Outtakes
About a Boy (PG-13) It's a long way from American Pie to this compact little charmer about the redemption of a sexual predator, but that's exactly the journey taken by writer-directors Paul and Chris Weitz. About a Boy is based on a 1998 book by popular Brit novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) and boasts a…
Web Site of the Week
http://www.fluffertraX.com
Peaceable Player
Singer/Songwriter Dar Williams
Florida Authors Expo
Q and Author Inevitably in reading you find yourself wanting to know more about an author — their inspiration for a book, what they're like, how they would read a particular passage aloud — and you're left hoping that author might someday visit your local bookstore on a reading/signing tour and then you'll have your…
Letting Their Roots Show
At first glance, Tampa's Rocksteady@8 appears one attractive, disruptive female alcoholic short of being the most interesting Real World cast ever. They're seven disparate men whose clothes, faces and demeanors communicate very real personalities and lives, the antithesis of the boy-band different-personality formula. It's hard to imagine a group of more different-looking guys joining forces…
Free Press
How can daily newspapers — those protectors of the public trust-turned-sexy Wall Street darlings with titillating profit margins — make money on the Internet? That's the question every ink-stained corporation with a ticker symbol has been trying to answer. The St. Petersburg Times, a fat cash cow raking it in under the precarious auspices of…
Spins
Reviews of Weather Report reissues and the latest from I Am the World Trade Center. ************************* Weather Report Mysterious Traveler Tale Spinnin' Black Market Fusion. In the quarter century since its heyday, the genre has been mocked, vilified and generally discredited. An embarrassing aberration. Chops-mad players strutting shallow pyrotechnics in lieu of soul and substance.…
A Real Neighborhood Bar
With all the beautiful flora and fauna, beaches and parks in our area, it really comes as a surprise that there are relatively few places to eat en plein air. Part of it has to do with the stifling heat that afflicts us six months out of the year; the other culprit is the misguided…
Skip In for Salads
Modest cafe located in downtown St. Pete, where The Blue Moon restaurant once did business. Its specialty is various incarnations of salad. Try the bleu Hawaiian salad ($4.95), hearty masses of mixed greens topped with bleu cheese, honeyed ham and (sadly, canned, not fresh) pineapple and mandarin oranges. The eatery's homemade dressing is delightful, but…
Food and Fun go Pop
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, let me recommend a few personal favorites culled from hundreds of restaurants and bars I traipse through every year on my professional dining missions. With The Day only a week away, I hope it inspires contemplation of your beloved's most attractive traits as well as serious thought about how…
Toot Toot
Lest you think we're just a bunch of wankers spewing leftist propaganda with no regard for journalistic convention, we should tell you that we actually win awards with this stuff. These are the ones we won for work published in 2001: The Society of Professional Journalists Mid-Florida Chapter gave Planet writers six awards in the…
Israeli Feast Resolution
People from afar are still coming to this country, bringing everything from French crepes Suzette to Colombian meat pies, from pad Thai to Jamaican jerk chicken. That's what I pondered as I sat at a bare table at the Jerusalem Cafe & Kosher Deli in Dunedin, listening to the owners, Yair and Dana Nabaa, 1992…
Connoisseur Confessions
News flash: Wine snobs lurk everywhere (as if you didn't know). And once in a blue moon they live a story worth making fun of. With that in mind, I polled every wino I know to discover their most embarrassing or amusing wine moments. So the next time you're feelin' stupid about your secret obsession…
DVD Pick: The Devil’s Backbone
An elegant and richly layered ghost story in which the creepiest ghosts haven't quite figured out that they're already dead. The Devil's Backbone is a horror story of the first order, densely textured and elaborately imagined, in which the most resonant horrors turn out to be not just of a supernatural nature (although they're in…
Dining on the Mighty Hillsborough
With all the beautiful flora and fauna, beaches and parks in our area, it really comes as a surprise that there are relatively few places to eat en plein air. Part of it has to do with the stifling heat that afflicts us six months out of the year; the other culprit is the misguided…
Popping In
Playwright, composer, Tampa expatriate and noted bald guy Joe Popp blew into town last week to see some friends and celebrate his seventh consecutive 30th birthday. The New York City denizen also found time to put in a June 12 appearance at Southern Alliance main-man Joran Oppelt's bi-weekly In The Raw acoustic singer/ songwriter series…
A Laffer
Florida House Speaker-designate state Rep. Johnnie Byrd doesn't get around much anymore. Beyond his Plant City hometown and the dark places where legislators and lobbyists meet, Byrd is virtually unknown. Yet the Republican attorney will soon be one of the state's most powerful pols. So it was with some anticipation that political junkies from all…
Salads with a European Flair
Cafe European, 113 Hyde Park Ave. S., 813-254-9458 — The restaurant is popular with academics from University of Tampa and businesspeople working downtown. Cafe European's salmon salad ($6.95 lunch, $9.95 dinner, with extra fish and different dressing) is addictive. Crisp, fresh mix of Romaine and iceberg, tomatoes, cucumbers, grated carrots, shredded red cabbage and salmon…
URL, Interrupted
Suzi Pilat clutched a glossy Verizon Communications Inc. advertisement. The vice president of a small Internet service provider in Clearwater, Pilat eyed Verizon's latest pitch to dial-up customers to upgrade to faster digital subscriber lines. The Verizon ad promised to put new customers on a free DSL modem without activation fees for $29.95 a month.…
Letters
Responses to Rochelle Renford's recent cover story on public access cable in Tampa and Trevor Aaronson's coverage of the Albert Whitted Municpal Airport debate. ***************************************************** Ou Est Mariette? Where am I — French With Mariette with Co-Host Cinnamon toy poodle? Been producing since 1989. My dog brings joy to children. I teach French and am…
Old Style Service, Classic Spanish Flavors
Pepin Restaurant, 4125 Fourth St. N., St. Petersburg, 727-821-3773 — Old-style Spanish restaurant, but its namesake salad ($6.25) is always nicely done. If you dine at the restaurant rather than order takeout, the waiter prepares it with a flourish at your table. Start with sangria, then order salad, featuring crisp red- and green-leaf lettuces, Romaine,…
Books: People Die
Simon & Schuster/$22
Jonesing for McBride
Ever go to a party to see one person only to find he's not there? You walk around, disappointed, offering niceties to the people you meet and waiting for the perfect time to escape unnoticed. That's what state Sen. Daryl Jones, D-Miami, must have felt like on June 13 when he found himself at a…
Really Remote Control
If you, like so many of the rest of us, are already hopelessly addicted to DVD, you might seriously consider reading no further. That's right. Put the paper down and just walk away. We're about to open a Pandora's Box here, and there's a distinct possibility that you may find yourself tempted by something you'd…
Kids in the Sprawl
It's rare that an actor sums up in his performance all the deeper meanings of a play, but that's precisely what happens when Ryan McCarthy is on the loose in Eric Bogosian's subUrbia at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. As Tim Mitchum, racist alcoholic, Air Force dropout and general malcontent, McCarthy dominates the stage…
Pencil Him In
Florida judicial elections, when they happen, hold out little entertainment value for voters. The ethical canons of the legal profession — yeah, we were surprised too — discourage candidates from criticizing opponents or promising to rule a certain way if elected. Name, rank and serial number are about all you're going to get out of…
