Performing Arts Center Hosts 2nd Annual Fall Festival!

Just in case you missed the first annual Fall Festival at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center (NTPAC) last year, this exciting, four-day event is back for a second year this weekend, beginning tonight! Attendees will get to check out the many unique music, dance, art and other cultural programs all weekend long at NTPAC (8550 Hunters Village Rd., Tampa 33647) and, best of all, it’s all free to attend!

Here is a variety of the hundreds of photos we took at last year’s Fall Fest and this year’s weekend promises to be even bigger and better! 

For the complete schedule of NTPAC Fall Festival events, visit NewTampaArtsCenter.org!

Former ‘Golden Girls,’ ‘Gilmore Girls’ & ‘Roseanne’ Writer Brings New Play To NTPAC 

Powerstories presents Stan Zimmerman’s “right before i go” as part of its “Celebrate the Power of the Arts” weekend at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center Sept. 20-21. 

You may not know the name Stan Zimmerman, but if you’ve ever watched an episode of “The Golden Girls,” “Gilmore Girls” or “Roseanne,” you may already know his work. 

But, whether you know his name or not, you owe it to yourself to check out Zimmerman’s original play, “right before I go,” in which he also acts as the narrator. 

Zimmerman’s play about suicide notes will be performed at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center (NTPAC, 5850 Hunters Village Rd.) on Friday and Saturday, September 20-21, 7 p.m., by Powerstories, “a nonprofit professional theatre troupe whose mission is to stage true stories to open minds and hearts and inspire action worldwide.” Powerstories will “Celebrate the Power of the Arts” throughout the weekend, which also will include an art display, raffles, appetizers, staged reading, talkback, celebrity meet & greet and live music. 

Zimmerman, who also has directed many plays, says “right before i go” itself is “only about an hour long” and that there will be a half-hour sit-down with a mental health professional following the performance. A portion of the ticket sales will be donated to the Crisis Center of Hillsborough. Also scheduled to be readers are chief meteorologist Denis Phillips and anchor Wendy Ryan of ABC Action News Tampa Bay. 

“I feel that with this piece, the audience will need to talk about it afterwards,” Zimmerman says. “It’s really about starting a discussion. I’ve found that after the show, people want to talk about it with total strangers on the street or friends and family.” 

Theatrical Rights Worldwide (TRW) had this to say about the play: “Stan Zimmerman brings to life the last words written in letters by individuals lost to suicide — including celebrities, veterans, kids that were bullied, LGBTQ and the clinically depressed — and those who have survived suicide attempts. Since its acclaimed first performance at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2015, the play has traveled across the country, raising awareness and offering hope for suicide prevention.” 

Zimmerman, who says he was mercilessly bullied and regularly spit on in 7th, 8th and 9th grade, admits that he would go home and “visualize taking my own life” many times. 

In an interview on YouTube, he said, “I don’t suffer from depression, but if I did, and had those feelings [of suicide], I honestly don’t know if I’d be here today.” 

But then, in 2012, “I was one of a couple of people who received a suicide note from a very good friend of mine named Kevin, who took his own life. I started Googling ‘suicide notes’ and had an idea to use my craft to put what I found into a play, with actors reading the suicide notes in order to help raise awareness and prevention for suicide.” 

Writer, director, playwright and actor Stan Zimmerman will be the narrator for “right before i go” at NTPAC and will have a “talkback” session following the play. (Photo: Screenshot from YouTube) 

With his career predominantly as a comedy writer, Zimmerman says he really scoured the internet in order to try to find a “funny” suicide note, “but what I found is that there really wasn’t one. Some of them were lighter, and that some people will laugh or giggle, but that may be nervous laughter. But, this is a very important moment in anyone’s life when they decide to do this.” 

He says that when the play was first performed at the Fringe Festival, “the tendency for the actors was to play the result, you know, where this was going. And I had to remind them that there’s an urgency to these notes. These people that wrote these notes needed to get this out [because] they weren’t being heard and they had to tell people what they felt inside. And I think that’s why they’re all so powerful.” The subtitle of “right before i go” is “Destigmatizing Suicide.” 

As for how he approached writing “right before i go,” Zimmerman says, “I wanted this to be sort of like ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ in that it would be something that would be easily performed and wouldn’t take a lot of rehearsal, so theatre companies, when they did this piece, they could rehearse it for a couple of hours or a couple of days and interpret it any way they wanted.” 

He also says that it just came to him “how the structure needed to be and how to group the notes to tell the story.” 

Meanwhile, Zimmerman says that although he has made a career of writing, his first love was acting, and he started his career in the theatre program at New York University. 

