BUSH TAKEDOWN, SPURLOCK-STYLE
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Studio: Warrior Poets, Wild Bunch, Non-Linear Films Rated: PG-13 Release Date: 2008-04-18 Director: Morgan Spurlock WorkNameSort: Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? In Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? director Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) is a posse of one. His quest? To…
INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN
Gateway has potential, but lacks focus
BLISTER
There was this minor explosion, see, and from it blew this insignificant twig with three naturally blond leaves barely hanging from its top. Over a period of, say, 35 years, the twig was twisted, bent, rolled in sequins, dipped in bleach, thumb-tacked repeatedly on its backside, shoved awkwardly up several other backsides, bleached again, smothered…
SAVAGE LOVE
Hey, everybody: I’m taking a week off. Here’s an old column – from May 24, 1995 – to tide you over until my return next week. —Dan You recently wrote something about people who “are only attracted to amputees.” Well, I have been attracted to female amputees for as long as I can remember. I…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) A reader from Fiji is encouraging me to pay a visit. “Fiji is heaven on earth,” she says. “You’ll be ecstatic here.” While I have no doubt that’s true, it’s hard for me to imagine being any more ecstatic than I am when I travel to Hawaii. It, too, has resemblances…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
These days, nothing is certain in the music industry. That’s why I’ve been watching RCRD LBL (www.rcrdlbl.com) – an online record label that offers free, legal music – for a while now to see if it would become anything worth your time. Now only six short months old, this baby has blown up. It’s a…
FIRST SHOT
You’re getting old if you remember when movies had actual release platforms. Pretty soon now, it’s going to be standard operating procedure for every picture to go simultaneously to theaters, Blu-Ray, cable, Hulu.com and maybe even Lite-Brite. The phenomenon is particularly noticeable in a place like Orlando, where exhibitors are sometimes lucky to squeeze in…
LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES
Twelve weeks ago, when I began writing this column, my biggest fear was running out of material. As it turns out, the bigger issue is that there’s not enough me to write about the arts. You probably picture me whiling away the days in my hermetically sealed corner office aboard the Orlando Weekly space station,…
HAPPYTOWN
It’s political propaganda time again (yay!) and seeing as this always brings out the best in candidates, we can only applaud the glory that is a particularly grim flier (obtained from a spy at a Colonialtown North neighborhood meeting April 10) for Julius “Doc” Melendez. Republican – and Iraq veteran! – Melendez is challenging krr-AZY…
MAILSACK
WAR IS EXPENSIVE As millions of Floridians get ready to file their income taxes, it’s important to bring attention to the tax for the Iraq war, which has cost Florida $28.7 billion and counting. The human and economic costs of the Iraq war have been enormous. Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since…
STAIN ON THE COFFEE TABLE
In a Q&A appended to the tail end of Vicious Intent: The Rock ’n’ Roll Art and Exploitation of Stainboy Reinel, released last month on Dark Horse, Greg “Stainboy” Reinel states, “I’m not an artist. I’m more of an entertainer.” Forty-six-year-old Reinel’s concert posters – high-octane, high-color, chicks-and-cars presentations of rock & roll fever dreams,…
THE CRATE DEBATE
As I write this, Marci Brinker at Insomnia Radio: Orlando is turning me on to an interesting local singer named Timothy Simpson. Simultaneously, a friend is instant-messaging a live Jens Lekman bootleg of a show in Sweden, and my IndieFeed podcast is readying a song by Chi-town battle MC Verbal Kent. Next to that download,…
WHAT, YOU’VE NEVER SEEN A GUY IN A SKIRT BEFORE?
David Steffen, 64, rides motorcycles, plays electric guitar and likes to hit the sauce on occasion with his party-animal wife, Patricia. He’s got six grandkids. He moved to Orlando from Chicago in 1975. He used to hunt hogs. Steffen also likes to wear skirts; not kilts, sarongs or caftans, but skirts. Frilly skirts. Pleated skirts.…
NEVER MIND
Editor’s note: This story was first published on April 14, 2008 On March 19, Orlando city attorney Mayanne Downs sent a letter to the Florida Commission on Human Relations that marked a dramatic reversal in city policy: The city policy that since December 1998 had forbidden new social service organizations from locating in Parramore and…
DON’T WORRY
Not so long ago, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer asked us to look to the many cranes erecting skyscrapers on the city’s skyline as proof that downtown was on the cusp of blossoming. You don’t hear much of that talk these days. Lou Pearlman went bankrupt, then to jail. Cameron Kuhn is broke, in foreclosure and…
THE CAR OF TOMORROW?
With a title like Car of the Future, you might expect to see a flying vehicle that folds up into a briefcase so you can stow it under your desk at Spacely Sprockets. Prepare to be disappointed on that score. As the April 22 installment of Nova shows us, what we’ll be driving in the…
The Crate Debate continued…
So you might have noticed a little piece I wrote in today’s paper (“The Crate Debate”) in which I make the case that record stores have no place in today’s business world besides nostalgia. Fun, huh? I’m sure gonna love reading your death threats – keep ’em comin! Well, the debate continues today as I…
Speaking of racism â?¦
… the insanely right-wing mag Human Events has a piece up on what they’re calling “Obama’s Other Jeremiah Wrights” – basically, pointing out that among Obama’s supporters are black musicians such as Jay-Z and Q-Tip, which means he hates whitey or something. And because he and Ludacris talked about AIDS prevention, and Luda did a…
Forget taxes, do the Titanic today
We here in the Calendar department were just informed that today is the 96th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Now, this may not sound very notable to the average person who has no way to experience this historic event (other than a little film that may have won some awards). But you, my…
