Dismal show a gaffe-fest

Hey, Oscar: We saw your boob last night. His name is Seth MacFarlane.

MacFarlane’s tone-deaf, unfunny, sexist, puerile, straight-from-the-ninth-grade-locker-room “We Saw Your Boobs” routine about nekkid actresses was lower than a cockroach’s pedicure. Charlize Theron’s pained reaction shot (which was part of the act, but fitting anyway) spoke for the world: Several of the actresses MacFarlane mocked were shown in rape scenes.

Jennifer Lawrence, you weren’t the first to fall on your face last night. And the burst bathroom pipe backstage wasn’t the only thing stinking up the place.

WireImage

SOUR NOTE:
Oscar host Seth MacFarlane is joined by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe for a musical number.

MacFarlane, who was hired by first-time Oscar producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadon to bring back some life to the wax museum, instead led a night of gaffes, awkwardness and slights that concluded just as inappropriately as it began, with a surprise appearance by Michelle Obama as the Best Picture presenter.

Michelle Obama is not a neutral ceremonial personage, like the queen of England. She is a partisan political figure. Hollywood liberals, this isn’t hard: Picture how you’d have felt if the climactic moment in 1985 were handed over for the purpose of glamorizing Nancy Reagan, with a phalanx of uniformed troops grinning nervously behind her. “Creepy South American totalitarian lite vibe,” tweeted Walter Kirn, and he writes for the liberal journal The New Republic. Even President Ronald Reagan never busted in live on the Oscars, and Reagan was an actual movie star, academy member and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. (He taped a non-self-aggrandizing “enjoy the show” welcome for the March 30, 1981, Oscars — which had to be delayed because he was shot that very day.)

Off-putting moments were scattered throughout. Instead of doing a good-natured Billy Crystal-style musical salute to the nominees, MacFarlane seemed determined to show off his pipes. (Impressive, but so what? The Oscars aren’t a Seth MacFarlane concert.) It was his jokes that were off-key.

MacFarlane made a funny about Chris Brown beating Rihanna, another about Latinos with accents, and another about orgies at Jack Nicholson’s house, the place where Roman Polanski gave a little girl drugs for the purpose of raping and sodomizing her.

“Too soon?” he said, after joking that no actor ever got into Lincoln’s head like John Wilkes Booth. MacFarlane once made a joke on “Family Guy” about JFK and RFK Pez dispensers getting their heads blown off, but, no, it’s not too soon for Lincoln jokes. They just have to be funny. You know what shouldn’t be funny? The theme music the orchestra plays to nudge aside the winners. Playing “Jaws” humiliated the poor relations from the tech side.

Take away MacFarlane’s pointless, look-at-me-I-can-dance routine (again: We didn’t tune in to see Family Guy cut a rug with Harry Potter and Robin) and you’ve got a few extra seconds for each acceptance speech.

MacFarlane is a voiceover actor and writer, not a comic, and the Oscars are not the place to launch a career in live performing. Cutaways are fine on “Family Guy,” but at the Oscars, you have to build energy in the room (as he did in his best moment, the “Sound of Music” gag), not rely on taped bits.

Perhaps to cover up the sound of crickets, MacFarlane kept laughing at his own gags. This was in keeping with the self-loving motif of the evening: Producers Meron and Zadan turned the evening into an infomercial for “Chicago,” as if no one would remember they were executive producers on that film, while Best Original Screenplay winner Quentin Tarantino thanked not his handlers but himself for his own brilliance.

And those bits had arthritis. William Shatner as Capt. Kirk? Really? Sally Field probably thought she’d heard the last “Flying Nun” joke 20 years ago, and viewers under 35 must have been baffled.

Even the evening’s best moments were partially bungled. How did the memorial reel manage to leave out Andy Griffith, Richard Dawson and Larry Hagman? The Denzel Washington Best Actor clip gave away the climactic twist of “Flight.” The James Bond segment was supposed to be introduced not by Halle Berry but by all the 007 stars together — but Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan hate Bond producers and refused. Still, if you have both Shirley Bassey and Adele in the house, how can you not have them do a duet?

