Two musicals — Sophie: The Red Hot Mama Revusical in West Palm Beach and Sophie, Totie & Belle in Deerfield Beach — celebrate the life and flamboyant times of legendary blues singer Sophie Tucker. What you won’t find reference to in either show is Tucker’s appearance in Dania during the…

Just as a tornado whisked Dorothy away to the land of Oz, hurricanes help take viewers of Pablo Cano’s works into a world of fantasy. His whimsical marionettes are made from street trash, and the pickings get better right after a big gust of wind blows through. “Hurricane Floyd and…

As a long-time newspaper reporter and editor who’s worked all over Florida, Tim Dorsey has written and read stories about the most bizarre crimes and stupid human tricks the Sunshine State has to offer. For some reason he still chooses to live here. “You were born here, it’s beautiful, you…

Bathed in a neon-orange glow, the painting of Jimi Hendrix torching his guitar seems to give off, well, warmth. The man who painted it puts viewers front-row-center at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, a vantage point from which fans no doubt felt the heat. “I was right in the…

Older MTV fans may remember the Make My Video contest, in which viewers were asked to shoot original footage to accompany the Madonna song “True Blue.” Out of more than 1000 entries, judges picked a grainy, black-and-white piece featuring a lovelorn young woman who has to choose between a cheating…

Pianist Emma Kelly had nothing to do with the murder of bad boy Danny Hansford, but as a well-known figure in the quirky city of Savannah, Georgia, she’s included in the best-selling book about the killing. John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is as much about…

Cities like Fort Lauderdale and Fort Worth were obviously named after military outposts, but in Fort Lauderdale the question is, To which fort are you referring? Long before the city was incorporated in 1911, a total of three rustic Army bases had been built in the area. Completed in 1838,…

It’s not easy to appear menacing in a wheelchair, but David Bernstein is pulling it off as the King of Thebes in the Academy Theatre production of Antigone. In the Greek tragedy, Creon ascends to the throne after his brothers-in-law, the sons of Oedipus, kill each other while battling for…

Comedian Steven Wright is known for his molasses-slow delivery of wry, observational humor, but the aching gap between every word, every syllable, is no act. The meter of his speech remains consistent no matter to whom he’s talking. And the way the comedian talks mirrors the way he lives. “I…

Diners at the Islamorada Fish Company in Dania Beach — at least those seated on the deck overlooking the man-made lagoon — are occasionally reminded how the succulent, scaly critters on their plates ended up there. A fishing trawler periodically cruises the small, landlocked waterway, with its rigging and nets…

If the four members of the percussion ensemble Rivers of Time appear to be just milling around in the audience before one of their shows begins, don’t be deceived. Although an array of drums, shakers, gongs, and cymbals awaits the group on stage, the performance is likely to begin before…

A comfy rocking chair is a good place to sit and think, but San Francisco artist Bernie Lubell wants viewers to think about the chair. Not only that, he wants them to sit in his minimalist pine rocker in order to get their cognitive juices flowing. When someone rocks in…

Throwing keggers is a rite of passage for most high-school students. But for Jason Donovan of Plantation, party planning was vocational training. Donovan, age 25, began lining up venues, DJs, and bands for underground parties when he was just 16. By the time he was a Broward Community College student,…

Somewhere between the club crowd and the couch potato set lies a group that doesn’t mind going out late — as long as the effort results in some form of “cultured” entertainment, according to Cody Thomas. And Thomas, an actor and stage manager at the Academy Theatre in Fort Lauderdale,…

Kevin Welsh photographs the world’s top wave-riders for Surfer magazine and catches the action on video at the same time. A senior staff photographer for the surfing mag, Welsh won’t reveal the specifics of his “double trouble” system, but it’s clear he’s getting maximum mileage from each shoot: The glossy…

Beneath the dark surface of thigh-deep swamp water in the Everglades grow the roots of cypress trees. They’re all but invisible to hikers until someone rams a tender shin into one. Snakes and alligators inhabit the murky water, too. But, according to Sandy Snell-Dobert, “with the water as high as…

Duran Duran’s catchy brand of synth-pop and its sexy videos made the band’s members darlings of the new wave scene in the early ’80s. The music and images also sold tons of records: The albums Duran Duran (1981), Rio (1982), and Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983) each had several…

As a student at the Florida Institute of Technology in the late ’60s, Mark Sivik was interested in biology — especially bugs. And to him FIT’s Colombian exchange program sounded like a chance to collect some exotic insects. So he signed on ostensibly as a guide for a project in…

John Jerich glides effortlessly over the smooth asphalt of the practice area near the new in-line hockey rinks at Caloosa Park in Boynton Beach. Pushing off first with one foot, then the other, he ignores the few shallow puddles, water from which leaves trails from the wheels of his skates…

Two dancers stand statue-still on a bare stage just behind a third performer, who leans toward the audience and flashes a sarcastic grin. As the dancers move their torsos and arms robotically, the narrator begins to speak in verse: “My boy/Lost his innocence to the rain/And he tried, he/What Jack/Did…

On most Saturday mornings, the Cinema Cafe in Fort Lauderdale turns into a pub, where men speaking with British and Irish accents gather to watch rugby and down a hearty meal similar to what they’d find in their homelands: fried eggs, English sausage, Irish bacon, grilled tomatoes, and toast. “They…