Soundboard
Wednesday, Jun. 19 Arnie’s Tavern, Huntersville Scott Johnson Bayou Kitchen Bill Noonan Big Al’s Pub, Cornelius Jes & Sherry Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Cajun Queen, Pineville 7th Street Gator Band II Connolly’s Craig & Rich Acoustic Dilworth Coffeehouse Open Mic w/ Bert Wray Double Door Inn Checkered Past * The Evening Muse Jeff…
8 Days A Week
WEDNESDAY 19 The Charlotte Sting takes on the Washington Mystics and superstar Chamique Holdsclaw tonight at the Coliseum at 7pm. Tickets are $8-50, available by calling 877-WNBA-TIX. CPCC Summer Theatre’s second production, Jekyll and Hyde, opens tonight at Pease Auditorium. The story is an evocative tale of the epic battle between good and evil, based…
Franchise Players
In Hollywood lingo, they’re called “tent poles,” movies that their respective studios hope will prove to be so popular that they can count on producing a whole slew of follow-ups featuring the same popular character or characters. The most obvious example is, of course, the James Bond franchise, which has been going strong for some…
The Crush
I long ago lost count of the number of men I’ve dated in my life. One of the things that I will never say if I ever get married is that I didn’t date enough. I can also say that I’ve heard every single excuse a guy uses for anything from getting sex to borrowing…
Wooed By Hollywood
When John Woo’s films Hard Boiled, The Killer and Bullet in the Head reached the West, Woo was hailed for his gravity-less action coupled with a genuine tenderness rare in such shoot-’em-ups. More a phenomenon than a director, this Hong Kong iconoclast introduced an astounding new cinematic style to international film audiences. The self-taught filmmaker…
Stargazer
For All Signs On June 24 at 5:42pm EDT we will experience an eclipse of the full moon. It will not be visible in the US, but our human psyches will register its symbolism. This is the last of a two-year series of eclipses in the signs of Cancer/Capricorn. The position of these signs in…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES KILIMANJARO: TO THE ROOF OF AFRICA It’s hard to say who will reap the most benefits from the latest IMAX feature to be presented in Discovery Place’s Omnimax Theater: the patrons who elect to check this out on the big(gest) screen or the travel agencies that might potentially find themselves swamped by tourists…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I am a college student with a boyfriend in the Army. I love him very much and I know he wants us to spend the rest of our lives together. Unfortunately, we are universal opposites. I am a Jamaican-American Wiccan and a stereotypical Gemini. He is a white, stereotypical Scorpio, Baptist from…
Uptown Towers: Obsolete
All plans for Charlotte’s future promote uptown, our main employment hub where 50,000 workers toil in towers. Charlotte’s self-image is tied to these mighty, man-made stalagmites of corporate power that symbolize the city’s place in national finance. But a national seismic shift is occurring in the meaning and content of office work, one that will…
Land Ho
Landscape. The very word, for me at least, conjures up a catalogue of images shaped by my training as an art historian. Those images range from the intense beauty of a Turner landscape to the sylvan forests of Poussin to the geometry of Cezanne and the raw power of Van Gogh or Anselm Kiefer… and…
Automatic Diplomas?
Three math teachers who taught at Crossroads Charter High School on North Tryon Street are asking politicians and the state and federal education departments to investigate their claims that about a third of the school’s graduating class failed math — and likely other subjects as well — but were handed their high school diplomas anyway.…
Queens Road Honky-Tonk
You can still tell the difference between Myers Park and Nashville. But during a seven-week run of Always…Patsy Cline, Theatre Charlotte is being turned into a shrine for a country music icon. Outside the front entrance, the visiting Producer’s Group has draped funky fuchsia-and-white signs on the awning with the show title written in lurid…
Funding Snags Delay UNC-C Radio Station
Efforts are still underway to get a UNC-Charlotte radio station up and running. A group of students known as the Campus Radio Organization (CRO), led by former UNCC student body president Gregory Hall, say they hope to be broadcasting by August or early September. Hall and other CRO members have been trying to drum up…
Derf Draws a Different Toon
John Backderf, known to everyone but his mother simply as Derf, draws the comic strip “The City,” which is featured in more than 50 alternative weekly papers nationwide, including Creative Loafing. Derf, who launched the cartoon in 1990, has just published two comic books relating strange-but-true stories from his own life. My Friend Dahmer (self-published,…
Letters to the editor
Waste Not, Want Not To The Editors: I want to thank Creative Loafing and especially Tara Servatius for exposing Charlotte Mecklenburg Utilities and NCDENR for the way sewage spills are allowed to continue without concern or penalties. Being a resident of South Carolina and specifically a homeowner on Lake Wateree, we have been complaining for…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music American Guild of Organists Summer Recital Series featuring Nancy Watson. Sun., June 23, 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public. University City United Methodist Church, 6100 W. Sugar Creek Road. 704-588-1290. American Guild of Organists Summer Recital Series featuring recitalist Robert Gant. Sun., June 30, 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the…
Fear The Forehead
As always, the Heroes Convention once hit the convention center with the force of Thor’s hammer, and comic book fans and Trekkies rejoiced. This year’s fest was the biggest yet, and even managed to attract a few non-traditional fans (likely a few came thanks to the interest surge spawned by the Spidey movie — they…
City Fare
In 1999, owner John Weinbrenner opened the 100-seat City Tavern in the old Drum location, a space that had been renovated and occupied by the Porcupine Cafe. The decor is still much the same as the former occupant: blond wood, an expansive curved bar, and large booths under a wall of windows high enough to…
So You’re In Love, Huh?
