The Smothers Brothers used to do a funny routine about sibling rivalry. Who did their mother favor — Tommy or Dickie? “Mom always liked you best” was a familiar mantra of these sibling musician/comedians, who started out as a couple of college dudes in the 1960s and nowadays still do…
Thank You,Thank You, for the Draft We cannot win a single game. Not even one, we’re very lame. We cannot win one here nor there. We cannot win one ANYWHERE! Could you, would you On the road? Would you, could you If it snowed? We could not, would not, on…
In South Florida, it’s hard to keep up with all the astoundingly cockamamie development schemes that come down the pipe. Like, how do you compete with a plan floated a few years ago to build two Eiffel Tower replicas on the beach in Pompano Beach? And there was that International…
Rarefied air. A sense of great altitude. Two higher authorities loll in cauliflower-like crannies of a cumulus cloud, talking of lesser beings. God: And what of my sons from South Florida? Saint Grassback: You have many sons in that region, Father. The ones with the big shoulders. Ah, the Miami…
Save That Dog — Kill Him! Lawrence Meaney wanted his dog, Diogee, to die a natural death, and after 16 years (a biblical 112 in canine years) the border-collie mix was already beginning his inexorable drift toward doggy heaven. In recent years, Diogee’s wagging tail and springy step had been…
Optical scanner? Same ol’, same ol’ Tailpipe was feeling as clean and serene about next year’s election as he does after one of those high-pressure undercarriage baths down at the Rubber Ducky. Mysterious undercounts? Disappearing data? Spooky voting machines? All gone. For Election 2008, those unreliable “touchscreen” machines have been…
The Truth Can Set You Free On dark nights, when your own mortality seems to feed on you like the rust on Tailpipe’s flank, think of Donald Baker and know that things could be worse. The ‘Pipe has never met Baker, but sometimes he thinks about him, sitting for the…
Training Day It’s hard being a police officer in Hollywood, and Tailpipe’s not even talking about the shaking down of pimps or the pocketing of bribes from FBI agents posing as drug smugglers or any of the other questionable deeds with which the department has recently been linked. No, the…
Lawyer and activist Norm Kent gets around. He made a flash in the news a few weeks ago, when Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle said that he felt most gay people were unhappy — and that he was basing that statement on his friend, Kent, whom he’s known for years…
Those mourners at Graceland sure looked dumb for crying over Elvis Presley’s death. Elvis lived! Weekly World News had pictures to prove it. For 28 years now, WWN has set us straight on issues of national importance. While other media outlets obsessed over Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, WWN…
When you make a biographical film about a public figure who’s well-known to much of the audience, you start out in a deep hole. From the moment the guy appears onscreen, people are making mental notes about the actor’s way of holding a fork or pronouncing tomato instead of getting…
For two years now, Tailpipe has been hearing rumors about an alleged miscarriage of justice in the arrest of Lionel Tate for the armed robbery of a pizza delivery man in 2005. Tailpipe has heard the rumors and, until now, dismissed them. You remember Tate, that walking train wreck of…
Fort Lauderdale City Manager George Gretsas’ latest jihad seems to Tailpipe a little more serious and disturbing than his past push to remove chewing gum from the sidewalks. Now he wants to remove from those same sidewalks the freedom of the press. Or at least to hinder it with obstructive…
Like President Clinton, Tailpipe never inhaled. Emissions dispensers like Tailpipe only exhale, of course. But at least two presidents (including the incumbent) and a slew of presidential aspirants and politicians of all stripes have at one time or another touched joints to their lips, an act that continues to be…
R.I.P. Jocks Check ´em again, doc Dimly lit hotel room. Overturned furniture. Four corpses on the floor, covered with sheets. Who´re the stiffs? Tailpipe asks. A wizened CSI, cigarette smoldering in the corner of his mouth, pulls back the sheet. ¨Pro sports,¨ he says. What? ¨Pro sports. You know, South…
Dancing really is the best therapy. That goes even for an embattled politician like Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti, who, Tailpipe discovered recently, can unleash her hips to the libidinous reggae beats of a band like UB40. The ´Pipe´s talking about a party for the Hollywood Beach Community Redevelopment Agency at…
The Plantation Police Department thought Wesley Christopher was a neglectful dad. So they Tasered his 2-year-old daughter. That´s not a misprint or something from an episode of Reno 9-1-1. It actually happened. In February of last year, a Broward County Child Protective Services investigator named Nicole Percival staked out Christopher´s…
Despite what Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale Director Irvin Lippman says, it ain’t normal for a big art museum to close down during the summer. Doing so, as the MOA has done, cuts a big slice out of the cultural life of the city. Summer is when people have a little…
Hey, vatos, I’m back in my old haunts. It’s Wednesday morning, and I just sucked down a whole bowl of menudo — extra picante to make me sweat like a pig — for this chingazo of a hangover. David Hidalgo is in the back room noodling on his guitar to…
When I told a neighbor last week that I was going to the King Tut exhibition, a look of relief came over her face. “Oh, gosh, I thought I missed it,” she said. “I thought it had come and gone.” This was the day before the show opened. That overbearing…
When J. Arthur Heise took over the journalism program at Florida International University in 1983, there were instructors who wouldn’t talk to each other, hopelessly scrambled student files, and a faculty that was often in open revolt. “The FIU provost told me that the department was ‘my single biggest academic…
If you were to hear one of Celso Fonseca’s mesmerizing bossa novas perambulating from the radio, you might think it was Joao Gilberto making a comeback. There are the same tricky, stop-start rhythms Gilberto (now in his 70s) used to employ, the same softly percussive guitar playing. Maybe Fonseca’s singing…
