Letters for December 28, 2006-January 3, 2007

Small-town Lament The Jenne mob moved in: As I sit back and read “Cuckoo for Coconuts” (Bob Norman, December 21), I think of three things, and each is very sad: 1) “Civil Servant”: Mayor Oliver Parker and Ken Jenne should look this up and remember who they really are. Whether…

Live It Down, Dontrelle

What Can He Say? What to say about the Dontrelle Willis arrest? There’s a lot of mundane thoughts and questions that come to mind. Why, someone could write an entire column on the issue of why a multimillionaire athlete didn’t have a driver (oh, and they did). But I don’t…

Molly Might Be Found

Molly … thanks to this article by Wanda J. DeMarzo and Diana Moskovitz in the Miami Herald this morning. A tipster says Molly Selby, the mother of hospitalized baby Patrick, might be in Miami right now, but I emphasize the “might,” because it’s just one lead and it’s not substantiated…

Miami Herald: Best Paper In the Country?

Laid up this morning with a cold from the bowels of mordor (yeah I’m a geek like that sometimes, and I didn’t fail to see a little bit of the TNT hobbit-fest last weekend). Yesterday I was sneezing fistfuls of extremely watery snot all over the place. Last evening it…

Deck the Halls With Waste and Folly

Sometimes, all it takes is a single, seemingly benign question to disturb the balance of a deeply complacent town. So it is in Sunrise, a community that from all its outward appearances is just another sprawling west Broward County suburb where nothing as interesting as political scandal ever seems to…

Cuckoo for Coconuts

A hundred-and-fifty years ago there probably would have been tar and feathers involved. Pitchforks and a greased rail would have likely also come into play. Looked at that way, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Mayor Oliver Parker can be thankful. He’s only facing a recall petition, an endless stream of insults, and the undying…

Blubber for Cash

Nothing troubles Tailpipe more than the sight of a tubby kid who can barely climb over a park bench or run around a track. The ‘Pipe wants to say: Hey, little dude, lay off the doughnuts and get a physical life. American kids have been fattening up faster than you…

Home for the Holidays

It’s been a while since the days when I lived in a hovel by T’s Lounge out by Palm Beach International Airport. During those glory days, there were some months when my weekdays began with a bike ride past the strip bar’s suggestive marquee and another six miles to my…

Letters for December 21-27, 2006

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me Hollywood’s giving them money for what?: Just add Neil (On the) Fritz to the growing list of jerky, incompetent Hollywood officials (“Spinning Straw,” Tailpipe, December 7). Wow! $71 million for the Hollywood Art District — what a great use of taxpayer funds. Not! At least…

Baby Patrick In State Custody

Molly’s Tattoo: “Sick Girl” Over Boxing Gloves I got some clarification on what, exactly, can be done if disappeared mother Molly Selby is found. There are warrants on her in Washington state for violating her probation, so any local law enforcement agency can pick her up on those and hold…

A Mother’s Plea

Molly Selby It looks like Cathy Winters is in for a heartbreaking Christmas. Her new grandson, Patrick, is in a hospital in Pembroke Pines, fighting for his tiny life after being born two months premature in a transient camp restroom near the Everglades. And her drug-addicted daughter, Patrick’s mother, has…

The Gyllenhaal Test

Here’s some true or false questions about soon-to-be Miami Herald editor Anders Gyllenhaal, who is leaving the Minneapolist Star Tribune to take the helm at SFla’s most widely circulated daily in a couple of months: 1. He is uncle to movie star siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. 2. During his…

A Christmas Travesty

The Palm Beach Post’s front page today is dominated by a huge Ipod advertisement. No, wait … it’s supposed to be an article. Under the heading, “Christmas Gift Ideas,” complete with a bow, was the giant headline “Accessorizing your Ipod.” Then a story by reporter Stephen Pounds about all the…

Isiah’s All Right

Couple of thoughts about two of the day’s biggest stories. First, hiking on a giant mountain in the middle of winter with the threat of blizzard, in terms of death risk, makes race car driving look like lacrosse. Why isn’t anybody in the media pointing that out? Climb a mountain…

You’ve Come A Long Way, Sparky

Tiny Davis When I read the stories about the botched death by lethal injection of Angel Nieves Diaz on Death Row, I can’t help but recall the truly horrific state-sanctioned deaths that have occurred in Florida. You know, like the times that the electric chair, ghoulishly called ‘Old Sparky,’ set…

Pulp Person of The Year: John Kent Cooke Jr.

Cooke Is At Right Florida Keys Community College President Bill Seeker must have really thought he was sticking it to the town’s daily newspaper when he pulled all the school’s advertising from its pages. He may have had dreams of finally putting the Citizen in its place, of heeling it…

News Alert: Fiedler Retiring

Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler just announced his retirement to the newsroom. Herald alum Anders Gyllenhaal, now editor and senior vice president of The Minneapolis Star Tribune, is replacing him at the end of February. The Herald already has the story leading its web site. It quotes Fiedler: ”It has…

A Meager Friday Offering

Our Guy Off deadline and hopefully done with my battle with the Daily Business Review (a publication Pulp readers know I usually respect), so it’s time to post something. I mean I don’t believe that DBR should be suppressing its own stories, and I think Christensen’s decade-old story is a…

The Answer … To A Stupid Question

Allen Iverson to the Miami Heat? The idea is ridiculous, but leave it to Pat Riley — the king of supposed quick fixes — to slobber all over the idea, damn near literally. According to Israel Guttierez in today’s Miami Herald, the Heat coach and president said: ”I would be…

Deck the Halls With Waste and Folly

Sometimes, all it takes is a single, seemingly benign question to disturb the balance of a deeply complacent town. So it is in Sunrise, a community that from all its outward appearances is just another sprawling west Broward County suburb where nothing as interesting as political scandal ever seems to…

FCAT Scratch Fever

Don’t ask us how we got hold of it (that’s not something we’re prepared to say), but New Times managed to get its hands on a smuggled copy of this year’s tenth-grade FCAT. Yes, the test Florida kids prepare for, day after day, hoping to do well enough in February…