Princes And Princesses Of Glory
For one magical evening, the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte brought the king of Yuletide oratorios, Handel’s Messiah, to Belk Theater. After decades of performing this masterwork in local churches with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, the Oreo’s triumphal march on the PAC was long overdue — albeit upstaged by Clay Aiken’s “Joyful Noise” idolatry at Bobcats…
Neighborhood Noisemakers
Originally begun as a side project, The Avett Brothers (Seth and Scott Avett, along with bassist Bob Crawford) have, in just a few years, gone from playing to crowds of — well, let’s just say the term “crowds” is stretching it — to selling out venues like the Neighborhood Theatre on a regular basis. A…
The Blotter
Sticks and Stones …: A sensitive 51-year-old man called police to report he was the victim of telephone harassment. Someone had called the man four times between 9:30am and noon. According to the report, the man stated his harasser was calling to say he was stupid. … Will Break my Bones … : A sensitive…
Bloodbath
Blood and death are part and parcel of the videogame world. If limbs can’t be reduced to bloody stumps and innocent bystanders beaten to pulpy messes, then the violent fantasies of videogames aren’t fulfilled. Violence is a thread that dominates this industry, satisfying some odd urge within players that necessitates blood spray when a character…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: My friend Angie who I only see a few times a year was visiting my town on vacation. She was having problems with the batteries in her camera, so my husband offered to let her use our camera for the weekend. When the weekend was over, she gave the camera back. Later,…
Got the Wintertime Blues?
So it’s after Christmas and your desire is to a) return misbegotten gifts b) keep the par-tay going (in line with the traditional 12-days extension, assorted pagan beliefs and the start of Kwanzaa) or c) find sonic solace for the holiday blues. Check these: If you’re a Southerner with hip-hop-mad offspring, satisfy your child’s crunk…
See & Do
Wednesday, December 28 Don Reitz isn’t just another potter. Considered “one of the most important and influential ceramic artists of the century,” his Abstract Expressionism is embodied in jar- and teapot-like forms with alluring glazes and textures achieved through salt and wood firing. His exhibit, Clay, Fire, Salt, and Wood, features a retrospective of 71…
Sex Sells
On Dec. 10, more than 20 vendors set up shop in Tucker, GA, to market the country’s finest sex toys at the Atlanta Fetish Flea Market. Proceeds from leather whips, nubby dildos and wax-dripping candles went to charity: the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. Men dressed in spiked black leather massaged patrons with body oils…
Stargazer
Capricorn The Goat: (Dec. 21 — Jan. 19) This is a highly active week. Social life and travel (even if only local) are on the agenda. Your physical body has been in need of attentive concentration for several months. Don’t let that go now. Issues over debt and or/taxes may be looming. For All Signs…
Why Can’t Johnny Read?
Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board member Kaye McGarry is so afraid of fellow school board member George Dunlap that she says she wants a security guard stationed in the room during closed session meetings. To some people, that seems a bit extreme, but to former school board member Lyndalyn Kakadelis, it makes sense. Kakadelis says she, too,…
Clips
New Releases THE RINGER In need of quick cash, a struggling office worker named Steve (Johnny Knoxville) is persuaded by his sleazy uncle (Brian Cox) to pretend to be a mentally challenged athlete named Jeffy so he can enter the Special Olympics and come away the big winner. The movie may sound outrageous and offensive,…
Jim Black and the Campaign Cash
It’s the key political question that politicos across the state want an answer to. What, if anything, do the feds have on North Carolina State House Speaker Jim Black? And given what they do have, what else still might be out there that we, or they, don’t know about? In the balance hangs control of…
View From The Couch
THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005). The final gasp of Miramax Pictures (disbanded by parent company Disney, with the Brothers Weinstein heading off on their own) brought more than just Grimm tidings; among the handful of shelf-warming final releases was this unmitigated disaster, an $80 million stinkbomb that was lucky to gross back $38 million. Terry Gilliam,…
Holiday Adventures
Last Saturday morning, I got stuck for 20 minutes on a very slow moving street that the rest of the year serves as an interstate highway called I-40. Two lanes were blocked because of people trying to exit the freeway and go into Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem. Of course, I was going there, too (don’t…
Courting Controversy
The poster for Steven Spielberg’s new film Munich (now playing in Charlotte) is simple and stark. A lone man sits gloomily in a dark, heavily draped room, his body sparely illuminated by the light from a street lamp. His shoulders are hunched disconsolately and a pistol dangles from his hand. He seems very much alone.…
Breaking News
MORGAN FREEMAN AS DINESH D’SOUZA Mississippi-born Oscar winner and wannabe ex-colored man Freeman recently told 60 Minutes that Black History Month is “ridiculous” and the only way to get rid of racism is to “stop talking about it.” Uh-huh, tell that to all them neo-Nazis and their ilk. THE LOVE BOAT: NOT SO EXCITING OR…
Mountain High
The Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) recently named Brokeback Mountain the Best Picture of 2005 in its 14th annual voting. The acclaimed drama about a love affair between two cowboys (played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) also earned awards from the group for Best Director (Ang Lee) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Larry McMurtry and…
Don’t Panic
Where is Osama bin Laden? If I knew the answer to that question, do you think that I’d be sitting at my desk writing this column? Hell to the no. If I knew where bin Laden’s bin hidin’, I’d be at some tropical resort buying liquor and backrubs with the $25 million bin bounty I…
Never Too Much
CORKSCREW This time of year, I start thinking too much. I think about what I did wrong (and not enough about what I did right), and I think about what should happen in the year to come. But my favorite part is re-living the great wine I consumed, because those memories are pleasant ones. Here’s…
It’s Not about Race
For almost a year, a rapist terrorized Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, assaulting eight women. In a February case, he raped a woman after holding a gun to the head of her three-year old. After Gilberto Cruz Hernandez, a 24-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, was arrested for the crimes, the Greensboro News & Record began…
High steaks
This year has signaled the second wave of steak houses for Charlotte. The first wave arrived in the 1990’s — Morton’s, Capital Grille, Sullivan’s. Now, steak houses are again springing up like mushrooms after a rain. And why? Well, why not? Charlotte is a city of big banks and big appetites, where the sky’s the…
Letters
Fostering Families “Foster Homes to Fashion Shows” (by Karen Shugart, Dec. 14) was difficult to read. As I realized just how many kids are now or will soon be moving into the world with no sense of family, most likely destined to the rolls of prison and welfare, my heart broke. We should all be…
Taking the Cake
A staple at weddings, tea parties, funerals, church socials and birthdays, cake is more than just dessert to Southerners — it’s the last word in Southern food. It’s also something of an ever-evolving cultural history on a plate. For a young woman in the postwar South — and it doesn’t really matter which war we’re…
Forgotten Language
Here’s my thing: I used to be a Spanish interpreter. I swear this is true. I studied Spanish in high school, which was almost unnecessary since I lived in LA then, where Spanish is pretty much the primary language. I continued to study it in college, though not seriously until my second freshman year, when…
Wine List
Wine Tasting A different sampling of wines every week. Saturdays, 12-5pm. Free. Frugal MacDoogal’s, I-77 at Carowinds Blvd. 803-548-6634. Wine Tastings Wednesday Flight Nights, 5:30-7:30pm, three-wine tastings; $10. Four for Fridays, 5:30-7:30pm, four-wine tastings; $20. Reid’s Fine Foods, 7th Street Station. 704-377-1312. Wine Tastings Several tastings throughout the week. Free. Earth Fare, 12235 North Community…
Journalism 101
I know I’m not the first urban explorer whose job is to comb the city for its soul/pulse/substance. Still, the idea of it struck me as a relatively new concept. Something that an alt. weekly without the rigid constraints of a daily paper may have started, probably in the wake of the gonzo journalism era.…
The Jim Hunt Top 10
Cartoonist Jim Hunt is the visual counterpart to reporter and columnist Tara Servatius. Both are longtime Creative Loafing political bulldogs, always out there sniffing out corruption, waste, abuse, ineptitude and other ego-fueled predicaments public officials often find themselves in. So it only makes sense that we would have Tara write the blurbs for the 10…
Battle of New Orleans
While New Orleans remains in a post-Katrina funk, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band is alive, well and in its usual Crescent City state of funk, soul and spirituality. Though their home base of New Orleans is a mess, DDBB is not. All members are doing OK; unfortunately, you can’t say the same of their homes…
Taking it to school
Fans of Frank McCourt’s miserable Irish childhood might want to tread cautiously on his third memoir installment, Teacher Man. Fret not, McCourt’s requisite Celtic gloom and his self-flagellating voice are as distinct as ever. It’s just that after Angela’s Ashes (the book, the movie, the Happy Meal), we know young Frankie of Irish destitution is…
Gimme Movies
Filmmaking is awesome. It’s huge, combining so many other disciplines, and powerful enough to make a deep impact on the psyche. Here’s five hot linx for starters. Popcorn, anyone? Sankofa www.sankofa.com CineKink www.cinekink.com Lina Wertmuller www.linawertmuller.com Gena Rowlands www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/rampling/45 Bright Lights www.brightlightsfilm.com/experimental.html
CL recommends
This Book Will Change Your Life Again! By Carey and Delehag (Plume paperback). Sequels are notorious for their propensity to flop. Riding on the coattails of their predecessor, Part Deuxs don’t usually make an attempt at merit by their own means; they exist only for sales. This Book Will Change Your Life Again! is no…
Nktar
Ever noticed how electronica guys are really into labels? There’s the obvious way the genres split up like bacteria and then mutate into the next dance-music pandemic. You know, electro-techno-house-ambient-acidjazz-trance-drum’n’big-beat-bass-edelic. But these folks’re also big into record labels. Hell, there’s a record label for every electronics act out there. You got your AirMass, your Astralwerks,…
