A funny thing happened shortly after the turn of the millennium — Boston sports teams suddenly stopped sucking. First came the New England Patriots, who won their first of their three Super Bowls in 2002. Then those perennial heartbreakers, the Red Sox, finally won a World Series in the modern…

The drive-thru is quintessentially American. So, how could Christmas in this country be complete without a drive-thru lightshow? At Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek, Brandano Displays has decked out a three-mile stretch in a bedazzling electric show for the 15th annual “Holiday Fantasy of Lights.” There are enormous train stations,…

Brighton Beach Memoirs just folded on Broadway after a one-week run, despite glowing reviews from the New York Times, the New Yorker, and every other big publication. It seems ticket sales were “appalling,” which is somehow appropriate for a semi-autobiographical Neil Simon play set in 1937. That year, the economy…

Two fascinating exhibits are opening side by side at the Boca Museum of Art (501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton): One contains enigmatic art, the other a New Guinean Skull Rack. “An Unfinished Conversation: Collecting Enrique Martinez Celaya” includes 19 works by the famous Cuban-born artist and Delay Beach resident, including…

Michael Israel, a strapping Yanni lookalike, is what you might call a speed painter. To songs like “Pump it Up,” he jumps around on stage, splattering a spinning canvas with paints. For the first few minutes his brushstrokes don’t seem to add up, but by the fifth minute a pop-art…

A little park in Wilton Manors is hosting a feast fit for a king — maybe several or dozens of kings. For the 4th annual “Taste of the Island” event, 48 restaurants and drinking establishments are setting up stalls and samples of their food and beverages at the Richardson Historic…

Las Olas Boulevard will transform into a beer-soaked art fair this weekend. A hundred and fifty national artists are showing up on the drag with $15 million worth of juried art — to mark Oktoberfest. There will be both art booths and micro-brewed beer. What this means in practice is…

Conundrum Stages, a community theater in Oakland Park, is putting on a jamboree of performances in different mediums today, ranging from stand-up comedy to violin solos. And all the participants are local artists. Artist Afua Hall will dance solo and then the stage will be taken over by hip-hop crew…

No, No Nanette is a classic of the Roaring Twenties. It’s also a musical long associated with the so-called Curse of the Bambino. For years the rumor went that the original showing on Broadway had been bankrolled by selling Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees, dooming the…

For the next month, the City Hall in Palm Beach will be decked out with the art of Rita Boutros. Her exhibit, “Prey and Other Works,” is a collection of paintings, pen and ink drawings spiced with pastel and acrylic, and other mixed media projects — some mind-bending. Growing is…

Take Me Out is the story of a major league baseball player’s coming out. Written by Richard Greenberg, it won a Tony Award for Best Play and it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. When it debuted in 2002, there were no openly gay baseball players. There still…

In the opening scene of The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez, a Confederate soldier has a gangrenous leg amputated. The lopping off is performed by a slave of the DeLeons, a plantation family in Virginia. Here’s the kicker: they’re Jewish and so are their slaves. The irony of Jews owning…

In 1896, William Selig founded the first film studio in Hollywood, then a sleepy farming town, to escape Thomas Edison’s eastern cartel. From then on, Hollywood churned out product. Film was a commodity, seldom art – and even less today. Speed-the-Plow, a play by David Mamet, concerns an aesthete and…

Haulover Beach Park is a protected stretch of coastline sporting big-wave surf, well-sculpted sand dunes, and an infamous clothing-optional zone at the north end. In other words, it’s a great place to “hang out.” Prudes who prefer to steer clear of people’s bits and pieces can stick to the non-nudist…

Frenchify your life now. The Eighth Annual French Film Festival (sponsored, of course, by Perrier) is unrolling French cinema for four days. The opening soiree at 6 p.m. on Friday packs a smorgasbord of French cuisine: coq au vin, beef bourguignon, lobster bisque, potato soufflé, and, for dessert, profiteroles. On…

Noel Coward’s Private Lives premiered in the UK in 1930. Panned by major British critics, it was reprised in New York to American acclaim. Through six runs on Broadway, the comedy has been a vehicle for stars like Laurence Olivier, Tallulah Bankhead, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton. Private Lives’ premise…

While America celebrates the Fourth of July, France commemorates its own independence on July 14: Bastille Day. That’s when, in 1789, the French people revolted against monarchy and established a National Assembly to draw up a constitution. (The Americans had passed theirs two years earlier.) The first Bastille Day party…

Indie film buffs may want to check out Julia, a 2008 flick in town for the week. Directed by French filmmaker Ericka Zonca, it stars Tilda Swinton, the Oscar-winning redhead actress, as Julia, a catastrophic alcoholic who racks up blackouts every night. At an AA meeting, she runs into a…

Sol Theatre is going out of business – but with a bang. Its final show, Men on the Verge of a His-panic Breakdown by Guillermo Reyes, is a set of monologues done by one actor, Angel Perez. He’ll be metamorphosing between five Latino immigrants whose identities have warped and cracked…

The dancers of Intensity Dance Studio are gracing Miramar today. They’ll be doing pieces in all the major styles: ballet, jazz, hip-hop, tap, contemporary, ballroom, lyrical, and break dancing. It’s a pretty staggering array. The Intensity Dance Studio is unique. Based in Miami Lakes, it offers classes to tiny dancers…