Andrew Zimmern never met a food he wouldn’t try. Actually, amend that. There are only two things that wouldn’t touch his lips, so you can imagine. We caught up with the intrepid host and James Beard award-winning chef of the Travel Channel’s new series Bizarre Foods of America, premiering 10 p.m. Monday. This time, the St. Paul resident, 50, is leaving his passport at home and delving into the strangest edibles our nation has to offer.

Why did you devote a full season to the U.S.? When I’m in tribal Africa eating grilled, wild, giant porcupine people are fascinated with it, but there’s a little bit of a disconnect, I imagine. To them it’s good watching, but it’s not possible to be doing. I am obsessed with food and with eating. So to have the opportunity to sit on a street corner in a suburb of Louisiana and have a Vietnamese grandpa make me duck blood pizza the same way his grandparents made it for him when he was a kid in Dien Bien Phu is to me what a food life is all about.

How do you get over the fear of eating strange things? In terms of how I get over the fear, I never had any. As a kid growing up in New York I ate tongue at my grandmother’s on the weekends and sautéed calf’s liver and did all the things that I think we sort of lost touch with in this generation. You’ve got to remember, what’s weird to some people is wonderful to another. I sat in Africa one day and had a [Lawaneka] tribesperson insist that Americans were crazy because we let milk rot and then dried it into little squares and ate it. If you told Americans that there were people who thought cheese was disgusting they would laugh at you.

Have you ever refused anything? Only two times. I was in a slum in Delhi and we were eating street food and there was brown sludgy water coming out of a spigot in the wall. I knew that would be a trip to the hospital. I [also] passed once on some moldy chicken intestines. Ever had an adverse reaction? I had some bad cumin on our first trip to Morocco and I got a virus from it. And other than a couple of bouts of nausea at night from some bad mussels on a family visit to Portland, Maine, those are the only two times I have gotten sick on food in the last six, seven years.

Last meal? Roast chicken with stuffing and gravy preceded by as many cherrystone clams on the half shell as I could eat.

By AMY REYES

Lasers. They can provide hours of endless entertainment. Ever sat in public and attacked random people with a laser pointer? Such fun!

The Miami Science Museum is celebrating the laser in all its creative (non-annoying) glory at this weekend’s Laser Fest 2012. Friday and Saturday nights they will have marathons shows of their classics like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles (for the boomers) as well as their new Beastie Boys show (for the 30-somethings) and the Bob Marley show (for college kids). If you are bringing the little rugrats, “Pop” is the more family-friendly show.

Friday evening you can arrive early and check out the free planetarium star show at 7:30 p.m. and rooftop observatory viewing from 8:30-10 p.m., weather permitting. Check out the Activity Room or head to the Space Gallery for a few hands-on activities and demonstrations for the kids ages 3 and up between 8-9 p.m.

By MADELEINE MARR

Andy Hillstrand gets treated like a rock star wherever he goes. Though it’s a bit of a freaky concept for the Deadliest Catch star, nothing will stop him from appearing on the so-called Captain’s Tour with his costars, brother Jonathan Hillstrand and Sig Hansen.

Andy loves getting to meet the fans of the Discovery Channel reality show that chronicles the adventures of Alaskan King crabbing boats in the Bering Sea.

The three guys will be at the Coral Springs Center for The Arts 8 p.m. Thursday, showing home videos, taking questions and talking up the Hillstrand brothers’ new vodka, Time Bandit, named after their ship.
Read the full story

Break out the beer & nachos — Duffy’s takes over North Miami’s former Water Club space to open its first Miami-Dade location on June 24. The sprawling, 25,000-square-foot space bills itself as the “largest sports grill in South Florida” — and has the numbers to back it up:

700 seats
500 feet of dockage
200 plasma TVs
$6.99 weekday lunch
$7.95 weekend brunch
$6 Kettle One
$4 Captain Morgan
6 styles of wings
2-for-1 happy hour daily from 4pm till close
1 pool

This is Duffy’s 24th outpost — each dishes out all the sports bar classics — with a global twist. Think loaded potato skins, coconut crusted dolphin fingers, Thai chicken curry, Angus cheeseburgers, buffalo chicken salad and a NY Reuben. Come ready to watch some serious game — Duffy’s is the “official sports grill” of the Heat, Dolphins, Marlins and Panthers.

Three good girls gone bad find redemption working for a mysterious man, fighting crime in designer duds. It never gets old. ABC is giving this generation of young women a heavy dose of girl power via the Charlie’s Angels reboot slated to air in fall 2011.

The real star of the show, however, is the city of Miami. Since Miami Vice wrapped in 1989, Miami has been snubbed as a production location by the major networks. Sure, we got awesome cable shows like Burn Notice, The Glades and Magic City producing their shows around town. But when is the last time you saw CSI: Miami‘s David Caruso walking down Lincoln Road? Or Adam Rodriguez? We’ve been looking for him. But don’t let him know (the restraining order is still in effect).

The three angels played by Rachel Taylor, Annie Ilonzeh and the lovely Minka Kelly will, no doubt, find plenty of excuses to show off their nubile bodies and inappropriate-for-detective-work fashions, but Miami will bring the heat with plenty of sexy bodies (via an abundance of hot extras), white parties (remember the casting calls?), beaches that will make shivering northerners start checking airfare and fancy cars that can only be driven in a town that rarely hands out speeding tickets.

