bite me carefully
Virginia Heffernan’s article in the New York Times this weekend about xiaolongbao, or Chinese soup dumplings, made me wonder: Here in Orlando, where can I risk steam burns and mouth scars for the sheer joy of spurty pork-broth-filled buns? Turns out I’m in luck; Eastern Pearl, up in Altamonte Springs, has soup dumplings on the menu.…
‘Hiding in Hip-Hop’ author wants to be your Dan Savage
In this morning’s post-Come Out With Pride hangover news: You remember Terrance Dean, the Hiding in Hip-Hop author who caused a stir a couple years back by hyping his book as a tell-all about closeted gay people in hip-hop, only the actual book didn’t name names and was really just a long self-flagellating diatribe about…
Ms. Helfer will not be shaking hands
I had honestly hoped to bring you all sorts of geek-flick news from the New York Comic-Con, but with the latest of their constant calendar changes having put the thing in early fall, major “gets” were as few and far between on the schedule as I feared. This just isn’t a time of year when…
nugget yummers
If I may paraphrase the Clash, “It ain’t cotton candy; it’s meat.” This picture has gone viral (the substance, perhaps literally) in the last week, so I won’t belabor the definition; go here, here or here to read about mechanically separated chicken. In a nutshell — or a BK clamshell — it’s a slurry of meat,…
Calling all Pooh fans
Depending on how you like your Pooh, the cute little stuffed bear with the rumbly tummy who loves pots of honey, there are two pieces of news. On the local front, the Orlando Repertory Theatre opens The House at Pooh Corner on Saturday, Oct. 9, with human actors stuffed into the costumes (tickets $17). The…
All the dirt on Ryan Reynolds
A claustrophobic thriller that stands among the yearâ??s best films
Anxiety attack of the clones
Alternative universe coming-of-age tale gives way to its directorâ??s oppressive nature
Tangâ??s dynasty
Former Viet Garden owner starts anew in Oviedo
Currying flavor
A Brit opening a curry stand is nothing new, but a restaurant steeped in Indian cuisine using a time-honored British dish as a launching pad for seafood fusion? Well, that calls for a closer look. The small, cozy interior of this strip-mall restaurant is more family dining room than seaside shack, but the flashy part…
One flew over the rainbow
A weirdly light and fluffy mental-ward drama from the Half Nelson team
Personal planning
Beach House with Vampire Weekend, the Very Best 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 11 Hard Rock Live, 407-351-5483 www.hardrocklive.com $35-$40 $35-$40 Like most people, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand of Baltimore dream-pop duo Beach House needed a vacation. And like many of those people, they found their way to the visitor-friendly confines of Orlando. Unlike the…
The shadow of death
The relentless sting of losing a collaborator, or a frail-minded producer, or the destruction of an entire country yields no mercy. Distance does nothing to numb the trauma: The psychological effects of tragedies on mental health ripple across raging oceans and hazy skies. Orenda Fink — half of indie-folk duo Azure Ray — knows this…
Beyond the lighted stage
Rush 1-800-ASK-GARY Amphitheatre, Tampa Friday, Oct. 1 Friday, Oct. 1 Friday, Oct. 1 Like many suburban dudes of a certain age, I listened to Rush throughout much of my early adolescence. My difficult years coincided with the band’s — in the mid-’80s, the only person on the planet with a more painfully self-aware haircut than…
Deep Disney
ConGaloosh Friday-Sunday, Oct. 8-10 at Royal Plaza Hotel Downtown Disney www.congaloosh.org Various prices Various prices Plenty of popular Orlando attractions from the 1990s now have no one to mourn them but creditors, including (but not limited to) Splendid China, King Henry’s Feast, Kissimmee’s Haunted Mansion and Mystery Fun House. But the Adventurers Club, the eccentric,…
The pink elephant in the room
It’s a Thursday afternoon at the White Wolf Café on North Orange Avenue, and over the clanking of plates and the piped-in strains of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Eddie Mehnert is trying to justify himself. Rather intensely. Mehnert, campaign manager for 36th district Florida House hopeful Greg Reynolds, is attempting to explain how a gay-friendly equality…
