Nothing human is entirely foreign, although the recognition of la condition humaine somehow offers small comfort in the interactive zoo of Miami, a jungle habitat freed from the constraints of normal society. The animals rule, lawlessness prevails, and the polite are left in the dirt like so many spoor droppings…
All my life I always said I’d never live past age 36. That’s how old was my personal savior, Marilyn Monroe, when she was murdered by the pigs or accidentally overdosed herself or — and I really doubt this — committed suicide. Besides, it makes a great excuse: So what…
The siren song of nightlife, an alluring chimera of torment and inspiration, the denizens of the night seized by endless hungers: hook me up with power and sex, put my name in boldface, fix my life. — nervy program requiring stamina and a high tolerance for debasement, the pop press…
Dusk is descending, the hour of promise and possibility, and the English writer Alexander Stuart is bouncing around his apartment in the falling light, pointing out the treasured artifacts of his life, the semiotic sign posts that somehow led to a strange new life on South Beach. At age 38…
I know I don’t act like it around here, I know you can’t really tell, but I am a trained professional journalist with nearly twenty years’ experience. I haven’t had many teachers, but the few I’ve had were the best. Mrs. Murphy in high school taught me the basics. Professor…
A new year, the dread urgency of the fin-de-siecle, civilization crumbling, and Miami, as ever, going for the baroque. Madonna adding muscle and visual punch to her New Year’s Eve frolic, regulars like Bruce Weber and Nan Bush cavorting with John Salley of the Miami Heat and male models as…
Damn it, Lionel, this would’ve been the perfect time. Why didn’t you go on national television and hype it? Oh, that’s right, you did. But America didn’t listen, did it, Mr. Goldbart? America refuses to adopt your new calendar, the one that would equal out the number of days in…
Welcome to my house full of junk. My wife has completed the biggest project since the building of Hoover Dam or the cutting of the Tamiami Trail, covering every wall and filling every nook in the house with spiffy wood racks on which she’s organized and alphabetized the two or…
Rat city, ugly little beasts growing fat and sleek in a tropical cornucopia, vermin functioning as the true parallel creatures to the human race, gorillas being nasty enough but essentially guileless. The mankind-as-rodent metaphor erupting in a truly linear fashion over the holidays, decidedly nonallegorical plague-bearers descending on our house…
Once more into the breach of Trashland USA, wallowing in the lurid and lewd, the frenzied countdown to the half-baked resolutions of the new year especially punishing, fueled by an ugly itch to wrest every conceivable diversion from the dregs. The process of simply going out, anywhere and everywhere, eventually…
You wanna play Xmas with me, buckwheat, I’ll play ya some freakin’ Xmas. So it turns out Luke Campbell is a nigger. Jesus Christ — speaking of which, Jesus was a black man, but no one disses Him (especially this time of year), although the government did back then –…
More than a few El Nuevo Herald staff members were impatient. Publisher Roberto Suarez, accompanied by editor Carlos Verdecia and Herald publisher Dave Lawrence, had called together about 60 staffers for a hastily arranged meeting. Granted the news was significant: After more than five years at the editorial helm, Verdecia…
There is one good thing about this. People can find me. Even if I’m not lost, were that ever the case. I try to avoid righting, or writing, or usually ranting, about racism. Don’t believe in it. All blood’s mixed. Stop me if you’ve heard this one — so these…
Oh by gosh, by golly, it’s Christmas time, the town that never stays home plunging headlong into a marathon of high-octane socializing. The populace mawkish and sort of forgiving, a regimen of endless bonhomie and goodwill taking its toll, mankind not naturally given to extended bouts of charity. Another seasonal…
The Miami story, wired up and ready to roll, the city functioning on scatterbrained creative circuity. Ordinary life, as of late, coming to resemble a pulp-market rewrite of Naked Lunch with touches of magical realism, outright pornography, and assorted knock-’em-dead gimmicks drawn from the cheaper forms of fiction. On the…
Yeah, so there’s this thing, like when you ask someone if they like a certain song, say Joshua Kadison’s “Jessie” (yo, Brother Chuck, check it, that’s the best I can do to plug the tune you turned me onto ’cause I think it’s overproduced, but it’s nice, bro, a tinge…
White Party week, a crush of the noble and base, the pure and putrid, undercut by the frenzy of renown, from Prince to the luminaries of the gay universe. Off to a rousing start at Paragon for “An Evening of South Beach,” coordinated by nine different AIDS organizations and the…
The other day I received one of the most articulate and thoughtful letters I’ve ever got and I wish I had space to sling the whole thing. Reis Baron wrote it to tell me how stupid I am to use the phrase “hottest street buzz in town” to describe bands…
Settle back and relax, it’s Prozac time. Life just doesn’t get any weirder — or much worse either — than this. A dicey proposition of alternating repulsion and fin-de-siäcle pleasures, the city drifting into a bizarre free-trade zone of arrested development, floating somewhere between St. Tropez, pre-war Berlin, and an…
This is time for no rock and roll, it’s time for gluttony and invasion. Time for football and fawning over whichever grandfather has the most money. Pass the mashed and die. Thanks. I’m lucky enough to have some corn (liquor) and to be lost in this maize. And to have…
Miami, a tumble through fortune and folly, the celebrated making random unscheduled cameo appearances, propping up a rapidly faltering production. Lincoln Road on a crushingly banal afternoon, the staff at Books & Books casually detailing their brushes with fame: Sinead O’Connor, Bill Murray, John Waters, Madonna buying glamour magazines, Mickey…
For the next six weeks or so, Americans will occasionally and collectively be nice to each other. It happens every year around the time it starts getting dark early — give, be generous, be kind, care, Thanksgiving, Xmas, all that rot. Pangaea lead singer Ani Espriella will begin appearing on…
