Ginger’s Spice
Rock & roll and debauchery go back a long way. Ever since Les Paul streamlined the device we now know as the electric guitar, the resulting tumult has led to hip-shaking, lovemaking, and the teeth-gnashing of upstanding citizens everywhere. Britain’s Wildhearts not only took musical cues from their rock forebears, but they also nabbed their…
Brave New Word Warriors
The battlefield in the Brave New War of Words expanded considerably this past week, triggered by Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, caught in an unguarded moment calling neocon allies of President Bush “the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I’ve ever seen.” The Republican National Committee demanded an apology from Kerry in a…
Screwin’ and Strokin’
Early last week, I got an e-mail from Wilson, the popular radio personality from WRFX 99.7. The one-named host was putting on something he referred to as a “Screw-off,” and invited fellow Loafer Tara Servatius and me to be celebrity judges. I told him he might want to reconsider referring to yours truly as a…
Who’s Really Got the Funk?
Parliament/Funkadelic’s funky mantra from 1974’s Up for the Down Stroke — “We want the funk! Give up the funk!” — made them undisputed rulers of the funk universe. While fans might have thought the message was directed at them, by that time the band’s original members were asking leader George Clinton to give up some…
Dream the Impossible Dream:
The best way to grasp the reality of Charlotte’s traffic situation is to think in terms of Chief Traffic Engineer Bill Diller’s dead body. Diller, a middle-aged guy who isn’t exactly at death’s door, is frank about the fact that by the time the city and the state get around to improving many of the…
Green Acres Syndrome
When my husband recently slipped in a reference to us possibly “living out in the country someday,” I instantly squeaked, “OH NO! Not you, too! One of the reasons I picked you was that you didn’t have that typical guy fantasy of living in the sticks! In the times you’ve totally ticked me off, I’ve…
Sit & Spin
Iron & Wine Our Endless Numbered Days SubPop For as long as there have been 4-track recorders, there have been sad, shy boys who have used them to record their every wounded thought. Deemed lo-fi or, more recently, sadcore (by those who like to label things), it typically revolves around a singer-songwriter who digs overdubs…
Shopping for Reality
The revelation that North Carolina’s top tourism destination is a shopping mall tells us much about our society. In a state blessed with abundant natural beauty, it’s rather sad to think that our favorite destination is Concord Mills Mall, a generic, over-hyped playground that offers predictable, canned environments designed primarily to lift money from our…
Earth-shattering Shopping Extravaganza
Rustee Baucom Daycare center owner “My best friend and I are shopaholics so we went the very first day and bought some really cool tops. We were so excited, we celebrated later with Kamikazes at Harper’s. Our ex-husbands would be livid if they were still around, but no-o-o, they couldn’t handle the credit card bills.…
Music Menu
THURSDAY 3.18 David Childers — DC and Co. ripped through a brief but incandescent set of hard-rockin’ material recently at the Alejandro Escovedo benefit, proving that this foursome’s engines hum as well at 90mph as they do at 55mph. Lead guitarist Randy Saxon can make like Clarence White with the chicken pickin’ on the slow…
Letters
Where’s Counterpoint? I am disgusted by the photo on the front of your rag of film critic Matt Brunson with a crown of thorns on his head and the sarcastic headline about “Bashin’ the Passion.” You would think that since you went to the trouble to insult Christians with that photo and a bad review…
The Blotter
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY CON JOB: Two different men found job listings online for a security guard opening at a local business. Both men paid an average of $890 for a gun, uniform, and various other items, but after their checks cleared, so did the employer, and they never heard a word again about their supposed jobs.…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Mar. 17 Amos’ Southend Bonepony Ballantyne Resort The Sinatra Experience Baoding Robert Fernandez Big Al’s Pub, Mooresville Jes & Sherry Blue Carl DiPonziano Bonterra Kim Carper, Van Sachs & Gerard Benson Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Comet Grill Anamcara w/ Oliver Mulligan, The Relics Double Door Inn Jabberwocky The Evening Muse Girlyman w/…
News of the Weird
F for failure: New York City high school chemistry teacher Elihu McMahon, 69, reports daily to a do-nothing job — at $77,000 a year — as the result of being ordered out of the classroom based on various complaints and administrative findings. According to a February New York Post story, he has spent about three-fourths…
See & Do
MARCH 18 – THURSDAY What has Theresa Bedell, journalist for a New York magazine, done to inspire the obsessive devotion of Tony after just one dinner? Very little. And that’s the horror of Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl, chronicling a blind date from hell. A gentle “no” makes little impression on Tony, and an emphatic…
The Thrill Is Gone
In the new psychological thriller Secret Window, Johnny Depp plays a successful author who’s trying to figure out why a Mississippi hayseed (John Turturro) keeps terrorizing him. In the current drama Twisted, Ashley Judd stars as a detective trying to uncover who’s killing all her former lovers. The mystery of both these films — indeed,…
Ask the Advice Goddess
Putting on the Grits I have a fantastic new girlfriend. I could really see having a future with her. She says she feels the same. There’s just one problem: She’s in a rock group, and they’re recording an album. I know her music means a lot to her, but I worry that her career will…
Cinematic Messiah
It’s perhaps the most unexpected box office smash since My Big Fat Greek Wedding walked down the aisle to the tune of $240 million. While commercial prospects were strong for The Passion of the Christ, no one could have predicted that it would cross the $200 million threshold in a mere 12 days (the third…
Stargazer
