Kick Ass Part 2

And, for the kiddies, a boisterous "Dodge the m.u.f.fin" contest. Epcot, eat your heart out.

Some people are saying that thundering horses don't really fit the image of a tropical beach. Neither do Teamsters, yet they're down here every year with their conventions and loud shirts. Talk about a scary stampede.

With more polished extravaganzas like the Arabian Desert Cla.s.sic, the future of the Beach is shining. No more cheap gimmicks and crackpot promotions. This is the big time now.

Sophistication with a capital S.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the beach...

April 6, 1988 Fun and frolics reigned at Haulover Beach again this past weekend, as scores of chowderheads ignored posted warnings and plunged straight into a dangerous riptide.

If that weren't enough excitement, a mob of male high-school kids attacked several teenage girls, ripping off all their clothes, grabbing their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and genitals and chasing them down the beach. When one of the Haulover lifeguards tried to shield one of the girls, he was kicked repeatedly.

"She was naked and they were grabbing her. I just wanted to get her out of the crowd," said the lifeguard, Ken Chouinard. "It made me sick, and it also made me fearful for the people who come out here."

Some of these festivities were captured on tape by a WTVJ-Channel 4 news crew and should be recommended viewing for anyone who is considering a leisurely family outing at Haulover.

For years this has been a trouble spot, though the parks department doesn't advertise the fact. Keeping the beach safe apparently is a low priority in the budget, as evidenced by the minimal way in which the county polices the area and staffs its lifeguard crews.

"We get the same consideration as macrame cla.s.ses and kickball games," says Lt. David Battenfield, a Haulover lifeguard for the past 15 years. "This county is providing people access to this beach, but it's not providing their protection."

For a long time, the lifeguards have been trying to get someone to pay attention. The near-riot this weekend, combined with the perilous surf conditions, portend a disaster in the making-an expensive one.

Currently, Haulover Park has 11 full-time lifeguards on staff. Part-timers are hired to fill out the shifts, though many are not trained as emergency medical technicians, as the full-time lifeguards usually are.

Haulover Beach is about 1.4 miles long, but almost 43 percent is out of immediate range of a lifeguard tower and basically unguarded. The biggest stretch between towers measures 810 yards-a long way to run, if somebody's drowning at the other end.

The last accident took place March 23. Lifeguards got there swiftly and pulled the 42-year-old tourist out of the water, but he died later.

The miracle is that it doesn't happen more often. During the past week or so, strong winds and spring tidal conditions have made Haulover particularly treacherous, with invisible run-out currents sweeping many swimmers out toward the open water. Lifeguards officially closed the beach on three days, but plenty of idiotic showoffs hopped in anyway.

On March 27, Haulover lifeguards logged 10 rescues. On March 29, the number was nine. On March 30, it was 15. Business peaked again this past weekend with 19 rescues on Sat.u.r.day and 28 more on Sunday.

While the park is much more crowded than it was in 1975, there are five fewer full-time lifeguards now. During last year's budget crunch, the county proposed cutting back even more on the staffs, but the lifeguards successfully argued against it.

Today the lifeguards meet with county parks officials to plead-again-for help in making the beach safer. They aren't asking for salary hikes; they want more lifeguards, more towers and better lifesaving equipment. They also want a regular and visible police presence.

Sat.u.r.day's clothes-ripping melee took place with a Metro crime suppression team nearby. Still, the teenagers ran wild. "A combat zone," Battenfield said. No arrests were made at the scene; police say they are trying to identify the a.s.sailants.

On the bright side, at least n.o.body took a bullet.

On March 26, startled Haulover beachgoers watched as one man pulled out a machine gun and shot another, while still a third drew his own pistol and popped off a few rounds. A bystander was shot and wounded as he walked his three children out of the park.

Just another day at the beach. If the undertow doesn't get you, the snipers will.

Let's crow for Hialeah c.o.c.kfighting April 17, 1989 Let freedom ring!

Three dozen men cradling live chickens appeared at the Metro Justice Building the other day to demonstrate in favor of-don't laugh-c.o.c.k-fighting.

The men were members of a Hialeah "social club" raided last week. Police arrested 186 people, seized 86 birds and grabbed $40,000 in gambling money.

The club offers live music, rides for the kiddies and a restaurant. But the main attraction is a i^o-seat fighting pit where grown-ups sit and cheer while two dumb barnyard animals mutilate each other. Can you think of a n.o.bler cause for demonstration? Raise your placards high, boys.

