’Tis the Season

If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, you’re plum out of luck. However, if you have visions of hayrides and popcorn dancing through your holiday thoughts, then the Christmas Celebration at Continental Park is just what you need. With a fire truck bearing Santa Claus (forget the sleigh — so…

Feel-Good Fun

We understand if you’re all art-ed out after Art Basel, but tonight’s event at the Wallflower Gallery is one with a heart, not just beautiful people schmoozing and raping the open bar. You know the Wallflower as a local mecca for creative types who infiltrate the scene with dance, spoken…

Visions of Sugar-Plum Fairies

December has descended, and dancers all know what that means – time to bust out the rouge and toe shoes for the inevitable performance of The Nutcracker. The holiday favorite is a time-honored ballet tradition, and for many youngsters, it’s an important first memory that often leads straight to ballet…

Speed Demons

In many (southern) areas, including Homestead, the Monday-morning drive to work following a Sunday broadcast of stock-car racing takes on added ka-clang, sharpening defensive driving skills and firing pulses. Everybody wants to be Richard Petty. Which is the raison d’être of the Richard Petty Driving Experience. After careful instruction and…

15 Going on 16

Even though Andy Warhol shuffled off this mortal coil in 1987, his indomitable spirit just couldn’t not be present at this year’s Art Basel. Our annual Olympics of art, the Super Bowl of sculpture, the over-the-top smorgasbord of paintings and pretty people, screams of Warholian excess. Let’s face it –…

Value the Sacred

Anyone who can maintain a sense of peace while waiting in line at Target this week has obviously reached some sort of spiritual enlightenment. Do we need all of this stuff? Toys? DVDs? Does every baby have to scream at the same time? If it’s all freaking you out, here’s…

My Fair TV Alternative

TV land is all abuzz about the writers’ strike, and avid couch potatoes — us included — have been losing their minds with all the reruns. And since it looks as if the strike has no end, and we’ve watched every DVD in our collection, we’ve taken to exploring other…

Can They Massage My Boss Away?

Yeah, you’ve been sitting on your ass all day at work, but by the time the clock strikes 5, you’re in need of some serious R&R. It must be all of those trips to the vending machine, the MySpace page building, and the long hours gossiping on the phone. Sounds…

New York Loves/Hates Miami

Mid-beach and South Beach ranked five and six, respectively in a recent New York Times travel piece touting 53 places to visit in 2008. The writer lavished: “Move over South Beach. The iconic Eden Roc Resort and Fontainebleau Miami Beach — faded glitterati hangouts designed by Morris Lapidus — will…

Don’t Mess With The Queen

Sly Stallone gets a good look at Lancaster She’s like seven feet tall in heels, usually clad in a brightly colored mini dress accessorized with a trademark towering blonde mane. You can hear her honeyed Georgia drawl from across a room. Elaine Lancaster is the most visible and celebrated queen…

Splendid Art at EdgeZones, Not So Splendid

Elvis Ramirez Art goers take in an installation at EdgeZones during Art Basel 2007. With the plethora of Art Basel events going on this past weekend, there was no way to catch all of it. In fact, I’m willing to bet that a lot of the smaller events were overlooked…

No More! Bye For Now, Basel

No more art. Not for a few weeks, anyway. Not to say Art Basel wasn’t jolly and everything, but we’ve got a pounding art hangover to nurse. Call us lightweights, but while some of the art was as fine brandy to the palate, we definitely got slammed by a 40…

Now That’s What We Call Art

Probably my favorite stop at Art Basel was Fountain Miami, a “guerilla-style” art fair at 2841 North Miami Avenue. Here’s why: A woman writhed around on concrete in a slick, black octopus suit; the exhibiting artist responsible for Americunt; and art could be had for just $40. But check this…

Over the Weekend – Basel, Busta, Riley and Chavez

Maybe you were holed up with all the lights off trying to avoid bearing witness to another Dolphins loss, or maybe the cold sweats inducing traffic and parking madness deterred you, but otherwise you probably hit up Art Basel in one form or another, whether it was the actual show…

Art Basel – Bridge Art Fair Opening

Wayne Coe’s Scumble Bum, selling for $1,000 at the Bridge Art Fair. Flashes of conscience mingled among polished art sniffers who trod over the red shag carpet of the Catalina Hotel for Thursday’s opening night reception of the Bridge Art Fair. Exhibitors from both coasts, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Paris and Canada…

Dark Days and Nights in Havana

Many Americans — at least the ones who don’t live in Miami — assume that Cuba is a tropical paradise, a place where smiling, happy people salsa dance and drink rum all day, while the dutiful Socialist government educates and cares for its citizens like a benevolent papa. After my…

Ron Jeremy, Adult Video Awards and a Chest Autograph

Photo by Tracy Block Well endowed with sexual intentions, Ron Jeremy poses for a picture with himself at the Hustler store in South Beach Wednesday night. Last night, celebrity photographer Michael Grecco titillated Art Basel with the release party for his book “Naked Ambition: An R-Rated Look at an X-Rated…

Who’s Your Super Friend? Heroes Arrive for Basel

Holy Basel Schmazel Batman! Who are all those spandex-clad avengers bruising up eyeballs around town? Aquaman, Thor, The Silver Surfer, Ms. Marvel, The Wonder Twins, Super Girl, and Cat Woman have all been spotted at the Miami Beach Convention Center and in Wynwood the past two days, leaving bewildered bystanders…

Crowd at In Fashion ’07 as Stylish as the Photos on Display

Last night’s opening fete for the Miami Beach Art Photo Expo: In Fashion ’07 was a mostly subdued affair, with a soigné crowd sipping free vodka tonics and lulled into quiet admiration by the burbling sounds of the Surfcomber hotel’s pool. Its long, blue expanse, capped by a waterfall, served…

10 Rules for Sponging Off Basel

1. FIND FREE FOOD. Art fair and family-style barbecue? That’s Scope Miami when it presents a Q&A with emerging Miami artists who created its large-scale and site-specific sculptures — plus its services at the grill. Sunday, December 9, 4 to 6 p.m. Roberto Clemente Park, 101 NW 34th St., Miami…

Lost Cause

Casting Nicole Kidman as The Golden Compass’s glacial, intractably smooth megalomaniac Mrs. Coulter is no less inspired for being obvious. Indeed she was the one and only choice for director Chris Weitz, who adapted this first installment of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Despite the book’s description of the…

Darfur Now

Can-do pep is the resonant key in this profile of six individuals, spread across three continents, working to provide relief in western Sudan. Featured are a sheik displaced by internecine warfare, International Criminal Court prosecutor Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a young L.A.-based activist, and … Don Cheadle. The film tarries briefly…