Pillars of Prosperity: O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Thomas Kramer What will it take for the Miami Beach City Commission and other local cronies, hangers-on, flunkies, recipients of two-bit contributions, casinoheads, rationalizing lawyers, suddenly converted “mediators,” the INS, and unscrupulous big-shot newspaper editors to wake up and smell the coffee about…
South Florida’s Favorite Stalinist Leeches Kathy Glasgow’s article “Breach of Faith” (November 16) concerning radio commentator Emilio Milian merely whets one’s appetite when it comes to the smorgasbord of incidents in which people are silenced because they fail to adhere to the official line of the Cuban American National Foundation…
When you own a record store called Blue Note, also the name of music’s greatest jazz label, your stock better go a hell of a lot deeper than a stuffed Kenny G. section and a handful of Duke Ellington albums. Blue Note Records in North Miami Beach deserves its name…
Standing there on Washington Avenue for the midnight reckoning, confronting the nasty mob waving VIP opening-night invitations around the front door to Liquid, my entire career as Stepin Fetchit to the nightlife industry assumed the clarity of a bullet to the brain. If the club had gotten it together to…
Why Ron Book Avoids Libertarians I enjoyed Jim DeFede’s article about Ron Croo…er…Book (“Crime and Politics,” November 9), but I have a suggestion for future political coverage. Print an R for Republican or D for Democrat after each politician’s name in order to designate the political affiliation of that individual…
Sound and Vision On-screen, Nanook and a small posse of Eskimos sneak up on a slumbering group of walruses. The men inch closer, crawling on their bellies, harpoons clutched to their sides. About ten feet away from the screen, off to one side of B.A.R. Space, Paul Berry strums some…
Aside from the usual jaunts down the humiliation highway, the pointless theatrics and endless hook-up requests to dark world, the onerousness of being considered a combination of Michael Aller, Fredo Corleone, the social director on the Love Boat, and a dumbed-down Samuel Pepys, and the cruel dichotomy of living in…
Unrealistic Profile, City in Chaos, Skeletons Aplenty Art Levine is one of the most unprofessional writers I’ve ever met. If his intention was to present readers with a realistic profile of Miami Beach mayoral candidate Andrew Delaplaine, he was not successful (“Attitude Dancing,” November 2). If Mr. Levine thinks that…
And you thought Harry Pussy couldn’t get booked on Miami Beach. Ha! The majordomos of the local noise band scene have agreed to play a gig on Thursday, November 16, at Black Box, the multimedia performance space that opened last weekend in the South Florida Art Center’s Ground Level gallery…
While rampant dementia might be tough on the citizenry, insanity does lend pungency to the more popular cultures, and soon enough there’ll be no limits whatsoever. Samuel Beckett will cash in and approve Endgame as a comeback vehicle for Gary Coleman. The silicone warriors of Baywatch will remake Waterworld as…
Matti Bower: Eloquent and Busy For Kirk Semple to say that Matti Bower “isn’t a particularly articulate or precise speaker” is ludicrous (“Mistaken Identity,” October 26). She is so articulate that her phone, even prior to this city commission election, never stops ringing. When people have a problem, it is…
Let’s jump right in and confront the important, chew on the big issues: art, life, illusion versus reality, truth, sex, class chaos, and whatever else may be grist for the short-order sociology mill. It’s a world rich with blessings and beatitudes, everything intersecting at the nexus of nightlife, the gilded…
“I guess it would be nice to say it’s a sequel, but it’s not,” Jodi Horovitz says as she emits a big laugh. “Subconsciously, I’m sure, Freedy was spinning around in my head.” Singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston, that is, whose fine 1994 album This Perfect World contains an affecting song about…
Editor’s note: New Times readers who wish to contribute letters to the editor may now do so by e-mail. Our electronic address is listed below. Please remember to include a daytime telephone number and your home address. Though that information will not be published, we must have it to allow…
Michael Kennedy, a respected member of the local music scene, died of an apparent overdose of the muscle relaxant Soma on October 1. He was 37 years old. As primary songwriter for the critically acclaimed Broward-based band Rooster Head, vocalist-guitarist-keyboardist Kennedy penned many of the often humorous songs that showed…
Unlike the drawing rooms of Henry James and Edith Wharton, redolent with intricate ironies, the comedy of manners that is contemporary nightlife inevitably degenerates into broad, knockdown farce. But still, the modern velvet jungle remains a wilderness of artifice where image is everything, one long hand jive of self-delusion, fantasy,…
The News Isn’t All Bad in Goulds The pictures selected for Kathy Glasgow’s article “Going South” (October 12) did not accurately reflect the character or fortitude of my community, Goulds. They did not reflect that Goulds is composed of more than 80 percent single-family homes. We have parks, shopping centers,…
As with the more respectable strains of journalism, the lifeblood of pop reportage is information, from mere frippery to the legitimately sordid. It’s a definite learning experience, this industry of darkness, and felicitously enough for those obsessed with half-baked truths, loose lips — set free by liquor, hubris, and general…
“It’s a done deal,” Brian Franklin proclaims with more than a trace of relief in his voice, putting an end to two months of nail-biting suspense over negotiations with Mercury Records for what’s known in the music biz as a co-publishing/developmental contract. The drama began in early August when, having…
O.J. ruined my day, my week, and if his sorry story keeps being chewed over in the media, he’ll possibly ruin my life. Overnight America entered a terminal phase of short-order lunacy, something less than human and past the redemption of the divine, illuminated from within by the evil eye…
Local singer-songwriter Diane Ward doesn’t usually leave her guitar amplifier in her car overnight between gigs, but she did so a few weeks ago in a bout of self-described laziness. The lapse may have saved her life. While driving onto the Palmetto Expressway, Ward lost control of her Toyota Tercel…
In this particular line of work, the twin polarities of existence — the glorious and the sordid, the soaring of imagination and the sober parameters of reality — coalesce on a psychotic Ouija board, obeying no known dictates of seemliness, either earthbound, otherworldly, or of some ungodly dead zone. It’s…
