Well, It’s Diet Time Again
If you haven’t started yet, it’s a little late to try getting in shape for bathing suit season. After all, summer’s half over already. Sure, the calendar says we have almost 2-1/2 months before fall falls, but let’s face it. Once we’ve celebrated the 4th of July, the season starts winding down and the stores…
The Blotter
If At First You Don’t Succeed…: At a department store recently, a woman selected a handbag, several articles of clothing and some jewelry before entering a dressing room. A few minutes later, she emerged wearing a new outfit and strolled out the store’s exit. The store’s security officer confronted the woman outside. Apparently, the woman…
Real Life Top 5
Hey, what are you laughing at? You think this guy looks funny? Big Mike Mitschele is one of Charlotte’s more dedicated artistes, most recently as a member in good standing of soon-to-be-rock-stars the Alternative Champs, earnest purveyors of the fine art of… GOSH! That’s such bullshit! The only thing the Champs purvey is a steady…
Letters
Brazilians are Latinos, too I applaud the efforts of the Creative Loafing staff to open up new ideas to its readers about Latino culture and how it is positively influencing our North Carolina community. I particularly enjoyed the section concerning the term “American,” and also the discourse on generational divides. One concern I have is…
Breaking News
Li’l Kim Sentenced to Prison for Perjury New prison outfit will include white-and-black-striped pasties and thong. Uptown Freaks Out Some thugs show their asses and a few people pee in a cemetery and suddenly it’s a “riot.” Arts & Science Council Gives$12.5 Million More to Area Culture Groups That could have bought everyone in the…
Addie’s Jamaican Cuisine
Island Beat Flavorful eatery is a perfect fit for NoDaMany New Yorkers tend to be disapproving of new environments, but not Icia Roman. She chose to come to Charlotte: “I like the people here.”A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Roman left Brooklyn, NY, her home of 34 years, and opened Addie’s Jamaican Cuisine on North Davidson…
News of the Weird
LEAD STORY: Willie Windsor, 54, of Phoenix has for several years lived as a full-time baby, wearing frilly dresses, diapers and bonnets, sucking on a pacifier, eating Gerber cuisine, and habitually clutching a rag doll, all in a home filled with oversized baby furniture. According to a long Phoenix New Times profile in June, the…
Karma Cleanser
I’d been wanting to have two children for years. I already had one daughter, and decided to seek to adopt a second child. The transition has been much more difficult than I could’ve ever imagined. It’s been a year but I have not been able to connect with her in a loving way. I can’t…
Doom, despair and agony
From old-school pinball machines to today’s gaming supercomputers, the best games have always presented one thing to players: challenge. To make a captivating and exciting videogame, makers can’t just present the same old situations that the previous version had; there’s a specific need for complexity and advancement in any game. As we see with the…
Silly Bills
A handful of state House of Representatives members sparked a furor this year when they backed a bill allowing in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants. Talk radio lines were burning with indignation, and supportive legislators’ voice mailboxes filled up faster than an open bar at a Modern Drunkard magazine convention. But that well-intentioned measure was…
See & Do
July 14 – Thursday City Stage fringe theatre festival resumes at Spirit Square as Carolina Actors Studio Theatre reprises one of its tastiest comedies. Two wayward souls collide in a fateful supermarket encounter near the canned tuna in Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild. Intersecting monologues dissect the encounter, life in New York, and the universe. Michael…
Sit & Spin
Brian EnoAnother Day on EarthHannibal/RykodiscEno sings! After not having released a vocal album since the last Bush regime, the ambiently ambitious Brian Eno — the Moby of the Mods — has once again put his pipes to platter. The album’s first track, “This,” features a hazy, African-inspired rhythm paired with a droning, almost robotic melody…
Shinn’s folly
Curt Schilling, the hulking, Cy Young-award-winning, World Series ring-wearing ace of the Boston Red Sox, was in town recently. Sort of. Schilling actually made his “Charlotte” appearance — part of a rehab stint with the Boston Red Sox’s AAA affiliate, the Pawtucket Red Sox — in Fort Mill, SC, the place the “Charlotte” Knights call…
Stargazer
For All Signs On July 16 Saturn shifts from the sign of Cancer to Leo and will remain in Leo for approximately 2.5 years. Saturn represents manifest reality and the “rules” by which we all must live to maintain our social and personal systems. At worst, Saturn symbolizes rigidity, the calcification of fears and the…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 7.13 Dodd Ferrelle & The Tinfoil Stars – The Tybee/Savannah-based Ferrelle has eschewed the mandolins and soft, Southern-rock twang of his past platters for more of a feedback-drenched, Crazy Horse-type sound on his excellent new song cycle, The Murder of Love. A comer in the y’all-ternative genre, Ferrelle’s songwriting on the new album still…
