In 1996 playwright, activist, and screenwriter Eve Ensler gave birth not to a child but to a play known as The Vagina Monologues. The work — featuring three women waxing lyrical about good, bad, and ugly aspects of the vagina — has grown to be quite a precocious child: enjoying…
“The word cool in my day meant low temperature, nothing more,” explains Morton Glosser, real estate broker, avocado and lychee grower, human hotline for the South Florida Bluegrass Association, harmonica and banjo player, and founder of the bluegrass group Corn Country, where he goes by the alias Pop Corn. A…
Cast musician Rosie Flores in a Western and she’d definitely be an outlaw. While she doesn’t sport a black hat or garb (colorful cowboy boots that match her guitar are more her style), the gifted guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist often finds herself at odds with the law laid down by…
To put a curse on someone, insult them, or complain up a storm, there’s no better language than Yiddish. The 1000-year-old tongue, perpetually in danger of dying, boasts colorful expressions such as “six feet under baking bagels,” which means a person is in an untenable situation, or “don’t knock me…
Nobody can argue there’s something distinctly odd about New Orleans, Louisiana. There’s Mardi Gras, the yearly bacchanal possibly unrivaled around the world, where girls gone wild get captured on video in many mammary-revealing moments. There’s frightening foodie and short-lived sitcom star Emeril Lagasse. But New Orleans also is a city…
Tammy Faye just won’t go away. And that seems just fine with us. The heavily-made-up Praise the Lord Broadcasting/Heritage U.S.A. queen who cried her way into the hearts of the American public in the Eighties as wife of wayward televangelist Jim Bakker, sometime singer, and star of the documentary The…
Light and strong, aluminum historically has been considered one heavy metal. Abundant but lodged in the Earth’s crust and virtually unreachable, the element had to be isolated before it could be removed. This occurred around 1845, and the metal finally showed its shiny, exotic face at the Paris Exhibition of…
Actress Rita McKenzie is sitting under a hairdryer in a Sherman Oaks, California, beauty salon, but show-biz trooper that she is, she’s happily gabbing about her star turn in the off-Broadway smash, Ethel Merman’s Broadway. McKenzie, a TV, film, and musical stage veteran, has been eerily evoking Broadway belter Merman…
Imagine seeing a movie under the stars for a nickel or a vaudeville show. Such things could have happened indoors in Miami, especially if you were downtown at the Olympia Theater. Built in 1926 by Chicago architect John Eberson for Paramount Pictures, the Mediterranean Revival-style structure was one of many…
April 1999 was the last time a public peep was heard from George Sanchez — or maybe it was more like a squeal. That year the artist, who likes making big statements, mounted “monumento,” an installation commemorating the 38th anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Housed in the…
The hills were alive with The Sound of Music in 1965. Since 1999 the halls have been alive with the sound of Sing-a-Long Sound of Music. The final musical collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (Oklahoma, South Pacific) began its life on Broadway in 1959 and starred Mary…
Recent hot days of December have made Miamians moan, groan, and long for a big blast of Arctic air so they can don the moth-balled sweaters and coats hidden deep in their closets. Warm-weather lovers are crying wool! So it seems impossible to fathom that winter officially arrives Friday, December…
“Enter at your own risk,” warns interior decorator, furniture designer, and photography curator Juan Carlos Arcila-Duque about the Design District space where he’ll show the work of controversial Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Like many people in this unsure post-9/11 world, Arcila-Duque has scaled down recently, shuttering his large furniture showroom…
Watching Ann-Margret shimmy so energetically next to Elvis in kitschy movies such as Viva Las Vegas or stab people and set fire to things as an angry delinquent in 1964’s campy Kitten with a Whip so long ago, it’s hard to imagine her a senior citizen. Nevertheless the actress turned…
“What we have is a hard core of revolutionaries that have infiltrated half the Hollywood guild…. Hollywood is everywhere. Every small town in the country has got a moviehouse. We’re talking the hearts and the minds of a nation.” Thus warns a zealous FBI agent in Welsh director Karl Francis’s…
Some towns much older than ours proudly flaunt the fact that George Washington slept there. Among youthful Miami’s many dubious claims to fame: While onstage at Coconut Grove’s Dinner Key Auditorium in 1969, a very drunk Jim Morrison, lead singer for the Doors, allegedly exposed himself. He was arrested shortly…
You had no problem pounding out that first novel. In fact writing on a legal pad during your daily train commute to work, you’ve produced many more since that fateful first attempt. But getting published? That’s a different story altogether. Twenty-one — yes, twenty-one! — publishers rejected your manuscript. For…
A rocket blasts off, leaving a thick white cloud of smoke in its wake. A small private plane ascends from a faceless runway. “The Twentieth Century has produced a new man. A man on the move, curious, alert, with his eyes on the stars and his feet solidly on the…
As those of us forced to fashion a clear, convincing, and even entertaining story out of a scant 400 or so words know well, it’s damn tough! Imagine then writing an entire play — comedy, drama, musical — that lasts less than twenty minutes. Can’t be done, you scoff? Tell…
Notorious for their stuffy reputations, most classical music conductors can’t claim to have their own Website, let alone even know what the Internet is. Marin Alsop is different. Her easy-to-read site (marinalsop.com) features her bio, lists her credits and recordings, plus offers pictures, reviews, schedules, and even contact information. “Pretty…
When Murray Moss, owner of the seven-year-old SoHo boutique called moss, talks shop, it’s a bit different than a typical New York City storekeeper. Perhaps that’s because moss is not your ordinary store. The 7000-square-foot space boasts white walls and sleek glass-fronted display cases that show off lamps, candleholders, cutlery,…
Call architect Norman Giller the man who made MIMo. Of course in 1949 when he was designing buildings such as the first ever two-story motel, Sunny Isles’ Ocean Palm, the last thing on his mind was what style he was utilizing. “Styles are something that historians give to architecture,” says…
