Miami News Blog

Is this racist?

​Mickael Cohen is a 36-year-old self-professed millionaire from France who wears linen suits and looks like a Lothario version of Jon Lovitz. In July, he showed off a Gulfstream jet, a Rolls Royce, a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin, an 80-foot yacht, and a Sunny Isles condo that, he said, clients of his company, Air Platinum Club (APC), could have at their disposal.

The only condition: They'd have to purchase 100 hours of flight time at the low, low price of $780,000.

Four months later, and just two years after Air Platinum LLC was founded, Cohen is under siege from creditors, partners, and former employees. They say he has jilted them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In September 2008, Swiss charter company Travcon filed suit against APC in Miami-Dade civil court, claiming Cohen's company had stiffed it out of more than half of an $83,000 bill for a Paris-to-New York flight. The Swiss won in court, and APC's bank accounts were garnished to reimburse some of the $51,791 owed. "Mickael Cohen is not poor," says Philipp Zürcher, Travcon's president. "He is just trying to walk away without payment."

Every Miamian's favorite booty-smacking relative, Uncle Luke, did the title track for The U, a documentary about the chaotic rise of the University of Miami's football squad, by Rakontur, the group that brought us Cocaine Cowboys. As part of ESPN's "30 for 30" series, it will air December 12 at 9 p.m.

Rakontur has leaked Luke's Drumline-on-crystal-meth ditty. This might be the very first Uncle Luke video we've found on YouTube that's safe for work. Now break it on down to the Hurricane sound!

​The girls came in numbers fit for a rock star -- droves, from East and West and North and South and points beyond what any mere compass could position. And they were draped in shades no rainbow ever even fathomed. Think all the colors of all the rarest tropical fish -- and then amplify. Cerulean blues and scarlet reds and absolute chartreuses, each as if rendered by Pixar. And then of course a rampant pink that out-shone even the work of Chloris, the Greek goddess of flowers.

Then again, Chloris probably was in on that wild color's creation, just as she's undoubtedly been in on all the ultra-vivid action stirred up by fashion designer Betsey Johnson. But not even a goddess rates the kind of response Johnson received when she blew into her namesake Aventura boutique this past Saturday.

In a word, it was one big "Wow!," from the horde in front of the boutique's door, to the throng that surrounded the great lady inside her store. It was a thrilling reminder of what the best, bold fashion can mean to people. And to be sure, Johnson is one of the best and the boldest - she's also one of the longest-standing success stories in the biz.

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• Glenn Beck is in town, so instead of shaking your fist at your '90s box, shake it at the man -- live and in person. We hear he has some wonderful things to say.
• For another form of battle, check out Unconquered 1: November Reign for a luscious MMA fight that'll leave someone begging for a death panel to take him out of his misery.
• Imagine Shakespeare remixed by Lil' Jon...and then brought down 1 couple of notches and you'll get Shake it Up. How art thou, boo?
• Part 2 of Shecky's Girl's Night Out is on and that means discounts, deals, and bitches who will elbow you for 25 percent off.

Click here for Saturday's events and here for Sunday's.

​While putting out a fire inside an empty house at 2021 SW 58th Ct. early yesterday morning, Miami-Dade firefighters spotted a bunch of suspiciously mellow potted plants and tipped off the police. Narcotics detectives found 34 hydroponic marijuana plants -- which we now expect they will destroy in some depraved ceremony.

The weed was worth $8,000 to $10,000, cops estimate. Nobody was in the house during the fire or the raid, but we expect whoever was on the lease is headed back to Vancouver as fast as their Volkswagen bus will take them.

We feel obliged by the fact that we have a music feature about Julian Marley in this week's New Times to point out that this is, like, bullshit, man.

Two very unique (and different) cinematic experiences for you today, both of which take place in places that get the Culture Blog's "Two Pipes Up" of approval.

One is courtesy of the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives: a screening of historic footage of the Civil Rights movement in Miami at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (101 West Flagler Street, Miami). Here's a sneak peak, a television clip of Miami's first black city commissioner M. Athalie Range commenting on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The screening starts at 6:30 p.m., is free, and will be moderated by UM History Professor Gregory W. Bush. Call 305-375-1621.

