The difference between being a drug addict and a Straight Dope addict is that I can only get an occasional fix of the Straight Dope. You make me laugh hard enough to put the pain out of my head that the ruptured disks in my back are causing me. Monday…
The Frisbee soared over Eric Rebenkoff’s head in the crowded park, landing some 30 yards behind him, in the shallow outfield of a nearby softball diamond. Frank McDonough Park in Lighthouse Point was teeming with children and adults on that Tuesday evening in May 1995. The plastic platter happened to…
Glossy regional magazines often shill for the communities they write about. But last month’s issue of Miami Metro definitely raised the bar for shameless self-promotion with its cover promoting “The City’s Hottest Morning DJs.” Front and center was Paul Castronovo, one of three Zeta (WZTA-FM 94.9) DJs who get rock…
Attorney Donald Kahn had spent a lifetime preparing for this moment. University of Miami law school. Advanced degrees in taxation and real estate. Ascension to partner at the slightly stuffy firm of Green, Kahn, Piotrkowski in Miami Beach. On November 10 the lawyer shined his wingtips, donned a blue Austin…
Like a monster truck stomping an old car, the swamp buggy crunches a sapling as it takes a sharp turn knee-deep in the mud. It comes to a halt in the heart of the 3000-acre swamp that is Big Cypress Hunting Adventures, a hunting preserve on Seminole land about 50…
Exactly what occurs during the process of cremation? What exactly remains after the process is done? I hear all kinds of opinions on this, but I would really like to know the facts. — Lisa, via AOL My assistant Jane asked if I wanted her to visit a crematory so…
Hated It Who is Sean Rowe? I see him listed in your masthead as Staff Writer. When you assigned that cover article “Chasing Danny” (November 12), did you bring him over from your “Holistic Horticulture” section? Please send him back to penning snide, affected pieces about the South Florida “alternative”…
Across the Tamiami Trail, past The Pit barbecue and the Miccosukee gambling palace, and following 90 miles of monotonously swaying sawgrass sits a bar. This screened-in hut serves as an unofficial gatehouse to the fishing village of Everglades City. On a Friday at dusk, as the setting sun stains the…
The night before Hurricane Georges was due to hit South Florida — with memories of Hurricane Andrew’s destruction still fresh in the minds of South Floridians — Robert E. Diehl, editor of the Boca Raton News, convened a staff meeting. Diehl announced that the daily would publish off-site if the…
Sheron Thomas was apparently in no mood to read the Sun-Sentinel in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day four years ago. As delivery woman Sandi Shattuck pulled into his Hollywood Hills driveway around 5:30 a.m. to drop off her first newspaper of the day, Thomas displayed his gratitude by…
Pity poor Dennis Des Jardin. After a New Times article (“The Fear of Living Dangerously”) exposed unsafe conditions at Victory Living Programs (VLP), a residential campus for the mentally disabled that Des Jardin manages in Dania Beach, the embattled director spent an uncomfortable hour last month taking questions from the…
Dan Marino, Our Latest Martyr Over the past few years, I often turned to your alternative weekly newspapers for cutting-edge investigative reporting of the highest caliber, which is why I was appalled after reading the recent “expose” on Dan Marino (“Chasing Danny,” Sean Rowe, November 12). I have never been…
Anton McIntosh slept curled beneath a palm tree as policemen tromped from the overgrown foliage at the edge of the beach, their white uniforms glowing against the dark night of their skin. It was a Saturday afternoon in August, and the beach was overrun with young families nibbling from picnic…
One morning in 1944, Carl Mayhue crossed the Las Olas bridge and gave birth to what may have been the nation’s first commercial bus bench. “I saw these old people standing around in the sun waiting for the bus,” Mayhue recalls. “So I went back to my buddies at the…
Ah, it’s autumn and the sweet smell of revenge is in the air. An anonymous tipster exacted his own version of it last week on Howard Patterson, the man who allegedly bilked dozens of people across the country out of more than $5 million. The tipster alerted Fort Lauderdale police…
Hazing Danny I just finished reading Sean Rowe’s cover story on Dan Marino (“Chasing Danny,” November 12). What an awful write-up. What did the Miami Dolphins’ quarterback ever do to him? Here we have a professional athlete who lives among us, who doesn’t make headlines about doing drugs or domestic…
When I watch a movie on television or videotape, there is sometimes a statement that this movie has been formatted to fit my screen. My question is, how do they know what size my screen is? — JHahnUSNR, via AOL They don’t know, chum. They don’t have to know. But…
Merits of the case aside, the most surprising aspect of last week’s age-discrimination trial pitting former columnist Jack Nease against the Sun-Sentinel was the pride with which editor Earl Maucker explained to the jury how the paper’s local business coverage had been gutted two years before. Not that the gutting…
Shirley Pearlman is a short, white Jewish woman with your grandmother’s figure. She’s also the most successful 75-year-old rap musician in America. One afternoon last week, over a cup of decaf at a Pembroke Pines Denny’s, she and her male rapping partner spontaneously showed why: “Laddy daddy,” she rapped. “I’m…
The three lawyers on the podium did their best for more than an hour to sustain the interest of the small audience crammed into the faculty lounge at the University of Miami Law School. The suited men joked that it must have been a bad hair day for the missing…
Did the Celts really celebrate a holiday by building a huge, hollow man out of wicker, filling the man with prisoners, then lighting the thing on fire? Or instead are they the victims of really bad Roman press? If true, this really sets a high bar for judging a tough…
Why Miranda! We Would Never Dream of Being Sarcastic The Free Press staff wishes to thank you for the write-up in the Undercurrents column in your [October 29] issue. We are indeed a very small publication covering Palm Beach County — a “little fella,” as you called us. We may…
