But what about Opa-locka? That famous flea market is certainly not enough to get things going over there. And those buildings straight out of the Arabian Nights tales were never really meant to attract travelers from abroad. They were part of a real estate scam concocted in 1925 by pioneer aviator Glenn Curtiss to lure snowbirds into buying property. During the freezing winters of yesteryear, developers used to send postcards up north with pictures of Ali Baba in a sunny and exotic landscape. Well the whole thing went kaput during the Depression and now the city just looks like an enormous roadside attraction featuring minarets instead of dinosaurs.
Successive city councils couldn't figure out how to attract money to this strange place until they recently found an old postcard from the Thirties showing a belly dancer under the headline "Baghdad in Opa-locka." Bingo! That gave them a brilliant idea: Remember those documentaries on TV showing the U.S. Army using replicas of Third World urban environments to train soldiers destined for distant wars? Well, Opa-locka could be the perfect training ground for troops headed to the Middle East!
Opa-locka would be a happy and prosperous community proud to help our military. The Army personnel would shoot targets day and night, kicking down doors and driving tanks down the street while blowing up fake targets. It might prove to be very exciting and could even attract tourists eager to see the action.
Of course, some residents might complain that their peace and quiet is being disturbed, but hey, people complain about this everywhere. What ya gonna do? Too bad they might end up ducking rubber bullets when they're going to the supermarket. Too bad they'd have to listen to Muslim prayers five times a day from loudspeakers on the city hall tower. Too bad, because the city's finances come first and it could finally achieve a balanced budget with this plan after being dirt-poor for years.
This idea must be adopted! So tell those nagging Opa-locka citizens to move to South Beach where they can complain all they want and somebody will even listen to them!
George Melachrino, the Granddaddy of Space Music, Was a Health Hazard in the Forties: Before Gen X was on X, before space-age pop, before the revival of lounge music, before Brian Eno ... there was George Melachrino! He was an enormously popular maestro in the Forties and Fifties because he composed and arranged "weird" music. Nowadays he is completely forgotten, but at the peak of his career he managed to conduct orchestras with no less than 30 strings and dozens of harps playing some kind of ethereal surreal songs that sounded like violins from beyond. This guy also came up with the idea of creating "Music for Everyday Events," which was a very advanced concept in the Forties. Then there was a series of LPs with titles like Music for Sewing, Music for Cooking, et cetera, et cetera. In spite of the fact that he composed tunes for ordinary activities, the melodies themselves were quite bizarre, and some people thought they were satanic or just plain evil.
When I was a child, I had an uncle who was enormously rich and grotesquely fat. A major eccentric, he listened to Melachrino day and night. He had loudspeakers installed in every room of his house, which was quite a luxury in those days. This system was connected to a central hi-fi player that could somehow replay up to twenty LPs. Very hi-fi-hi-tech!
One day he fell down the stairs at home and his 600 pounds of grease ruptured and exploded, killing him on the spot. The music in the house kept playing for days without interruption until they found the body. Ghostly violins from beyond were echoing throughout the house amid a putrid stench. It was very spooky.
Looking back at all of this, I distinctly remember the gardener coming to me and whispering into my ear: "It was not the stairs, it was the MUSIC that killed him...!"
Bravo George Melachrino! The music of Death! Encore! Encore!
Is the World Ready for ... SoBeMan, the First VIP Superhero? In an arena already oversaturated by X-Men, Daredevils, and Hulks of all sorts, it took the fertile sands of South Beach to concoct ... SoBeMan, the only superhero who's also a true VIP!
He has the appearance of a good-looking Joe Blow, but all he has to do to acquire instant superpowers is to say a magic word like "MONEY!" and he is immediately transformed into a major photo-op surrounded by celebs and wannabes.
Not only can he walk over red velvet ropes, he FLIES through hermetically closed doors and takes the best table in the house to boot. He achieves this by saying another password: "BIG TIP!"
