The interview is not going well. We’ve barely begun talking and Argentine director Lucrecia Martel is already staring back at Kulchur with the expression of a woman who’s just swallowed a mouthful of sour milk. “It wasn’t until we finished the script that we contacted Almodóvar,” she insists sharply, referring…

“My whole life I was introduced as someone else,” Anthony Kennedy Shriver quipped to the well-heeled crowd before him at a Toronto benefit dinner this past fall for his Best Buddies foundation. “I grew up the nephew of President Kennedy. Then I was the nephew of Senator Kennedy. Then I…

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s really flattering that so many people have wanted to write about us,” explains Adam Zimmon, guitarist for the Spam Allstars, while furrowing his brow over the barrels of ink that have been expended on his band. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and countless…

If you spent much time at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach art fair, you heard plenty of talk about truth and beauty, of how a painting could be so transcendent as to be priceless, its value incapable of being measured in mere dollars and cents. Save it, sister, at…

Don’t hate Fabian Basabe because he’s beautiful. “I don’t work, and a lot of people just don’t understand that,” the 26-year-old Basabe says, sounding genuinely hurt by the less-than-sympathetic response his poor-little-rich-boy persona often inspires. Pausing for a sip of his margarita, he continues: “People focus mainly on the glamour…

They aren’t nearly as morbid as the tourists who swarm to the entryway of Gianni Versace’s South Beach mansion, taking snapshots of each other on the very spot where the fashion designer was gunned down in 1997. But then the steady stream of pilgrims arriving at 461 Ocean Boulevard in…

“Why are people wondering why the Republicans won the election?” asks Ruthie J with a touch of annoyance. During the course of Kulchur’s conversation with the midday host of Miami’s Christian radio station WMCU-FM (89.7), this is the only subject that ruffles her eminently patient demeanor. “Why is this such…

All right, progressives. You want a real reason to cry? Enough with the voting machines already. Please shut up about an Ohio recount. And forget the much-vaunted Republican turnout in Florida’s I-4 suburban corridor. Instead look to our own backyard, right here on South Beach. In the 72 hours preceding…

“You can’t be a happy newspaper columnist, you can’t be Erma Bombeck,” Carl Hiaasen insists, stabbing the air with a forkful of grouper as he lays out the tenets of Journalism 101 over lunch. “All of my best work comes from some kind of anger. If you go up to…

“I don’t support it.” — Carlos Alvarez on maintaining Miami-Dade’s gay rights ordinance, speaking in Spanish, August 28, 2004 “It’s a law … The citizens have spoken.” — Alvarez on upholding Miami-Dade’s gay rights ordinance, speaking in English, August 29, 2004 Give Carlos Alvarez credit for being a quick study…

Somewhere in Texas a two-time presidential aspirant is laughing, no doubt feeling more than a little vindicated. When he first announced his Oval Office intentions, the pundits were dismissive of this rough-edged Texan. Those self-made business-mogul credentials he kept touting? Bah! Merely the results of cronyism and shameless influence-peddling. And…

Let’s hope Laurence Tribe has a finely honed sense of irony. It was nearly four years ago that Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional scholar, saluted the Florida Supreme Court for ordering a manual recount of our state’s now-notorious presidential votes. The court had declared it was duty-bound to “safeguard the…

Toronto would seem an odd place to take the pulse of Latin cinema. Sure, you can buy Cuban cigars, fresh from Havana, at any of the corner newsstands that dot the city’s downtown — there’s no embargo here, compañero. However, actual flesh-and-blood Cubans, or indeed Latinos of any national stripe,…

The clearest lesson from the August 31 county mayoral election: $1.8 million just doesn’t buy what it used to. That was the size of candidate José Cancela’s immense campaign war chest, and it delivered only a distant fifth-place finish for the media mogul turned pol. Contacted by Kulchur, Cancela declined…

As he prepares to attend next Monday’s Republican National Convention in New York City, Miami delegate Marco Rubio is already anticipating trouble. But not from the more than 250,000 anti-Bush protesters expected to march past the convention’s Madison Square Garden site. “I’m hoping to go to a Marlins game in…

Have you heard about John Kerry’s secret connections to Fidel Castro? How about the hidden financial links between Teresa Heinz Kerry and the Cuban government? No? Derek Newton rolls his eyes, and with a laugh plunges his hand into the six-inch-deep sea of paperwork that covers his entire desk. As…

It is almost too easy to make fun of Xavier Suarez. Miami certainly has suffered through its share of troubling political leaders, but only Suarez managed to have reporters across America, from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times, wondering in print if our mayor had lost his mind…

“We’ve got real plans, we’ve got a better sense of what’s happening to America. And we’ve got better hair.” — John Kerry, introducing running mate John Edwards at a Cleveland rally “You need to call Dennis, he’s freaking out!” sputters Charles Lenchner, thrusting his cell phone at Tim Carpenter. Lenchner’s…

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in I-95’s snarl, gazing with envy as a television news helicopter whipped past overhead, take comfort in Dave Slater’s anger. Before he retired in 1996 as a traffic reporter for both WPLG-TV (Channel 10) and WIOD-AM (610), Slater spent nearly twenty years flying above…

“This is it. I am done.” — Maurice Ferré, announcing the end of his political career after decisively losing the Miami-Dade County mayoral race in September 1996 “I’m finished. I’m no longer a candidate for anything.” — Ferré, after losing the City of Miami mayoral race in November 2001 “Hey,…

It’s hardly surprising that Micky Arison wrote out a $2000 check to President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. After all, last year the Carnival Corporation CEO and Miami Heat owner cashed in $66.1 million of his cruise line’s stock, on top of receiving another $90 million in stock dividend payments…

Police officers call it stalking. Kulchur, however, prefers the term “field research.” So let’s just split the difference and say that for the second time in as many months, President George W. Bush’s chief advisor, Karen Hughes, was a bit, er, concerned over Kulchur’s extreme dedication to the craft of…