ONCE BITTEN
by Jim Gaines
Mandy Hughes got married in Key West in June 2005. Film footage from that ceremony shows her thin but smiling, walking around in her wedding dress, apparently happy and healthy. But Hughes says it took a week of stocking up on fluid ...

BUYER BEWARE
by Jim Gaines
This is a corrected version of this story, changed to reflect the status of the state's intention to file notice with Legendary Journeys and Best Price Cruises. Jessie Hall of Orlando always wanted to go to the Rose Bowl, and when she pl ...

HAPPYTOWN
by Billy Manes
While you may have been fidgeting with your carb, man, the part-time suits in the Florida legislature have been scheming new ways to harsh your mellow, even if they don’t quite dig your crazy lingo. Last week, HB 187 soared unanim ...

THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
by Bao Le-Huu
While it’s certainly no excuse not to attend the fest and support its most worthy cause of migrant farm worker aid, it is a pretty blessed thing that the annual Harvest of Hope Fest in St. Augustine has already become a big enough magnet ev ...

THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
by Bao Le-Huu
So, you been diggin’ this extended winter? Ha! Take that, vacationers! The Beat Speaking of tourists, local country band Giddy Up Go (March 4, Will’s Pub) kind of resembles a group of them right now. If they’d ge ...

HOLIDAY GUIDE 2009: BARTENDER
by Billy Manes
It’s the Island of Misfit Toys. Slightly saddened faces etched deep with perennial rejection line up and hang down along the bar as other people play out their sweater-stretching Christmas convivi ...

THEIR MAN CLINT
by Allen Barra
Twenty-some years ago, while working for the Village Voice, I was astonished to overhear a conference call that included the arts editor, the Voice’s lead film critic and none other than Clint Eastwood. He had called to not only than ...

REVIEW: RESTAURANT - LOWE’S GOOD EATON SOUL FOOD
by Faiyaz Kara
Lowe’s Good Eaton may be open seven days a week, but there’s no better time to sample the restaurant’s dishes than Sunday afternoons, when worshippers dressed in their Sunday best cross the street from Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in the he ...

BEST OF ORLANDO 2009
by Jeffrey C. Billman, Trevor Fraser, Faiyaz Kara, Bao Le-Huu, Billy Manes, Lindy T. Shepherd, Justin Strout, Bob Whitby and Jessica Bryce Young
select a link below

SAVAGE LOVE
by Dan Savage
My husband and I have been married for one year, but we had been dating for 10 years prior to that. I thought we had a very understanding relationship. In the last couple of days, I have found out that he has a serious obsession with females wear ...

RESCUED FROM THE BRINK
by Liz Langley
It’s a stunning day in Fort Pierce, just about midway between Orlando and Miami on the Atlantic coast. Late February sunshine has nudged out the winter cold and there’s green grass and blue sky as far as you can see. Only the words “Careful – she’ ...

REVIEW: FILM - SAINT JOHN OF LAS VEGAS
by Justin Strout
Of the many, many things Pixar has gotten right in the last decade or so, one of their keenest moves was in casting Steve Buscemi as the voice of the slithering lizard villain in Monsters, Inc. In both live and CGI form, Buscemi’s unique ...

ONCE BITTEN
by Jim Gaines
Mandy Hughes got married in Key West in June 2005. Film footage from that ceremony shows her thin but smiling, walking around in her wedding dress, apparently happy and healthy. But Hughes says it took a week of stocking up on fluid ...

BLISTER
by Billy Manes
“You weren’t supposed to find out about this,” Tony cheats at me through my husband’s bedside iPhone. “Besides, if you could keep your man happy, we wouldn’t even be talking about this now, would we?” Call it arranged infi ...

A LOSING CARD
by Billy Manes
Fifteen years ago, long before Florida’s recession-necessitated tiptoeing into legalized gambling, the state’s attorney general, Bob Butterworth, waged a war on an unlikely racketeering pastime: bingo. Specifically, the state alleged that Canadian ...

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
by Rob Brezsny
ARIES (March 21-April 19) From what I can tell, your excursion to Fake Paradise didn't exact too serious a toll. The accidental detour may have seemed inopportune in the moment, but you know what? I think it slowed you down enough to keep y ...

