Arts Agenda
Classical Music Charlotte Symphony Lollipops When a mime shows up unrehearsed for his performance, the result is a symphonic showdown where even the audience gets in on the act in The Classical Clown. The Lollipops series is a showcase of concerts designed for young listeners ages 4-9. Sat., Jan. 15, 11 a.m. $8-$20. Blumenthal Performing…
![Midnight Munchies with [adult swim]](https://i0.wp.com/clclt.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/01/news_cover-6993.webp.webp?fit=190%2C219&ssl=1)
Midnight Munchies with [adult swim]
Cartoon Network used to be the unlikeliest place on basic cable to see a decapitation. Or a nipple. Or hear a curse word. But that was before Adult Swim. Based in Turner Broadcasting’s offices in Atlanta, Cartoon Network began in 1992 as a kid-friendly haven for the bland library of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. From Atom Ant…
Main Street USA
Frequently, restaurateurs and their press agents bombard me with e-mail, voice mail and snazzy promotional materials with euphoric prose containing demands for attention. On the other side, I hear about a restaurant via voice mail or e-mail from readers or friends. The latter group seems to become more insistent when the restaurant is located far…
![[a cartoon is born]](https://i0.wp.com/clclt.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/01/news_cover-6997.webp.webp?fit=190%2C130&ssl=1)
[a cartoon is born]
Padded envelopes and express packages pile on top of Nick Weidenfeld’s desk with all the promise of unopened Christmas presents. As Adult Swim’s program development manager, he shuffles through scripts searching for a clever idea to turn into a new show. “Every day, I see the worst idea I’ve ever seen,” he says, shaking his…
Healthy And Palatable
In January, folks are gung ho about their annual dietary resolutions. Whether it’s Atkins, South Beach, No White Food, or Weight Watchers, diet regiments have a nasty way of making their presence known. “I can’t eat Italian. I’m off all pasta and tomatoes,” one friend says. “No sushi for me, unless the chef will make…
Remembering King by erasing him
I go to civil rights rallies… I hope every colored boy becomes a star. But don’t talk about revolution, That’s going a little bit too far. — Phil Ochs, “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” It’s hard to imagine a more noxious despoiling of the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. than George…
If It Tastes Like An Orange . . .
It’s an ingredient in just about everything: artificial flavor. You’ve got to wonder how they go about mimicking all those flavors — orange, strawberry, peppermint, vanilla, chocolate, almond, beef, chicken, etc. Those fake flavors are compounds created by extracting the crucial chemicals from the naturally occurring substance. After that, the substance is liquefied or vaporized…
Cary School: Slavery Not So Bad
Here’s something you may have missed during the holiday rush that you may be interested in, considering the upcoming King Holiday. The Raleigh News & Observer reported in early December that Cary Christian School (in Cary, NC) is using a booklet titled “Southern Slavery, As It Was” as part of its ninth grade curriculum. The…
Crunchy fantasy
It’s January. It might be cold. It might be gray. There’s an inauguration on the way. Let’s play make-believe and escape to our magic cabin in the woods, where there are no worries, no gray skies and no inauguration on the way. Let’s make the most excellent winter-in-the woods breakfast. Let’s make granola. We’ll take…
Disturbing Diagnosis
When we last visited our friends at the North Carolina Medical Board, they were busy deciding the fate of Dr. Charles Buzzanell after a most unfortunate incident. A patient of his had died during what was supposed to be a relatively simple surgery, and despite the fact that Buzzanell lied to the medical examiner investigating…
To Have and To Hold
If you haven’t tasted bad wine, you haven’t lived to appreciate the good stuff. Like gulping spoiled milk — especially right out of the jug — you know turned wine when you experience it. Wine that has been badly stored (or “cooked” in industry parlance), tastes flat and musty, not grapey. It’s not performing the…
Back to School
The ivory tower flings open its gates again this week. Students at UNC Charlotte and elsewhere are flocking to classes rested and refreshed from the Christmas break to face the challenges of new courses. Members of the faculty have prepared their syllabi, made their course plans and are more or less ready to face the…
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…
News of the Weird
Those hardy Floridians: Rudolph Jessie Hicks Jr., 30, was arrested in Brooksville, Fla., for trespass, but not before he had gotten up from a police dog takedown, five Taser shots, and an entire can of pepper spray (December). And police in Port St. Lucie, Fla., were considering whether to charge Robin Bush, who strangled a…
Easing The Bottleneck
In December the RIAA filed another 754 copyright infringement suits against individual file-sharers, while the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of their case against Grokster, a file-sharing program that piggybacked on AOL messenger. It’s a lot better news for lawyers than it is for an industry that’s lost steam the last several years.…
Letters
Under-appreciated Arts That was an important and informing article Scott Lucas wrote about the arts in Charlotte (“A Chill on the Arts,” Dec. 29). Thank you. I had a different impression of Charlotte before moving here a couple years ago. I was under the hope of the city becoming more appreciative of the arts, which…