How dare the police shut down such an enriching pastime! My goodness, if they strip us of our right to torture G.o.d's hapless creatures, then what next?

Granted, an organized c.o.c.kfight isn't really an act of nature. Under normal farm conditions, most roosters are too busy chasing the hens to stop and disembowel each other.

But with a little human guidance and just a touch of inbreeding, a rooster becomes a ferocious fighting machine.

I know what you're thinking: chickens. Gamec.o.c.ks are basically just chickens in drag. And how fierce can a chicken be?

Plenty fierce, especially if you attach razor-sharp spurs to its scrawny yellow legs. These devices are made of honed steel, bone or fibergla.s.s. The purpose is to replace the rooster's natural spur with something slightly more effective.

Otherwise a c.o.c.kfight is about as thrilling as a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. Without artificial spurs, the birds just hop and squawk and pull each other's feathers out. Where's the drama in that?

But add those nasty little can-openers, and c.o.c.kfighting becomes a macho life-or-death spectacle. In fact, matches often do not officially end until one of the two birds expires of its wounds. That's when the big money changes hands.

We're talking rich tradition. Dueling poultry goes back to the days of ancient Persia and Greece, before video games, when people were forced to amuse themselves with whatever was handy. Given the abundance of chickens, and the relative ease with which they could be dragooned, it was only natural that a mindless blood sport would evolve.

Popular among English n.o.bility (what wasn't?), c.o.c.kfighting was soon introduced in colonial America. Among its ardent fans was the highly cultured Andrew Jackson. Always controversial, c.o.c.kfighting was outlawed in Great Britain and Canada. Ma.s.sachusetts banned it in 1836. In recent years, the legality has been debated from Maryland to Louisiana to Key Largo.

In some places, c.o.c.kfighting remains legal provided that the birds are not fitted with sharpened spurs, and that no gambling is allowed. This, of course, takes all the fun out of it. If the roosters can't slash each other to shreds, and if the spectators can't bet on it, where's the pleasure?

The argument from animal-rights sissies is that c.o.c.kfighting is cruel, even s.a.d.i.s.tic. They like to mention that big raid in West Dade a few years ago, when police found live roosters with their eyes missing. It happens, sure, but at least they didn't wind up as fried nuggets in a Col. Sanders box.

Most of those arrested last week at the Hialeah pit were accused of misdemeanors, although a few face felony charges that carry possible five-year prison terms. In Florida, it's illegal to promote, stage, attend or gamble on an animal fight.

Now's the time to take a stand against such government intrusion.Tell those pointy-heads in Tallaha.s.see that enough's enough-what goes on between a man and his chicken, well, that's a sacred and private thing.

And who's to say these gallant birds don't relish the tang of fresh blood on their beaks! Why, you should see their tiny eyes light up when those spurs are strapped to their shins. There is no finer moment in sports.

So cheer those crusaders who carried their killer roosters to the courthouse steps, for justice comes to those who crow the loudest. Free the Hialeah 186!

Land snakes! Pythons seem to like it here October II, 1989 Finally, some good news about Florida wildlife.

The panthers might be vanishing, but the pythons have arrived.

You know all about Big Mama, the 20-foot beauty that was living comfortably under somebody's house in Fort Lauderdale.The neighborhood kids kept telling their parents that they'd seen this monster subterranean serpent eating racc.o.o.ns and opossums, and naturally their parents didn't believe a word of it.

Once captured, Big Mama has gone on to become a star of local and national media. If you're in the TV biz, there's no video like snake video.

Then, just when you thought it was safe to be a racc.o.o.n again, along comes Junior, another semi-humongous python who turned up last week at a local construction site. Though measuring only about 17 feet, Junior was nonetheless stretched out and posed with every TV reporter in the tri-county area. The next day the poor creature died from internal bleeding. Such is the price of fame.

The authorities want us to believe that these two snakes were freaks in our midst and that their discovery within weeks of each other was just a wild coincidence. They want us to swallow the notion that these pythons were family pets that either escaped or were abandoned. But how many people do you know who own a 20-foot snake? Or even two 10-footers?

No, these carnivorous beasties had been loose for some time, doing what pythons do best-eating, sleeping and making lots of baby pythons (females lay up to 100 eggs).

