Instruments of Torture and 100 Cuban Artists at Miami-Dade College’s Freedom Tower

The Miami Freedom Tower is hosting Instruments of Torture Through the Ages, an exhibit on loan from the Museo Medieval in Italy. The guillotine on display looks awfully perfect in front of the Spanish Renaissance-style building. Surely, that’s what drew me in—and anyone else with a taste for the macabre.The exhibit, running through August 29, displays roughly 85 objects, which are authentic or carefully executed reproductions of original instruments once common in the dungeon of many a noble or prince.

While the exhibit definitely gives viewers the chills, the weight of the exhibit comes from realizing just how bad it was to be on the wrong end of the law before agencies such as Amnesty International and the United Nations existed. In those days, justice was vernacular. The punishments meted out by a Tuscan duke could be much less or much more bloody than those of his counterpart in Bavaria.

Certain objects on display dispel long-held myths.A chastity belt, for instance, was not something a husband forced his wife to wear if he were going off on crusade. Oftentimes women adopted the use of a chastity belt when traveling, as roadside inns hosted outlaws bent on rape as much as law-abiding citizens.

The masculine version of a chastity device, however, was made to inflict pain, not protect the “pudendum” or “shameful” parts of man.When impure thoughts caused the wearer to get an erection, little spikes would meet the growing member.This was generally a form of self-mortification of the flesh for reasons of piety.

The above device wasn’t necessarily for the homosexual offender only. For in- stance, a beautifully-made stretching device introduced into the mouth, rectum, or other orifice would be twisted to expand, and open up. My friend who came with me said he has seen similar devices for sale on fetish websites—although I think their modern, repurposed intent is to bring about pleasurable, not fatal, pain. To punish homosexuality with death, a large saw—always a ready torture device— was introduced between the legs of a man hung upside down.They would proceed to saw the guilty in half. Some accounts reveal that people would not often die until the saw reached the navel.

One item on display, an Italian rack with spikes, also comes with a description of waterboarding—which is described as being enduring because it is an “economical” form of torture.To get the most out of time with the prisoner, the executioner would pour copious amounts of water into the mouth against the tortured person’s will. In addition to the feeling of drowning, the stomach and abdomen would be beaten, which would cause the person on the receiving end much pain. It seems as if time-tested ideas such as this are still employed by governments to extract information.

A head crusher, would gradually tighten and lower onto the person’s skull.When the device was unscrewed, the cranial cap of the person would be removed. The Nuremberg Maiden, or iron maiden, is also on display. While this torture existed in other parts of Europe, the smiling Nuremberg version, in which the prisoner was placed so that spikes would pierce the flesh and ultimately kill and crush the victim, is the most iconic.This punishment was reserved for severe crimes against the state, or ruler, such as minting coins illegally.

The torture exhibit highlights the fact that these punishments, and tortures, were not meant to be swift.The rack was meant to dislocate shoulders and vertebrae so that the death was agonizing. Other devices were meant to be worn on a long- term basis, such as spiked belts, so that wounds would develop, exposing flesh, so that ultimately gangrene and death would take their course.That is if you were lucky enough to not have flesh-eating worms introduced.

Other devices, such as a heavy, mocking mask made out of metal, were created for women who had spoken in front of or against the men in their lives.These masks chronicle the near-universal domestic slavery in which women existed in past centuries.A dunking or dousing chair punished women who gossiped.The guilty were strapped into the chair and lowered into a body of water several times throughout an entire day, thereby repeating the feeling of drowning. Should we bring this back for Perez Hilton?

The show is really two shows in one.The second part of the exhibit displays methods of torture carried out by the Inquisition, with wax models of the accused in various stages of torture and pain. On a slightly disconcerting note, the wax figures of hairy, medieval Italian men were oddly attractive.

To learn more about the exhibit, visit Miamitorture.com

Faces: 100 Cuban Artists by Carlos Manuel Cardenes Sr. and Jr.

This collection chronicles the diaspora of Cuban artists living in Miami. Rather than mere portraits of the artists in the photographs, Cardenes, Jr. weds the artists to their art. “My approach was to conflate the work and the artist into a single indivisible image; to place creator and creation in the same canvas and, so to speak, put the flesh on the bones of creation.To see the art and the artist as one—that was my vision,” said Cardenes, Jr.