“Couldn’t they just have hired Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host the show?” asked William Shatner in a segment in which MacFarlane tried to head off bad reviews by predicting them. Seth, what Booth did to Lincoln you did to yourself.

Kyle.Smith@nypost.com

Read More..

David Samson: Miami Marlins saw trouble with ticket sales before Day One

The Miami Marlins’ new ballpark was slow to draw fan interest even before a disastrous season led to a collapse in attendance so steep that the front office never contemplated it, team president David Samson said Monday.

“It didn’t occur to us... that the off-field results of last year could be what they were,’’ Samson said during a press conference at Marlins Park. “We didn’t even contemplate in a worst-case scenario that our revenues would be what they were.”

And while Samson said the biggest miscalculation was in just how poorly the Marlins would play, he said lukewarm support was noticeable well before the Marlins’ infamous mid-season dive.

Season-ticket buyers did not respond to the late 2011 signing of Jose Reyes and other star players, months before the ballpark’s debut. His marketing team had hoped to announce a string of sell-outs before the April 4 Opening Day, but even the Boston Red Sox didn’t bring enough demand to sell all 37,500 seats.

“We misread last year on and off the field,’’ Samson said. “We did not have the bump we expected after the winter meetings [when the Marlins signed Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell]. That got us worried. Not panicked, but worried.”

His comments danced around a central question looming over the opening of Marlins Park at the site of the old Orange Bowl football stadium in Little Havana.

Can Miami sustain a Major League Baseball team? Samson said he wasn’t trying to suggest the city couldn’t, noting “fans are always right.”

“I’m not going to say Miami is not a sports town,’’ he said. “Or that there is something wrong with the fans. I would never say that.”

Samson’s comments to reporters was the sideshow to owner Jeffrey Loria defending the Marlins’ stripping the team’s payroll of Reyes and other expensive players — a move he said was needed after the players failed to deliver in 2012.

Loria’s press conference came a day after he published a full-page letter to fans in local newspapers defending the move and the controversial deal that had Miami-Dade borrow nearly $400 million for the stadium’s construction.

Facing heavy fan backlash and the prospect of a season even worse than the one that brought “tens of millions of dollars” in losses last year, Loria hopes Miami will see his new young team as one worthy of support.

“We needed to fix the chemistry, we needed to fix the core of the team,’’ Loria said. “We didn’t draw more people [to the stadium] because the team was losing.”

So far, season-ticket sales are about half what they were a year ago, and the team isn’t sure it can sell out Opening Day on April 8. And the Marlins are facing revived ire over the 2009 stadium deal as the Miami Dolphins pursue their own tax-funded renovation for Sun Life.

Dolphins executives have promised a funding arrangement far more palatable than what the Marlins offered, and Loria on Monday called the Dolphins’ effort a “smear campaign’’ for its implicit slam against his arrangement with Miami-Dade.

A referendum on the Dolphins’ proposal probably will come in May, meaning the debate over tax-funded stadium projects will heat up just as the Marlins try to recover from the worst debut season among all ballparks built since 2001.

In his comments, Samson offered new details on the weak ticket sales, and said the collapse in revenue left the team no choice but to cut payroll.

The season’s announced attendance of 2.1 million was still far better than what the team drew when playing in Sun Life, and put the team at No. 18 in the 30-team league in terms of attendance. But Samson said the internal numbers of actual paid attendance were much worse. He put the so-called “turnstile” attendance for the season at 1.4 million. That’s roughly 17,000 people per game — or not even half of the stadium.

In its worst-case scenarios for the 2012 season, Samson said the team’s forecasts only contemplated for a turnstile attendance of 2 million.

Samson said an early sign of trouble was when June match-ups with the Red Sox didn’t deliver at the box office.

“We were very, very worried when the Red Sox games didn’t sell out,’’ he said. As the team turned in a strong performance in May — only the second month in the ballpark -- ticket sales weren’t delivering.

