Breaking News
Cheney Hunting Victim Released From Hospital Rumor circulated last week the VP blasted him for stating “middle- and lower-class Americans have rights, too.” GOP Lawmakers Promise to Fight Bush on United Arab Emirates Port Deal Are these the same GOP lawmakers who promised a full probe into Bush’s illegal wiretapping, only to immediately back down…
Stargazer
Pisces The Fish: (Feb. 18 — Mar. 19) This Mercury retrograde will particularly affect you and your schedule. If traveling, double check all reservations and build in safeguards for lost luggage, keys, and other small items. An old issue that carries emotional intensity is likely to surface this week. Bear in mind that you are…
Film Clips
New Releases DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY It’s a behind-the-scenes documentary, a music concert and a stand-up act all rolled into one. Dave Chappelle, amusingly commenting that he’s mediocre at both comedy and music yet able to make a fortune nonetheless, heads to his Dayton, OH, hometown to hand out golden tickets (similar to those given…
For Sale: American Security
She’s at it again. This time Rep. Sue Myrick has pulled her head out of the gubernatorial campaign hole she’s had it stuck in and now decided she’s hacked-off at the president for backing an Arab bid to run our ports. “In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO…
View From The Couch
CONTROVERSIAL CLASSICS VOL. 2: THE POWER OF MEDIA (1975-1976). Three 70s classics, each still as topical as ever, offer different stances on the media, painting it as good (All the President’s Men), bad (Dog Day Afternoon) and downright ugly (Network). All three movies are served up in two-disc editions, and they’re available individually or as…
See & Do
Thursday, March 02 In a citywide conspiracy to turn theatergoers into barflies, Tavern Shakespeare is picking up where the Bar Project left off. You’ll need to transport your drinking elbow uptown — and upstairs at the RiRa Irish Pub — to catch this new Collaborative Arts beer-and-Bard mixer. Although Elizabethan nobles knew nothing about dating,…
A Mountain Or a Molehill?
Is the media making a Mountain out of a molehill? Or will the Best Picture chances of the year’s Oscar front-runner indeed Crash and burn? Ever since its bow at the Toronto Film Festival, Brokeback Mountain has been the clear favorite to win the top prize at the 78th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, airing live…
AND THE AWARD GOES TO …
It’s that time of year again. Oscar time. But what if this year you could really experience the Academy Awards like the stars in Hollywood? You can! The Academy’s Oscar Night America program provides thousands of movie fans across the country the chance to experience the thrill and excitement of Oscar night in their own…
Stumped
Sometimes an enterprising entrepreneur will pursue a culinary path paved with the tasty dishes he grew up with. If he’s lucky, the public will follow. If he establishes his concept in a town oozing with historic charm, chances improve. When owner Ed Thomas opened the 95-seat Stumptown Diner last January (in the space formerly occupied…
The Blotter
Fire Sale: A woman looked out to her backyard and saw a man loading her firewood into a shopping cart. When she confronted the man, he began to yell at her. Perhaps he was unhappy with the quality of firewood he was stealing. The woman called police, who arrested the man a few blocks away…
Fee! Fie! Phó! Fum!
Between winter and spring, one soup comes to mind that is both hot and healthy for those lingering winter ailments, yet non-fattening enough so you can begin wearing those revealing spring fashions. Phó is the celebrated Vietnamese soup that literally means your own bowl. Giant bowls of fragrant beef broth are filled with thin slices…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: While my girlfriend was out of town, I went out with friends and got sloppy, shit-faced drunk. We’re talking the drunkest I’ve been since senior year of college: alcohol poisoning would have been a relief. I came home and puked all over our bedroom floor. By the time my girlfriend got back,…
From NYC to the QC
Hi, I’m Brittney (cut to me reaching out to shake your hand), your new nightlife columnist. I know what you’re thinking: “What makes this chick worthy of covering nightlife for the Loaf?” Well, perhaps it’s because this northern migrant is all over Charlotte. Exhibit A — my calendar: Sunday: I spent my night at an…
Letters
No Justice, No Peace Tara Servatius is showing some naïveté again, looking at the Band-Aid to try and compress the gushing neck wound of displaced poor people who have no other option but to steal to try and survive (“Drastic Measures,” by Tara Servatius, Feb. 22). In America, we don’t look at the source of…
The moe.ron’s Guide
Since forming in Buffalo, NY, in 1991, the band moe. (get used to the lowercase “m” and the period, or else this story’s gonna throw ya) has evolved considerably. How evolved? Consider a band that’s gone from playing 20-minute complete sets to playing 20-minute songs. The group’s fanbase has grown exponentially, too. Presently comprised of…
Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly
In June 1981, sitting at a piano while visiting my ex-hometown of Portales, New Mexico, I started playing a good old West Texas waltz feel. In the key of C, of course. It was the era of the great urban cowboy plague, when every song on country radio was cowboys this and cowboys that. I…
The Redcoats Are Coming!
