Fringe 08: Diamond
Diamond: A Neil Diamond Tribute Croon-A-Tune Productions (Mount Dora FL) Even if youâ??re too young, or consider yourself too cool, to be a Neil Diamond devotee, itâ??s hard to deny heâ??s earned his place in music history â?? and Jack Berriosâ?? unironic tribute to the man is a fitting celebration of his sonic legacy. More…
Fringe 08: Galapagos
Glapagos: The Directorâ??s Cut 2 Candy Bars and a $5 Bill Production (Kissimmee FL) Back in 1990, Schwarzeneggerâ??s Total Recall promised us virtual vacations featuring all the fun of real travel without the inconvenience (plus violent nookie with Sharon Stone). I still havenâ??t liberated the mutants on Mars, but Basso Voche Travel (motto: â??if you…
Fringe 08: Doodie Humor
Doodie Humor’s Christmas Spectacular Doodie Humor (Orlando FL) Normally, I hate it when a long-running favorite craps out with a clip show parading their best-of moments. But Doodie Humor has sculpted their scat into a satisfying hour of sketch comedy. This year the poop-humor prophets look back on their 24 years of heart (and bowel)…
Right-wing dipshit gets PWNED!!!!!
By Chris Matthews, no less, who has regained some of my respect in one interview with some dipshit talk-show host. If this is the best they GOP has, Obama is going to own them this fall. Watch it. “You don’t understand what appeasement is, don’t use the word.”
nsfw: â??is your girlfriend one a them salad-eating bitches?â??
How often can you say about a cooking show that itâ??s NSFW? Thanks to MyDamnChannelâ??s Cooking With Coolio, that sorely underserved demographic seeking a profanity-laced cooking show can rest easy. With a snazzy animated-cleaver graphic, a cranky sous-chef and two silicone-stuffed Sauce Girls, Coolio slices and dices (messily) his way through a variety of shall-we-say…
ENCHANTED JAPAN
J-pop duo may take in the States
GO WHOLE HOG
Popular pork staples, Pinoy-style
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
Lipstick Pickup, the new Orlando-based femme-punk label I mentioned a few months ago, is finally consummated. Hot off the presses is its debut release, a 7-inch by Washington State’s Yokohama Hooks, and it’s one sweet splash for the label. The tuneful, midpaced punk rock slashes with high-tension new wave streaks, and the choice A-side, “Cleveland…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) I hope you’ve been trying to bolster your stick-to-it-iveness. I trust you’ve been pumping up your follow-through and supercharging your determination. If you haven’t been attending to this unglamorous yet heroic work, catch up. Your final exam will be administered no later than May 24. Here’s a sneak preview of some…
POLICE BEAT
??? (???-??????) ???: This Beat will be published on my 29th birthday – fun fact: That’s also the first anniversary of the death of pompous gasbag Jerry Falwell – which means that by the time you read this, I’ll have less than a year left of meaningful existence. As the kids say, whatevs. (Do the…
MAIL SACK
Two sides First let me congratulate you on finally having the guts to say something bad about Mears Transportation `“Cab fight.” May 8`. The Orlando Sentinel never has anything but praise for both Mears and Disney. Your article was very good, and also informative, but it is only touching the surface. There are deeper issues…
SAVAGE LOVE
I’m a 31-year-old man and my girlfriend is 28. We’ve been in a monogamous relationship for four years. Recently we’ve been doing the long-distance thing, and we’re going to be doing it for a while until I can move from Canada to the United States. This is our problem: She brought up the idea of…
BLISTER
Way back when I was but a pale flicker only occasionally set alight by the backseat huffs of leaded gasoline, the mere mention of “ladies night” was enough to transform my cranium into a pink-and-yellow lava lamp. A gaggle of women, most of them moms, piling their off-the-shoulder pleated-polyester numbers into the Delta 88 and…
FRANKLY MY DEAR, IT’S A FARCE
“Big book, big brain, big guy, big shot!” Those are the four components that make up the machinery of Ron Hutchinson’s Golden-Age-of-Hollywood farce Moonlight and Magnolias, now playing at the beautifully restored Garden Theatre in downtown Winter Garden. The “big book” is Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, Gone With the Wind, the best seller that recounted…
GOOD NIGHT
We’ve taken our shots at the Florida Music Festival, now entering its seventh year. Crass commercialism, questionable organization and spotty lineups are complaints that have stuck to the event like a lingering boys’-room stink. But here’s what we know: The last couple of years have shown remarkable improvements in at least two of the three…
UNFABULOUS
The 1970s was an odd decade in a lot of ways: Watergate was a mess, Lucas and Spielberg changed the face of media, and actress Cybill Shepherd – at the behest of Peter Bogdanovich’s egomaniacal whim – released an album called Cybill Does It … To Cole Porter. (And boy, did she ever.) Things haven’t…
BEFRINGED AND BEWILDERED?
Indeed, such strangeness is a mere sprinkling of what’s in store for the 2008 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival. The whole enchilada is engorged with the creative energy of 70 artists and groups (mostly from here, though others come from everywhere) plus the scores of volunteers and staffers who provide the production magic. Over the…
THE ETHICS OF FRANKENCHICKEN
It isn’t 2022, so we’re not yet eating Soylent Green. Still, if the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals get their wish, in a few short years we’ll be feeling OK about scarfing down chicken drumsticks made in labs. The group, which advocates vegetarianism and veganism, just announced a $1 million incentive to the…
HAPPYTOWN
As a regular service to our readers we like to keep you updated on how much the war in Iraq is costing. And the best way to do that, of course, is to localize it. That’s where the good people at the National Priorities Project come in. They’ve been breaking down the cost of war…
FIRST SHOT
Here’s how you know you’ve been devoting too much energy to second-guessing the movie business: Your TV is on. An anchorman comes on to report that vicious storms are cutting a deadly swath across large portions of the U.S. And your very first thought is how unfair it’s going to be if this freak catastrophe…
LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES
Last year I spilled several thousand words’ worth of ink (and a not-inconsiderable volume of my own plasma) on coverage of the 2007 Fringe festival. I produced preview paragraphs on each of the 70-plus shows participating in our annual international arts event and followed those up with more than a dozen reviews after the festival’s…
The Democratic primary in one paragraph
I read plenty of election/political blogs and web sites, and one of my favorites is fivethirtyeight.com, a site that uses all sorts of statistical and demographic measures to predict how elections will go. To date, this guy’s been pretty accurate, more accurate in fact than many professional pollsters (the secret: demographics are king, everything else…
