Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: First, let me start off by saying that I am not gay, but I want to have a threesome with my boyfriend and another female. It was eating me up for a while because I thought I was gay, but after finally opening up about it, I found out that wanting to…
25 Years of Activism
By 1980, Si Kahn had been a ’60s-era civil rights activist in Arkansas, rallied textile workers in the Carolinas and organized miners in West Virginia. But the Reagan era was ushering in a different world and it “felt more and more like there wasn’t something there to support and reinforce the good social justice work…
Stargazer
Sagittarius The Archer (Nov. 22 – Dec. 20) Call on your inner observer to let you know if you are behaving or thinking in too grandiose a style. There is an aspect this week that could tempt you into controlling behavior. You could use this energy in a positive way to renew or rebuild something…
Abandoned by his country
I’m going to tell you about the death of Jimmy Chastain and the fight of his young widow, Stacy. It’s a story set among the purple ridge lines of North Georgia, but it could be anywhere in the blue-collar South. It’s a tale of how this nation’s leaders talk loudly about supporting our men and…
View From The Couch
KING KONG (1933). There’s no reason to doubt Peter Jackson’s upcoming remake will deliver the entertainment goods (certainly more so than Dino de Laurentiis’ feeble 1976 version), but it will have a long way to go to reach the bona fide classic status of this 1933 masterpiece. A gargantuan hit upon its original release and,…
Breaking news
BBC, REPORTING ON TOP CATS MELEE, DESCRIBES CHARLOTTE AS CITY “WITH MASSIVE CHURCHES ALMOST AS BIG AS THE FOOTBALL STADIUM” If they repent, the ex-cheerleaders could always get jobs leading group prayers at one of the mega-churches. HUMAN MANNEQUINS BACK IN STORAGE Oops, that should have said “Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey officially break up.”…
Clips
New Releases THE ICE HARVEST The Ice Harvest is being promoted as this year’s Bad Santa, but it’s just bad, period. Its only merit belongs to Oliver Platt, who’s top-notch as the obnoxious, loud-mouth drunk who invariably attaches himself, barnacle-like, to some poor sucker’s arm during a festive holiday party. Otherwise, this merely goes through…
War Profiteer Alert
For a mere $20 you can meet one of America’s leading war profiteers next week right here in Charlotte. Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey will be the John Locke Foundation’s special guest on Dec. 7. He’ll talk on “The Global War Against Terrorism.” It should be good. It’s a subject Woolsey knows well, seeing…
Conversation Pieces
Holiday parties — especially those with crappy food and drink — can really suck. But, like a bird that strategically aims its business for a clean car, a carefully plopped comment can make anyone raise an eyebrow or chuckle. I’ve compiled a list of completely geeky, useless wine facts to drop on unsuspecting bores, if…
Phone Phreaks
In my humble opinion, cellphones have three uses: 1. Receiving obnoxious calls from relatives (including boyfriends/girlfriends) at the most improper of times. Examples: your mother needs a favor when you’re in a meeting at work; a drunk friend needs to tell you how much he (or she) loves (or hates) you — at 3am; your…
Rent Control
With apologies to James Brown, I’d be more than happy to bestow the title of “the hardest working man in show business” to Rob Marshall if he had been allowed the opportunity to direct back-to-back-to-back screen adaptations of Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera and the new theatrical release, Rent. Marshall, who guided Chicago to…
Blind
We’ve been in L.A. only four days and already Daniel has whored himself hugely. I love that about him. I remember back when he was faking like he was a folk artist, I used to lead him around from gallery to gallery by the hand while he wore torn overalls and kept his glance askance.…
Celebrity Cookbooks Revealed
Recently, I was perusing the kitchen bookshelf of some friends of mine, friends who were nice enough to invite my girlfriend and me over to a pre-Thanksgiving celebration replete with roasted turkey, cookies, cake, and all sorts of items that real men are reputed not to eat, like quiche and wraps. But we he-men ravenously…
Spittin’ into the Wind
Bad freestyling is like a bad first kiss. The timing is off, saliva flies with directionless abandon, and when it’s finally over, mutual embarrassment brings on heavy silence — or in the worst case, raucous booing. UNC Charlotte’s “Survival of the Illest” competition saw both reactions earlier this month. There are some things amateurs just…
Wine List
Wine Classes Fall classes presented by the Carolina Wine Club. www.carolinawineclub.com. Dec. 6: I See Stars — The Champagne Story; Dec. 13: Optional session, 6:15-8pm. $35. Westye Group Southeast Showroom, 127 West Worthington Ave. # 104. 704-344-8027. Wine Tasting A different sampling of wines every week. Saturdays, 12-5pm. Free. Frugal MacDoogal’s, I-77 at Carowinds Blvd.…
Zooming in on X
