Opinion & Commentary

Thanks, We Think Now you’ve got it: Jason Handelsman’s January 10 article about Rick Ross, “Still Hustlin’,” was 10 times better than the garbage he wrote about Bigg D (“Bigg Pimpin’,” December 13). The focus was on Rick Ross and his music, not on fried chicken and strippers. Thanks! John…

After missing my exit on the Palmetto Expressway, the one that leads to NW 167th Street, because some dude couldn’t show me some common courtesy. I had to take the long way back onto the expressway. I looked to my left as i traveled up the ramp back onto State…

A Wicked Check into the Boards Chris, can you skate backward?: Brett Gillin proves in his January 3 article “The Whiny One” that he knows nothing about hockey or Sidney Crosby. It’s one thing to talk about something he knows about, but it’s another to repeat things he has heard…

I know, a couple of weeks ago I talked smack about year-end lists while dispensing a roundup of my favorite local albums of 2007. But I couldn’t resist one more, especially with the previous issue’s national roundup of the year in music. For some local flavor I racked my brain…

Standing Up for Stacey She’s won some too: I am writing to you five days after reading Bob Norman’s December 20 story “Stacey and Friends,” about my wife, Stacey Honowitz, because I didn’t want to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. I am absolutely incredulous that your publication could allow…

Click here to check out a slideshow from the Zombie Walk. I was playing fast and loose with other people’s money, and I came up dead one morning in a Dumpster wearing this amazing outfit,” a guy named Jesse says as one of his brown eyes peeks down at me…

Homeless Harangues No sympathy here: I am having a hard time finding sympathy for the men in “The People Under the Bridge” by Isaiah Thompson (December 13). They assaulted the innocence of children, as far as I’m concerned. They forfeited their right to state support (I’m not particularly sure I…

It’s that time of year again — the end, that is, when High Fidelity-style geeks compile High Fidelity-style best-of-the-year lists. There are slobbering dissections of Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga, blathering babble about Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, and a crock of criticism of M.I.A.’s Kala. If that’s what you want,…

Homeless The Terminator is better than we are: Thank you so much, Isaiah Thompson, for shedding light on this tragic situation in your December 13 article “The People Under the Bridge.” Florida should be ashamed of itself. I can’t believe this is what the sex offender “hysteria” has led to,…

Talk about a throwback! Here’s some old school Common from 1994 off of his Resurrection album. He was still going by Common Sense at the time and still living on the Southside of Chicago…not doing Gap ads, not making movies, not wearing cardigans, and definitely keeping his rhymes simple and…

“Hit me, you can’t hurt me…Suck My Kiss” It’s been a long time since this video got any spins on the major Viacom stations and as far as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalogue goes, that’s really a shame. It’s a really well-shot video, especially for the time frame and…

Back in the mid-Nineties, the Miami-birthed noise act Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa was playing now-defunct Miami Beach venue Washington Square. Suddenly the club’s musical director, a guy named Doc Wiley, cut off the sound. “There’s nothing like tripping on acid and being drunk, and being told by the club’s sound guy:…

Thanks for the Tip Danny is not to be missed: It has been many years since I attended the theater, but Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, reviewed by Brandon K. Thorp in “Soul Porn” (December 6), was about the best reintroduction I could have experienced. My wife and I…

It’s 11:30 p.m. on a Friday at Churchill’s Pub (5501 NE Second Ave.), and Miami filmmaker Aiden Dillard, age 26, is positioning the legs of an inflatable doll on his shoulders. She wears a pink chiffon dress and sequin Santa hat. “Ho, ho, ho, it’s that gift-giving time of year,”…

I don’t know what it is about this song that gets a party started so easily, but Juvenile’s 1999 cut, “Back That Ass Up” is just classic booty music that defies the notion of booty music. Aside from the title, it’s a hell of a well-composed song which features Juvie…

It’s been awhile since the world has heard anything out of the Cuban emigres, Orishas. The group, which captured the hearts and eardrums of world music fans back in 1999, did put out the album, Antidiotico, a few months back, but that was mainly filled with their past hits and…

Kokomo might not be real, but Monty’s (2550 S. Bayshore Dr., Coconut Grove; 305-858-1431) surely captures the touristy quality of that fictional vacation paradise. At this bar and restaurant situated on the Coconut Grove marina, couples sip fruity frozen cocktails while families congregate under the tiki huts, their children darting…

Racist Washing And we’re all along for the spin cycle: The Haitian refugee situation mentioned in Janine Zeitlin’s November 29 article “Washed Up” is to be expected, especially in today’s anti-immigrant climate in the United States. It’s said this climate is created by working, poor whites who believe the country…