Mainlining A Broken Life
If you’ve watched cabaret, musical or operatic performances with any degree of regularity and perceptiveness, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a certain amount of pacing involved in the artistry. Opera divas simply cannot pump out high-energy arias at peak volume at the upper reaches of their vocal range for two to five hours. Cabaret spellbinders…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Jul. 13Amos’ Southend Sponge w/ ShadowflagBig Al’s Pub, Mooresville Scott JohnsonComet Grill Open Mic w/ Bill McDonaldDouble Door Inn The VerdictEmber Grille Melinda Hansen Band The Evening Muse Dodd Ferrelle and The Tinfoil Stars w/ Stephen Simmons; Rod Picott w/ Bob Sinclair & the everybodyfieldsGarden Cafe Open Mic w/ Ansel CouchThe Gin Mill Wizard’s…
Brits During Wartime
In English author Jonathan Coe’s new novel, he picks up where he left off with The Rotter’s Club, skips 20 years and lets the healing effect of time wash over his characters. They march into the new millennium, struggling with (or profiting by) the closing of a Birmingham car manufacturing plant, reverberating with (or ignoring)…
The Line Kings
Last month, the American Film Institute continued its tradition of honoring Hollywood’s past by presenting the latest installment in its “100 Years… 100 Lists” series. After tackling such topics as the Top 100 Heroes & Villains and Top 100 Thrills (see sidebar), the organization elected this time to take the words right out of the…
Bangkok Bomb
Successful sequels in literary detective fiction usually rely on an all-too-human sleuth readers can empathize with, as the protagonist battles the bad guys and his own demons. But when a chief character has a condescending attitude toward the very audience the reader is likely a part of, the author jeopardizes the whole franchise. That’s the…
View From The Couch
CONSTANTINE (2005). Based on the DC Comics/Vertigo series Hellblazer, this disappointment casts Keanu Reeves as John Constantine, a man who’s always had the ability to recognize the angels and demons that walk the earth in human form. Yet as he goes about his business of wiping out as many of the demonic “half-breeds” as possible…
Arts Agenda
Comedy Charlotte Comedy Theater Live Improvised Comedy. Interactive, improvisational comedy similar to Whose Line Is It Anyway. Rated R. www.charlottecomedy.com. July 15-16: Comedy Battle. The 1st two teams will perform July 15, 10pm and 2nd two on July 16, 8pm. Championship July 16, 10pm. $10. 1111 – D Hawthorne Ln. 866-467-7681. The Comedy Zone Upcoming…
Film Clips
New Releases DARK WATER What were the heads at Disney’s Touchstone Pictures thinking when they elected to release this downbeat drama in the middle of summer? Dark Water is the sort of brooding psychological film often embraced by discerning audiences in the fall off-season – during the blockbuster period, it doesn’t stand a chance. That’s…
Island Beat
Many New Yorkers tend to be disapproving of new environments, but not Icia Roman. She chose to come to Charlotte: “I like the people here.” A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Roman left Brooklyn, NY, her home of 34 years, and opened Addie’s Jamaican Cuisine on North Davidson Street in NoDa earlier this year. Addie is…
The New Great Migration
“A chocolate city is no dream; it’s my piece of the rock, and I dig you, CC…” — George Clinton, “Chocolate City,” 1975 For Jatrine Bentsi-Enchill, it started pretty much the same way it has for everyone else. First, two physician friends of hers moved to Charlotte. They raved about what a great place it…
Southern By The Grits Of God
Picture me: I’m sitting in the parking lot of a rundown convenience store – a “Stop ´N’ Stab,” as a friend of mine calls such establishments – eating a shrink-wrapped pimento cheese sandwich and quaffing from a 20-ounce Coke. Not haute cuisine, to be sure. Not-so-haute cuisine, more like it. As I sat there and…
Closed Doors
The story of today’s new migration is really two stories. While the approximately 61,000 African-Americans who moved to Charlotte since 1995 all technically relocated to the same place, they’ve experienced two distinctly different Charlottes. For educated middle- and upper-class African-American professionals, Charlotte is a boomtown. Business leaders have redoubled their efforts in recent years to…
Don’t Cook With Crap
We’ve all done it – given a fond farewell to a half-empty bottle of stale, vinegared wine by pouring it into a sauce, soup or, when half-drunk desperation surfaces, a glass. We’ve all done it – but it’s wrong. If wine’s been opened in a cabinet for over two weeks, it’s total shit and doesn’t…
King’s Dream?
