FRI 2/20 TheatreworksUSA brings children’s book author Beverly Cleary’s (The Mouse and The Motorcycle) beloved character Ramona Quimby to life onstage at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW 5th Ave., Fort Lauderdale). Ramona’s adventures on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon, have entertained and instructed elementary school-age children…

SAT 2/21 Modelizers, you better be ready. Among the requirements for the nearly 300 models participating in the 11th Annual Volleypalooza Model Volleyball Tournament is that they will be scantily clad. Can they serve the ball, bump, or set? Who cares? All that’s important in this fundraising event for PETA…

NOW 24/7 Getting naked in public and running like hell. It was a fad among college students in the early 1970s, its crowning moment occurring in 1974 when a streaker bounded across the stage of the Academy Awards telecast right under the nose of prim Brit actor David Niven. Back…

SUN 2/15 Imagine the pressure put on a singer when critics compare his style with venerable musicians like Paul Simon, Raffi, and Mr. Rogers. (Wait a sec, when did Mr. Rogers become a musician? Well, he did sing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) Such acclaim means he must embrace the…

Thursday 2/12 There’s a reason they call corporate logos “brands.” Though they don’t stink of burned flesh anymore, today’s brands still retain their air of slavery. The aim, it seems, is to pollute the human mind with a barrage of commercial slogans, swooshes, and “lifestyles.” San Francisco artist Hank Thomas-Willis…

FRI 2/13 Okay, don’t get mad, but Meg Ryan is not a member of Just the Funny, Miami’s rollicking group of improvisational actors and sketch comedians. This is important to keep in mind during the troupe’s upcoming performance of How We First Met, a Valentine’s Day show celebrating those first-encounter…

THU 2/12 Long before Janet Jackson shocked the world by baring her breast on international television, we had already spent many years besieged by racy cleavage-heavy images. A lot of those provocative shots were of supermodels on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, courtesy of fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, the mag’s…

FRI 2/13 The upstart Major League Wrestling purports to offer a scintillating alternative to the mainstream television fare put on by World Wrestling Entertainment and other purveyors of the pseudo-sport. Judge for yourself this weekend. While the 4-match fight card boasts a World Heavyweight Championship bout, it’s the special challenge…

NOW 24/7 Love is a one-night stand in a Hialeah honeymoon suite. Love keeps the meter running. Whether an all-night affair or a whirlwind roller coaster ride lasting as long as your favorite soap opera, motel romance is always exciting. And Miami’s abundance of no-tell joints, equipped with mirrors, vibrating…

Thursday 2/5 There are people who eat to live. And there are those who live to eat. You count yourself among the latter. But today for a change you can eat and help others live too. New Times newspapers in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach are presenting an event called…

MON 2/9 You can call it a local equivalent to the Oscars. There will be goddesses working the red carpet and glamorous gowns, but be on the lookout for the freaky styley. Shelley Novak, Miami’s hairy-chested drag wonder, is honoring the best of the local cross-dressing culture. Will Pussy-la win…

FRI 2/6 Not since Prince has an artist embraced the color purple. But Barney, that cuddly singing and dancing dinosaur, has an excuse for his purple power: He was born with it. Barney’s Colorful World Tour is taking the country by storm. In fact the show’s producers have been responsible…

SAT 2/7 At Loxahatchee Arthur R. Marshall National Wildlife Refuge, the sound of a snail kite could take all the pressures and hassles of your cellularly connected life away. Even the toothy grin of an alligator basking in the sun could unleash the natural beast inside you. In fact there…

SAT 2/7 Next month’s South Beach Wine & Food Festival may have Emeril. But this coming weekend’s FAB Fest — the long-running Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Taste of the Beach food festival, renamed this year to reflect a broadened international FAB (Food, Arts, Beverages) focus — has Skippy. For…

If after a rash of layoffs your boss sends out a memo instructing you and your office mates to chill out, have some fun, and mix it up as an effort to turn around the communal dread of additional corporate hatchet jobs, be careful. Be very careful. The Bush administration’s…

Thursday 1/29 The media is responsible for all of society’s ills. The media is slanted. The media lies and perpetuates false attitudes that most Americans don’t share. The media is the original Axis of Evil. The media is made up of pot-smoking, cross-dressing, leftist, pinko Commies. Blah, blah, blah, blah,…

THU 1/29 The Florida Center for the Literary Arts opens its writers’ residency and lecture series with a not-necessarily-politically-correct discourse. Prolific, award-winning author Francine Prose will lecture on “Scent of a Woman’s Ink: Why Women are Still Being Read Differently from Men.” When her original essay on the subject appeared…

NOW 24/7 Yeah, it was an extreme political situation: Miami Beach Commissioner Matti Bower facing off with City Manager Jorge Gonzalez, wielding a stick and slashing the air with it. The incident happened earlier this month. Beach folk bore witness to this exhibit of politico exuberance, only recently eclipsed by…

SUN 2/1 Sometimes you have to wonder if marathon runners are masochists. They endure long, strenuous exertions, flirt with dehydration, and pound city pavements until their joints give out. What’s the big thrill of running 26.2 miles? Pain? An obsessive need to be like P. Diddy or Oprah? The promise…

NOW 24/7 As we head into the campaign season, a time when politicians polish the art of the big and small lie, it’s reassuring to know that truth has sailed onto our shores. For the second time since 2002, thanks to our daily newsstand rag, the city, and the county,…

Thursday 1/22 Ahh, the media, never tiring of their incessant navel-gazing. What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? Who the hell cares anyway? Well, some people do and they’ll be the ones attending this evening’s symposium, titled Managing Perceptions: Media, Propaganda, and the War on Terrorism, at…

THU 1/22 You’re intellectual, caring, and humorous. You must be a monkey. In the lunar calendar of Chinese astrology, that is. Yes, it’s Chinese New Year and you guessed it: The year of the monkey is upon us. We don’t recommend eating a bushel of bananas to celebrate. Instead head…