Good Eats
ALL AROUND TOWN ANNTONY’S CARIBBEAN 2001 E. 7th, 704-342-0749; 145 Brevard Court, 704-339-0303; 20910 Torrence Chapel Road, Cornelius, 704-894-0280. A fun, change-of-pace restaurant for a casual lunch or dinner. Limited menu features rotisserie-cooked barbecued meats, what else, Caribbean style. $ BRUEGGER’S BAGEL BAKERY All over town. Chewy bagels, crisp on the outside, and served with…
More Money Than Sense
Last week, the Jacuzzi company introduced their newest product, the “La Scala bathing and entertainment center,” pictured here. It’s a seven-feet-long, combination Jacuzzi, 42-inch high definition TV, and stereo system. Once again, life trumps satire. Talk about your high-way patrol. . . A so-called “patrol,” including some city council members, walked from 9pm till around…
Cho Nuff
Fag hag. Shit Starter. Girl Comic. Trash Talker. Film Star. Television Actress. Bestselling Author… Standup comic Margaret Cho brings her complex persona and standup comedy this Saturday, April 27, to UNC-Charlotte’s McKnight Hall. Cho’s performance is a benefit show sponsored by Time Out Youth and UNC-Charlotte PRIDE (People Recognizing Individual Differences and Equality), and all…
Highway to Hell
Recently, as I battled traffic on I-85 in my tiny vehicle, it suddenly occurred to me why so many people all around the globe despise Americans. As I strove to keep my car on the road in spite of the jerks in sport utility vehicles who were compelled to cut in front of me incessantly,…
Music For The Masses
Ah, CityFest Live. Let’s start with what we know. If it’s a Charlotte music festival, Darius Rucker will be there, whether anyone wants to hear him or not. The man’s sold some 20 million albums, dammit, and the lack of a fanbase isn’t going to stop him that easy. What with celebrity golf tournaments and…
Leg Before Wicket
One way to escape the trauma of world affairs is to retreat into sports. If religion is the opium of the masses, sport is our speed, an upper that melts the world’s crises away for a few hours. This may seem a strange observation from someone pitied by his American friends as being clueless about…
Safety First
After an unexpected increase in attendance at last year’s Center CityFest, event organizers at Ark Management were inundated with letters and e-mails from concerned patrons regarding crowd safety issues. If you didn’t go, let’s just say pedestrian traffic on Saturday night was at a virtual standstill throughout the entire site. Soon after the event, however,…
What Does “Kosher” Mean?
If you’re not Jewish, “kosher” is a word you’ve probably used only in the context of things being OK, as in, “Is everything kosher for the party tonight?” Or, “You don’t look so well, is everything kosher?” Outside of that, most goyim (that’s non-Jews, for all you non-Jews) probably have some vague impression that kosher…
Cary On
Caitlin Cary, the onetime fiddle player, harmony singer, songwriter and angel foil to Ryan Adams’ devil in the infamous alt.country band/trainwreck known as Whiskeytown, has a new album out, While You Weren’t Looking (on North Carolina’s Yep Roc Records). If early reviews are any indication, Adams and the rest of the now-defunct band would have…
Letters to the editor
Reparations Issue Needs Resolution To The Editors: Generally, I let the ignorance of misguided white folk roll off my back. I feel as if they get enough attention in my day-to-day life as an African-American and therefore I refuse to respond to every transgression of common sense. However, a recent letter from John S. Freeman…
8 Days A Week
WEDNESDAY 24 Charlotte Repertory Theatre wraps up its season with Proof, winner of last year’s Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show will run tonight through May 5 at the Booth Playhouse of the Performing Arts Center. Tonight’s performance begins at 7:30pm, and others follow at 8pm throughout the…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 4.24 Dismemberment Plan — Washington, DC quartet Dismemberment Plan nicely segue working class post-punk with post-class college angst better than most anyone around. The band lurches and burps beautifully with jagged icicles of guitar, bouncy bass and Travis Morrison’s inimitable, turn-on-a-dime vocals. With Paris TX and local Justin Williams’ intriguing new post-pop project The…
This Messenger Won’t Be Killed
