The Gallows and the Deep

Like many a convict before him, James Horace Alderman came to Jesus in a jail cell. His conversion to Christianity, and not some native taste for melodrama, explains why the 46-year-old smuggler asked to wear a red rose to the gallows and be buried in white. The rose was an…

Hollywood Dreams

Outside on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach all is bustle and conviviality, but inside the Alliance Cinema it’s silent and anticipatory. Three people and a turtle have gathered here for the first private screening of a movie. The rough-cut video is longer than feature length, and the tiny audience knows…

Dania Whips Out a New Sign Ordinance

Sean Newman swears he wasn’t trying to attract attention when he and his wife opened an ultrachic adult boutique complete with leather whips and $500 latex bodysuits in the rustic heart of downtown Dania. He almost manages to say it with a straight face, too. But then the flicker of…

Sold Out

Miranda Lopez and her neighbors were ready for another fight against high-rise development near Fort Lauderdale beach, then someone mentioned money. A lot of money. An amount in excess of six figures. Suddenly, members of the Dolphin Isles Homeowners Association faced a moral dilemma: Should they abandon principle and take…

Undercurrents

Sun-Sentinel Co. employees are laughing about top management’s “head in the sand” response to the recent Stephen Wissink/XS sexual harassment embarrassment. As readers of last week’s New Times will recall, Wissink was forced out as editor and publisher of City Link (the publication formerly known as XS) after allegations he…

The Straight Dope

Cecil, you are my hero. My ultimate goal in life is to be the polymath you are. My question concerns a mythical “chicken gun” used for testing jet engines. I have heard tales of store-bought poultry being shot out of a gun at 500 mph into a running jet engine…

Letters

Wissink’s Girl Toys Are to Be Applauded I just wanted to comment on Paul Belden’s well-written article (“That’s Why They Called It XS,” November 20). I can only sympathize with the people who had to endure the Wissink reign of terror. I applaud the women who came forward and said…

That’s Why They Called It XS

It’s been more than six years, yet Ronnie Greenspan still can’t talk about the staff party without feeling a rise of queasiness in the pit of her stomach. The shame she felt that night, though diminished by time, has never quite disappeared. Rather, it has spiraled down through the years…

Undercurrents

There’s safety in sex at FAU, but watch out for religion. That’s the editorial message from the student newspaper, the University Press, in the aftermath of a censorship spat with the Boca Raton News, which prints and sells advertising for the Press. Last month News publisher Roger Coover threatened to…

What Next, Limos?

For Barbara Rolle the bus means freedom. Two months ago she had trouble finding a ride to take her son Ryan to a speech therapist. He needs to go three times a week because the two-year-old boy can’t yet form words as he’s supposed to. On other days it’s essential…

The Straight Dope

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few years about subliminal advertising, sexual words and phalli in Disney movies, et cetera. Another rumor I keep hearing is that a part of the male anatomy was unintentionally pictured in the underwear section of a 1975 Sears catalog. Let me…

Travis McGee, Fictional Castaway

Three weekends ago, Bahia Mar marina was overrun with bikini-clad boat girls, silver-tongued yacht brokers, and some of the world’s most dazzling watercraft gathered together for the 38th annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. Amid the sleek sloops and tubby trawlers, one world-famous vessel was notably missing: the Busted Flush,…

America’s Most Frustrating

It was like Edgar Renteria singling in the eleventh-inning run to win the seventh game of the World Series but not being able to tell anyone for a whole year. Oh, Phil Mundy had wanted to talk about it and had hinted around about it, but secrecy had to be…

Undercurrents

You’ve come a long way, baby… er, sir. Twenty of the most politically connected women in Broward County looked deep within themselves, pondered how best to improve the lives of the women of Broward County, and decided a man should lead the way. Next month lawyer William Amlong becomes chairman…

Blackboard Bungle

At 7:30 a.m. as school buses rattle down Palm Beach County roads carrying sleepy children to school each day, the work crew at the future home of the Morikami Elementary School has already arrived. Now a slate gray, two-story edifice on a dirt road west of Delray Beach, the county’s…

A Revolting Development

He remembers the crack dealers and the prostitutes, the drifters sprawled along the little side streets off Fort Lauderdale beach, the 70-year-old tourists being propositioned, and all the local residents who stayed away. “The city forgets,” Roger Handevidt snarls. He owns the Orton Terrace Apartment Motel in the north beach…

The Straight Dope

While watching a recent interview with Emmylou Harris, I was horrified when a member of the audience asked a rather personal question about Gram Parsons. (“Why did Gram Parsons kill himself at such a young age?”) Ms. Harris handled the question gracefully and moved on to other, more pertinent topics…

The Resurrection of Robert Tilton

Sitting in Ross Perot’s favorite booth at a fancy Dallas restaurant, Leigh Valentine eats half her low-fat redfish and then explains about her husband’s “disguise kit.” The kit contained several fake mustaches and a $1200 custom-made wig. Robert Tilton, the Texas televangelist, carried it everywhere, and during their first year…

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, When I’m 64?

The face that replaced his on the page looks so young, so nonthreatening. Not like Jack Nease’s face. His face is wrinkled and worn, withered perhaps by having heard too many politicians lie, seen too much corporate greed. Nease once gazed at readers from the front page of the Sun-Sentinel…

Undercurrents

In light of Broward County commissioner Lori Parrish’s deep desire to be sheriff, her views on the American system of justice take on greater significance. Thus the audience showed interest at the October 23 public hearing on the Swerdlow land deal, when transcripts were made available of the commission’s closed-door…

Talk About Emergency Response Time!

For a man who just pulled off an unlikely victory over a more powerful and entrenched opponent, Shane Anderson doesn’t look the part of the conquering hero. A sheen of sweat is breaking out on his forehead, his face is unnaturally pale beneath its sprinkling of freckles, there’s a slight…

The Straight Dope

Recently on your America Online site you posted your old column about Rock’n Rollen Stewart, the guy who used to hold up those “John 3:16” signs at sports events. You may be interested to know that Stewart is now serving a life sentence in jail. –Name withheld, via AOL Yipes…