“Our fans I thought would see win after win. Our advanced sales didn’t move,’’ Samson said. “I don’t know the reason. I really don’t.”

He also declined to predict a sell-out for Opening Day – a lack of confidence for only the second year of the stadium’s existence.

“Fans are reticent and upset,’’ Samson said of the fury over dumping the star players. “I am so sorry about that.”

Read More..

Archbishop Wenski leads 90-mile motorcycle run

After a blessing, motorcycles roared their engines and drove out of St. Richard Catholic Church in Palmetto Bay to participate in the first Motorcycle Poker Run organized by the Archdiocese of Miami.

Heading the bikers: Archbishop Thomas Wenski wearing a biker’s leather jacket and riding his black Harley-Davidson Street Glide motorcycle.

“Bikers are people that are accustomed to praying because if you’re going to ride a motorcycle, you should know how to pray,” said Wenski, who has been riding his motorcycle for about 10 years. “This is a way to bring some good attention, find financial support for St. Luke’s Center [Catholic Charity] and have a good time.”

Behind him, more than 60 other riders followed for about 90 miles through South Florida roads.

“Today he is not just my spiritual leader,” said Natacha Quiroz, the only woman driving a motorcycle on her own. “He is my road leader.”

At every stop, including Robert Is Here, the fruit and vegetable farm stand in Florida City, Cafe 27 in Weston, and Peterson’s Harley-Davidson in Miami Gardens, the contestants picked up a card, eventually collecting a complete poker hand.

The bikers were also able to interact with the archbishop and others while competing for the $500 Harley-Davidson gift card.

But Wenski’s favorite stop was at the Schoenstatt Center in Homestead, where riders were able to stop at the chapel, say a private prayer and enjoy refreshments.

“It’s always good to ride with good people,” said Bob Borges of Hollywood, who rode with his daughter. “The problem with a lot of other rides is that they all go from bar to bar to bar, and I don’t drink when I ride.”

The Chrome Knights Motorcycle Association and other groups helped the archdiocese organize the poker run and guided the inexperienced drivers. Volunteers from the organization also helped guide the riders and stop traffic at intersections.

For Quiroz, who had never experienced riding in a group, the privilege of riding with the archbishop was indescribable.

“My heart is pounding so hard,” said Quiroz, who took out her motorcycle from her garage for the fist time in more than a year. “My motorcycle is the tiniest among these huge machines, and if you see me I look like a butterfly among eagles. But to know that I’m the only girl makes me feel like an eagle, I am proud.”

The Poker Run, according to the Rev. Luis Rivero, was also a way to show others that following Christ can be fun.

“It’s a way for us to learn to use the tools of today, speak the language of the younger generations and bridge the gap between the ancient and the new,” said Rivero, who has been riding his three-wheeled Spyder for the past three years. “The archbishop makes fun of me and says that because I have three wheels I’m still in training.”

The proceeds of the run will go to programs that help people in the community recover from various types of addiction, and Wenski is hoping to establish the poker run as annual event to support St. Luke’s.

“Many people know I’ve been riding a motorcycle for some years now, so hopefully they’ll support it even if they don’t ride a motorcycle,” Wenski said. “I pray before, during and after I ride my bike.”

Read More..

Adele Talks Skyfall Oscar, Wants EGOT

Now an Oscar and Grammy winner, singer Adele comes one step closer tonight towards joining the exclusive EGOT club.

Moments after her Best Original Song win for Skyfall at the 85th Annual Academy Awards, the 24-year old Brit entertained the possibility she might someday nab a Tony and an Emmy statuette and join the 11 performers who've earned the incredible distinction.

Pics: Oscars Sexiest Stars

"Maybe I'll do like an HBO special like Beyonce did," mused Adele. As for the Tony, she wasn't so sure.

"It's not my kind of thing, a musical, no offense," laughed Adele, adding that she might be open to it "someday."

Read More..

Exploiting addiction

Andrea Peyser

He’s ringmaster in the Circus of the Damned.

