The Protector (Genius Products) Thailand's Tony Jaa has made clear his plan to take Jackie Chan's crown as the king of Holy crap, did he just do that?! He's about halfway there. Though Jaa is devoid of Chan's charisma, his hyperathletic kickboxing style will make your jaw drop; here's a...
I thought the Miami Herald was a little quiet on the death of Michael Browning, a writer who was central to the newspaper's identity for a couple of (its finest) decades. No tribute, no guestbook, just a repackaged obit written by Palm Beach Post reporter Scott Eyman. I encouraged the...
Wendy O. Williams always said she liked to make "aggressive art," and that's what she did as the front woman for '80s punk-metal band the Plasmatics — sporting a Mohawk on TV, wearing nothing but electrical tape over her nipples, blowing up luxury cars and school buses, cutting guitars in...
Dear Mexican: I'm a 60-year-old Chicano and proud. Why do young Chicanos keep imitating blacks? They dress like blacks, talk like blacks, listen to black music, and hang with blacks. Aren't they proud of their own culture? Why don't they embrace Hispanic ways and learn about Hispanic history? — Say...
The Game rose to fame with help from Dr. Dre, who godfathered 2005's The Documentary, a smash that featured cameos by 50 Cent. But a feud with 50 was followed by the sudden end of the Game's label deal — a split that indicates with whom Dre sided. As a...
It looks as if Christmas presents are going to be arriving early — at least for the many electro fans who've managed to slip some nice into their naughty this past year. Yup, Candyland is back. The 11th rendition of the longest-running dance event in South Florida goes down Saturday...
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...
The sign outside MJ's Rock 'n' Roll Clubhouse reads "Eat, Drink, Remember." Which didn't make much sense to me, since the second item generally precludes the third. But when I entered the red-lit joint with the black-and-white tiled arch and the posters of Elvis and some dude on stage was...
Focus isn't exactly what comes to mind when you think of the Melvins, a group that has indulged its every outlandish whim for more than a decade. Despite often fascinating results, even the most devoted fans' patience must have limits. On the flip-side, even if the Melvins pile on the...
New Times' blockbuster story last September about Bruce McMahan, the New York and Fisher Island hedge-fund manager who married his own daughter ("Daddy's Girl," by Kelly Cramer), shook up Wall Street, got rehashed by the New York Post, inspired a (surprisingly accurate) retelling by Geraldo Rivera's TV show, and garnered...
There's something about making plans that's been proving difficult for me lately. First, Low-Fidelity's UM radio show got bumped the day I planned to visit the studio (see last week's column). Then I found out that the December 30 Sleeparounds show at South Shores Tavern in Lake Worth — part...
Jaco's Beat The ring of truth: I was very happy about the initial Jaco Pastorius article ("Jaco Incorporated," Jeff Stratton, November 30). I know all involved for two and a half decades. Except for minor details, this story tells it like it is. Janice Heller Hollywood Were we letting our...
When the Levees Broke (HBO) Spike Lee's four-part doc, easily the best non-fiction film of 2006, gets a fifth part on DVD: a 105-minute epilogue that reveals just how little has changed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Featuring new interviews with the displaced and displeased,...
Early one afternoon in June 2003, a bushy-haired, 28-year-old sergeant from Miami sat down on the hard floor of a steamy, furnitureless room in Ar Ramadi, one of the most dangerous locations in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. The space, on the second floor of the city's government center, had been previously...
Dear Mexican: I'm a Spanish-language student struggling with tenses and the gender of nouns. The other day, some friends and I were discussing street slang and the word verga (penis) came up (no pun intended). It occurred to me that the definitive symbol of masculinity ends in the feminine -a...
"Oh, cool! A Curious George doll!" Dears frontman Murray Lightburn exclaims. "I've been wanting one of these for my kid for ages." He pauses. "Sorry about that — I got sidetracked. I'm in a pharmacy right now in Winnipeg." These are not exactly the first words you expect to hear...
The thinking-man's-metal tag that hangs on Isis seems bad for business, but guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner and his comrades don't appear to mind. After all, the jacket of their new CD includes the quote "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" that inspired the album's title, as well as a quasi-footnote conceding...
The Florida Press Club contest results are streaming in. Check out the results here. Lots of categories to go, but plenty of winners there already. Congratulations to all of them. Myself, I pulled two first place finishes already, in the commentary and sports column categories. So I should be pretty...
Hollywood adores making big-budget biopics about rock stars and their eternal struggles with booze, broads, and diverse demons. And we love watching them. Some they nailed; others not so much. Jamie Foxx was a respectable Ray Charles, for instance, and Gary Oldman made a fine Sid Vicious. But Joaquin Phoenix...