And, even though he didn’t originally intend to be the play’s narrator, “When I did the first table read in my living room with friends of mine, a lot of them said, ‘You’re a writer, you need to put yourself in this piece.’ That’s when I started writing a lot more in between. And, they said they wanted hope, so that’s when I started putting a lot of stuff about hope at the end.” 

An Illustrious Career 

Although Zimmerman and his long-time writing partner James Berg were never the head writers on “The Golden Girls,” “Gilmore Girls” or “Roseanne,” the Zimmerman/Berg team did write multiple episodes for all three and were able to capitalize on those successes (and others) with many other writing credits. 

In addition, while they also didn’t receive writing credits for the original script of “The Brady Bunch Movie” (and weren’t happy about it), the team was hired by the film’s director Betty Thomas to do rewrites of the original script, and the movie became a hit. Zimmerman and Berg would then get full writing credits for “A Very Brady Sequel,” which also became a hit in 1996. 

And, while none of the other TV series the pair wrote for — including the TV adaptation of the hit movie “Fame,” as well as “Just Our Luck,” “Pauly” and “Rita Rocks,” to name just a few — became monster hits, they also were hired as “term writers” for other series, most notably “The Nanny.” 

Their work won the team two Writers Guild of America award nominations — for the “Rose’s Mother” episode of “The Golden Girls” and the infamous “Lesbian Kiss” episode of “Roseanne.” 

Zimmerman and Berg also were the writers for “Ladies of the ‘80s: A Divas Christmas,” a 2023 TV Christmas comedy starring some of the most famous TV divas of the ‘80s — Loni Anderson (“WKRP in Cincinnati”), Morgan Fairchild (“Flamingo Road” and “Falcon’s Crest”), Linda Gray (“Dallas”), Donna Mills (“Knots Landing”) and Nicollette Sheridan (also “Knots Landing” and later, “Desperate Housewives”). 

Also last year, Indian River Publishing (an independent book publishing company distributed by Simon & Schuster) published Zimmerman’s book The Girls: from Golden to Gilmore, subtitled “Stories about all the wonderful women I’ve worked with…” (Note-He says that the words that come after the ellipsis are “and Roseanne,” although the book cover doesn’t say it.) 

The book tells Zimmerman’s true story as a TV and film writer and yes, all of the wonderful women he and Berg worked with together. I’ve read several chapters of my copy, which I will ask Stan to autograph when I meet him next month. It’s a great read. 

Editor’s note — Although I also interviewed him on the phone, most of the direct quotes in this article came from the YouTube video “Playwright Stan Zimmerman Discusses Right Before I Go.” And, the information about his early life and career came from The Girls. 

For tickets ($40-$100) to the performances of “right before i go,” visit bit.ly/NNCelebration or Powerstories.com.

Tampa Bay Home Team Helps Sellers & Buyers With Discounted Commissions 

Joe & Christina Kipping say they rare proud to run their Tampa Bay Home Team real estate office on Cypress Ridge Blvd. like a family, but here they are with their actual family. (Photos provided by Joe Kipping)

Joe Kipping loves his family and he also loves to be a coach. A former high school and college football player himself, he now coaches football for his sons, Joey, 10, and Jaxson, 9. 

But, Joe spends most of his time coaching clients in his role as a real estate agent and broker, and cultivating a business that feels more like a family than a corporation. 

He and his wife, Christina, who also is a real estate agent, own Tampa Bay Home Team. 

Joe started in the industry in 2003. 

“I was doing mortgages, but I didn’t want to be strapped behind a desk,” he says. From his vantage point, he met real estate agents who weren’t serving their clients well. “I can do this better,” he thought, so he pursued a real estate license. 

He started selling homes in 2007, then established the company that would become Tampa Bay Home Team in 2009. After 10 years under the Keller Williams umbrella, Tampa Bay Home Team is now part of eXp Realty. 

“We made the switch to eXp Realty because it offers greater opportunities for Realtors through revenue sharing and stock ownership,” Joe explains, adding that eXp Realty has an innovative model that allows agents to build wealth for retirement during their careers. 

In 2014, Christina was let go from a corporate job in finance and joined Joe in the business. 

And in 2021, Joe’s career came full circle when he opened a mortgage business, called Motto Mortgage Home Team, a local franchise of a Denver-based company that has more than 225 offices in 40 states. 

The office for both companies is located in Wesley Chapel, on Cypress Ridge Blvd. near AdventHealth Center Ice. It includes five more agents, all of whom have been at the company for several years. 

“We’re family oriented,” says Christina. “We’re a small business, and we really do treat clients as family, and our employees would say the same thing.” 