Act Like Ya Know
By the turn of the new century, hip-hop, a style of music once considered a hotbed of social protest and commentary, began to look like a cold cot. The form once described as “The CNN of the Ghetto” by Public Enemy’s Chuck D too often came across like Fox News: “fair and balanced,” as long…
Canceled Flights
Grace Lipscomb Commodities Broker “You mean, other than new businesses deciding to go somewhere else because they couldn’t get as many non-stop flights, and the local economy grinding to a halt or maybe collapsing? No, I guess not.” Earl Spencer Auto Mechanic “A lot of those damn planes fly right over my neighborhood so I’ll…
Dance Fever
In my triple role as staff writer, music writer, and columnist, I often run into people who assume I don’t know jack about something because I don’t write about it all the time. To whit, DJ culture. “Why don’t you write about DJs more?” I’m often pestered (um, asked). “They’re musicians too.” To which I…
From Screen To Sing
Actors want to direct and directors want to act, so the old saying goes. And evidently, a lot of actors want to sing. Record collectors have long hoarded odd releases by Eddie Albert, Cybill Shepherd, Leonard Nimoy, Telly Savalas and more.Historically, the recorded output from actors has been laughable at best. Yes, it’s funny to…
WEIGHING IN
My sisters and I have a family ritual we’ve been practicing for more years than we care to admit. It’s not like most other family rituals. Well, not like any others we’ve ever heard of. It probably started when my two sisters, Laura and Martha, and I noticed that we could no longer inhale great…
Sit & Spin
Jimmy Eat World Futures Interscope Thoughtful Arizona pop-rock outfit Jimmy Eat World’s eponymous 2001 breakthrough LP — originally titled Bleed American, but re-named after 9/11 — was more than an instantly memorable collection of simple, infectious guitar-driven tunes; it was also something of a victory for the depressingly anachronistic notion that a talented band can…
The Blotter
SAVAGE SENIORS: A group of elderly men were sitting around drinking when two of the codgers started to argue. One old-timer picked up a stick and started swinging at the other gent, along with several other people in the house. One of the other guys picked up a knife and stabbed the stick-wielding old coot…
Music Menu
THURSDAY 1.13 George Strait — He’s had a record 50 #1 country hits. He’s had 25 (!) platinum records. Consider that each one of those platinum discs represents a million sold — many have gone multiplatinum — and you have some idea of Strait’s dominance over the Nashville country genre. Since breaking in about a…
SEE & DO
JANUARY 13 THURSDAY @WAG body:Any short list of the best hip-hop albums of the last 20 years should include at least three by KRS-One’s Boogie Down Productions: Criminal Minded, By All Means Necessary, and Edutainment. While “The Blastmaster” has been erratic in his recorded output lately, he remains impossible to ignore. See our story in…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Jan. 12 Breakfast Club DJ Boney B Dilworth Neighborhood Grille Roy w/ Cookie Double Door Inn Volatile Baby The Evening Muse The Zach Broocke Band; Mike Strauss w/ Reeve Coobs and Adam Whiting The Gin Mill Wizard’s Road Show Midtown 51 Middleman Midtown, Mountain Island Simon Sez Milestone Hansom Banjo w/ Downtown Singapore, Ghost…
Ask The Advice Goddess
BLAZING SADDLEBAGS My wife has a great figure, but she sometimes wears clothes that would only look good on an underfed model. She has a red knit dress that’s supposed to be sexy, but instead makes her look like she has saddlebags and a potbelly (which she doesn’t). Ditto with a pair of brown stretch…
Holiday Hangover
Jean-Pierre Jeunet locates whimsy in the damnedest places. Certainly, the playful sensibilities of this French writer-director seemed right at home in the quirky romantic comedy Amelie. Alien: Resurrection doesn’t count one way or the other — just another example of a highly regarded foreign director trying to crack the Hollywood big time and getting chewed…
Remembering The Purple Gang
If gin mills and jazz were the forbidden fruit of the Roaring Twenties, the swiveling hips of Elvis Presley and the brutal sullenness of street gangs — personified by James Dean and Marlon Brando — were the bugaboos of the Ike Age. Elvis was often unintelligible, Brando and Dean often barely articulate, but if the…
VIEW FROM THE COUCH
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (2004). A true-life yarn that was dubbed by Sports Illustrated as “one of the greatest sports stories of all time” instead morphed into one of the dullest sports films of recent years. Actor-director Peter Berg, long a deadening presence on either side of the camera, has adapted his cousin H.G. Bissinger’s acclaimed…
Southern Discomfort
No, Robert Johnson did not make a deal with the devil to acquire mystical guitar-wrangling powers. He practiced, and — with some help from his spider crab-like fingers — was able to sound like two guitarists playing at once even while howling about having his lemon squeezed until the juice ran down his leg. His…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES WHITE NOISE Forget all that talk about dead people: I see dead careers, beginning with those of actor Michael Keaton and director Geoffrey Sax (a TV vet making his feature film bow). White Noise asks viewers to accept Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) — the method by which the dead communicate with the living…
