Nude Looks Like a Lady

You can take the lawyer out of law school, but you can’t take law school out of the lawyer. Attorney-turned-artist Ellen Harvey puts art cliché on trial. She infamously took the idea of landscapes to task when she painted oil pastorals among NYC’s graffiti tags and concrete pylons. Next she…

Cats With Chops

As Duke Ellington said, “Jazz has always been like the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.” This weekend, WDNA 88.9 FM has dedicated a whole film festival to such characters hopped up on hooch and horns. The 14th annual Miami Jazz Film Festival will open…

Herd on the Street

The last thing you wrangled was probably a TPS report, but it wasn’t so long ago that most Floridians made their living on steeds and heifers. HistoryMiami just opened “Florida Cattle Ranching: Five Centuries of Tradition,” which is infinitely more interesting than it sounds. Turns out Florida was the first…

The Boy Who Grew Too Much

Spotted over on 24th Street and NW 1st Court, this big boy dwarfs the surrounding Wynwood neighborhood. Have a graffiti tip for us? Send addresses and descriptions to cultist@miaminewtimes.com…

Abortion Fights Crime?

Here’s something to chew on: Know why the murder rate took a sudden dip in the 90s? No, it wasn’t stricter gun control laws or more police presence. The lower murder rate was a direct result of legalizing abortion in 1973. According to the authors of bestseller Freakonomics, criminals are…

Vixens at the Villa

Screw graduate degrees and career ladders. Everyone knows the best way for a lady to make real cash is to dress tarty and swindle her suitors. But leave it a writer from The Simpsons, David Mirkin, to make this classic plot device more perverse. In his 2001 film, Heartbreakers, a…

Army of Mörker

Don’t be afraid of “Mörker” — darkness in Swedish and also the name of a new exhibit on display through November 19 at Wynwood’s Calix Gustav Gallery (98 NW 29th St., Miami). There you’ll find Sweden’s Johan Björkegren, whose work is a real palette-cleanser for the Miami art scene. Although…

Don’t Mess With a Snap Diva!

​Look at you. All this time, you’ve just been subtly snapping at your waiter when impatient for the check. Back in the 90s, though, there were actual video tutorials, complete with slow-mo shots, to teach folks how to take snapping to the extreme. And by extreme, we mean snaps named…

Want Free Tickets to Pandemonium at the Arsht Center?

via faceboookLost and Found Orchestra​Pandemonium is the symphonic equivalent to Glee. Instead of teenie-boopers breaking out in spontaneous Broadway musicals, this show has pedestrians blowing on traffic cones like they were makeshift French horns. We’re giving away two tickets to opening night of the U.S. premiere of Pandemonium, but you’re…

Human Centipede Spawns Torture-Porn Cat Toys, Jewelry, and Tattoos

courtesy of IFC FilmsHuman Centipede’s evildoer.​Forget Silence of the Lambs. Now there’s a movie that’s trumps all existing worst case scenarios if you find yourself kidnapped. The Human Centipede is a recent Dutch horror film where captive tourists are sewn together, mouth to anus. We refuse to write those two…

Golem in the Ghetto

Centuries before Brad Pitt led a vengeful army of jews onscreen in Inglourious Basterds, rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel hatched a monster avenger to protect Prague ghettos. As the legend goes, he molded clay from the Vltava River, spoke in tongues, and gave life to an angry golem. This big-fisted…

Vampires Suck

Amid the cries of Team Jacob and Team Edward, there’s a faction of tweens chanting Team Vlad. That’s right — young adults have come to battle over who has the best vampire books. Stephenie Meyer is charged with making Twilight bloodsuckers too damn emo. There’s way too much talk about…

Growing Up on Stilts

If Miami had a French Quarter, it would be Stiltsville, the colorful houses built one mile off the coast of Cape Florida. Safely off the grid, girls got naked, men got boozy during Prohibition, and everybody lost a lot of cash at illegal craps tables. But beyond the lewd and…

Patricia Engel Brings Latina Lit to the Webster

How do you kill an Argentine? Make him stand on his ego and jump. So goes the old Colombian joke as told by Sabina, a Colombian-American girl from New Jersey, the daughter of immigrants, and the protagonist of Patricia Engel’s Vida. In one of Vida’s nine stories, Sabina spends time…

The Little Mermaid Is Your Life Coach

Just as we expected, we can blame a lot of our emotional baggage on Disney. In a new web comedy series, Advice to Young Girls From a Cartoon Princess, Second City’s Danielle Uhlarik presents nuggets of wisdom from animated classics, and the films’ creepy messages become uncomfortably clear. In The…