Blue Jay way
Jay-Z picks the wrong partner for this design
Survivors jilt
Another dazzling animated adventure, another aggravating hero
Interludes with the vampire
An uneven horror drama from South Korea
This Little Underground
Despite the asterisk of a couple of years off between versions 1.0 and 2.0, Will’s Pub just celebrated its 14-year anniversary, which is remarkable for two reasons: First, that owner Will Walker is still working with his original liver; second, that the scene institution is a bona fide beacon of Orlando’s cultural history, something we…
Live Active Cultures
Months of rumor-mongering. Weeks of watching and waiting. Eons of anxious anticipation. And it all adds up to this: the aphrodisiac every adrenaline addict aches for; the instant before that euphoric first hit of energy. I’m flat on my back, staring into a stormy sky, and my ass is sliding steadily backward out of my…
Happytown
By now you’re familiar with the meme of unexpected choreography in public spaces: a lunchtime crowd milling around a mall or museum or tourist trap seems to be going about its merry way until, out of nowhere, one person throws an arm up, makes a face and starts channeling Barbra Streisand or Judy Garland while…
Police Beat
Aug. 26 (2009-405838) 7:15 a.m.: All right, so the verdict’s in: My better angels have prevailed, and the Mug Shot of the Week is relegated to the dustbin of this newspaper’s archives, alongside such long-forgotten, sometimes misbegotten features as Ask a Dominatrix! and News I Don’t Care About. Thanks to everyone — and there were…
Singing its praises
Glee;9 p.m. Wednesday;Fox Here’s something you don’t see every day on network TV – a drama that’s actually fun. Glee, which revolves around an Ohio high-school teacher’s efforts to turn a mediocre glee club into a championship team, is wickedly funny, remarkably energetic and beautifully acted and choreographed. Ryan Murphy (Popular, Nip/Tuck), who has spent…
A really big show
I was 16 years old the last time the Beatles invaded the United States to the degree that the release of Harmonix Music Systems’ new interactive video game, The Beatles: Rock Band, has. It was 1995 and The Beatles Anthology documentary and subsequent box set tie-in of rarities transformed my curiosity about the group into…
Culture 2 Go
Wonderful wizardry The Wiz Through Oct. 3 at Theatre Downtown 2113 N. Orange Ave. 407-841-0083 www.theatredowntown.net $18 The Wiz, an African-American musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was a long-running Broadway hit that opened in 1975 and ran for four years and 1,672 performances. It was a groundbreaking production in…
The Opera is dead. Long live the Opera!
It wasn’t quite the glass-shattering crescendo opera lovers would have expected from the end of such a long, dramatic act; it didn’t even carry the emotional heft of a fading pianissimo in slowly dimming light. ; Instead, the July 30 auction of the remaining assets of the 51-year-old Orlando Opera Company’s administrative home at the…
Pulling rank
Damn you, Flickchart. For the past several months, I have toiled — unpaid, mind you — as one of 23,000 beta testers at www.flickchart.com. It’s a website designed specifically to frustrate and antagonize the user, to stimulate heated debate among friends and internal self-loathing. Yet I can’t break away, and considering my output pales in…
In the name of love
‘Pride” tends to be one of those condescending code words for any event that combines minorities with a good time. But this year, the term holds special meaning for the Orlando Hispanic Film Festival, now in its third year, because they have finally been embraced by a proper venue. Packing their things and moving from…
DVDs Nuts!
Deadgirl Sometimes the best ideas are contained within mediocre films, especially in the recent milieu of indie horror. To wit: In Deadgirl, two high-school virgins skip school to explore an abandoned mental institution and discover a chained-up, naked woman who looks dead but isn’t. Appallingly, one of the boys decides to lose his virginity by…
Rolling in dough
Pizza Fusion 7563 W. Sand Lake Road Orlando, FL 32819 407-351-3360 http://www.pizzafusion.com/orlando Scalini’s Pizza ‘n Pasta 5106 Dr. Phillips Blvd. Orlando, FL 32819 407-291-9349 http://www.scalinispizza.com In case you haven’t noticed, it appears pizzerias are gravitating toward an “out with the old, in with new” approach these days. Gone are the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, white-shirted dough-tossers and,…
Blister
It’s these little things, the floorboard creaks and air-conditioner whispers, the chatter of raindrops on dirt puddles mingling with the syncopated crazy baby voices — “limburger,” they say, over and over in hard German coughs, “limbur-GER!” — in my head, that make just sitting here such an insane endeavor. The sound of silence is a…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) I don’t think I’m being unduly optimistic when I speculate that you’re on the verge of achieving a ringing victory over your bad self. What makes me so confident that this development is in the works? Well, in recent weeks you have been dealing more forthrightly and intelligently with the lowest…
Savage Love
As a 43-year-old single gay ; guy, I recently had my first spanking experience and am now feeling extreme guilt and self-loathing. ; Long story short, I answered an online personal ad, went to this guy’s house and let him paddle me. There was no sex other than me jerking myself while getting hit. Now…