REVIEW: RESTAURANT - TWISTED BLISS ICE CREAM
by Paul Hiebing
Needing an excuse to have some ice cream is like asking permission to breathe. But if you must justify it to yourself, claim scientific curiosity for all the flavor experiments to be conducted at the walk-up window of Twisted Bliss Ice Cream.  ...

SMASHING ACORN
by Curt Guyette
You haven’t seen Carrie Guzman on the television shows hosted by archconservatives Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck. Her name hasn’t appeared on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal. And she hasn’t shown up in any surreptitiously videotaped ...

REVIEW: RESTAURANT - VALENCIA BAKERY
by Joseph Hayes
New Yorkers like secrets, and (since 1936) one of the most closely kept has been the Valencia Bakery, known in Manhattan and the Bronx for a particular style of cake -- rich buttercream frosting covering super-moist white cake with three layers of ...

REVIEW: RESTAURANT - SHIRAZ GRILL
by Faiyaz Kara
I waited a long time for Shiraz Grill to open. Each time I drove by and saw the lights of the restaurant’s stylized marquee illuminating a Moghul-style font, I drooled at the notion of devouring their charbroiled kebabs. And whe ...

CULTURE 2 GO
by Al Krulick and Lindy T. Shepherd
Madcap Willy The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) Through April 3 at Garden Theatre 160 W. Plant St., Winter Garden 407-877-4736 www.gardentheatre ...

SEX AND OUR CITY
by William Dean Hinton
It used to be that New Orleans, that gaudy, tacky hole in the earth where sin and smut are marketable attractions, was the one community that Central Florida civic and business leaders feared the most. New Orleans -- and its famously seedy streets ...

TOP OF THE POPS
by Justin Strout
T.A.M.I. Show  Collector’s Edition $20 (Shout Factory) One of the least compelling derisions against modern pop music concerns today’s overnight successes and the ...

FISH TALES
by Lindy T. Shepherd
Plastic ice chests under a canopy in the parking lot of Stardust Video & Coffee are not where you’d expect to find some of the best shrimp in Orlando. Then you learn that they came from the Atlantic Ocean, unloaded from boats on a dock at Port ...

MR. BICYCLE
by Lindy T. Shepherd
Mighk Wilson is the guy who hears all the horrific local bike crash stories, whether he wants to or not. And he doesn’t. Bloody bones sticking through spokes, murderous motorists speeding away from hit-and-runs, a ...

BIG PLANS, NO MONEY
by Jim Gaines
‘I have a cunning plan.’ Whenever Edmund Blackadder’s unwashed sidekick, Baldrick, uttered those words in the BBC historical comedy series Blackadder, they heralded a ...

POLICE BEAT
by Jim Gaines
March 2 (2010-100956) 7 a.m.: Whoever stole a Ford pickup from the Holiday Inn on Major Boulevard got a bonus of handguns in the glove box. Yee-haw! (2010-102056) 8 p.m.: Cops saw a woman slippin ...

REVIEW: RESTAURANT - EL REY DE LA PAPA
by Faiyaz Kara
You dig your grave with your teeth,” so the saying goes, and after my meal at El Rey de la Papa (literally, the Potato King), I certainly felt acutely aware of my own mortality. An overload of starches brought me ...

OUR DUMB STATE
by Billy Manes
It comes on like a migraine. At first it’s the slowly paced temple syncopations separating dull waves of topical nausea – WFTV Channel 9 News anchor Barbara West arches her brow and squeezes out some pointed ...

SHOOTING THE MESSENGER
by Jeffrey C. Billman
On May 27, 2003, Ryan Spevack, a 20-year-old student at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Ariz., launched two Internet gripe sites, the now-defunct www.shittyschools.com and th ...

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
by Jim Gaines
There’s really no way to miss the cell phone tower looming at one end of Braddock Avenue, near the corner of Curry Ford Road and Crystal Lake Drive. It’s the tallest thing around, and it’s an old one: a stout meta ...

A TALE OF TWO NEIGHBORHOODS
by Billy Manes
‘No Trespassing: This area is a designated construction site. Anyone who trespasses on this property commits a felony!” warns a sign wired to a 3-foot-high fence off Briny Deep Court near the Orlando International ...