I’ve always been more interested in what we don’t talk openly about in our society than in what we do. Even more interesting to me is what is acceptable for good parents not to talk about with their kids. Love, or the western version of the myth of love between a man and a woman…
Storage Tips
According to many high-falutin’ wine experts, storing wine in anything but a state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled cellar is nothing short of wine abuse. These misguided folks claim wine is so very delicate that, if you so much as hiccough while holding the bottle in your hand, the wine will be forever ruined by the sudden vibration. At…
Then There Were Five
This is News 14 Carolina. It’s one o’clock.” With that voiceover, the newest member of Charlotte’s TV news pack debuted June 14, as Time Warner Cable’s News14 Carolina went on the air after months of building a news operation from the ground up. To cut to the chase, with some adjustments here and there and…
Eat Here
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 400 S. Tryon St., 704-339-0303; 2001 E. 7th,, 704-342-0749. All locations have different owners. A hint of the tropics; rotisserie chicken with Jamaican jerk sauce, ribs, Paradise Island fish special, curries, and Caribbean styled greens. $$ Fuel Pizza Cafe, 1501 Central Avenue, 704-376-3835; 319 W. Trade St., 704-344-1767; 404 S.…
Shields Up! Red Alert!
Summer definitely crept up on us this year. Between the incredibly mild winter we had and that late May cold snap, there was no defining “Ah, it’s summer” moment this year. In fact, I didn’t even have the usual joy of digging out my summer clothes, since I never bothered to put them away this…
Focus On Family
They’ve been a part of rock & roll history for about as long as the music has been around. In fact, many of these notorious relationships (and, er, feuds) have actually made rock & roll history. The relationships in question are siblings — brothers and sisters who play together… literally. The Jackson 5 was loaded…
Coin of the Realm
Dig down in your pocket or under the couch cushions and retrieve a penny, a nickel, a dime and a quarter. Brush away the lint and the cheesy poofs, and compare the four coins. What do the penny and nickel have in common that the others don’t? If you look real close, you’ll see that…
Sonic Boom
This Tuesday brings the new Sonic Youth album, Murray Street, influenced by the recording’s interruption last fall by the September 11 attacks (see Tim Davis’ review of the CD in this issue). Named for the band’s lower Manhattan studio address, which was hastily abandoned after only one month’s recordings, the album features dual saxophonists Jim…
The Blotter
* American Graffiti: On her way to check her mail one morning, a woman noticed something different about her mailbox. As she got closer, she was able to see that someone had scratched something into its side. She was appalled at the etched word: ASS. No, these were not her initials. * A Warm Thank…
CD Depot
When David Bowie tries to keep up with the times, you let him, because he’s been ahead of them for so damn long. When he wants to do a Frank Black-penned composition, it’s rubber-stamped. Neil Young? Well, he’ll take the money, and one imagines he admires Bowie’s natty verve, anyway. The bad news is it…
Tall Orders
* In a May dispatch from Cuba, The Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro proposed in 1987 to alleviate a chronic milk shortage by trying to get his scientists to clone the most productive cows, shrunk to the size of dogs so that each family could keep one inside its apartment. The cows would…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 6.12 Songwriter Night — Nice bill here, featuring ex-Lodestafarian Jeff Williams, who’s now currently showcasing some of his best stuff yet since leaving the confines of a band; the fractured, weblike style and sanguine voice of Kate Felder; the multi-talented Mike Mitschele, doing the acoustic guitar thing this time around; and the Quixotic Jay…
