VOTE NOW IN THE BEST OF ORLANDO® READERS POLL!

Apr 4-10, 2001

Apr 4-10, 2001 / Vol. 17 / No. 14

The Glands sound swells

It’s my heart that’s in the right place but my head that’s in the clouds,” The Glands’ guitarist-vocalist Ross Shapiro sings on “Swim,” thus summing up his band’s peculiar pop charm. The Glands are a rare thing indeed: an Athens-based band that doesn’t seem to be influenced by any other group from the Georgia college…

Stephen Deusner

Sing the praise of gourmet pizzas

You may have noticed the sign while driving along South Orlando Avenue. Steve ‘n Eydie Gourmet Pizza it says (400 S. Orlando Ave; 407-691-0255), and what springs to mind is some strange amalgam of dinner theater and Vegas lounge act. Take my pie, please. Actually, the name comes from Eydie Schaudecker and her son Steven,…

Joseph Hayes

Photo frenzy

I thought Bryan Adams was going to be here. He’s not. Instead, the Velvet Bar at the new Hard Rock Hotel is sputtering about in an hors d’oeuvres, open-bar industry haze, as the less attractive end of the music world self-aggrandize at round tables and wait for importance to pop out of a pig in…

Billy Manes

Don’t tread on me

When Vicki Vargo won her District 3 seat on the Orlando City Council last April, it was the two precincts west of Orange Blossom Trail that propelled her to victory. In a race where 3,463 people voted, Vargo’s 529-vote differential in her Rosemont neighborhood was enough to overcome the 245-vote lead that her opponent, Tom…

William Dean Hinton

Sale away with me

In the past 20 years few weekends have passed without me standing in a driveway casting a judgmental eye over half-used nail polish, a squirrel-shaped napkin holder or a coffee pot tattooed with a decade’s worth of Maxwell House. Garage sale-ing is great. You can tell yourself you “got out in the fresh air on…

Liz Langley

Net gamers can play on – and dream on

When video-game maker Sega recently confirmed rumors that it would cease manufacturing its Dreamcast hardware this March, many gamers might have been tempted to swear off the popular, critically acclaimed console. But for current and future owners of the powerhouse Dreamcast — voted “Machine of the Year” by Time in 1999 — there’s still one…

Jon M. Gibson

Remembrance of themes past

Some people have said, and I agree, that this is the single biggest thing to revitalize downtown,” says Richard Kessler, referring to the Westin Grand Bohemian, the luxury hotel he’s building catty-corner from Orlando City Hall. Kessler offers this assertion while meandering the lobby of the unfinished hotel. Around him workers carry classical-looking columns, or…

Theresa Everline

Both sides now

Maybe it’s time the Walt Disney Co. found itself a new corporate symbol. Sure, Mickey Mouse has served the company faithfully for 73 years. And certainly his bright, smiling face has moved a mountain of merchandise. But this plucky little rodent just doesn’t capture the true spirit of the company anymore. So which animal would?…

Jim Hill

Saving pennies for Jerry’s kid

If you want to make Jerry Eisinger happy, how about floating him a little loan … like $1 million? That’s how much the actor/writer says it will cost to bring his self-penned film project, Hope 63, to the screen. Currently in “the dreadful stage of fund raising” (Eisinger’s words), the feature-length romantic comedy is due…

Steve Schneider

Space: the final brewski

A team of researchers from the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology announced in December that after nearly four years of research, it had solved the perplexing problem of how to store and pour draft beer while on zero-gravity space stations. The team injects carbon dioxide against a flexible membrane inside the keg, which forces the…

Chuck Shepherd

Recent

See all

Gift this article