Investigative reporting in Mecklenburg County isn’t for the weak of heart. When I’m planning a big investigative story I’ve worked on for months, I begin preparing my family and friends for the fallout weeks in advance of its publication. They’re going to hear and read some awful things about me, I warn them. They always…
Stargazer
For All Signs We’re all fatigued with the subject of Saturn and Pluto, but this is the big astrological news of the year. This combination is a symbol of forced change, which is once again approaching exactitude. What I am seeing among individuals everywhere around me, is that whatever problematic thing has been under the…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Apr. 24 Arnie’s Tavern, Huntersville Scott Johnson Bayou Kitchen Bill Noonan Big Al’s Pub, Mooresville Robin Brown Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Cajun Queen, Pineville 7th Street Gator Band II Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro Big Head Todd & The Monsters Charlie Brown’s, Charlotte Cherry Bomb Acoustic Comet Grill The Relics Connolly’s Craig & Rich…
The Blotter
* Bricks for Brains: A Charlotte mother came under fire in her own home, when several bricks came hurtling through several windows, narrowly missing her. It seems that her evicted son didn’t take the boot so well and decided to let her know it. * Smooth Operator: Yet another lover’s dispute turned ugly, resulting in…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I’m afraid that I’m going to do something really bad to my boss, and I need your advice to make sure I don’t do the wrong thing. He’s a good guy and everything, and we work at a place that’s supposed to be progressive and open-minded. Yet he drives one of those…
Lady And The Tramp
It’s a no-brainer to figure out why faddish film players like Pauly Shore and Yahoo Serious disappear from the cinema scene almost as quickly as they arrive, but what to make of the strange case of Peter Bogdanovich? A former film critic who parlayed his connections into a Hollywood career, Bogdanovich helmed three beloved works…
Boys On The Bus
Eyes Adrift, the new alt-supergroup featuring Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets, Krist Novoselic, formerly of Nirvana, and Bud Gaugh, the drummer for Sublime and Long Beach Dub All Stars, played the Visulite Theatre. At 8pm, six people are there. One guy wears a flannel, even though it’s 80 degrees outside. Eyes Adrift T-shirts are…
Everything In Its Place
“The images of photographs, once seen, exist in our memory until some actual incident, which we witness or live, refers to one of them as though to a more solid reality.” — John Berger Martha Strawn’s photographs are of images that she has lived to understand; they’re images that are very real and very meaningful…
Girl Sour
While there are dozens of movies each year that can be called box office hits, there are only one or two that can be deemed influential — that is to say, the sort of picture that’s not only financially successful but is endlessly aped by every fledgling filmmaker hoping that lightning will strike twice. Quentin…
News Of The Weird
LEAD STORIES * University of Connecticut physics professor Ronald Mallett, 57, said in April that after years of study, he hopes to begin experiments this year leading to genuine time travel, involving probably no more than a neutron or two at first but laying the groundwork for transporting larger objects. Mallett believes his theory is…
Manteo Is More
Manteo is reminiscent of a little fishing village, the kind where you’d expect to see Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher riding her bike. (Don’t worry, though — murder is practically nonexistent on Roanoke Island.) Perhaps that’s why no one lives on Manteo today who doesn’t want to be there. Locals are either descendants, or they’ve…
Fix It In the Mix
OK, here we go. For 20 points and control of the game, name that soundtrack. Daaaaa dum. Daaaaa dum. Daaaaa dum. Daa dum. Daa dum. Daa dum. Yes, that’s right! Jaws. That sound, those notes captured the impact of an entire film in a matter of seconds and, that summer season, made people look a…
Homefront Adviser
anyone willing to fight you for what you believe is yours is, by definition, an enemy. Even if the nicest person you can think of — say, Mary Poppins — knocked on your door one morning and demanded your house, you’d be pissed. Sure, she’s sweet, entertaining, has friends who’ll clean the chimney. But you’d…
