Articles by Billy Manes
1012 stories found. Showing page 1 of 51.
Happytown
Happytown | 10/21/2010 | By Billy Manes, Justin Strout
Dear Kendrick Meek, this isn’t easy for us, but we have something we have to tell you: We think you should take one for the team and get out of the goddamned Senate race. Yes, we’re well aware that ...[MORE]
Council Watch: Billy Manes pays attention to local government so you don't have to
Council Watch | 10/21/2010 | By Billy Manes
If city council was a color, this week’s mind meld would have been a peppy pink. Several commissioners donned pink T-shirts (over their ties and under their blazers, attractively) in recognition of “...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 10/14/2010 | By Jeff Gore, Billy Manes
Like most thoughtful individualswith hearts that actually beat, we spent a good portion of the past couple of weeks under a pink pall of doom. We doused our melancholia with the requisite six mimosas ...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 10/7/2010 | By Jeff Gore, Billy Manes
It was not unlike watching an anthill-kicking in reverse last Friday, when all the little people of the City Beautiful scurried en masse to the epicenter of all future Orlando activity, the new Amway ...[MORE]
Council Watch: Billy Manes pays attention to local government so you don't have to
Council Watch | 10/7/2010 | By Billy Manes
There was a dewy suppleness about this week’s morning-after meeting, a palpable electrical charge accompanied by sly winks, sweet scents and creased mouth corners; tangles of figurative clothes – or t...[MORE]
The pink elephant in the room: Why gay Republicans are swallowing their pride
10/7/2010 | By Billy Manes
It’s a Thursday afternoon at the White Wolf Café on North Orange Avenue, and over the clanking of plates and the piped-in strains of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Eddie Mehnert is trying to justify himself...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 9/30/2010 | By Billy Manes, Justin Strout
It was a showdown at the OC Corral last week when the Orange County commission blustered into a dustbowl at its Sept. 21 meeting of the rather large heads. Normally, county commission meetings carry w...[MORE]
Council Watch: Billy Manes pays attention to local government so you don't have to
Council Watch | 9/30/2010 | By Billy Manes
Appropriately enough, it was all about watching things at this week’s civic slumber party. Lining the back walls of the council chambers were the so-called “big dogs” of local law enforcement staring ...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 9/23/2010 | By Billy Manes
With zombie hysteria at an alltime high – scratch that; real unemployment numbers dipping perilously into the double-digits – you might expect that your standard downtown vegan-wrap stroll would be in...[MORE]
Fall Guide: A yank in the wake
9/23/2010 | By Billy Manes
If you can’t manage to pull your scrawny ass up on those two worthless twigs on my wide board,” says the voice on the other end of the cellular tether, “then you are only one thing: pathetic.” I...[MORE]
Council Watch: Billy Manes pays attention to local government so you don't have to
Council Watch | 9/16/2010 | By Billy Manes
It was as if the entire daiswas crafted of gummy bears and chocolate bars at this week’s meeting of the Candy Land commission, which was weird because the whole evening would later be spent in the sou...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 9/16/2010 | By Billy Manes, Erin Sullivan
As with most of the pseudo-political convoluted relationships conjured in our Happytown™ heads, there almost inevitably comes a time when we stumble into the abyss of romantic disillusionment. We get ...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 9/9/2010 | By Billy Manes, Justin Strout
We’re off to see the Wizard! Well, we were, anyway. In our ongoing attempt to keep you apprised of all of the comings and goings of the still somewhat theoretical Dr. Phillips Center for the Performin...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 9/2/2010 | By Billy Manes, Justin Strout
With everybody’s post- primary-night hangovers firmly in check, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson – who now gleefully faces stodgy old (alleged) woman-hater Daniel Webster in the November general election – mad...[MORE]
Council Watch: Billy Manes pays attention to local government so you don't have to
Council Watch | 9/2/2010 | By Billy Manes
Collars were stained decidedly blue as this week’s Extreme Makeover: City Edition staff meeting was called to order. This was, after all, the week that the Garbage Pail Kids from the scrapheap lobby d...[MORE]
Building the perfect beast: The failure of downtown's ambitious social experiment
8/26/2010 | By Billy Manes
When Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer first uttered his “live, work and play” mantra early in his tenure to describe cultural connectivity specific to the city’s downtown core, he probably didn’t have this in...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 8/26/2010 | By Billy Manes, Justin Strout, Erin Sullivan
Here comes a train wreck! Probably the strangest thing to come out of the seemingly endless battle over SunRail (and high-speed rail) clogging the political arteries of the Sunshine State has been the...[MORE]
Council Watch: Billy Manes paying attention to local government so you don't have to
Council Watch | 8/19/2010 | By Billy Manes
Outside, hot water pelted the mini-skyscraper of our mini-metropolis, while inside the hot water washed around in a more litigious manner. Specifically, the city had in recent weeks been put on the ...[MORE]
Happytown
Happytown | 8/19/2010 | By Billy Manes, Justin Strout
Editor's note: This column has been edited for clarification. Make it stop! The fetid stench of acrimony and its obstacle course of cardboard yard-sign vanity, the televised attack ads, the curle...[MORE]
Never say die: A Republican health-care bus tour uses Medicaid to keep reform opposition alive
8/11/2010 | By Billy Manes
It was a far cry from the bombastic barnstorming that characterized last summer’s heated health-care debate, but when incoming Florida Senate president, Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, rolled his bus i...[MORE]
1012 stories found. Showing page 1 of 51.
