Miami News Blog

Leading up to Miami Book Fair International, Riptide 2.0 will be publishing profiles of visiting authors. Check back often as two to three will going up per day until Sunday, November 15.

Marie Ponsot is the best poet you've never heard of.

Photo by Michael Lionstar

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Her first book, True Minds, was published in 1957 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Pocket Poets Series, but it took until 1981 and some nudging by her friend and fellow poet Marilyn Hacker to put out her second volume, Admit Impediment. Why? Because while her male contemporaries were jockeying for awards and professorships, Ponsot, 88, was rasing seven children, sixteen grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren, all the while writing poems for the simple reason that she loved doing it.

"When things were very intense, I had a rule that I had to write for at least ten minutes before bed every night," she says. "Sometimes I'd be dead asleep at the end of the ten minutes, but sometimes I'd get caught up [in the poem]." She's awake now, and the world has awoken to her finely-crafted verse.

Joyoendho via Flicker CC

When it comes to the drug habits of the rich and famous, there's a thin line between hilarious and disturbing. Championship race car driver Mariusz Malyszczycki's relationship with ecstasy is something closer to entrepreneurial. The Polish speedster was busted in the middle of a brazen plan to import a boatload of the little colorful pills and was sentenced Thursday to 37 months in prison.

Videos online show the handsome daredevil holding trophies and speeding around dirt tracks in a bright red hatchback.

He apparently had another source of income. According to federal court documents, Mariusz and a partner met with two undercover cops at Don Pan Bakery in Miami in March 2004. There, he "asked agents if they had any connections at the Miami Seaport" in order to "smuggle 50,000 pills of ecstasy." They would be 100 percent pure MDMA from Holland, he told cops. (Gigantic glow stick party much?)

His lawyer Scott Sakin contends Mariusz was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" and that his English wasn't good enough to understand what was happening.

​When last we saw our Miami Dolphins, they were busy beating the bejesus out of the shitdipping trash-talking New York Jets, and silencing their shitdipping trash-talking fans in the process. It was one of the most satisfying wins in recent memory. Jason Taylor was able to talk some trash of his own about New York, and Ted Ginn Jr. - fresh off his redeeming record-setting 2 kickoff return touchdown performance - was compared to Jesus Christ by his offensive coordinator.

Not too shabby.

This week, because the NFL schedule makers thought it would be clever to stick a proverbial crowbar up our collective asses when they decided it would be neat to see the Dolphins travel to New York and New England on consecutive weeks, the Fins visit the Patriots for another AFC East showdown.

Still, even with the unfortunate scheduling, the Dolphins are in the driver's seat as far as their playoff hopes are concerned. After this week, Miami has the 4th easiest schedule in the conference, while the Patriots have the most difficult. In fact, the Dolphins have the easiest schedule remaining in the AFC East.

When Miami sports agent Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, 51, flew into Miami Friday after spending 13 years in a Cuban jail, he felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. The small children he had left behind were all grown up and Miami had sprouted a new skyline.

Hernandez, who tried to help Orlando "El Duque Hernandez" and other baseball stars defect from the Communist island, served "every last day" of his 15 year-sentence. (A Cuban jail-year is 10 months long.) And he believes what he did was right.

"What we did we did it with the best knowledge that we were doing good for people," Hernandez Nodar said shortly after arriving on a Taca flight from Cuba.

• ​Hey, there were some elections this week. You probably didn't vote, but we liveblogged them for you, and here are your winners for Miami, Miami Beach and Hialeah. 
• In Miami voters loved name recognition (aka voting for people related to former Mayors), and in Miami Beach the most entertaining local election of the season heads to a recount and then a runoff.
• Paula Dockery is running for Governor, because what Florida needs is another state-wide Conservative insurgent candidate. 
• A poor lil gambler thought he had won $166m, but the Seminole casino told him his machine malfunctioned and he hadn't won a cent. 
• Enlightened debate: Is A-Rod a hero or a douche? 
• A UM Law Professor who was arrested but not charged for offering a prostitute $20 abruptly dropped his lawsuit against a blog. Meanwhile UM hired a new guy to head their psychiatric dept who's faced criticism from the Senate. 
• And here are your Real Housewives of Hialeah. 

via The V Files

​Considering Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin now gets his own right-wing political column every other week, is it asking too much that he keeps pointed, half-baked political theory out of his television reviews? Because all too often the man's words come off seeming ridiculous.

After deciding to attack the National Park Service and nature itself a few weeks ago, Garvin sunk his teeth into the Obama administration while nominally reviewing ABC's new alien show V.

ABC's series takes aim not at a German dictator from the misty past but a sitting -- and popular -- U.S. president. From the fawning reaction of the news media (sample press-conference question to V [Ed: alien visitors who are actually evil space lizards or something] leader Anna: "Is there such a thing as an ugly visitor?") to the recruiting of human supporters into an alien front group that could easily be mistaken for "community organizing," the parallels to Obama are unmistakable.

But what says actress Morena Baccarin who plays Anna?

"I don't think we're saying Anna is President Obama," she tells i09.

Well then.

It's definitely with in line, if not expected, to comment on any political subtext in a television show, but Garvin all too often crosses the line by making that subtext fit his own personal partisan political views, and attacks those programs that don't. Not only does it come off as a whack job, but also a hack job.

College football is a ridiculously frustrating thing, and playing in the ACC only magnifies that. Listen, we know the chances of it happening are slight, but if Duke beats NC and somehow knocked off Georgia Tech next weekend they'd have the best conference record. Seriously, Duke!?! 

​Sunset Place is a horrible place where teenage stereotypes go to die, but it is also home to the last of the giant, metallic robo-iguanas. The photo comes from MigRodz's Flickr.

Suspect Jason Rodriguez

​Several media are reporting that eight people have been shot and two killed in an Orlando office building. It happened just before noon at the Gateway Office Center near Lake Ivanhoe. The Orlando Sentinel says that one victim has been killed, and two are in serious condition. Police have taken suspect Jason Rodriguez, 40, into custody. 

​Franz A. Wakefield, a Miami resident, claims that he not only came up with the idea and names of Apple's entire iPod, iTunes, and iPhone line, but that actress Sarah Jessica Parker totally screwed him over in the deal.