Ahh, show biz! One minute you’re wearing long hair and skintight Spandex onstage; the next minute you’re wearing long hair and flowing robes onstage. Blond-locked Sebastian Bach, onetime wild frontman for popular metal band Skid Row (1987-1996) and more recently leader of the supergroup the Last Hard Men, can relate…
After enjoying a smidgen of success in New York over a couple years, the last thing DJ Ursula 1000 (a.k.a. Alex Gimeno) anticipated during a 2000 homecoming gig in Miami was a debacle. But the place where he grew up and honed his musical chops wasn’t quite so welcoming. He…
All throughout our childhood, those Saturday-morning Schoolhouse Rock jingles assured us that three was the magic number. Journalist and radio producer Gustavo Noguera likes the number nine, particularly the bracing Ninth Symphony written by Romantic-era composer Ludwig van Beethoven. No matter that the German kicked the bucket 175 years ago…
“It’s smart, sassy, very Jewish, and rings true in a lot of ways,” says Florence Kaufman, not about the Miami Jewish Film Festival, which she founded six years ago under the umbrella of the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education, but about Amy’s Orgasm, one of the 30 movies…
Fernando Perdomo’s friends jokingly refer to him as Chewbacca. And with his formidable height, unruly brown mop, and sometimes copious facial hair, the musician does bear a slight resemblance to the cantankerous Wookiee from the Star Wars epics. However, given the gentle Perdomo’s penchant for seamlessly appearing and disappearing from…
Imagine scheduling an arts event right after September 11, 2001. Certainly not the brightest idea. Crowds, frightened for their safety and feeling a bit guilty, wouldn’t be in the mood to whup it up and have fun. But some presenters like artist/gallery owner Franklin Goldman, director of The Spanish Monastery…
Jesus is big. He always has been. The subject of songs, musical plays, books, and movies. His catchy handle used in the name of bands and once tactlessly uttered as a basis for comparison by John Lennon, bragging about the Beatles’ level of fame. Six or seven years ago, after…
“I had the whole nine yards — the tunnel, the colors, and the lights,” recalls actor/director Adalberto J. Acevedo. Not of his illustrious stage debut but of a difficult time in the hospital two years ago; after enduring open-heart surgery, he suffered a bout of ventricular tachycardia and nearly took…
Believe it or not, long before Yoko Ono became Mrs. John Lennon, she did have a life and identity of her own. As an avant-garde artist over the past 40 years, she has produced a significant and influential body of work. Yes, we’re talking about that Yoko Ono. The one…
Check beneath overpasses throughout Miami during the evening and you’re sure to find more than just the homeless, assures Greynolds Park naturalist Paula Schneeburger. Making their home there as well: bats. Yes, you’re not in Transylvania anymore, Dorothy. South Florida can lay claim to a small population of the world’s…
For artists Gina Cunningham and Peter Eves, innocently pursuing their own interests inadvertently leads to promoting international understanding. In the early Nineties, their fascination with all things Haitian resulted in them opening South Beach’s highly touted Tap-Tap restaurant, serving generous portions of Haitian cuisine and culture to clueless South Floridians…
According to the American Library Association, Saturday, September 21, marks the first day of Banned Books Week. For the past 21 years the ALA along with several other co-sponsors have been exalting free speech and expression by commemorating one’s right to read anything. Fighting tenaciously against the closed-minded minions who…
A possibly apocryphal tale about Little Haiti nightspot Churchill’s says that one night an armed man bounded in, demanding everyone at the bar hand over their wallets and valuables, which they reluctantly did. Then he ordered them to lie face down on the floor. That’s where the terrified crowd drew…
A brigade of strangers firing up chainsaws in your back yard was already an ominous sight. It only got worse when your property was left looking like a hurricane had just blown through. Orange trees eliminated, grapefruits gone. The citrus canker killers didn’t mean any harm. They were just following…
The toughest part of being an international megastar? “Being in that very high income bracket,” admits Dame Edna Everage, who has put in more than her share of hours for her dollars and pounds. On the heels of co-hosting the Queen of England’s jubilee concert, appearing on Ally McBeal, and…
Put a bit of innocuous paper in the hands of an artist and God knows what you’ll get. Dolls, confetti, a banal figure study, an oversize book, a giant airplane? Such and more can be seen in ArtCenter/South Florida’s current exhibition “Pa-per-view.” Ostensibly energized by the renovation of the facility’s…
The Beatles in 1964: young, wild, and not exactly free. (John had already been married to Cynthia for two years.) But gaze at the black-and-white photographs hanging in a makeshift gallery in the Radisson Deauville Resort’s lobby and the world seems transformed to a more simple, magical place — pre-CD,…
Tune in to the television news and you’ll hear that Miami is one of the worst places in the country to drive. Take a short ride and find out firsthand. Speeding, running red lights, weaving in and out of lanes, turning without using blinkers, cutting other vehicles off — reckless…
Actor/musician Philip Michael Thomas seems to be spending his career surrounded by animals. TV partner Sonny Crockett’s pet, Elvis the alligator, and brutal drug kingpins bedeviled him on the Eighties drama Miami Vice. Now he is coming up against creatures again — Martin the Frog, Dolly the Duck, Harriet the…
Goulds. It’s a place that sounds as if it belonged somewhere else. Goulds, West Virginia, maybe. Or Goulds, North Dakota. Certainly not Goulds, Florida. But more than a few lifelong South Floridians have driven a little too fast down U.S. 1 and certainly missed the town, which developed in the…
Utter the name Skipper Chuck to a long-time Miami kid and he’ll be transported back to a world of “peace, love, and happiness,” where a gentle host held his young audience in thrall, plying them with cartoons, puppets, sidekicks (including zany Scrubby and wholesome babe Cher), and games such as…
They met at a local open-mike night in 1997, and although they grew up across the country from each other, they felt an instant connection, almost as if they were related. An Oklahoma native, Amy Carol Webb learned to raise her voice early, crooning around the Southwest with her three…
