The Frisbee soared over Eric Rebenkoff's head in the crowded park, landing some 30 yards behind him, in the shallow outfield of a nearby softball diamond. Frank McDonough Park in Lighthouse Point was teeming with children and adults on that Tuesday evening in May 1995. The plastic platter happened to...
Thursday December 10 A hang glider has to haul one of those big nylon sets of wings to a cliff. And a parasailor's rig includes boat, parachute, and of course a large body of water. Making use of a flying inflatable boat sounds not nearly as complicated. The two-seat pontoon...
Even students of English history may have trouble sorting out the palace intrigues and intragovernmental conspiracies that fill Elizabeth, the handsome new production about Queen Elizabeth I's ascension to the British throne in 1558. With the bewitching Australian actress Cate Blanchett (last year's Oscar and Lucinda) in the title role,...
Carlton: Moore Is More Blaming Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Carlton Moore for the lack of progress in economic renewal in the near Northwest is wrong ("A Dream Deferred," Jay Cheshes, October 8). In fact, Commissioner Moore should receive most of the credit for whatever "successes" we have had in that...
Attorney Donald Kahn had spent a lifetime preparing for this moment. University of Miami law school. Advanced degrees in taxation and real estate. Ascension to partner at the slightly stuffy firm of Green, Kahn, Piotrkowski in Miami Beach. On November 10 the lawyer shined his wingtips, donned a blue Austin...
I've always been intrigued by the ancient custom in China of binding women's feet. I've never seen an actual picture of what they end up looking like but have heard them referred to as "lotus blossoms." Do they end up looking like a claw or just little tiny feet? Was...
A tinsel-decked Christmas tree overwhelms the living room of Atlanta's upstanding Freitag family. The ceiling-scraping spruce is about to be topped by a star until one of the characters declares that "Jewish Christmas trees don't have stars." How the Freitags come to have this gold ornament packed away among their...
Thursday 3 For a while there it seemed like another bad '70s trend had been laid to rest. But fondue -- the ridiculously tedious and fattening method of frying individual bites of food in scalding oil -- has resurfaced on the wave of nostalgia for the decade. During fondue class...
The night before Hurricane Georges was due to hit South Florida -- with memories of Hurricane Andrew's destruction still fresh in the minds of South Floridians -- Robert E. Diehl, editor of the Boca Raton News, convened a staff meeting. Diehl announced that the daily would publish off-site if the...
Why aren't seat belts mandatory in all school buses? -- Kesti16, via AOL When I first considered this question, the words natural selection bobbed inexplicably in my mind. On examination, however, the main factors are safety and expense. Which one was more important to the people in charge I leave...
Holed up with his Sidney Bechet records, old flannel shirts, and dog-eared copy of War and Peace, Woody Allen has made a second career of shunning fad, fashion, and fame -- and of ostensibly keeping to himself in the most populous city in the United States. No nouveau-grooveau glitz or...
Evolutionary baggage is a bitch. According to biologists we have the equivalent of three brains -- the reptilian, the mammalian, and the higher cortex -- each of which developed during a different stage of evolution. Our reptilian chunk of gray matter, being the oldest, controls our most basic instinct --...
Sheron Thomas was apparently in no mood to read the Sun-Sentinel in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day four years ago. As delivery woman Sandi Shattuck pulled into his Hollywood Hills driveway around 5:30 a.m. to drop off her first newspaper of the day, Thomas displayed his gratitude by...
Country music in the '90s is Alan Jackson inexplicably hyping Ford trucks via a rewritten version of "Mercury Blues," a venerable number covered during the early '70s by Steve Miller (a space cowboy rather than the ropin' and ridin' kind). It's Shania Twain, a singer whose producer/husband/Svengali, Robert "Mutt" Lange,...
Silver lining or slender thread? That question nags at me as I go over my best-of-the-year list. There were some terrific movies in 1998 -- eight, according to my count. But the average film keeps on getting worse. If movies remain as synthetic and incompetent as they are for the...
"Eating Monkey Brains, The Baboon Nurse and Other Tales," Robert Morrison's audacious one-man show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lake Worth, is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. If you like one piece in this exhibition, which is as provocative as its title, you'll probably buy into the whole...
The harmonica is a curious instrument. Palm-size and usually made without moving parts, it looks so simple, like a toy. Mastering one should require no more than inhaling, exhaling, and fluttering a finger or two. But the innocuous little thing has frightened many a would-be musician into a life of...
American History X, a hard-edged look at American neo-Nazis, arrives in theaters with a lot of behind-the-scenes baggage: First-time director Tony Kaye has engaged in a protracted, high-profile battle with producer-distributor New Line Cinema over the film's final form. While Kaye may have a justified grievance, this is not as...
Thursday November 12 Spurned lovers these days might slash their ex's tires or stalk him or her -- at least until the restraining order comes through. But such petty revenge looks wimpy compared to what happens in the mythological story of Medea. Jason, the rightful heir to the throne of...
Nobody knows if Scott Joplin ever knew Irving Berlin. In The Tin Pan Alley Rag, Mark Saltzman's well-meaning musical, however, the two composers not only meet cute (Joplin, disguised as a composer's agent, appears in the office where Berlin works as a sheet-music publisher), they reminisce, play tunes, and dip...
Pastor Bob Coy is at the pulpit. And he is not alone. God is with him. As are more than 2000 Bible-toting worshipers. They are seated on folding chairs and theater-style seats in the warehouselike building that is the sanctuary of Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. Like Pastor Bob the congregants...
Gillian Welch Hell Among the Yearlings (Almo Sounds) Revival, Gillian Welch's brilliant 1996 debut album, had an old-time, hardwood simplicity about it: The two voices and two acoustic guitars did the majority of the work but were supported on several songs by bass and drums. For her followup, Hell Among...
