A Ford Lemon Festival
No doubt about it, a tantalizing array of sensuous morsels was harvested for The Tuscan Sun Festival last week at the PAC. Music by Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. A knockout Russian cellist who once earned her bread modeling for Chanel until she could afford an instrument. Lush photos by Steven Rothfeld, projected above the musicians,…
The Horror Of It All
Jay Anson’s 1977 novel The Amityville Horror was such a worthless piece of literature (I use the word lightly) that the only way it could have moved any copies was for its author and its limelight-soaking subjects to declare it was based on a true story. That did the trick: The book became a best-selling…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Abbey Chorus Spring Concert The Abbey Chorus of Belmont Abbey College will present a program of sacred and secular selections. www.belmontabbeycollege.edu. Sun., April 24, 3 p.m. Free. Belmont Abbey Basilica, 100 Belmont-Mount Holly Rd., Belmont. 704-461-6813. Charlotte Chorale A performance of classical music benefitting Avon Foundation. Sat., April 23, 7 p.m. $12, 10…
Rebel Yell
Filmmaker and character actor Ray McKinnon has spent his career playing against Southern clichés. A native of Adel, Georgia, McKinnon has a long, lanky frame and gentle drawl that, from his first film role as “Alabama trooper No. 1” in Driving Miss Daisy, threatened to pigeonhole him as a harmless good ol’ boy. He could…
Low Country High
Many Charlotteans enjoy the proximity of Charleston. At one dinner in Charleston, I recognized more Charlotte folk than I normally do in restaurants here. Charleston has that kind of charm and appeal that leaves you wanting more – more of their renowned hospitality and more of their legendary Low Country cuisine. If you’ve recently moved…
View From The Couch: Errol Flynn Collection
ERROL FLYNN: THE SIGNATURE COLLECTION (1935-1941). Time may have somewhat diminished his stature, but back in the day, Errol Flynn was as big a star as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney or any of the other formidable contract players at Warner Bros. The matinee idol’s greatest film, 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, has already been…
Pressure Cooker
Since the day Cosmos Café first opened its doors seven years ago, Executive Chef Mark Hibbs has been creating memorable, eclectic dishes. Raised on a small farm outside Pittsburgh, Hibbs knew he wanted to be a chef when he was just nine years old. Drawing from the influences of his mother and his grandmother’s cookbook,…
Film Clips
New Releases KUNG FU HUSTLE Operating with the same degree of logic as a Marx Brothers feature or a Looney Tunes short – which is to say, operating with no logic at all – Kung Fu Hustle stands alone as the year’s most whacked out bit of entertainment. Writer-director-actor Stephen Chow has in essence built…
It’s A Small World Market
The shelves at international markets are fascinating. After all, where else will you find monkey gland sauce, frozen sea lettuce or spotted dick pudding? Or a multi-syllabic unpronounceable root which I’m still not sure whether I should brew, grind or hang in my closet? The key to a positive experience in an international market is…
McMansions Are Us
The super-sized house is making its presence known in Charlotte. Just cruise down Providence Road toward Weddington, or meander through Myers Park and gawk at the 17,000-square-foot mega-abode on Queens Road West, or check out many of the homes around Mountain Island Lake. Even a quick look at real estate listings will show you: Some…
A Puckery Picker Upper
In this country, we have lemon furniture polish, dish detergent, tile cleaner and air freshener. We love how the lemon cleans our house and our bathrooms. But somehow, we forgot that the lemon, the fruit of citrus medica, is good for our bodies and helpful in our cooking. Although ghettoized to the dregs of cleaning…
Death Shortage?
Should you be worried about an impending “death shortage”? The alleged shortage of corpses will be caused by biomedical advances that will dramatically increase life expectancy over the course of the 21st century, according to Charles Mann in The Atlantic Monthly. “Stem cell treatments, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapies — the list of potential longevity…
It’s Mother’s Day
The card aisles in the supermarkets are already stocked with sentimental greetings for you to send to your mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, daughter or sister who’s a mother, and the person who’s like a mother to you. But Mother’s Day is next month. This week, you can do something nice for Mother Earth by observing Earth…
Saving Green Fields
Big box stores and neighborhoods generally don’t mix. Most of us shop at large chain stores with their superabundance of goodies, but we rarely want them anywhere near where we live. In fact we usually oppose them fervently. That’s the story so far in the saga of the proposed Lowe’s home improvement superstore on a…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 6434-F West Sugarcreek Rd., 704-598-6863; 2001 E. 7th St., 704-342-0749. A hint of the tropics; rotisserie chicken with Jamaican jerk sauce, ribs, Paradise Island fish special, curries, and Caribbean styled greens. $$ Azteca, 116 Woodlawn Rd., 704-525-5110; 9709 Independence Blvd., 704-814-9877; 1863 W. Franklin Blvd. (Gastonia), 704-866-7574. A favorite of…
It’s Spring!
Ah, spring. Time for the birds to sing, tulips to bloom and the state to release its annual high school dropout report. Which is usually followed by the annual Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools press release about how peachy everything is which is in turn followed by the annual local media coverage of how peachy CMS says…
Talk Tight, Get Heavy
When the overweight, red-nosed wine blowhards begin flaunting fancy words, I duck out of the conversation before the bullshit hits the fan. Now, with the huge popularity of the movie Sideways, these cocky connoisseurs are crawling out of every cellar, anxious for an opportune moment to release their jargon-laden rhetoric. My favorite beverage is so…
Rapture Politics
I am ecstatic at the thought of the Rapture – that prophesized event where Tom DeLay, George Bush, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell and friends are zapped up to Jesus. I was pondering this the other evening at the Limbo Lounge while watching the big screen as Beelzebub’s Brutes prepare to scrimmage with the Angelic Avengers…
Free-form TV Lives!
