Miami News Blog

Disco Rick will not be pleased. At some point during Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco's Hypnotiq-addled sleepless binge that was Super Bowl weekend, apparently he swept up some young, impressionable lads and showed them his advanced dollar-fluttering techniques-- at Tootsie's Cabaret strip club. From his Twitter page:

​ ​His homie from Cincy, by the way, is Ryan Santoro -- a high school footballer in his senior year. Who says today's athletes aren't taking responsibility for the education of America's youth?

via Animal Planet

Jake, a pug-Chihuahua mix.

​We have pretty much stripped away any wholesomeness associated with this year's Super Bowl with our guide to sex, drugs, gambling, and living large in South Florida, but we can never denigrate the Puppy Bowl.

And this year's version of Animal Planet's annual cute-splotation extravaganza promises to be at least 300 percent more adorable. Because in addition to hours upon hours of watching adorable puppies play with dog toys, there will also be -- get ready for this because your heart will actually melt out of your chest and onto your keyboard -- bunny rabbit cheerleaders and a blimp manned by a crew of hamsters. This is in addition to the traditional kitty halftime show.

The Puppy Bowl features pups from rescue shelters, and airs information about adopting animals. The action kicks off at 3 p.m. Super Bowl Sunday, and you can get a sneak peek of the starting lineup here.

via Rubio's Flickr

​President Obama and many in his administration have been accused of "Chicago style-politics" by the likes of Glenn Beck and others. Now Marco Rubio is facing similar criticism for being "a slick package from Miami." Maybe the two can get together and man hug it out.

"Rubio is a slick package from Miami, and people have not seen the other side of Marco Rubio and who he is, where he stands and his flip-flopping, whether it be taxes or cap-and-trade or high-speed rail," state Sen. Mike Fasano, a Republican from New Port Richie who bakes Crist, told The Times/Herald in a recent story.

Rubio's campaign didn't take too kindly to the dirty insult in that sentence. No not "flip-flopping," but "Miami."

Yes, he's wearing a Snuggie.

​We've long known Cincinatti wide receiver and Miami native Chad Ochocinco has a somewhat colorful personality -- we were sort of tipped off when he legally changed his last name to a bad Spanish translation of his jersey number -- but he seems to be really coming into his own since the NFL came to town for the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl.

Let's run down the Week and a Half of Chad:
 
He worked at McDonald's.

He beseeached his Pro Bowl coach to let him moonlight as a kicker so he could unveil his kicking alter ego Esteban Ochocinco, the "most interesting footballer in the world."

He posted Twitter photos of himself wearing only briefs.

​Is there even any point in playing the season now that we know for a fact the Marlins will win the World Series this year? It has been foretold by the oracles of our time: the props department of long-canceled "near-future" submarine drama seaQuest DSV. (For the record, we have no idea why the show's title has that weird capitalization, and we too thought DSV was a porn term.)

​Now this isn't sensationalist at all. No, the Brevard-based sexual predator watchdog group Protect Our Children (POC) is being entirely reasonable. If you disagree, you're most likely a pedophile -- or Roger Daltrey.

The Who's Pete Townshend will come to South Florida to perform at the Super Bowl. In 2003, the guitarist was arrested in England and accused of searching for child sex photos online. He claimed he was researching a book, and was never convicted, but his name was added to the country's sex offender registry. So POC is sending out 1,500 of the above postcards to area residents warning them that "Townshend will be at large in Miami on February 7" -- because he might escape from the stadium to go trolling for your children in nearby parks.

via About.com

​Historic Florida theme park Cypress Gardens, which pre-dated Disney World by 35 years, is officially no more. Merlin Entertainment dumped a bulldozer load of lego blocks on it and officially declared it the future home of Legoland Florida.

The park will be the world's largest Legoland, and aimed at families with smaller children. The famous botanical gardens and at least one of the park's wooden roller coasters will remain, and there's a chance that the legendary water ski shows will stick around, but everything else will be getting a plastic block face lift.