Joe and Christina are native to the Tampa Bay area and moved to Wesley Chapel almost 15 years ago. In addition to Joey and Jaxon, Joe and Christina also have two daughters. Taylor, who is 14 and six-year-old Natalie. 

“I love to educate people,” Joe says, “whether they’re buying now or 10 years from now. I’m a coach at heart. If they buy 10 years from now, I want to be the guy who has been there the whole time, educating them along the way.” 

“We’re here to help people when the time is right,” Christina adds. 

Discounted Commissions 

Joe and Christina say they have stripped their commission fees “down to bare bones” and offer a menu system where buyers can pay as little as 1.5 percent. However, they say, most people choose the 2% option. 

They say that if someone doesn’t see value in a particular service, they shouldn’t have to pay for it. In other words, their options put the consumer in the driver seat. 

Meanwhile, Tampa Bay Home Team’s clients say their lower commission rate doesn’t mean a lower level of service. 

When you list your home for sale with Tampa Bay Home Team, you can rest assured that outstanding photography will always be part of the deal. 

Eric Sanchez worked with Christina to sell his home in Meadow Pointe. He’s lived in Wesley Chapel for 18 years, but recently bought a home in Two Rivers. 

“I was under duress and had to make a quick sale,” he explains. “I was looking for a Realtor who was willing to take less commission and found Christina. It was truly a godsend.” 

Back in 2006, during the local real estate market crash, Eric had tried to sell in Temple Terrace by hiring a full-commission Realtor. That home never sold and he eventually lost it. He wanted to be sure he didn’t make that mistake again.

“(Christina and Joe) have a whole office working hard to sell my home,” Eric says. “They did everything from referring me to contractors who did an excellent job, to helping me pack. There was absolutely nothing the Home Team couldn’t handle for me.” 

Eric received an offer within two weeks and closed on the sale of his home less than four weeks from when it was listed. 

“A lot of things had to fall into place, and Christina handled everything to a ‘T,’” Eric says. “I got premium service — absolutely the full service of what you would expect from a Realtor’s office, with no corners cut – at a discounted rate. 

He says he and his wife, Carmen, speak of them highly every opportunity we get, and refer them to anyone they can. 

“They even have the post-sale saying,” explains Eric. “You’re family now. They have get-togethers and social events, and they invite us. It’s not a business feeling; it’s a family feeling. I don’t feel like a customer; I feel like a friend.” 

Joe and Christina say a couple of things their clients really appreciate include their partnership with Zillow to showcase the homes they market. 

Also, Tampa Bay Home Team has an in-house media department for photography and videography. When they used to outsource photography, pictures were snapped quickly in less than an hour, but now their staff can spend all day getting the perfect pictures to best showcase a home online. 

“Clients like it because they don’t feel rushed,” Christina explains. “This is a big step for them, putting their biggest asset on the market. They want someone to come in and care about it as much as they do.” 

They also say their background in the financial industry and mortgages also is a benefit to their clients. 

“A lot of agents are not trained on the mortgage side,” Joe says. “You want to make sure the person you’re hiring as a listing agent has the background knowledge to know what questions to ask the lender so there are no issues with the mortgage.” 

He says they’ve heard a lot of horror stories about deals that don’t close. “The worst thing is after you’ve made plans, you’re packed up and ready to move, and the deal dies,” he says. 

Guaranteed Offers, Too 

That’s one reason people are tempted by online companies that offer convenience and a sure thing, such as Open Door and Offerpad. But Joe says his company offers a better option. 

Tampa Bay Home Team will make a guaranteed cash offer on your home. 

“We have investors that will give full market value for homes,” Joe explains. “It’s a unique program that gets people a lot more money.” 

He says online companies typically offer about 80 percent of a home’s value. Recently, Joe says a seller got $30,000 more from Tampa Bay Home Team than they were offered from an online source. 

“If consumers go to Open Door or Offerpad, they are not being represented,” explains Joe. “Our fiduciary responsibility is to the client to represent their best interest. Those companies’ responsibility is to their shareholders.” 

He says the most important thing when buying or selling a home is to work with someone who has a track record of selling a lot of homes, with the experience and education to navigate the transaction. 

For example, Robert Holbert and his wife Carrie have 2-year-old twins and a 10-year-old. They are another client of The Home Team who recently moved to Wesley Chapel from New Tampa. They’re also repeat customers who first bought a house with Home Team in 2020. Then, The Home Team helped Robert’s parents move into the area in 2022. 

“Joe is super knowledgeable about the market and has done a great job of keeping the relationship with us,” Robert says. “It’s not just a deal, but he’s been someone we see around town, who has helped us with follow-up questions about schools and when we needed a recommendation to replace our A/C. He’s been available for us, not just for one transaction.” 

