Watching Florida Stage's new production of The Drawer Boy is a bit like observing a bumblebee in flight. Based on the evidence, it shouldn't fly, but there it goes. Michael Healey's 1999 script is riddled with implausibilities and secondhand ideas. Still, it offers some gentle humor and soul, and audiences...
It is so very nice when a movie completely outstrips the expectations conjured by its trailer, as is the case with The Dreamers. At first blush, this tale of three passionate youths caught up in the late '60s Parisian countercultural revolution looked downright trite. Never mind that esteemed veteran director...
THU 26 Isadora Duncan may be best remembered for her freakish death: Her long, iridescent scarf, trailing out of her speeding roadster, got stuck in the spokes of a back wheel and strangled her. It was a shocking ending to a shocking life. Duncan, now considered the mother of modern...
Want to know my definition of good theater? It's when you take a seat, see a show, and go home a changed person. That's what you can expect from the M Ensemble's new production of Strands, now on dazzling display at the venerable company's North Miami theater. Strands is one...
Mr. Costello swings all sorts of ways SAT 2/21 "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," Elvis Costello is rumored to have said. And writing about Costello is an equally daunting task. To begin to understand him, you first must ask yourself the question: How can an artist who...
It's not uncommon at a major record label's headquarters to see a hip, bald man in his late 30s cleaning out his cubicle. In his four years as a business analyst at Universal Music, Rob Coe has seen more than 200 people pink slipped and escorted from the building. What's...
It's a medical horror story that never happened as far as the State of Florida is concerned. And it began on New Year's Eve 2001 in the most mundane of places -- a living room. Mary Emma Marshall thought she simply pulled a muscle in her left hip as she...
Martha Roldan, a 45-year-old employee of the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, doesn't have a law degree. She never took the bar exam. In fact, she could be arrested if she ever purported to be an attorney. But in an office nestled on the south side of...
SAT 12/6 To politicians, war is an extension of diplomacy. It is a tool to wheel out when other avenues of negotiation do not provide acceptable results. To professional soldiers, war is the study and execution of tactics to complete a broader strategy. Both politicos and military planners define war...
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about "Embracing the Present: The UBS PaineWebber Art Collection," a show at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art (MoA). Now comes "Return to Realism: Contemporary Art from the UBS Art Collection," a similar but superior exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. (The...
WED 2/18 The cover art for Los Straitjackets' latest disc, Supersonic Guitars in 3-D, depicts the Mexican-wrestling-mask-wearing, instrumental surf impresarios from Nashville flying through outer space. And the group is still in Cloud Nine territory thanks to a Best Traditional Blues Album Grammy nomination for Rock 'N' Roll City, the...
Nothing irks me more than a mishandled dining trend. Cuisine, it seems, tends to react like adults who were abused as children -- it grows up, identifies with the attacker, and makes us diners feel like the victims. Red Coral is a case in point. The two-month-old Fort Lauderdale restaurant...
There be three things which go well, yea, Which are comely in going: A lion, which is strongest among beasts and turneth not away from any; a greyhound; a he-goat also. -- Solomon, Proverbs 30 It's a late April afternoon, though the sun remains far enough above the west of...
At the mere mention of the title of Anne Louis and Joyce Bandler's new book, Predicting the Penis, Jamie, a raspy-voiced, brunet bartender, explodes: "They're lesbians trapped in a heterosexual mind frame, and they have no fucking idea what they're talking about.... How the hell do they know? Some guys...
Although his name is not as heralded as Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, or Fort Apache Band founders Jerry and Andy Gonzalez, New York-based trombonist Papo Vazquez is as central to the development of Latin jazz as any of those legendary figures. The virtuosic trombonist has been an important part of...
As a reader, you can easily assume that all the critics at a particular publication are more or less of the same mind, but here at New Times, that isn't the case. We're just too damn independent-minded to take our colleagues' views into consideration, which is why, when coming up...
Dude, come on in. Welcome to the brand- new Broward County North Jail. Have a seat. No, not there. Over here in this boxy wooden chair with the wires. Built not for comfort but utility, you could say. No, no, no. It's not -- ha ha -- the electric chair...
Dubya is still a deceitful chump: Regarding your January 5 cover story by Sam Eifling, "Liar, Liar...," a quick note to inform you that I find your antipatriotic, antimoralistic, and antisocietal message immature and obscene. I laugh at your attempt at "journalism" and suggest growing up. I will shun all...
Twenty-three years after busting the nation's jaw with its infamous appearance in The Decline of Western Civilization (Penelope Spheeris' documentary of the Los Angeles hardcore punk scene), the state of Fear, L.A.'s greatest punk band, is still strong. The band has a greatest-hits record out, a compilation of outtakes emerging...
Take this, you pagan strumpet: Rebecca Meiser's January 29 article ("Jews for Bejesus") describes the problems of the extended Rapp family. Edie Rapp is quoted in regard to herself and her dying husband: "If there's one thing the two of us were definite about, it was our Jewishness." The story...
Important things to remember during this flu season: Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands often and well. And, as Hippocrates said, "Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food." Clearly, given the violent nature of this year's virus, that last...
For those familiar with Brian Eno's ambient music, his newest addition to the canon won't come as a shock. Instead, it's more of the soothing, almost-there quietude that made his classics Music for Airports or Thursday Afternoon such attractive shades of sonic wallpaper. Nowadays the 55-year-old composer and theorist finds...