The park will feature more than 50 new rides and attractions and is expected to open in Winter Haven in late 2011.

Last week, retired rapper and King of Diamonds strip club manager Ricky "Disco Rick" Taylor made it rain knowledge on the blogosphere's gyrating ass in anticipation of the Super Bowl, which he predicted will be "the biggest weekend in strip club history in South Florida."

One of the Hypnotiq-soaked crumpled bills of wisdom he tossed our way: "There is sex in the champagne room. There's not supposed to be. What we don't know about we don't give a fuck." He also listed the names of several NFL players from Miami who he expects will be up in the club trying to convey the following message to their league-mates from across the country: "This is how we do in Miami."

As it turns out, divulging this sort of sensitive information is a big no-no in the oiled-boob industry. Within an hour of us posting to the blog, somebody started a Twitter account under the handle "DISCORICKSARAT". Among the mad tweeter's not-at-all-exaggerated claims:

Disco Rick Said in Article KOD [King of Diamonds] sell pussy, also the girls are slaves.

Disco Rick states there is sex in the Champagne Room. Why is he shaming the KOD hoes?

Apparently, this DISCORICKSARAT is a budding feminist. He also sent multiple plaintive missives to P. Diddy, who'll host a Super Bowl party at the club, warning him of a law-enforcement blitz being planned in the wake of the blog post:

Federal agents set to raid KOD Superbowl weekend thanks to this article posted by Disco Rick.

Then we got a text from Disco Rick himself:

​There's more than enough weird things that happen here in Miami-Dade, but sometimes it seems we're downright sane compared to the rest of Florida. WTF Florida is our new weekly survey of all the weirdness our Peninsula has to offer.

American Idol Comes to Mickey Mouse Land



American Idol skipped over Miami, its favorite Sunshine State pitstop, this year in favor of Orlando. There they found a Mr. Theo Glinton, who showed up looking like he attached super glue to the top of his face and rolled around in the Haus of Gaga for an hour. Which is great, because we love a contestant who's not afraid to be himself, y'know. But because apparently artists like Elton John, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, the entire new wave genre, and a certain Adam Lambert were all well known commercial flops, Simon knows effeminate, flashy male singers have no chance to make it and Glittery Glinton's verdict was sealed even before he opened his mouth. Unfortunately when he did it didn't help. It wasn't bad, but yeah, it wasn't good. Who did make it through to Hollywood? Cornelius Edwards who learned dance moves from his stripper friends and ended up splitting his pants. That clip after the jump.

via Maxim

​Aren't there enough aspiring swimsuit models in Miami Beach looking for a sugar daddy? So how did one Miami Beach doctor get duped into thinking he was having an online fling with a former Maxim model, only to find out he was actually trading pictures and having phone conversations with a man named Justin Brown, an Internet-savvy 24-year-old with a particularly effeminate voice?

According to the LA Times, Brown posted images of model Bree Condon on sites such as SeekingMillionaires.com, looking for potential grift victims. He'd then string the lovelorn moneybags along by sending Photoshopped nude photos and, because he was able to pass his voice off as a female's, having phone conversations, all the while collecting gifts and money from the men.

Bjørn Christian Tørrissen; Wikimedia Commons

Delicious!

​Last week's freeze was not nice to Miami's homeless contingent. The shelters were overflowing, and the Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offenders crowded around barrel fires and behind makeshift walls.

But Harold, a burly 37-year-old Georgia-born transient who wears a Moses beard and huge circular eyeglasses, tends to find the silver lining in every defecatory cloud. He refers to one-night jail stints as "B&B stays," claims to catch fish with his bare hands, and long ago mastered the art of snatching leftovers from restaurant patios. He would never deign to enter the lowly walls of a shelter for his dinner.

(Harold asked that we not use his last name or snap his photo because he "might have one or two warrants [he] forgot to take care of.")

