After four days of looping around the Caribbean, the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Fascination eased into its berth at Port Canaveral, Florida, on the morning of July 23, 1998. Legions of flushed, sunburned tourists descended the gangplank, luxuriating, no doubt, in the last few hours of their tropical escape before...
Bid farewell to American fusion cuisine, that tired trend, as you know it. Say hello to Latin fusion cuisine because, well, you're going to get to know it. The place where you'll begin to get acquainted, folks, is the Samba Room on East Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. The...
When Paul Thomas Anderson's second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film-industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a leading...
The Herald street hawker was standing in the road selling papers along with the Sun-Sentinel salesperson and another Herald seller. Hey, wait a darn minute here. Why are there two street geeks selling the same rag on the same corner? Well, that's because there are now two Heralds from which...
Something wasn't right in the Winn-Dixie store in Dania Beach that day. Anger was building among store employees under the supermarket's white fluorescent lights. The animosity would soon turn to violence, with a customer's blood spilling on the hard, shiny tile near the checkout counter. The unlikely cause of the...
Drive west! To a place where roads are made of dirt and plots of land stretch for ten acres. To a place where animals outnumber people and turtles swim in murky canals. To a place where palm trees are native and unruly and a hand-painted sign reading "Lost 3 Cows"...
The night her life began to unravel, Linda Ashby was a confident female law-enforcement officer only five months into a career as a uniformed deputy with the Broward Sheriff's Office. Her confidence had merit: Ashby had been commended for bravery on the job after excelling at the police academy. She...
Four years ago, in the thick of the last presidential campaign, MTV broadcast one of its "Rock the Vote" specials, during which one of the station's vee-jays stuck a mic in Snoop Doggy Dogg's face and asked for his views on the impending election. I don't remember the exact wording...
If you require, as I do, a very good reason to venture into the volatile cauldron of Miami-Dade County, then let one of those reasons be the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in North Miami, which regularly showcases some of the most exciting art in South Florida. Last summer, for...
The most memorable detail in Tom Tom on a Rooftop, Daniel Keough's new play now receiving its East Coast premiere in Hollywood, is a piece of the set. The feeble comedy takes place entirely on the tarpaper roof of a modest apartment building, where, amid lawn chairs and milk crates,...
Art of Noise The Seduction of Claude Debussy (Zang Tuum Tumb/Universal) British producer Trevor Horn's avant-garde outfit, Art of Noise, was well ahead of the electronica curve in the early '80s, using then-new sampling gimmickry to combine found sounds, electronic atmospherics, and synthetic beats to conjure the 1983 break-dance classic...
The Busy Signals Baby's First Beats (Sugar Free) Analog keyboard, guitar, and drum machine: $400. Bedroom recording gear: $2000. Recording your debut album all by yourself: not quite as priceless as you think. Onetime Babes in Toyland roadie Howard W. Hamilton III is the Busy Signals. Other than backup vocals...
When the chairman of the School Advisory Board climbed on the roof of Deerfield Beach Middle on November 29, he took photographs of what he thought looked like men who'd "just gotten off the landing ship." The men were in space suits attached to respirators and were digging up voluminous...
At 3:24 a.m. the Howler makes his presence known. Out of the early December morning darkness, a nasal and unintelligible sound rises in pitch to a vitriolic keening. The verbal outburst is mercifully short -- no more than 15 seconds. But it is followed closely by another nonsensical rant of...
The mission of the people who fought for district government in Hollywood was noble. The goal was to seat a minority on the city commission for the first time in the city's 75-year history. The districting proponents also wanted to give residents the opportunity to elect a representative from their...
Everyone save for the most tolerant readers has probably had his or her fill of millennium lists. There isn't anyone who hasn't been assaulted by them: most influential figures in history, best books, best American movies, most important historical events. No area has been dogged by Listomania more than pop...
Robert "Brother Rob" Christensen began trading in foreign currency in February 1998, and it didn't take long before he was making a killing. Or so it seemed. By his own reckoning the $135,000 he had invested with a South Florida trading firm had ballooned in value to more than a...
If you've been reading the heart-wrenching tales of abused and drug-addicted children that accompany the Sun-Sentinel's pitch for contributions to the paper's Children's Fund as avidly as we have, you've no doubt been tempted to reach for your wallet and give till it hurts. After all, these anecdotes of youth...
Wednesday, December 29, 1:10 p.m. I spot the first obvious Phish fan in an aging Volvo with Quebec plates and a dancing bear sticker on the bumper just past the I-595/I-75 split. The car, smeared with road salt, is occupied by four young gentlemen in sweatshirts sporting serious car hair,...
Leon Hendricks squeezes his linebacker frame into a kitchen chair in his modest Lauderdale Lakes house, the television blaring sports in the background, as always. The curtains are drawn in the dark, cramped living room, the focal point of which is a La-Z-Boy recliner perched in front of the large...
Ah, what a miracle that Andy Kaufman was. So sublime his wit, so pioneering his spirit. Astonishing! A hero to be loved, adored, and emulated by all artists and performers for the rest of eternity. An opener of doors, a smasher down of barriers, a glorious, luminous, intrepid spirit without...
Guy Clark Cold Dog Soup (Sugar Hill) There are songwriters who are respected by fans, and there are songwriters who are respected by other songwriters. Then there's Guy Clark, who earns professional respect like a banker compounds interest. The Texas-born song stylist has long been revered by his peers and...
