BREAKING: TERESA JACOBS WILL NOT PURSUE DOMESTIC PARTNER REGISTRY
OK, SO HERE’S THE SKINNY. In an effort to preempt tonight’s scheduled Town Hall at The Center on Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs possibly “wavering” on the idea of following through with the city’s domestic partnership registry (which goes into effect on Thursday), Jacobs held an impromptu press briefing in her fifth floor conference room…
Selection Reminder: Ladies Nite: Quilting Fractals at Will’s Pub!
Monday, Jan. 9 – Ladies Nite: Quilting Fractals Those of you who want to hate on the very idea of women doing needlework in the 21st century, please get over it. Not only have we evolved beyond the traditional gender roles that required women to do all the sewing, we are beyond the restrictive second-wave…
Sunday Film News Roundup: January 8, 2012
So, we’ve been away from the Roundup for two weeks now and I’ve collected a whopping two stories over that time. Two. Honestly. Nothing about my scouting routine changed, there is just nothing going on lately except nonsense year end lists (except our year end list, which was awesome, of course), which are swiftly morphing…
Selection Reminder: Sweet Bird of Youth reading at Orlando Shakes!
Sunday, Jan. 8 – Sweet Bird of Youth reading “Each of us has his own private hell to go to,” says gigolo Chance Wayne to actress Alexandra Del Lago in Tennessee Williams’ 1959 play Sweet Bird of Youth. Having freshly navigated the annual familial hellspace that is the holidays, we can all relate. In Williams’…
Selection Reminder: Jeff Jones’ Little Miss Parliament House opens tonight!
Through Jan. 28 – Little Miss Parliament House What’s creepier than watching a bunch of little girls dressed up as hot women, strutting around a stage in skimpy outfits, bikinis and more mascara than an Ulta store employee? Grown men dressed up as little girls pretending to be hot women doing the same thing. Which…
Selection Reminder: Crealdé Open House!
Saturday, Jan. 7 – Crealdé Open House This isn’t your standard no-touching-just-looking art affair. The folks at Crealdé School of Art want you to dive hands-first into their Winter Park creative village, and today’s “A Day of Film & a Night of Fire” event gives you that chance. By day (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.),…
Underrated: 2011 Edition, Part 3 – Documentaries
So when I did my Underrated of 2011 posts last week (Part 1 and Part 2) I gave documentaries a little bit of a short shrift. I love docs, but I tend to have a policy of letting documentaries come to me (through Netflix or on TV) rather than going out to see them. Still,…
One Last Bite: Jaws Post-Mortem Plus Legendary Lost Video!
As I’ve repeatedly reported, Universal’s Jaws ride is now most sincerely, clearly dead. I took a stroll through the park yesterday to inspect the corpse, which was quickly concealed behind construction walls. Plywood now covers all the shops and carnival games between the Disaster! attraction and the Fear Factor stadium. The ride’s location and the…
Jazz hands from hell: “Dance Moms,” Round Two
Ever since the fabulous first season of American Horror Story wrapped up, I’ve felt a real, yawning void in my life. I had just plain gotten used to my weekly peek at a 21st-century landscape where monsters hold sway over the innocent, all relationships end in shame and betrayal, and human suffering sometimes gets so…
2012 Maybe Babies II: Maybe Babiesier
Just to supplement Justin’s piece this week on some of the lesser known fare of 2012, there are a few more that I’mlooking forward to that could make or break the year (or be completely meaningless to the year, or not even be released this year at all). Ahem. 2012 looks to actually be shaping up…
Selection Reminder: Ralphie May heads to town!
Friday-Sunday, Jan. 6-8 – Ralphie May It might not show, but comedian Ralphie May has really been through the ringer the past couple of years: His troubles started in 2010 with a marijuana mix-up in a Guam airport then continued when he endured a near-death bout with pneumonia later that year that landed him in…
Selection Reminder: Great American Art Hype at Substance!
Friday, Jan. 6 – Great American Art Hype Who knows why graffiti is so popular? We understand the impulse to create it – since there’s been paint and hands, humans have been making marks just to prove their existence – but why should anyone want to gaze upon another man’s doodle? And if that sounds…
Opening in Orlando — January 6th
The Devil Inside — For the past few years, industry analysts have been proclaiming that January is no longer the boneyard of commercial cinema. Long gone, they say, are the days when the first few weeks of the year offered no options beyond barely releasable genre dreck like White Noise. Now, the month is just…
Remix
The Old-Fashioned
True grits
You can find shrimp and grits all over Central Florida. Or you can make it yourself
Happytown
The week where a call to arms brought unpleasant attention to the bumbling Republican machine, some oil cash brought more tackiness to the Panhandle and Joe Biden’s brother brought bad education to Florida. It’s already been brought-en!
Savage Love
Why do most people assume that all nonmonogamous relationships are destined to fail?
Orlando people who died in 2011
Local notables we lost
This Little Underground
Bao Le-Huu resolves to hold area musicians to even higher standards in 2012, and dares them to meet the challenge
Maybe babies
Our annual look at the less obvious films we might love this coming year
Loaded subject
Photographer of female gun owners sidesteps gun advocacy and focuses on feminine empowerment
People who died in 2011
Lesser-known but significant figures
The Are We Sunk? Index
How quickly is Florida sinking into the ocean this week?
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) “It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions,” said poet Robert Bly. That’s why he decided to learn to love his obsessions. I urge you to keep his approach in mind throughout the coming months. You are likely to thrive to the degree that you…
Such a lot to be
Atmosphere and great performances assist this complex spy drama
Live Active Cultures
Seth’s best and worst of 2011
Sam Rivers (1923-2011)
A friend remembers the local legend
Video: Bye-bye Bruce, Hello Harry — JAWS! Closes at USF
At 8 p.m. on 1/2/2012, an icon of Central Florida’s attractions industry was unceremoniously euthanized, as Universal permanently shuttered their JAWS! boat ride. I covered the closing of the “mistake on the lake,” and the final reunion of the ride original “skipper” employees, here and here. But I couldn’t miss being there until the bitter…
Selection Reminder: Seeing Rainbows in my Wine Spotlight Cabaret Series!
Wednesday-Thursday, Jan. 4-5 – Seeing Rainbows in my Wine Spotlight Cabaret Series Bawdy actresses, cross-dressers, torch songs, lots of liquor – that’s what we think of when we hear the word cabaret. While we doubt many people are getting plastered and trying to get a peek up a tranny’s skirts at the Winter Park Playhouse,…