Tampa Bay Home Team is located at 2818 Cypress Ridge Blvd., Ste. 150. For more information about Tampa Bay Home Team, contact Joe and Christina at (813) 321-HOME (4663), email info@TampaBayHome.com or visit TampaBayHome.com. 

The professional real estate team at Tampa Bay Home Team also enjoys spending time together outside of work. 

Viva, Las Vegas! The Nagers Travel To ‘Sin City’ To See The Killers & More! 

Jannah and I had both been to Las Vegas before, but never together, so when it was announced that one of our favorite live bands — The Killers — was having a residency at Caesar’s Palace in “Sin City,” we knew we had to go see them again, despite the 105Âș heat. 

Frontman Brandon Flowers and his crew (top photo) did not disappoint. From the Grammy-winning “Mr. Brightside” to more recent hits like “Caution” and “Boy,” it was a great night for us that started with dinner at Peter Luger’s Steakhouse (bottom left photo), the Brooklyn institution best renowned for its bone-in porterhouse steaks. The reviews say that the Caesar’s Palace version is even better than the original. Maybe…but the meal was amazing. 

We also got to see comedian Taylor Tomlinson during her two-night stop on her “Have It All” tour. Taylor, the host of the current TV show “After Midnight,” is known for her views on growing up in a church family and she recently came out as queer. Opening act Zach Noe Towers was super-funny, too. 

Our first night in Vegas, we saw Kyle Martin (left), who starred in the Billy Joel musical “Movin’ Out” on Broadway, and his show “Piano Man,” a multimedia tribute performance to both Joel and Elton John. Martin said he recently broke Elvis’ record for the most Vegas shows with more than 650. I can see why — he does an awesome job. 

We also made a visit to the Mob Museum downtown (bottom right), where the history of the mob’s influence in both Vegas and the U.S. (including the JFK assassination), features the recreation of the actual wall where Chicago’s “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” took place. The tour ends with a visit to the museum’s 1920s-style speakeasy. 

As for other food we enjoyed, while at the Wynn (one of the most beautiful casinos on the Strip) for Taylor’s set, we ate at a great Japanese place called Mizumi, where we scarfed down Japanese snapper tempura and a king crab hand roll. We closed out our four-day stay with yummy quiche and French toast for brunch at “Mon Ami Gabi” (below left), an authentic French bistro in the Paris Casino. 

We didn’t get to go to the Sphere (which looks truly amazing from the outside) to see its super-pricy “Postcard from Earth” IMAX movie and I didn’t win at the tables, but we had a blast! — GN

Martin Gramática ‘Kicks Off’ Tampa Bay Bucs Season At AdventHealth Tampa!

Former Tampa Bay Bucs kicker Martin GramĂĄtica posed for lots of pictures when he was met by a happy crowd of doctors, nurses and staffers at AdventHealth Tampa on Bruce B. Downs Blvd on Sep. 6 to help kick off the Bucs 2024 season two days later. (Photos by Charmaine George)

AdventHealth Tampa (3100 E. Fletcher Ave. at Bruce B. Downs Blvd.) got a special visit Friday from a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers star two days before the team kicked off the 2024 NFL season.

Super Bowl winner Martin GramĂĄtica stopped by to greet hundreds of doctors, nurses, and clinicians. The former Bucs kicker took time to sign autographs, take photos and show his appreciation for the hard work front-line health care workers do every day. 

AdventHealth is the exclusive hospital of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Gramática said he was happy — and honored — to represent the Bucs while greeting the AdventHealth Tampa team.

“I’m just here representing the Bucs to say ‘Thank you’ to all of the men and women who sacrifice so much to take care of us when we’re not doing well.”

Gramática, who also is the VP of Business Development for Life Guard Imaging, said that it was just a “happy coincidence” that he made his appearance at the hospital’s Pepin Heart Institute. “Life Guard is just an imaging center,” he said. “This is where you go to be taken care of when we find something wrong with you that needs to be addressed. People look up to football players, but these people are the real heroes.”

As for what he thinks about the Bucs — who open the season at this afternoon at 4:25 p.m. against the Washington Commanders at Raymond James Stadium — this year, when many so-called experts believe the team isn’t playoff caliber, GramĂĄtica said, “I don’t know about that. I’m really excited about our chances. We had a really good year last year and when you bring guys like (quarterback) Baker (Mayfield) and (wide receiver) MIke (Evans) back, and add some young talent, you never know what can happen. Everyone starts the year 0-0 and every team is one injury away from not being good, so we just have to stay healthy and I think we’re gonna be good.”

Bucs cheerleaders Dante Hale (far left) and Ella Whitby (far right) were also happy to pose for pictures with the AdventHealth team.