so this is why olive garden always wins.
A confession: I’m hooked on E!’s The Girls Next Door, an inside look at the increasingly unsexy portrait of the passive-aggressively bitchy minutiae that goes into Hugh Hefner’s keeping up with three bleach-blonde and mostly clueless girlfriends. No, I don’t watch it for what you’d think I watch it for. (Besides, the “good” stuff, in…
Our president is a fucking retard, vol. 45676523
I really, really don’t know how to add to the compendium of dipshittery that is GW Bush. Even my parents, who have never voted for a non-Republican in their lives, have come to realize that this guy is dumb as a brick, and probably should have a home in the Hague rather than the White…
Showing your work (or, cops behaving badly)
Some of you may have noticed the big cop story we’re running this week. The quick and dirty version: A few OPD cops have a tendency to get abusive, and OPD doesn’t really do a damn thing about about it. Anyway, in that story I referenced four different videotapes: The one where Officer Trinidad pushed…
ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION
Ocoee taquería serves up standard-issue dishes
THE CLOCK STRIKES MEDIANOCHE
Don’t expect to hear the latest pop tune being pumped over the speakers at Adita’s Cuban Bakery on University Boulevard. The music that fills the tiny space is pure, classic salsa, and the food is pure, classic Cuban. Forget those pressed sandwiches with pork so finely shredded it resembles pâté. Adita’s medianoche sandwich ($5.99) is…
SAVAGE LOVE
I am a heterosexual man in my 20s, and I need some help putting a label on my kink/fetish. I usually don’t care much for labels in any aspect of life, but I’m hoping that knowing what to call this may help me find others who share the same interest: I love it when a…
THE CLOCK STRIKES MEDIANOCHE
Don’t expect to hear the latest pop tune being pumped over the speakers at Adita’s Cuban Bakery on University Boulevard. The music that fills the tiny space is pure, classic salsa, and the food is pure, classic Cuban. Forget those pressed sandwiches with pork so finely shredded it resembles pâté. Adita’s medianoche sandwich ($5.99) is…
HAPPYTOWN
Do you know what July 12 is? In the city of Orlando, it’s “The Grace Family Reunion Day.” Who are the Graces, and why does the city care about their family reunion, you might wonder? Good question. We can’t answer it, but we do know their “legacy is truly honorable and worthy of recognition.” Or…
COMMENTS
They Are Not Worthy I read the quip about `Barack` Obama being right because now he is playing to the center `Letters, July 3`. Basically, the gist of the opinion was that this is what Obama needs to do to win the presidency. I say “F” that! That is what all politicians do. When are…
BLISTER
Editor’s note: Billy Manes is taking a much-deserved vacation, so this week we bring you vintage Manes from “The B-List,” originally published online Sept. 22, 2000. Enjoy! Strolling through the sugar walls of Fairvilla Adult Megastore’s skewed voyeur sexuality, it’s sometimes hard not to lose oneself in a warbly, vicarious yelp. Video-box mouths seemingly pried…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) “The only way to get a difficult feeling to go away is simply to love yourself for it,” says author Christiane Northrup. “If you think you’re stupid, then love yourself for feeling that way. … To heal, you must … shine the light of compassion on any areas within you that…
WARPED PIONEERS
Barcelona’s Professor Manso (Alex Llovet) and Mister Furia (Salvador Rey) are the electro-pop neo-lounge lizards known as the Pinker Tones. They’ve played everywhere from Las Vegas to Moscow’s Red Square, but it’s their show under the first-ever electronic music tent at this week’s Vans Warped Tour that has them poised to make some history. Festival…
A VELVET CHAIN OF INFLUENCE
Few art bands can claim to exert as much influence as the Velvet Underground, and perhaps the most romanced branch of their deep bloodline is the distortion-polluted tributary that the Jesus and Mary Chain dredged so definitively. Unlike the flower generation’s kaleidoscope, this dark, noxious sound snaked from psychedelia’s underbelly, dangling between a fever dream…
FIRST SHOT
Talk about raising the bar. Notorious L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke has claimed that Warner Bros. relied specifically on her wisdom when it decided to up the distribution of its forthcoming remake of The Women (due Sept. 12). According to Finke, the studio paid close heed to her suggestion that the movie, formerly consigned to…
KIMBRO’S 21ST-CENTURY DIGITAL MUSICAL
Fifteen actors. Forty-five speaking roles. More than two dozen behind-the-scenes staffers. A live band, live singing and live video projected on a giant spandex screen. The most ambitious show to hit Orlando in years opens July 10 at Lowndes Shakespeare Center. This isn’t a Broadway bus-and-truck tour, it’s original theater fueled by local talent and…
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT
Who polices the Orlando police? They do. That’s the problem.
HARD-CORE HENDRIX
“Beauty is truth and truth, beauty,” John Keats said, and almost 200 years later there is still resonance in his words. Gracious imagery in art and nature need not be judged by the mundane yardstick of reality – that it exists, and by extension enhances our existence, is truth enough. Well, that’s one way to…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
My personal exploits range from playing baccarat with European royalty to bedding a parade of glamorous women to hunting big game in Africa … bare-handed. So, personally, I don’t really get the whole dork thing. But in order to maintain enlightenment, it’s healthy to see how the other half lives. The Beat The pop-cultural phenomenon…
LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES
Happy Belated Independence Day! I hope you managed to make it through the Fourth of July with your fingers and liver intact. I celebrated our nation’s birth with the traditional P’s: Patriotic music, Powerful explosions, charred animal Products … and Poetry. Poetry? Perhaps you’re thinking that pentameter isn’t particularly apropos for an independence celebration. Last…
COUNCIL WATCH
Palpable signs of municipal exhaustion permeated the council chambers this week, as the commissioners and mayor had just spent the better part of the morning workshopping the city’s entire operating system. “The way the city works,” the mayor called it, summing up everybody’s distaste with the wayward shopping carts, cookie-cutter developments and other problems that…
No ‘Midnight Meat Train’ for Orlando
An Aug. 1 opening date is still the official line, but The Midnight Meat Train is not likely to open in Florida at all is what we hear. Author Clive Barker is so enthusiastic about the film adaptation of his novel that he wants horror fans to lobby Lionsgate.
Milka Ramos on the break-up of Milka and her personal breakdown
Edited to correct the Little Debbies’ date at Peacock Room from the July 17 to the correct date of July 19 Back in October of ’07, I wrote a piece on the Latin metal band Milka and their long journey to what would turn out to be their last album, The Morning After. What I…