REVIEW: RESTAURANT - NELORE CHURRASCARIA
by Faiyaz Kara
By now, most of us have been initiated into the carnivorous merry-go-round of the Brazilian steakhouse, or churrascaria – whet your appetite at an enormous salad bar, then take your pick of meaty cuts served by puffy-pants-wearing gauchos brandish ...

THE PUBLIC (TV) OPTION
by Lindy T. Shepherd
If you watch much TV, Channel 1 may have already lured you in. Perhaps you stumbled onto an acoustic performance by a local singer-songwriter. Or maybe it was jock talk about college athletics. Lovers of the arts ...

FOLLOW THE MONEY
by Billy Manes
The 2010 political season received its first adrenaline shot Jan. 11, when fourth quarter 2009 campaign finance reports were released for state and local candidates (federal filings will follow on Jan. 15). What w ...

MULLIGAN
by Jim Gaines
Let’s be clear: We really don’t care who is gripping Tiger Woods’ putter. Neither should you. He’s rich and famous and if he wants to shag every waitress who serves him a drink, what business is it of yours? Peopl ...

BIG BROTHER COMES KNOCKING
by Jim Gaines
It was a peaceful post-Christmas evening in Chris Elliott’s house, one of many beige dwellings in his Winter Springs neighborhood. He was checking e-mail while the kids were having a bath before their 7 p.m. b ...

MONSTERS OF ANTI-FOLK
by Raymond Cummings
The Bundles The Bundles (K Records) It isn’t until halfway through the Bundles’ self-titled debut that Kimya Dawson – the highest-profile member of this folk supergroup – stares down the elephant in the rompe ...

LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES
by Seth Kubersky
For nearly a year, I’ve been anticipating the second half of the Fairwinds Broadway Across America series. And I’ve praised the presenting Florida Theatrical Association for finally granting my wish for a slate of shows – topped by t ...

WHAT, BUDDY WORRY?
by Billy Manes
There are people living in Orlando. Real people, not just the crime statistics, the jobless and the foreclosed upon. That was the theme of the video piped in to City Council chambers Feb. 18 in anticipation of Mayor Buddy Dyer’s seventh annual S ...

PICKING THE BONES
by Jim Gaines
Shortly before 10 a.m. Jan. 13, SUVs and pickups line up at Personal Mini Storage on East Semoran Boulevard in Apopka. Fifteen people are drawn by the smell of bargains. Wieldi ...

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
by Joe Piasecki
The call to save our wounded planet has packed millions into movie theaters, spawned political action groups and even inspired a current Tropicana orange juice marketing campaign. But a recent national survey of a ...

GOING NOWHERE
by Jim Gaines
Launched on Sept. 11 with as much fanfare as its backers could muster, the campaign to enshrine “personhood” in the state’s constitution is looking more and more like a long shot these days, so much so that even a ...

BEFORE THE NEW MILLENNIUM
by Richard Reep
Before the new millennium Auspicious Vision Through May 23 at the Mennello Museum of American Art 900 E. Princeton St. 407-246-4278 www.mennellomuseum.org ...

THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
by Bao Le-Huu
I don’t know what’s inducing it – a persistent creative urge, dissatisfaction with the current direction of things, or something else – but there’s been a local trend lately of marquee rock veterans rising back up and doing exactly what it is tha ...

DVDS NUTS!
by Justin Strout
Gigante  From the mythical Orpheus to Say Anything’s Lloyd Dobler, the line between dangerous obsession and adorable pursuit has always been blurry, and it takes a confident storyteller to convince an audience to eit ...

FALL GUIDE 2009
by Orlando Weekly Staff

BEST OF ORLANDO 2008
by Avery Beckendorf, Jeffrey C. Billman, Faiyaz Kara, Seth Kubersky, Bao Le-Huu, Billy Manes, Ian Monroe, Deanna Morey, Lindy T. Shepherd, Justin Strout, Jessica Bryce Young, and Bob Whitby
Can you believe another year has passed? It seems like only yesterday that we were printing our fabulously popular Best of Orlando issue – which by the way is the original and best Best of Orlando, not that ...