News Spot

• Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

  A Bal Harbour outpost for Jean-Georges

  • <span class="bold">The goods</span>: Jean-Georges Vongerichten brings another celeb-chef restaurant to Miami with the opening of J + G Grill in the opulent St. Regis Bal Harbour.

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• Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

  Celebrity birthdays on Feb. 23

  • Actor-director <span class="bold">Peter Fonda</span> is 72. Musician <span class="bold"> Johnny Winter</span> is 68. Actress <span class="bold">Patricia Richardson</span> (“Home Improvement” is 61. Guitarist <span class="bold">Brad Whitford</span> of Aerosmith is 60. Singer <span class="bold">Howard Jones</span> is 57. Actress <span class="bold">Kristin Davis</span> is 47. Actor <span class="bold">Marc Price</span> (“Family Ties” is 44. Actress <span class="bold">Niecy Nash</span> (“Reno 911!” is 42. Actress <span class="bold">Kelly Macdonald</span> (“Boardwalk Empire” is 36. Actor <span class="bold">Aziz Ansari</span> (“Parks and Recreation” is 29. Actress <span class="bold">Emily Blunt</span> is 29. Actress <span class="bold">Dakota Fanning </span>is 18.

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• Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00 EST

  Halle Berry and other Oscar curse victims

  • If <span class="italic">The Help</span> star Viola Davis is named best actress at next Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, let’s hope she has a more successful post-Oscar career than Halle Berry, the previous (and to date, only) African-American to win that prize. After winning the golden guy in 2002, Berry saw her reputation tarnish in turkeys like <span class="italic">Gothika</span> and <span class="italic">X-Men: The Last Stand.</span> And let’s not forget the purr-fectly awful 2004 comic book yarn <span class="italic">Catwoman</span>.

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• Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:16 EST

  Whitney Houston’s death raises issues of mixing meds with alcohol

  • Drinking and medications don’t mix, especially when taking meds like Xanax. Whitney Houston’s death has raised issues about combining prescription drugs with alcohol.

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Perhaps it was the Miami Heat’s victory over the New York Knicks the night before at the AmericanAirlines Arena but Heat fan Jimmy Buffett seemed in particularly good spirits and warm voice Saturday night at the AmericanAirlines before a sizable, but not quite sold-out, crowd for his first concert of 2012.

“This is as wild as the Heat game last night,” Buffett grinned before thousands of fans after the concert opening deep album cut, The Wino and I Know.

Just before he started his first encore song some two hours later, the evergreen Fins, a barefoot Buffett thanked Pat Riley for the spiffy black shirt the Heat coach supposedly offered him backstage. The spotlight fell on Riley in the stands and he apparently seemed ready to partake in, or at least observe, the Fins concert ritual that Parrot Heads the world over have turned into a kind of boomer aerobics since the tour staple’s release in the summer of 1979. A familiar site: thousands of outstretched arms swoop atop the head like a shark’s dorsal fin and as the jolly chorus hits, arms and body move along to the lyric’s direction: “fins to the left, fins to the right.”

There are certain songs Buffett has to do, Fins being one of them. Of course, Margaritaville, the unofficial National Anthem of the Florida Keys is the other, as is Cheeseburger in Paradise and the still tender Come Monday, his first hit single in 1974 and, arguably, still his best.

To the singer-songwriter’s credit, he didn’t offer rote versions of these war horses. Buffett, 65, seemed engaged by the oft-performed material even if his Coral Reefer Band at times cruised a bit on auto-pilot.

What really elevated the concert above the routine for this veteran performer was a smart set list that took interesting detours into unexpected regions of Buffett’s vast catalog. Jamaica Mistaica, The Wino and I Know, Buffett’s solo version of Knee Deep, a recent Zac Brown Band country hit he had sung harmony on as a guest, License to Chill and We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About (cheekily prefaced with the comment, “We are the people our children are scared of”) populated his 25-song set and proved welcome additions.

“We curved this show in the direction of South Florida,” Buffett also promised early in the evening. He kept his promise of a Miami-centric concert by dusting off his amusing satire of immigration policy in the tropics, Everybody’s Got a Cousin in Miami. Many of the locally based songs, like Havana Daydreaming, A Pirate Looks at Forty and the acoustic finale, Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season, felt even more at home and resonant in the downtown venue.

Buffett also took a cheerful jab at his history inside this particular bayfront venue. “I can say anything I want on this stage and not get thrown out,” he cracked, a reference to an incident in Feb. 2001 when he was ejected from his courtside seat by a referee during a Heat/Knicks game for reportedly engaging in language saltier than that found in some of his classics such as Why Don’t We Get Drunk.

Buffett joked that when he wrote that novelty song he purposely tried to compose a country number racier than the norm at that time in 1973, one that would ensure he would be banned from radio. But radio blackout notwithstanding, South Florida, then and now, would never completely turn its back on one of its favorite sons of a son of sailor.

“I knew I’d made it when I walked into the Caribbean Club in Key Largo and this song was on the jukebox.”

For more pop culture, follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.

Source: Miami Herald

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