One of the joys of being a music critic is that every day, you get albums from all over the world. Every week, new music shows up in my mailbox from around the globe, and most of it is stuff I think audiophiles around these parts need to hear. The...
Josef'sItalian restaurants specializing in Roman, Sicilian, Corsican, and Milanese fare are a dime a dozen, but we have yet to run across another trattoria whose passionate love affair with the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of Italy is so intense. Perhaps that’s because owners Beth and Josef Shibanetz, an American woman and her Austrian chef husband, came to […]
Big City DogsThere are few rules in gastronomy as immutable as this: Everything tastes better wrapped in bacon. It’s a fact that has not eluded the fine folks who flip, fry, dunk, and top the huge array of tubular beef under the yellow awning of Big City Dogs. Their signature frank, the ripper, is a testament to […]
Lazavius HudsonA 1998 charge of disorderly intoxication didn’t stop Fitzroy Salesman from winning election to the Miramar City Commission in 2003. And a 2005 DUI charge resulted in just a 20-month suspension from his official duties. So it’s stunning that this battle-scarred politician would have his career toppled by a single brush with 18-year-old Lazavius Hudson. […]
Kuluck Persian Restaurant and LoungeKuluck does something well that most ethnic restaurants in Broward or Palm Beach don’t: it’s cool. The upscale Persian supper club, located in a strip mall in Tamarac, actually oozes style. With soft lighting, colorful walls with velvet drapes, white tablecloths, and a 20-foot dance floor, the joint is all sleek edges and sass. It’s […]
Sorry, Vampire John RalstonThere could have easily been a drop-off after his amazing 2005 solo debut, Needle Bed, but Lake Worth native John Ralston never succumbed to a sophomore slump. Instead, Ralston got to work immediately on what would become Sorry, Vampire, pairing up with ex-Wilco keyboardist/engineer Jay Bennett and even enlisting the vocal talents of fellow South […]
I may be a little late on this call, but I noticed this morning that the Sun-Sentinel has followed the Palm Beach Post's lead and is posting mugshots from the Broward County Jail. Well, you know it is a public service. Whenever you feel like a loser, start wading through...
Timb has heard all the jokes. At 6-foot-3, with bleached-blond hair, morgue-pale skin, and a wardrobe full of industrial fetish attire, the Fort Lauderdale-based singer can be a magnet for wisecracks whenever he steps out on the town. His attire, along with the massive four-inch boots he typically wears, causes...
What New Times reported last week is now official: The Herald is cutting 17 percent of its workforce, or 250 positions, which is actually 2 percent more than we expected. "These next few weeks will be some of the most difficult and emotional we have faced," Editor Anders Gyllenhaal wrote...
It's been a long time coming, but Palm Beach Post publisher Doug Franklin handed down the bad news today (thanks to Pulp readers for posting it). Bottom line: -- 300 jobs will be cut company-wide. -- 130 newsroom jobs will be cut. -- Buyouts are being offered to employees with...
Call them the comeback kids: In its early days, the 2008 Cannes Film Festival has served as a staging ground for a number of unlikely returns, beginning with that of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who's been absent from movie screens (except as an occasional actor) for nearly as long as...
The last time Twyla Tharp combined her unique choreographic talents with the music of a genius rock ´n’ roller, the results were… well, “shameful” is probably too strong a word, but “regrettable” is far too weak. That was The Times They Are A-Changin’, an unfortunate contribution to the even-more-unfortunate “jukebox...
It is no easy task to adapt the complexities of John Coltrane's "Naima" to the rhythms of the Caribbean, but that is precisely what vibist and bandleader Dave Samuels has proposed to do since the inception of the Caribbean Jazz Project in 1993. The task at hand is essentially blending...
The view from the top stinks. That sweet, sulphuric stench that can come only from a 225-foot-high, mile-wide mound of garbage. At Sample and Powerline roads in Pompano Beach, this is Mount Trashmore, the tallest landform in South Florida, a monolothic monument to the region's waste, which has been fermenting...
Let me know when the funeral is being held, because Fort Lauderdale's music and party scene is just about dead. Local audiophiles might as well start dressing in all-black to observe the mourning. Although the Riverfront area in Fort Lauderdale was once a vibrant place that, at its best, looked...
For such a relatively short existence, few bands have excited such extreme reactions in the heavy music world as the Orlando-based quartet Trivium. Formed in the earlier part of this decade while the members were still teenagers, the band’s 2003 full-length debut, Ember to Inferno, messed with the metal heterodoxy...
At 7:15 on a morning in mid-June, Dara Torres strode out to the 25-meter pool at the Coral Springs Aquatic Center, turning heads among the teen and preteen swimmers around the Olympic-sized pool. She's an imposing sight — the striated deltoids common to champion swimmers, a back with muscles stretched...
For a red-hot decade, Kansas City's the Wilders have been walking the line between pleasing the folk-festival contingent and the teamsters who warm the bar stools at local honky-tonks. Having already put their own righteous spin on traditional numbers, the next logical step for the quartet was to develop its...
When music industry experts advise fledgling musicians how to achieve success, few probably suggest developing a weird blend of rock, pop, and exotic folk music. DeVotchKa has done so anyhow, and A Mad & Faithful Telling, its latest album, is the highly enjoyable result. Because the group stays true to...
It's been an historically bad month for South Florida newspapers. Hundreds of jobs lost, lots of tears, existential fear, lost hope, and teeth-gnashing. Most of those who have left the newspapers will be busy trying to find new jobs and build new lives. But what of those who remain? One...
Steven Spielberg may rule Hollywood, but in the video-game biz — the more profitable of the two industries, becoming more so with each passing year — he's a bikini-clad babe in Jaws-infested waters. Perhaps that's why in 2005, Spielberg, an avid gamer, signed with developing giant EA Games for three...
Here's a track a friend suggested I look up, thanks to our shared love of any song using the phrase "booty music" (as opposed to the more journalistically politically correct "Miami bass"). Please start your day with this refreshing jam, "Booty Music" by Deep Side, a multiethnic, locally based quartet...
