A twin-engine Aerocommander dipped from the sky above Lantana's municipal airport. Caught in a gust the plane hovered above the tarmac before screeching to earth. Tearing past Pipers and Cessnas, ultralights and helicopters, the six-seater slowed to a halt at the mouth of an overstuffed hangar, propellers whirring. Jean-François Buslik...
From a distance, the midmorning scene in the fenced-in yard of a warehouse storage company in northern Miami-Dade County was so common as to be commonplace: two men standing in the open cargo bay of a panel truck, waiting for a series of metal drums to be lifted and loaded,...
Future anthropologists chronicling the evolution of America's consumer culture will remember April 1, 1999, as the end of an era. For on that day, in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks, the Galleria closed forever. This mall not only starred in the movies Valley Girl and Fast Times at...
In many respects, country club restaurants resemble hotel restaurants: Both have reputations for serving mediocre fare to captive audiences in staid surroundings. Prevailing dining logic demands that these eateries should be avoided. After all, why visit a hotel unless you're staying in one? As for country clubs, most are private,...
Russ Rogers looks glum as he walks down an alley of metal garage doors, heading toward his band's warehouse bay rehearsal space. Holding a bag of Kinko's boxes containing dot Fash's latest newsletter in one hand and a bag of bottled Heinekens in the other, he approaches drummer Phil Tucciarone...
There's a photo on Tom Tornatore's desk of him and his two kids at Disney World. In the photo Tom is on the left, Katie, age 12, is in the middle, and Tommy Jr., 16, is on the right. They're standing in front of Cinderella's Castle, which is decorated in...
When he died a decade ago at the age of 85, Salvador Dali left behind an output vast enough to make him one of the most prolific artists of the 20th Century. The flamboyant Spaniard's legacy also includes a reputation as one of the shrewdest -- some would say most...
Thursday April 1 Here's a twist. For ten years Suzanne Miller of Fort Lauderdale was known as Vivian Saint John, professional wrestler. But then she quit the ring and became a student at the New York School of Occult Arts and Sciences. She's now known as Lady Suzanne Miller, teller...
With blinds drawn because she's recovering from cataract surgery, Doris Altier sits in her Hallandale condo on the Intracoastal and recalls her career as a jazz singer and bass player. During the '50s, she worked the East Coast nightclub circuit, dating bandleaders and movie stars along the way. Her walls...
The 14th annual Winter Music Conference (WMC) kicks off in Miami Beach this Saturday, bringing a flurry of DJs, artists, producers, and industry types to South Florida. Much like its monolithic cousins -- the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin and the CMJ Music Marathon in New York --...
The objects that adorn Alberto Milian's office in the Broward County courthouse in Fort Lauderdale tell more about the Cuban-born prosecutor than the words that pour forth from his mouth ever could. Behind Milian's desk is a red, white, and blue United States Army banner. Taped to the door is...
The "dinner party for dead people" play, in which an author gathers together people who may or may not have met in real life and plops them into the same room for supper, isn't officially recognized as a dramatic genre. But it's so popular that maybe it ought to be...
Oddly enough, former House of Pain (HoP) member and current hip-hop troubadour Everlast is proving himself to be a crossbreed of b-boy and Johnny Cash. In his current incarnation -- as guitar-wielding Whitey Ford -- he sports a streetwise, middle-finger-in-the-air attitude matched with songs that aren't afraid to cross genre...
If you're Built to Spill's Doug Martsch, you can have it both ways: Sign with a major label and keep your indie-rock credibility; maintain a successful band and a happy family without disrupting either; live in relative isolation in the cultural hinterland of Boise, Idaho, and still be one of...
They came with hoods on and guns drawn in the middle of the night. They brazenly swept past the signs cautioning, "If nudity or sexual activity offends you, please do not enter." They proceeded down the purple-walled hallway of the private club, past two more signs warning of impending non-PG...
"I was hoping there would be a better turnout than this," Dave Kronstat, owner of Home, a new Fort Lauderdale rock club, says as he surveys the 15 or so people huddled around the bar at 10:30 p.m. two Fridays ago. His disappointment is understandable; this is the first night...
Big Head Todd and The Monsters Live Monsters (Reprise) The live album is inherently problematic. Some bands that are good in the studio are great on stage, but, when the fire of a stage performance is translated back into the recorded medium, the results rarely satisfy. In all of contemporary...
At a recent evening of "girl talk" with some of my friends, the subject of makeup tips came up. One of the women said her mother swore by Preparation H to reduce the dreaded under-eye puffiness we all get sometimes. We all laughed, but afterward I wondered: Does it really...
After the priest has cut out the tongue of the Marquis de Sade, he presents the meaty organ to the asylum's caretaker encased in a black box. Handing it over he comments, "It was so long and serpentlike that I had to wrap it around a dowel." Well, I bet...
The Deep End of the Ocean starts out as a maternal horror movie and ends up as a family therapy session. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Beth Cappadora, the photographer wife of restaurateur Pat (Treat Williams) and mother of two sons and an infant daughter. While checking into a jammed hotel for...
The defense attorney wants to put the young man in a mental institution. The prosecutor wants to put him in prison for life. The court is trying to determine if he's mentally competent to stand trial. Psychologists are delving into his mind, trying to figure out what triggered his murderous...
The two men stand in front of the Broward County Addiction Recovery Center on an unseasonably hot morning in early February, smoking and joking about the dangers of clap. One is tall, skinny, and talkative, dressed in a sweat jacket, a black man with huge eyes set in a gaunt...
