Arts & Culture

They say there is a great story behind every great band, and The Pink Spiders founding member, Matt Friction, definitely has one to tell after a year full of chaos and calamity. Upon building a decent radio buzz, the original three-piece from Nashville lost everything when their tour bus caught…

In most books, even very pretty ones, the art is subordinate to the text, and the design — the paper, the binding, the layout, the cover — is subordinate to everything else. Not so at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, at least not tonight (1650 Harrison St., Hollywood)…

The word “scoundrel” doesn’t fully resonate until it’s shrieked, mid opera. You see, those professional Sopranos do more than hit high notes — they squeeze, twist, and drain every available drop of sentiment out of their insults. If we could all do that, rush hour would be terribly interesting. Some…

Yo. Thirty-nine years old, in fact. To be a 39-year old boxer, you gotta have ropey old-man muscles, hardness built on hardness: That’s the only remedy for the light, flicker-fast fists of the 25-year-olds who want to bow the ropes. Punks. You’re Glen Johnson. You turned pro in 1993, back…

It’s the summer of 1986. You’re in your leather flight jacket, your hair slicked back, and a pair of aviators on. It’s the height of the Cold War, and the Ruskies are coming. But that’s why the U.S.A has you. You take off in your F-14 Tomcat and head into…

Many a rabid fan (writer included) logged on earlier this year to iTunes, itching to download the band’s fourth release, Viva la Vida. But for every one of them, there is a sizeable chunk of critics who stand by waiting for the other fair trade, non-leather shoe to drop for…

As we become a more educated public, we feel guiltier for all of our misdeeds. Take recycling (or lack of it, rather). There’s a twinge of pain associated with throwing a bottle away that simply wasn’t there a decade ago; we’re calling it Green Guilt. This can be alleviated through…

Sure, you can hold your own at the gym. You scoff at lesser athletes as you jog past them on the beach, kicking up sand. But can you flip a tractor tire? Can you push a small truck? If the answer is no, then you’re simply not cut out for…

“Corndogs are basically the best and worst of America,” says Aimee Sauer, spokeswoman for the National Corndog Federation. “Where else but America can you have all of the excess but none of the guilt … on a stick. And they’re phallic.” OK, so Sauer might not be pumping corndogs with…

We don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, but the economy, man … it’s in a little bit of a downturn. Shhhh, not too loud! Anyway, our financial state most assuredly sucks for everyone, but all the nifty mom and pop stores in South Florida are feeling the pinch…

If for some reason you watched the fifth season of The Man Show, the man you saw hosting was not Doug Stanhope. It was merely the shell of a man who’d been neutered by a cable network. The real Doug Stanhope will be showing up at the Poorhouse on Friday…

In the Deep South, where billboards warn of the Lord’s comeback and snake-handling churches dot the hills, the long-held rift between good and evil is deeply ingrained. So how does one ward off demons in such a place? If you’re Col. J.D. Wilkes, you start a band called Th’ Legendary…

Dude. It’s time to face a sad truth: That mustache will never, ever, get you laid. You can accessories it with a Free Mustache Ride T-shirt, you can bead it like Bo Derek’s locks in 10, hell — you can even train it to stand upright and then stretch out,…

There are several ways you can tell when the holidays are coming up in South Florida. The first cold spell is always a signal — the moment that the thermometer hits 60 degrees, it’s officially time to pull your leather jacket out of the closet. But residents really know Christmas…

Tequila and lime. Sunday and brunch. Pryor and Wilder. Yep, nothing enhances quite like a perfect pair, which is why New Times’ own wine and food extravaganza, Pairings, looks like a sure-fire hit. Thursday at 7:30 p.m., the Broward Center for the Performing Arts will fill with all manner of…

Deborah Sherman tells me that Barton Bishop’s Still The River Runs is drawing the worst houses in the history of the Promethean Theatre, of which Sherman is the executive artistic director. This is remarkable, because Promethean Theatre is a company that almost always draws bad houses. I have seen them…

Too much of a good thing,” Mae West once famously said, “can be wonderful.” Or, as in the case of “Yuroz: Retrospective 1986-2008,” now at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, too much of a good thing can be, well, too much. In 2005, the Coral Springs Museum presented roughly…

Some people want to get scared on Halloween. Others only want to get “scared.” It’s easy to tell which kind of person you are. Did you pay full price to see Saw V, only to peek through your fingers and giggle your way through the movie? Are you prepared to…

Just because many of us have a pot to piss in nowadays doesn’t mean we should forgo heading over to the 49th Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show to see what we can’t afford. Expect to ooh and ahh over $3 billion worth of boats, yachts, electronics, engines, and thousands of…

Florida’s sunny weather and blue skies don’t really correlate with Edgar Allen Poe’s gloomy writing. Yet Florida continues to produce a consistent source of dark artists, be it the retired death metal scene of Tampa, or the Neo-Goth acts of Miami. The sunshine isn’t brightening these corners any time soon…