Next to his tarp along the nether region of the Julia Tuttle -- he's not a sex offender -- hangs a Publix bag full of tiny lizard bones, picked clean of meat. It's evidence of his latest conquest. During the cold spell, Harold feasted on iguanas that fell, paralyzed by cold, to the ground. "You wait until 1 or 2 a.m., when it's cold enough to shrink your balls," he explains, cloaked in a bubble jacket and several sweaters. "Then you walk along the water under the trees and listen. It sounds like somebody's throwing a sack of rice on the sand. Then you run and get them before they snap out of it."

​Who's ready for liftoff? Apparently one NASA employee in Cape Canaveral, because a dime bag of cocaine was found inside the hangar housing the space shuttle Discovery.

Drugs and space travel haven't been this connected since David Bowie's Space Oddity, but it seems there's an actual "junkie, strung out in Heaven's high, hitting an all-time low."

The baggie containing cocaine residue was found outside a bathroom inside the high-security hangar. Only about 200 NASA employees and contractors have access to the building.

NASA is conducting drug tests of all employees but notes that "there are no obvious indications of anyone acting oddly or under the influence."

[Space.com: Cocaine Found in NASA Space Shuttle Hangar]

• Lincoln Town Car Road
• A branded line of easily removable bikini tops
• LMFAO's "I'm in Miami Bitch" Convention Center
• Flamingo Park sponsored by ManHunt.Com
• Miami Beach Coke, a retro formulation of the cola with the original cocaine ingredients
• Ocean Drive Drive
• Threatening SoBe Iced Teas to start paying royalties
• Normandy Bramen Motors Isles
• Naming Speedo the official clothing sponsor of the 12th Street Beach, if they aren't already 
• Pastel crock pots and tubs
• A Rosetta Stone language program for Miami Beesh "English"
• A South Beach Snuggie made of fishnet 

Bay News 9

​There's more than enough weird things that happen here in Miami-Dade, but sometimes it seems we're downright sane compared to the rest of Florida. WTF Florida is our new weekly survey of all the weirdness our Peninsula has to offer. 

Florida's Oldest Snowball

​Riptide has fondled the blonde and silky tufts of greatness. And today, Coconut Grove resident Justin Shaw's arm hair is recognized as the longest in the world. Move over, Mark McGwire; it seems that there are still heroes amongst us after all.

In September, we took a tape measure to the Crazy Pianos drummer's left-forearm tuft and were staggered by its length: 5.75 inches. That number eclipsed the then Guinness-verified record for arm hair length -- 5.3 inches on the left arm of a Wisconsin high schooler -- by almost half an inch.

To be recognized by Guinness, you need to have your record verified by local media (us) and "upstanding members of the community" -- Justin had two firefighters from his local firehouse measure his arm hair on camera. And a few days ago, he received an official certificate (pictured after the jump) in the mail. Apparently, Guinness recognized his record from that fateful moment that the firefighters grabbed hold of his tuft, meaning that he's already been the keeper of the world's longest arm hair for more than four months. "It's a pretty sweet victory," he tells Riptide. "It's been a long road getting here. All that's left for me to do now is destroy my own record."

House Via Flicker CC

The elusive species of South Florida space heater.

​The other day, Riptide went to the Shops at Midtown Target and asked an employee to point us toward the space heaters. He rolled his eyes and said, "Honey, we've been out of them for five days." Then he suggested we try a blanket. (Thanks, man.)

Apparently, nearly every store in the county is sold out too. This morning, Home Depot spokesperson Craig Fishel explained his company didn't have a single one for sale South Florida.

As evidenced by the geniuses who lit a charcoal grill in their living room last night, this cold snap is making Floridians a teensy bit crazy.

Northerners don't understand. When it drops below 40 degrees in New York, for example, you jerks have central heating. All we have here are bottles of Cruzan rum.

Orange farmers might be screwed, but knowing Miami, there's probably a thriving black market for space heaters in a Southwest Dade barn somewhere. Just ask for the guy with the gold tooth.

