On June 2, 2003, the Federal Communications Commission, under the Republican stewardship of Commissioner Michael “Son of Colin” Powell, decided on a radical rewrite of media ownership laws. The Bush-approved decision would have allowed any one of the Big Five media giants – AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney Company/ABC, Viacom, News Corporation and Vivendi-Universal (now…

Garaud MacTaggart

Serious sushi in the fast lane

If you have a serious craving for sushi, but not much time, Sushi Express (47 E. Robinson St., 648-2271) keeps pace with those who move in the fast lane. Located across from the downtown Orlando post office, Sushi Express specializes in quality, short-order sushi. The food’s cheap, too, with packs of eight priced from $3.25…

Colleen Moore

Tortoise transcends post-rock excesses

One characteristic of music in the ’90s has been the coining of functional but banal terms for emerging music forms: grunge, electronica and now “post-rock.” Bands tagged with the post-rock label are generally indie-label acts that draw on progressive rock from the past to expand rock’s rather restrictive musical boundaries with a punk edge and…

Daniel Fuller

Runner sticks it to her coach

An Indonesian runner named Ruwiyati won the women’s marathon in the Southeast Asia Games and promptly told reporters in Jakarta that the secret to her success is that she drinks blood from her coach’s finger before each race. Said coach Alwi Mugiyanto, “I don’t know why, but she just insists on doing it.” Pigging out…

Chuck Shepherd

License to shill

Bumper stickers that make you laugh out loud in the street like the village idiot are rare, but I saw one awhile back. It read, “I do whatever my Rice Krispies tell me to.” Makes you wonder if it’s true of some people. In fact, I can picture a few in the Florida Legislature who,…

Liz Langley

Commando cops

Just after midnight on March 18 of last year, Donald MacKay settled in for the night at his home in Apopka. Suddenly, he heard a bullhorn: “ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE — SEARCH WARRANT!” A second later, the front door was destroyed. “I was laying in bed,” MacKay remembers. “I go to sit up and the…

Ericson, Edward Jr.

Act out

‘We have 12 years of [being] very successful at providing HIV imformation. It seems like they would trust us’ From aliens looking for the causes of HIV to a game show called “The Fluid is Right,” the message of the group TeenACT is direct in its focus even if its language is purposely coy. Because…

Mary Meehan

Doing a job on the farmworkers

Orlando’s own legislative power trust, Rep. Dan Webster and Sen. Toni Jennings, posed last week with cardboard enlargements of the $50 rebate checks that Florida homeowners will receive as part of the bulging multimillion-dollar bag of goodies folded into the $45.3 billion state budget. With re-election on many of their minds, the legislators’ underlying message…

Lawrence Budd

Madison Institute exposed again

John Barry, known locally as leader of the drive to eliminate affirmative-action initiatives in Florida, resigned last week after three months as president of the James Madison Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Tallahassee that promotes a conservative Republican agenda. Barry, who often reads Orlando Weekly, says he missed reporter Edward Ericson Jr.’s article “Money…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Golden Knights still on time-out

Federal judges handed down sentences last week to a former Seminole County sheriff’s deputy and an Orange County judge’s daughter caught in the scandal involving illegal cell-phone use by key University of Central Florida football players. David Smith and Nikisha Bronson, daughter of Circuit Judge Theotis Bronson, were placed on probation and ordered to make…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Premature Medfly eradication

State agriculture officials were understandably anxious to announce the eradication of the Mediterranean fruit fly from Central Florida. The state had dropped $25 million on malathion and sterile flies to stem the pesky insects’ spread in 1997. Yet Florida Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford’s April 17 announcement of ultimate victory over the tiny pests could hardly…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Clearing the air on dirty laundries

I apologize in advance for using technical jargon, but have you sniffed any perchloroethylene today? You have if you’ve had a suit, a blouse or other clothing dry cleaned, because perc, as it’s known in the business, is the solvent used by nearly all of America’s 27,000 dry cleaners. Unfortunately, dry cleaning itself is not…

Jim Hightower

News

The news that didn’t make the news in 1997 From carcinogenic toothpaste to world arms sales and lost spaceships of plutonium, Project Censored continues to deliver news the American public had little or no chance of seeing in their daily paper or on the nightly news. Now in its 22nd year, the Sonoma State University…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Act out

Mary Meehan

Tortoise transcends post-rock excesses

Daniel Fuller

The Tao of Taos

Wally Harper is an art addict. Harper, who has lived in Central Florida since 1976 and currently works for the Multilmedia Group at Disney, has invested his savings in his habit for over 25 years. But after a friend introduced him to the artistic community of Taos, N. M., his addiction took a turn for…

Catherine Kean

Box Tops reunion runs soul deep with Chilton

Garry Talley and Danny Smythe, founding members of the Memphis pop-soul combo the Box Tops, hadn’t seen each other in nearly 30 years. And yet merely half-an-hour after they met to record a new album, the guitarist and drummer, along with original bandmates Alex Chilton (vocals), Bill Cunningham (bass) and John Evans (keyboards), were playing…

Bill Friskics-Warren

Movie: Les Miserables

Our Rating: 3.00 Sometimes one asks too much of a film. By the time Valjean (Liam Neeson) and Cosette (Claire Danes) reach a Paris rife with street urchins and toothless peasants on the eve of an uprising, a big musical number seems in order. Fantine (Uma Thurman with British accent and spritzed bust) has just…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Movie: Les Miserables

Les Miserables Length: 2 hours, 9 minutes Studio: Columbia Pictures Website: http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/lesmiserables/intro.html Release Date: 1998-05-01 Cast: Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman, Claire Danes Director: Bille August Screenwriter: Rafael Yglesias Music Score: Basil Poledouris WorkNameSort: Les Miserables Our Rating: 3.00 Sometimes one asks too much of a film. By the time Valjean (Liam Neeson) and…

Orlando Weekly Staff

May 6-12, 1998

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