Mt. Doric poetry
“Nay, take a seat with us, Honor and eat with us,” They answered grinning; “Our feast is but beginning.” When Christina G. Rossetti wrote those words in “The Goblin Market” in 1862, Dora Ann Drawdy was just settling into the Florida wilderness that would someday bear her name. And Rossetti certainly wasn’t thinking about Vince…
Fools by formula
Movie: Say It Isn’t So
Chumming, not slumming
Movie: The Brothers
Tourist teases give up the Keys to satire
Movie: HeartBREAKeRS
A hero of the post-maudlin period
Movie: Pollock
Fools by formula
Movie: Say It Isn’t So
Chumming, not slumming
Movie: The Brothers
Tourist teases give up the Keys to satire
Movie: HeartBREAKeRS
A hero of the post-maudlin period
Movie: Pollock
Green envy
Orlando’s annual St. Patrick’s Day charade, er, parade always promises a polite glimpse at what the apocalypse might look like in a small-town, big-livered, green fiberglass petri dish. Literally, it’s “War of the Worlds”-lite, as the stroller-and-sundress set huddle along the pre-Livingston end of Orange Avenue and descend gradually (and bleakly) into the dilated pupils…
Mob friendly
It’s amazing how perceptions change. It used to be someone said “Soprano” and images of gowned women singing onstage leapt to mind. Now the only caterwauling anyone is familiar with is between Tony and Carmela. As far as I can tell, Sopranos “New York Style” Ristorante & Pizzeria owes its name to the vocal range,…
Review – Live at the Sapphire: Under the Megawatt Moon
Artist: Big Sky
Review – Double Dealin’
Artist: Lucky Peterson
Review – Wicked Grin
Artist: John Hammond
Review – Live at the Sapphire: Under the Megawatt Moon
Artist: Big Sky
Review – Blues Dream
Artist: Bill Frisell
Review – Double Dealin’
Artist: Lucky Peterson
Review – Wicked Grin
Artist: John Hammond
Review – Blues Dream
Artist: Bill Frisell
Review – Live at the Sapphire: Under the Megawatt Moon
Artist: Big Sky
Review – Double Dealin’
Artist: Lucky Peterson
Review – Wicked Grin
Artist: John Hammond
Review – Blues Dream
Artist: Bill Frisell
Collective conscience
This is how the members of the Stone Soup Collective see things: “Ideally, we’d like everybody to get a prize.” Those words are spoken by 21-year-old Paul Jones, the current coordinator of the Stone Soup Collective, a progressive information resource and “radical space” that opened in October on South Orange Avenue. Jones is referring to…
Cuban standbys for the veggie set
Vegetarians, whether they’ve chosen to abstain from meat for health or ethical reasons, sometimes go through moments when they feel somehow … deprived, like they’ve lost something. “I sure do miss ribs,” a friend said recently. One creation that is always tempting is a toasty, crunchy Cuban sandwich. And Rincon Criollo (331 N. Orange Ave.;…
Expanding the musical universe
Amid the wash of images cast by a video projector, a collective of musicians soak the Bodhisattva Social Club’s woodsy attic retreat in ethereal female vocals, classical instrumentation, ambient synthesizers, hypnotic percussion and warm bass tones. The room is packed tight and attentively quiet, so much so that a lonely beer-bottle clank breaks the crowd’s…
Town crier
He captivates audiences with a lightning-quick delivery and positive lyrical flow. He’s worked with impressionable youth and shared bills with rap heroes Run-DMC. His work — both on and off the stage — crosses boundaries, cultures and age groups. He’s a man with a mission. Some would say a mission impossible. He’s the voice of…
A world of sorrows
In the early ’90s, when it was trendy to take the tranquilizer Xanex, people I knew took it. Later it was Prozac. Now it’s Paxil. It might seem like I drive people to pills, but really, they come to it on their own. If it works for them, they can bob for Ecstasy in a…
Let’s go get some air
The opening last Friday night of O2 Elements means that Orlando finally has its own oxygen bar. Another cultural trend that came of age in California has belatedly landed here, but to what avail? Since when are we beset with enough low-lying smog to make hits of clean air a necessity? Are the yeast fumes…
The real place of race
Robert Bacon Jr. made two deadly mistakes. The first: He killed the ex-husband of his girlfriend. The second: The ex-husband was white. As a result, Bacon was sentenced to death. But if his victim had been black, odds are very good that he would have been sentenced to life. This is the often-overlooked part of…
My poll or yours?
When City Commissioner Vicki Vargo began writing a survey to send to 13,043 homes in her district, she wanted it to be different than any of the polls the city normally sends out. She didn’t want to send out homogenous questions on unimportant topics. She wanted her poll to contain topical information that would prompt…
They can’t do that
Mayor Glenda Hood had a glorious message at the start of the Feb. 5 City Council meeting. She’d been on the phone with Gov. Jeb Bush and David Struhs, head of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and both had cleared the way for the city to temporarily house a private charter school in…
Not so FastPass
Have you heard what the folks in Lake Buena Vista have been saying about Disney’s FastPass system? And no, I’m not talking about how thrilled guests have been with the chance to make advance reservations instead of standing in line for hours for Disney’s most popular rides and shows. I’m talking about the pissed-off Disney…
It’s crazy, but it just might work
In March, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that Russell Weston, the paranoid schizophrenic charged with killing two U.S. Capitol police officers in 1998, could be forcibly medicated to attempt to stabilize his illness so that he might assist in his defense. Until the judge’s decision, Weston’s lawyers resisted the medication because once he…
Putting Pollock into perspective
Don’t forget a painter’s got to kick the world in the ass, and if he’s real he won’t even know he’s doing it. He’s got what it takes, that’s all.” So said Jackson Pollock, regarded by many to be the most important artist of the 20th century. A man we love to admire and condemn,…