​For years Publix has been giving away free calendars to its costumers as a simple little thank you.

This was nice and all until Jeff Katz and Joyce Kaufman, conservative blowhards on 850WFTL, complained that December 7th was marked as Islamic New Years, and not as Pearl Harbor Day.

That's the problem with talk radio isn't it? They have three hours each day to fill with outrage, so they will literally be outraged at anything.

According to Snopes this set off an email chain that included the following warning:

Let Publix know that you will not tolerate this un-American attitude and boycott their stores. You can inform them that your shopping will be done at Walmart, Target and Winn Dixie, who recognize Americans and their fighting men and women. And, they are also cheaper than Publix.

Now no one will get free calendars! Way to go guys! George Washington's tears of joy are pouring down from Heaven!

Publix issued a statement today saying that it has never included Pearl Harbor Day because it is not even actually a national holiday at all. Though it has always included Islamic New Years, and it's not their fault the Muslims have some weird calendar system. They also added that the vast majority of calendars don't include Pearl Harbor Day.

Natalie O'Neill

Just when you thought Florida would never legalize marijuana, the folks over at Moha Super market go and prove you wrong. Smokers Behold: Miami's very first pack of rolled ganja cigarettes. New Pot!

Oh, man. It almost seems too good to be true. Like it could even be a mistake! But no. You read it here first: That rundown little shop on 45th and North Miami Avenue -- the one with the wild dogs out back -- sells more than cheap forties and stale Marlboro loosies.

Sorry, senators. This place is going down in the history books.

​This entire cougar craze is really out of control. OK, we get it middle age woman, you want to bang nubile, young studs as much as your male counterparts want to bang ditzy, big breasted young blonds. Rah rah feminism, taking control of your sexuality, and all of that, but the "movement" really need to pull itself back a little bit. It's already pretty much a parody of itself.

There's a recurring SNL sketch, a sitcom, a movie, a how-to book, and other riff-raff. Keep your cougar-y ways where they really belong: in your bedroom (or the dorm rooms of your conquests, whichever it may be). Do what you do, but not everyone needs to know your business, alright.

Miami-based Carnival Cruises has had about enough of it too, and says it will no longer let tourist agents books Cougar-themed cruises. A Carnival cruise ship played host to the first such event, but no more. Alas, the cougar is out of the bag and other cruises are about to set sail. A cougar cruise is set to sail out of Miami on Norwegian Cruise Lines next December.

Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer will be going into it's fifth decade on the air since debuting in the '70s. That's quite a feat for any TV show, but the new year might be extra special for the locally produced TV show which airs on public television stations internationally hosted by Horkheimer, the director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium at the Miami Science Museum.

That's because the New Year's Eve will host a blue moon. Most years only see twelve full moons a year, but occasionally a calendar year will be filled with 13. It happens about every 2.5 years. A blue moon on New Year's Eve occurs once every 19 years, but we'll let Horkheimer explain it.

Tourists complain Miamians are rude. Locals complain tourists are dumb. So it goes.

We'll readily admit to being rude at times, but it's time for tourists to admit they're a bit clueless.

William Hageman recently rounded up the dumbest questions tourism professionals have ever been asked. Obviously, a Miami tourist takes the cake:

According to Jennifer Haz, of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, one inquiring mind asked: "Can you tell me which beach is closest to the ocean?"

Just remember, though, these geniuses are basically keeping our local economy afloat.

Stuff white people like.

​Detroit has cars. Los Angeles has movies. Pittsburgh has steel. Miami has... reality show stars?

Since the advent of reality, we've played the backdrop for some truly appaling television. Miamians who think they can dance have recently been ordered to file into the Adrienne Arsht Center on January 18. And now Extreme Makeover: Home Edition just sent us a press release announcing it's looking for a Miami family.