It happened almost by accident, University City leaders say. If you moved to Charlotte 10 years ago and couldn’t afford a $300,000 house, your real estate agent most likely directed you to the new subdivisions of east Charlotte that grew up around UNCC. At that time, thousands of African-Americans were moving to Charlotte. They, together…
Corn, hold the cob
My kid brother Tim liked to eat corn on the cob when he was a bald little boy. His 4-year-old blue eyes bright with excitement, he’d grab the cob that was almost bigger than his head and immediately begin attacking it, typewriter style. Left to right, his teeth would graze the kernels, and when he…
Rasslin’ Pioneers
Women’s professional wrestling may be cartoonish and outrageous, but Ruth Leitman’s new documentary, Lipstick & Dynamite, which opens in Charlotte this weekend, takes seriously both the subject matter and the women involved. Through interviews and archival footage, the film traces the lives and careers of six women who pioneered the early days of “lady rasslin’,”…
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…
Follow The Bouncing Ball
Ten months ago, Stephanie Johnson climbed aboard a Charlotte-bound Greyhound bus without a dollar in her pocket because, she says, God had urged her to leave Baltimore. Unfortunately, God hadn’t urged anyone just yet to provide her with a job or a home. She ended up at the Salvation Army. Fast forward to the present,…
Just a lil bit (higher)
I’d been shooting the breeze with Cam Taylor and Joseph Pate for about 20 minutes when I looked down and remembered, Oh yeah, I’m suspended from a tree limb 30 feet above the ground. Yikes! Actually, I was surprised at how soon I became accustomed to hanging out in midair so high up. I was…
Nothing Fails Like Success
From the outside, it might seem that the Charlotte dance scene is thriving, particularly if you’re judging from the big, brand-name DJs making their way through town this summer. The list reads like a K-TEL 90s dance compilation: Josh Wink, Junior Vasquez, Keoki, the Crystal Method, Danny the Wildchild, Kimball Collins, Sasha. The exclamation mark…
They Still Don’t Get It
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the education building, there’s got to be a demographics guy who shows up for work at 10 in the morning, takes a two-hour lunch, then leaves at four o’clock. They should hunt him down and fire him immediately. The bastard has cost this county hundreds of millions of dollars.…
Bad Candy
Thank God Grant’s dieting phase has come to a close. For a while we were certain he was gonna end up all curled and shriveled in a hospital bed, no bigger than an aborted fetus, a case of complete potassium deprivation. He’s got the shriveled part almost down, now that he’s lost 21 pounds in…
Plug & Pray
If the fundamentalists are getting you down and you think religion’s fair game for satire, check out these hot linx. If you think I ought to be ashamed of myself, have Sister Carlotta spank me with a wooden paddle. Mrs. Betty Bowers www.bettybowers.com Islamica News www.islamicanews.com Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua www.dogchurch.org British BodyThetan…
From Pot to the Medicine Cabinet
Twenty years after the first Reagan-era public service announcement that warned young people to “just say no,” Mecklenburg County’s kids just don’t seem as interested in street drugs as they were a decade ago. Now, it appears, they’re high on pharmaceuticals. A survey of 3,400 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students by Substance Abuse Prevention Services of the…