This Little Underground
There’s really not much more to say about the fourth annual femme-centric ELLA Fest (Oct. 1-3, Orlando Brewing) that I haven’t already said, mainly because little has changed in its outlook. With a few exceptions, the talent was more or less the same in terms of caliber and edge. And in quite a few instances,…
Happytown
It was not unlike watching an anthill-kicking in reverse last Friday, when all the little people of the City Beautiful scurried en masse to the epicenter of all future Orlando activity, the new Amway Center. Boosters with ties and parents with baby carriages and cheerleaders with cameltoes and gays with hair products clustered next to…
Council Watch
There was a dewy suppleness about this week’s morning-after meeting, a palpable electrical charge accompanied by sly winks, sweet scents and creased mouth corners; tangles of figurative clothes – or tax dollars – may have been littered across broken civic champagne bottles, but in the end it was worth it. The city finally got some…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Much of the reader mail I receive is friendly. But now and then I’ll get a message like this: “I’ve followed your horoscopes with pleasure for years. But I must say, you’ve really lost it lately. I can’t stand the garbage you’ve been slinging. What happened to you?” My response is…
Savage Love
My husband has a cuckold fetish. We have indulged it through two drunken threesomes with two of his best friends. The first time, he really had to talk me into it. The second time, he steered me in that direction and I took the wheel. I now have had sex alone with Friend Two a…
Live Active Cultures
Whoever coined the cliché “the more the merrier” never visited Orlando’s haunted attractions. Last week, I praised Uni-versal’s 20th anniversary Halloween Horror Nights, and while I stand by my assessment, it’s impossible to ignore the negative impact of the overwhelming crowds that Universal pulls to its popular party. The phrase “safety in numbers” is aptly…
Culture 2 Go
A clever bit of Broadway `title of show` Through Oct. 23 at Footlight Theatre The Parliament House 410 N. Orange Blossom Trail 407-425-7571 www.wanzie.com $16 Conventional wisdom contends that you can’t make it to Broadway today without a jukebox full of familiar hits, an established Hollywood franchise and a bunch of B-list celebs. But songwriter…
DVDs Nuts!
Ally McBeal ; The Complete Fourth Season: Whenever we rant about the need for Glee to finally become a “real show,” this brilliant season of another often irritating, yet more often uplifting, TV phenomenon is what we mean. Creator David E. Kelley’s slapstick musical paean to the modern working woman (anti-feminist arguments aside) reached a…
Anger is an energy
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists with Screaming Females 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13 The Social, 407-246-1419 www.thesocial.org $15 $15 $15 July 10, 2010, wasn’t the best night in Ted Leo’s touring career. That evening, he and the Pharmacists, his lively indie-punk band, played at Skully’s in Columbus, Ohio, to a house sprinkled with hecklers. The…
Stardust’s kick in the bratwurst
Never heard of Dustoberfest before? Break down the words to break the code. “Dust” comes from “Stardust” – as in Stardust Coffee & Video. And “oberfest” comes from the archaic Saxon term for “drink beer and eat sausage till you die.” That should tell you what’ll be going on Sunday, Oct. 9, at Stardust, from…
Zombie Monologues this weekend
The Zombie Monologues 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 8 and 9 Sleuths Mystery Dinner Shows 8267 International Drive, Orlando, FL 32819 $10 407-363-1985 www.sleuths.com It’s not like we weren’t warned. For decades now, the greatest minds of our generation (George Romero, Sam Raimi, Lucio Fulci, Edgar Wright, Max Brooks, et al) have been alerting…
The Beer Tracker: Find the love of your life
There’s nifty feature on the TheBrewCrew.com website called “The Beer Tracker,” and here’s how it works. Go to the pull-down menu on the site and select, say, “Rogue Ales.” Then wait for a couple of seconds while the second pull-down menu loads up with all the available Rogue products, like Dead Man’s Ale, either in…