Photo by Grant Delin

​Why is Jonathan Safron Foer, young novelist and lit celebrity, appearing in Miami two days after the Miami Book Fair International? Kind of weird, but also pretty awesome for those of us who missed some of our favorite authors--Tao Lin, Jonathan Lethem--to the inevitable choices one has to make between readings at the fair. No choice tonight--just Jonathan.

Four years after his "September 11th" novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Safron Foer has penned his first nonfiction work, an intelligent investigation into the historical arguments for eating meat. Or rather, the myths behind those historical arguments--Foer is a converted vegetarian.

He reads from Eating Animals (Little, Brown and Co., $25.99) at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Temple Beth Shalom, 4144 Chase Ave., Miami Beach. A free, general admission ticket is required, unless you're a serious Safronian, in which case you can pay $40 for priority seating, a signed copy of the book and a ticket to the private reception afterward with JSF himself. Tickets are available at all Books and Books locations.

Is it just us, or does Family Feud invariably pit a white family against a black family? It's like the show's producers are daring you to not root for your own race, like the O.J. Simpson trial all over again. It could be argued that race relations in America will not take the next step until Family Feud is off the air - which will never happen because there will always be some broke, obscure former sitcom bit character willing to host the show. (The word in Tinseltown is that once the Boss from Seinfeld kicks the bucket, the fat cop-dad from Family Matters is eager for the gig.)

This Thanksgiving, Feud devotees will get a break from the ol' whites vs. blacks race war when a Miami family, shockingly surnamed Perez, will try its luck at naming what the rest of America thinks is in the bathroom cabinet besides toothpaste.

No word yet on the identity of the opposing family. There's always a chance this could be a Latino vs. Asian episode -- a precious event that occurs at roughly the same frequency as a Halley's comet sighting. 

This Feud might just be seminal enough to deserve a live blog session -- and around that time Thanksgiving afternoon, Riptide will be looking for any excuse to get out of mashing potatoes and husking corn.

​"When I was in high school, I was editor of the paper, and we did an April Fool's issue that was all fake news. I look back at that and look at what I'm doing now, and I realize just how little growth there's been in the last 30 years."

Samantha Ronson

• Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Go to match.com to find your mate and then go to the Antique Jewelry show to pick up the old, borrowed, and blue.
• Pauly Shore can't help it if he reminds you of the '90s. Take your time machine (the metrorail) to his appearance at the Improv and really get into the spirit.
• It's not all about Tony Roma's and strip malls, South Miami now has its very own Art Walk. Cruise it or head to the Design District/Wynwood for a glimpse of all the pre-Basel action.
• Lindsay Lohan's dad may be the one making all the news these days, but Lilo's ex is totally our fave for putting on a free show at Dolphin Mall. Give her a listen.
• They're showing the Pacquiao/Cotto bout at the Clevelander, so tuck in with tourists and watch one of the most highly-aniticipated (and Tweeted) fights of the year.
• Celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain is hosting and kitchen legends Jacques Pepin and Eric Ripert are throwing down. Do you even need to know the occasion to go?
• Of course, the Book Fair kicks off today. Click here for our complete coverage.

Click here for Saturday's events and here for Sunday's.

Last night, the Bas Fisher Invitational celebrated five years of artistic innovation and its newest portfolio, "Wow We Have Come This Far," a tribute to past exhibits and a variety of works by 12 BFI alumni. The project is being sold to match a Knight Foundation grant and raise money for future BFI programming. There were cocktails, and cupcakes, and creatives all drinking in the latest collection - an homage of sorts to a place that embraces everything alternative and serves as an incubator for the anti-commercial.

The Bas Fisher crew from top left: Naomi Fisher, Jim Drain, Agatha Wara, Kathryn Marks.

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​To try to breeze through the accomplishments of award-winning writer, director, playwright, composer, and auteur Melvin Van Peebles would be more like making your way through an onslaught of gale-force winds.One of the pioneering black artists in America's history, he has contributed highly acclaimed works of art such as the groundbreaking piece of cinematic candy, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which is still referenced as one of the most innovative examples of guerrilla filmmaking to date. 

Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi

​Born in Central Connecticut, poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi now lives in Los Angeles and teaches. Her accolades are numerous--Stegner Fellowship, Jones Lecturer, Rona Jaffe Women Writer's Award, Bernard F. Conners Prize, Connecticut Book Award--but even they don't prepare a reader for the richness inside her debut The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005) and her newest collection, Apocalyptic Swing (2009), both from Persea Books.
My interview with her on October 30 was incredible.  Enjoy.

On Miami
I used to go to Miami all the time with my grandmother, in order to visit my aunt. It was so different from the rural places where we lived on the east coast. I was in Miami when Reagan got shot; when the pope got shot; when the American hostages in Iran were released. I have all these poetic-type memories of watching television in a typical Miami home for these historic moments. Even though I'm in L.A., I think about Miami all the time. People have said to me, if you love LA, you tend to have a tremendously great time in Miami. Both are cosmopolitan cities; American but not American. LA's also a Spanish-speaking city. Whole groups--Hispanic, African-American--moved to L.A. after the war, so some parts have the feel of a Southern city to me.

Tom Healy

​There was no indication, early on, that Tom Healy would become a poet.

Growing up on a farm in upstate New York, in an environment he describes as "brutalizing in every aspect," Healy didn't get much intellectual encouragement. Mostly, he spent his time doing the hard work required on a small family farm, until one summer in high school, he got a chance to attend a program called Boys State. Run by the American Legion, Boys State functions much like a rural Model U.N., except the focus is more on national patriotism. (Bill Clinton went to the one in Arkansas). While there, Healy met a Yale graduate who told him he should apply to an Ivy League college because "they like hicks like us." Healy took the advice and applied early action to Harvard; it was actually the only college he applied to. His high school English teacher bet him twenty-five dollars he wouldn't get it in.

"And he still hasn't paid me," Healy says.

Once in Cambridge, however, Healy quickly realized how arrogant he'd been in his innocence and felt lucky to have been accepted. He majored in philosophy; took classes with noted poetry critic Helen Vendler; and ran a soup kitchen in Boston after graduating. He briefly attended a graduate program in philosophy at Johns Hopkins, but discovered in the process that he wasn't an academic at heart.

After a stint in San Francisco, Healy moved to New York City. In 1994, along with Matthew Marks and the late Pat Hearn, Healy opened one of the first art galleries in Chelsea, in an old taxi garage on W. 22nd Street.

He has long been a stereotypical Miami character: The elderly exile who never loses hope of going home, who views life as a never-ending quest to topple "El Tirano."

via Miami Book Fair

​Then there's his counterpart: The compañero on the island who refuses to give up the revolutionary dream despite the world crumbling around him.

The later is lovingly fleshed out in Achy Obejas' heart-rending novel "Ruins," set in the Special Period of 1994, when peas were ground to brew coffee and ropa vieja was concocted from threadbare cloth marinated in watery tomato sauce.

It was a time when Castro had flung open the doors, and in the fishing village of Cojimar -- the setting of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" -- young men and women formed a "silent parade" to the shore "carrying inner tubes and wooden planks... like rows of giant ants hauling Lifesavers and toothpicks in the moonlight."

But Usnavy Martin Leyva -- named for the giant letters emblazoned on the ships docked at Guantanamo Bay -- refused to go to sea. Although he slept in a cot in a leaky, windowless tenement with his wife and daughter, he remained steadfastly loyal to the Revolution that had made him much more than "some hick from the hills."

Obejas' Gothic-tinged narrative is fueled by the widening chasm between revolutionary ideals and hunger. We see Usnavy struggling at every turn: Should he help his friend leave the island? Should he look the other way when someone cheats at the bodega where he works? Should he try to make a dollar to buy his wife and daughter a gift?

A former prize-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, Obejas spent long stretches living on the island she left as a child, getting to know those who chose to stay.

"These were very humble people who never got any special privileges from the revolution," Obejas says from her home in Chicago. "They signed on because they believed this would make a better Cuba only to see it fall apart."

Couch liberals, including a New York Times book reviewer, see metaphors at every turn--the crumbling buildings, the stifling humidity that erases words from the page. But the book is not about fancy word play. It's about facts.

