Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2014

Jun 25 - Jul 1, 2014 / Vol. 28 / No. 18

Cover Story

The Light Factory is reborn

Last year, the Light Factory nearly kicked the bucket. The obit had been written, and the funeral planned. But much like the crazy stories you hear — where the deceased is on a slab in the back room of the funeral home, about to be embalmed, and suddenly sits straight up and yells, “Wait! I’m…

Page Leggett

Obvious Child: A treat for grown-ups

OBVIOUS CHILD *** DIRECTED BY Gillian Robespierre STARS Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy In writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s debut feature Obvious Child, based on her own short film from five years ago, Donna Stern (played by Jenny Slate) is a stand-up comedian, and what instantly struck me was the awfulness of her routine. Her material, which wallows…

Matt Brunson

Jersey Boys occasionally off-key

JERSEY BOYS **1/2 DIRECTED BY Clint Eastwood STARS John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza Catching up with Jersey Boys on a weekday afternoon, I was not surprised that there were only about 15 of us in the theater auditorium. What did catch my eye was the fact that I was the only male present and the…

Matt Brunson

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (June 26)

Let Me Smash That: A man’s night on the town ended early last week after a woman decided throwing the contents of her drink in his face wasn’t quite enough. The man was injured to the point of hospitalization when the woman threw the entire glass directly at his face. The woman admitted to throwing…

Ryan Pitkin

Weekly horoscope (June 26-July 2)

For All Signs: We continue to be dealing with the harsh Mars/Uranus energy that is very near to squaring Pluto. Tempers flare easily under this aspect. If you are feeling irritable, cross, or outright angry, the most useful thing you can do with that adrenaline is exercise or use your large muscles in some way.…

Vivian Carol

CD Review: Bless These Sounds Under the City’s self-titled album

Bless These Sounds Under the City, Albert Strawn and Derrick J. Hines, make the most of a minimalist musical approach on the duo’s self-titled debut. The arrangements get lush accoutrements that are missing in the live setting, but do little to corrupt the music’s overall simplicity. The 13-track album begins with the keyboard-driven “In Between…

Jeff Hahne

Leaping Lindsey

Dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling loved to perform. The only problem was she hadn’t actually had the chance to do it in front of many people. If she was going to break through her fear, there was only one way to accomplish it. Stirling went to a random apartment complex, knocked on doors and asked whoever…

Jeff Hahne

Stonewall and the riots that changed the world, even this sleepy Southern town

Charlotte’s gay bar scene has been decades in the making — and has it been a ride. From hole-in-the-wall hangouts home to prostitutes and hustlers to modern-day dance clubs hosting hundreds of patrons and viewed as entertainment destinations, local establishments have made their own unique history. That history is important to Donald O’Shields, who, with…

Matt Comer, QNotes Editor, Special to Creative Loafing

State budgets propose more cuts to N.C.’s already-lean judicial branch

Its workers have received a .24 percent pay increase in the last five years. In Mecklenburg County, its employee turnover rate has increased by about 50 percent since 2008. These facts and figures might sound familiar, but this isn’t a story about the plight of North Carolina’s teachers. The state’s judicial branch has sustained about…

Ana McKenzie

Holy Gooaalll

Shortly after Mexico wrapped up a scoreless game against Brazil in its second appearance of the World Cup, memes of Mexican goalie Memo Ochoa started flooding my Facebook feed. In them, he was portrayed as San Memo, wings growing from his back, a halo around his head, his body wrapped in a cloak. Someone even…

Ailen Arreaza

Theater review: Li’l Abner

It’s unlikely that I’ve seen Li’l Abner since the last time CPCC presented it in 1988 at Pease Auditorium. Al Capp, who created the characters and the comic strip that Norman Panama and Melvin Frank based their 1956 script upon, muddied his acceptance in theatrical circles during his later years, delighting in skewering liberals —…

Perry Tannenbaum

HeroesCon 2014: Taking the floor

“Sensory overload.” That’s the phrase I’ve heard most from first-time convention-goers, moments after entering the floor. And they’re right. Creators signing and chatting with fans, vendors haggling over toy prices with customers, hundreds of intricately crafted costumes funneling through the aisles, and the general buzz of fandom — the comic book convention is a vast…

Andy Smith

Blessed are the cheesemakers of Uno Alla Volta

Milk, acid, salt. Three humble ingredients that, when placed in the right hands, can be transformed into something otherworldly — cheese, butterfat made blissful. Two months ago, Vivace executive chef Zack Gadberry, 29, took this simple trinity of ingredients into his own hands to fill a need in his kitchen and inadvertently started Uno Alla…

Keia Mastrianni

A willing victim

She showed up to my wedding in a floral mini dress and black platform heels. The outfit may have been appropriate in Los Angeles, where she lived, if she was at a nighttime soiree that ended at 2 a.m. with a limo ride down the strip. But we were on the opposite coast, on a…

Claire Gibson

There goes Xiu Xiu’s neighborhood

Not long after Jamie Stewart, who’s led the interminably honest and vaguely unsettling but curiously danceable art-punk project Xiu Xiu for more than a decade, moved to Los Angeles from Durham, North Carolina, he stumbled across an arthouse screening of Angel Guts: Red Classroom. The 1979 Japanese erotic noir film is characterized by “racialized sex,…

Patrick Wall

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