SOUP for the Soul
In the big, big space of the Hart Witzen Gallery, SOUP, a compelling invitational show featuring eight artists from our area, proudly resides through the first weeks of May. With hundreds of square feet of space and high industrial ceilings, the gallery provides an excellent venue for the work of several competent artists. SOUP features…
Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Saddam is on trial, and Osama is enjoying the fifth year of his involuntary south Asian spelunking holiday. So it was only a matter of time before a new boogeyman emerged, a boogeyman whose apocalyptic speechifying and filthy mustache would fill the spider hole in our hearts, minds and cable TV schedules the way Saddam…
Dollars and Sense
Friends With Money is a sterling example of what I like to call movies that exist outside the margins. Most films, good or bad, feature characters who exist only in the 90 or 120 minutes that we’re watching them on screen. Their actions are specifically tied to whatever plot is unfolding during the course of…
Gotta Sing! Gotta Listen!
It was just over a decade ago — 1995, to be precise — that the Rhino music label and the Turner movie outfit combined forces to release an ongoing series of CDs that sought to push the classic movie soundtrack back into the spotlight. This inspired teaming was nothing if not prolific, as Rhino Movie…
The Earth is Round
Like flat-earthers forced to confront the first images of this planet taken from outer space, the uptown crowd had its collective universe rearranged last week. By now, most people have probably heard that a poll taken by the School Building Solutions Committee showed voters aren’t exactly fond of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators and don’t trust them…
Oregon Tale
Domaine Serene Winemaker Comes to Charlotte for the 2006 Wine & Food Weekend “Haunting, brilliant, thrilling, subtle” is how protagonist Miles describes pinot noir in the Oscar winning Sideways. Since the release of that movie, pinot noir, particularity domestic pinots, has enjoyed a popular resurgence. Oregon produces some of the best pinot noirs in the…
See&Do
Thursday, April 20 The Beloved invasion has begun. Margaret Garner, Nobel Prize-winning novelist and Beloved author Toni Morrison’s operatic adaptation opens tonight with none other than Denyce Graves in the title role. Latter-day abortion rights advocates have nothing on Marge, that’s for sure, and Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour lends his talents to this newborn…
“Tube” Steak Boogie
Table Dancing TV dinners there’s nothin’ else to eat TV dinners they really can’t be beat I like ’em frozen but you understand I throw ’em in and wave ’em and I’m a brand new man oh yeah! — ZZ Top, “TV Dinners” There used to be a restaurant in New York City, Ike, that…
Get Lean Charlotte
Have you heard the news? The answers to your weight problems may indeed be right inside your refrigerator alongside the OJ and soda! There’s increasing evidence to suggest that the nutrients in milk may help you burn fat and lose weight. Join the got milk? Campaign along with Curves International and Shape Magazine as they…
It’s Weekend Savings Time
When did Thursday become the weekend kickoff? With so much to do downtown and around town on Thursday night, it certainly feels like an early start for hedonism. Last Thursday, I rang in my weekend at Morehead Street Tavern. The Tavern was hosting a happy hour for my apartment complex (which is like college with…
The Blotter
Secret Stash: A 39-year-old woman reported a robbery in her home. Someone stole money she was storing in a picture frame hanging on her wall. This isn’t the terrible ’20s, it’s OK to trust the banks again. The woman reported a loss of $15. Have An Audiovisual Section?: An alarm sounded when the back door…
Electric Collective
Sound Tribe Sector 9’s futuristic voice Trying to get your head around Sound Tribe Sector 9’s music takes a bit of work. It’s a swirl of electronica that sometimes sounds like punching buttons on the car radio at random. Snippets of noise pasted together form a shimmering soundscape. Songs unfold like budding flowers, opening slowly…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I have a question not about my own karma but about what might happen to my friend Chris. This guy, you see, tends to be an absolute prude. He looks down on his friends — gay or straight — who engage in any sort of promiscuous behavior or too much indulgence in…
A Story Worth Retelling
Oprah Winfrey didn’t discover Toni Morrison. But the big O fanfare did allow Morrison to engage a new television-viewing audience with her stories about forgotten ghosts of history. And with Opera Carolina’s production this month of Margaret Garner — starring Metropolitan Opera’s Denyce Graves — the novelist has yet another chance to tell a tale…
Letters
How would Jesus dress? This past week your front cover and your article (“Postmodern Christianity,” April 5) was interesting, but not new. These people are what is termed Willow Creek-type ministries, come as you are, leave as you came, sloppy agape, pseudo-type Christianity, no change to their lives, sammo, sammo. Sadly, they have no real…
Son de Cuba
