Category Archives: Highlights

Features, Highlights

From Shattered to Secure: Scott Mulvaney’s Journey from Homeless to Housed Through the VA

For Marine Corps Veteran Scott Mulvaney, gratefulness is his state of mind.

“If it weren’t for the VA, I’d be dead. I would not be alive.”

With an easy smile and kind eyes, Mulvaney speaks earnestly about his experiences. As a formerly unhoused Veteran, his journey with the VA led him from sleeping in his car to running the Heroes Golf Course, having a home on the West LA VA Campus, and helping countless other Veterans.

His story starts with a stint in the Marine Corps. Years later, undiagnosed PTSD and depression coupled with job loss led to two bouts with homelessness.

“It was like being frozen, I was really broken … in a way you become very fragile because you don’t know who you are at that point,” Mulvaney said. “All the anchors you held onto before, all the things that gave you meaning, and stability are gone.”

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Highlights

The Minimalists: Five Ways to Be Happy With Less Stuff

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Stuff. So much of our lives are spent wanting it, buying it, trying to keep it. We work 60-hour workweeks so we can fill our drawers and purses and closets and storage units and attics with stuff. We take pictures of our stuff to post on Instagram, spend weekends picking out more stuff to buy, talk about our stuff at cocktail parties.

Sure, we need some stuff. We need to eat stuff, use stuff, and wear stuff (in polite society, anyway). But how much stuff do we really need? And how much of our stuff actually brings value to our lives? That’s the question Ohioans Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus began asking themselves when, in their late 20s, they realized they were outwardly successful but inwardly miserable.

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Highlights, Plant-Based Food & Drink

South Beach Food and Wine Festival (SOBEWFF) Coverage

Grand Tasting Village: How to Navigate the SoBeWFF Big Event

The Whole Foods Grand Tasting Village is like the open bar at a wedding reception. It’s where everyone wants to be. And when 70,000 foodies gather en masse, you can bet your monthly food budget there’ll be plenty of action.

There have been plenty of unforgettable, Instagram-worthy, LOL-inducing moments over the years. Plus, the food is superlative.

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Anne Burrell Talks Karaoke, Diamond Dishes, and Women in the Biz

Anne Burrell is the Food Network’s bubbly, blond ambassador of good times and great eats. A frequent face on the network, she’s taken turns on Iron Chef America and Best Thing I Ever Ate, hosted Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, and just kicked off season four of Worst Cooks in America and season two of Chef Wanted With Anne Burrell. Her second cookbook is set to be released later this year (her first was aNew York Times bestseller), and she’s participating in a whole host of events at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. She’s kind of a dynamo.

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SoBeWFF: Does the Glass Make a Difference When It Comes to Beer?

Mason jar, can, funnel: prevailing wisdom has generally dictated that almost any vessel is good enough for beer. But times they are a changin’. And as beer evolves from college dorm endeavor to serious palate pursuit – glassware is evolving right along with it.

Yesterday, Spiegelau hosted a seminar entitled, “Beer Tasting With Spiegelau: Does the Glass Make a Difference?” And after sitting through the 90-minute show and tell, we can honestly say — it totally does.

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SoBeWFF: Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson Drink PBR; Talk Tattoos, Runny Eggs and Christopher Walken

Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson might be the hottest culinary duo since bacon met the frying pan. And yesterday, the Taste stars took the stage together at the SoBeWFF.

Lounging on a couch, the two talked significant others, guilty pleasures and Christoper Walken. Oh, and drank beer. Seriously, PBR has never seemed so sexy.

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SoBeWFF: Stocking Your Home Bar With Tony Abou-Ganim

The party follows Tony Abou-Ganim. One hour with the modern mixologist, and we felt like we’d signed up for grown-up spring break. As he himself said, “it’s no coincidence negroni rhymes with Tony.”

And in fact, we learned more from yesterday’s “Stocking and Tending Your Home Bar” seminar than we did in four years of high school Spanish. Adult education at its best.

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SoBeWFF: With Enough Wine, You Too Can Cook Like Robert Irvine

Robert Irvine is kind of a bad ass. In addition to his buffed up bod (which we’ve been lucky enough to see shirtless at last year’s SoBeWFF), he’s got the vast array of knowledge to school many an amateur (and pro) chef. Last night, he was on hand to help sauced up cooks prepare pasta tableside.

Irvine took the helm at the Barilla interactive dinner at the iconic Biltmore Hotel, and tipsy attendees learned a lesson or two from theKitchen Impossible chef.

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Features, Highlights, Plant-Based Food & Drink

Dining list for New Times’ Short Order blog

Bottomless booze is a beautiful thing. And nothing says Sunday morning hangover cure like free-flowing bubbles (or bloodies). Lucky for the lush among us, there are lots of Miami brunch spots offering weekend libations to soothe that queasy stomach and bring back that pleasant buzz.

So next time Saturday night’s festivities leave you a little worse for the wear, here’s a lineup of eateries where you can get your day drinking on. Cheers.

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Highlights

Humor piece for New Times’ Cultist blog

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As Mother’s Day approaches, we’re reminded of the tireless efforts of the women who lovingly raised us into the neuroses-plagued adults we are today. They cooked for us, they cleaned up after us, they dressed our wounds and taught us manners. And along the way, they left us with more than a few emotional battle scars.

But despite the many flaws of our maternal role models, most of us should thank our lucky stars. After all, it could have been worse. Much worse.

Just take a look at this list of abusers, murderers, and straight-up sociopaths. You’ll be kissing your momma’s feet in no time, even though you’re still mad at her for dressing you up as a Care Bear on Halloween years ago.

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Events, Highlights

Yelp tribute to Miami

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Before I met Miami, my life was a series of mercurial moves. I was a wanderer; a gypsy; always fleeing in earnest from one city to another. A “rambling (wo)man”, so to speak. In the words of Hank Williams, “Some folks may say that I’m no good/That I wouldn’t settle down if I could/But when that open road starts to calling me/There’s something o’er that hill that I gotta see.”

That was me. From Honolulu to Laramie and New York City to Napa; from Dallas to Washington, DC and Panama City Beach to Hollywood: my nomadic nature led me from one new city to another; free to begin anew, alone and unhindered.

Relationships were ended. Furniture was given away. Friends were left behind. Jobs were quit. After nine months or so in a new place, the familiar feelings of discontent would roll in like the tide and I’d be planning my next escape.

Then, I met the Magic City, and everything changed.

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Events, Highlights

Miami New Times event preview

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For children of the ’80s, nothing brings back the days of playgrounds and juice boxes like Steven Spielberg’s E.T. This epic tale of an unlikely friendship is the quintessential throwback to pre-CGI filmmaking and a pre-rehab Drew Barrymore. Some observers claim the film has a Christian subtext, others argue it’s a treatise on relationships between diverse races, and still another segment claims it’s a dark commentary on suburban boyhood. But whether you see E.T. as a Jesus-like figurehead or a first-generation X-File, it’s hard to ignore the cultural impact of the so-ugly-he’s-cute alien.

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