Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I live in a small, conservative town a little more than an hour outside the city. The politics here are probably laughable when compared to what goes on in the big city. But I think it is a microcosm of the political system at large. The guy who is mayor got the…
Dead Politician, Fired Columnist
One old friend put a bullet in his head. His blood splashed the lobby of The Miami Herald, a newspaper I once regarded as holy. Another acquaintance, a guy who does the same sort of gig I do, is fired over the incident. Last Thursday was a disquieting day, to say the least. I met…
Media: Critics’ Picks
BEST RADIO STATION WFAE 90.7 FM For the past several years, we broke the radio section up into every variety known to man. In 2005, the panel of critics has spoken on its overall favorite, and WFAE won in a landslide. From its daily lineup of NPR programming and local call-in hour Charlotte Talks to…
Stargazer
Leo The Lion (July 22 — Aug. 22) Do not listen to the inner critic. It probably is borrowing trouble from the future and causing you to adopt a negative attitude at this time. Yes, you do need to redefine yourself, but you are likely not a slob, a bad person, or guilty of multiple…
Death Penalty Study Still On Hold
Many people now on death row could seek stays of execution if lawmakers approve a study of North Carolina’s capital punishment process, according to at least one supporter of the study. But as of late last week, the study’s fate remained uncertain. In May 2001, state lawmakers agreed to let prosecutors seek life without parole…
After Dark: Critics’ Picks
BEST CONCERT VENUE Visulite Theatre Large, three-tiered and with the bar where it should be (at the rear), the velvet-curtained old dame (once a porno theater) works for most any kind of show, from ensemble performances to gritty punk rock. Bonus: seats for those who want them. Or need them, depending. 1615 Elizabeth Avenue. 704-358-9200.…
Film Clips
New Releases THE DUKES OF HAZZARD Airing from 1979 to 1985, the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard was created for people who had trouble following the plotlines of Three’s Company. Inspired by the glut of so-called “hick flicks” that dominated drive-ins throughout the 1970s, the hit show was primarily an excuse to showcase good…
365 Days. 36,500 Stories
Ever noticed how many times the Charlotte Observer asks readers to do their work for them? You know what we mean: those little announcements that go something like, “Did you serve in the Korean War? We want your frostbite stories,” or “Have you ever dreamed of kittens and ice cream? We want to hear about…
After Dark: Readers’ Picks
BEST CONCERT VENUE Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre 707 Pavilion Boulevard. 704-549-5555. BEST CONCERT OF PAST 12 MONTHS Dave Matthews BEST PLACE TO HEAR LOCAL MUSIC The Evening Muse 3227 North Davidson Street. 704-376-3737. BEST CLUB FOR MUSIC Double Door Inn 218 East Independence Boulevard. 704-376-1446. BEST CLUB FOR DANCING Menage Ultra Lounge 118 West Fifth Street.…
View From The Couch
THE COMPLETE THIN MAN COLLECTION (1934-1947). We tend to think of sequels as a modern innovation, but the truth is that Hollywood’s been fond of them almost from the start. The 1930s were packed with all manner of long-running film franchises: Tarzan, Andy Hardy and Bulldog Drummond were just some of the familiar characters who…
Murder Euphemism Update
Last week we reported that some Charlotte detectives call the murders of poor or otherwise “unimportant” people “misdemeanor homicides.” After that column was published, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police detective wrote that we weren’t completely up to date regarding popular murder euphemisms. The detective informed us that the unofficial term used around the department for the murder…
Best Of Charlotte 2005
We at Creative Loafing have decided it’s time to take our relationship with Charlotte to the next level. Get to know each other a little better, if you know what we mean. That’s right: Get Naked! The critics who make up our illustrious panel for the 2005 Best of Charlotte have taken it upon ourselves…
Life With The Fast Lane
Gorgeous Diane Lane seems to spend an inordinate amount of her time on the big screen looking for love. Her search resulted in murder when her screen husband Richard Gere killed her lover in the 2002 thriller Unfaithful (for which Lane received a Best Actress Oscar nomination). And, of course, she was searching for Mr.…
Bitsy gets crankin’
Residents in the Carmel Road/Quail Hollow/Ballantyne area nearly jumped out of their Docksiders and Bruno Maglis recently when media reported police had arrested a woman for operating a methamphetamine lab in a South Charlotte home. Later, when further information revealed the meth lab’s location was just some middle-class area on the fringes of Swankville, the…
Arts & Entertainment: Critics’ Picks