Cardenes, Jr. initially started this project on his own. How- ever, in the middle of scheduling and photographing the artists, he suffered an untimely death. To honor the memory of his son, Cardenes Sr. completed the work.The pictures are moving, eloquently executed studies of a population that is both unique to and a major force behind the life of Miami.
To learn more about this exhib- it, contact the MDC Art Gallery System at (305) 237-7700.

Lindsay Lohan Released From Prison and Vows To Never Again Rob Another Bank - Oops!

LOS ANGELES - Noah Westbunker, warden of The Zsa Zsa Gabor Prison For Women, opened the cell door to jail cell #69, and escorted prisoner #362436, aka Lindsay Lohan to the front iron gate and freedom.

Warden Westbunker removed Lohan's handcuffs, ankle shackles, and chastity belt (which he says he had personally installed for her own good) and he told Miss Lohan that he did not want to ever see her cute little butt in his prison again.

LiLo smiled and asked him if he was gay or what. Westbunker laughed and said that he is not gay, and that it was just that he wished her well with her film and partying career and that he would not mind hooking up with her somewhere away from the prison, the media, and the hundreds of lesbian inmates that occupy his prison.

Lindsay giggled and said, "But Warden Westy, did you forget that I am one of them so called carpet munchers or what?"

Warden Westbunker turned three shades of pink and told Lohan to have a good day. He gave her a very passionate French kiss, and softly fondled her ass for about 35 seconds.

As Lohan turned to get into a waiting limo a reporter for 16 Magazine asked her if she had any comments. Lohan, ever the media hound grinned and said that she had learned her lesson and promised that she would never, ever rob a bank again.

All of the reporters and paparazzi got a collective puzzled look on their faces. When Lohan realized what she had said she laughed and said "Oops! I was just pullin' y'alls collective legs."

One reporter, Titus Peterpit, with National Geographic Magazine said that if she wanted to he would be thrilled to let her pull his pecker. She giggled and said that she was sure he would be but noted that she is not into peckers and that she is more the bikini burger type.

Chaos rising

Roaches on the railways, malaria in the snow and the Bishop Auckland head known for his wit and wonderful voice.

STARTING from scratch – and in a church magazine, so it must be true – The Messenger, the mag of St Margaret’s in Brookfield, Middlesbrough, reports that the average railway carriage is “home to as many as 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bed bugs and 200 fleas”.

Where, for heaven’s sake? “The cockroaches are hiding behind the lighting and ceiling panels while the bed bugs lurk in the seating fabric.

“The fleas jump about wherever they like, particularly down your leg.”

Years of spraying have proved ineffective, the report adds. Now the train operators have approached Rentokil in a bid to find a “more drastic”

solution.

Shooting the Messenger, I read it two weeks ago on a train from Darlington to Teesside. I swear I’ve been itching ever since.

STILL with the flying squad, recent columns have touched upon malaria – the pharmacy in Tow Law, Switzerland of the North, advertises treatment. It may not be so improbable after all.

The Stainmore Railway Company’s quarterly magazine recalls the incident during the great winter of 1947 when workmen struggling to clear the line at Stainmore Summit – between Barnard Castle and Cumbria – were summoned to help a sick lorry driver on the nearby A66.

Though doctors were unable to get through, the Barney station master passed details to the local GP who correctly read the symptoms and sent medication on a special breakdown train.

The magazine acknowledges the improbability of a malaria case in six feet of Stainmore snow. It’s likely the poor chap had served in the Far East during the Second World War, it says. It may all make Tow Law seem quite clement by comparison.

T HE Daily Mail, incidentally, devotes a page to the irresistible spread of Blandford fly, a pest said – like Mr Norman Hunter – to bite your legs. Pop singer Mollie King had to abandon a show after being attacked by one (or, perhaps, more). The insect takes its name from the Dorset town of Blandford Forum, where first it was identified and, as ever, it’s the female which is the pesky trouble. The males are vegetarian.

