Triple Breasted Masseuse

So the media is all abuzz today about Jasmine Tridevil, a Tampa massage therapist who recently obtained a third breast after a long search for a surgeon willing to perform the surgery.

"It was really hard finding someone that would do it, too, because they’re breaking the code of ethics," she's quoted as saying, "I called, like, 50 or 60 doctors, nobody wanted to do it." Whatever doctor she did find to do it is probably less than happy that she's reminding the world that he violated the code of ethics - even though she says the surgery is "off the record" with a non-disclosure contract.

Why did she want a third breast? Apparently it's a gimmick that Tridevil hopes will help her to launch a television reality show about herself. She has, according to news sources, hired a professional camera crew to follow her around recording her every move. (Despite this, her promotional images shown in the news are smartphone selfies taken in bathroom mirrors.)

It isn't clear whether she intends to pitch this raw footage to the networks as a example or a pilot, or if she's actually hiring people to film, edit and produce the TV series now on her own and hope a network bites on it later. It also isn't clear if she's hired an agent, or is doing this completely off the grid by show business standards.

More disturbingly, perhaps, than her self-alteration, is her declaration: "my whole dream is to get this show on MTV." Hmmm. Aim a little higher, perhaps?

And if all that's not enough cognitive dissonance for you, she said another reason for the third breast was because she "doesn't want to date anymore" and that she hoped it would make herself unattractive to men. Say what? I would think a triple-breasted masseuse would be every sci-fi geek's wet dream. Then again, she has publicly stated there is no nipple on the fake third breast, just a tattoo of a picture of one. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Okay. Yeah, you know, that does, in fact, sound very very very very unattractive.

Lastly, to add further annoyance to a story that is already annoying on multiple levels, practically everyone covering this in the media is making reference to the triple-breasted woman in the film Total Recall, and omitting mention of the prior character Eccentrica Gallumbits, a triple-breasted prostitute in the 1979 science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Come on people, give Douglas Adams his props!

Mary Woronov

Some people seem to always be in the right place at the right time. Take Mary Woronov, who was born in Palm Beach, Florida (in the Breakers Hotel, in fact) in 1943. By the mid-60s she'd somehow become one of Andy Warhol's "Superstars" and was a dancer with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (with music provided by The Velvet Underground).

And from there, Woronov parlayed herself into an acting career that somehow managed to perfectly span a half century of hipsterdom. She appeared in the 1966 Warhol film Chelsea Girls; the 1974 cult horror flick Silent Night, Bloody Night with John Carradine and Candy Darling; 1975's Death Race 200; the classic Ramones movie Rock and Roll High School (as the Joan Crawford-ish principal Miss Togar); Heartbeeps (with Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters); 1982's Eating Raoul; 1989's Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (the film that prompted a psychotic fan to kill Rebecca Schaeffer); 1990's Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty and Madonna; and Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects in 2005. Additionally she made guest appearances in many TV series including Charlie's Angels, Webster, Highlander, Murder She Wrote, Knight Rider, Mr. Belvedere, Logan's Run, St. Elsewhere, Wings, Taxi, and My So-Called Life.

And if that's not enough, she's also an accomplished painter. What've you done lately?

Gail Melville Shumway

Florida-based photographer Gail Melville Shumway has traveled around the world - Ecuador, Peru, Trinidad, Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras, Panama, Guatemala, and Southeast Asia - to capture beautiful images of wildlife (especially amphibians and butterflies.)

Her photographs have appeared on covers of National Geographic Explorer, National Wildlife, International Wildlife, and Ranger Rick; on billboards, greeting cards, calendars, puzzles, editorials, album covers, books, and advertisements. Her photographic works have been published in more than 75 countries and represented by GettyImages, and her image of a swallowtail butterfly was once displayed in the entrance to the White House.

Shumway is seen here promoting her children's book Stripey Follows His Dream at an art fair on Anna Maria Island.

Count Carl von Cosel

We kinda know a lot about the subject of this post, but in a way we kinda don't. He wrote autobiographical articles in Rosicrucian Digest and the pulp publication Fantastic Adventures, but many gaps and unanswered questions remain.

For example, we're not even 100 percent sure of his name; he was listed as Georg Karl Tänzler on his marriage certificate, Carl Tanzler von Cosel on his United States citizenship papers and hospital records, and simply Carl Tanzler on his Florida death certificate. He was born on February 8, 1877 in Dresden, Germany. During his childhood, and later while traveling briefly in Italy, he was seized with visions of his dead ancestor, Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel, who revealed to him the face of she who would someday be his true love, an exotic dark-haired woman.

