Ultra Music Festival, the annual one-day mega-rave that brought out an estimated 35,000 people this past March, is going to have some steep competition when it returns to Bayfront Park for a seventh edition in 2005. Club Space, the biggest nightclub in the city, is pitching a rival festival. According…
“You can’t be a happy newspaper columnist, you can’t be Erma Bombeck,” Carl Hiaasen insists, stabbing the air with a forkful of grouper as he lays out the tenets of Journalism 101 over lunch. “All of my best work comes from some kind of anger. If you go up to…
Trust Us, Put Your Ballot in Here And don’t worry, we’ll take care of any “problems”: Thanks to Kirk Nielsen for covering one problem with the absentee balloting in his article “Absentee Minded” (October 28). Here’s what you would find had you used your absentee ballot. In the instructions for…
Democracy: It’s All About Tough Choices A District 7 voter ponders his options: After reading Francisco Alvarado’s article about the county commission race between Xavier Suarez and Carlos Gimenez (“The X Man Returns,” October 21), I say wow — what an impressive list of political heavyweights backing Gimenez, all of…
Julieta Venegas was the big winner at this past Thursday’s MTV Video Music Awards Latin America, and you just have to be happy for such a buoyantly talented singer-songwriter and snappy dresser, not to mention that Venegas looks like a flower. Not that there’s vegetative stillness about Venegas, she just…
“I don’t support it.” — Carlos Alvarez on maintaining Miami-Dade’s gay rights ordinance, speaking in Spanish, August 28, 2004 “It’s a law … The citizens have spoken.” — Alvarez on upholding Miami-Dade’s gay rights ordinance, speaking in English, August 29, 2004 Give Carlos Alvarez credit for being a quick study…
Porn Defined You are holding it in your hands right now: The American Heritage dictionary describes “pornography” as “lurid or sensational material.” Under that definition, Kris Conesa’s one-sided hatchet job on Bangbus.com certainly qualifies as pornography (“The Ride to Perdition,” October 14). Please don’t misconstrue my comments. I’m no fan…
It was very bad luck for radio station WLRN that two of the three presidential debates fell during the week of its semiannual fundraising marathon; the station interrupted the collection-plate-passing to air Bush vs. Kerry. A potential disruption more immediate, tragic, and profound for both the station’s staff and thousands…
So I Said to Donna Shalala… One billionaire’s recollection of the first presidential debate: In reference to The Bitch’s observations on the presidential debate at the University of Miami (“Definitive Gaze,” October 7), those of us who were fortunate enough to attend the event also were able to listen to…
One of the zaniest, most influential horror films of all time has been disinterred and lovingly necromanced back to undeadness by Claudia and Larry Brahms, owners of Miami’s very-much-alive MTI Home Video. Save for its brief theatrical release in 1970, I Drink Your Blood has never before been viewable in…
Somewhere in Texas a two-time presidential aspirant is laughing, no doubt feeling more than a little vindicated. When he first announced his Oval Office intentions, the pundits were dismissive of this rough-edged Texan. Those self-made business-mogul credentials he kept touting? Bah! Merely the results of cronyism and shameless influence-peddling. And…
People Belong in Bicentennial Park Only the unenlightened would pave over the last waterfront green space: The county wants us to vote yes on bond issue #8 and spend $275 million on two massive museums in Bicentennial Park, hijacking the last green space on the water in the heart of…
Living in a democratic society is time-consuming. Under totalitarian regimes, no one has to spend valuable hours evaluating candidates. The deal with dictators is that they abolish voting, and as long as you don’t try to depose them or say bad things about them, they don’t drag you in front…
Let’s hope Laurence Tribe has a finely honed sense of irony. It was nearly four years ago that Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional scholar, saluted the Florida Supreme Court for ordering a manual recount of our state’s now-notorious presidential votes. The court had declared it was duty-bound to “safeguard the…
An ambitious and costly plan to put two museums in Bicentennial Park came under attack this week when the Urban Environment League demanded dramatic changes to the proposal and an influential art collector voiced his complete opposition to the development idea. The Miami Art Museum, the Miami Museum of Science,…
Toronto would seem an odd place to take the pulse of Latin cinema. Sure, you can buy Cuban cigars, fresh from Havana, at any of the corner newsstands that dot the city’s downtown — there’s no embargo here, compañero. However, actual flesh-and-blood Cubans, or indeed Latinos of any national stripe,…
Prominent Lobbyist Exposes Breast “If successfully suckling at the public teat is a crime, then consider me guilty!” As a lawyer who is well past his early development years, I was a little surprised by Rebecca Wakefield’s statement in “Rage Against the Machines” (September 23) to the effect that I…
Life is tough for old musicians. Just ask Ricky Williams — not the pot-smoking, team-quitting ex-Dolphin. This Williams is a six-and-half-foot-tall, blind piano player, lately of the Forge, currently of nowhere in particular. For the past decade Williams played piano a couple of shows a week at the club most…
The Story Is Not All Right How easy to avoid the tough questions and aim for the sensational: Rebecca Wakefield’s article “The Kids Aren’t All Right” (September 16) was a sensationally crass attempt at journalism. Although the information she used may be publicly accessible, her “look at these nutcases” portrayal…
The beckoning of a pay phone ringing on a derelict downtown corner, in front of a seedy convenience store, or better yet, in the arid lobby of an office building, offers the thrill of random human contact, or at least the opportunity to generate good prank karma by helping the…
The clearest lesson from the August 31 county mayoral election: $1.8 million just doesn’t buy what it used to. That was the size of candidate José Cancela’s immense campaign war chest, and it delivered only a distant fifth-place finish for the media mogul turned pol. Contacted by Kulchur, Cancela declined…
Bus People: Don’t Bother Complaining Miami-Dade Transit customer service — now there’s an oxymoron: Kudos to Francisco Alvarado for exposing the mismanagement and lack of commitment to customer service so rampant at the Miami-Dade Transit Agency (“Critical Mass Transit,” September 2). My dependency on transit is a constant frustration and…
