Just like the real world, addictions online revolve around three basic evils: sex, money and food. And while not too many people will brag about their porn or online gambling jones, several friends of mine boast with glee about their daily visits to Chowhound.com. A giant bulletin board posted by people across the country, it…

Joseph Hayes

Funkadelic fishes

Artists are often good at turning life’s unpleasant instances to their — and others’ — advantage. Last year, when a shortage of rainwater parched area lakes, you might have spotted Mark Goldthwaite scouring the dirt and muck for wood. He used the wood (most of which had broken off from docks) in pursuit of his…

Patricia Madden

Democrats back sales tax

Orange County Democratic leaders had expected this past Monday’s monthly meeting to be heated, and they weren’t disappointed. It was, after all, the contentious evening at which party activists would vote whether or not to endorse the school board’s Sept. 10 half-cent sales tax referendum [A few strings a-taxed, June 13]. Five years ago, Democrats…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Orlando Weekly rules

At the Florida Press Association’s Better Weekly Newspaper awards last week in Daytona Beach, Orlando Weekly took home 11 prizes in the over-15,000 circulation category, including six first-place awards for best humorous column (Liz Langley’s Juice) and best serious column (Al Krulick’s Real Politics), as well as best sports story, outdoor writing, special issue and…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Miracle’s kid stuff

Attend a game of the WNBA’s Orlando Miracle, and your seatmates will include quite a few children and their parents, some teen-agers, a scattering of single men, plus lots and lots of women. In fact, 75 percent of the Miracle’s audience is made up of females from ages 25-34, according to the director of business…

Linnea Brown

Taking back the airwaves

When Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934 and gave away an estimated 377 billion taxpayer dollars to for-profit broadcasting companies, its only expectation was that those broadcasters would use their free public airwaves to serve the common good. Since then, radio and TV networks have made fortunes off the government’s free rent. Increasingly, though,…

Jeffrey C. Billman

Tough enough?

Janet Reno is rapping. We are standing in front of the Okaloosa County Courthouse, where Reno is holding court during one of many campaign stops in the Florida Panhandle last week. The group she faces is largely older, largely white. But here is Reno, the former U.S. attorney general, in a pink off-the-rack dress suit,…

William Dean Hinton

Not fade away

‘Fade away and radiate,” once coohed a fast-burning Debbie Harry, raising the rock & roll torch at the mythic credo of many a rock star. But music’s “live-forever” premise might only be a puff of false bravado were it not for the postscripted tomes of biography that lace context into often momentary influences. Hindsight, after…

Billy Manes

Almost famous

Some of its friends and foes alike were heard to comment that this year’s Florida Film Festival, which ended last Sunday, was notably light on celebrities. But “celebrity” is a subjective term that has limited cachet in a festival context, anyway. Events like this exist primarily to (1) identify tomorrow’s titans and (2) celebrate the…

Steve Schneider

Milking Castro’s convertibles

In a May dispatch from Cuba, The Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro proposed in 1987 to alleviate a chronic milk shortage by trying to get his scientists to clone the most productive cows, shrinking them to the size of dogs so that each family could keep one inside its apartment. The cows would…

Chuck Shepherd

Profile in dating courage

I have a friend who has a friend — and who doesn’t? — who is big into online dating. “You should try it!” said Paige, my first-tier friend, probably because she thought that was what I’d like to hear. To paraphrase Mark Twain, that is what friends do. Anyone will tell you what you don’t…

Liz Langley

Not so good to the last drop

‘It’s Central Florida’s “Action News Update” for Wednesday, June 20, 2012. Here, with all the latest is Channel 3’s award-winning Action News Team, Rob Eyeball and Darla Peach …” Rob: “Good evening, everybody. Another skirmish today at the site of the Jim Woodruff Dam, near the southern tip of Lake Seminole on the Florida/ Georgia…

Al Krulick

A felled man lashes out

Goonies never die. In the case of Corey Feldman, they simply grow into misunderstood “goons.” Goons with bands, even. Corey and his hopefully named Truth Movement were in town for a Back Booth extravaganza that would rival an ingrown toenail for sheer novelty. He has survived (and I mean that in a breathing sense) childhood…

Billy Manes

Jun 19-25, 2002

Recent