Some of the best-kept dining secrets are hidden in the crevices of huge, obnoxious shopping plazas. Pollo Rico is a delicious example. Sitting in a corner of the Lake Fredrica Shopping Plaza on State Road 436, the restaurant’s tiny storefront gives no indication of the treasures within. Inside, the humble eatery’s off-white walls are adorned…

Orlando Weekly Staff

House music homeboy

Even in the long, dark shadow of local government’s repeated attempts to rid downtown Orlando of a vital club culture, the city remains a pivotal piece of the national dance music puzzle. Although DJs like Kimball Collins, Dave Cannalte, Robbie Clark and DJ Icey helped establish the city’s reputation, newer players — like Miami transplant…

Shawn Wallace

Rhymin’ & ‘nimyhr

Anyone who’s caught The Drew Show on WTKS-FM knows that, in addition to his smart-ass mouth, Drew Garabo is also possessed of a serious love of hip-hop. Though he claims to be a “student of ‘white rap'” (even confessing a love of Snow), Garabo’s knowledge obviously extends beyond that and his show is constantly peppered…

Drew Garabo

Resurrecting the gobbler

It’s that time of year when the leftover Thanksgiving turkey demands your attention. So, you can feed it to the dog or follow my recipe for a turkey salad that defies the tired old mayonnaise-celery-onions standard and maintains the flavors of the holiday season. First, pick off all the remaining white meat and coarsely chop…

Deb Berry

Joe blow no-show

Even with a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez is having trouble attracting pancreatic-cancer patients for his Columbia University study (only 25 of 90 slots filled), perhaps because the treatment’s most prominent component is twice-a-day coffee enemas. A Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center doctor called the regimen “ludicrous,” but Gonzalez said…

Chuck Shepherd

Bad aptitude

If you’ve been reading Orlando Weekly’s letters page recently, you know that some of our readers have kicked up quite a bit of fuss over our allegation that the FCAT system of school testing invites administrative skullduggery. While a defense of our position is beyond the purview of Dog Playing Poker, we’re frankly concerned by…

Steve Schneider

Justice, Texas style

“J.R. Ewing is in the lobby asking for you,” Larry Hagmans Orlando Weekly publisher Mike Johnson, only slightly aware of the irony — he bears no small resemblance to J.R. himself, youngish and cute, between the “Jeannie” and “Dallas” years. Alas, it’s not that Texas tycoon leering 60 feet tall at the receptionist’s desk, but…

Billy Manes

The death of cool

Once The New York Times identifies a hip, new trend, it’s as good as dead. The intensity of the spotlight melts an underground phenomenon like plastic, casting it into the molten river of pop culture. From there, a faded fad is doomed to resurface again and again, stripped of all novelty, perhaps on an episode…

David J. Plotkin

Stapp slapped, cops called

According to the police report, she yells, “I fucked four guys in your bed while you were gone!” She hits him with a cell phone. 911 gets called. She gets hauled away on charges of “aggravated assault with a weapon.” Baby-mama drama doesn’t get much better, but this is no “Cops” outtake. No, when trailer-park…

Jason Ferguson

Take back the airwaves

In 1995 the University of Central Florida turned its student radio station, WUCF-FM (89.9), over to National Public Radio and jazz programing. The idea was to rid the airwaves of objectionable content, professionalize the operation, make a name for the university, and maybe save money in the process, since the school struggled to keep student…

Jeffrey C. Billman

The Comics Contest

The men and women of America’s alternative-comics industry deserve our respect and admiration. These hard-working artists spend lonely hours and days bent over drawing tables, poring over clip art, combing the thesaurus for synonyms for the word “poop,” with shockingly little compensation. They speak the truth to power, a concept mainstream cartoonists abandoned long ago.…

Bob Whitby

Cirque du Solaris

Slow, heady, picturesque and almost universally revered, the 1972 “Solaris” is hardly a film that cries out for a do-over. In adapting a science-fiction novel by Polish author Stanislaw Lem, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky probed the limits of his creative imagination to produce a quasi- futuristic character drama. Nominally a moralistic critique of space exploration…

Steve Schneider