One way or another, you have to feel sorry for Rick Rockwell. You know, the sacrificial bachelor on the stunt Fox TV special Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Either you feel bad that Rockwell’s gold-digging bride, Darva Conger, annulled the cherished relationship after just 36 hours of wedded bliss,…

Jim Bailey didn’t start cross-dressing because of any suppressed fantasy. As the singer and actor explains, he had to do it. His penchant for perfection demanded it. “I was at a party,” he recalls. “Phyllis [Diller] is a friend of mine, so I knew her mannerisms, and at a party…

Last February New York pianist Lara Downes and painter Kim Ray Krupnick of Fort Lauderdale brought a slice of avant-garde art to South Florida, with Downes playing pieces by Debussy, Gershwin, and Stephen Paulus while surrounded by projected slides of Krupnick’s landscape paintings. “That was successful enough that we decided…

I don’t know if I stopped breathing, but I was unconscious. What I saw was the most hideous, horrible thing! This was no nightmare! If you saw the movie Ghost, it was like where those horrible black things came out and were grabbing you. There were people screaming. It was…

Handsome, clean-cut, in shape but not a muscle head, Michael Page could easily attract women or men. Or both. Not bad if you’re bisexual, which the Fort Lauderdale airline pilot decidedly is. The only problem is that historically there has been no place for bisexuals to socialize — even in…

Other than claiming, “Hey, I’m a cannibal!” you can’t do much more to repulse others than to profess your dietary preference for insects. That’s right. Bug munching. Maybe some fricasseed fly or basted butterfly. With nearly 1500 recorded species of edible insects, the possibilities are endless. That factoid immediately raises…

Until four years ago, avid scuba diver Dan “Red” Whiteman made his living setting up elaborate fish tanks in homes and businesses. But one evening a drunk driver changed all of that. No, Whiteman wasn’t hit by the intoxicated motorist. An inebriated young lady rammed her car into a palm…

Bette Midler, Jewel, Kathy Mattea, and Donna Summer have sung her songs, so how come we’ve never heard of Julie Gold? The simplest explanation is that Gold, by her own admission, isn’t much of a singer herself, so the stars who turn her songs into hits seem to get credit…

Stepping up to tee off on a hole dubbed “Feedin’ Frenzy,” participants in the Second Annual Charity, Open Invitational, Orange Blossom, Westfair, Cowboy, Cow Pasture Golf Classic will quickly realize — if they haven’t already — why cowboy boots are the suggested footwear. Instead of a lake or sand traps,…

Author Michael Crichton based the speedy, smart dinosaurs in his book Jurassic Park on the ideas of scientist Robert T. Bakker, whose research put to rest the idea that dinos were dimwitted, cold-blooded lizards. In fact Bakker was on the research team that confirmed the find of a raptor in…

Playing in and around his native Philadelphia during the mid-’70s, jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger Vincent Montana, Jr. was having a tough time putting bread on the table with measly $25-per-week gigs. There just wasn’t a market for jazz. The music of the moment, Montana knew, was the danceable, groove-oriented…

The interactive comedy Shear Madness has been around for 20 years, but the touring production’s penchant for local references and updated jokes keeps it fresh. Enlisting local barristers to “defend” suspects against accusations of murder at the center of the whodunit also makes for a new performance each time out…

The futuristic metaphysical movie The Matrix proffered the notion that more than one reality exists: There’s the one you think is reality and another one that exists beyond the average human’s realm of conscious experience. Hollywood blows plenty of imaginary smoke, to be sure, but in this case the plot…

Kris Kemp, a Web page designer, sometime carpenter, and film buff who named the annual Flo Film Festival after his now defunct poetry-and-music ‘zine, Flo, doesn’t think the event’s slacker, slumber party style will be lost by moving it to a real theater. Last year independent film fans gathered at…

Most kids these days don’t even know who Janis Joplin was or Alice Cooper is. So what’s the marketing strategy behind a line of aged rock-star action figures? Well, according to the folks at Todd McFarlane Productions, the things aren’t dolls, and they aren’t aimed at kids. McFarlane, the creator…

A young man can learn plenty about himself and the world by taking the type of coming-of-age odyssey John Kretschmer undertook at age 25. Oddly enough, one of his lessons was that second-tier celebrities can be unkind. It was 1984, and the sailor had just logged 16,000 miles from New…

William Youngerman has loved money since he was a little kid. He’s no greedier than the next person, he just has a thing for coins and bills — particularly rare, old currency. Now age 51, Youngerman started collecting coins when he was 9. By age 12 he was helping to…

Boaters cruising Broward County’s inland waterway system in the past month or so may have noticed the shiny new aluminum docks and freshly landscaped scenery along the north side of the Dania Cutoff Canal. The 3000 feet of shoreline just west of the Ravenswood Boulevard bridge in Dania Beach sports…

As the unofficial “ambassador of New Orleans,” Joe Cahn has made it his mission to set folks straight about his hometown, its food, and its world-renowned Mardi Gras celebration. “I try to demystify misconceptions about New Orleans cooking, especially that it’s hot,” says the roving chef and Fat Tuesday cheerleader…