Miami-based singer/producer Wibby White should learn how to quit when he's ahead. The track arrangement on his newest album, The Trendsetter... starts out strong and can easily fool a listener into thinking he just copped an innovative CD. The album's lead single, "Enjoy Yourself," is a damned good blend of...
The Broward County School Board and the City of Weston are about to sell us all down the river of grass. District leaders are set to waste tens of millions of dollars on a bad land deal involving an extremely wealthy political contributor. The deal involves what appears to be...
Judging by how often their early work is still, nearly two decades later, being pumped out on the PA systems of Spanish and Latin-American restaurants in this country, it's pretty plain that Americans generally regard the Gipsy Kings as some kind of gold standard for what passes for Latin music...
Michael "Corleone" Giulianti To help you get through the day I thought I'd share this with you. It's from a bullet hole-and-firearm-adorn web site for the "Outlaw Legal Group" in Los Angeles which is run by Michael Giulianti, one of the illustrious sons of Mara Giulianti, our very own mayor...
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (New Line) You probably already know where you stand on Tenacious D, the pudgy hard rock comedy duo that made Jack Black famous. And if you haven't heard of them, this isn't the place to start: Their DVD of short films and music...
Caryl Churchill's A Number is a play that's superficially about cloning and only slightly less superficially about the nature of identity — very slightly, for this piece is not subtle with its ruminations. The play has been hailed as "an astonishing event" by the London Evening Standard, was said by...
Keep Out! Someone recently regaled me with too many details concerning a bout of food poisoning she suspected having caught at the raw bar of a waterfront seafood restaurant in Coconut Grove. I hear such tales quite often, and as one who dines out multiple times weekly, can sympathize with...
The Postmarks make music that, at times, is part Burt Bacharach, part Beach Boys, and part folk rock. That's an odd blend in 2007, but this emo-pop trio knows how to bring it together. The Postmarks have appeared in this rag before and have raised their profile since we last...
Jazz and hip-hop once constituted a popular combination thanks to the likes of Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest. And while the mainstream has seemingly lost its taste for the blend, there's plenty of flavor left in it — at least when Future Jazz Project is plugged in. The...
"Don't make me go to the Hard Rock," my friend groaned when I asked him to come with me to Tequila Ranch. "It's college night! Drunk co-eds undulating on a mechanical bull!" I said enticingly. I was hardly sincere about my enthusiasm, I must admit, but I needed a story...
Dear Readers: Mucho comments about my February 1 column regarding the metamorphosis of Mexican names into seemingly wacky nicknames — "Nini" from Alejandrina, for instance, or "Chely" from Araceli. I argued such changes occurred thanks to linguistic laws; some of you had other theories. Here are the best. Here's what...
Ever since Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban music has been on the radar of mainstream trendspotters both old and young. Yet the majority of new releases and rereleases since BVSC have concentrated on the Caribbean side of the equation (with the possible exception of Senegal's Orchestre Baobab), to the detriment...
When most people dress up their pets in outrageous outfits and/or put them into unusual situations, then photograph the hapless animals, the result is kitsch, and the people might be considered, oh, kinky. When William Wegman does the same thing with his famous Weimaraners, however, it's considered art, and he...
War in Deerfield Don't assume the worst about Deerfield High: I think Bob Norman's article really didn't help much ("Dead End," February 15). Yeah, it informed people what is going on between Haitians and African-Americans, but you also have to see it from another point of view. It's not only...
Timing, as they say, is everything. When I contacted North Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) recently, it was just to make arrangements to see "Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge," an exhibition featuring sets and costumes from productions by dance-world titan Cunningham. As it turned out, the great...
The e-mails regarding one of the leading 2008 presidential contenders arrive every week or so, and the subject lines aren't kind. "Obama profits from media cover-up of family ties to slavery." "Letter to Random House charges Barack Obama book is a fraud." "The last days of Obama." "Obama caught in...
Rick Miller isn't a fan of South Florida's club scene. As the singer/guitarist for popular rockabilly group Southern Culture on the Skids, he's not in love with venues festooned with chrome and mirrors. And he says he hasn't had good luck winning over crowds this far south. For a North...
Gretchen Day-Bryant must have the easiest job in journalism. She's the Sun-Sentinel's Lifestyles section editor and that means she must pick stories about pop culture, shopping, and video games off the wires and pop them onto her pages. Apparently she has also been given a directive to display the resulting...
PARK CITY, Utah --On the first Saturday of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I rolled out of bed and hustled up Main Street for the 8:30 screening of Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings caring for an irascible elderly parent. Only I...
This story, as originally conceived, was supposed to be a compilation of the year's best boxed sets and other reissues. But then it hit us — in today's shuffle-driven iPod world, with the pace of pop culture moving at breakneck speed, it's pointless to make such temporal distinctions. The past...