Inspired by Buena Vista Social Club, Waynesville, NC’s Son de Cuba is a group of six (sometimes seven or eight) who play son and son-derived music full of percolating Afro-Caribbean rhythms. There’s band founder/leader Joe Rothenberg LaPaz playing bass, guitar and vocals. Then his wife Alina Marquez-Rothenberg, classically trained, playing mellifluous Cuban piano and their…
Heavy Luggage
Grant and Daniel would not have been at all surprised to hear that Cheryl wanted me to haul her an actual iron safe all the way to Nicaragua. They remember, for example, the last time she came to visit me in the States. She showed up with no driver’s license, no credit card and no…
Let’s Go Get “Stoned”
“Brian Jones was the best bunch of guys I ever met,” Keith Richards once said. A new Stephen Woolley-directed Brian Jones biopic, Stoned (Screen Media) — currently playing at Ballantyne Village — attempts to explore the various complex facets of that most iconic Rolling Stone. Richards and foil Mick Jagger may be more (in)famous, but…
Stargazer
Taurus The Bull (April 20 — May 19) You have concerns at this time about older family members and/or aging property. Hopefully, you made the property repair last fall, after problems first appeared in the summer. At this point, the outcome is apparent. Your partner is a strong supporter during this period. For All Signs…
Media Addicts Anonymous
Psst, over here: ads and news from around the world. These first three links are so good they could send you to media addicts rehab. Not ready for the strong stuff? Start with a little kvetching or study something infinitely small. France Rocks http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/french_aids_awareness_scorpion The Interactive Museum of News www.newseum.org Worldwide Media Guide www.mondotimes.com Commercials…
Diversity Is Delicious
East Charlotte, what is it good for? Food, according to Louise Barton, organizer of the third Taste of the World culinary tour. Earlier this month, tour participants experienced the cultural smorgasbord of our own little Brooklyn, shuttling in 10 buses between 16 ethnic eateries. Barton explained the use of buses: “So people don’t have to…
A Different Shade of Soul
Van Hunt, formerly part of Atlanta’s rich neo-soul scene, briefly bowed in Charlotte at a recent Ovens show. His new CD, On the Jungle Floor (Capitol; **1/2), is uneven and his essence fares much better live. But Jungle Floor’s primary interest lies in its display of alternative artists’ ongoing struggle with limited horizons. Alt-soul has…
Film Clips
New Releases THE WILD While it’d be easy to dismiss The Wild as a rip-off of Madagascar, it would also be inaccurate: Taking production schedules and release dates into account, both films were obviously being produced at roughly the same time, leading one to suspect that both might have had their genesis in the same…
It Was The Teenagers, Stupid
Boomer With Attitude
View From The Couch
CLASSIC MUSICALS FROM THE DREAM FACTORY (1946-1955). It’s a great month for lovers of MGM’s lavish musicals from yesteryear: In addition to the That’s Entertainment! CD anthology set (see story elsewhere in this section), next Tuesday will also witness the release of a DVD collection featuring five of the studio’s popular musicals. Calling these titles…
I Changed my Sex. Now What?
Signs Scott Turner Schofield is a man: He looks, dresses and sounds like a man. He has a masculine name. He’s prone to let the dirty dishes pile up. He uses the men’s room. At fox-trot lessons, he leads. He goes by “he.” Signs Scott Turner Schofield isn’t a man: He was almost voted homecoming…
I Need a Hit of that Myspace!
I was introduced to Myspace about two weeks ago and reluctantly got a Web page and set up all my profiles and stuff. My friend D walked me through the process. Within five minutes, a half-naked female messaged me asking to be added to my friend list. I told D, “Oh man, this technology can…
That Sinking Feeling
The thing about a sinkhole is that until it actually sinks, everything looks just fine up on the surface. But below there are stone bubbles of emptiness forming, proliferating, expanding toward one another. It can go on like that for many years, the surface seeming stable and secure to distracted eyes. And then something, the…
Lottery’s Losers
The first week the lottery came to North Carolina, the staff of Southside Mart could barely pause for a moment, even for a drink of water. Demand was constant. The store sold out of bigger-payoff tickets, the $2 Blackjack and the $5 Carolina Cash, within three days. But to Khalid Al Nabulsi, a cashier at…
Beast of the East
Up in their ivory towers on prestigious ivied campuses, I’m sure there are smug academics who will confidently tell you that Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? is about something more abstract and profound than it purports to be. Go to the current Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte production of this 2002 Tony Award…
School Board Switches Sides
The 8-0 vote by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board for Superintendent Peter Gorman was a rare kumbaya moment that didn’t come easily and didn’t happen by accident. Two weekends ago, a frantic phone campaign was launched by the elite uptown crowd that coalesces around the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. The word on the street by Saturday…
