This Land Was Made For You And Me
Landscape paintings were around before God made Adam and Eve. The drawings on the craggy walls in the caves of Chauvet-pont-D’Arc in France predate Adam’s exit from Eden by about 15,000 years. These primal landscapes of homage and terror depict bison and rhinos in conflict on the open plain, and scratch out the first human…
View From The Couch: Ray, Secrets & Lies, more
RAY (2004). The home theater release date for this biopic about music legend Ray Charles was this past Tuesday, exactly one week after the film captured an impressive six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. So just how good is Best Actor frontrunner Jamie Foxx’s central performance? Let’s just say that without him, Ray…
Top-Flight Flopping
Away from my Charlotte beat, I religiously avoid Noises Off and its signature revolving set. Nearly every production I’ve seen of Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy in Charlotte has been better than the wretched Broadway version I endured in late 1984. While I’ve grown to like and appreciate Noises Off over the years, I still collide…
Film Clips
New Releases HIDE AND SEEK It’s becoming increasingly rote to review junky, generic thrillers like Hide and Seek: Critics would do well to simply cut-and-paste their slams of last year’s Secret Window (this film’s doppelganger) and leave it at that. But let’s not stop with that Johnny Depp dud: If Hide and Seek were a…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Carolina Brass An ensemble of artist-musicians will present a concert featuring selections from the Renaissance to the present. www.belmontabbeycollege.edu. Mon., Feb. 7, 8 p.m. Free, donations accepted. Belmont Abbey Basilica, 100 Belmont-Mount Holly Rd., Belmont. 704-461-6813. Charlotte Symphony A performance of Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G Major” : with guest pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet…
Low-Performing Schools? We Don’t Think So
Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent James Pughsley has finally gotten serious about bringing some of the system’s most experienced teachers to its neediest schools. But many teachers don’t like the plan and have no intention of teaching in the system’s lowest performing schools. The superintendent took a beating in the media after Superior Court Judge Howard…
Cuts Like A Knife
Owning a restaurant is often a chef’s dream. Calling the shots and creating the food you want can be alluring after years of dong a proprietor’s bidding. But owning a small business comes with its own share of miseries and headaches, and the restaurant business is especially brutal. A high percentage of these businesses shut…
Whose Values?
In November, 2004, the New York Times revealed that the International Red Cross had issued a report about conditions at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba. What they found, the Red Cross said, was “tantamount to torture” – in other words, torture – including both physical and psychological abuse. Moreover, the IRC found that…
Cooking From A To Zebra
Jim Alexander, owner-chef of Zebra Restaurant and Wine Bar, is a veteran in the art of fine dining and grand cuisine. Alexander’s 25 years of experience in the culinary world have culminated in a multiple award-winning restaurant. For three years in a row, Zebra has won the AAA Four Diamond Award and the Wine Spectator…
Take ´Em Out of Class
He had the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard. The harangue of sexual propositions he spat at me was staggering in both its breadth and creativity. I’d banned him from my property some time ago, but if I lingered too long outside, he’d be back, following me around, asking questions that made me blush, and muttering…
Toss Up
While locally grown summer greens and heirloom tomatoes are perfectly paired, salads are also good company in the colder months. But I don’t mean the “all you can eat” salad bars with their over-the-top portions. Making a similar salad at home is easy. Heck, some grocery stores have their own salad bars you can take…
Beware the Transit Bashers
Transit bashers in Charlotte have been having a field day recently with the increased costs of the South Corridor light rail line. In print and on talk radio, the anti-transit crowd is trying to create the impression that there’s widespread opposition to these plans. This is a pattern that’s been followed in most American cities…
An Overflowing Super Bowl
It’s the day football fans eagerly anticipate each year – Super Bowl Sunday! It’s also a big day for snack food makers, pizza delivery companies and breweries. The Snack Food Association calculated that in 2001 (the last year they collected the data), the millions of Americans watching the Super Bowl ate (in million pounds): Potato…
Scoops on the Net
She got fired, he got hired, and here’s today’s latest Mark Mathis alert. It’s the typical fodder for a local television news website, the kind many other cities already have. These websites aren’t so much a blogger’s paradise as a combination of “who’s gone where” scoop, “editorials” and links to newspaper and magazine articles posted…
Touchdown! Year of the Rooster Ribs
Sun., Feb. 6, is a busy day. After several long months, the football season comes to a climactic denouement, with the ultimate testosterone showdown of the year, the Super Bowl. With all the drinking, chortling and caveman dancing that ensues, one works up a healthy appetite – for something along the lines of a brontosaurus…