For All Signs The Sun moves into Aries on Mar. 20 at 1:49am EST. Thus begins our first official day of spring, the day the Sun appears to cross the earth’s equator from the southern hemisphere to the north. This change marks the first day of the year in zodiacal time, and symbolically augurs new…
View From The Couch
THE COMMITMENTS (1991). It’s hard to picture the director of Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning as the contemporary answer to Vincente Minnelli, yet Alan Parker has directed more musicals than any filmmaker regularly working today. But The Commitments, an immeasurably entertaining look at a Dublin soul band, is not only the best of Parker’s output,…
Black Slaves, Black Masters
Irene Honeycutt, founder of the Central Piedmont Spring Literary Festival, likes to tell the story of how she discovered author Edward P. Jones when, by chance, she caught Jones’ appearance on the Jim Lehrer show. “As soon as he (Lehrer) started interviewing Edward P. Jones, my ears perked up,” she recalls. “He responded so well…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES SECRET WINDOW This dum-dum drama is about an author who’s accused of plagiarism, and one has to wonder whether this irony was lost on writer-director David Koepp and author Stephen King (on whose novella this is based). Secret Window is nothing if not a pastiche of past big-screen thrillers, recycling most of its…
Depta Nose Best
After seeing the towering Frank Langella in the title role on Broadway back in 1997, I admit that I wasn’t eagerly awaiting Epic Arts Repertory Theatre’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac when it was first announced last summer. Edmond Rostand’s tragicomedy was a flamboyant gesture of defiance against the realism and naturalism of its day,…
Livin’ La Vida Charlotte
Nationwide, salsa is now more popular than ketchup. The mojito is one of the most popular cocktails in Charlotte. And ceviches and moles are showing up on upscale New American menus around town. Charlotte, the sleepy banking town that fun forgot, is morphing into a culturally diverse city. Need some epazote, an Aztec herb? You…
Editorial Artist
Charlotte painter and printmaker Polly Dove Lamal doesn’t paint or draw peaceful landscapes or decorative still-lifes. Her fine art is more like the work of editorial cartoonists and makes biting comments about our society. Even her drawings of pieces of pie have a bite — she personifies each slice with incisors. In person, Lamal is…
Killer Eats
Food, glorious food. We love it. We need it. More than half the country is overweight because of it. And we all have our favorites. Family recipes and local restaurant dishes that we turn to again and again, to celebrate special occasions, comfort us when we’re upset, or simply to save us the trouble of…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Alice Coote A concert by mezzo soprano with pianist Julius Drake. Tue., March 23, 8 p.m. $10-15. Sloan Music Center, Davidson College, Davidson. 704-894-2101. Anonymous 4 An international vocal ensemble will perform as part of their farewell tour. www.cultureandheritagemuseums.org. Sat., March 20, 8 p.m. $15, $12 CHM members, $5 students. McCelvey Center, York,…
Take This Tip and Shove It
You can tell a lot about people from their gripes. And some gripes mean more than people think they do. Our national obsession with service workers, for example. Americans spend an awful lot of time and energy worrying about the quality of service our minimum wage minions provide — food servers, in particular. It’s possible…
Food Trends 2004
Even with Krispy Kreme’s recent report that their earnings doubled in the fourth quarter, other food outlets and manufacturers are seriously looking at the impact the low carb dieter is having on the food industry. These days, it’s low carb anything. This month Heinz rolled out their one-carb-per-serving ketchup while Unilever announced a new line…
Crash (and Burn) Diets
Go to any grocery store. Go to any fancy restaurant. Hell, go to any restaurant, down to and including those fast-food chains so questionable that folks have even stopped joking about eating there. Atkins, Atkins, Atkins. It’s everywhere you look. America is in the middle of one of the biggest and most enduring full-blown diet…
Spain: More than Rioja
Spain has regretfully been the redheaded stepchild of the wine world. Besides the occasional cheap red gem or expensive Rioja, I considered “quality Spanish wine” an oxymoron. But after a recent trip with a flock of wine journalists, I can now drunkenly report my wrongness. We spent a week exploring the northern wine regions of…
Bar Hopping
The first energy bar I ever ate tasted disgusting and I devoured it in less than a minute. That was three summers ago in the muggy shade of some oak trees along a mountain bike trail. My legs covered with the viscous mud that forms when loose dirt mixes with sweat, I had just slumped…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 400 S. Tryon St., 704-339-0303; 2001 E. 7th St., 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. $$ Azteca, 116 Woodlawn Rd., 704-525-5110; 9709 Independence Blvd., 704-814-9877; 1863 W. Franklin Blvd.…
If Ashcroft Were Uninsured…
From the moment Attorney General John Ashcroft was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis on March 4, he without a doubt received the best and most efficient medical care in the world. While Justice Department officials haven’t released many details, the Attorney General, because of his status, was most likely whisked through the emergency room at George…
Alone Again Naturally
Seeing a rock band collectively tear into one of their own tunes, it’s easy to forget that song probably began life on a gently strummed acoustic guitar in somebody’s bedroom, alone with its creator. That’s the lure when someone normally surrounded by a band and a wall of noise performs their music stripped down to…
Where Are The Big Boys?
After last week’s announcement of the formation of C-SET, the Charlotte Bobcats’ regional sports TV network, headlines focused on the fact that in order to watch 60 Bobcats games, you’ll need a digital cable hookup. That’s still true, until C-SET signs up other regional cable outfits to run the channel, and sells a smaller package…