Wildlife experts say there's nothing to worry about, but they said the same thing about Bufo toads, and look what happened. And parrots-every neighborhood now has its own flock of screeching parrots. Were all these birds somebody's pet? Not unless they staged a ma.s.s breakout. More likely, they've simply adopted South Florida as their new home and are merrily reproducing in the tops of our banyan trees.

Same goes for the pythons. They're here to stay. Both Big Mama and Junior were an exotic species called the reticulated python, which happens to be the longest snake in the world. Here are the most commonly asked questions about our newest tropical neighbor: Where do they come from?

The reticulated python is native to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines.

How big do they get?

Commonly growing to 25 feet, the largest known specimen was killed in 1912 on the north coast of Celebes.The snake measured 32 feet, 9 1/2 inches.

What do they eat?

Pythons prefer to dine on small mammals, although the larger specimens will gobble the occasional deer or goat. In one of the few doc.u.mented cases of its kind, a 31-foot reticulated python is known to have eaten a 14-year-old boy on the island of Salebabu, in Indonesia. The attack happened several years ago, and there's no reason to suspect that this particular python has migrated to South Florida. Yet.

Are pythons swift, clever and keen-eyed?

No, pythons generally are slow, dull-witted and myopic. In stalking prey, however, they have the considerable advantages of stealth, camouflage and about 300 pounds of sheer muscle. They also love to climb trees and swim rivers.The good news is they're not poisonous. The bad news is they kill by brute constriction.

How do I know if one is living under my house?

If you haven't seen your poodle for a few days, it might be a good idea to check around. Fortunately, a python such as Big Mama only gets hungry every couple of months. The rest of the time they just sort of curl up and grow.

What do I do if I find a 32-foot python in my yard?

The one thing you don't do is try to kill it with a rake. Rakes work fine on pesky little garter snakes, but not pythons. All you do is get them incredibly ticked off, which is a bad idea. As any professional reptile trapper will tell you, the ideal python is an unperturbed python.

You said these things climb trees! So what happens if a giant python falls out of a tree and lands on top of me?

Then you can kiss your sorry asp goodbye.

Send in clowns-and book them, of course January 9, 1991 Busted again.

Performance artist Kman (no hyphen), AKA Art Kendallman, AKA Monkey Joe, AKA the Missile-collared during the Orange Bowl parade.

Intercepted as an unauthorized clown.

"I was just parading like I do every year," Kman says. "They said the director didn't want me there."

Kman loves a parade. He waits all year for the Orange Bowl. Usually he tags along with the Ringling Brothers clowns, but this year the Ring-ling clowns didn't partic.i.p.ate so Kman was pretty much running solo.

His costume was, well, distinctive. The green jump suit with the red dots wasn't too gaudy, especially for a clown. The sneakers with the flashing lights weren't so peculiar, either. It was the rest of the outfit: "I have a helmet with goggles and a mask. My mask is like a hawk pilot. I'm a hawk! Yeah, and I have a helicopter on my head."

That's what seems to have caught the attention of police.

"It's motorized and everything," Kman says of the helicopter. "It's a great chopper. It's a Huey. I found it at Toys-R-Us, amazingly enough. A scale-model Huey!" So he was whirlybirding down Biscayne Boulevard toward the grandstand and the network TV lights when a Miami policeman stopped him. Kman didn't have a permit to be there.

He told the cop he hadn't missed an Orange Bowl parade since 1984. He explained how the Ringling clowns always welcomed him into their formation. Kman says the cop told him OK, get with the Ringling guys. But there was no sign of them, so Kman loosely hooked up with some clowns from the phone company.

This is how he describes his act: "Basically I'm flying this helicopter on my head and basically running around. I do different stunts, turns and spins. I'm a dancer, so I dance while I do this."

He was just warming up, revving the chopper, when the same cop spotted him again. "I also was walking really slow, and that had something to do with it," Kman theorizes.

At any rate, he got arrested for trespa.s.sing. The police report straightforwardly describes the suspect as a man "adorned with a helicopter" who "did not belong in the show."

As he was hustled out of the parade, some of the spectators booed the cops. Kman spent five hours in custody. "They had great fun with me," he recalls. "They had me posing with officers and taking pictures." Kman relates the story with annoyance but no bitterness. He's been arrested before. Once he was riding the Metrorail as Monkey Joe-that is, dressed as a monkey and squatting on his haunches like a monkey and occasionally making noises like a monkey-when he was busted for wearing a mask in a public place.