FOR Gadfly readers, nothing flies like time. Several have responded to last week’s note recalling the Bishop Auckland (boys) Grammar School train trip to the Royal Show on Newcastle Town Moor, July 1962.

We’d been foolish fourth formers, should never have been let out, marked the return journey by tipping thousands of agricultural leaflets – flyers, maybe, but they fell quickly enough to earth – from Durham viaduct onto the streets below.

It sent Christine Armstrong – now in Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough – searching for her diary of the 1961 school trip when she attended the Girls Grammar School in Bishop.

The two didn’t merge until 1963, kept apart by a football field – a sort of green chastity belt – and, truth to tell, by the fact that we probably preferred football in the first place.

Christine, at any rate, remembers that theirs was a train trip, too – from Bishop Auckland for three days in Venice and thence to Lugano.

“With hindsight we were very lucky to have teachers like Miss Curry and Mrs Walker (and her husband) who were prepared to give up their time to lead us,” she says. With hindsight, they were also quite lucky to be girls.

PETE Sixsmith, at Bishop Grammar a few years later, recalls a school trip down the coaly Tyne – “as then it was” – when Swan Hunter was building the Southern Cross, a luxury liner.

It may not have been as educational, however, as the Ferryhill School leavers’ outing to Scarborough in 1977 – Pete, then as now, a teacher at the school.

Initially disinclined to allow it, the head relented after being assured that they’d take in Rievaulx Abbey on the way.

After refreshments in Helmsley – “read into that what you will” – the party left on the Rievaulx road.

“Stand up, look over the wall and tell Mr Bowman you’ve seen Rievaulx Abbey,” the demob mob were instructed.

They spent the rest of the day by the sea – sampling, as Pete perhaps euphemistically puts it, the delights of the Queen of the Yorkshire Coast.

BOTH Phil Steele in Crook and John Vasey in France remember that the Royal Show group disgorged at West Jesmond station. We’d been steam hauled by a V2, says Phil, but a “snotty first year” at the time.

“We didn’t fancy a load of tractors very much, but a trip to Newcastle was wonderful for a fanatical train spotter like me.”

John remembers two separate queues – male and female crocodiles.

“The thing that really sticks in my mind, however, is the first sighting of a colour television. It was experimental, and I remember it being a bit wishy-washy.”

The memory, of course, is strictly black and white – but maybe more about colour telly next week.

THE same note acknowledged Denis Weatherley, the Bishop Auckland headmaster, a wonderful singer and (as later I learned) a great man.

It was Denis, encountered in Darlington in 1997, to whom I’d suggested that he looked well. “There are three ages of man,” he replied.

“Youth, middle age and ‘By God you do look well’.”

It was Denis who died a few weeks later while singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot in his son’s choir. They’d just got to the line about coming for to carry me home.

Mary Hawgood in Durham recalls singing with him in the Palatine Opera Group – “a brilliant principal, his wit and unflappable humour made rehearsals a joy” – and the “truly memorable” last night parties hosted by Denis and his wife Eleanor.

Since Mary is also a former mayor of Durham, we’ve asked if the Bishop boys are forgiven for depositing so much agricultural waste over her serene city.

Sadly, ominously, there hasn’t been a reply.

FINALLY, back to church magazines and the Reverend Barry Pyke, vicar of the Mulgrave group of parishes near Whitby, is commendably brief in his August letter.

Barry simply tells the story, said to have been related during a clergy retreat, of the surgeon, the civil engineer and the politician discussing which of the three professions was the oldest. The surgeon claims seniority because when God created woman, he took his scalpel to remove a rib from Adam to make Eve.

The engineer retorts. “When God divided the Chaos into Earth and Sea, that must have been the first and greatest civil engineering project of all time.”

The politician says he can beat both of them.

“Who do you think created the Chaos in the first place?”

Once bitten or otherwise, the column returns next week.

