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…
Letters
Separating Men From Boys I’m looking at your January 19 front page, “Women Vs. Men’s Video Game Obsessions” (by Suzy Hansen), and observing the “menacing” transformer robot man. I’m thinking “Boy’s” obsession must be more appropriate. Surely, adult men aren’t interested in silly-ass crap like this? – Alex Clark, Charlotte Drug War Worse Than Drugs…
Introducing Hollis Gillespie
“When I was seven I had a crush on Satan.”. . . and that’s neither the first nor the last time humor columnist and NPR commentator Hollis Gillespie’s life has taken a swerve toward the bizarre. Her outrageously funny — and equally heartbreaking — autobiographical tales (such as the collection featured in her debut book,…
Bellglide On The Brink?
If you think a threesome’s difficult, the old saying goes, you should try a band. Ever wonder about the recent surge in musical duos? More money, less egos. Just like out in the human meat market, good matches are hard to find and compromise is the rule. Then again, every so often things just mesh.…
News of the Weird
Dinking accomplishments: Editor Frank Kelly Rich’s bimonthly tribute to overdrinking : the magazine Modern Drunkard : is a 50,000-circulation glossy “about drinking and only about drinking, and not just drinking, but heavy drinking,” he told the Los Angeles Times in January. Recent features included biographies of great drunks, a dictionary of bar slang, and a…
The wrong gift
Thank God the ass-freezing weather is finally here. I have about 700 awesome thrift-store jackets I’ve collected since the first famous 50s tangerine swing coat I stole from Grant last March, and I was tired of sweltering in them during all that unseasonably warm weather we had earlier this month. I had already gained my…
Music Videos
DEVO Live in the Land of the Rising SunMVD Music VideoKnown by many only as the robotic-acting, “energy-dome”-wearing mouthpieces behind the hit “Whip It” some 25 years back, DEVO here make a convincing case for being one of the single most important bands of the post-punk movement. Yes, DEVO. Most of the key members now…
See & Do
January 26 – Wednesday The monthly Queen City Soulful Lyrics event is a fine showcase featuring the African American tradition of storytelling through lyrical performers, poets and spoken word artists. The event will be hosted by JC, the “lyrical poet.” Tonight at 8pm at The Afro-American Cultural Center’s Attic Theatre. Admission is $5 and AACC…
Sit & Spin
LowThe Great DestroyerSub PopFrom the reaction in some quarters, you’d think Low, the Duluth, MN, band that put the slow in slowcore, slowly, now rocks like Bleach-era Nirvana. Well, not quite. Yes, on The Great Destroyer, their first full-length for former Grunge-peddlers Sub Pop (and seventh overall), the trio has cranked up the pace and…
To The Better End
My girlfriends and I spend so much effort trying to find the right man to settle down with, yet marriage seems such a bleak prospect. My grandparents are still married (not happily, I might add), but my parents aren’t. And now, I have friends who aren’t even 30 and are already divorced. I have had…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 1.26Chatham County Line – Lead vocalist/guitarist Dave Wilson’s songwriting is stoked with Dylan-haunted treatments. This is especially apparent in CCL’s interpretation of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” as well on several Wilson originals. CCL add on bluegrass flourishes to their take on country music and ably maneuver the roots highways with rip-roarin’ numbers as…
Stargazer
For All Signs There are three modes of being represented in the zodiac of 12 signs: cardinal, fixed, and mutable. The mutable signs are: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces. They have their conflicts, but one thing these signs agree upon is the value of motion and adaptability. These are the signs that go with the…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Jan. 26 Amos’ Southend Kurtis Blow Breakfast Club DJ Boney B Comet Grill Open Mic w/ Ramblin’ Bill Connolly’s On Fifth Dirty Sanchez Double Door Inn Rising Lion The Evening Muse Chatham County Line w/ Phyllis Tannerfrye The Gin Mill Wizard’s Road Show Manchester Tavern, Rock Hill Rayen Belchere Project Midtown 51 Drew Reid…
Feel The Heat
Ray Bradbury’s prime motivation, when he wrote his dystopian Fahrenheit 451, was to prevent the horrific future he described so vividly from materializing. So it’s more than a little disheartening to realize that in the 12 years since Children’s Theatre last presented the sci-fi classic at their Morehead Street fantasy palace, the reality of American…
Million Dollar Knockout
Boxing movies are rarely about boxing. Raging Bull, arguably the most celebrated of all pugilist pics, remains a searing character study about a violent man who was scarcely able to control the inner demons that ended up running — and ruining — his life. The still relevant drama The Harder They Fall, featuring Humphrey Bogart’s…
Broadway Bound
Any way you look at it, 2004 ended triumphantly on Broadway. Ringing in the New Year, the Great White Way posted its highest-grossing week ever from December 27 through January 2. Eleven of the 31 shows on Broadway actually sold out for the entire week. That capped a year that saw an all-time high in…
Coming Out Swinging
