MON 12/1 Palm Beach County dropped its pants (metaphorically speaking, of course) last month with the “25 Days of Culture” event in an effort to prove it’s still hip. One of the more interesting featured activities was “Cult Cinema: Movies that Shook the World,” which included a screening of the…
THU 11/27 It’s so damn refreshing when you hear an artist who just exudes raw talent and a white-hot attitude. Have you ever heard of Joanna Connor? Maybe not. But is that such a surprise? Let’s look around at what the music industry is offering us. Patronizing annual issues of…
In director Ron Howard’s The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones’ Samuel Jones takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the Western genre — the white man who has lived among the Indians till he has at last become one. This plot device, used in Hombre and Nevada Smith and myriad…
In the annals of fraud and fakery, a discredited ex-magazine reporter named Stephen Glass will likely wind up a mere footnote. The people who forge Van Goghs and the con artists who bilk naïve grandmothers out of their life savings (not to mention certain fast-dancing corporate executives) even more richly…
The past is prologue,” goes the old saying, but for much of the theater, ancient and modern, the past isn’t even past. Many plays have been constructed about past crimes that have risen to disturb the peace of the present. It’s an ongoing trend that’s particularly interesting in contemporary America,…
As long as there have been people, there have been those who kick the crap out of other people. But even with this long history, and despite the recent occurrence of hard-core fighting championships, founder John Morrison and the other folks at USA Extreme Challenge couldn’t find a particular style…
THU 1/20 The Broward County Fair opens its gates today at the Pompano Race Track (corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Powerline Road, Pompano Beach). You can expect the typical county fair fare, so to speak, from this year’s event, along with a few surprises. Like past years and, in fact,…
This has been a rough season for the Dolphins. The team sits at 6-4 following a bounce-back win at home against the Ravens. Now, 6-4 is OK and right at last season’s pace, but that’s not good enough. Last season, you’ll remember, they lost in New England the final week,…
SAT 11/22 In case you missed that one week when it was part of the local news cycle, Fort Lauderdale now has a larger gay population per capita than any city in the country save, natch, San Francisco. And now that we’ve all acknowledged that gays are a large minority…
SAT 11/22 You consider yourself a dyed-in-rawhide, real deep-down country boy with a penchant for ten-gallon Stetsons, a fresh tin of Skoal, and cowgirls in tight Wranglers? Are some of your favorite flicks Rhinestone, Urban Cowboy, and How the West Was Won? Then saddle up, pardner, and get your ass…
SAT 11/22 Mr. A gets around. For the past 25 years, he’s been peddling something to the kids of South Florida: magic. Mr. A is a four-time Florida state magic champion (yes, Florida has magic championships) and also owns a magic shop in West Palm Beach called — you guessed…
SAT 11/22 OK, kids. Do you know what this Saturday is? No, it’s not the day after the regular Friday-evening bacchanal where you play the Dutch oven game with your girlfriend. Well, it is that, but try to keep your regular activities to the early hours of the morning. No,…
FRI 11/22 Nobody’s ever projected a bruised heart and put the melody in melancholy quite like Robert Smith and the Cure. Fondly considered the masters of mope for almost 25 years, Smith and his revolving-door lineup have made it safe for boys to wear makeup and for the angst-ridden population…
The spooky beauty of Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s strange take on the Columbine massacre, arises not from the shock of sudden violence but from the filmmaker’s steady gaze at the numbing routines of life inside a suburban high school. With what first looks like cool detachment, Van Sant (My Own…
There was a gaggle of young women sitting near me during the screening of Tupac: Resurrection. They frequently voiced their enjoyment of the movie, in particular at three specific points. They growled appreciatively at an image of Tupac naked in a bathtub, his crotch festooned with gold chains. They cackled…
One of the first things you may notice upon entering the Schmidt Center Gallery at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton is a grand piano in the far left corner of the gallery. On it sits a small placard reading “Attention Patrons: This Piano Is Not Part of the Exhibition.”…
The way an artist discovers his or her niche differs individually. For Pam Rosen, a.k.a “the Glitter Girl,” it happened by chance. After she received a degree in printmaking from the Art Institute of Boston, she moved to New Orleans. “I was working on a Mardi Gras costume and started…
THU 11/13 Slowly yet surely, Dom Irrera has become one of the old men of comedy. One of the guys who have been in the business for years and whom the young comedians look up to. Just look at all the copycats. When Woody Allen came out with his neurotic…
While guitar-driven music has continued to evolve into the 21st Century, you’d be hard-pressed to find any single guitar player today worthy of the title pioneer. Sure, some experiment left and right with their millions of sound-effects racks and ready-made sequencing loops. But what does it take to actually develop…
SAT 11/15 Get your ten-hour Latin fix with this Saturday’s “LatinFest on Flagler.” From noon to 10 p.m. at Meyer Amphitheatre (105 Evernia St., West Palm Beach), you’ll catch professional Latin acts such as Roberto Torres. Fans of Latin music who are familiar with Torres know him as the man…
SUN 11/16 The whole concept of extreme — sorry, X-treme — sports has gotten a bit tiresome. What ever happened to just skating your friend’s empty pool with a couple of pals? “Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huckjam” may be a bit more involved than your average city street or backyard,…
SUN 11/16 This was way back before Guttenberg had a brainstorm and invented the European printing press. (The Chinese, of course, had already invented it centuries before, but Western history likes to ignore such embarrassing facts. Please also continue to believe that Columbus discovered America and that Italians invented spaghetti.)…
