On Jan. 13, musician Pete Townshend was arrested on suspicion of possessing and making child pornography. Townshend admitted using a credit card to download kiddie porn from the Internet, but only to help research his autobiography, which will deal in part with sexual abuse he vaguely recalls having suffered as a youth. Images he found…

Steve Schneider

Pinky and the brained

Punta Gorda, Fla., inmate James “Happy” Borland, 41, suffered a near-fatal concussion in December from being roughed up by inmates Lemuel “K-Money” Ware, 32, and Corey Andrews, 32, because Borland had accused Ware of stealing his pet spider and renaming it “Pinky.” According to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report, Borland had demanded his…

Chuck Shepherd

Trashy tabloid tales

“Britney back with Justin — Their hot sexy night!” creams the cover of Star magazine. “Burp,” I burp, running my shaky fingers over my bile-wracked constitution. I’m not above this national fascination with nubile nobility, but I am growing a few spikes of resentment. I liked it better when Barbie and Ken couldn’t talk and…

Billy Manes

Eye in the sky

Print journalists will do anything to get a free ride in an plane. I am no exception. Wedged into the narrow back seat of a Cessna 172, next to a radio transmitter, I’m getting a first-hand look at how WDBO-AM’s “Iron Dave” Adams gathers and reports traffic information to thousands of motorists. Iron Dave is…

David J. Plotkin

Just another Hood?

If you give any credence to “buzz,” the Orlando mayor’s race has evolved into a three-way contest: You’ve got presumed front-runner Buddy Dyer, the likeable ex-state senator for whom the Red Chair would be a consolation prize after losing the state attorney general’s race in November; you’ve got presumed runner-up Bill Sublette, the also likeable…

Jeffrey C. Billman

Bad science

In February 1999, Orlando resident Alan Yurko, then 29, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for shaking his 10-week-old son to death. An autopsy revealed that the baby, also named Alan, had blood in his retina and a subdural hematoma (blood-filled swelling in the brain). Taken together, the findings were offered as proof…

Bob Whitby

Big ideas

Big ideas bring big talk, the kind that can buzz around one’s head without landing. And there will be a lot of talk this year by the city’s movers and shakers, what with the unexpected replacement of Mayor Glenda Hood a year before her term was up, thanks to Gov. Jeb Bush’s higher calling, as…

Staff writers

Common bonds

Let’s face facts: There’s not a city in Florida likely to ever vie for the title of The Next Seattle. Two Sunshine State bands, however, are poised to put a bit more shine on the state’s reputation. From the turquoise wonderland of Miami and the rural college town of Gainesville come, respectively, Iron & Wine…

Brian Howard

Common bonds

Brian Howard

Regime change

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev shocked the West with his infamous proclamation, “We will bury you.” He merely meant to assert that the USSR would outlast its capitalist cousins, but a public unfamiliar with Russian idiomatic expressions instead perceived a direct, mortal threat to their lives and livelihood. Nutrajet guitarist/vocalist Greg Reinel knows his Cold War…

Steve Schneider

Jan 22-28, 2003

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