BEST ART GALLERY (tie) Joie Lassiter Gallery and Elder Art Gallery Joie Lassiter’s gallery gets the nod this year for two reasons. One, she consistently brings to Charlotte high quality, difficult, challenging, uncompromising work, and in so doing refuses to cater to the (often loathsome) tastes of this city. And two, she has survived doing…
Happily Never After
Happy Endings, Don Roos’ comedy of love, sex and parental instincts, joins Crash, Short Cuts and Magnolia as one of those films that trails countless intersecting characters across sprawling Los Angeles. Maybe the trend reflects the subconscious of the film industry. If you spent so many waking hours driving and reading film scripts, life might…
YMCA Members Shut Out
Two members of the Harris YMCA who are upset over the availability of a far-right magazine at the facility say they are being shut out of an upcoming meeting that the two had been told they could attend and voice their concerns. In early July, CL reported that Harris Y members Page Lee and Kristin…
Arts & Entertainment: Readers’ Picks
BEST ART GALLERY Mint Museum of Art 2730 Randolph Road. 704-337-2000. BEST ART EXHIBIT “Duy Huynh: New Paintings” at Center of the Earth Gallery BEST THEATER COMPANY Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte 650 East Stonewall Street. 704-342-2251. BEST LOCAL MALE ACTOR Brian Lafontaine BEST LOCAL FEMALE ACTOR Cody Harding BEST PERFORMING ARTS GROUP NC Dance Theatre…
The Half of It
CORKSCREW If good things come in small packages then we should all be drinking wine from half bottles. DUI preventor, provider of opportunity to try many things, facilitator of fun for single people — all wrapped in a small package the size of a venti latte. Before Prohibition, most wine was sold in whatever container…
Short List
Short List
Consumer Culture: Critics’ Picks
BEST NEW STORE (OPENED IN LAST 12 MONTHS) Earth Fare Earth Fare, the Healthy Supermarket — it’s about damn time. Now if only this Asheville-based chain could open a few more stores and bring its goodness to those of us living outside Ballantyne, maybe we could all be a little healthier. 12235 North Community House…
You Say Tomato
Tomatoes come in three varieties, right? Red, yellow and green? Or fresh, sun-dried and canned? But what about those oddly shaped striped ones you had on your salad plate at an area restaurant, or the lovely garnet-bronze ones that your grandmother used to grow in her backyard garden, complete with the story of how her…
The Boys’ Club
If county commissioners don’t give a rip about statutory rape — if they’re so determined to call it a “cultural phenomenon” and brush it under the rug — then who is going to protect young girls from men who could be their fathers? The last time the Mecklenburg County Community Health and Safety Committee, which…
Consumer Culture: Reader’s Picks
BEST NEW STORE (OPENED IN LAST 12 MONTHS) Luca Lu 2823 Selwyn Avenue, Suite E. 704-373-1698. BEST CLOTHING STORE Nordstrom SouthPark Mall. 704-442-6000. BEST HAIR SALON Carmen Carmen Various locations. BEST HEALTH CLUB Peak Fitness Various locations. BEST INDOOR RECREATION FACILITY YMCA, Harris Branch 5900 Quail Hollow Road. 704-716-6800. BEST FLEA MARKET Metrolina Expo 7100…
Standing Room Only
When the thermostat hovers around 100 degrees, you know it’s too hot to cook. Heck, it’s almost too hot to eat. Here’s a roundup of some takeout places where you can’t eat in even if you wanted to. Price’s Chicken Coop is a city — if not state — treasure. Newcomers should be required to…
See & Do
Wednesday, august 03 Asheville poet, professor and author David Brendan Hopes has been getting rave reviews for his new book, Bird Songs of the Mesozoic. It’s subtitled “A Day Hiker’s Guide to the Nearby Wild” and is about paying careful attention to local flora and fauna as opposed to say, going to the Rockies to…
Food & Drink: Critics’ Pick
BEST NEW RESTAURANT (OPENED IN LAST 12 MONTHS) Restaurant i Japanese Fusion Cuisine Restaurant i Japanese was named by one of the owner’s daughters. The “i” is from the Japanese word ai, which means love. This is a restaurant in which you can taste the passion of classically trained chef and co-owner Masanori Kokubo. His…
Focus on this family
When the Warped Tour rolls into town Monday, the Charlotte band Hopesfall will be playing on the Smartpunk stage, a slot the group holds for the entire road trip this summer. “It is by far one of the most fun tours I’ve been on, if only because every night you’ve got 50 buses in the…
Metro School Art Exhibit
Students of Metro School are creating over 700 sq. ft. of outdoor art to adorn their new facility, being built adjacent to their current location in uptown Charlotte. Metro School serves 200 students ages 5 to 21; all have significant developmental disabilities. These students have designed 8-inch square ceramic tiles, which reflect their creative imaginations.…
Food & Drink: Readers’ Picks
