Santa’s elves are playing second fiddle to another diminutive foreigner this Yule season: King Tutankhamun. Just about everybody is lining up for a piece of the Boy King, whose tombside knickknacks go on display at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art on Thursday, December 15. With a half million or…
Hail the Bloviators They all get Brownie points: Bob Norman’s December 1 piece (“Spreading the Plame”) was bracing and timely. He probably understands that he will be execrated: People hate it when they were wrong and somebody who was right reminds them of it. Packer, Goldberg, Friedman, Kristof, and the…
Joe Rodriguez was racing upriver in an aluminum skiff when he began to grasp the folly of hunting wild pig by moonlight in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest packing the fishing camp’s only .12-gauge shotgun shell. Joe is a fishing guide by trade, accustomed to handling sharks and rays in…
November has been quite the month for millionaire businessman David H. Brooks. As founder and chief executive of DHB Industries, the 50-year-old Brooks has raked in $700 million in sales since 9/11, primarily from no-bid Defense Department contracts. DHB Industries, you may recall, is the parent company of Point Blank…
Who will be remembered as the Grim Reaper of baseball in South Florida? Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, who insists on making a vast fortune off the backs of the taxpayers? Or Senate President Tom Lee, who withheld much-needed state subsidies that doomed the bid to put a new stadium in…
Talking with handsome young Nathan, a blue-eyed, big-shouldered guy I met at Blue Martini last week, it became obvious that the last thing men obsessing about the anatomy of women want to think about is how that anatomy works. Not to be too delicate about it, but when Nathan suddenly…
Land Office Business Appraise the Lori: This is in response to the November 17 article “Parrish Is Burning.” (Bob Norman). Norman just touched the tip of the iceberg. As a longtime employee of the office who started working there under the late Bill Markham, I can tell you that the…
The call to James W. Johnson came in April 2004. On the phone was Winston Thompson, an associate dean at Broward Community College, telling him that Lulrick Balzora, an assistant professor of religion at the college, had been called up for duty in Iraq. “Would you be willing to take…
If you’re a real estate broker dealing in seven- and eight-figure properties, the news is all good. Keep the Kristal flowing, son. According to Rick Goodwin, publisher of Unique Homes Magazine, about 50,000 multimillion-dollar homes were sold nationwide last year, compared with 9,000 in 1997. And Florida is right there,…
It’s time to come to the defense of Judith Miller. Yes, the former New York Times reporter served as a mouthpiece for the Bush administration during the buildup to the Iraq War. And she certainly had a dubious role in the Plamegate scandal. But the way her colleagues have been…
For those, like Night Court, who’ve never actually been to Ibiza, the tropical-tinged, house-infused, all-night party atmosphere at Hallandale Beach’s Nikki Marina can be transporting. True, the party doesn’t end at dawn — try 2 a.m. — but the dining-party experience ensures a good six hours of intimate play with…
Larry Gierer is annoyed. “That’s where the carport was,” Gierer says, pointing to the front of his Oakland Park home. A large blue tarp covers his roof. His landscaping, once lush and tropical, looks as if it was put through a shredder. Nearly one month after registering for disaster assistance,…
Globally Local Just a quick trip on I-95: Great issue this week (“Meet the New Republicans,” Jonathan Zwickel, November 17)! Finally, a spotlight is being turned to our music scene! It’s been two years of fighting to get recognition for local artists from the press. Things are finally turning around…
Preston Henn’s mug shot shows a thin, older man with deep-set, pale-blue eyes. His head, with thinning hair on top, is cocked a bit to one side. His lips are pursed; a worry line creases his chin. He could be your grandfather on a bad day. After the shot was…
Floyd Hull Stadium, part of a 9.2-acre park in southern Fort Lauderdale, has a special place in Tailpipe’s battered heart. Fifty years ago, volunteers and players from the nonprofit Federal Little League raised enough money through cupcake sales to build the professional-looking baseball stadium that includes grandstands, an announcer’s booth,…
Josephus Eggelletion is the politician who won’t go away. During the past five years, the Broward County commissioner has been hit with scandals involving his taxpayer-issued credit card and his unethical work for developers and trash haulers. More recently, we’ve learned he has an unfortunate knack for having children in…
All About the Ben It comes with the territory: The opinion essay about me by Bob Norman was interesting and amusing (“All About the Benjamin,” November 10). There is an old saying, “A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” Any resemblance to any actual living…
The killing was carried out midday, in front of numerous witnesses. Yet to this day, the culprit´s identity remains in dispute. Thursday morning, August 1, 2002, a yellow bulldozer chugged up Rio Vista Boulevard on its way to demolish one of Fort Lauderdale´s grandest riverfront mansions. The 1926 structure was…
Summer used to be the birthright of American kids. Remember? It was the slow, loopy season, when there was time on your hands and thrilling new ideas, unimpeded by rigid schedules, seemed to come sailing in out of nowhere. You decided to read 100 Years of Solitude in a day,…
The details of last week´s Broward exclusive were so outlandish, I figured they had to be bullshit. One copy of Madonna´s new CD, Confessions from a Dance Floor, was supposedly being flown to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport as the first leg of a national nightclub CD-listening tour, timed to promote…
Broward County Property Appraiser Lori Parrish might as well have ridden up on a white horse. Claiming to be ¨outraged¨ by a plan to build a $45 million governmental complex, Parrish ¨pulled the plug on the deal,¨ according to the October 11 Sun-Sentinel. ¨I never asked to be part of…
Clean as Blackwater Don’t blame them for accepting a no-bid offer: Regarding Trevor Aaronson’s article on Blackwater 63 and the war, his questioning of no-bid contracts for $24 million is misdirected (“Err America,” October 27). Blackwater provided a service that the Department of Defense could not or would not do…
