Last week something remarkable happened. Something I wasn’t certain was possible. Last week Alex Penelas became mayor. Oh, sure, I know he was elected mayor back in 1996, but all that did was confer on him a title. Until now Penelas has simply been playing mayor. He dresses up in…
Lead Stories *In April the Unique Recoveries collection agency in Bombay, India, hired six eunuchs to go to the homes or offices of obstinate debtors to embarrass them into paying up by dancing around and threatening to lift their saris to expose their “genitallessness.” Unique’s director said he expects his…
Miami May Be a Small Town, but It’s Home to One Very Big Ego Brett Sokol’s “arthouse” movie feature (“Missing the Big Picture,” June 17), while mostly excellent, also angered me. An anonymous local arts writer was quoted as saying, “Miami is the sticks. You don’t get art films in…
Lead Stories *Latest Diaper Research: Jill Furlough, age 31, of Lakenheath, England, told the London Daily Telegraph in April that she had been frightened by green sparks flying out of her one-year-old son Joshua’s disposable diaper. Scientists contacted by the newspaper said it was triboluminescence, a buildup of energy similar…
Alianza Nacional: Lost, Loony, and Illiterate It is with dismay, disgust, and horror that I read Alex Salinas’s article on Andres Orta (“A Mind in Exile”) in your June 10 issue. Poor bastard! Orta is waaaaay off course here. Obviously he is not very well informed on many issues. His…
That Mermaid Means War! Robert Andrew Powell’s article regarding Pow Wow (“Miami: See It Like a Pampered, Sheltered, Spoiled-Rotten Tour Operator from Munich,” June 10) was enough to make me explode. As a Miami Beach resident I know I have rights, and that I should not be shut off from…
Lead Stories *Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading (England) University told the Times of London in May that “several” firms had approached him about surgically implanting transponder microchips into their workers as a way of tracking their hours and whereabouts. Cybernetics expert Warwick last year put a chip into his own…
It came as no surprise that Phil Hamersmith’s memorial service this past Sunday was a standing-room-only affair. Hamersmith, who died last week after suffering a heart attack, had been a political force in South Florida for more than twenty years. The list of politicians who came to pay their final…
Lead Stories *Students enrolled in the pornography course at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, submitted final graded projects of fiction, photography, a video of a man’s eyes as he masturbates, and in one case, a bondage performance in which a female begs to be whipped with a rubber cat-o’-nine-tails, according…
The Doctor Is in a Snit As a fellow in the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner Department and as one of the subjects mentioned in Jose Luis Jimenez’s article “Quincy He Ain’t” (May 27), I feel it is important to correct certain facts and to provide additional information in considering the quality…
People often ask me: “Jim, is the county always going to be a mess? Are corruption and incompetence so pervasive that eliminating them is simply impossible?” I’ll grimace slightly in response, nod my head, and say, “I sure as shit hope so. Otherwise I’ll be out of a job.” Lately,…
No Class and No Response I want to thank Ted B. Kissell for keeping the William Clarke scandal alive (“No Class,” May 27). Following his first informative article, I launched my own campaign to have this parasite removed from the school-district payrolls. I have been met with complete indifference at…
Lead Stories *Practicing Up for Yugoslavia: In April an air force pilot training at the Warren Grove Bombing Range in New Jersey missed his target by a mile and a half, landing in a state forest preserve, and starting a fire that burned more than eighteen square miles. Leading Economic…
If events at Miami International Airport took the form of a Western, then three months ago G.T. “Tom” Arnold would have walked into one of the airport saloons, tossed his Stetson on the bar, and announced his arrival by declaring, “Boys, there’s a new sheriff in town, and there’s gonna…
Memo to Feds: Wake Up! Jim DeFede’s column “Inside Job, Part 2” (May 20), dealing with bail-bond “king” Jim Viola and corrupt guards at the Miami-Dade County Jail, was a great follow-up story to “Inside Job” (May 6). “Part 2” only reinforces the popular belief that U.S. law-enforcement agencies (more…
Lead Stories *An April Associated Press report from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, described recent intense competition for dead bodies. The government has been offering $100 to any family that will relocate deceased relatives’ bodies from a certain graveyard to another, to make way for a new road. Families that declined,…
Lord, Govern Yourself Accordingly Regarding Jacob Bernstein’s “Shhhhh: Nature in Progress” (May 13), here is a draft letter to God the Almighty, from lobbyist Miguel DeGrandy: Dear God, Reference the natural treasure Biscayne National Park you put next to South Dade. It is in the wrong place and must be…
Lead Stories *Frenchman Richard Moureau upset Brit Terry Burrows in the European Window Cleaning Championship in Paris in March by wetting and streaklessly wiping three standard panes in 14.31 seconds. Moureau’s time was very fast, but according to a Wall Street Journal report, a jurisdictional dispute between the International Window…
MEMO Date: May 20, 1999 To: The Dade State Attorney’s Office, The Miami-Dade Police Department, The Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, The Florida Division of Insurance, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (Miami Field Office), The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, and The Internal Revenue Service…
Recently I devoted this space to a modest essay about the renaissance of Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road Mall. The headline: “Lincoln Road Miracle: From Scruffy Derelict to Enchanting Shoppers’ Paradise.” The piece generated a fair amount of mail, most of which we published the following week. We didn’t have room…
I love baseball. And being a Yankees fan, I also love to watch the Baltimore Orioles get clobbered. So last week’s game between the O’s and a group of Cuban all-stars was great fun for me. I must admit, though, that while watching this particular game, as well as the…
Lead Stories *According to an April Associated Press report, the University of Illinois managed to find women to fill fifteen laboratory positions in which the only job is to sniff pig manure. They work three hours per week at $15 an hour attempting to recognize certain chemical markers in the…
