In January, one piece of paper changed James McCalla's life. A muscular, six-foot Haitian-American, the 26-year-old McCalla went out to get the mail at his suburban home in Pembroke Pines. He found an official letter from the federal courthouse in Davenport, Iowa. It was a civil judgment. "$11,200,000,000," the document...
Note: An earlier version of this story attributed some quotes to Melania Knauss-Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, at an April 14 marketing event for Trump International Hotel & Tower. This woman was actually Senada Adzem, vice president of marketing for Bayrock Group, the developer building the hotel. Melania Knauss-Trump was not...
Jailbait is the first installment in "Perversion in Paradise," a New Times Series Sex has come a long way since it was about a man climbing on top of his wife once a week. For some reason, in South Florida, the physical act of love in all its forms multiplies...
Jim Florentine can do more than just answer the phone on unsuspecting telemarketers and mess with them. But the formula has been so successful that he’s recorded four volumes of his comedy CD, Terrorizing Telemarketers, and landed gigs on Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers and The Howard Stern Show because of...
John Fante's novel Ask the Dust, published in 1939 and all but forgotten till its 1980 reissue with a Charles Bukowski foreword, is very much a work of thinly veiled autobiography; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Its protagonist, a struggling writer named Arturo Bandini, shared...
The posters for V for Vendetta read: "An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy." Uncompromising? It simply isn't possible to translate Alan Moore's multilayered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify, and it's certainly not feasible to expect producer Joel...
From the "What The Hell Do I Know" file, the Herald story about the FDLE chief's e-mails in the Bay County boot camp death case caused the special prosecutor to take the FDLE off the case. You may recall that I derided the story as overplayed and overstated, saying the...
Thanks to our illustrious chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, here's an advance copy of the list: ALL MEDIA James Batten Award for Public Service -Sally Kestin, Megan O'Matz, Jon Burstein; South Florida Sun-Sentinel; FEMA: A Legacy of Waste -Craig Pittman, Matthew Waite; St. Petersburg Times; Vanishing Wetlands -John...
There are some things you should know before going to Taqueria Doña Raquel (793 S. Dixie Hwy., Pompano Beach, 954-946-4490) for the first time: 1. They don't have burritos. 2. Well, they might, but they're not on the menu. 3. They don't serve margaritas. But they do have beer. 4...
Southwest Ranches Town Manager John Canada is officially above the law. The man who runs the Ranches, that wealthy rural "horse community" in the southwest corner of Broward County, isn't beholden to the state's Code of Ethics. That means a conflict of interest is no conflict at all for Pat...
The slots are coming. Once Florida lawmakers work out the finer details, gamblers will be able to pull the levers at Broward County's four pari-mutuel facilities — Gulfstream Park and Hollywood Greyhound Track in Hallandale Beach, Dania Jai-Alai in Dania Beach, and Pompano Park in Pompano Beach. The gambling machines...
Actor Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club) has been fasting for four days. Except for water, fresh lemon, and cayenne pepper, he expects to eat nothing anytime soon. This isn't one of those trendy Los Angeles diets, though; he's burning off the staggering 62 pounds he packed on...
In January 2000, a young psychology graduate student named Jesse Bering moved back to South Florida to watch his mother die. Seven years earlier, Alice Bering had been diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer, and now her struggle with the aggressive disease was nearing its final phase. Jesse Bering spent as...
Double Shaft Who's really getting screwed by the sheriff? Just read the brilliant piece by Wyatt Olson on BSO ("The Naked Truth," March 16). For years now, I have studied Powertrac intensely, and this is about the best breakdown of information on what was happening and who was behind it...
Something is rotten in Deerfield. The City of Deerfield Beach is cracking open like a cantaloupe, one side led by Mayor Al Capellini and City Manager Larry Deetjen and the other by commissioners Steve Gonot and Martin Popelsky. City Hall meetings are marked by shouting and chaos. Armed guards have...
Sheriff Ken Jenne's 34-year career in public service always seemed like a steady, inexorable march upward. He climbed from hotshot assistant state attorney to a high-profile member of the Broward County Board of Commissioners before moving on to the Florida Senate, where he served for 20 years. In 1998, after...
About three years ago, Heeb, the magazine for young, Jewish hipsters, hired Susannah Perlman to coordinate the entertainment for one of its events in New York City. She rounded up a bunch of what she calls “really great acts that just happened to be Jewish,” from spoken-word performers to comedians...
Thank God. A new play about Catholic priests that mentions neither pope nor pedophilia. It is about miracles, though, which might raise eyebrows. But the stage — as a stand-in for pulpit and courtroom — is a wise neutral forum for debating the meaning of things like miracles. In Hand...
This is not George Lazenby making his doomed run at James Bond or even Mel Gibson presuming to play Hamlet. This is serious heresy, combined with a touch of felonious assault. It has evidently not occurred to Steve Martin that, just as there is only one Eiffel Tower, there is...
The Aristocrats (Lions Gate) The single joke around which Paul Provenza's documentary revolves has a standard beginning and ending, like pieces of bread that make a sandwich stuffed with excrement, incest, and whatever other foulness the teller can come up with. Provenza and Penn Jillette recorded more than 100 comedians...
A Good Woman, Mike Barker's adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere's Fan, has been gathering dust for some time. It played the Toronto Film Festival in the fall of 2004 before opening in 2005 in every country in the world except this one. Such dawdling doesn't bode well...
Mandoah "Manny" Ebaid walks Harrison Street in downtown Hollywood. It's 10:30 on a Wednesday night in February, and the restaurateur is checking the foot traffic outside his Middle Eastern eatery, Exotic Bites, near Young Circle Park. People are strolling in and out of the smoke-filled Kelly's Pub next door. At...
