Some people pooh-pooh the notion of big-name chefs lending their expertise and big names to luxury hotels, cruise ships, airplanes, Vegas, Disney World -- any venue that offers enough money. Personally I'd lobby these culinary wonder boys to apply their golden touch even to the food concessions at sports arenas...
Paul McGuinness has never thought of himself as a teacher of life lessons, so it comes as a bit of a surprise for him to hear it relayed that Kelly Curtis considers him an adviser--hell, a mentor. It comes as even more of a shock to discover that Curtis recalls...
A long, long, long time ago (November 1991, to be exact), when Bandwidth's frequency range was tender, green, and underdeveloped, yours truly got to hang with Dr. Alex Paterson, wing commander of the ambient/dance outfit the Orb. At the time I hadn't heard any of the band's music (this was...
Where were Howard Fast, Joe Adler, and Bob Rogerson when Mr. Nelson, my high-school history teacher and the wrestling team's coach, sidled up to the lectern to teach the American Revolution? That war, as I remember it, was a series of lively anecdotes about converting Boston Harbor into a giant...
As Brian Dodge and Mike Silver approached the entryway to Storm around 9 p.m., the sound of DJ-spun music pulsated into the street from the nightclub. The fledgling gay club -- leasing space at Chili Pepper in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Sundays -- was well into its second day of...
At best the revival of a classic stirs our sensibilities much like a remarkable piece of music. A chord is struck that reverberates from antiquity to the present, reuniting us with the universality of our most human emotions. At its worst a classic only manages to transport us as far...
Just the other day Undercurrents received a letter from Paul Anger, Broward publisher of The Herald. We tore into the missive eagerly, hoping it was the job offer that would finally give us a chance to do some real journalism. We long to work cheek by jowl with these lords...
Now here's a first: Just about anything I can complain about my most recent dining experience is most likely my fault. For instance, I didn't appreciate the lack of ambient dining music during this meal. While I'm never overly fond of, say, loud house beats vibrating my plate -- and...
The bare midriff is making me insane. I admit I first thought the trend of displaying tight, tanned little tummies, with or without belly ring installed center stage, kind of cutely risqué. But after pop princesses like Christina Aguilera took it to such extremes that they now present themselves naked...
The Wedding Planner begins with footage of a seven-year-old girl performing a wedding ceremony with her Barbies. It's a fitting opening, because the movie that ensues could almost be the result of a screenwriter literally transcribing the play scenario enacted by a small child and her dolls. If you were...
It's a scenario with which we're all familiar by now: young single guys in search of hot babes, firing one-liners at each other, making pop-cultural references ad nauseam, and ultimately finding out that women are somewhat less shallow than they've been led to believe. At least it's a scenario you...
Ben Waldman has a question for police: When are we going to talk? Waldman is president of SunCruz Casinos, the cruise-to-nowhere company founded by the now-deceased Gus Boulis. Before Boulis was gunned down in his car just off Federal Highway last month, SunCruz executives were embroiled in a bitter gambling-business...
Irving Reisfeld has that sound in his voice. Sitting at a small desk in a disheveled office, he has just reached a human on the phone after a lengthy time on hold. From his end the conversation sounds lopsided; Reisfeld's words drip impatience and pick up velocity. He's slipped into...
Life usually doesn't play fair with Death Becomes You, Coral Springs' favorite goth-rock horror show. I know this because I'm lucky enough to receive regular transmissions from drummer Christopher Lee, who is more than willing to report, in detail, every happening that shapes the band's existence. Many of these updates...
It isn't often one sees a newspaper publish a correction on the front page above the fold, complete with a color photo of the person who was wronged. That's because editors are like doctors -- they like to bury their mistakes. So what kind of colossal screwup would necessitate such...
Hello, what's this? Why, could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being -- alert the media! -- not particularly good for people? (If only they could try the same with guns. Messrs. Heston and Silver: You awake yet?) Indeed Blow director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls, Monument...
In the early morning hours in midtown Manhattan, a half-dozen brutes make their way to the K-Rock (WXRK-FM 92.3) radio station on 57th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. No passerby is in the area at 6:50 this Friday morning, but if one were, he or she would likely cross...
Violet represents the quintessentially American spiritual journey -- the road trip. Set in 1964, it is the story of a young woman named Violet (Jennifer Hughes), who travels by Greyhound bus, her late mother's confessional in hand, from her mountaintop home in rural North Carolina to the Hope and Glory...
Three peninsular bands are making the trek to Austin next week, not to engage in psychological warfare against the newly installed dauphin of the Bush dynasty (you know, like Poppy did to Noriega) but to strut their respective stuffs at South by Southwest, the massive music-and-media conference that sends the...
Director John Herzfeld's 1996 feature, the droll and underrated 2 Days in the Valley, was a more than adequate counterbalance to the catastrophe of his first feature, Two of a Kind, a 1983 John Travolta vehicle (which, together with Moment by Moment, put its star on the fast track from...
Resurrection finds the former voice of Judas Priest wavering between the classic metal stylings for which he's revered in many quarters and more-contemporary touches of the type that have made multimillionaires of malcontents who were still sucking strained bananas when Rob and the lads were living after midnight. As might...
