"Art is domination. It's making people think, for one moment in time, there's only one art, one voice, and that's yours," declares opera star Maria Callas (Rosemary Prinz) in Master Class. Callas was not simply a talented singer and a beautiful woman; she was a diva. It is the ability...
You'll have to excuse Belinda Griffin for not catching the fever that gripped West Palm Beach last week at the opening of CityPlace, a 77-acre, $550 million, taxpayer-supported downtown complex billed as the biggest thing to happen to the city since Henry Flagler built the Breakers. The slight, twentysomething black...
Mark LaFontaine has the flu. He sniffles as he walks through his dining room, a hooded, red-and-blue terry-cloth robe swaddling his tall, athletic body. In Scooby-Doo slippers he pads to the back of the house and, after a few minutes, returns with his hands full. He unloads onto the dining...
The 24 hours after Election Day 2000 were perhaps the most chaotic time in South Florida history since Hurricane Andrew struck. So, in the interest of history, Hurricane New Times hit the streets. It's 2 p.m., and the Palm Beach County government center is the only place that matters in...
Cut from the same digital cloth as its predecessors, Pole 1 and Pole 2 (the only true reference points of any value here), Pole 3 is more minimalist future dub from German eccentric Stefan Betke. Ghostly echoes and thickened bass patterns form the skin of each piece, with the skeletal...
While the world roosts outside the state capitol in Tallahassee, Democrats huddle on the third floor just trying to cope. Roughly 30 representatives, most hailing from South Florida, sit around a long table in what they call the caucus room, the largest space in the House minority's suite of offices...
Before others could reject him, Michael Chabon had convinced himself no one wanted to read an epic novel about comic-book creators, mythical Jewish monsters called golems, New York in the 1930s, daring escapes from Lithuania, Nazis, and the Empire State Building's elevator system. He wanted to write the book--desperately, one...
Though she's been at it for years, Victoria Williams is probably better known as a celebrity with an illness than she is as a visionary writer and performer. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992, Williams first caught massive media attention when Lou Reed, Pearl Jam, and a slew of other...
Jen's mom is now safe at the River House: I am writing in regard to Jen Karetnick's review of the River House ("Bringing Up the Rear," September 21). First let me say there is never any excuse for poorly prepared or spoiled food being served in a restaurant. I have...
It takes a special kind of mindset to celebrate castration, and audiences confusing feminine empowerment with the crude hacking off of seemingly oppressive huevos are certain to get a bang out of Girlfight, the gritty debut feature from writer-director Karyn Kusama. Metaphoric or otherwise, there's already a movie about deballing...
Restaurants employ a variety of tactics to win customers. Mustang Sally's, a four-month-old steak house in a desolate Flamingo Road shopping plaza out in cow country (a.k.a. Cooper City), is currently utilizing a time-honored method. No, it's not exploitation of the Wilson Pickett song, the all-American car, or even the...
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Kevin Gordon has never fit in with the Nashville program. He's simply too talented, too ambitious, and too ornery to make do with the prefab platters dished up by Music City denizens. And that's a damn good thing. It's been a good long...
He's a Plantation councilman, a right-wing Christian activist, an abortion protester, and a man who rails against the movie industry, which he believes is destroying the nation's moral fiber. But now Jerry Fadgen is preparing for his Tinsel Town debut. The councilman warned September 27 of dire consequences following the...
Temi Linzner wheels her sleek, cobalt blue Mercedes into a parking lot near Holy Cross Hospital. Dark glasses shroud her intense brown eyes; a round-brimmed straw hat covers her sparse crop of short, silver hair. When she first started chemotherapy for her lymphatic cancer in the late 1970s, all her...
"Junior officers quickly become disoriented in the Orient," Navy wife Julia Anderson warns newly arrived officer "Sparky" Watts in A.R. Gurney's play Far East. Indeed the New Theatre's production of this work seems to offer a heady brew of scandal, sex, and unrequited love, promising to leave the audience pleasantly...
A woman, one member of a party of six at Baredo Café in Boca Raton, got up suddenly from her table and began marching around the dining room, glancing pointedly at other tables and their parties. We knew she was a customer, but she looked for all the world like...
For nearly two years, Aventura widow Regina Greenhill expressed nothing but praise for her former aide, Bridget Garcia. Bridget, a certified nursing assistant, had treated the 87-year-old Regina with great care, spending every day of the week cooking her meals, driving her around town, and allowing her to live an...
Diners often think that restaurant critics have elaborate systems for rating restaurants, and of course we have many complex reasons for admiring or disliking a particular eatery. But when all's said and done -- digested and written -- I like to keep it real with one simple question: Would I...
It has often been written of Chris Guest--or, if you prefer, Fifth Baron Christopher Haden-Guest, son of diplomat Peter Haden-Guest, who could once vote in Parliament--that he has the demeanor of cold stone and the temperament of the dead. He possesses, one often hears, an impenetrable façade, that of the...
The feds left this guy out to dry: I have just read Roger Williams' story on the Social Security Administration ("Social Insecurity," August 17). As a former SSA employee, I have seen firsthand similar disregard for employees' health. On one occasion both myself and the claims representative sitting next to...
Jack Martin's foot presses down ever so slightly on the gas pedal, inching the white, government-issue Ford Ranger through the gentle curves of a cul-de-sac he's come to know by heart. All around him the sun-warmed walls of pink stucco homes seem to stretch and melt into one another like...