Achy Obejas will appear at the Miami Book Fair Saturday, Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. Miami Dade College 300 NE Second Ave. (Room 7128 (Building 7, 1st Floor). Jorge Casuso has co-authored two Spanish-language plays with Obejas.

Farm-owner Roberto Aguedo Chavez.

​To squash a common misconception, the rash of illegal horse slaughter in South Florida is not the work of some sophisticated mafia. The horse killers- who have been doing their thing for years before the media took notice -- are rarely connected to each other, and they're usually just opportunistic farmers trying to make an extra buck. Like 53-year-old Roberto Aguedo Chavez and 45-year-old Ricardo Olivarez, who allegedly had the misfortune of selling ten pounds of frozen horse meat to an undercover detective in October.

Chavez and his assistant Olivarez lived together in a horse stable located on a farm at 19890 SW 180th Street. The accommodations were "crappy", in the words of a detective involved. Chavez' mother lived in a nearby trailer.

An informant told Miami-Dade cops that the cronies were peddling horse meat. A detective showed up and allegedly paid Chavez fifty bucks for a black plastic bag full of the stuff. Hence the photos of them cuffed in chairs, which come straight from the personal iPhone of a cop who was on the scene. In a freezer, investigators found an additional 240 pounds of horse meat.

Back in the 1970s, while working on George McGovern's doomed presidential bid in Texas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch shared a room with two driven young Yalies named Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

via Wikimedia Commons

​When the man from Hope won the White House in '92, Clinton invited Branch -- in secret, even from his top advisors -- to record interviews with him.

Eight years of furtive taping led to this year's 700-page The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President (Simon & Schuster, $35). The book sketches a behind-the-scenes portrait of the most powerful man on Earth.

Branch will speak about the project on Saturday at the Miami Book Fair. The talk, scheduled at noon in the Chapman Conference Center, is free but does require a ticket.

 "This is a unique book because it's not meant to be a historical evaluation. I was just too close to Bill for that," Branch says.

Instead, The Clinton Tapes fills in the blanks behind the biggest moments of Clinton's presidency as they happened. 

For instance, after Castro shot down Cuban-American pilots during the Brothers to the Rescue crisis in 1994, Branch writes, Clinton threatened Fidel Castro with military retaliation. "He was really starting to dip his toes in the water on loosening the embargo before that, but Fidel put him in a spot where he had no choice but to back out," Branch says today.

Click through for a full Q&A with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years."

Are Cigars next?

​After all of those politically conscious goths, poetry café types, and other assorted folk who think regular cigarettes are too mainstream helped Barack Obama get elected, what does he do? He turns around and bans their beloved clove cigarettes! How long until he bans cigars too?

Along the way, Chipi met counter-culture hipsters [ed: as opposed to mainstream hipsters, who listen to Girl Talk], goths, and college professors who also shared her love. 

​The only things little goys really know about Jewish culture they learned from A Rugrats Chanukah and kindergarten multicultural holiday celebrations. Basically this amounts to knowing there are eight days of presents and candle lighting, latkes taste great, and the lyrics to the dreidel song. 

Don't let the glasses fool you; he's a literary super hero

​For fellow writers, Jonathan Lethem needs no introduction. 1999's Motherless Brooklyn, the story of a detective with Tourette's syndrome, put Lethem on the map, but by that point, he'd already written four novels that breached the genre line between science fiction and literary fiction, a line that, thanks in large part to Lethem, has more or less disappeared. A constant advocate of the fantastic and book culture in general, Lethem has spoken up for the importance of progenitors like Philip K. Dick and Italo Calvino, and like them, he seems incapable of writing a dull plot while simultaneously delivering intellectual heft.

His newest novel, though, may be his best. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Chronic City  (Doubleday, $27.95) takes place in a modern-day Manhattan that is nevertheless as wildly inventive as one of Calvino's invisible cities, a Manhattan where a tiger is on the loose on the Upper East Side, a secret land fill has been created as an art installation, and the atmosphere is polluted by Chinese mines that prevent the protagonist's fiancee--an astronaut--from coming home. Yet a lot of the action still takes place in a music writer's apartment, where two guys are getting high and chatting about pop culture. In short, it's awesome.