312 reviews found. Showing page 1 of 16.
Sex and the City 2
Film review: by Billy Manes | 5/26/2010
The Swarovski suspension of disbelief required to properly indulge the Sex and the City phenomenon in its initial televised incarnation was regularly rewarded by its post-feminist brazenness as much a...[MORE]
X
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 4/3/2008
Like a flamboyant exercise in urban planning, each new musical offering from iconic showgirl Kylie Minogue brings with it a workmanlike architectural appeal. For more than 20 years, Minogue’...[MORE]
The Dessert Lady
Restaurant review: by Billy Manes | 3/20/2008
Diabetics and the eating-disordered got a little more to love and worry about earlier this year when Patti Schmidt expanded her after-dinner overstatement to the Church Street Station concourse. T...[MORE]
Between the Lines
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 2/21/2008
It isn’t the most enviable title in the music industry – the redheaded-stepchild humility, the cell phone always on, the nose-up scoffs from the noodling virtuoso set – but some...[MORE]
The Joshua Tree: 20th Anniversary Remastered
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 11/29/2007
Long since resigned to the coffee tables of khaki families or wedged on shelves next to the Bible and The Da Vinci Code, it’s easy to forget the widescreen impact of U2’s 1987 world-a...[MORE]
Red Carpet Massacre
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 11/8/2007
“These are days of hit and run,” croons Simon LeBon as he slams his way into what may be the most important record of Duran Duran’s nearly 30-year career with album opener “...[MORE]
Steve McQueen: Legacy Edition
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 8/9/2007
Perfect pop is not easy pop, a fact manifested in every difficult second of Prefab Sprout’s timeless 1985 sophomore release, Steve McQueen (released as Two Wheels Good in the U.S. due to a legal confl...[MORE]
Time on Earth
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 7/12/2007
Farewell to the World, Crowded House proclaimed to 250,000 Aussies outside Sydney Opera House in 1996 (the DVD was released January 2007), but the dream was apparently not over. Reportedly, drummer P...[MORE]
Release the Stars
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 5/31/2007
For all of those who worried that that the twisted cathedral-ism of Wainwright’s Want Two was signaling the end of the progression so winningly scorched by its similarly named predecessor, Want One, t...[MORE]
Light at the End of the World
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 5/31/2007
With the chains of love – the very same ones that connected them with mass audiences in their late-’80s alt prime – long since broken (blame the country album … no, the covers one), Andy Bell and Vinc...[MORE]
Palms and Runes, Tarot and Tea: A Michael Penn Collection
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 4/19/2007
Eighteen years ago, the future looked (and sounded) grand for Michael Penn: A pseudo-heartthrob turn in the video for the top-30 hit “No Myth” was a potential step out of the shadows of his brother, S...[MORE]
Out of the Woods
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 4/5/2007
At about the same time one hapless, blue-faced, morning-after rave survivor uttered the infamous words “chill out” in the mid-’90s, Everything but the Girl called up Todd Terry, pulled on their sparkl...[MORE]
Jeb: America's Next Bush
Book review: by Billy Manes | 2/15/2007
It could have gone the other way. In fact, some would argue that it should have. Back in 1994’s tense bipartisan political climate, the gubernatorial races of Texas and Florida were bound together u...[MORE]
Fundamental/Fundamentalism
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 6/29/2006
Sixteen years ago, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe packed up their two-finger synthesizer tracks and their pinched-nose musings on the pop idiom and potentially singed their hit-making career with a match...[MORE]
But Enough About Me ... : A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous
Book review: by Billy Manes | 6/15/2006
“I’ve plucked my eyebrows while I’ve talked on the phone to people,” offers writer Jancee Dunn on the phone from New York, with a giggle. “I’ve bleached my mustache.” Dunn’s life is the stuff of ...[MORE]
The Magical Breasts of Britney Spears
Book review: by Billy Manes | 6/1/2006
Those curious about the verbal flare-ups from the intellectual wounds inflicted by the rise and fall of all things Federline will relish this. Van Cleave’s collection of poetry isn’t so much about Bri...[MORE]
Powder Burns
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 5/4/2006
Who would have expected this? Greg Dulli — longtime caricature of post-grunge, stained-tuxedo-shirt excess — leaves his post as the twice-lit cigarette butt in the corner of a neon-bar hallucinati...[MORE]
The Revolution Will Be Accessorized: BlackBook Presents Dispatches From the New Counterculture
Book review: by Billy Manes | 5/4/2006
For 10 years, BlackBook has done its highbrow best to challenge the notion of the fashion glossy by juxtaposing film focus with intellectual focus, presumably to the delight of the eye-rolling cognosc...[MORE]
Do You Love Me Like You Say: The Very Best of Terence Trent D'Arby
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 1/12/2006
It all seemed so amazing, almost seismic in its high-hat-and-stammer glamour. Terence Trent D'Arby burst onto the scene in 1987, braids slapping around his face while he channeled Prince, James Brown ...[MORE]
Jordan Knight
Recording review: by Billy Manes | 6/16/1999
Years ago girls screamed for five puppetlike street kids from Boston, as the pale-skinned quintet New Kids on the Block ventured into the malls and lockers of the world's pubescent youth. Today, the N...[MORE]