An American Muslim, raised in Florida, writes from Saudi Arabia
In July we published a piece examining the allies of Arab revolutionaries here in Florida, and in doing so, told the story of Dena Atassi, a Syrian-American born and raised in Orlando. Atassi, a Muslim, recently told us that she had moved to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, to begin teaching at an all-girls…
Sunday Film News Roundup — September 18th, 2011
So, depending on who you ask, this week’s big genre release, Drive, was either the greatest film since Citizen Kane or the worst film since The Hottie and the Nottie. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, and I might wait until all of the jizzing/furor wears off to not feel compelled to…
Selection Reminder: Student Academy Award-winning documentary As We Forgive
Sunday, September 18 – As We Forgive It’s an unfortunate side effect of humans’ limited brain capacity that we can’t really comprehend big numbers, whether talking about the infinite distances of the galaxy or even disturbances in our own proverbial backyards, where massacres, genocides, famine and other omens of the apocalypse happen all the time.…
Selection Reminder: So You Think You Can Dance Tour!
Saturday, September 17 – So You Think You Can Dance Tour From her elegant audition piece, which had already won amateur competitions nationwide and elicited thoughts of “Zeus” and “Mount Olympus” from the judges, to her charmed pairing with contemporary dancer Marko Germar and finally her crowning as America’s Favorite Dancer by a suffocating margin,…
Selection Reminder: Hope & Help’s Headdress Ball tonight!
Saturday, September 17 – Headdress Ball Even if it means a stumbling regret hangover the morning after, the year’s “most outrageous black-tie event” – an unseemly moniker given that its titular attraction basically involves an orchid bonanza growing from somebody’s cranium, not neckwear – always brings the goods in both charity and gossip. One time…
Photo Gallery: DemoGraphic at Urban Rethink
If you read this week’s Culture2Go column, you know all about last night’s DemoGraphic event at Thornton Park’s Urban ReThink. Just in case you missed out on the art show/open-mic night/30th birthday bash for local artist Tisse Mallon, we’ve got photographic evidence of the artistic use that Jessica Earley, Thomas Thorspecken, and others invested in abandoned…
Underrated: Kiss Me, Stupid – Billy Wilder (1964)
Out of Billy Wilder’s entire filmography, Kiss Me, Stupid is the one that really stuck in his craw. Lambasted by critics and censors alike for being too crude for its time, it was seemingly doomed from the get-go, when Jack Lemmon, fresh off of back-to-back-to-back hits with Wilder (Some Like it Hot, The Apartment and…
2011 Global Peace Film Fest weekend schedule.
Note: Due to internal clock confusion, this was posted a week early. Still good info to have for when the fest starts TUESDAY, SEPT. 20!! (My birthday – yet another reason I should’ve remembered.) I’ll be posting the Tuesday-Thursday schedule over the weekend. By now you’ve hopefully peeped our coverage of the latest Global Peace…
Selection Reminder: Three-day Fall Book Sale at Orlando Public Library!
September 16-18 – Fall Book Sale Despite its Brutalist slabby-concrete exterior, the Orlando Public Library, located downtown, is pleasantly airy and inviting on the inside. The Friends of the Library bookstore, up on the third floor, raises funds for the library year-round by selling books, vinyl, DVDs, maps, magazines and other stuff that’s been donated…
Selection Reminder: USA 101 with travel writer Gary McKechnie!
Thursday, September 15 – USA 101 Widely revered as “The Travelin’ Man,” travel writer Gary McKechnie’s expert trekking cred goes beyond his collection of best-selling guide books and his features in publications like USA Today and Southern Living, and the fact that he’s a two-time Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Silver award winner (pretty much the…
Top chifa
Peruvian-style Chinese cuisine makes its move to suburbia
Rotation: What local artists are listening to
This Week: Savi Fernandez of the Savi Fernandez Band
Savage Love
I am a 16-year-old female. I have been in a monogamous relationship with a boy for seven months.
DVDs Nuts!
