Far more good things than bad transpired on the stages of Broward and Palm Beach in 2007, and many of them are obvious only in retrospect. Quite often in theater, you won't think much of a play or of a scene in the moment of performance. It's only later, after...
The following is a true story written by John DeGroot: At 41 years and crippled, Jason Roy Thomas says he will not take his life before 2008 – something he tried and failed to do this Thanksgiving past. In a proud act of faith, Jason has decorated a small tree...
Are you here for the Weir? If so, the third option for Deadheads (those not in the Philzone or Jerryside) presents itself this weekend in Boca Raton. RatDog — originally a side project of former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman — continues to take fans on a...
In the extensive liner notes that accompany this five-disc set, jazz writer Nat Hentoff quotes John Coltrane as having once said, "I wish I could walk up to my music as if I'd never heard it before. I'll never know what the listener feels, and that's too bad." For the...
Reggae star Mavado, who just performed at the Gold Coast Roller Rink in Fort Lauderdale a week ago, was robbed on Tuesday in Toronoto. According to reports, most of Mavado's belongings were stolen including a laptop, money, and his passport. As a result, Mavado has cancelled his upcoming shows (Atlanta...
A couple of weeks ago, Tailpipe got mental flashbacks to those famous pictures from Tiananmen Square where a lone man stood in the street defying four Chinese Army tanks. That's kind of what it looked like on Fort Lauderdale Beach on the evening of November 30, when bicyclist John Bochino...
The good John DeGroot got ahold of the new Tribune Co. employee handbook -- and it doesn't disappoint. The rules were recently sent via PDF to all Tribune employees, including those at the Sun-Sentinel (and Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, and other newspapers, TV stations, etc, the company...
Chad "Pimp C" Butler with his mother, Wes "Mama" Monroe in Port Arthur, Texas, 2006 News reports trickling out of Los Angeles are revealing more about the unexpected death of 33-year-old rapper Pimp C. Some of the details are conflicting, which is to be expected in the immediate hours following...
It comes into view as you round the southern curve of Young Circle in Hollywood. Perched on a plot of park land on the eastern edge of the circle, across from a Publix parking lot, it looks poised and ready. Neither bird nor plane nor Superman, it is nevertheless an...
It all began with an anonymous letter from "a concerned parishioner." There was a small matter of missing funds from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach. Would Palm Beach County state attorney Barry Krischer care to take a look? By then the Diocese of Palm Beach had removed...
On a recent Sunday afternoon, biologist Miguel Fernandes stands on a five-foot-wide oceanfront sand dune in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, stroking a slender stalk of sea oats and cursing. "Look at this shit," he says, yanking his head back toward the never-ending line of hotels and condos that hugs the coast. "Who's gonna...
Ben Harper's band, the Innocent Criminals, are in the middle of pillaging several newly arrived boxes. The first copies of their collective CD, Lifeline, have just arrived, and the musicians are grabbing stacks with each hand. Meanwhile, Harper, who's already gotten his share, is shuffling about their rehearsal space with...
I'm a big fan of beautiful accidents," Skeleton Key leader Erik Sanko says. And he might as well be. Though he is referring to spontaneous creative accidents, Sanko also admits to being mystified that Skeleton Key — which formed in 1996 amid a thriving downtown New York arts scene —...
These days there are more denominations of electronica and industrial music than there are YouTube clips of people making fun of Chris Cocker. If we could quantify a number, it would be called something like a hojillion and one – but that’s just speculation. What we do know is that...
The Norman Invasion Here's lookin' at you, kid: The other Norman Invasion was in 1066, but this one is more fun, with boiling pulp dumped on the heads of scoundrels ("Animal Farm," Bob Norman, November 8). Blog 'em, confound 'em, and send 'em back to hell or whatever planet they...
Blanche Duncan sits in her dark-red pickup truck in a deserted Budget Rental Car lot at the Industrial Park of Coral Springs. It's a rainy, dismal Sunday morning, but Duncan, in tight pink blouse and sparkling gold necklace (and one gold-capped tooth with a star-shaped cutout), is dressed for business...
This Austin group is far from catholic in its approach to indie rock. Though pegged as "experimentalists," the Octopus Project is more than capable of delivering the pop goods. And despite the members' tendency toward vintage electronic equipment like theremins, the group's passion for tweaking the capabilities of modern recording...
Hot Hot Heat October 19, 2007 Culture Room It's exactly 8 p.m. when I pull up to the parking lot of Culture Room. The night air is surprisingly cool and comforting as I freak out about not being able to find parking. A few maze-like trips through the lot yield...
How big is the divide between fine art and graffiti art? You’d think the two would be polar opposites – graffiti is, after all, a form of vandalism that acts as a window into urban discontent. Then again, the classic definition of fine art as something exclusive and refined has...
In terms of the yawning chasm between what was promised and what has been delivered, Lair earns the distinction of being the biggest letdown ever for PlayStation 3. Worse, it's also one of those games for which massive prerelease hype merely ends up underscoring its flaws, transmogrifying a game that...
It was around 9 p.m. on a recent Tuesday when the kid strolled into Java D'Lites, a Coral Springs Coffee Shop. With the shop buzzing over the night's event — South Florida's first legit Guitar Hero competition — the kid's entrance didn't get much attention. Matt Lozano was just one...
It's Not a Freak Show The right to bare our arms: The rhetorical fireworks in Jamie Laughlin's piece about the Gun and Knife Show at the Fort Lauderdale War Memorial ("A Quick Lesson in Firearms," Night & Day, August 16) were telegraphed from the first sentence, and as a result,...
