I swear, I will never understand why some restaurants highlight their weaknesses instead of their strengths. Even for the sake of mass appeal. Take the three-month-old Bulgari Ristorante in Hollywood. Just off the I-95 ramps on Hollywood Boulevard, the place bills itself as Italian and Mediterranean. Many consumers will obviously...
What's South Florida's most overlooked cultural resource? I'd vote for the variety and depth of children's theater on the local scene. With little public notice and less media fanfare, a number of busy stage companies are finding a huge audience base hungry for live entertainment suitable for the younger set...
...makes Sherri look good: Do Chuck Strouse's knuckles scrape the ground when he walks? Just wondering. Because the last Undercurrents penned by him (February 14) about the janitor named "Mike" is such a low, juvenile attempt at journalism that I can only imagine Strouse is a slack-jawed, gap-toothed, suspendered hillbilly...
Ever wanted to own an old, hand-tinted map of terra incognita, lovingly bordered with colorful savages and sea monsters? Believe it or not, such treasures remain readily available, says Dr. Joseph H. Fitzgerald, collector extraordinaire and founder of the Miami Map Fair. At a Valentine's Day seminar at the Bienes...
If We Were Soldiers smells at all familiar, perhaps you're confusing it with the stink emanating from a nearby theater screening Black Hawk Down. After all, on their shiny, blood-drenched surfaces, they're damned near the same movie: Both are based on books that recount true-life battles that claimed the lives...
Driving across the western reaches of Broward County along I-75, you probably wouldn't notice the Florida headquarters office for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, whose agents are responsible for investigating everything from mail fraud and theft to child pornography and terrorism. Just off Miramar Parkway, the structure is off-white, with...
One day, years ago, Gregory Mcdonald was playing tennis with a man he'd known since they were both 12 years old. It was hot, the middle of summer, and Mcdonald was playing a good game--doing that tricky shit, making with the kind of moves that get under an opponent's skin...
Christians have rights too: With all due respect, I will never understand the modern liberal mind that is so offended by God and religion and devotes so much time and energy to its crusade of opposing any free expression of faith but then at the same time celebrates with such...
Back in the 1990s, Kathleen Hanna kicked off the riot-grrrl movement and kicked ass on the male-dominated punk/hardcore scene with angry albums from her group's self-titled Bikini Kill (1992) to PussyWhipped (1994) to Reject All American (1996). Now Hanna is back with the all-womyn electro/punk-rock trio Le Tigre, a group...
Theater comes in all shapes and sizes, from loud, lavish, traditional musicals to small-cast, single-set dramas. The most intimate of all, the solo performance, offers a chance for direct audience/actor connection and an opportunity to take on material that might be too risky for a larger venture. Two such shows...
Frankly, if rock writers didn't have crazed visionaries to waste ink on, you people would get plenty tired of reading about expertly played tambourine tracks and tearful obbligato passages. No, you'd be reading about Bill Clinton's three-breasted intern in the Weekly World News like the rest of your weak-willed kind...
When Joe Quesada, writer and illustrator of comic books, went to work as a freelance contractor for Marvel Comics three years ago, he found the so-called House of Ideas in ruin. The comic-book industry was, as Quesada recalls, "going down the toilet": Every month, 10 to 15 percent of readers...
History relived, not relieved: I want to thank you for Jeff Stratton's excellent article, "A House Surrounded" (February 7). The history of Fort Lauderdale has been decimated by the developers who come and leave our county with barrels full of money. Our historical buildings and houses are all but gone...
There are people going to work for someone else right now, making someone else's dreams happen," says Derek Cintron. "They'll take home some change at the end of the day, buy a DVD player, watch a DVD and that will make them happy. And then the next morning, they gotta...
Two weeks before Christmas in 1995, Doug Houton got a handful of unexpected gifts. The 32-year-old pediatric nurse was in the middle of his afternoon shift at Fort Lauderdale's Children's Diagnostic and Treatment Center. He was thinking about what to do for the holiday -- maybe take a vacation to...
Just last week, the makers of a film called Pendulum gathered in a brand-new Dallas movie theater to screen their picture. The event was a fund-raiser for both the Susan J. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's Race for the Cure and the trust fund for the children of Pendulum co-star Alissa...
The two most storied teams in the long history of Cuban baseball, the Havana Reds and the Almendares Blues, are waiting for the last of their teammates to show for today's game. One Red claims he's too tired to throw the ball around: "No puedo. Estoy cansado...." Another can't find...
The protorockers of Milemarker rouse cold-truth ruminations on breaking free from worst-case scenarios. Combining punk arithmetic and ethereal synthesizer with wraithlike singing, their fourth full length (first on indie stalwart Jade Tree) crystallizes their hardcore ethos and stark sound into an aural movement that mightily motivates. Initially a revolving roster...
Almost ten years ago, Shelton Hank Williams made a deal with the devil. Even though the grandson of country-music legend Hank Williams and son of Hank Williams Jr. owed $24,000 in delinquent child-support payments, the self-described long-haired, tattooed slacker with a taste for weed and whiskey was barely eking out...
Is there any point in summing up the past year? It doesn't seem to matter what we're talking about -- dining, music, politics -- all trains of thought lead to the wreck of September 11. For most of us, it's as if the first eight months of the year didn't...
Attended by a rather sexy air of intrigue, the hit French film Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups) arrives upon our shores, and, refreshingly, it's left up to us to figure out just what the hell it is. Monster movie? Costume drama? Martial-arts extravaganza? To say the least,...
