Maluca plays Grand Central on Saturday.

​Friday

• Tattoo artists from all over country will descend on Miami's downtown Hyatt this weekend for the three-day Tattoolapalooza. There'll be tattoo contests, marauding evil clowns, inking seminars, gnarly bikers, and goth punk bands. If you're going to get inked, this is the place to do it.
  
• Yes, it is genetically possible for there to be two funny guys born into the same family. Charlie Murphy doesn't play second fiddle to brother Eddie. He gets his own laughs on his Comedy Central special, I Will Not Apologize, on The Chapelle Show, and in his book The Making of a Stand-Up Guy. He performs at the Miami Improv all weekend long.

More >>

screencap via Radar Redux

​Last night the city of Baltimore was invaded by a strange marching army of "Suzercisers" who startled residents by marching through the streets in matching black and gold lamé outfits with an astute and astounding devotion to synchronized fitness. The army came in peace, and there were no casualties aside from a few folks who are recovering from having their minds completely blown.

Yes, Miami-based artist Susan Lee-Chun (winner of one of New Times' first annual MasterMind Awards) attacked Baltimore today with her on-going "Suz-ercise" body of work. The performance of C'mon Baltimore, Everybody Suzercise kicked of Americans for the Arts Public Art Network's Half-Century Summit. It needs to be seen to be believed.
More >>

The cool kids' table in the cafeteria is inviting you to sit with them. Or at least that's what it feels like when the Borscht Film Festival announces it's accepting submissions for next year's festival. Above is a trailer for their CCCV short series (CCCV is the Roman numeral for area code 305). Some of last year's CCCV stories went on to screen at Tribeca and Cannes, and one resulted in an MTV production deal. (Daniel Cardenas, who made "Xemoland" about Key Biscayne last year, is working on a pilot for an animated series with MTV.)

If you'd like to get in on that Borscht action (ahem, we voted it Miami's Best Film Festival), there are four ways to get involved:
More >>

Greg Mike flips off the drilling giant.

​Just yesterday, BP's busted oil well went berserk, spitting mysterious goo and gases and forcing the removal of the containment cap. In other words, Deepwater Horizon is back to bleeding 50,000 barrels of crude directly into the Gulf of Mexico every single day. The whole world is sick of this shit. We're about ready to storm the drilling giant's American headquarters with torches and pitchforks. And Atlanta-based pop provocateur Greg Mike is pretty pissed too.

His response: A protest poster titled "Thanks, BP!," starring a smiling soda can, two fuck-you fingers, an oily pelican, and a bunch of BP death heads. (Download it for free here.) New Times talked to Mike about the spill, his poster, and his new Miami art show, "Popstars and Cokeheads." More >>

Catch a free screening of this hipster film adaptation of a kids' book.

​Ah, the first day of Summer. But as the mercury rises, our finances continue to dip. Here's a rundown of free things to do this week.

Monday: Don't wait for a plague of locusts. See the end-of-days exhibit "20(12)" at a pop-up midtown venue called Miami Art Space. Local painter Kiki Valdes curated art by the likes of Freegums and George Sanchez-Calderon that speaks to the anxiety-filled anticipation of the year 2012.

Tuesday: If your idea of a good time is playing battleship while knitting and listening to new wave, head to Sweat Records' weekly Rec Room for board games, crafts, and rock'n'roll. There's no cover for this low-key hang.
More >>

Was the rape-revenge flick The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo too hard-core for sunny Miami?

​For the fifth time in a decade, Miami International Film Festival is in the market for a new festival director after choosing not to renew Tiziana Finzi's contract. A festival insider from Italy with a reputation for discovering new cinema talent, she was hired in 2009. For 2010's festival, she choose The Secret in Their Eyes, which went on to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which was so popular that Hollywood is planning on ruining remaking it for American audiences.

Finzi sold out Gusman Center for the Performing Arts with such festival programming. But she also played to the art house film crowd with picks like Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers, No One Knows About Persian Cats, and Eraserhead.

Back in March, she told us "I accepted this job as a challenge to bring my taste -- cutting-edge, radical films -- to this town, a beautiful place where people come for enjoyment, big parties, and holiday but not to see a Russian or Chinese movie." So were her tastes too edgy? Did the sold out crowds complain?

More >>

Former MAM director Suzanne Delehanty and new director Thomas Collins

​Moving at a glacial pace towards a new home at Bicentennial Park, the Miami Art Museum made some progress Thursday. Thomas "Thom" Collins has been named its new director.

The museum had been without a director since December, when Terence Riley abruptly resigned.
Collins, a relatively young director who now oversees the private Neuberger Museum in New York, is in for a ride.

When he resigned, Riley told New Times MAM's expansion was "more complex politically than virtually any other project I'm aware of." He later expanded, saying, "There's a pretty long list of directors who've probably ruined their careers getting involved in a building program. It could be career tragedy."

As we reported in a story in March, the museum's expansion hinges on both public and private money, and has hit several roadblocks in the decade it's been in the works.
More >>

Miami native Ben Greenman has never been shy about toying with convention.

via Ben Greenman

​The New Yorker editor and novelist -- and let's not forget, Miami New Times alum -- has won acclaim for his McSweeney's-approved approach to writing, as in his last novel, 2009's Please Step Back.

The book tells the tale of a fictional '60s-era funk musician named Rock Foxx -- and Greenman recorded a theme song for the novel with real-life legend Swamp Dogg.

Greenman's newest book -- What He's Poised to Do, published by Harper Perennial and arriving in bookstores this month -- also grew out of an unusual project.

In 2008, Greenman collaborated with Hotel St. George Press to release Correspondences, a letterpress box set with three accordion books and a postcard referenced in one of the short stories, about a man who walks out of a marriage and holes up in a hotel where he receives postcards.

Readers then sent their own messages back to the publisher on the card (a selection of which you can read here).

Greenman's latest book grew out of that central postcard-themed tale, and each of the 14 short stories carries a postmark stamp with its time and place, from 1940 Havana to 2010 Miami. Click through for an interview with Greenman about the book.

More >>

Before Romero Britto lucked his way into a multimillion-dollar empire selling cheerful, polka-dot canvasses to the masses, there was Thomas Kinkade.

Britto (left) and Kinkade

​Kinkade is a kind of role model for Britto. Even before the Brazilian thought about hurting people's eyeballs, Kinkade had already made a fortune selling those gooey, oddly phosphorescent landscapes of winter wonderlands and flushing meadows you now see plastered all over America's malls and in badly decorated Christian households.

But it seems the master has become the student. A year after Britto was arrested for drunk driving in Miami, Kinkade has been arrested for drunk driving in California. Now you have one more way of distinguishing your hack artists. Also: ill-conceived facial hair.

More >>

Pulgha World mosaic mural by Miguel Paredes.

​In this week's art column, we previewed everything from aboriginal reveries to a high-stomping high school girl's drill squad to an orgy of experimental video, which are all part of this weekend's Second Saturday gallery crawl capped by a free concert by the iconic Spanish duo Fangoria.

But the hits just keep on rolling with spaces like Gallery I/D  offering a searing photography group show "RISE: New Works by New Artists" capturing subjects and subcultures in diverse states of disorder. Julie Glassberg's Bike Kill turns the lens on the Big Apple's Bike Kill festival and members of the Black Label Bike Club in the roll of errant knights jousting in furry, plush costumes.
More >>