Show business, the new opiate of the masses, rife with ritualized pageantry and comforting recreational delusions, enveloping and pernicious as a cult. Everyone’s favorite industry pursued with the fervor that English intellectuals of the Twenties once brought to the Catholic Church, communism, and buggery, the nuances of devotion lost in…
A whole new era for “Program Notes.” Yes, kids, we’ve moved up to baby photos. Oh, stop crying. In September 1989 Meat Loaf told me about his latest project, an album being written by Jim Steinman, who had authored the monster smash Bat out of Hell LP in 1977. It…
The best thing that happened to me last week was getting to see my dad. Trust me, you don’t want to hear about the worst. That Natural Causes thing’s pretty cool, they won some money and support from Tanqueray, good for them, they deserve it. Just one little payback is…
Halloween weekend, the national holiday for the nightlife industry, a surreal but profitable refraction of ordinary club existence, sort of like Christmas without basic human values. The same pervasive air of forced jollity and indulgence — a twisted pomade of resentment, longing, and touches of genuine good feeling — piled…
The breaking filth beat, learning too much about people, most of it unpleasant. Lurk around enough crowded rooms, nod politely at appropriate conversational junctures, and a pitiless deluge of errant behavior will sweep over the unwary: distasteful personal revelations, the private hell of celebrities-I-have-known, the dank secrets of friends and…
Now do I get it, now do I have a clue? Doubtful, but I heard hope. Lots of it. I was pretending I was dreaming that I was a normal person, heading out after work for a few beers (very few, actually) and to hear some people play guitar and…
A surrealistic sojourn in the City of Angels, the American dreamscape, glittery and cruel as a mirage, an eerie augury of Miami’s destiny. Mired in the sheer exhilaration of modern vulgarity — all small-change renown and bargain-basement chic — and tumbling headlong into an uncertain future, haunted by the glorious…
Forgot all about this nonsense, didn’tcha? In between the $250 brake job (first estimate: six bills) at Meineke (where you pay less or they screw you) and the home fuel-pump replacement (thanks for the assist, Carlos), my wife and I sought brief respite in Naples, and no I don’t mean…
In late August the news staff of El Nuevo Herald filled out an employee survey, conducted every three years by Knight-Ridder, Inc., at each of its 29 dailies. The poll is designed to measure employee satisfaction and to seek solutions to problems. Results gathered from El Nuevo’s news staff of…
Once more into the breach, another onslaught of rigorous fun, another year of hope triumphing over experience. The season, a heady brew of distractions and rough amusements, greeted with the usual mix of dread and delight. Miami’s annual march through the winter solstice, the city primed to bask in the…
The party circuit, an ugly scramble for the hollow moment, the regulars rooting around like epicene little pigs, chasing after trifles and courtesies. The true addicts haunted by the sweetest prize possible, the ideal phantasmagoria: a gathering lousy with glitz and glitter, riddled with the elite, and better yet, entirely…
Miami, another year of hype and hustle in the city of ambition, another rush to seize the moment in the town that glamour built. A tropical metropolis tumbling pell-mell into the consciousness of the world, simultaneously hyperventilating and falling apart, uncannily like an overextended Caribbean nation with attitude problems. Warm,…
Near the end of some of his live shows Steve Forbert sings about how “you cannot win if you do not play.” Being a certified loser, I wouldn’t know. In the summer season of the Southwest YMCA basketball league, the New Times team won its conference and played last Thursday…
Rosh Hashanah, a new year, a new beginning, a new attitude of unsettling contentment, gooey delight reigning in the house of nice. The first traces of autumn and renewal, born again after a difficult period, the usual endless summer doldrums of whiny personal crises, Freudian black holes, and various fabulous…
The other night about 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. at Spo-dee-o-dee, just for fun — I wasn’t on X, I wasn’t even ecstatic — I kept hugging people. I can’t remember everyone I hugged, although I do recall a warm embrace with fellow slacker-critic-poseur-writer Mike “Teddy Bear” Burrell, because he’s really…
The essence of the Florida Keys, as regularly conveyed in the sports pages of the Herald, consists of perpetual leisure and fun. It’s all about fishermen having the times of their lives, splendid international sailboat races, and gripping offshore powerboat duels. Much of the credit for this alluring image of…
You know the bomb is mack when you spot John Hood at a rock and roll show in a place like Stephen Talkhouse. But there he was, the most dapper doorman and prop promoter on South Beach, the guy the press’ll never stop hyping as an “intellectual thug,” the man…
September song, a seasonal dirge for a cruelly unyielding landscape, the brain a vicious jumble of frippery and unsavory associations, one vast over-the-top Hitchcock dream sequence. The internal nightmare curiously more tolerable than reality, lately a battleground straight out of cable television hell, uncannily like a Jane Whitney trash talk…
My parents taught me lots of things, like never lie, cheat, steal, or take advantage of people. The lessons came in handy the other day on the streets of downtown Miami. In fact, they saved me twelve dollars. It went down like this: A black man with a gray beard…
Sometimes I wonder if I could write one of these columns without ever mentioning music. Like my idol, Robert Steinback of the Miami Herald, just ideas, thoughts, mammals replacing insects, insects replacing thoughts back to ideas. Am I starting to read like my other idol, Tom Austin? Big Love takes…
The dog days of the killing season, tempers fraying, minds unraveling, the dark reaches of the collective unconsciousness bubbling up to the surface like an evil cancer, a plague upon the hot bottom of the Earth. Lost and dispirited in the seventh circle of the inferno, the reassuring tug of…
Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving, the fortunate and feckless alike craving something beyond their fair share of the available resource pool. The rich demanding discounts and getting richer, the disenfranchised sliding down the totem pole, the media fighting over scraps like jesters at the king’s court,…