War, like shark attacks and being cheated on, is an event most participants try to repress. Common post-war feelings such as shame, guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder are not the only reactions, however. Some people, living historians as they call themselves, fire up the time machines to visit a chimerical past of profuse bloodshed. “Other…
G. Love & Special Sauce
Garrett “G. Love” Dutton is in a good place right now. We got the chance to catch up with the slacker-rapper recently and the excitement in his voice was evident. For starters, Dutton’s musical family has officially expanded from a longtime trio — with upright bassist “Jimi Jazz” Prescott and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens…
It’s Our Thing Now
Day one in a week crammed with things to do for every wallet size and taste. As you slowly descend the concrete steps inside Bobcats Arena, careful not to fall and lose all your cool points, you grin to yourself, feeling the pulse emanating from every corner. It seems ages since the last time everyone…
Livin’ Long Like This
One August night in 72, young Rodney Crowell arrived in Nashville with $15 to his name. Crowell — who plays the Neighborhood Theatre Saturday night — was eagerly obeying Jim Duff, the mentor who’d encouraged him to leave his native Port Houston’s music scene of canal bars, rodeo dancehalls and Holiday Inns and sign with…
It Takes a Village
This week, the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association will kick off its first-ever tournament in Charlotte. To Charlotte’s elites, it represents a stunning cultural and political victory, the first flex of the muscle of the synergistic new uptown they’ve labored 20 years to create. Beyond complaints about traffic snarls, it’s unlikely many Charlotteans realize what it…
‘cats, Goths & Golden ‘chutes
Welcome to another installment of Ask BWA. Thanks for sending in questions, so I don’t have to go on making all of them up. Now I only make up some of them. Send me your tongue-in-cheek questions about whatever issues are puzzling you by e-mailing me at the address at the bottom of the column.…
Hey Sister, Go Sister, Soul Sister
The CIAA’s Charlotte debut is cause for the city and local black community to put its best foot forward. And — this being the tail end of Black History Month — it’s a chance to further work out some of the lingering tensions of the New South’s afterbirth. I mention this because some people have…
Breathe at your own risk
Asthmatics living in Mecklenburg County: 55,350 Estimated number of yearly premature deaths caused by air pollution in North Carolina: 3,050 Number of coal power plants in North Carolina: 14 Number of Ozone Exceedance days in 1998 and 1999 before the Clean Smokestacks Act was passed: 138 Ozone Exceedance days in 2005: 20 Scheduled year that…
Tournament Game Schedule
Women’s Tournament began: Mon., Feb. 27. Women’s Quarterfinals: Tues., Feb. 28. Men’s Tournament begins: Wed., March 1. Men’s Quarterfinals: Thurs., March 2. Food Lion Day Semifinals: Fri., March 3: Women — 11am & 1pm. Men — 7 & 9pm. Ford Finals Night: Sat., March 4: Men — 6pm. Women — 9pm. OTHER EVENTS RUNDOWN: McDonald’s…
Stop Yelling Racism
It seems every couple of weeks or months we have the same conversation: Do uptown clubs discriminate against black people? I don’t doubt that some club owners don’t like black people coming into their clubs, just as I don’t doubt that some restaurants don’t like black people coming to eat. We can’t determine whether people…
Mambo Queens
Milton Scotty Bradley is just your average former personal trainer, sometimes go-go dancer, psychic, soft-hearted beefcake amateur private dick in a three-way, committed-but-open relationship. His love triangle is completed by beefcake retired FBI special agent Frank Sobieski and (say it) beefcake veteran private dick Colin Cioni, the latter two into voyeurism and role-play. Together, dressed…
Katrina with a Wrecking Ball?
William Perry couldn’t be accused of sugarcoating his feelings about the proposed demolition of Morningside Apartments. “For me,” the 75-year-old resident says slowly, “having to find another place to live would be just like a man-made Katrina.” Exaggerated as his comment may sound, people living in the 56-year-old complex just south of Central Avenue in…
Hard Acts to Follow
An exhibit of fine art prints that features the work of some of the greatest American and European artists of the 20th century would be a hard act to follow for many an artist. Young painter Christopher Clamp, whose one-person inaugural show, Commonplace Treasures: Narrative Still Life Paintings, currently on view at Melberg Gallery, is…
NASCAR Museum: The Proletariat’s Burden
The answer is: Wassily Leontief. Oh, I’m sorry. You want to know the question. Silly me. Who is responsible for Charlotte and Atlanta picking taxpayers’ pockets to fund a NASCAR museum? And, as I said, the answer is Leontief (1906-1999). The Nobel-winning economist fled the Bolsheviks. Yet, his work, often embraced by socialist countries, is…
Blackwood’s Bonanza
The stage is almost totally bare at McColl Family Theatre when you come in to see The Shakespeare Stealer. You can see the walls at the sides, far into the wings, and you can see the dark rear projection room high up along the exposed rear wall. But don’t take this minimalist artsy tableau as…
