Arts Agenda
Classical Music Allan Rosenfeld This Charlotte Symphony clarinetist will present a solo recital featuring the clarinet and bass clarinet. The concert will be held at the Recital Hall, Winthrop University. Wed., Jan. 22, 8 p.m. Free. 704-568-1095. Antares Quartet Formed in 1996 in New Haven (CT), as the Elm City Ensemble, Antares draws on a…
The Blotter
We Didn’t Start The Fire: Responding to a call, officers came across a very bizarre scene: an oddly placed traffic cone that had been stuffed with rags and set on fire. The cone was blazing in the middle of the road; about 10 yards away, the arsonist had left a jug with a gallon of…
Far East Side
“You will have great success in your latest endeavor” was the fortune I cracked out of a cookie at Formosa Chinese Cuisine. You have got to hand it to the Chinese. Fortune cookies are a great marketing concept: everyone leaves happy.The 72-seat Formosa, which opened in June 2002, is the second restaurant developed by owner…
Slam Punk
After seeing Amy Ray perform Friday evening at Tremont Music Hall along with North Carolina badasses The Butchies, I have a few questions. First, who decided that it was ever, at any time, OK to wear a mullet? Having sported one early in my adolescence, I’m a little confused as to why the worst male…
Good Eats
Dilworth/Southend 300 East, 300 East Blvd., 704-332-6507. Locals have long gathered at this casual neighborhood bistro in a vintage house featuring an eclectic menu. L, D $$$ Berrybrook Farms Natural Foods, 1257 East Blvd., 704-334-6528. Homemade soups, herbed tofu sandwiches, bean burritos, and freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juices found in a natural food shop.…
News of the Weird
Spiderman: Punta Gorda, Fla., inmate James “Happy” Borland, 41, suffered a near-fatal concussion in December from being roughed up by inmates Lemuel “K-Money” Ware, 32, and Corey Andrews, 32, because Borland had accused Ware of stealing his pet spider and renaming it “Pinky.” According to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report, Borland had demanded…
A Better Corkscrew
Conquering the cork has been a big frustration for wine drinkers, especially when you don’t have a corkscrew handy. Creative inventors have used air, levers, metal strips and screws to plow through to the juice, but when faced with all these choices, what’s an overwhelmed wino to do? Experiment. Everyone’s got an opinion about which…
Forward Thinking
Call it post-rock. Others have. It’s a term sometimes bandied about for (ostensibly rock) bands that take as many cues from ambient sound, jazz and classical music as they do from Eddie Cochran, Led Zeppelin and Nirvana.Other people, however, call it prog rock reincarnated with a slightly hipper image. Prog, of course, is short for…
CD Disc-overies
Bongzilla Gateway Relapse Every sentence in the band’s bio includes a handy pot reference. Very nearly every song title — certainly every one on Gateway, their second full-length — does the same. Couple that with custom van-style artwork, an unabashed willingness to be labeled “stoner rock,” and, er, their name, and what does it spell?…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 1.22 Interstellars/The Stelle Group — Lunar ambient rockers The Interstellars continue to quietly crank out albums and EPs, and the results are usually imminently listenable — sort of like a Spiritualized without all the expensive software. The Stelle Group, I’m guessing, was named after the Illinois community of self-sufficiency advocates. That they are –…
Sound Board
Wednesday, Jan. 22 15th Street Garage Across Five Aprils, The Showdown & My Scarlet Sky Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Connolly’s On Fifth Backyard Green Double Door Inn The Interstellars w/ The Stelle Group The Evening Muse Leslie Helpert w/ Claire Kettlebell; Deanna Lynn The Meeting House Restaurant John Alexander Trio Midtown 51 Wayne…
Spring Cleaning
If there’s one familiar slogan that applies to the 2003 spring movie season, it’s the one about something old being something new. Looking at the titles scheduled to come our way over the next few weeks, it’s hard to find many that don’t immediately bring up memories of earlier pictures. For example, what is Duplex…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I met this girl a few years ago and we fooled around. She was young and got pregnant. I stood by her side. She has a lot of emotional problems, and I’ve always been a sucker for the damsel in distress. Anyway, she would lie to me all the time, but I…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND “Never let them see you sweat” is a tagline that apparently went unheeded by George Clooney, who huffs and puffs mightily in his directorial debut. This adaptation of Chuck Barris’ memoirs, in which the creator of The Gong Show (among other TV inanities) claims to have been an…
