Why aren’t roller derbies more popular in America. They’ve got everything we crave in our sports. Strength, speed, power, on-the-fly strategizing. The idea is this: A bunch of people on teams A and B skate around a track, with a designated member of each trying to lap the other team…
Valentine’s! You forgot all about it! At this point, even your most powerful exertions won’t result in the kind of really romantic evening your mate is pining for, and s/he’ll probably resent you till Christmas. Unless you shell out $125 for one of these picnic packages benefiting the Riverwalk Trust…
If a pointy-headed New York liberal said the things redneck comedian Jeff Foxworthy says about the rural American working class, he’d be lynched. (Or given tenure.) Jeff Foxworthy says them, and he’s loved. Not by television audiences so much — the Jeff Foxworthy Show lasted just one season, got moved…
One of my roommates is a highly driven young entrepreneur raised in Asia by American parents, and he is an enthusiastic consumer of all ingestibles, be they solid, liquid, or smoke. Like me, his favorite foods are uni and foie gras. Like me, he loves excellent craft beer, appreciates delicately…
The almost universally acclaimed Top Gun, the Musical isn’t actually a musical version of Top Gun. It’s a play about the musical version of Top Gun. This is the story of Billy Palmer, a Broadway producer in desperate need of a hit after the failure of his previous effort, Apocalypse…
It’s a reptile show. It’s always a reptile show. Never in the storied history of the War Memorial Auditorium (800 NE Eighth St., Fort Lauderdale) has there been an amphibian show, for people do not care about them. It’s reptilia that fascinate us, with their disposable skin and ancient horrible…
Two summers ago I accompanied my friend James “The Amazing” Randi on a speaking tour of northern Europe. We visited Scandinavia and the Baltics, and enjoyed a quick southerly jaunt to the Netherlands. Our final engagement was in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the middle of the Atlantic.Reykjavik is a modest city,…
If you build it, they will come. “It,” in this case, is a children’s hospital named after a baseball great; “they” are a bunch of retired ballplayers who will play one another in a one-off game at Fort Lauderdale Stadium (1301 NW 55th St., Fort Lauderdale) at 1 p.m. You’ve…
I’ve written here before that the one indispensable tool of any moneyless mammal is a rice cooker. I even provided a recipe for low-cost rice cooker deliciousness. But in my months of protracted broke-assness, I’ve come to realize that my previous comments were facile. The rice cooker is a machine…
Larry King prepared less to talk to more people than anybody. Occasionally, when he sat down to chit-chat with somebody he knew a lot about during his 26-year run on CNN — like Marlon Brando, say — his interviews were magic. When he interviewed Brando, he was starstruck, and the…
Balut is the unofficial national dish of the Philippines, and it’s disgusting. I know this because I’ve eaten it. Granted, my balut might have been indifferently cooked — the Japanese chef who made it remarked that he’d “never eat that thing in a billion years” — but balut’s an easy…
The Promethean Theatre (3301 College Ave., Davie) is known primarily for its idiosyncratic programming. One moment, Promethean’s doing a quiet, meditative new play about family tragedy in the North Florida wilds; the next, its stage is covered in severed limbs, broomsticks, and possessed elk’s heads for a musical version of…
Getting drunk is fine. Getting drunk in a risk-free environment while raising money for a good cause is far, far better. Enter the Fort Lauderdale Bus Loop: Pay a fee of $20 and catch a bus to nine of Fort Lauderdale’s most beloved boozeries: McSorley’s, Shooters, the Blue Martinis, the…
When my foodie friends arrive for a first visit to SoFla, I deceive them immediately. In my old Taurus wagon, I drive them north on I-95. We pass marinas and canals (“Venice of the Americas,” I tell them), cruise onto Andrews Avenue and over the New River (“Have you ever…
No telling how it happened, but in the past decade, pro wrestling has become a suitable subject for serious art. Four years ago, The Wrestler almost nabbed an Academy Award for Best Picture; last year, the altogether more fun The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity — which examines America’s role…
Prior to the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese new year was celebrated the same day as the Chinese and Korean new year, which this year will be February 3. After the Restoration, the Japanese new year was celebrated January 1. Sunday, the Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens (4000 Morikami Park Road,…
Dennis Miller is the second-most-entertaining, freedom-loving, semi-intellectual, autodidactic, libertarian funnyperson in the country. (The first is Penn Jillette.) You know the résumé, more or less — Saturday Night Live, the HBO shows, the radio programs, the rants, the guest appearances on Fox News, in which he plays gleefully to the…
Those unlucky bastards who’ve attempted improv comedy — and the even unluckier bastards who’ve watched the attempts — know how hard it is. You can’t just assume the stage and make funny happen. You gotta have technique. And the folks at Laughing Gas Improv have technique to spare. They got…
Brad Garrett’s voice or face has appeared in every movie you’ve ever seen (Ratatouille!) and most of the ones you haven’t (Hoodwinked II: Hood vs. Evil). He’s a fine poker player (who contributed maybe the funniest-ever moment to Celebrity Poker Showdown, when he suddenly began channeling Bill Cosby in front…
Right around 9 o’clock last night, a cheer was raised in the kitchen. The overworked FedEx folk had finally delivered the barbecue.It was Texas barbecue, and for one of the ten individuals staying in our home for the holidays — Lance, he’s called — this is fable food, memory food…
One of the most ambitious exhibitions in recent SoFla memory is now running at the Boca Museum of Art (501 Plaza Real, Boca). It’s called “American Treasures,” which doesn’t quite do justice to the thing’s scope. From the press release: “American Treasures, an exhibition featuring thirty-six artworks by renowned American…
Look, just because it’s got “Cirque” in the title doesn’t mean it’s got anything to do with those other guys. “Cirque” ain’t a proper noun, and in this case it (probably) references “Cirque Europeen” — the grand tradition of costume-heavy, makeup-crazy, animal-less circuses that played across Europe for centuries. So…
