Bienvenido a Miami

Bienvenido a Miami

It's been a vigorous year for natural catastrophes. After all, 2005 started with the aftermath of the tsunami in East Asia. And anybody who ever stepped foot in New Orleans (apparently the entire population of North America which, as time will tell, also attended the USC-Texas Rose Bowl game) reeled in horror over the mess that was Hurricane Katrina. Actually, if Time Magazine had any brains, the "Person of the Year" should have been been Mother Nature instead of a pompous, clueless windbag like Bono.

Nonetheless, I know what celebrity-driven culture was really concerned about this year so I felt it necessary to put my best Sean Penn foot forward (albeit without a photographer, a Rolling Stone writer, and a rented, leaky rowboat) and report on the tragedy that concerned us most and answer the most pressing question - did Miami survive Wilma? So off on a plane I went....

Sadly, the answer is "yes". If Hell was a nation, I'd sincerely give consideration to Miami being its capital. Miami is pretty much New York City stripped of personality and Los Angeles without scenic hills in the vast distance. However, unlike it's Canadian cousin Toronto, it has more hell-similar temperatures all year long. This communal relationship can be confirmed by the endless array of Torontonians who spew themselves all over it's geography at any given time. That being said, the road network, utilities, and water are back to what they always were - awful. Not as lucky are an uncountable number of trees that have either uprooted or standing dead. Or an awful lot of retail signage which, on the bright side, provides an interesting challenge to those who wonder if the gas is still good at "Teaco" or if there are rooms available at the "Renance" hotel or if there are good cheap coats at the Ington Coat Factory. Personally, I'm grateful to Mother Nature for giving me the name of my new callgirl operation if I ever get it off the ground - tell me you have a better name than "Payless HoeSource"!

Anyway, I have to lay off the personal observations and check out what the media tells me - because as you know, they always get the story straight (the increasing degree of which directly correlates with how left-wing its bias is). Thus, the important issue during my visit was not the trees, the water, or how to mow the old geezers into the ocean so the cool wannabees can fully lay claim to South Miami Beach but...[drum roll please]...which New Year's Eve party Jamie Foxx would show up at.

The South Beach club scene is big stuff here. Why is the stuff of mystery. South Beach is a pile of forty year-old dumps, some of which got some fresh neon and tacky repainted stucko and, thanks to some rather expensive PR work, became "hot spots". "Hot spots" for what, is anybody's guess. Based on observation, "hot spots" for paying stupid money to move up to "VIP rooms" to pay more stupid money to move on to "Super VIP" rooms to pay even more stupid money to move up to "Super Elite VIP rooms" and so on until you reach the apex - namely, a private audience with Diddy (or Diddy-Doo or whatever he calls himself by the time you read this). All this over a myriad of excessively loud and poorly engineered rap music, scads of white people whom really should only be allowed to do Latino dances if properly licensed first, the requisite pile of Torontonians trying to move up the tropical social ladder (even though there really isn't one), and, okay, the 4-5 hot looking Latinos if you can find them.

But what about celebrities? Well, apparently club and deco hotel owners on South Beach pay mucho dinero to get big stars to appear. And New Year's Eve is supposed to be the penultimate in spending. I find this kind of laughable. The newspaper guides listed the party hosts as such "huge" luminaries as Lindsay Lohan and, hold me back - Wilmer Valderrama. That's right, folks - Fez. For $200 a ticket, you could see 5 minutes of Lohan before her asthma attack (or drinking binge or pregnancy pains depending on what her flaks whispered to tabloids to give her publicity time). Or $100 a ticket to see... Fez. Mind you, you can sit in the parties and listen to the "I saw him/her, seriously!" list and come up with names like the aforementioned Foxx, Leo DiCaprio, or J Lo (who, apparently, has also bought the big penthouse in every new Oceanside condo up through Fort Lauderdale according to too many real estate agents to list here.)

Personally, I'd nuke the whole town to pare down the worldwide population of vapid poseurs and ease back the United States Social Security budget for the next 15 years. On the other hand, maybe I'll let global warming do its thing and skin cancer the whole joint to death. The way Mother Nature's been working these days, I think it's the more practical strategy and it certainly fits into the whole Hell mandate rather nicely.

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