Thursday April 2 Yacht racing is pretty inaccessible as a spectator sport. Ships slice through the ocean with no land in sight, sometimes for weeks, especially during events like the Whitbread Round the World Race, an eight-month, around-the-world jaunt. But when the the nine ships from six countries and their…
In the opening scene of the film Can’t Get Away, the camera pans across a desolate stretch of tree-lined highway. Shot in black and white, and accompanied by a haunting musical score, the message is pretty clear: Something bad is about to happen. Cut to a weed-covered field and a…
Thursday March 26 Jennifer Howard obtained a restraining order against her abusive husband, and three days later the 28-year-old was found lying in a pool of blood with a bullet in her head. One of 1500 women murdered by their husbands or boyfriends each year, she’s represented by one of…
Anyone who scribbles a note on a napkin with an ink marker ends up watching helplessly as the ink soaks into the paper and the words bloat into an illegible mess. While the technique used in Oriental brush painting is similar, the results are far less messy. Those hazy-edged lines…
The rat-a-tat-tat footwork of flamenco dancing and belly dancing’s undulating tummies may seem worlds apart, but they actually have a lot in common. “The hand movements are very similar and the rhythms of the music,” says Damaris Ferrer, a professional flamenco dancer in Davie. The connection is Gypsy ancestry. A…
Even though the simulated rock face is 25 feet tall, the beginner’s route is a simple scramble. In fact the hand- and footholds are so close together, it’s like climbing a ladder. But once I’m up top, my hands clutching a fake rock, my feet clinging to a narrow ledge,…
Thursday March 19 What happens when a young Jewish musician falls in love with a Miami witch? In the musical-comedy Nightsong, both families disapprove of the match and try to break up the couple. Imagine Jerry Seinfeld’s meddling sitcom-parents battling Endora, the mother from Bewitched, and you get the idea…
One of photographer Lewis Baltz’s subjects, the Hotel Rothaus in Zurich, Switzerland, is flanked by two streets leading to very different worlds. The road to the left leads to an upscale shopping area and some Swiss banks. The road to the right cuts through a former industrial area now ruled…
Thursday March 12 Since the ’50s, three-dimensional images have been popping off of movie and TV screens, but 3-D viewing has never measured up to the hype. The marketers at 3-D TV Viewing Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, however, feel that they have a winner with the Realeyes 3-D unit for…
Naked is not always sexy. Take the exhibitionist naked mole rats at the Palm Beach Zoo at Dreher Park — please. A queen and colony of the ugly, pink, wrinkly-skinned mole rats from Africa has now been established at the zoo. From the four fat fangs at one end of…
Thursday March 5 The documentary Crumb was one of the most critically acclaimed films of 1994, winning rave reviews across the board. But when it came time to promote the film, which recounts the life and career of popular underground comic-book artist Robert Crumb, in video stores, the marketing folks…
Bonnie Canino is dancing around the canvas, looking for an opening. Suddenly she bends her knees, drops her left shoulder, and cocks her right fist. When she lets the uppercut fly, her black-and-white boxing glove looks like a checkered blur that — whap! — connects with its target, a boxing…
At the age of ten, Dorothy Rickmeyer took up the alto saxophone and continued to play for years. Living in West Virginia at the time, she was proud to march in the sax section of the Ceredo-Kenova High School band during parades. But, like many, she stopped playing after graduation…
Thursday February 26 Just about everyone had pretend sword fights when they were kids. Both kids and adults are now stepping up to the real thing — well, almost. Fencing is like sword-fighting without the bloodshed, and twenty-year veteran Miguel deDiego teaches the sport three times a week. Beginners start…
“I want you to come up here right now and be saved in the name of Jesus,” the Rev. Edward Lord tells his flocks. People who smoke or do drugs, sick people, unrepentant sinners — the feisty revivalist preacher tells them all to step up front and let the Holy…
Imagine Albert Einstein hanging out in a Paris nightspot, trolling for mademoiselles, his huge mane freshly washed, and a brand-new pocket protector in his vest. Then add a club-cruising companion — say, Pablo Picasso. Sounds like it could be funny. Actor-comedian Steve Martin figured as much when he sat down…
Thursday February 19 Dr. Ruth Westheimer has been around. America’s favorite little sex therapist was born in Germany in 1928 and by age sixteen had moved to Israel, where she fought for that country’s independence. Next she was off to Paris to study psychology at the Sorbonne, and after immigrating…
Adam Tobin of Davie hasn’t gone hunting in about eight years. When would he have had the chance? Most weekends, the 33-year-old manager of the technologies division for Fisk Electric in Miami is at Markham Park in Sunrise, where he does plenty of shooting, but no killing. Sporting a camouflage…
Thursday February 12 It doesn’t have the melodrama of Tonya Harding putting out a hit on Nancy Kerrigan, but the ice-skating show The Memory of All That… Gershwin on Ice should appeal to fans of the composer brothers. The performance celebrates the centennial of American composer George Gershwin’s (18981937) birth…
It’s gotten so a kid can’t plop down on the bedroom floor with a fresh stack of comic books and a sticky candy bar to see what new adventures the superheroes are up to. The chocolate might (gasp!) ruin the investment. So instead, the unread comics — with their bold…
Puritan modesty has guaranteed genitalia a place in comedy — a forum where it’s OK to discuss and laugh at the so-called taboo. Thing is, it’s been overdone. So when the Second City cast requests audience input for its improvisational riffing, originality is appreciated. “There’s always someone in the audience…
Leave it to a bunch of grown-up skate rats to turn a dance club into a part-time skateboard park. And leave it to club management to turn the concept into a marketing tool. “When you walk into a club, you think how cool it would be to combine that music…
