It was just before 7 a.m. when Inmate #BS98-5144 started pushing the speaker button used to alert jail deputies. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeep! The obnoxious sound woke up the other inmates in Broward County's North Bureau jail. While they tossed about angrily, Deputy Albert Tacher would smile, rise from his post...
Steven Seagal's voice was blooming in Craig Marquardo's ear like an exotic flower, and the voice was saying yes. Yes, Seagal liked the script. No, he wouldn't mind acting the lead role, and yes, he would agree to do it with a "verbal handshake." A bankable action-film star whose movies...
Just about everyone has heard songs by Kimberly Rew, but chances are good that most of those people have never heard his name, or, if they have, probably think he's a woman. In most instances this would be a great place to soapbox on the ignorance of the masses, but...
Various Artists Songs For Summer (Oglio Records) You've got to give Adam Gimbel props for chutzpah. Last year his girlfriend, Summer Brannin, died of kidney cancer at the age of 21. Gimbel decided to commemorate her death by making a mix tape with some of her favorite bands. But he...
Bogotá, 1998. It was another bummer of a Valentine's Day. In Colombia the lovers' holiday is known as the Day of Love and Friendship, and though it falls in October instead of February, the end result is just as likely to be as disappointing as Uncle Sam's celebration of the...
Stephen Tashman settles himself on a hardwood chair inside a West Palm Beach federal courtroom, his attention riveted on the morning's proceedings. It's the second day of trial, and although Tashman's intent on the steady stream of arguments and testimonies, he appears relaxed, his deportment hardly that of a man...
The following is a list of women who have been raped, mutilated, tortured, enslaved, crippled, or murdered--and quite often, all of the above. In some cases, these women have also suffered miscarriages, been rendered infertile, contracted horrific diseases, and gone insane. Some of them have even been killed twice, perhaps...
One of the most memorable images of Willem de Kooning has to be the 1986 portrait by the notorious Robert Mapplethorpe. It's a straightforward black-and-white photograph in which the artist, 82 years old at the time, looks directly into the camera with a benign half smile. He's wearing his familiar...
It was more than 40 years ago now, but Gelding has no trouble recalling the day his life took a very odd turn. He was 12 years old, riding the school bus. It was crowded and there was no place to sit, so he stood. The bus hit a bump...
A Reader Puts Slavin to Shame Having read Mr. Slavin's letter to the editor in the March 30 issue of New Times, I must take exception to his assertion that Paul Demko's article "That's Condotainment!" (March 2) was "overly long and boring" and intended to "mollify… nasty old geezers." Overly...
You're just going to have to accept that Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd are far too glamorous for the roles they inhabit in Where the Heart Is. It's an issue that probably won't hurt the film's reception: Remember Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias? Your average moviegoer loves movie stars and...
"I'm sick of people who see my hair color and see that I sing pop music and think that I'm automatically a clone of Britney or Christina!" complains rising teen star Mandy Moore. "Not that that's a bad thing, but I'm not another Britney and I'm not another Christina. I'm...
If you've been reading the newspapers, you've probably assumed that restaurateur Dennis Max has been taking a beating. His private life looks to be a shambles -- wife Patty departed after catching him cheating on her one too many times. Word is Patty got a hefty settlement because of a...
Hold your thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart: That's how close Plantation inventor-entrepreneur Jeff Kaplan has come to making it big. Time and time again. Let's see. There was the time 20 years ago when Kaplan, now 40 years old, got into the video-rental business. This was before billionaire...
Land boats known as Lincolns, Cadillacs, and Pontiacs, tagged in Ontario, New York, or Pennsylvania, are parked facing the gently rolling hulls of the fishing fleet anchored at Hillsboro Marina Inlet. In the warm sun, Capt. Brad Terry is open for business. Knife flashing, he slices thick, pink fillets of...
"Battle of the bands" competitions remind us of high school or, worse, movies starring Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox about high-school "battle of the bands" competitions. The nationwide Bandemonium contest visited our state last month, and three South Florida groups nearly rose to the top. In fact the town...
On April 11 of last year, at around two in the afternoon, a prison guard arrived unexpectedly at Bryant Troville's cell, at the Cross City Correctional Institution, about 50 miles west of Gainesville. Without a word of explanation, the guard shackled Troville and led him from his cell. The prisoner,...
Shelby Lynne I Am Shelby Lynne (Island Records) Insecurity can be a good thing. Take the example of Nashville chanteuse Shelby Lynne. Judging from the title of her mightily impressive sixth album, Lynne has one hell of a self-esteem problem. It's hard to see why, though. Like Dwight Yoakam and...
Merchant/Ivory Productions has long been America's quintessential purveyor of classy "literary" films. At its best the team of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant has given us A Room With a View (1986) and The Remains of the Day (1993); at its worst Slaves of New York (1989) and...
Wilbert "Nica" Cuadra sat in his Chevy Caprice with four of his boys. It was a typical Friday night; Nica was drunk on Mad Dog 20/20 and infused with a familiar rage. Across University Boulevard he could see the enemy -- members of a West Broward gang called La Familia...
Oasis Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (Epic) Advance hype for the fourth Oasis album (not counting 1998's rarities and singles collection) suggested that the disc would be less about Britpop and more about psychedelia and dance/trip-hop. That certainly raised a few eyebrows (and when you're talking the brothers Gallagher,...
Arthur Keys, two friends, and half a dozen children stand under a melting afternoon sun beside a canal in the western reaches of Broward County, watching the water. Tea-color but transparent, the water's surface is unruffled by wind. Fish appear in small schools close to the bank -- tiny, almost...
