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Allow us to take this opportunity to welcome you to the “Reason for Season” by giving a brief overview of what you, the reader, can expect when you click through these pages. It is a little something we would like to call (dramatic music) “The Reason for Season Survival Guide.” And what’s a Reason for Season Survival Guide without a basic definition of what the Reason for Season actually is? So here goes: It is our ultimate calendar of events occurring between today and April 30, 2007, the span of time generally referred to by locals as “the season” — when part-time residents and tourists flock to South Florida to avoid weather phenomena like snow, ice and hail storms, blizzards and the like. The Europeans enjoy their ever-so- strong Euro currency. Canadian, Asian and South American tourists drop by in droves too. By contrast, the “off-season” is when tourists, part-time residents and even a few residents go to other parts of the planet to avoid heat waves, partisan primaries, county elections, monsoons and the occasional hurricane. Since there are so many more people around during this, the season, there are lots more things to do. And in celebration, the SunPost initiated this guide in the year 2000 — during the wacky recount fiasco where, for at least a couple of months after the election, no one was sure who had won the presidency. Fortunately for us Floridians, the primitive ballot cards we used back then have been replaced by electronic voting devices, which, thanks to recent software upgrades, even turn on, allowing voters (especially those from Broward) to cast electronic votes for governor candidate Charlie Crist whether they intended to or not, as was reported last week. Electronic glitches aside, electronic voting machines are easy to use once voters are properly instructed in their intricacies by helpful computer consultants from Omaha (“You punch the button with the words ‘Charlie Crist’ on it to get the machine working”). So, to make future event planning easier for you, the reader, we give you these helpful hints and pieces of advice. 1. The Reason for Season is divided into five main chapters:
Within these sections are listings divided by month and further by day. For extra fun Performing Arts is broken down into theater and dance. 2. Event listings will have addresses, contact phone numbers and (when available) times and Web sites. We figured these were the basic elements needed to track down an event. 3. Repetitive venues are signified by abbreviations. For example you may see a listing that says Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, opens, 8 p.m., ZCC. Now before you flip out and scream, “What the hell is a ZCC?” please look at the beginning of the section, where it says “Venues.” There you will find two- to four-letter abbreviations in capital letters with the name of the venue it signifies, its address and its phone number. (ZCC, by the way, stands for Ziff Opera House at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.) 4. Time is a harsh mistress. The farther in the future an event is scheduled the more likely its details are to change. That means if you’ve marked your calendar using this Reason for Season guide (which we encourage you to do), be sure to double check events occurring in far off March or April. In other words, before rushing to see — say — the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami’s Best of the Classical Repertoire in February of 2007 at the Manuel Artime Theatre, call ahead first. Like electronic voting machines and many humans, event producers are not completely infallible. 5. If you don’t find an event in one section, then try another. Sometimes events are half a dozen of one kind and half a dozen of the other. But, hey, searching is half the fun, right? 6. No calendar is totally comprehensive. We have limited space. People inform us about events after deadline. We get tired. 7. Always wear clean underwear. Because if you get into an accident, medical technicians will see it and, you could be unconscious, thus helpless to prevent them from posting images of your undergarments on the Internet. Then again, accidents commonly occur just before accidents. As Bill Cosby (slated to appear in Miami next year) says, “First you say it, then you do it.” Aww, heck, go ahead and wear dirty underwear. It’s a turn-on in these parts. See, simple and easy. And, as a bonus, somewhere within this issue we have Premier Real Estate, a compilation of all the brand spanking new projects that are even now being sold by your friendly neighborhood developers. Yes, just think: You can plan your events and decide what real estate ventures to pour your cash into in this rather interesting market. Or maybe you can find a new home. Might as well. Anyway, now that you have studied the ways of the Reason for Season you are ready to enter our road map to the future. Read our oracle. Embrace it. Love it. Come to accept it as you will come to accept that our artificially intelligent voting machines prefer that Charlie Crist will be our next governor. We think it is because Charlie Crist has a better tan than Jim Davis. This is Florida after all. The governor has to have a good tan. The voting machines know this. --Introduction Erik Bojnansky Credits
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