On the day the pope visited Miami, Kman was arrested again for refusing to remove his goggle mask. At the time, he was riding a bicycle with the scale model of a Hercules military transport plane mounted on the front. He is uncommonly fond of miniature war toys; he once appeared in public as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Says his lawyer, Glenn Terry: "He's a harmless guy who's trying to say something, though I don't know what it is."

Police say Kman wasn't causing any problems at the Orange Bowl parade, except that he refused to go away.The parade folks say it's unfortunate that Kman was arrested, but say he should've got a permit like all the other clowns.

"We had Captain Crime Stopper, and the World's Fastest Clown," notes Gene c.o.keroft, director of production for the parade. "My gosh, we'd never say no to a clown." He added that Kman's whirling helicop-ter-on-the-head routine sounded very entertaining.

Next year, Krnan promises, he will go through the proper clown channels. As for the theme of his performance, the message of his art: "Fly in peace," he says. "Whatever."

No peace for movie ushers who want quiet June 26, 1991 AMC Theaters has announced a crackdown on customers who yak during movies: Violators will be ejected after one warning.

This ought to be fun, especially in South Florida. We've got the loudest, surliest, burliest, most well-armed movie audiences in the hemisphere. A verbal warning might only provoke them.

What prompted AMC's new policy was a national survey in which 71 percent of those interviewed named "disruptive behavior" as the reason they don't go to the movies more often. Like AMC, Wometco and General Cinema are attempting to discourage talkers by showing on-screen warnings before every film. The test will be trying to back up those threats with serious muscle.

AMC says it will order its ushers to patrol the aisles vigilantly. I didn't even know they still employed ushers! They've got plenty of uniformed young men whose job is guarding the uniformed young women who make the b.u.t.tered popcorn, but these fellows are under strict orders never to leave the refreshment stand. You seldom catch them inside the theaters.

Say you scrounge up some ushers crazy enough to take on a South Florida movie audience. Training them will cost a fortune. Start with a basic martial-arts course, then six weeks on the firing range, nightscope training, wilderness survival school, hostage negotiations, and so on. Those who don't wash out of the program still won't be prepared for the teeming h.e.l.lpit that is your average early-bird matinee in, say, West Broward. There's one sure way to see if an usher is combat-ready. Put him in the aisles during a Woody Allen movie.

Allen is a literate and witty screenwriter. His movies are full of clever lines, exquisitely timed. Enjoying the dialogue, unfortunately, requires that one be able to hear it. That's simply not possible in many local theaters.

The problem is chronic and insurmountable. Woody Allen sets most of his pictures in New York. Many South Florida moviegoers are from New York, or have relatives there, or once visited there on vacation. Thus they cannot restrain from exclaiming, at the most crucial moment of the movie: "Look, there's the Chrysler Building! We were there with your cousin, remember? Back when she had that terrible gout!"

At which point, the wife is likely to say (in a voice like a diesel): "That wasn't the Chrysler Building, it was the World Trade Center! And it wasn't gout, it was gallstones!"

Other Manhattan landmarks that send moviegoers into clamorous eruptions are Radio City, the Empire State Building, Macy's, the Plaza Hotel, any Broadway marquee, and of course Central Park. Whenever there's a scene in Central Park, you might as well go buy some Raisinets and relax in the lobby, because you won't be able to hear a word of the movie. Audience members will be trading moldy Central Park anecdotes for 15, 20 minutes easy. Another perilous situation for ushers is Terminator-type films, which rely on spectacular methods of incineration, dismemberment and organ removal. In other parts of the country, such scenes evoke normal shrieking and groans of disgust. Here in South Florida, though, they inspire long esoteric debates about technique-for example, is a grain thresher more effective than a circular saw? How long do human body parts keep in the refrigerator?

Only the boldest of ushers would interrupt such a conversation with a "Sssshhhh."

Once a customer defies the warning, the challenge is subduing the noisy culprit and removing him or her from the movie. Many of these babblers are quite huge, much bigger than your average usher. Nothing short of a flash fire is going to budge them from their seats.

AMC's solution is to offer a refund if they'll get up and leave peacefully. That'll probably work fine in Tulsa, but extra coaxing may be required here in Miami.

We're talking stun guns and grappling hooks.