Let me count the ways
Movie: Murder by Numbers
Dwellers of The Nile
Movie: The Scorpion King
Chop talk
Some pubs in Ireland keep a rack behind the bar for personalized beer mugs — sort of an incentive for steady guests and a companionable gesture. Why don’t other establishments do that — personalized chili sauce dispensers at Thai House? Monogrammed bibs at O-Boys? Nagoya Sushi has the idea, with a rack of labeled chopstick…
Let me count the ways
Movie: Murder by Numbers
Dwellers of The Nile
Movie: The Scorpion King
What’s running through it?
Summer is now in previews, with a few spring days that were so hot and muggy that just walking out the door made you feel like you were being breathed on by a giant dog. It’s only a matter of weeks now before the temperatures tease their way up into the 90s. Soon newscasters all…
Pulling up stakes?
Barbara Bochiardy thought she’d won. Last year, Orange County commissioners set aside $400,000 to preserve her West Orange property, six acres on the west bank of Lake Nally that is home to the remnants of Henry Nehrling’s experimental Palm Cottage Gardens. Nehrling’s writings formed the basis for much of the horticultural research that’s surfaced since…
Two for the road
Two officials thrust into the firefighter controversy last summer will soon depart Orlando city government, but for different reasons. Three-term Commissioner Don Ammerman lost his bid for reelection April 9 to accountant-turned-attorney Phil Diamond, who was strongly backed by the downtown establishment and takes office June 1. Mark Munsey, the city’s risk manager, notified city…
Thanks for nothing
You can’t write about this year’s Florida Legislature without discussing the Tom Feeney-John McKay feud. The two Republicans went to Tallahassee in January with opposing agendas — House Speaker Feeney wanted to carve himself a congressional district, and Senate President McKay wanted to restructure the state’s tax system and eliminate dozens of sales-tax breaks. When…
Lord of the Rings
The Orlando Predators knew what they had, all right. Not willing to miss a marketing opportunity, the arena football team made rowdy fans at the TD Waterhouse Centre endure a parade of players at an April 12 exhibition game before, at last, welcoming their new starting quarterback. Amid a shower of fireworks and green lasers,…
Degree of difficulty
At a distance, all one might see is a labyrinthine morass of dark lines and twisted angles. It’s only upon moving in for a closer look that Benjamin Goodman’s vision of “The Cage Keeper” comes into focus. And a dark vision it is, a zoo keeper’s worst nightmare: The lions have escaped from their cage…
Getting the nod
The annals of celebrity history are dog-eared with buddy pairings that match slick black street-smarts with geeky white everyman ambitions: Wilder and Pryor, Ackroyd and Murphy, Nolte and Murphy, DeNiro and Murphy. Fitting then, that I should be placed with “Deuce Bigalow”‘s pimp, Eddie Griffin, for a Portofino Bay tête-à-tête on what it means to…
Good news. Good grief.
What’s a Mouse gotta do to catch a break? The recent good news that post-9/11 travelers are flocking back to Disney World should have translated into a little positive PR. Maybe even given the beleaguered corporation’s stock a boost. Sorry Mickey. When Wall Street learned about the crowds in Orlando, the wizards promptly bought up…
Null and droid
University of Toronto professor Steve Mann, 39, has for 20 years worn computer components on his body for ongoing research and even calls himself a cyborg, and carries enough documentation that he had never (even after Sept. 11) caused problems with airport security. (He wears computerized glasses and headgear and an electronic body suit; is…
Few have shaped Orlando’s…
Few have shaped Orlando’s recorded rock sound as much as Jon Marshall Smith. Check the liner notes on those favorite local CDs and you’ll probably find him credited as the recording’s producer, mixer or masterer. Hear his midas touch on Kow’s 12, Gargamel!’s “Touch My Fun!,” Bughead’s “Whole Lotta Puddin’,” as well as on the…
Apron strings tied with blue ribbons
Last year on my birthday I received a cookbook called “Modern Culinary Art,” written by a professor at the famous French culinary academy, Le Cordon Bleu. The term “modern” seemed funny because the book was written in 1950 when the venerable institution was already more than 50 years old. Modern culinary art now comes to…
Bomb-barded
Last year, the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice stalled an agreement between the U.S. Forest Service and the Navy to use the Ocala National Forest as a bombing range. The coalition questioned the Navy’s Environmental Impact Study draft, saying it underestimated the effects that 20,000 bombs dropped each year (only a few hundred are…