The star who won an Oscar in l999 with her amazing performance as the girl who desperately wants to be a boy in Boys Don’t Cry now plays a female Mike Tyson, a ferocious fighter who becomes a Knockout Queen in the raw, violent world of women’s boxing. In Million Dollar Baby, Swank is Maggie…
Soft Cover Heaven
The Working Poor: Invisible In America by David K. Shipler (Vintage). As author David Shipler says,”Nobody who works hard should be poor in America.” Nonetheless, around 35 million Americans have jobs and still remain below the poverty level. This should shock us to our core, but somehow these days, it doesn’t; it’s just another depressing…
Feel The Lovelight
The Light Factory’s 2nd Annual Project Lovelight Movie Lover’s Weekend and Film Competition will be held February 3-6 at various Charlotte venues. The event kicks off at 6pm Thursday, February 3, with an opening gala reception at the J. Richards Gallery at Phillips Place, followed by a 7:30pm screening at Phillips Place Cinemas. The featured…
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. Prague Symphony Orchestra Presented by Carolinas Concert Association. Mon., Jan. 31, 8 p.m. $25-$65. Blumenthal Performing Arts…
View From The Couch
DVD DECISION 2004 In the summer of 2003, Warner Home Video and Turner Classic Movies teamed up to give film fans a chance to decide which vintage motion pictures they wanted to see on DVD. From the studio-submitted list of 20 titles, the top five vote-getters (including The Postman Always Rings Twice and Days of…
My Oh Mai
I’m not an exit person. Thus, the names of the back-to-back shopping centers which so handily roll off the tongues of my friends (who do live off the exits) evade me. Unfortunately, I call shopping centers by the name of a restaurant, as in “The shopping center where X is located.” This is particularly dangerous…
Film Clips
CURRENT RELEASES THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON / THE WOODSMAN Nixon, inspired by actual events of the mid-70s, centers on an ordinary joe ( Sean Penn) who’s a failure both professionally and personally. Tired of being constantly beaten down by life, he decides to murder Nixon, the man he feels best exemplifies everything that’s wrong…
Table For Two
For some, it takes two to make a dream come true. Tammy and David Dearstyne of Dearstyne’s Bistro and Catering are partners in life and partners in the restaurant business. With Tammy in charge of the front of the house and catering and David as Executive Chef, Dearstyne’s is making its mark in Matthews. “Dearstyne’s…
Can Cannon beat McCrory?
It’s the biggest untold political story in Charlotte, and until last week, Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon was probably the only one who fully grasped its implications – or even noticed it at all. That is, until Creative Loafing began showing a Charlotte voter registration spreadsheet to the city’s political strategists. The county Board…
Gloriously gory
I had countless “aha” culinary moments five years ago when I was at cooking school in Italy. The earliest one arrived on the first day of class. We were a group of 15 who had traveled from many countries to attend, bleary-eyed and disheveled in our newly unpacked chef’s whites at 7 in the morning.…
Google Eyes
Is there a company anywhere within these United States with a better public image than Google’s? We love it. We need it. We use it — more than 200 million times a day, by some accounts. The unofficial slogan — “Don’t Be Evil” — epitomizes everything we want in a business relationship. And more often…
Leftovers
A few weeks ago, this column spilled the beans on a few commonly used food phrases. There are plenty more of these sayings out there, so we’re going back for second helpings. Here’s the scoop on spilling the beans: The Old English Dictionary (OED) gives a 1574 quote for spill it, meaning, “to divulge, let…
Carson left mark on television
A SINGULAR LEGACY – Many of today’s hipsters squeezing into Seven Jeans and enjoying the sublime comedy stylings of Adam Sandler probably never saw Johnny Carson on TV. Hopefully, obituaries this week for one of television’s icons will do justice to the influence his Tonight Show has had on entertainers and TV in our time.…
Got Game?
The Europeans gave us the seasonal pattern of eating wild game in the fall and winter. Perrin Wells, General Manager of the Broken Arrow Ranch in Ingram, TX, noted that lack of refrigeration played a large part in this custom. “But today,” Wells says, “American chefs have broken that pattern. While France may be glued…
The Social Contract
“Socialist” and “socialism” are the new demonizing epithets favored by conservatives, having replaced “liberal” as the insult du jour. To be “socialist” is to be un-American, or subversive to American “values.” There’s all the difference in the world between the words “social” and “socialist.” I’m the proud product of a European social democracy that was…
South America:
I don’t know what I thought, but I thought it would be different. My recent exploration down south in Chile opened my eyes to a culture that produces wine for the rest of the world, but not for themselves. Chilean wine country, a burgeoning tourist destination that eerily resembles Sonoma Valley, is bursting with vineyards…
Load Em’ Up,
Although it may not always seem like it, there has been a method to my madness when it comes to kicking Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in the rear end over the last year and a half. To understand what’s going on here, you’ve got to go back to the school system’s defeat in the Swann lawsuit. The…