Bella’s choice

I feel a certain weight of responsibility in reviewing the much maligned Eclipse, the third offering from the Twilight series that has unleashed on us the term, Twi-hards. But it is not the Twi-hards or their Twi-moms I fear, or the critics who panned the film despite adding “it’s a little bit better than the previous one”, or the next slew of critics who came in to slam the critics for panning the film and don’t even get me started on the feminists. It’s this whole lot of them who can’t seem to accept that someone could dislike the film and not be a hater, pretentious git or defender of the abstinence programme (the logic goes that I hate the film because Bella won’t put out).

Other film franchises have met similar fates — more recently the maelstrom that fell upon Sex and the City 2 almost had one feeling sorry for the ladies — but Twilight seems to elicit a whole other category of spite, the most notable of which has come from feminists. Their disdain is for Bella (Kristen Stewart), an insecure teenager who allows two men to decide what’s best for her as they fight it out amongst themselves. The rebuttal from the creator of the series, Stephanie Meyer — “in my opinion, the foundation of feminism is being able to choose” — added fuel to the fire because, let’s face it, her definition is fairly meaningless. And what choice does Bella have to make? Between two men who don’t treat her as an equal, who fight over her future while she sleeps soundly in a tent? Or, as we saw in New Moon when Edward leaves Bella, so distraught is she that she chooses extreme sport-like scenarios because she can’t live without him. Some choice.

Eclipse is not as fun to watch as Twilight. It is slightly more painful than the New Moon because now, in Eclipse, we want something to happen between Bella and Edward (Robert Pattinson) or Bella and Jacob (Taylor Latner) — and the something does not refer to the unlocking of the chastity belt. Instead we seem to be stuck in the same place we left off in New Moon: Bella hasn’t decided which non-human path she will embark on, with the pasty one (ancient, hot looking vampire) or the shirtless one (young, hot werewolf). This angst is stretched over two hours, in between which, sub-plots of a new serial vampire killer in town, out to get Bella, Edward, Jacob, other uninteresting characters, are thrown in for some measure. Then there is the tension amongst Edward and Jacob, vying for Bella’s affection — why there is any doubt that her heart lies with Edward is baffling — that adds to the seemingly unending movie.

The only constants in the film are the stunning scenery of northwest America, decapitations and dismemberments, wondering why Dakota Fanning signed on and “the earnest solemnity” according to one Guardian critic. The bad news is that there are two films left before Bella will give herself to her true love. It’s enough to make you want to slay something.

ALL SALZ OF FUN

The hills are alive... with 58 turnips, 120,000 painted eggs and 400-year-old trick fountains.

I went to swanky Salzburg in late spring expecting a surfeit of Julie Andrews and The Sound Of Music.

Instead I found a remarkably diverse destination that pretty much - and very pretty it is too - ticked all the boxes for a weekend city break. It's just so instantly easy to like.

A tourist trap it most certainly is, with its little alleys off Getreidegasse lined with souvenir shops, but perhaps not quite the complete Tourist von Trapp I'd expected.

However, the sound of the music of a certain Herr W.A. Mozart is just a tad prevalent and there's a large statue of Salzburg's most famous son in the main square.

The classy, history-drenched and very walkable Austrian city is dominated by the medieval Festung Hohensalzburg (£8.80 entry).

It's an ideal place to start exploring the city and is reached by either a stiff 15-minute uphill walk or a zippy funicular railway, which is included in the admission price.

And this is where we find our turnips.

Most castles have symbols of war-like things such as dragons, swords or shields, but thanks to ruling Prince-Bishop von Keutschach being from a family of wealthy turnip farmers, the Festung is festooned with reliefs of 58 root vegetables, though they're a bit high up and darn tricky to photograph.

The turnip-clad castle was never conquered (not even by the Swedes!) but was bagged without a fight by Napoleon when he was merrily hoovering up central Europe.

There's an excellent tour of the torture chamber and tower, which has superb views across the city to the Alps.

Don't miss the small Marionette Museum near the entrance. Fascinating and a little creepy. Or the chastity belt in the main museum. Ouch.

After returning to my hotel for a coffee - the marvellously and luxuriously Austrian Goldener Hirsch on the city's prime street Getreidegasse - the next port of call shifted the action forward several centuries.

