Mini Lobsters Kill 4

A skeleton walks into a bar and says,
"Can I get a beer and a mop?"

No seriously, mini lobster sport season in Florida opened last week (regular season starts tomorrow) and four divers have already ended up dead, crushed within the deadly claws of murderous mini-lobsters staging a well-organized undersea revolt.

No actually, the divers met with accidents of their own devising, or succumbed to heart attacks. With numbers like this, lobster fishing fatalities are set to surpass the idiocy of the K-2 avalanche tragedy. Can we get a reality check here? Don't drink and dive. If you have a heart condition, there are much safer ways to chase tender pink tail.

Fogies, fat old boozehounds, and anybody with a blood pressure reading higher than 140 over 90: Here's a New Times shortlist of places to get lobster without overburdening the resources of the Coast Guard and our heroic EMTs. You can live fast, but you're not going to leave such a beautiful corpse once a moray eel and a couple of cudas have spent a day or two getting their fill of you. And here's even better news -- the price of lobster is down from last year by nearly a dollar per pound:

15th Street Fisheries, Lobster Roll with Steak Fries, $12.95

Fish, 16 oz. Australian lobster tail, $59

Tara Steak and Lobster House, 3 1/2 lb. live Maine lobster, [market]

Rino's Tuscan Grill, black lobster ravioli, $22

The Addison, Surf and Turf with steak, crab cake, and 1/2 Maine lobster, $65

Great Event Catering, Lobster clambake for $100 guests, $30.95 per person

Mai Kai, Lobster Bora Bora, market price, includes "Polynesian Islander Review" with "brightly colored costumes."

Feathered head-dresses! Spangly costumes! Doesn't that sound nicer than spending your weekend digging around under rocks?

--Gail Shepherd