It was 1996. In Charlotte, Steve Holt was running a couple of art galleries and a bar called Pat’s Time For One More in NoDa. For the past few years NoDa had been hosting gallery crawls, during which the streets would come alive with hipsters, artists, drummers, and curious onlookers. During one gallery crawl, Steve…
Wine List
Wine Classes Wine Vocabulary. Apr. 26, 6:30-8pm. $30. Mint Museum of Craft & Design, 220 N. Tryon St. 704-344-8027. Wine Tasting A sampling of wines. Sat., 12pm-3pm. Frugal MacDoogal’s, I-77 at Carowinds Blvd. 803-548-6634. Wines Around the World Annual wine tasting event provided by the Young Affiliates of the Mint. Fri., April 22, 7-10 p.m.…
It’s About Time
In the “We didn’t-really tell-you-so-but-hoped-it-would-happen” Department, the FCC ruled last week that TV broadcasters must disclose the origins of VNRs (video news releases) from government or corporations when used on public airwaves. As I mentioned March 23, the Bush administration has spent $254 million in taxpayer dollars to produce VNRs, which look like news reports…
The Special Closet
For months now, Grant has been buying women’s clothes, which by itself isn’t anything new, but these women’s clothes don’t fit him. “Bitch,” he said to me over the phone yesterday, “I just found the goddamnest, most gorgeous cocktail suit in 50s bubblegum blue … “Bubblegum blue?” I asked. “Believe me,” he said, “when you…
Green Day Grows Up
Major labels like to blame their woes on file-sharing, which is a convenient boogie man, like Saddam Hussein. But the real culprit is their failure to shepherd more bands like Green Day into the marketplace. How many acts from the Nirvana-led punk explosion of the early 90’s are still making vital music? It doesn’t even…
Letters
The Long Arm of Christ Shannon Reichley’s recent media column (“Quality Time,” April 6) singled out The Charlotte World for giving one of our “thumbs up” to Scott Heldreth of Kannapolis. Heldreth and his family were among a group of Christians who stood vigil outside of Terri Schiavo’s hospice as she died. Heldreth’s 10-year-old son…
Cars vs. Art
Jeff Towe Salesman Arts projects my ass. We don’t need another damn museum downtown, we need a racin’ … um … museum. Sheila Thompson Alabasterer “Just combine the two and let local artists reproduce their work on the drivers’ cars. I tell you, the Warholian implications of the Tide car have always fascinated me.” Mark…
Soundtrack by Satan
How does a nice young woman from a small rural town in England get to be DJ Satan? Practice. “I was big into music from an early age,” says Andrea Parker, whose dark electronica records have earned her the satanic moniker. Parker started her career collecting old BBC sound effects records and combining them with…
News of the Weird
Lead Story: The New Zealand agricultural company Summit-Quinphos revealed in March that it has a working model of an automated nitrogen-inhibiting sprayer that fits under a cow’s tail, and that it has a government grant to develop the device. A company spokesman said nitrogen from cow urine, concentrated in small patches in a field, currently…
The Blotter
Lunch Break Gone Bad: Two construction workers at an apartment complex were eating lunch inside a car when two other men, both of whom were brandishing guns, approached the vehicle from behind. The armed men pointed their guns at the victims’ heads, and robbed them of nearly $400 in cash, a cell phone, and various…
Scalzo Earns Money, Pain
In many ways a band is a marriage, only divorce is more difficult because what you’ve built together – an audience – is not so easily packed into the back of a van. So it is that acts will plug on year after year…”for the kids.” What choice is there? Well, there’s always the side…
See & Do
April 20 – Wednesday What do you play for an encore after you’ve just ripped through Bach’s Violin Concerto #2 with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra? If you’re a full-grown prodigy such as Augustin Hadelich, you whip out a solo sonata by Bach, Bartok or Paganini. Hadelich, 22, has been concertizing since he was 7. Adding…
Sit & Spin
Yo la tengo Prisoners of Love Secretly Canadian Yo La Tengo fans have got it made. Not only has the Hoboken, NJ, trio maintained a consistent, stable lineup over the last decade, they’ve managed to sustain a steady learning curve throughout: growing, changing, and adapting while never losing their fundamental Yo La Tengo-ness. Plus they…
Stargazer
Taurus The Bull (Apr. 20 May 19) The subject matter has been your personal identity. Who are you becoming and who do you need to be? How do you wish to define yourself before the world? How can you develop an individual identity that is workable while simultaneously maintaining a personally rewarding relationship? For…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 4.20 Dave Alvin – Dave Alvin’s Blasters days maybe over, but he remains a master American storyteller and guitarist, where simple words turn into a happy reminiscence or a bulging lump in the throat. This is a fine chance to see Alvin play tunes from his recent recording Ashgrove in a very intimate setting.…
Triple Play
Once again, despite the principals’ best efforts to destroy it, Major League Baseball is back, opening this month before record crowds across the country, including the new-old team in Washington, the erstwhile Expos, now known as the Nationals.The Beltway, of course, staged an even bigger baseball drama in March when a Congressional committee hauled something…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Apr. 20 Borders, Stonecrest Vonda Shepard Breakfast Club DJ Boney B Brickhouse Tavern, Davidson Robin B & Andy Seets Cricket Arena Green Day w/ My Chemical Romance Double Door Inn Incognito Mosquito w/ Haywire The Evening Muse Dave Alvin w/ Jeff Williams The Gin Mill Wizard’s Roadshow Irish Cue, Cornelius Gabe and Friends Milestone…