I hadn't expected much from the Museum Of Modern Art, set high on the Monchsberg cliffs above the city, but the four floors of exhibits, including Van Goghs and Picassos, were compelling. Plus there's a nice cafe at the top floor with a splendid view of the castle (£6.70 entry).

Nearby is the Natural History Museum (£5 entry), an excellent rainy day diversion.

After an excellent pizza in the Stella restaurant near the Goldener Hirsch and a rather good glass of Austrian white wine in the hotel bar - the guests who have stayed here are seriously A-list, Prince Charles and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for starters - an early night was in order as tomorrow there's an early alarm call.

A half-hour ride on the 25 bus - the city has an excellent network - brings me to Untersberg, which stands a lofty 6,114ft and could probably be considered "Salzburg's mountain".

The cable-car ride up (£15.90 return) is excellent and it's something of a surprise to find there's a blizzard at the summit. It's the last day of May, it's -2C and I could make a snowman if I wanted to. Or I could head to the nearby restaurant for a warming coffee. Hot drink wins hands -down.

The 25 bus goes past Hellbrunn Palace and Salzburg Zoo.

Helbrunn is pretty much unmissable - the baroque building is pleasant and the music room is an extraordinary echo chamber .

However, it's the 17th-century trick fountains. that are the chief draw. They are set in attractive gardens and one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. Water spouting from statues, the floor, wall, deer antlers and goodness knows where. Plus a "floating" golden crown. Don't miss it - and expect to get wet. Bonkers but brilliant. (£7.90 entry including a guided tour of the fountains.).

Immediately by Hellbrunn is the zoo, set along a rugged cliff.

I'm not a great fan of zoos but as they go this one was OK as the animals had some half-decent space to roam, there's a nice cafe and you get up close and personal with a tiger (entry £7.50).

Back in the city the wet weather - endless rain, to be honest - meant a planned boat trip on the River Salzach had to be cancelled as it was flowing too fiercely.

Male Order

They hopped out of taxis, four at a time, and sashayed up a small flight of stairs after negotiating a rather impressive patch of puddle on the main road to enter the big gates of the Colaba hotel. That was the last the curious bunch of onlookers outside saw of them that night. But the skimpily-dressed models with their lithe figures and waxed legs had done enough to enliven a bored, retiring crowd.

Standing among and listening to the motley collection of auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers and knick-knack peddlers gawking at the models and belting out words of wisdom could be, well, enlightening. As those silent moments of awe and sex-laced wild imagination evaporated with the last girl disappearing through the door, giggles and nervous laughs ran through the crowd.

Soon, a bystander was ruminating on the purity of girls in his UP village, another about the many advantages of the chastity belt, and someone else about the lack of parenting skills in Mumbai.

“Don’t be fooled by what you see,” piped up an old man, “They disappoint you in bed. They are cold as iced fish.” The challenge was prompt. “How do you know, you old tramp? Boys are the only thing you are interested in.” The crowd dispersed, leaving the banter unfinished and the old man groping for a response.

Misfits in a city rumoured to be absolutely grown up in matters sex, are they? Possibly. Or, is it the old deprivation complex at play, with bawdy humour as an outlet for sedimented sexual frustration? You never know. But it spreads across classes.

Just ponder over the outrage at Tiger Woods’ sexual indiscretions. What is it in him that the world is so worried about? Is it the fact that he is a married man and still has several mistresses? Not really. The quantum of outrage is never less in the case of transgressing unmarried film stars and footballers, and of course, our cricketers.

Is it the fact that heroes should set moral standards? Ha! That’s bunkum. We know that. Sure, people ogling at underdressed models, salivating over girls in the Playboy centrefold and drooling over porn sites in office hours should not be talking much about moral standards.

Knowing men, it has to be envy, “that lucky bastard…” kind of a thing. It’s the alpha man beating the weaker among the species in the race for women. We attribute alphahood to men and still crib when he makes the most of it. Isn’t it funny?

Chastity belt and UP belles can wait. We know we are not serious. Just as we don’t really care whether Woods plays his golf well or Cristiano Ronaldo knows his football. It is more of the “sour grapes” syndrome at work.