STARGAZER
For All Signs Mercury, the ancient god of messengers, turned direct on January 22. As it shifts into forward motion we are likely to experience a flurry of changes in plans. Lapses in calculation are more frequently generated while Mercury is retrograde, so double-check figures of recent weeks. Occasionally a very old error will surface…
Animal House
Less than an hour’s drive from Charlotte in Rowan County, Charlotte Metro Zoo boasts — along with our city’s name — a stable of over 100 animals, including baboons, chimpanzees, bears, wolves, camels, kangaroos, llamas, some 30 big cats, and nearly a dozen small, exotic cats. Steve Macaluso, the owner of the wildlife collection, has…
See & Do
JAN 23 . THURSDAY Playwright Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is the old boy’s most blistering indictment of hypocrisy, greed and, well, the human race — and specifically, the white Southern version of said race. Ex-jock alcoholic Brick Pollitt is husband to hot stuff Maggie (the cat in question) and…
Out of the Water
It has been well over a decade since scientists first figured out that AIDS can’t be transmitted in a swimming pool. And no one since the Middle Ages has claimed that one’s morality could be changed by being in the same area as another person. That didn’t stop the Charlotte World, Charlotte’s self-proclaimed Christian newspaper,…
Young To Old And Back Again
From time to time, I write about the pros and cons of being thirtysomething and single in Charlotte. There should be a specific science dedicated to finding a partner in life — maybe it should be called Singletology? Anything to get some federal funds thrown its way to keep me from maxing out my credit…
Urine Trouble in Carolina
For almost a decade, my stores sold an assortment of cleansing teas, detoxification drinks and urine additives. Customers sought to clean out their systems for four to six hours and I did not ask them why. They could buy similar products from some health food stores, pharmacies and even convenience stores. The products had names…
Rep Writes The Book
Charlotte Rep’s sassy new musical, Let Me Sing, is a wonderful collection of old songs from 1899-1943. The ambitious new book, written by Rep artistic director Michael Bush and literary manager Michael Aman, comes loaded with good intentions.Make that overloaded with good intentions. After teaching the history of American musical theater at Brooklyn College for…
Take It To the Next Level
What is it about January that gets me on my high horse about TV and radio sports? Maybe it’s just that, as a sports fan, I’ve been watching college bowl games and NFL playoffs and listening to the occasional sports talk radio as football ends and college hoops begin.Gripe number 1: Famous jocks as “announcers.”…
The Creation’s Creator
Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling By Ross King (Walker & Co., 304 pages, $28) Despite the carping of a few nitpickers who preferred seeing it through centuries of accumulated grime and varnish, the brilliant restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, depicting the biblical creation story, has proved to be one of the past century’s…
Go Bankers!
As a child, the phrase I dreaded most was “This is for your own good.” It always preceded something dreadful: medicine, being sent to my room, having a particularly huge tangle yanked out of my hair. I learned that the minute one of my parents uttered the words “This is for your own good” it…
The Pleasure Principle
Not all art is meant to challenge us with symbolism, political metaphor or complicated narrative. Works of art play many roles, and one of those is simply to provide pleasure — pleasure for the viewer and, I might add, pleasure for the artist.Pleasure Places, a new exhibit at Center of the Earth Gallery, is no…
It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid
t has to be right up there on the top 10 list of great American charades. Every time there’s a dip or surge in the economy, the pundits and politicians in Washington pull out their bullhorns and shout each other down over who’s responsible for it and whose stimulus plan is going to solve it.…
