I persecute Christians. David Limbaugh says so and he's famous radioman Rush's brother, so it must be true. The uncle of Dittoheads across the land came out with a best-selling book this fall titled Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity. Just to make sure you don't miss the...
Somewhere between the twist and the sit-in was a musical experience unlike any other. Between the first British invasion and the first rock opera was the most energetic, honest, exciting music ever created." Those sentences, penned by South Florida record collector/historian Jeff Lemlich, are perhaps the best ever written to...
What people read is their own business. So what if it's deliciously erotic, politically unpopular, or untraditional and avant-garde? That's the philosophy of plenty of librarians and other personal-liberties enthusiasts. Freedom from censorship is also the theme of the current "Banned Books Week," which concludes Saturday. During the event, the...
THU 6/26 With the megamoney rolling through the northern county, it's amazing how we're only in year two of the annual Palm Beach County Boat Show. In keeping with the excess of the area, the event promises more than 250,000 square feet of boats and nautical displays, with some of...
It's been too long since Joe Buffalino has smiled. We've been in the rumbling Greyhound bus for going on 30 hours now, and any sign of happiness has long passed into boredom. But he has reason to smile now. From behind the chemical plants spread like moss over northern New...
Driving his Yellow Cab taxi down A1A, Jay Cunningham is on a mission. "The other drivers call me Don Quixote," he says with a slight New England accent. "But really, I'm just stubborn." On this recent Saturday morning, Cunningham is patrolling Fort Lauderdale Beach. The weather is perfect. Tourists bustle...
Having seemingly exhausted all permutations of the sports-comedy formula (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump, et al.), Ron Shelton has now moved on to another obsession: the Los Angeles Police Department. Earlier this year, we got the uncharacteristically somber (for him, anyway) Dark Blue, a "what if" tale of the...
It's 28 hours before showtime and Jim Bailey hasn't found his inner woman. He's on stage for the final rehearsal at the Atlantis Playhouse, a strip-mall theater in Lantana where he's doing a 12-show stint impersonating Barbra Streisand. Bailey is trying to sing "As If We Never Said Goodbye," but...
Hallandale Beach's surreal skyline of residential skyscrapers begins to shrink as you drive away from the coast. Hallandale Beach Boulevard turns more mundane and suburban just before it crosses I-95 into a world of Scarlett's, Mattress Giant, and Circle K. It's the tiny, mobile-home ville of Pembroke Park. The drab,...
At six foot one, 365 pounds, Richard Nielsen Jr. was a man-giant with huge arms that hung from broad thick shoulders. On his left biceps was an enormous tattoo of a fisherman above a line from the Book of Psalms: "They that go down to the sea in ships." Though...
Krisztian Katona's inviting smile hints at his unhindered optimism. Nothing seems to bother the 25-year-old with the wire-rimmed glasses, thin goatee, and wave of brown hair that crashes gently around his head. He speaks with a slow eloquence that gives his Eastern European accent a soothing rhythm. "Krisztian just likes...
Usually, Sebastian Ordoñez is a race-car driver only when he's pushing toy cars across his bedroom floor. The 8-year-old will sputter engine noises between his lips as he maneuvers imaginary Formula One racetracks all over the globe. "In like Brazil, Australia, lots of places," he says. He'll be a star...
About a millennium and a half ago, Buddhist teachings from India began seeping over the Himalayas and into China. Yuan Hong, an emperor of the Wei dynasty, had a Buddhist monastic institution set up for an Indian scholar monk known as Bhadur. The temple, built in the forest at the...
As the 17th-annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival nears its end -- oh, wait a minute! Just because the "closing-night film" screens on Saturday, November 9, that doesn't mean the festival is really over. That would be too easy -- and too sensible. No, "the world's longest film festival," as...
At the head of a 20-foot table, the squat silver urn looks as if it should be under glass. It has been so meticulously polished that not a spot of tarnish can be found among the ornate ribbons and miniature flowers decorating its edges. A water spout emerging from its...
The clink of glasses. The murmur of the crowd. The smell of newsprint and cigarettes. The pregnant pauses. The flecks of spittle arcing through the smoky air toward a waiting microphone. The creak of stretching similes. The rumble of mixed metaphors. The thud of thematic anvils. The screams of tortured...
"Ladies, we've got a special treat for you tonight," the DJ's voice bounds over the crowd. "He's won our Sunday-night amateur strip contest more times than any other contestant. Please welcome... Bernie!" As the first bars of Jerry Lee Lewis's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" trumpet through LaBare's sound system,...
Congratulations are in order for Pompano Beach Mayor Bill Griffin, who recently landed a new job at a huge, Dallas-based firm called Turner Construction. You may not have heard about the new gig, since Griffin hasn't talked about it publicly, but it's a very big deal. Turner has offices in...
The dozen shoes that protrude from beneath Clarence Kelley's bed are neatly lined up, like cars at a dealership. First there are the patent-leather ones that cover his ankles, then the gray, plastic loafers with chrome buckles, then the aging blue sneakers with yellow stripes, and so on. Across the...
If Sax on the Beach fails, the newly opened music bar will be just another Miami jazz dream deferred, like Arthur's (which featured big names in the 1980s) and the cozy, if empty, Champagnes on 79th Street that closed months ago. This gin joint in the lobby of Bay Parc...
On an overcast, oppressively muggy mid-August afternoon at John Prince Park in Lake Worth, the "Racial Holy War" seems far away indeed. As I sit at a picnic table under a pavilion by the bank of a stagnant creek that meanders through the park and empties into Lake Osborne, six...
By the 1970 release of Vintage Violence, John Cale had been deeply involved in the creation of albums that shook the world to its very core (as a performer on the first two Velvet Underground albums, as producer/multi-instrumentalist on Nico's Marble Index, and as producer of the Stooges' first album)...