The gathering at the Colaba hotel should take heart. They don’t stand isolated. It is a huge world of closet voyeurs out there. They can keep ogling at waxed legs and rant.

TV review: The Hospital and Who Do You Think You Are?

Another excellent episode . . . The Hospital, Channel 4. Photograph: Channel 4

I have always agreed with Victoria Wood that I wouldn't be an adolescent again if you bumped my pocket money up to three and six. After viewing the first episode of The Hospital (Channel 4) last night, which looked at the £1bn a year efforts of the NHS to stem the rising tide of STDs within the country's teenage population, you could now bump it up to a full guinea and I would still turn it down in favour of an ageing but non-suppurating set of genitalia and a cervix that could still pass its MOT.

The nether regions of the young folk these days, it seems, are a mass of gunged-up tubes, burning nooks and pus-filled crannies, warts and weeping foreskins. Chlamydia is a rite of passage and nothing short of HIV seems to put a crimp in their sexual style. As one of the doctors noted, gone are the halcyon days when getting up the duff was all you had to worry about. "Now, in comparison, you might be quite pleased if your daughter just came home pregnant."

How does it happen? Michael explains that he goes out, "meets a random and takes it from there". The "it" in this case being herpes. He was hoping for gonorrhoea because "a pill sorts that out". Tommy advised his most recent conquest to go to the clinic, because "she needs to get herself checked out because I have had a lot of sexual partners. That's just who I am. I do drink alcohol, so what can I say?" The mother of 15-year-old Shannon sat in her flat while her daughter attended the clinic for contraception after a miscarriage, talking about her daughter's uncontrollability. But, she sighed, what could she do?

Faced with this toxic mix of teenage and parental irresponsibility – and societal, if you want to cast the accessibility of cheap alcohol in such a light – the doctors and other NHS professionals did their increasingly exhausted best. They doled out condoms, inserted implants, tracked down no-shows, persuaded the reluctant to take their tablets and maybe, just occasionally, made an infinitesimally tiny difference to the behaviour of some of the more receptive.

It was a bleak and ghastly glimpse into the world of the young. Even more depressing than the changes were the constants. Shannon explained why she went out at night when she was supposed to be in bed: "I got told that if I didn't see this boy by a particular time, he was going to dump me." Had she felt that she was ready to have sex at 15, said the interviewer, asking about her pregnancy. There was a pause. "Well," she said, her face brightening, "I loved the boy so obviously I was ready." She beamed and glowed at the memory of him. She looked about 12.

This was another excellent episode from The Hospital documentary series, which works harder than most to strip away the layers of artifice and euphemism that increasingly clutter any interaction between the public and public medicine. It did not lay bare the anger and frustration of the staff involved as much as the previous series did, perhaps because those who deal with teenagers on a daily basis are that bit closer to sainthood. They must, in order to function, simply have bigger reserves of energy and optimism to draw on than the rest of us. I'd have instituted a nationwide chastity belt programme by now and retired.

It was the turn of Rupert Everett ("actor, toff, poof", as he helpfully summarised for those unfamiliar with his work) to uncover his ancestry on last night's Who Do You Think You Are?. This was good news, because it's a format that always works best with an actor as the subject. The ego battles with empathy throughout, creating numerous little by-plays that enliven the main, dryly factual narrative – and Everett overflowed with both.

No sooner had he seen a picture of his grandfather Cyril with his handsome black steward in turn-of-the-century Nigeria than he had made him gay, and the two of them loving partners. He assumed that Cyril's father, a tattooed merchant seaman ("like a Jean Genet character!"), was a criminal fleeing the country. None of this was true, but it was fun.

He did uncover a kindred spirit: a cockney, octogenarian great-aunt, Marguerite, who shared her knowledge of his philandering great-grandfather, Frederick. She and her great-nephew bonded over a mutual love of naughty boys. "You're not playing for the other side?" she asked, light suddenly beginning to dawn. "I might be," he hedged, unsure how she would take the news. "Oh," she said. "Now I'm learning things!" They both cackled delightedly. "This is deteriorating into an Ealing comedy," said Everett. Actually, it was rather a sweet moment, one that neatly telescoped time while animating Everetts past and present.