​In Coral Gables, it's wine and cheese. Along Calle Ocho, it's mojitos and arroz con pollo. In SoBe, it's vodka-Red-Bull and air.

Deep in the farmlands of South Miami, apparently, they get down with Heineken and horse meat.

On July 3, an anonymous tip alerted Miami-Dade cops to this bin sitting along the side of SW 214th Street near 206th Avenue. "It looks like somebody must have been having a party," posits Det. Mario Fernandez,lead investigator of the county's horse-slaughtering phenomenon.

The revelers responsible haven't been nabbed. Click through for closer photos of the bin's contents.

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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.

​Dan Goldman is one of the few creators who carries a boatload of style, credibility, and innovation in the comics scene both in print and online. A comic book artist and writer who grew up in unincorporated North Miami Beach (Aventura now, he's old school), Goldman divides his time between Brooklyn, Miami, and Sao Paulo, and has worked on the critically acclaimed Shooting War, and 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail. Goldman's new webcomic, Red Light Properties, goes live on sci-fi publisher Tor's website on January 5th. New Times sat down with the illustrator to discuss his work, South Florida, and why superheroes are lame.

via Wikicommons

​Seventeen syllables for five hundred dollars is a pretty good deal right?

That's what my friends over at Knight Arts are offering right now to the Miami-Dade resident who can write the best haiku on the subject of the recent public arts funding budget hearings. Just go to their website and click on the Do You Haiku? tab. Then go to the online entry form and bang out your masterpiece using the traditional 5-7-5 format -- no paintbrush or pen necessary. You can enter as many times as you like until November 21...as long as you live in Miami.

First prize is $500; second is $250; and five honorable mentions will take home $100.



Full disclosure: my organization University of Wynwood is co-sponsoring. 

Not pictured: a groggy yuppie.

A year ago, a 33-year-old financier named Javier bought a two-bedroom condo in a posh new building downtown for just under $200,000. From his white leather couch, his gigantic windows offer spectacular views of both the river and the bay. He walks to Heat games, takes the Metromover, and is a regular at upscale Brickell restaurants. To Miami city planners and developers, he is as elusive and mythical a creature as Sasquatch. He is the urban-dwelling yuppie.

One problem: Javier wants out of downtown. In fact, he won't allow his last name, or the name of his building, to be used in this story, because he's hoping to sell his unit. It's not the parking, or the crime, or the lack of neighbors that is chasing Javier away. It's the noise. "Sleep is very important to me," he says. "When my windows are rattling, and I'm tossing and turning because of the boats, I'd rather get a quiet place somewhere else."

It's those damn shrimp boats, Javier says. The "wingnet" rigs trawl the Miami River and Biscayne Bay all night, throttling their engines to make turns and, Javier says, periodically blasting deafening horns. He says the boats usually wake him up around 2 a.m. Shrimpers hunt their minuscule prey at night, when they've migrated to shallow waters. "It's definitely not something I was aware of when I bought the place," Javier laments.

​Ruth Reichl comes to the Miami Book Fair International to plug a huge 1,000-plus recipe cookbook called Gourmet Today -- on the heels of the announcement that there would be no more Gourmet magazine tomorrow. That's sort of like Bernie Madoff going on a financial self-help book tour in the weeks after his Ponzi imploded. In other words, this will be one of the hottest events at the Fair.

Gourmet Today is not a retrospective of recipes culled from the publication's 68-year history, so it doesn't come across as some self-important swan song. Instead, this serious tome (meaning no photos) is steeped in the titular Today and stewed in new ingredients, techniques, and nutritional concerns. "I wrote my first cookbook in 1971," Reichl recalls, "and when I see the difference between what was available then and the food that now fills my supermarket, it makes me want to go dancing down the aisles."

Her years as The New York Times restaurant reviewer, followed by time spent so deftly steering Gourmet into the 21st Century, allow Ms. Reichl a uniquely informed perspective of the food world to share with her audience -- and as a speaker she tends to be unflinchingly honest. Unfortunately, she didn't agree to speak with us, so if you're anxious to query her over Gourmet's demise you'll have to do it yourself at the question-and-answer period following her appearance. (Sample: Do you ever lament that it was all your fault?)