Cosel married a woman named Doris, with whom he had two daughters, and sailed to Havana, Cuba in 1926. Shortly thereafter, he emigrated to the U.S. and lived in Zephyrhills, FL for a short time before strangely abandoning his family and somehow taking a job as a radiologist at the U.S. Marine Hospital on Key West, even though he was less than qualified for such a position. He made many claims that he had nine university degrees, had been a submarine captain and was an electrical inventor, but apparently none of these stories he told about himself were true.

On April 22, 1930, he met Maria Elena Milagro "Helen" de Hoyos (usually just called Elena by friends and family), a young Cuban-American woman in the hospital for an examination. Cosel instantly recognized Elena, the daughter of local cigar maker, as the destined-to-be soulmate that had been revealed to him in his hallucinatory visions. Unfortunately for Cosel, his alleged soulmate was married (though separated from her husband who lived in Miami) and dying of tuberculosis.

Cosel went into full-blown mad scientist mode, and begged Elena to let him attempt to treat her privately with all manner of quack therapies, including various electrical devices, obscure medicines such as a tonic infused with particles of gold, and dangerous X-ray treatments that almost certainly made her condition worse. Elena died on October 25, 1931.

Elena's parents, aware of Cosel's fondness for their daughter but not quite grasping the length and breadth of his obsession with her, allowed him to handle the funeral arrangements and burial, including an elaborate above-ground mausoleum in the Key West Cemetery. (Portions of the original memorial plaque that was commissioned by Cosel and affixed to the mausoleum are on display at the Martello Gallery in Key West.) Though they were grateful for his generosity, they were unaware he visited the grave almost daily - and nightly, usually very late at night - and that he had a key to the tomb made for himself. No doubt he spent many a night pouring shot after shot of rum, staring at the key and pondering its potential.

In April 1933, after almost two years of letting the idea ferment, he removed Elena's body from the tomb and managed to cart it back in the dead of night via a child's red toy wagon to his secret laboratory (inside an abandoned passenger plane behind the hospital) and then ultimately to his home. Cosel later told authorities that he could summon Elena's spirit by sitting at her grave and singing her favorite Spanish song, and that the idea to remove her body from the tomb was hers, not his.

Cosel's attempts to stave off the body's already-advanced state of putrefaction with wax and plaster were about as successful as his attempts to save her life in the first place, but that didn't stop him from keeping the body in his home for the next seven years. But soon locals began to whisper: why was Cosel buying perfume and women's clothing? And when a paper-boy reported looking through a window and seeing Cosel dancing with the corpse, Elena's sister showed up at his door and discovered the sickening truth. Though Cosel was arrested and jailed, he ultimately walked out of the courtroom a free man, for no other reason than because the statute of limitations had elapsed.

Oddly, officials showed even less respect than Cosel for Elena's body: instead of immediately giving her a reburial, her corpse was placed on public display at the Dean-Lopez Funeral Home, where it was viewed like a carnival attraction by thousands of gawkers and curiosity-seekers. Finally she was reinterred in Key West Cemetery, but in an unmarked grave in an undisclosed spot.

As for Cosel, he stayed in Florida. He moved back to the Zephyrhills area and created a life-size wax replica of his beloved Elena, and he lived with it in his home until his death on July 3, 1952. He's buried in Oakside Cemetery in Zephyrhills.

Captain George

In a state with at least 4500 islands (and you can triple that statistic if you include tiny ones under 10 acres in size) you need a lot of boats. And if you don't have a boat (I'm workin' on it) then you need a lot of Captains. Fortunately for us all, there's no shortage of have-craft-will-chauffeur Captains out there plying their trade.

One of my closest Captainly allies is Captain George on Anna Maria Island, who will for a pittance shuttle your ass wherever you want to go. Even if you don't really want to go anywhere. Even if you just wanna be dropped off on Beer Can Island for awhile to go frolicking nude in the mangroves with a bottle of Kraken and a bag of limes. His boat, the Mystic Dolphin also comes equipped with a CD player that plays both kinds of music - Jimmy Buffett and.... Jimmy Buffett.

Call the man: 941.778.2761. And tell him I sent you by!