They’re the poster children for LA punk, displayed alongside the Germs as epitomizing that scene. But punk wasn’t the message that X bassist John Doe, singer Exene Cervenka, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake were trying to send when they were at the top of the West Coast punk scene in the late 70s.…
King Pong
Today’s videogame industry is swallowing entertainment whole. Movies, television and print are making less than the $25 billion industry that has invaded the living rooms of many Americans. Chaplin and Ruby are here with Smartbomb to give readers the lowdown on the industry, its history and the seedy workings of today’s major players. Chaplin and…
Graphic Content
The first three are some of my most influential teachers and friends, but all these designers have made a deep mark on the profession. Have a peek at what graphic design’s all about. Cipe Pineles www.aiga.org/content.cfm?contentalias=cipepineles Keith Godard www.studio-works.com Lance Wyman www.lancewyman.com April Greiman www.aprilgreiman.com Sussman/Prejza www.sussmanprejza.com
CL Recommends
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala (HarperCollins hardback). Iweala’s debut novel is an original, harrowing yet, at times, almost dreamlike view of war from a child’s point of view. Agu, a young West African boy, sees his family killed and is forced into combat as a guerilla soldier in his nation’s civil war. He’s…
The Barnettes
We wish our families were as functional as this one. Not only are they talented singers, songwriters, pop-rock instrumentalists, classical musicians, filmmakers, etc., etc. and so forth and so on, they’re also nice to each other! Check it: Each band member gets his/her own choice in this week’s Real Life Top 5, and the siblings…
Dickens Plays Defense
Seeing that A Christmas Carol hasn’t been presented hereabouts by either a local or a touring company in the past two years, I don’t think it’s too harsh to say that Charlotte has grown tired of Charles Dickens’ confectionary claptrap. My post-Turkey Day sampling of the local scene, in fact, disclosed that two of our…
See & Do
November 30 wednesday Everything’s better on ice, except maybe jump-roping. To prove that maxim, Disney’s Princess Classic stops at Bobcats Arena for eight shows. Aladdin, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and more will reenact scenes from their classic stories while performing triple salchows and double axels. Will Ariel fall in love with an adrift hunk all over…
Sexual Fantasies
Maya was three months old when her father ran out on her mother a few weeks before her parents were to be married. Maya, who asked that we not use her real name, is now 17 and a student at a Charlotte public high school. She has never seen her father, but says it doesn’t…
Something For The Kids
Videogames are for kids. Or at least they were in the beginning. These new E-rated games (E for Everybody) aren’t quite your Mario Bros. of yesteryear, but there are a few gems among the field of bland. Yes, Virginia, there is a videogame about Shamu. Believe me, I love the whales and manatees. I’m all…
How the Government got Involved
In 1995, one year after the Newt Gingrich Revolution brought a wave of conservatives to political office around the country, then-NC Representative Robin Hayes sponsored a bill that replaced North Carolina’s K-12 comprehensive sex education curriculum with an “Abstinence Until Marriage” program. The state lets local school systems go beyond the abstinence message — allowing…
Nowhere Is Now Here
In 1969, Dave Coe was a 30 year-old parolee, resident of a hearse parked outside Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Old Opry. Bona fide country outlaw Coe told tall tales of his years behind bars — unless you believe he really did teach Charlie Manson to play the guitar, and that the State…
Supporters of Comprehensive Sex Education
Here are 15 of the more than 100 mainstream heath and religious groups calling for a comprehensive sex education curriculum. • Planned Parenthood • The American Medical Association • The American Academy of Pediatrics • The American Psychological Association • The National Institutes of Health • American Nurses Association • Society for Adolescent Medicine •…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 11.30 Bill Mallonee — Former leader of under-the-radar, alt-country honkers Vigilantes of Love, Mallonee now tours by his (high) lonesome. In recent years, Mallonee has steered his strong, supple songwriting back toward his Athens, GA, roots — see R.E.M., Pylon and the dBs — to great effect. His most recent effort, Dear Life, is…
The Blotter
Stay Away from my Grandma!: Desperate and lonely, a man longing to see his ex-girlfriend who had filed a restraining order against him, turned to his last option: a grandma. The man told his ex’s grandma all about the separation and how he was wronged in hopes that granny would call her granddaughter and go…
Oh Brothers, Part Deux
Last week’s column discussed the dearth of decent millennial soul and the “Mtume Factor,” the process which led to the death of classic rhythm and blues. Producer/musician Mtume’s own career illustrates this, as the Philly-bred son of jazz sax great Jimmy Heath went from playing with icons like Miles Davis and Dee Dee Bridgewater to…