BEST NEW RESTAURANT (OPENED IN LAST 12 MONTHS) McCormick & Schmick’s SouthPark Mall – 4335 Barclay Downs Drive, 704-442-5522; Uptown – 200 South Tryon Street, 704-377-0201. BEST SPECIAL OCCASION RESTAURANT The Melting Pot 901 South Kings Drive. 704-334-4400; 230 East WT Harris Boulevard. 704-548-2432. BEST LATE-NIGHT RESTAURANT Athens Restaurant 101 East Independence Boulevard. 704-375-3597. BEST…
Primal Porn
The original blank canvas and pleasuredome holds a primal fascination: we never seem to get enough of the human body. Whether you’re plumbing model M or F, these hot linx will entertain — or your money back, guaranteed: Creative Baldness www.chemochicks.com Tribal Bible: Tattoos of Iraq www.tattooheaven.com/IraqTat.html Hello Titty www.hellotitty.com The Museum of Menstruation www.mum.org…
Letters
Oops, our Bad(zium) While on point with his review of Erykah Badu (See & Do, July 20), John Schacht is just a little confused. The name of Badu’s freshman disc was Baduizm, not Badzium. “Badzium” is instead a drug that was used to add a touch of realism to Tom Cruise’s children’s star turns in…
Media: Readers’ Picks
BEST RADIO STATION WLNK 107.9 FM The Link BEST RADIO PERSONALITIES Matt & Ramona, WLNK BEST DRIVE-TIME RADIO SHOW The Matt & Ramona Show, WLNK BEST LOCAL TV NEWSCAST WSOC BEST LOCAL TV ANCHOR Bill Walker, WSOC BEST LOCAL TV METEOROLOGIST Larry Sprinkle, WCNC BEST LOCAL TV SPORTS ANCHOR Harold Johnson, WSOC BEST LOCAL TV…
Tony Arreaza
You’ve heard it a million times: La Rúa — the best Latin rock band in town, the band that brought rock en español to Anglo clubs, the combo with that cool new song and video, “El Chanchito.” Tony Arreaza is the guy who whips out La Rúa’s Slash-meets-Santana guitar solos. When he isn’t doing stuff…
Superpower
My child has a purple bunny she bought with her cupcake money from the Cathedral of St. Phillip Thrift, and this bunny, she exclaims, has the ability to bestow superpowers on people. Here is the process: She will ask you to hold the bunny, which you will do because it’s impossible not to, and she…
Now You See Him
The father of Adair Graham MacKenny (who has a fondness for utilizing the full complement of his name) hated illusionists. You can hardly blame him, after a childhood incident in which he unwittingly participated in the death of the Great Carrazimo, a traveling escape artist who miscalculated the water content of a particular plot of…
What’s Nick Cannon Really Saying?
Even if you’re not a regular viewer of rap videos, you’d likely recognize Nick Cannon’s “Can I Live?” as a standout of the genre. Set in an abortion clinic, the autobiographical video starts out with an apparition of Cannon begging his then-17-year-old mother not to go through with it. The “mother” is shown hesitantly filling…
Fake Plastic Homes
The house is in one of those “master planned” communities, where everything is clean and orderly, but homogenous as hell. The tiny front yard is neatly manicured, with colorful flowers and shrubs. Inside, the house is airy, fresh and tastefully decorated. A happy, loving family must live here, right? Yet something feels a little off.…
CL Recommends
Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny (Crown hardback). Here’s how this book starts: “There is so much bullshit that one hardly knows where to begin. The pabulum that passes for stirring political rhetoric is bullshit. . .The focus-grouped fad and the rule of the polls are straight-up bullshit.…
Sit & Spin
Natalia y La Forquetina, Casa, Sony/BMG Twenty-one-year-old Mexican punk-rock chica Natalia LaFourcade’s self-titled debut album of 2003 had instant appeal with young Latin music fans in Mexico and the US, and led to four Latin Grammy nominations and three MTV Latin American Video Music Awards. Ahora, Natalia returns with her band La Forquetina, and the…
Through The Looking Glass
It’s hard to get excited about looking at glass. Looking at glass is like looking at trees, the night sky or your kid — familiarity breeds blindness. But witness a cypress tree standing in black swamp water, a shooting star tracing the blackness or your kid laughing hard, and trees, stars or kids magically reappear…
City Spatters One Man’s Dream
For seven years, Randy Drake worked on the 1971 Harley Davidson Superglide that was his passion. He rebuilt it from the ground up, starting with just a frame, and then added part after part as he scrounged them up. Drake survives on the disability checks he receives, and the bike was the one extravagance he…
The Blotter
Youth Gone Wild: A troubled youth threatened a security associate at an alternative school designed for students who have been suspended or expelled from regular schools. The unruly teen apparently became angry and threatened to harm the 51-year-old security guard after he scolded the kid for violating school rules. Ice Cream Bandits: An ice cream…
One More Hidden Arena Expense
Pam Syfert did it again. The City Manager sprang another $1.2 million arena-related expense on City Council last Monday night, July 25. It was an expense she hadn’t gotten around to mentioning in the years since Council approved the arena deal with the NBA and Bobcats owner Bob Johnson. Several Councilmembers were surprised to learn…
