A horse named Miracle
Ahhh … finally some breathing room to write without having to worry about my ogreish Editor beating me about the face, neck and feet with a whiffle ball bat. I went to the “Kicks for Guns” event at the Citrus Bowl last week and met “Miracle” the horse, Orlando Police Department’s toughest animal officer, that…
Morning Roundup
The Terri Schiavo thing is making Bill McCollum squirm as he runs for attorney general. Basically, he’s trying to hedge between, well, common sense and the right wing fundies who will desert him if he takes anything close to a sane position. He’ll probably face Skip Campbell in November, and I think this is going…
The weirdness of gambling laws
I found this excellent essay on Slate on the inconsistencies of state and federal gaming laws. A sample: It is technically against the law to participate in an office pool on the NCAA tournament. Betting on a friendly round of golf, chess, or billiards is also a crime. I break the law when I play…
Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974
Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 Label: Stones Throw Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 Ever since getting fooled by the vintage-looking (and vintage-sounding) releases on the very much contemporary Desco label, mildly hard-core funk fans ‘ that is, those who have Hair & Thangs on vinyl, but who don’t have Dusty…
The Trials of Van Occupanther
The Trials of Van Occupanther Label: Bella Union Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Trials of Van Occupanther, The Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl, Almost Famous) is their most noteworthy fan, having shot their video and ushered them onto The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, and they’ve opened shows for the Flaming…
Silent Shout
Silent Shout Label: Rabid Length: EP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Silent Shout Even in the occasional fleeting seconds that feign normality on Silent Shout, Swedish brother-sister duo the Knife never wriggles free of a menacing techno stranglehold on their third album. Silent Shout boasts dim Arctics of goth-inspired electronica ‘ no vocal goes untreated,…
Elysium for the Brave
Elysium for the Brave Label: Six Degrees Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Elysium for the Brave Iranian-born, Indian-raised Ali possesses the sort of throaty, ethereal voice that lends itself marvelously to the sort of ambient ethno-techno she’s become known for as a member of Vas and Niyaz. On this, her second…
LIFE AS A HIGHWAY
Cross Country: Fifteen Years and 90,000 Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America With Lewis and Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee To Kill an Elephant Publishing House: Bloomsbury Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Cross Country: Fifteen Years and 90,000…
FLIGHTY APHRODITE
Scoop Length: Single Studio: Focus Features Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.scoopmovie.net/ Release Date: 2006-07-28 Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane, Woody Allen, Kevin McNally Director: Woody Allen Screenwriter: Woody Allen WorkNameSort: Scoop Our Rating: 2.00 It’ll be easy to refrain from conflating Woody Allen’s movies with his personal life as soon as he stops making…
Miami Vice
Miami Vice Studio: Universal Pictures Distribution Rated: R Cast: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds Director: Michael Mann Screenwriter: Michael Mann WorkNameSort: Miami Vice Our Rating: 2.00 Michael Mann followed a two-word directive ‘ ‘MTV copsâ?� ‘ when creating his fleetingly iconic TV series, but his big-screen update eschews the Nina…
John Tucker Must Die
John Tucker Must Die Studio: 20th Century Fox Distribution Rated: PG-13 Cast: Jesse Metcalfe, Sophia Bush, Ashanti, Brittany Snow, Sophia Bush Director: Betty Thomas WorkNameSort: John Tucker Must Die Our Rating: 1.50 If Mean Girls was the high-school movie for college students, then Tucker is the high-school movie for middle schoolers, locating their embryonic social…
Lady in the Water
Lady in the Water Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution Rated: PG-13 Cast: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Freddy Rodriguez, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban Director: M. Night Shyamalan Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan WorkNameSort: Lady in the Water Our Rating: 1.00 Supposedly, M. Night Shyamalan crafted this fatuous and arbitrary riff on mermaid legendry as a bedtime…
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
My Super Ex-Girlfriend Studio: 20th Century Fox Distribution Rated: PG-13 Cast: Luke Wilson, Uma Thurman, Anna Faris, Eddie Izzard, Wanda Sykes Director: Ivan Reitman WorkNameSort: My Super Ex-Girlfriend Our Rating: 1.50 Vile. Nasty. Crude. Base. Ugly. Everything that’s bad about 21st-century gender relations can be found in Ivan Reitman’s dopily noxious Super Ex, which uses…
DIABLO IN A TOGA
Titan Quest for Windows XP Publishing House: THQ Rated: NONE List Price: 49.9900 WorkNameSort: Titan Quest for Windows XP Platform: PC The year was 1996, and the sound of constant clicking heard emanating from desktops and dens across America was that of a lonely warrior ‘ or mage or Amazon ‘ assailing the undead-infested dungeons…
Back in Brazil