There’s No Business Like Noh Business
Alan Poindexter has admired the ritual, color, and spectacle of Japanese Noh Drama ever since his student days at UNC-Charlotte. For a long time, he has hoped for the opportunity to import elements of Noh and Kabuki into a production he directed here in Charlotte. Much more recently, Poindexter began dreaming of becoming the artistic…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES KANDAHAR The plotline is contrived, the performances (by non-professionals) are poor, and the dialogue is needlessly repetitive and frequently forced. Yet elements that would cripple most movies don’t seem to matter much in Kandahar, an open wound of a film that offers a unique peek into modern-day Afghanistan (if that’s not an oxymoron).…
It’s A Jungle In Here
It’s been almost a century since Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle set off a four-alarm alert in American society. Theodore Roosevelt was shocked upon reading of appalling working conditions in the Chicago stockyards, and took immediate Presidential action. The result? The stockyards were “cleaned up” (in every sense of the term), a Pure Food and Drug…
The Town That Banned Satan
Inglis, a little municipality, population 1500, in Florida, has come to be known as “The Town That Banned Satan,” thanks to its feisty mayor, Carolyn Risher. Inglis is one of those forgotten Florida towns. Bypassed by Interstates and turnpikes, it languishes too far from the vine to take advantage of any economic boom. Its economy…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Carnatic Violin Duet by Mrs. Bombay V. Ranjani and Mrs. Bombay V. Gayathri. Presented by the Classical Music Association of Charlotte. Sun., April 28, 4-7 p.m. $15 adults, $12 seniors. The Hindu Center Auditorium. 704-814-9355. East Carolina University Chamber Singers presenting sacred and secular acapella music of Bruckner, Barber, Moses Hogan, Rachmaninov, Lauridsen…
Digging Deep
It has been difficult for many to understand why the board of the Charlotte Housing Authority (CHA) has agreed to give outgoing CEO Harrison Shannon a $121,000 severance package plus a two-year, $50,000 consulting contract. If the authority, which oversees public housing in Charlotte, were rolling in money, that would be one thing. But CHA…
Out Of Africa
My son is studying the countries of Africa in his elementary school class. Since sampling indigenous cuisine provides many insights into a culture, we elected to journey to Ethiopia — well, a local Ethiopian restaurant, that is. Ethiopia is better known for political upheaval and drought than for its cuisine, but the food of Ethiopia…
A Country Without Journalism
Ten journalists are starving themselves to death in an unknown prison in a country few people have heard of. It has been six months since they were arrested and their newspapers shut down. Their hunger strike, which began over two weeks ago, is an effort to draw attention to their government’s shutdown of all independent…
Southern Hemisphere Gems
If we were all millionaires, we could guzzle great wine everyday. But since most of us fall outside those far-reaching parameters, we evolve into bargain hunters. But to uncover the amazing deals, you’ve got to stretch your boundaries and explore unfamiliar territory, like Chile, Argentina and South Africa. Relatively new to the wine scene, these…
Something To Crow About
UNC-Charlotte may be getting its own radio station after nearly a decade of dead air. A group of students known as the Campus Radio Organization (CRO) is in the process of drumming up support and talent for the station, which they hope to launch by next fall. Tentatively known as WCRO “The Crow,” the campus-based,…
Going For The Gold
I like to consider myself a patron of the arts. I am particularly interested in the specialized area of interpretive dance. My financial support to same tends to be rendered a dollar at a time, directly to the performers. This being the case, I was somewhat disappointed when the Diamond Club closed in January. Not…
Hornets’ Last Hurrah
It dawned on us that, as the Charlotte Hornets start their playoff run, their move to the Big Easy will impact the broadcasters who make a living, or at least a chunk of it, from Hornets TV, radio, and print media. Talented types like Steve Martin, Gil McGregor, Mike Gminksi, Bob Licht, and Gerry Vaillancourt…