It's tough to make fun of the show because, you know, they make poor people's shitty houses nicer, although Riptide does have a standing offer to punch host Ty Pennington, who resembles a high-on-meth juice-bar employee, in the face.

Anyway, in the wake of the recession, Extreme Makeover's producers should have no problem finding residents with sad stories and dilapidated single-family homes. If that's you, follow these instructions:

Interested families should e-mail a short description of their family story to: CastingExtremeMiami@gmail.com. Nominations may be submitted by the family or by a member of their community. Each nomination must include the names and ages of every member of the household along with a description of the major challenges within the home. Anyone submitting a nomination should be sure to explain why the nominated family is deserving, heroic, and/or a great role model for their community. If possible, include a recent photo of the family. All nominations must include a contact phone number. The deadline for nominations is January 31st 2010. But, the sooner we receive your nomination the better.

​Santa Claus is coming to the Shops at Midtown Miami (3401 N. Miami Ave., in front of Loehman's and West Elm) this Saturday, and he's bringing his rubbers.

Rubber ducky reindeer, that is. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Santa and his helpers will set up rubber duck reindeer races for Miami children. (We can only imagine "rubber duck reindeer" means reindeer the size, shape, and material of the traditional rubber ducky, and not some Frankensteinian combination of a duck and a reindeer made of rubber. We can also assume there's no "action" on these races. But if there is, I've got five on Daffy Reindeer.)

This is a great event for families. Or for people with rampant gambling obsessions, on acid.

​Miami Shark let you destroy our city with a blood thirsty, big fish with an indiscriminate pallet, but a new casual game let's you build it up. If you ever wanted to play Carl Fisher or John Collins, Build It: Miami Beach Resort is your virtual chance.

The new game from Cerasus Media lets you control Claire Parker who inherits a lot of land and a lot or money from an uncle in the 1920s with the caveat she has to enters the hotel business. You then get 60 levels, equivalent to six decades, to turn the sleepy beach town into a tourism hotspot.

You start with Art Deco hotels and diners with rounded edges that resemble a certain spot on 11th Street, and soon include parks, night clubs, restaurants and bars. None of the reviews make mention of say, going through periods of poverty, drugs, crime and racial tension. Nor is there an option for failing players to lure a TV network to come down and produce a stylish cop drama to boost tourism, but Vice City this is not.

The game can be downloaded for PC or Mac for free, but after sixty minutes you have to purchase a $9.95 license to continue.

Pixel Via Flicker CC

​The other day, 44-year-old Carlos Iglesia was jogging in Kennedy Park when he heard a strange noise. It sounded like a lady screaming in pain -- or intense pleasure? -- so he slowed down to investigate, and found several wild peaheans huddled behind an old fence.

"They yell like a woman having an orgasm," Iglesia says, and then imitates the noise in a falsetto pitch. "It sounds like, uh-ahhhhh!"

The unruly female squawkers started acting insane -- "screeching" and "smashing into glass doors" -- in Coconut Grove two weeks ago, after trappers relocated a flock of males to prevent mating. According to Grove activists, they were brought to a Redland farm because they're loud and poop everywhere.

This angered outspoken guys like Iglesia, who say the psychedelic sidewalk chickens are "part of Grove tradition." Getting rid of them seems to have made things worse: The lady critters have since come down with a serious case of the lonelys.

Both male and female peacocks first started disappearing in the North Grove a little over a year ago, after an influential doctor who lives on MiCanopy Avenue contacted the city. The city gave the go ahead to transport them to Sandy Acre Avocado and Mango Farm in Redland. When neighbors heard the news in August, they accused the old farmers of stealing.

(Farmer Sidney Robinson tells Riptide the city asked him to adopt the peacocks, and that he's "just trying to accommodate mother nature.")

Later, Coconut Grove Grapevine Blogger Tom Falco wrote: "It was either get rid of the peacocks or the doctor, and I wish it had been the latter."