Dr. Drew Pinsky is the nation’s leading huckster for celebrity addicts — the go-to guy for almost-famous faces lost to liquor, sex, ecstasy and crack.

Since 2008, Dr. Drew has glammed up and tarted up B- and Z-list celebs on his hit VH1 show, “Celebrity Rehab” — renamed “Rehab” last fall so as not to exclude folks who’ve yet to make it big by falling on their faces. He’s turned addiction from an affliction to a wise career move.

From Tiger Woods’ Bimbo in Chief Rachel Uchitel — self-diagnosed as addicted to inappropriate men — to plastic-surgery enthusiast Janice Dickinson, no life is too trivial or sad to exploit.

ABC via Getty Images

Dr. Drew and Mindy McCready

Thanks to the good doc, feeling powerless in the face of drugs or, who knows, compulsive, naked tweeting, are not weaknesses. He’s done more to make addiction look hip and trendy since stoned rocker Jimi Hendrix choked to death on his own vomit in 1970 at age 27.

Eight days ago, Dr. Drew lost it. With the passing of country singer and “Rehab” alum Mindy McCready (pictured with him), who died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, folks suspicious of the Rehab Industrial Complex are taking a dim look at Dr. Drew.

It’s about time.

“I think ‘Dr’ Drew Pinsky should change his name to Kevorkian. Same results,” singer Richard Marx tweeted the day McCready died Feb. 17, referring to the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who helped terminally ill patients off themselves.

Marx backed off the next morning. Sort of. “I went too far with the Kevorkian crack.” Then he continued to lay blame at Dr. Drew’s feet. “It is, however, my opinion that what Dr. D does is exploitation and his TV track record is not good.”

“Dr. Drew has lost another one,’’ was the reaction to McCready’s death from Eugene Kovar, grandfather of dead “Rehab” player Joey Kovar.

Five of Dr. Drew’s “Rehab” stars have, to date, succumbed to their demons, including actor Jeff Conaway and Rodney King. Three have died from the 2009 season alone — rocker Mike Starr of Alice in Chains was lost to a drug overdose in 2011, “Real World” star Kovar died in August from opiate intoxication, and McCready. Dr. Drew diagnosed her on the show as suffering from “love addiction.”

This is serious?

Dr. Drew is no killer. But he has reason to fail. He sits at the epicenter of the multibillion-dollar addiction industry, whose existence depends on the relapses of people he’s trying to cure.

“Whenever a celeb overdoses or has an addiction problem, buy Drew Pinsky stock. It’s good for his brand,” said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist and author who says he likes and respects the doctor.

Read More..

Miami medicine goes digital

About 10 years ago, Dr. Fleur Sack quit her practice as a family physician to become a hospital department head. Spurring her decision was the need to switch from paper records to electronic ones to keep her private practice profitable. “At that time, it would have cost about $50,000,” Dr. Sack recalled. “It was too expensive and it was too overwhelming.”

But times and technologies changed, and last year, Dr. Sack left her hospital job to restart her medical practice with an affordable system for managing electronic patient records. She agreed to a $5,000 setup fee and a subscription fee of $500 per month for the system. Her investment also qualified her for subsidy money, which the federal government pays in installments, and to date, her subsidy income has paid for the setup fee and about two years of monthly fees. “So far, I’ve got my check for $18,000,” she said. “There’s a total of $44,000 that I can get.”

That kind of cash flow is one reason why so-called EHR software systems for electronic health records have been among the hottest-selling commercial products in the world of information technology. EHR system development is a growth industry in South Florida, too. Life sciences and biotechnology are among the high growth-potential sectors identified by the Beacon Council-led One Community One Goal economic development initiative unveiled in 2012; already, the University of Miami has opened a Health Science Technology Park while Florida International University has launched a program in its graduate school of business oriented toward biotechnology businesses.

For many young businesses in the area’s IT industry, government incentives are paving the way. The federal government is pushing doctors and hospitals to use electronic health records to cut wasteful spending and improve patient care while protecting patient privacy — sending digital information via encrypted systems, for example, rather than regular email.

