Blacktop Burger Blues
Table Dancing Recently, I returned home from a five-day mini-tour of the East Coast. Having traveled to Florida to see a few Major League Baseball spring training games, I was forced to eat all my meals away from the friendly confines of my own kitchen or favorite local haunts and watering holes. Perhaps you’ve run…
CL’s 19th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards
It was a year when new theater companies came and went. And old ones upped and died — or took seriously ill. Yet, late in 2005, new growth appeared on the landscape. Amid the hoopla of the new Charlotte Bobcats Arena — and the celebrated implosion of the old convention center — something fresh and…
Rockin’ in the Free World
AUSTIN, TX — The confluence of the South By Southwest music conference hitting its 20th year and this Texas town’s reputation as a bohemian haven and key music capital meant that, above all, the 2006 SXSW lived up to its reputation as a summer camp for music heads. The event, held last week, totaled five…
There is No Pain
With Isaac Hayes’ recent departure from South Park over a shocking (shocking!) satire of Scientology, I feel I must begin with Mr. Leonard, who, though only a minor character in Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch, is a faith healer from Scientology’s faith-healing older uncle, Christian Science. OK, actually he doesn’t so much heal his patients…
T.I.: It’s hard to be “king”
It’s been an interesting year for hip-hop. Three 6 Mafia stunned America by becoming the first rap group to perform at the Academy Awards, and then again by actually walking away with the Oscar for Best Original Song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” from the Hustle and Flow soundtrack. T.I., a native of…
The Big Picture
Want to see the big picture, see many become one? It’s about inclusiveness, baby. We’re all tiles in a big, beautiful mosiac, and everyone fits in somewhere. Pettyness is passé — it’s time to get with the program. Project Hello www.projecthello.org Drive Project www.driveproject.com TIME cover art www.npg.si.edu/time AIGA design archives www.designarchives.aiga.org mosaic atlas www.mosaicatlas.com
The Stems
The Stems may have fallen off the radars of most American music consumers — after all, it’s been 20 years since the Australian combo’s day in the sun, and even then it was limited to college radio. But among collectors of powerpop, garage and psych, the quartet still casts a long shadow. Formed in Perth…
South Africa Trumps the South
It’s easy enough to coin the phrase “South by South Africa,” the ersatz festival that is nearly midway through its run from January through June. Gathering groups from across the Metrolina region under this umbrella hasn’t been too difficult for the Arts & Science Council. The lustiest contributors have been Winthrop University, the Levine Museum…
Do you wanna dance?
It’s a fecund time for female artists. In addition to Chan Marshall’s latest are recent outstanding releases from Neko Case (The Fox Confessor Brings the Flood), Beth Orton (The Comfort of Strangers), Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis (Rabbit Fur Coat), Isobel Campbell (her collaboration with Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas) and Tres Chicas (Bloom,…
New South Meets Old Europe
When I drove my friend Lisa Max Stybor, an artist and design professor from Germany, down to Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, last week, I didn’t know what to expect from the invitation that took us there. The invitation for Professor Stybor, a Fulbright alumna, was to speak about painting and teaching design at…
Two’s Company
What is this crazy little thing called bandmate love — and why does it rotate around so many tight twosomes in rock & roll these days? Witness down-to-basics duos such as bluesy garage skronkers the White Stripes and the Black Keys, spastic experimentalists Hella and Helio Sequence, and nerve-frying electronic units the Metal Hearts and…
T for Terrific
One irate citizen’s Margaret Thatcher is another’s George W. Bush, which might explain why writer Alan Moore has distanced himself from V For Vendetta, the big-screen adaptation of his influential graphic novel. Penned in 1989, Moore meant for his work to be taken as an indictment of Thatcher’s conservative platform in England. The screen version,…
Alien Territory
Chairperson Bitsy Harrison: This meeting of the South Park Symphonettes will come to order, y’all. Y’all know why we’re here — we all agreed to Vi’s idea to expand our mission statement beyond the Summer Pops series and start checking out things going on outside South Park — even though Vi was a little over…
New Kid In Town
Each time a new movie theater opens in Charlotte, its owners plug it as a state-of-the-art facility featuring amenities never before seen in the Queen City. In most cases, that’s true: On the local moviehouse timeline, it really wasn’t all that long ago (the 1990s, to be exact) that stadium seating and armrests with cup…
Black is as Black does
“You are a good type of black person. You speak so well and you have a good job.” In some form or fashion, that caveat has been cast on people of color all across the nation. The incessant need for others to classify my blackness in the context of some arbitrarily defined scale of honorable…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: About a year ago, I bought a condo in an “up and coming” part of town, although my neighbors and I later agreed that the realtor’s description really meant “you might get your car broken into.” We also had other problems around the building. A neighbor got harassed by a homeless guy…
What’s next for the Big “O”?