Ruth Reichl reads from Gourmet Today tonight at 6pm in Bldg. 3, 2nd Floor, Chapman Auditorium, as part of the "Evenings With..." series. This event's free - no ticket required - so we suggest getting there early.

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.

Voices United recording at the Hit Factory

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Not many records released this year will have as much good karma on their side as Lost & Found, the new album by Miami nonprofit Voices United.

Voices United was founded in 1989 by then 17-year-old director Katie Christie. It brings together 150 local children a year together to write and perform a vocal and theatrical production. This summer, 25 of those students -- ranging in age from 12 to 18 -- got together with sound engineer Carlos "El Loco" Bedoya at Aaron Fishbein's studio, The Franchise, to record a four-song EP that's being released tonight during a fundraiser at Las Tias in Wynwood (2834 N Miami Ave).

Tickets to the 7:30 p.m. event are $40-75 (remember, it's going to the kids), which gets you free wine and bubbly, music from Voices United alum DJ Hot Pants, a special appearance by NBC-6 anchor Willard Shepard, and a silent auction that includes a week-long trip to the Bahamas. The album costs $6. Buy two!

​In a boon for intellectual life in Miami, the University of Miami unveils its brand-new Center for the Humanities--the first of its kind in South Florida--this evening at 6 p.m. in the Storer Auditorium in the School of Business Administration (5250 University Drive, Coral Gables).

What is a Center for the Humanities? According to Director Mihoko Suzuki it's a way to bring the public--and other local universities--into a larger discussion about issues that center around art, interpretative social science, pedagogy, and literature. Technically speaking, it's an non-degree-giving entity within a university that sponsors lectures, panels, and other educational events that aren't limited by departmental or even organizational constraints. First founded in the United States a little over 50 years ago, Centers for the Humanities allow universities to host visiting scholars and open their doors to non-affiliated individuals.

"The events are open to everyone," Suzuki says. "The Center will encourage exchanges between us and FIU, FAU, etc. It's been a long time coming."

Tonight's lecture is a great example. The Center is hosting Marjorie Garber, who is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She'll be presenting a talk on "Shakespeare, the Humanities, and Modern Culture"; in other words, how the works of Shakespeare continue to inform modern life and literature. The free lecture is followed by a cocktail reception. (To RSVP, call 305-284-1580.)

Right now, the Center's offices in 123 Ashe are being re-modeled, but the new center hopes to occupy them by the end of the calendar year. And in the future, Dr. Suzuki is hoping to build a free-standing Center, similar to the Hall Center at Kansas University.

"But right now, we just want people to learn that we're doing these events and to know that they should come," she says.

Courtesy of The Beach Chronicles

​Miami gets animated in a new graphic-animated novel from creators Gianfranco Bianchi and Kevin Sharpley. The duo teamed up to create a sexy, gritty action-thriller set against the backdrop of South Beach.

Titled The Beach Chronicles, the series is the antithesis to the rampant depictions of Miami culture as being only about coke-laced, club-hopping yuppies with bad tans, and instead brings dark, edgy, fashion-forward allure to every smartly written plot. Each episode showcases upcoming local designers and artists, including everyone from KRELwear designer Karelle Levy to Mr. Clucky.

Jimmy Jean Louis, actor from NBC's Heroes, lends his voice to Jacques Jean Jille, a laid-back, fashion-forward Haitian scenester who is a reoccurring character on the show.

Glynn Jackson brings his legendary hair shows to the 3-0-5 this Sunday.

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• Don't call it a comeback, and rapper JT Money isn't rising from the dead, but his last hit, "Who Dat," was in 1999, and he's back for Halloween weekend -- so you can call it a resurrection.
• Jazz chanteuse Nicole Henry has returned from Russia (with love) and will be performing soulful standards at MOCA.
• If you think haunted houses are scary, try being locked in an interrogation room with cops searching for an unruly child murderer. Live it at Ground Up and Rising's version of The Pillowman.
• See Saw. The latest installment in the horror film series that will inspire you to give more "ew" than "ahhh" will premiere at Club Mansion.

Click here for our big ol' list of Halloween parties, family events, and other scarily fun shit. And here for Sunday's hangover action.