Under a 2009 federal law known as the HITECH Act, maximum incentive payments for buying such systems range up to $44,000 for doctors with Medicare patients and up to $63,750 for doctors with Medicaid patients. Hospitals are eligible for larger incentive payments for becoming more paperless. The subsidy program isn’t permanent; eligible professionals must begin receiving payments by 2016. But by then, the federal government will be penalizing doctors and hospitals that take Medicare or Medicaid money without making meaningful use of electronic health records.

“What the government did is, they incentivized, and now they’re going to penalize,” said Andrew Carricarte, president and CEO of IOS Health Systems in Miami, one of the largest South Florida-based vendors of online software service for physician practices. He said insurance companies also may start penalizing physicians for failing to adopt electronic health records because “the commercial payers always follow Medicare and Medicaid.”

It’s all part of the growth story at IOS Health Systems, which has more than 2,000 physicians across the nation using its online EHR system. Carricarte said many of the company’s customers buy their second EHR system from IOS after their first one flopped. “Almost 40 percent of our sales come from customers who had systems and are now switching over to something else,” he said.

Read More..

Miami Dolphins hopeful on stadium referendum date

The Miami Dolphins are hopeful the Miami-Dade County Commission will approve a May 14 date for a referendum on the $400 rehabilitation of their stadium, time enough to get South Florida in play for Super Bowl 50, a Dolphins spokesman said Saturday.

Spokesman Ric Katz said the language of the proposed referendum has yet to be decided, and ultimately the commission decides the date.

But, he said, “we’d be very happy with” May 14 because “that gives us a week to communicate to the NFL before they make the important decision of Super Bowl 50.”

NFL owners are slated to meet on May 22 to pick the site of the 2016 Super Bowl — seen as a tourist revenue prize for whichever host city gets the 50th anniversary contest.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez met Friday with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and CEO Mike Dee to discuss the proposed stadium rehabilitation.

From the mayor’s side, there has been no agreement on a date and Gimenez does not plan to bring the proposed May 14 referendum to the commission at this time, said spokeswoman Suzy Trutie.

Friday’s was a “first meeting” at which “many things were discussed,” including the Dolphin’s preference for May 14.

But, “We continue negotiating with the Dolphins with regards to finances.”

One proposed financing plan would increase the bed tax in mainland Miami-Dade by 1 percent and increase the sales tax rebate the team already gets at the stadium in Miami Gardens. Ross had initially offered to pay at least $201 million in his financing plan. But Katz, a Miami publicist representing the team in the stadium campaign, said the two sides were still in negotiation on what the mayor would ask the commission to put to taxpayers in a referendum.

Trutie said the proposed referendum would gauge public opinion on increasing hotel taxes from 6 to 7 percent to fund the stadium renovations.

Of the commission, Katz said, “We do not take them for granted. They have the prerogative.”

Attorney Kendall Coffey did not return calls asking whether the Dolphins had hired him to write the ballot language.

Dolphins lobbyist Marcelo Llorente had said in recent weeks that the team was considering May 7 and 14 as possible referendum dates.

Any activity by the Florida Legislature would likely have to be undertaken before then. The regular session is slated to end May 3.

Miami Herald staff writers Patricia Mazzei and Doug Hanks contributed to this report.

Read More..

Independent Spirit Award Winners 2013

The 2013 Film Independent Spirits Awards were handed out in Santa Monica, CA today and lots of Oscar frontrunners cemented their status by dominating in their categories once more.

Check out all the winners below:

Best Feature

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Bernie

Keep the Lights On

Moonrise Kingdom

Silver Linings Playbook

BEST FEMALE LEAD

Linda Cardellini, Return

Emayatzy Corinealdi, Middle of Nowhere

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Smashed

BEST MALE LEAD

Jack Black, Bernie

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

John Hawkes, The Sessions

Thure Lindhardt, Keep the Lights On

Matthew McConaughey, Killer Joe

Wendell Pierce, Four

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE

Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister's Sister

Ann Dowd, Compliance

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Brit Marling, Sound of My Voice

Lorraine Toussaint, Middle of Nowhere

BEST SUPPORTING MALE

Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike

David Oyelowo, Middle of Nowhere

Michael Pena, End of Watch

Sam Rockwell, Seven Psychopaths

Bruce Willis, Moonrise Kingdom

BEST DIRECTOR

Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom

Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

BEST SCREENPLAY

Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom

Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks

Martin McDonagh, Seven Psychopaths

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

For the full list of winners, click here.

