The Wine Year in Review
It feels so healthy to look back and reminisce over the past year’s lessons. With wine, it might mean you experienced a new taste, uncorked a new varietal, or discovered a new country to broaden your mind with fresh choices. Over the past year, we’ve had plenty to explore, with great news for our wallets,…
Put Down That Fruitcake!
Like a formal dinner, the entire holiday season is made up of many traditional, interlaced ingredients. This Brave New Holiday however, two of those ingredients — air travel and fruitcakes — will not be mixing, particularly if you’re flying to Canada. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has declared that fruitcakes are not welcome as…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 400 S. Tryon St., 704-339-0303; 2001 E. 7th St., 704-342-0749. All locations have different owners. 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.…
The Blotter
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER: After a long night of dancing at a club, a man decided to wow the crowd with some final moves. Taking a page out of Michael Jackson’s book, the man began doing high kicks. One kick, however, landed squarely in the groin of the club’s bouncer. As the happy-footed fellow was escorted…
Forging a New Music Future?
Outside the Neighborhood Theatre it’s the sort of windswept, bone-chilling December night that can make a homebody of the staunchest live music fan. But inside the NoDa landmark, a parade of local bands offers various levels of musical intensity for the hundreds of people who thumbed their frozen noses at the cold to celebrate the…
News of the Weird
Checkmate to the jaw: Dutch artist Iepe created the sport of chess boxing, which began in earnest in Amsterdam in November with several matches of six four-minute chess rounds alternating with five two-minute boxing rounds, with victory coming by knockout, checkmate or, if the match goes the distance, judges’ scoring of rounds. Both the Dutch…
Trucks Channels Familiar Spirits
Derek Trucks is more at home with a guitar in his hands than a Ouija board, but the title cut from his latest album, Soul Serenade, is an exercise in spiritualism. The soul is courtesy of King Curtis, the Rastafarian reggae lives again through Bob Marley, and the guitar is in the spirit of Duane…
Sit & Spin
Various Artists Jim Dickinson’s Delta Experimental Project, Vol.3 Birdman Granted, recordings made in the field have an almost exclusive appeal for archival historians and music completists. But don’t write off these recordings so easily and shake off your pre-conceptions, as some of the tracks off Delta Experimental Project Vol. 3 were recorded in-studio and at…
Art’s Where You Find It
If nothing else, Saturday’s Continental Tire Bowl provided the city a great service: it gave us the semblance of a nightlife scene on a blustery winter night. Every second person downtown was wearing the bright orange of the University of Virginia, and they all seemed to enjoy what the alcohol companies like to call “having…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 12.31 Belmont Playboys — OK, so they’re maybe not rockabilly proper. Then again, neither was Social Distortion, and I don’t see anyone jumping on Mike Ness’ case. ‘Round these parts, the Playboys and their various offshoots have become almost a lifestyle choice for those interested in early rock, car culture, tattoos and dark denim.…
P.O.’d At The P.O.
One bright Saturday I headed out in a sunny mood to the post office, not knowing how quickly and completely that mood would twist into something dark. The first thing that pissed me off before I even got to my branch was a crusty old Cadillac holding up traffic by trying to make a left-hand…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Dec. 31 Amos’ Southend Cherry Bomb w/ 200 Joules Big Al’s Pub, Mooresville Scott Johnson and Russ Brinnier Blue Carl DiPonziano Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Charleston Chops, Cornelius Hipshack Charlotte Coliseum Jubilate w/ Bill Gaither The Cobber Rainwagon Coyote Joe’s Out of the Blue Double Door Inn Belmont Playboys Double Door Inn…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser:This time of the year I start to become quite sentimental and sometimes even depressed thinking about my childhood. I grew up in a small town in the cold Midwest. We usually had a healthy snow on the ground well before the holiday season started, and the kids in my neighborhood had a…
Translates Well
The storylines of three seemingly disparate characters converge in the aftermath of a horrific car accident in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s acclaimed second film, 21 Grams (which opened locally this past weekend). If the basic premise sounds vaguely familiar, then perhaps you’re thinking of the Mexican director’s 2001 Oscar-nominated debut Amores Perros, in which a trio…
See & Do
DECEMBER 31 – WEDNESDAY If you’re a fan, how much incentive do you need to see this show? First, it’s on New Year’s Eve. Second, The Derek Trucks Band have a new disc out, the jazz-flavored Soul Serenade. And third, the nephew of original Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks is a top-notch guitarist in his…