Last week the fowl -- this time just the males -- went missing again. The abandoned females are louder than ever, and Falco now blames city officials. "It was all done secretly," he says. "Just because a couple people were bitching."

Unless your studio nickname is Babyface or you wear shades with slats, the Grammys probably mean nothing to you. As a ego-massaging spectacle, the music industry's award show is even more irritating than the Oscars.

That being said, we think it's pretty awesome that "I'm on a Boat" -- the Saturday Night Live/ Andy Samberg parody video filmed in Miami -- has been nominated for Best Rap Collaboration. Why? Because we get to put the video on our blog again.

Devout fans of this column, please forgive us for not presenting any morons last week. You see, a deluge of moronic behavior cascaded through our newsroom, jammed our fax machines, and overloaded our circuit boards.

We've mopped it all up just in time to narrow a football squad-sized crowd of deserving candidates down to a stellar cast of six. There's a distinctly classic feel to this week's lineup:

Captive lions the world over now have a standing contract on all Hooter's girls' heads.

​6. Corinne Oltz, who is clearly better at bustily serving onion rings than at keeping exotic animals.

We gotta admit it: Every time a captive cougar, tiger, or orangutan attacks the redneck who kept it locked in a cage for profit, some deeply-buried, dark and vengeful part of us pops open a Schlitz and does a touchdown dance.

Corinne Oltz was a Hooters waitress and a Playboy model. Her boobs never wounded anybody. Then, for some reason, she decided to buy Kendall's Wild Animal World, making her the custodian of several exotic animals. In 1999 and 2001, her big cats attacked people. In 2006, one of her leopards took a bite out of a 4-year old girl's face at a Coral Gables birthday party. In July 2007, she was charged with culpable negligence and keeping wildlife in unsafe conditions.

She was acquitted. (So was O.J. Just sayin'.)

Yesterday, several animals, including monkeys, parrots and snakes, were killed in a fire at Oltz' wildlife center. Somewhere in Las Vegas, a lemur forced to wear a white rhinestone vest sharpens its teeth and plots its revenge.

Miami transplant, part-time rapper/producer and full-time nonsensical screamer DJ Khaled is the master of extolling the virtues of shit most people find worthless and/or despicable. Such as his own musical prowess: who but DJ Khaled could scream, with great frequency and without irony, that DJ Khaled is "THE BEST"? 

So it's only right that Khaled is now endorsing McDonald's products on his 99 Jamz radio show- and it's a nice bonus that he's pumping the spots full of inexplicable homo-erotic imagery. Below, behold him describing his great man-thirst for the McCafe hot chocolate. It's just a taste: In another spot, Khaled admits to harboring a six-sausage-a-day biscuit addiction.

​The best part about suspended City of Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones's preordained re-election to her vacated seat is this: She'll be able to make another acceptance speech.

We're not sure how many surveys you need to tell you what you already know -- namely that Miami International Airport is to flying what George W. Bush is to presidencies.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bellatrix6/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

A familiar sight inside MIA.

​ ​But hey, it's Thanksgiving, so consider this your excuse to do the thanksy-dance that you're not staring at a flight delay screen inside MIA right now.

And if you're reading this on an iPhone in the Sam Adams bar, banging your head on the table and weeping at the sight of the runway jam outside, well, may as well order another tall one.

The Daily Beast did a complicated statistics thing to rank the 27 biggest airports in the U.S. just in time for the busiest travel holiday of the year, and -- don't spit out your tofurkey here -- MIA was the second-to-worst!

Our worst-in-the-nation, 72.5 percent on-time departure rate didn't help. Neither did our 21st out of 27 safety ranking, or the fact that one out of every four holiday flights didn't arrive on time.

Only Newark ranked below the Magic City.

But the Daily Beast did throw us a bone, noting that "at least the Miami airport, a big hub for American, makes the lengthy wait enjoyable," citing the massages, spray tanning and Cuban eats.

Thank you, sweet baby Jesus, thank you that we are not in MIA today.