If you don’t want it read …
… don’t write it down. Someone said that once, don’t ask me who, but I can guarantee they had no idea how true that would become later. I find now’s a good time to revisit the proverb. It’s particularly true in the case of U.S. Congressional candidate Alan Grayson’s emails to our own Billy Manes,…
THE BEE’S KNEES
Homey spot serves regal meat-and-threes
WRONG TURNS PLAGUE HAPPY VALLEY’S NEW EFFORT
Mutanten Label: Sleepy Bird Orphanage Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Mutanten Even for those hip to the area’s most peculiar band, Happy Valley’s latest is confounding. On their first full-length album, the arty, if not necessarily high-minded, Orlando trio deviates from their signature wobblecore blend of primal punk noise and left-field humor. Here,…
BASK, TES-ONE LEAD THE SHOW
Spoiler Alert opened last Saturday (Aug. 16) at CityArts Factory to an empty room and fell short of the provocative pledge made by its title. It left me wondering, “What went wrong?” Like his previous exhibitions Small Talk and You Love to Hate, curator Dustin Orlando has produced a cohesive presentation of strong images by…
ATTRACTIONS RUMORS
Shortly after Disneyland’s 1955 debut, Walt announced the arrival of “International Street,” erecting a construction wall on Main Street U.S.A. with “peepholes” though which guests glimpsed models of the expansion. The “Grand Opening in 1956” signs slipped to 1957, then 1958, and eventually vanished. The street was never built, but a new spectator sport was…
RUMBLE IN DISTRICT 8!
For nearly eight years, U.S. Rep. Ric Keller has been dutifully filling his seat in Congress, representing Central Florida as a staunch conservative. He’s been a reliable mouthpiece for the Bush administration, toeing the GOP line on immigration, gay marriage, war and stem cells. At times he’s been good for a few eye-rolls. His 2003…
A MORE POWERFUL PUNCH
It took me about five minutes to become a fan of Joyce Hamilton Henry, the new executive director of the Central Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, because I saw in her the one thing that is often absent from Orlando’s progressive community: leadership. Too often in this city, progressive ideals wither…
BLISTER
Remember when fun used to be all freckles and chewing gum in summer short-shorts, the mischief of sneaking a fiver from your mom’s purse and a cigarette from her boyfriend’s Playboy drawer, wheeling off to the arcade with five pieces of watermelon Bubblicious crammed between your teeth and the biggest bubble ever blown? Life was…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Your next assignment is to inject more fun into your job — or into anything that feels like work, for that matter. You’ve got a head start because lately you’ve been playing harder than usual. That should give you creative momentum as you reinvent your approach to activities that push you…
SAVAGE LOVE
I’m a female college student and a feminist. I expect equal pay, equal treatment and fairness when it comes to chores at home. But I have fantasies of domestic discipline. Some days I’d like to rush home and clean the apartment and make dinner for my boyfriend wearing only an apron. Then I’d appreciate it…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
A big pour on the floor for Jerry Wexler, please. Before dying Aug. 15 at his Sarasota home, the man contributed immeasurably to the music world as a journalist, label mogul and producer. Along with label partner Ahmet Ertegün, he was a key figure in ushering black music to the fore of the popular American…
FIRST SHOT
Just this once, we’re going to skip our usual state-of-the-cinematic-art preamble and get right into the product-by-product armchair quarterbacking you’ve come to know and (profess to) love. To be perfectly blunt, the movie calendar is at that annual desperation stage when changes and trends come almost too fast for a journalist to anticipate while still…
UNFAIR
This column is in response to our Aug. 7 cover story, “The incredible shrinking newspaper,” on changes at the Orlando Sentinel. John Haile was the Sentinel’s editor from 1985 to 2000. There is a place in Orlando for quality alternative media criticism, and it was a major undertaking for the Orlando Weekly to tackle a…
HAPPYTOWN
Tuesday is Election Day, and you know what that means. You have so many questions: Is Ric Keller actually as porcine as he looks on TV? Is Gary Siplin seriously calling someone else dishonest? Why is Clint Curtis on the ballot instead of in a padded room? (Answers: Yes, yes and good question.) We’re here…
COMMENTS
Non-hippies welcome I am writing this letter in hopes of assuaging Seth Kubersky’s fear that Dandelion Café is “losing its counterculture roots” `Live Active Cultures, Aug. 14`. Dandelion Café was established more than two years ago to provide a peaceful, friendly and relaxed dining experience. While we support the artistic endeavors of Troop 1692, we felt…
DON’T GO HUNGRY
Having to dodge your way through cars, soccer moms and the occasional tree-hugging organophile scooting across the parking lot as fast as his socked-and-sandaled feet will take him may not be your idea of a pleasant shopping experience. But when it comes to the shiny new Whole Foods Market on Sand Lake Road, giving a…
ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL
I think everything in life is a little bit of a love/hate relationship,” says Preston Lovinggood, lead singer of Wild Sweet Orange, a Birmingham four-piece that was named Alabama’s “Band You Need to Hear, Like, Now” in the Boston Phoenix’s recent, fully addictive “50 Bands, 50 States” exercise. “We have to figure out where we…
MUTANT CHRONICLES
Fake blood, Russian transsexuals, a staged birth gone bad when a stray coat hanger appears; these live show elements would be expected from hardcore death metal bands, maybe, but an unassuming trio of indie locals? Orlando’s self-described “wobble rockers” Happy Valley, who began life as an instrumental act, are a maelstrom of incongruity. Their wildly…