Read More..

Man's legs sliced off after he falls into the path of subway train

Twitter.com/joeyboots

Emergency crews help a man who fell into the path of a D train in The Bronx Saturday.

A drunken man’s legs were sliced off last night when he fell into the path of a D train at a Bronx subway station, authorities said.

The man, whose name was not released, got up from a bench, staggered across the platform, and fell to the track bed at the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium stop at 9:30 p.m., said sources.

“He was drunk, he was intoxicated,” said one MTA worker. “He was sitting here and he fell down.”

Before the man could get up, a D train rushed into the station, crushing and severing both of his legs.

An ambulance rushed the man to a nearby hospital. He was expected to survive, despite his horrific injury, police said.

Subway riders captured pictures and video of the frantic scene.

Read More..

The faces of Florida’s Medicaid system

MEDICAID

MiamiHerald.com/healthcare

The tea party governor now says he wants to expand Medicaid. The Republican Legislature isn’t so sure.

Hanging in the balance?

Access to healthcare for 1 million or more poor Floridians.

Billions of dollars in federal money.

The state budget, which already pumps $21 billion a year into care.

Florida’s Medicaid system today serves more than 3 million people, about one in every six Floridians. The decision whether to expand the system by a full third will be made by men and women in suits in Tallahassee’s mural-filled chambers this spring.

But the impact is elsewhere, in children’s hospitals in Tampa and Miami, in doctors’ offices in New Port Richey and in the home of a woman who recently lost her full-time teaching job.

The Suddenly uninsured

This was not how she envisioned her 60s.

Jean Vincent dreamed of turning her five-bedroom home into a bed and breakfast. She painted murals on walls, created mosaics on floors and let her imagination guide the interior decorating. There is a “garden” room, a “bamboo” room and a “canopy” room.

In 2010, Vincent lost her full-time job teaching in Citra north of Ocala. Her mother became sick with cancer and needed around-the-clock care before dying in August. Then, doctors began prescribing Vincent costly medications to treat osteoporosis and early-onset diabetes.

“I started getting a little behind with my mortgage,” said Vincent, 61. “All of a sudden, I found out I had to have an emergency retina eye surgery.”

Today, Vincent is searching for roommates to move into her home and help pay the bills. She begs Gainesville’s Sante Fe Community College and City College to schedule her for as many classes as she can handle as an adjunct geography professor; this semester’s four is the most she’s ever had.

But her biggest worry? Not having comprehensive healthcare.

Vincent — who is too young for Medicare — is enrolled in CHOICES, a health services program the Alachua County government created for the uninsured. It covers preventative care like her flu shots and helps with her drug therapy. But if Vincent ever got so sick she needed to go to the hospital, she’d be on her own.

Under current Florida law, adults with no dependents are not eligible to participate in Medicaid no matter how little they make. Vincent’s four children are all grown, which means even as her income has dwindled she can’t become eligible for the health insurance program run jointly by the federal and state governments.

If Florida decides to expand the Medicaid system, people in Vincent’s position for the first time could be covered.

The expansion would allow any single adult making about $16,000 a year eligible for Medicaid.

On the matter, Vincent has become an activist. She joined with patient rights group Florida CHAIN and traveled to Tallahassee to lobby lawmakers.

“When I gave my testimony, that’s all I wanted them to do was see there were people out there that weren’t just trying to take advantage of the system,” she said.

This summer, she expects to only be assigned one class at Sante Fe. That will provide about $2,000 for her to live on for three months. Meanwhile, her retirement dreams are put on hold.

Read More..