Word of a newspaper’s sale often elicits strong reactions from the people who produce and read it. When an out-of-town company known for cutting costs, for example, purchased the family-owned Herald-Sun in Durham, some staffers lucky enough to dodge layoffs quit anyway, and readers expressed dismay at what had happened to their hometown paper. Don’t…
Letters
Geek Love I am a little disappointed in Jared Neumark’s article “Street Geeks” (March 15). I expected to read a refreshing critique about local artwork; but instead he personally attacked some of the artists he interviewed. It is one thing to write your opinion about the work that an artist presents in a public forum,…
Carolina War Casualties
This past Sunday marked the third anniversary of the War in Iraq. While this would be a perfect opportunity to berate the Bush administration for its laundry list of impeachable lies, incompetent actions and war crimes related to the senseless invasion, we at CL prefer to use this space to pay tribute to our fallen…
Pain in the face
Until Saturday, I would not have said the word “bullfrog” fit into the description of my face. Not that I have a perfect face — far from it — though my upper teeth are regrettably perfect now. I had braces put on them when I was 20, not by an actual orthodontist, mind you, but…
Don’t Panic…Your War Questions Answered
Three years ago this week, US forces invaded Iraq. As of March 17, the US Department of Defense confirms that 2,309 American soldiers have died in Iraq. To date, 16,653 American soldiers have been wounded. The Pentagon doesn’t provide many details about wounded soldiers, so it’s unclear how many of those include maiming or permanently…
Stargazer
Aries The Ram (March 20 — April 19) This is a good period for progress in your career or other work in the world. You are concentrating well. Love and social life is also given a green light. It is a good time to resolve any lingering problems and release energy in your life for…
Short List
Dozens Attend Anti-War Rally in Charlotte on Sunday Meanwhile, scores of Charlotteans attended Olive Garden’s early-bird Sunday rush. Senator Russ Feingold Proposes to Censure Bush Over Domestic Spying A Democrat with a spine? That’s kind of like a Bush supporter interested in facts. Bar Patron Dies Doing the Right Thing A Knightdale man who decided…
Lipstick Bingo
Nine men, two with beards, glammed-out in more make-up than a band of prostitutes, twirling in nun outfits like delicate tranny swans — it can mean one of two things: either I’m having my recurring bearded-nun dream or Gay Bingo is at it again. Having seen sparse turnouts at every event I’ve attended in Charlotte…
Sex Education, CMS-style
The members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board have clearly lost their minds. This week, the board is grilling Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Interim Superintendent Francis Haithcock, who is competing for the superintendent slot, about her vision for the future. Instead, the board should be grilling her about why the school system broke state law and violated its…
View From The Couch
THE BUSBY BERKELEY COLLECTION (1933-1934). During Hollywood’s Golden Age, MGM was renowned for its musicals while Warner Bros. largely earned its reputation with its slate of gangster flicks. Yet as the studio that produced The Jazz Singer — the first talking picture and the first musical — Warner wasn’t exactly tone-deaf, and during the early…
Film Clips
New Releases ASK THE DUST Movies don’t get much more languid than Ask the Dust, yet for all its lackadaisical moseying when a trot here and there might have helped, the picture isn’t easy to shake. Scripter Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning genius behind Chinatown in the 1970s and the gun-for-hire behind Days of Thunder in…
See & Do
Wednesday, March 22 Since no club in the Charlotte area has seen fit to bring the great indie/art-rock band Stereolab to this part of NC, you’ll have to hoof it up to Chapel Hill and catch the group at Cat’s Cradle. It’ll be worth it. From the band’s beginnings as students of Krautrock acts like…
Feel The Burn
CORKSCREW It smells like skanky, stale vodka when you sniff your first one. Then it singes your throat with its flaming jet-fuel flavor, making your throat beg for mercy. Sake. This memory is why I avoided it for so many years. But recently a sake enthusiast transformed me, and I learned that this drink, the…
DINNER AT TIFFANY’S?
Yes, we’re all aware that the name of the movie is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But this isn’t some Truman Capote extravaganza starring Audrey Hepburn as girl-on-the-go Holly Golightly. Holly’s idea of her “mean reds” being allayed by a visit to that most elite of stores doesn’t even come close to the very real effects of…
The Whole Enchilada
“Will that be the 16-ounce Margarita, the jumbo size?” our server asked. Hmm. This sounded promising until we figured that two 16-ounce jumbos at $7 each was the same price as getting the 60-ounce Margarita pitcher for $14. That explains why everyone has pitchers of margaritas on their tables and why the owners named this…
The Blotter
Brat Bust: A man entered a gas station and walked over to a hot dog machine. He took three wieners valued at $3.87 and ate them while standing at the machine. The manager asked the man if he was going to pay for the pork products he had just consumed. The man said he had…