Crowning The King
The Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA), comprised of 45 critics living in nine states (including North Carolina, with three members here in Charlotte), last week named The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King the Best Picture of 2003 in its 12th annual voting. Runners-up for the organization’s top prize were Clint Eastwood’s…
Ask the Advice Goddess
Hopeless Is More My girlfriend broke up with me because she doesn’t want a commitment and wants to “explore dating other people.” Although I’m honestly not ready for commitment either, it kills me to see her dating other guys. There’s also a twist: She says she still has feelings for me and wants me sexually.…
View From The Couch
SEABISCUIT (2003) Adapted from Laura Hillebrand’s bestseller, this summer hit tells the story of the underdog racehorse whose remarkable success during the 1930s inspired an entire nation. But just as importantly, it also relates the very human story of three individuals — Seabiscuit’s owner (Jeff Bridges), trainer (Chris Cooper) and jockey (Tobey Maguire) — who…
Stargazer
For All Signs The significant cosmic phenomenon of the year is Uranus’ entrance into Pisces, beginning a seven year trek in the watery sign. Its last visit through Pisces occurred during the “roaring 20s.” Uranus is a planet that represents discoveries. In extreme it can symbolize revolutions. While it was in Aquarius we saw the…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES CALENDAR GIRLS Director Nigel Cole garnered instant attention with 2000’s Saving Grace, in which respectable, middle-aged Brenda Blethyn was forced to grow and sell pot to save her home. The film was a critical hit stateside though it struck me as a rather tiresome, one-joke film. (Senior citizens smoking dope! Isn’t that a…
Bless Them, Every One
It hasn’t been a bad year for the performing arts in Charlotte. Our opera, symphony, theater and dance companies all delivered handsomely. WDAV celebrated its 25th anniversary as Metrolina’s classical music voice with a live broadcast of the upsized Chamber Music at St. Pete’s concert earlier this month. The PAC capped its 10th anniversary celebration…
Big Brother’s little helper
Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. … Not only any actual misdemeanor, but any eccentricity, however small,…
It’s All In The Fine Print
Say you’re a kid growing up in a smallish town in South Carolina. Your dad sells appliances at Sears, your mom is a housewife, and what you do is draw. Mostly when you’re by yourself, which is a lot of the time. There’s not much around that tells you that drawing is important, except that…
The Bodies Come Home
President Bush does a good deal of traveling these days. He goes to London, where he is greeted by Britons protesting the Iraq war and occupation. He flies to East Asia, where there are more protesters. He wonders aloud about the angry crowds and asks his staff if they really hate “us” that much. At…
Best of the Best
The list gets longer every year, and this year is no exception: The number of anthologies boasting the best, most fantastic, most definitive collections of superlative writing in America has come to include just about everything. This year, for example, you can choose from books with the best American writing on crime, travel, sports, music,…
Wishes For 2004
Kick back with me if you will, as we ponder changes I’d like to see in 2004 from our friends in the wacky world of media that slice, dice and dole out information from the latest war news to Bennifer. Read a paper, watch TV, Mr. President. Was I the only one who recalled the…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Epiphany The adult choir of St. Paul’s will join other area singers for the liturgy and anthems. Tue., Jan. 6, 7:30 p.m. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 501 Pine St., Fort Mill. 803-547-5968. First Tuesday Concerts Gabriel Faure; Quartet No. 1, in C Minor for violin, viola, cello, and piano. Presented by Chamber Music…
License To Kill
While half the federal government ran around last week like a chicken with its head chopped off in a made-for-TV display of terror preparedness, the gray-haired ladies behind the counter at North Carolina DMV may well have been issuing driver’s licenses to the Jihad Class of “04. That is, if they hadn’t done so already.…
With Reservation
Guess who’s not coming to dinner? The no show, the bane of a server’s life. To a server, a no show directly impacts a server’s income. All of a server’s pay for a day of work can vanish instantly due to no shows. New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day are notoriously the worst nights for…
Designing the Future
“The past is a foreign country,” wrote English novelist L.P. Hartley 50 years ago to describe how the passage of time changes our perspective. The same events are remembered differently, and the past quickly fractures into a kaleidoscope of dissimilar points of view. In detective stories I’m always amused by the power to recall past…
