If you go by the press releases, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions convention next week at the Orange County Convention Center sounds like it’s going to be one hell of a show. More than 1,300 companies from 100 countries are expected to take part. Nearly 640,000 square feet of the center’s cavernous…

Jim Hill

Yuks to Bucks

At the center of the small and relatively closed circle of arts activists in Central Florida currently sit the two Terrys. Terry Hummel, the artist, took the lead in creating the Orlando Visual Artists’ League and its city-subsidized gallery and studios downtown. Terry Olson, the theater advocate, directs and helped create the Central Florida Theatre…

Jeffrey C. Billman

Get out of here

Following Orlando Weekly’s September inquiry into the influence-peddling role that Seminole County’s not-quite-official Development Advisory Board played in environmental politics, county manager Kevin Grace gave the DAB a choice: Go legit — meaning adhere to public-meeting and public-records laws — or get out. The DAB has chosen the latter. To recap: For the past five…

Jeffrey C. Billman

No day in the park

Sen. Bob Graham must have felt like he was in grade school, fielding the kind of who’s-buried-in-Grant’s-tomb questions that make kids giggle. “Is the Federal Aviation `Administra-tion` a federal organization?” Chris from Orlando wanted to know. “Yes, that’s an agency under the U.S. Department of Transportation,” Graham replied, sounding like the teacher’s pet. But Chris…

William Dean Hinton

Scared stiff

There’s no disguising the truth. So when Halloween rolls around, I rarely drift far enough out of my hand-wringing self-consciousness to don a plastic face and pretend to be something I’m not. That’s what my column’s for, anyway. A few years back, however, I did find it tastelessly appropriate to slip on a twig-battered wig…

Billy Manes

Nipped in the bud

As previously reported, Prince Jefri — brother of the sultan of Brunei, an oil-rich country on the northern coast of Borneo — has had his allowance cut by the sultan to only $300,000 a month, a punishment because Jefri had been wasting so much of the family’s money. Jefri allegedly blew $15 billion in his…

Chuck Shepherd

Zoom in, blow up

“It’s gone further than I expected, but not as far as I would have liked.” The frank words of drummer Ken Chiodini are a deceptively downcast introduction to “The Last Days of The Hate Bombs,” a 65-minute rockumentary that premieres Saturday, Nov. 10, at Maitland’s Enzian Theater. Otherwise jubilant, this video-verité celebration of the Orlando…

Steve Schneider

The last refuge of scoundrels

Samuel Johnson said it over 200 years ago: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” While the rest of us are being admonished to band together and make the necessary adjustments in the days after 9/11, the scoundrels of corporate America and their armies of well-paid lobbyists remain seemingly untouched by any notion of…

Al Krulick

The Zen of Cookbooks

I risk sounding both anti-holiday and un-American by saying it, but this year simple and global are going to be my themes for the holidays. So I’ve been looking at cookbooks for inspirations and was taken by a little book called Three Bowl Cookbook: The Secrets of Enlightened Cooking From the Zen Mountain by David…

Joseph Hayes

Upscale Cellar stands ground

If you miss the overall eclecticism of the former Park Avenue Wine & Cheese Cellar, where a little pot of mustard could cost more than a vintage Port, a leisurely trip up to Heathrow can help to stop cravings for French wine, Belgian chocolate and Italian vinegar. We don’t have basements here, so Pierre’s Wine…

Joseph Hayes

Made in Japan: New Orleans guitar sensation

Of all the talented musicians hitting the stage for this weekend’s debut “Sass-O-Jazz Festival” at Heritage Square downtown, few are as mysterious as Papa Grows Funk guitarist June Yamagishi. The Japanese-born axe-slinger is a bona fide star in his adopted hometown of New Orleans, where he seemingly jams with anybody and everybody. For five years…

Christopher Blagg

Believing, on a jet plane

A security staffer at Orlando International Airport has taken out her magic wand, the one they wave over the bodies of potential sneaks before they board the aircraft. When it reaches the neighborhood of my armpit, the thing starts squealing like a schoolgirl. My body has caused other things waved across it to register audible…

Liz Langley

Nov 7-13, 2001

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