Freebie
The St. Petersburg Festival of States Parade
The Loftus Record
By all accounts, John Loftus has done a bang-up job in his most recent incarnation promoting St. Petersburg's Holocaust Museum. The museum has a sacred and laudable trust to remind the community about the horrors of Nazi Germany. Loftus, with much-proclaimed credentials as a prosecutor of Nazi monsters, has added spirit to the museum's efforts.…
Label Chore
In a perfect world, wines would be labeled "Good, Cheap Red Wine" and "Great, Expensive White Wine." But we live in America, where marketing reigns and often lures people to the dark side. But with a little label savvy, buying great wine can be an experience that exercises your brain rather than your wallet. The…
New Performing Arts School at TBPAC
First, let's get this straight: The new School for the Performing Arts, announced a few weeks ago by the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, is not any kind of high school or degree-granting institution. "We're not involved with the school system," says Judith Lisi, president of TBPAC. "This is for training programs. My model for…
Blues for You
The eighth annual Tampa Bay Blues Festival
Israeli Pacifist
Pnina Firestone seems an unlikely peace advocate: an elderly woman who is wheelchair bound, she speaks in a tone that brings to mind a patient schoolmarm rather than a fiery activist. As an Israeli, she holds views on her government's policy toward the Palestinian refugees that are also nontraditional. "I consider myself to be a…
Spine Tingling: ‘The Devil’s Backbone’
"What is a ghost?" asks the unseen narrator at the outset of the intriguing new Spanish-Mexican import The Devil's Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo). "An emotion? A terrible moment condemned to repeat itself over and over?" All this and more, as The Devil's Backbone would have it. It's no accident that the rhetorical question that…
Flying into the Limelight
Admit it, you've been listening to the radio a little more often lately. When you're in traffic, and you just can't handle letting the one CD in your car roll over to the beginning, again, it's just a wee bit easier to yank it out of the dash and see what's on the dial than…
Rebirth of the Cool
The man who has became a synonym — Ike Turner = Wife Beater — is practiced in the art of answering certain interview queries without really answering them. Vilified in Tina Turner's autobiography, I, Tina, then hammered even worse in the 1993 biopic What's Love Got to Do with It, Turner knows his stormy past…
The Fine Art of Bellarte
Ralph Sitero is one of those rare chefs who have mastered both the ancient art of traditional Italian cookery and the intricacies of 21st century personal computing. If he's doing a special dinner, the announcement arrives via e-mail in a well-designed attachment. Some of the relationships he might have formed originally over a steaming plate…
Review: ‘Big Trouble’
plus the Return of the TamBay Film and Video Festival
Mail Purge
Am I shocked that Hillsborough County Commissioner Stacey Easterling nudged Commission Vice-Chair Thomas Scott out of his chance to ride in the St. Patty's parade? No! I'm just surprised she allowed anyone else in the parade. With just 15 months on the job, Easterling has demonstrated a well-undeserved arrogance and sense of entitlement that usually…
A Common Sense Guide for All Politicians
These rules will generally keep you out of trouble with the media. However, in Hillsborough County, politicians feel free to violate the rules, take their licks in the media and continue to get re-elected, no matter how sleazy they are. Still, if you are a politician who wants to avoid embarrassing Mama with your media…