Back in Brazil Label: Ether Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Back in Brazil Although travel magazines recently have been overflowing with nonstop coverage of Buenos Aires’ desirability as a destination for snobs-on-a-budget, readers of music publications can’t help but feel that Brazil is the epicenter of South American culture. From a…
POLICE BEAT
July 15, 2:54 A.M.: Try explaining this one to your cellmates: Several officers — including two horse-mounted police — were clearing the 50 block of West Central Boulevard of partiers when one suspect became unhappy about being herded around. Officer Pickett observed the suspect “look back at the police horse and exchange words with Deputy…
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
; ;; ;;; ;Not having a cow; ;; In April, a dead, decaying cow got caught on a tree branch at a dam near West Milford, W.Va., and remained there for “several weeks,” according to an Associated Press report, grossing out neighbors, while five government jurisdictions declined repeated requests to move it. It was outside…
LETTERS
Good riddance The right of eminent domain did Central Florida a very big favor by removing Casselberry strip club Club Juana `”Requiem for a strip club,” July 13`. Such clubs are nothing but pornography that not only demeans the women who perform in these clubs, but the men as well who patronize them. The men…
SELECTIONS
Thursday•27 Summer Shorts It sometimes gets lost in the shuffle that Playwrights’ Round Table isn’t just an aggregation designed to further the careers of area scribes. Actually, the group has made it an integral part of its mission to seek out and stage new plays by talents from every corner of the nation. Witness the…
THE BURN OF MATURITY
Spatz is not the most glamorous drinking establishment in Winter Park. On this night, there are drunken couples eating drippy wings and forgetting about their children while sports fans play pool beneath yellowed chandeliers from the ’70s. It’s not surprising that Louis DeFabrizio and John Fortson of Gasoline Heart are comfortable here: It’s gritty, yet…
PHOTO ROYALE
Ryan Marshall was bored. ; ;So he came up with an idea. ; ;What if he created a contest featuring teams of people (in costume, of course) running around downtown Orlando on a Monday night, solving riddles and taking pictures? And what if that contest were held at a bar, so that each time teams…
MORE THAN A HOOT
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and underdeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.” — Henry…
THE DEATH PENALTY AT 30
Thirty years ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court changed its mind and ruled that, after a four-year moratorium, capital punishment was constitutional again. Since then, 38 states and the federal government have enacted laws deeming death an appropriate punishment for the most serious crimes. For a while, it seemed some states — especially Florida…
HANG ON, SLOOPY
;Victims of Seminole County Judge John Sloop scored only a limited victory last week, when a six-member panel of the Judicial Qualifications Commission recommended he be suspended for 90 days for ordering the arrest of 11 people who had failed to show up on time in his courtroom. (They had been directed to a different…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES “The honest man must be a perpetual renegade,” said French essayist Charles Péguy. The honest woman must be one, too, I would add. Always a good rule to keep in mind, and especially apropos for you in the coming weeks. If you hope to remain true to yourself and in alignment with your integrity,…
SAVAGE LOVE
;I met a guy through a BDSM chatroom. It seemed like the perfect no-risk adventure sex — he’s dom, I’m sub; he’s sexy as all get-out, I’m fat in all the places he likes girls to be fat. So we hook up. But instead of the one-time adventure I was expecting, we hook up again…
BLISTER
I love Pabst. In a day that’s already included the aesthetic conundrum of a hot (but not very) roast beef sandwich at Pom Pom’s Teahouse & Sandwicheria, the muted pageant glee of a second-place win for Best Local Writer in the annual Best of Orlando bible, and the amplified irony of Jermaine Stewart’s “We Don’t…
NOTABLE NOISE
;The irony was too perfect. An article in the July 16 New York Times headlined “The Graying of the Record Store” was a pot-meet-kettle sort of coincidence. A newspaper reporting that an industry is losing its customer base to an expanding media universe? Hmm. ; ;;The story reported the typical gloom-and-doom, downloads-are-the-death-of-music news that gets…
I LOVE TELEVISION
;As previously and voraciously stated in this column, ME NO LIKE NERDS. I am an unapologetic bully who gets unbridled joy from picking up nerds by their underpants and dumping them headfirst into garbage receptacles. Does this make me a bad person? NO. See, there’s a delicate balance in the universe, consisting of “good/evil” and…
HAPPYTOWN
;Note the interconnectedness of all things: Jack Kerouac drove through the night in 1957 from his house in College Park to New York to read The New York Times’ review of his groundbreaking book On the Road. At the same house, now a writers’ residence dedicated to his work, Kerouac wrote Dharma Bums, another heralded…
A secret war plan?
“As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a…
