Seize the day
Best bets for Friday.

Cover story

• Return of Webb's City
  When you try to explain Webb's City to people who weren't in St. Petersburg during its heyday, you soon find yourself reduced to muttering words like "Disney World . . . the '30s . . . mall . . . P.T. Barnum . . . cheap shopping fun . . . carnival." And that's before you get to the mermaids, the kissing rabbit and the tic-tac-toe-playing chickens.
• Webb's City: The Music
  "Friends have come up to me and sung these faux songs," Ahlin said, wincing at the thought of imitations he has heard, such as a gravelly voiced Al Jolson-style version of a hat-and-cane number on The World's Most Unusual Drug Store.
• Who was Doc Webb?
  Perhaps the only thing more amazing than James Earl "Doc" Webb's life and career is that it has taken this long to turn it into a stage show. If the particulars weren't so well documented in history books and newspaper clippings, you would think it had to be the stuff of imagination.

Movies on the Edge

Pop Beat
Crescent City trio brings sound to town
Royal Fingerbowl's second CD will be released later this summer. You can catch their act Saturday at Skipper's.

The diva and her duo
Diana Ross's tour, which comes Saturday to Tampa's Ice Palace, has been drenched in controversy from the start.

A weekend of Canadian folk and kinfolk
JULIE DOIRON: 9 p.m. Sunday. New World Brewery, 1313 8th Avenue, Ybor City, Tampa. (813) 248-4969. Admission is $5.

Come prepared for metal rap mayhem
Cartoony metal rap band Insane Clown Posse performs with Twiztid and Slip Joint at 8 tonight at Jannus Landing in downtown St. Petersburg. ICP's live show is known to involve fires, chain saws and gallons of Faygo soda dousing the audience.

On Stage
Little Theater stages 'Fractured Folk Tales'
A. Paul Johnson threw a birthday party the other night for Fractured Folk Tales, a revue whose music he composed for Indiana Repertory Theatre in 1975. Since then, the work has been done in at least 25 productions, according to the St. Petersburg composer.

Theater in Review

Art Beat
A vacation for the mind
Summer means vacation, and vacation can be many things. It's a time to get away, or a chance to take youngsters to new experiences. Through photographs, it can be a vicarious trip to a distant land.

Reception to open national juried show
ARTISTS UNLIMITED -- The seventh annual National Open Juried Show brings in 34 artists from 14 states, chosen by prominent New York critic and gallery director Ivan C. Karp.

TimeOut
Teaching humans new tricks
Dogs have some traits that humans would do well to emulate.

Web site we like
Just browsing, thanks. . .

Adventure in marine biology
Do you know how healthy our waterways are?

Audio Files
Sound bites
LUCY PEARL, LUCY PEARL (POOKIE/BEYOND) -- Made up of ex-members of A Tribe Called Quest, En Vogue and Tony! Toni! Tone!, Lucy Pearl is something of an R&B super group, kinda like an urban Cream.

Classical
Kurt Weill: Die Burgschaft; Julius Rudel, conductor (EMI) -- It sometimes strikes me that Kurt Weill must have worked himself to death. Born in 1900, he lived just 50 years, but his career was amazingly productive and versatile, resembling that of another composer who crossed musical genres and died relatively young, George Gershwin.