that throughout the entire film, nearly 1/3 of the screen was taken up by the TBS logo and a promo for the George Lopez show. To that I say, WTF?

Look, I’m a marketing guy and will use every opportunity to get my message out there, but this is just a plain annoyance. About 10 years ago, the “bug” started appearing in the corner of our screens. That’s the station’s logo that sits down there to remind us that we’re watching NBC, like we would forget. Now, in addition to the “bug” we get static ads like the one for Lopez, or full video ads like you see on Discovery or The History Channel.

The images you see below show the screen I’m referring to along with the percentage of the screen that the ad takes up. I’m not a fan of this new type of advertising, as I think it’s pretty annoying. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if it only appeared for a few seconds here and there, but for it to be visible all the time, well, that’s unacceptable.

Maybe TBS and the rest of the networks who do this would like to pay 1/3 of my cable bill.

Yeah, right.

The original screen shot showing the position of the bug and the ad on TBS.

The same screen showing the percentage of the screen that is taken up by the bug and the ad.