Anonymous Blogger Targets County Cop

An anonymous blogger named the Straw Buyer has been dedicating a serious amount of bandwidth to bash and ridicule the Miami-Dade Police detective.Apparently, the Straw Buyer became fascinated with Baluja this past October, when the 11-year county cop arrested Coral Gables lawyer Delaila Estefano, John Romney, and Michael Martinez for stealing someone’s identity…

Sean Casey Gets a Hand from a Top Gun

Casey is serving a 12-year prison term for running down and killing an elderly woman in Miami Beach, leaving the scene, and then fleeing the country to avoid prosecution. He has an August 13 court hearing before Judge John Thornton to unseal transcripts of secretly recorded conversations he had with his former criminal defense lawyer, Milton…

MP3 of the Day: Adriana Calcanhotto

Last week Head Spins brought you into the studio of WDNA, site of Gene de Souza’s long-running Café Brasil. As we said in the article, any Brazilian worth his or her weight in music pays a visit to the show when they hit town, and that included Adriana Calcanhotto, who…

Lawsuit Claims Opa-locka Slumlord Stole Thousands While Tenants Died

Residents at Opa-locka’s Gardens Apartments — perhaps the city’s sketchiest property — endured 5 murders, 656 assaults, 34 robberies, 25 shootings, and 80 stolen cars during one four-year stretch, according to police records. And the apartments remain the hottest spot in the city for cops, says Capt. Rex Galindo, a spokesman…

Flyer of the Week: Christian Death at PS14 August 9

It was 1979 and punk was being born again in the glitter-flecked primordial muck of Los Angeles. Late-blooming skinheads and bands like Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, and the Germs were bashing the West Coast hardcore scene into shape, using little more than blunt force. For most fans of aggro…

Local Girl Thought She Could Dance, and Indeed She Could

Contrary to the way it seems, Riptide does not watch every reality TV show. Our TVs are seldom set to anything involving dance, but perhaps we should have caught some So You Think You Can Dance this season, because 18-year-old Miami student Jeanine Mason won. Yes, she did flamenco, the lambada,…

MP3 of the Day: “Totally Tanya” by Dynas

Broward-based MC Dynas is one of the local hip-hop underground’s stealth forces. He may not perform every weekend at the usual suspect venues, but when he surfaces, it’s always with something worth stopping to listen to. Raised in New York City, his style is stamped with his hometown’s golden-era lyricism…

Friday Food Funnies: Calvin Trillin On A Chinese Dinner In Hell

The Tummy Trilogy, the 1994 compilation of Calvin Trillin’s three food books (American Fried; Alice, Let’s Eat; and Third Helpings), contains enough funny — and brilliant — observations on eating to fill Friday Food Funnies for years. There is certainly no other food writer that can play on the same…

Notes From the Soundboard: Something Blue

To read past installments of Notes from the Soundboard, click here. One constant theme of this column is a fixation on bands and artists that somehow fell through the cracks that occur within pop music’s lengthy trajectory. That’s one hazard of rock’s rich repertoire — so many artists, but so…

Maggotron and DXJ Miami Bass Video Hits Collection

As long as we’re talkin’ bout Maggotron, we might as well do the right thing and put some of his sounds in your earholes. Get ready for robot voices, vocoder effects, screw type vocals, movie quotes, scratch noises, more cowbell, and the drum patterns that now define old school…

Letters from the Issue of August 6, 2009

Boxed In Loved it so much she’s afraid: “Million Dollar Maybe” (Natalie O’Neill, July 30) was great — just crazy-cool. It makes me want to cry to see a woman so strong and determined. You go, girl! Good thing I saw Christina Swanson’s pic, so I know not to mess…

Miami Social: Who the Hell Text Messages About Abortion?

George and Martha of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Burt Pugach and Linda Riss of Crazy Love. Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan of Us Weekly. Pop culture is full of quite literally insane couples who manage to stay together no matter how much we’re secretly rooting for their relationship’s demise…