Here’s hoping that it lasts longer than Detroit 1-8-7.

Girl Talk -- real name Greg Gillis -- performs at the Fillmore Miami Beach this week. (Darren Hauck / Getty Images)

By MICHAEL HAMERSLY

If your friends told you they were going to the Girl Talk show, you might scoff and joke that no thanks, you’ll just stay home and watch “The View.” But that’s only if you haven’t heard the crafty creations by Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, who takes all kinds of samples from all kinds of different songs to create insanely entertaining mashups. Check him out Thursday and Friday night at the Fillmore Miami Beach, performing in support of his new album “All Day,” and play “name that sample” – or just dance the night away. He talked about his music and what we can expect from his shows.

What inspired you to get into sampling and creating mashups?
I started getting into some bands when I was 13 or 14 that had electronics in them, and that kind of led me into looking into more electronic music. And then I got into sort of left-field sampling stuff, and I was in a band in high school that incorporated a lot of sampling, very raw, abrasive stuff, like using skipping CDs or cutting up physical tape or messing with four-track recorders, and listening to rap music as well. So by the time I got a laptop when I was 18, I had already seen a number of people performing live – in particular, I was a big fan of Kid 606 – so it was kind of a logical step from what I was doing in high school to that.

How would you describe your sound today?
I like it to walk a line between being accessible and also complicated and potentially dense. I like to layer a lot of samples and have it move quickly with a certain level of precision. And all of that comes from the influence of electronic music – I really love stuff like Squarepusher and how detailed it gets – so I love collage-based music that is detailed like that.

Have you ever gotten into trouble in terms of copyrighting?
No, no issues so far.

Could the artists come after you if they wanted to?
Yeah. It fits into a gray area, but I believe my work should qualify under fair use in United States copyright law, which allows you to sample without asking for permission if it falls under certain criteria. So we put it out there and basically hope for the best. I don’t wanna go to court, I don’t want anyone to challenge it, but if they do, then I would stand up for it. … But I find a lot of people who own the rights to songs reaching out to me now, giving me a capellas and instrumentals and sending me CDs in the mail, very open to me sampling the music they represent.

What can we expect from your two live shows in Miami?
I trigger all the samples in real time, so it’s very live, and I reference some of the material from the albums, and I notice people react strongly when they hear stuff from the albums. But I love to kind of jumble it all together – I love to take a beat from the new album and combine it with vocals from the last album. Or take a familiar part from the last album and put a brand-new hip-hop a capella overtop it. And on the visual side, over the past few years it’s been building up to make it more of a spectacle. We have a custom-made LED wall, we have homemade props, custom lighting design – just trying to make the visual part of the show as over-the-top as the music.

What inspired you to call yourself Girl Talk?
When I was getting going, I had seen a number of laptop performers, and there was something about that world that was kind of a bit stiff to me – you know, people sitting down and staring at their computers and putting in no effort to entertain the crowd. And that’s not what I wanted to do – so I wanted to pick a name that was counter to all that, that didn’t sound like a guy playing a laptop. And anyway, by picking that name, I definitely didn’t expect it to turn into a 10-year-long project [laughs].

You’ve been to Miami a few times – what do you think of the city?
I love it – it’s definitely to me one of the more extreme cities in the United States. It has its own style and culture. It’s just so distinctly different from any other place in the country. And there’s just a history of different music. I’m actually a fan of a lot of the more weird, left-field electronic music from there – Otto von Schirach and all that Schematic stuff – they’re my good friends who I collaborate with sometimes. They kind of brought a lot of that stuff to me – I didn’t know about it before. So yeah, Miami has always been really amazing.

– Michael Hamersly

DJ Jazzy Jeff is best-known for making happy hip-hop with Will Smith (“Summertime,” “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble”) and their hit sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” But he’s also a renowned turntablist and producer, having helped discover Jill Scott and Musiq, among many other stars. Catch him Friday, March 11, along with Miami Heat resident DJ Irie, at the Living Room & Whiskey Blue at W Fort Lauderdale (401 S. Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd.
Fort Lauderdale). Jazzy Jeff talked to Miami.com about the show. Read the full story

By Madeleine Marr

John Walsh wants to go global. The longtime host of America’s Most Wanted, 65, was at National Association of Television Programming Executives this week to talk up the idea for a new show, World’s Most Wanted. Sounds like an excellent plan. Walsh’s FOX program — on the air since 1988 — has led to the arrest of more than 1,000 criminals, including accused Thanksgiving Day killer Paul Merhige last year. Read the full story

Barry Manilow to the left in the '70s and to the right present day.

Everyone knows what to expect when Barry Manilow takes the stage Friday, Jan. 28 at the BankAtlantic Center (1 Panther Pkwy, Sunrise) and again Saturday, Jan. 29 at UM’s BankUnited Center (1245 Dauer Dr., Coral Gables) – guilty-pleasure hits including “I Write the Songs,” “Mandy,” “This One’s For You” and the classic cheese-fest “Copacabana (At the Copa).” And everyone might expect Manilow to take himself seriously, much like one would expect, say, Celine Dion or Martha Stewart to.
Read the full story

By Michael Hamersly

Can’t wait for the dance-music debauchery and decadance that the Winter Music Conference brings to South Florida in March? Well, you really don’t have to.

The Groove Cruise will take care of all your beat-driven needs, for three days straight. Think the Love Boat, but with electronic music, 24/7. Read the full story