News of the Weird
LEAD STORY: Nonlethal war tactics suggested by an Air Force research team in the 1990s were made public in December by the military watchdog organization Sunshine Project and included a recommendation to expose enemy troops to powerful aphrodisiacs in order to distract them into lustful hookups with each other (irrespective of gender). (The Pentagon said…
South America:
When you hear the words “Argentinean wine,” do you think of anything at all? Chances are your response is “no,” since we haven’t seen much of the stuff in these here parts. After some drinking research, I found out that they’ve been hogging their excellent malbecs, cabernet sauvignons and merlots all these years, keeping the…
Letters
X-Box Angst In reference to “X-Box Invades the Bedroom” (by Suzy Hansen, Jan. 19): I thought, surely some other woman out there read that article and was disgusted enough to take the time to write in and describe their feelings in a more thoughtful and articulate way than I could. Alas to the women in…
Freezing For Art
I had a full plate planned for this weekend, I really did. I was going to take in the gamut of the Charlotte scene (to paraphrase No Depression magazine, “whatever that is.”). I had planned to hit a big multi-band party, an art exhibit, and at least one good old-fashioned rock show. However, it seems…
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…
Better thief
If my mother had been a better thief, I would not be here right now. Not that she wasn’t skilled, mind you, she was. I’d even say she was better than Lary, who right now is the best klepto among anyone I know. But Lary relies on the obvious. For example, he will simply walk…
On The Solo Road
Ex-Throwing Muse Hersh and family have act, will travel By Chris Parker For the last half-dozen years or so, life in Kristin Hersh’s household has resembled that of the Partridge Family. Like the 70s sitcom, Hersh’s musical career finds her frequently packing her kids into the tour bus for months at a time. “I just…
The Blotter
LYING IN WAIT: An elderly man was ambushed by a guy who had crept into his car while he was filling it up with gas. The unwanted passenger then forced the old gent to drive him to a nearby house, and ordered him to stay put while he went inside for a few minutes. Instead,…
Big Band highlights improv night
If it’s true that inside every actor lurks a would-be director, then maybe it can also be said that inside every jazz player lurks a big band leader. Well, it’s an assumption you could make listening to local reeds man Brent Bagwell discuss the upcoming jazz improv night at the Room on Wednesday, Feb. 9.…
See & Do
02 – WEDNESDAY Ohio-born soul singer and pianist John Legend is hotter than a Senate confirmation hearing these days. You’ve heard him before, of course: on Jay Z’s “Encore,” and most notably on Kanye West’s spiritual smash “Jesus Walks.” Far from the horny bleating that too often passes for soul these days, Legend’s debut, Get…
Sit & Spin
The Game The DocumentaryAftermath/G-Unit/InterscopeThe next big player in “The Game” of hip-hop? Why, if you listen to the endless amount of press that Interscope Records has drummed up recently, the very answer lies within the question: Jayceon Taylor, AKA Chuck Taylor, AKA The Game. The readymade bio goes like this: Gets gun-shot, listens to classic…
Stargazer
For All Signs The Age of Aquarius has its astronomical basis in what is called “precession of the equinoxes.” The earth’s magnetic north pole draws a large circle in the sky over a period of approximately 26,000 years. This is the result of gravitational pull from the moon and the sun, resulting in a wobbling…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 2.2John Legend – Ohio-born soul singer and pianist John Legend’s solo debut, Get Lifted, was handpicked for release on Kanye West’s Sony-affiliated label, Getting Out Our Dreams (GOOD). You’ve heard him before, of course: on Jay Z’s “Encore,” and most notably on West’s spiritual smash “Jesus Walks.” (West produced the album’s first single, “Used…
Can’t Believe I Innate The Whole Thing
I got irritated reading your advice to “More To Love,” the wife who went from size three to size 14. Your contention: She needed to lose weight because her husband couldn’t change what he was attracted to. My view? Men are shallow because we allow them to be. If her husband is justified in not…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Feb. 2 Amos’ Southend John Legend Breakfast Club DJ Boney B Double Door Inn Sonic Tie The Evening Muse Taylor Roberts Music; Tosco House Party w/ Anne Deming Fire & Ice Lounge Rare Groove w/ D.R & Buddy The Gin Mill Wizard’s Road Show Graduate, Pineville Jared Allan & Co. Hickory Tavern Jay Mathey…
Speedway Saint
You don’t have to know much about NASCAR or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to enjoy Sharyn McCrumb’s latest novel. But if you do, you’ll have more fun with the in-jokes on both subjects. If you don’t, you’ll learn a thing or two about ´em. St. Dale is a rollicking tale about a group of people on…
They Soar, They Score
For my money, the best 2004 performance by a male actor in a leading role – yes, even better than the amazing Jamie Foxx in Ray – came from Liam Neeson for his beautifully modulated work as sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in the excellent biopic Kinsey. So why am I more annoyed at the lack…