Lesser-seen OW approved titles
Road songs
Astronautalis sets aside the history books on hit-and-miss new album
Hiding the sausage
How ALEC, a well-funded right-wing organization, is grinding out state laws
Live Active Cultures
Seth searches for live active cultures in Pennsylvania and finds flash floods, pearls and mushroom
The history of modern men
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark trip back into the light
What a wonderful world
Terry Teachout’s play about Louis Armstrong reveals the man behind the smile
Council Watch
Billy Manes paying attention to local government so you don’t have to
This Little Underground
Live music columnist Bao Le-Huu takes on the Accidental Music Festival, Cute Lepers, Larf, Deleted Scenes and Hunx and His Punx
Culture 2 Go
Words and music come together Tuesday night at Urban ReThink when former Orlandoan Deborah Reed returns from the Pacific Northwest (her current home base) to read from her new novel, Carry Yourself Back to Me. Floridian roots duo Jubal’s Kin will perform songs inspired by the book. Reed also writes under the pen name Audrey…
Drive
Ryan Gosling smolders in otherwise pedestrian style exercise
R.I.P. Ralph Ameduri
Beloved musician’s senseless murder rocks Orlando music scene
Greater goodness
The Global Peace Film Festival is back and weirder than ever
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) “An awakened Aries would rather err on the side of making a daring, improvisational mistake than cuddle up with passionless peace,” writes astrologer Hunter Reynolds. “He or she knows that creative conflict can be a greater unifying force than superficial harmony.” This is an excellent keynote for you to keep in…
Tabloid
Insanely entertaining true-life tabloid story comes to vivid life in Errol Morris’ new confection
COMMISIONER SHEEHAN TAKEN HOSTAGE BY GUNMAN, RESCUED BY SWAT TEAM IN 60 SECOND STANDOFF
Words cannot explain…. [youtube YBEjaADS2Zs] …such terrible acting. Give us a week to collect our thoughts, and we’ll get back to you on this in Happytown.
Grayson on “Countdown”: Yeah, he said it
If I had any doubt I would be thoroughly supporting Alan Grayson’s 2012 re-election bid for Congress — and I hadn’t — it evaporated last night, when Grayson appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss the bread-and-circuses air of the previous evening’s Republican debate (with its already infamous “Let him die!” tumult). Olbermann, despite…
Selection Reminder: Oceanographer Sylvia Earle at Rollins College!
Wednesday, September 14 – Sustainable Seas: The Vision and the Reality Ever go to the beach and wonder what’s in the water? Like, what’s really in the vast expanse of ocean that shouldn’t be there, like diesel fuels and petroleum, and what’s not there that should be, like an infinite number of fishes and whales…
Selection Reminder: Flying Horse Editions’ Letterpress Happy Hour!
Wednesday, September 14 – Letterpress Happy Hour Like a lot of labor-intensive craft skills (lookin’ at you, knitting), letterpress printing – raised metal letters inked and pressed into heavy paper – has enjoyed a surge of popularity of late. Something about our daily routine of making text hit paper without even being in the same…
Lordy, Lordy! Hard Rock is 40!
Saturday, October 1st – Hard Rock’s 40th Birthday Bash: The Downtown Throwdown Hard Rock International is turning 40. Unlike most people turning 40, this person is extremely excited about it… and yes, a company legally has the same rights as a person so let’s get rid of the word company from this point on. Rock,…
Postcard from NYC: “Talk To Me” at MoMA
Normally, playing with your smartphone in the middle of an exhibit at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art will earn you dirty looks for fellow museumgoers at best, and a stern talking-to from security at worst. But Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects which is on display at MoMA now through…
Florida Independent: New oil slick spotted in the Gulf
The Florida Independent is posting today that there have been reports of a new oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, near BP’s Maconda oil well. Aljazeera English has a more detailed report on recent appearances of oil slicks and sheens turning up in the Gulf today, as well. So far, nobody else seems to…
The Revisionist Oscars: 2000
As films the likes of Bucky Larsson and I Don’t Know How She Does It starting to hit the theaters we know that, even though it might still be hot outside, summer is officially over. Yes. It’s almost Oscar season. The glorious four months of the year where good films open up every single weekend. As…
7-Eleven hot dog-flavored potato chips: when eating an actual hot dog is just too much work
According to the co-worker we caught eating them: “More mustardy than it has to be, with the satisfying musk of hot dog.” OK. I guess, knee-jerk “ick” factor aside, it’s no different than the (adorably packaged but fishy/styrofoamy) shrimp-flavored chips you see in Asian markets, or the wide range of flavors (flavours?) offered by English…
Selection Reminder: No-wave vets Swans tonight at the Social!
Tuesday, September 13 – Swans SWANS ARE NOT DEAD. That’s the message that appeared on the legendary New York no-wave veterans’ MySpace page beginning sometime last year, and it appears that for possibly the first time in quite awhile, something on MySpace proved accurate. Although Jarboe-less, Michael Gira and the gang released their first album…
