Over A Billion Served
One would think that China’s various cuisines, thousands of years old and feeding over a billion daily, would be better known in the United States. Unfortunately, examples of faithfully prepared dishes from the Chinese cuisines of Hunan, Cantonese, Sichuan and Taiwanese, for example, are infrequently found in the US, with the notable exception of San…
Acorn Planted In Charlotte
Last summer when Creative Loafing asked County Board of Elections Deputy Director Jo Winkler if anything stuck out to her as unusual about voter registration efforts for the coming election, she wrote the word “ACORN” on a piece of paper. The group, which had never been active in Charlotte before, seemed to be registering a…
Bunnies, Beans and Peeps
You’ve been really good. No candy for 40 days. OK, maybe you snuck a Snickers one weekend, but overall you’ve been very disciplined. But this Sunday, your Lenten fast is over, and it’s time to give your sweet tooth a workout. And confectioners all over the US are only too happy to oblige. Easter is…
AI Calls For Corrie Investigation
With all the sneering and giggling going on last week, it was hard to hear the more significant news. In case you missed it, last week marked the two-year anniversary of the killing of Rachel Corrie in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Corrie had been trying to stop the demolition of a…
Study, Sip & Spit
When I was a kid, I begged my parents to take me to buffets. My little mind figured that so much food in one gorgefest had to be a good thing. As I got older, and learned the unsettling facts of Germ Theory and the like, the hygiene factor got in the way of my…
Add It Up
¨Current minimum wage — $5.15 ¨Annual pre-tax salary of a minimum-wage employee working 35 hours a week with no vacation — $9,373 ¨Federal poverty guideline for a one-person household — $9,570 ¨Number of votes shy of the 60 needed two weeks ago for the US Senate to pass a measure raising the minimum wage to…
Wine List
Wine Classes Great for beginners. Every month on the first and third Saturday, 12:30-1:30pm. $15. Dean & Deluca Wine Room, 6822-G Phillips Place Ct. 704-552-5283. Wine Classes Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot : Celebrities. Mar. 29, 6:30-8pm. $30. Mint Museum of Craft & Design, 220 N. Tryon St. 704-344-8027. Wine Classes Grape Expectations Part 3.…
Just Say No To Fake News
It’s time to come clean about a secret I’ve been hiding for too long: I was once a VNR user. I was young and poor, working in a newsroom where you swept up before you left at night. It started out innocently enough: a quick 30-second hit of a Sea World Shamu VNR on the…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 6434-F West Sugarcreek Rd., 704-598-6863; 2001 E. 7th St., 704-342-0749. 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. (Gastonia), 704-866-7574. A favorite of…
News of the Weird
LEAD STORY: Vivienne, an interactive companion accessible on powerful, “third-generation” cell phones, was recently introduced by the Hong Kong company Artificial Life as a high-maintenance, video-image “girlfriend” who goes on dates with you, kisses, speaks six languages, converses on 35,000 topics, accepts flowers and diamonds, and may even marry you (though you also acquire a…
Turn Out The Lights
Saturday night, local octet Pyramid finally released their full-length debut, The First American, at the Neighborhood Theatre. It’s always equal parts shocking and gratifying when a local band can pack people in to a place this large, but Pyramid, like another local band, The Avett Brothers, seem to have hit on the right idea(s): Make…
String Theory
The Twinemen Billy Conway – along with most everyone else who’s in a band, wants to be in a band, or wants to manage or sign a band – is in Austin, Texas. The occasion, of course, is the annual SXSW music conference, the music industry clusterfuck-slash-behemoth that has become less and less of the…
G-Men Toast Irish Terrorists
I was touched, almost to the point of gushing green tears, when I read of George Bush’s St. Patrick’s Day soundbite with the family of Irishman Robert McCartney, who on Jan. 30 was beaten and stabbed to death outside a Belfast pub. The perps are presumably 12 members of the Irish Republican Army. These aren’t…
Disappearing Act
God, I envy insane people. Take Lary. He spent the entire day recently trying to bolster his theory that cats can’t see orange. “Seriously, you put orange stuff in front of them and they ignore it,” he says with actual awe in his voice. I try to remind him that his cat Mona ignores everything,…
Channeling Woody
He’s a genuine folk hero, a national treasure. His songs are part of the American landscape. But there’s more to Woody Guthrie than just his protest songs and his authorship of the folkies’ national anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” Digging through the Woody Guthrie archives on 57th Street in New York City, daughter Nora…
Gay Pride and Gay Porn
There’s a huge difference between gay pride and gay stupidity. Unfortunately, we’ve seen more of the latter around here lately thanks to a small number of gays who seem to think their sexuality excuses them from practicing the good manners and common sense I know their mothers taught them. In the process, they’ve put a…
Jocks on Dope
Leo Ramsey Software Designer “It’s a great victory for skinny infielders, and players who only hit bloop singles, everywhere.” Janey Nilshoople Orthopedist “I’m glad Congress found something to do now that they’ve solved all the rest of the country’s urgent problems.” Geneva J. Swinson Seamstress “If this doesn’t teach players not to take stuff that’ll…
See How Doe Is
Despite the fact that rock & roll isn’t far itself from retirement age, growing old gracefully in it is still a tall order. Second acts are still sneered at on principle alone, and for every Tom Waits or Patty Smith there’s a Mick Jagger and Madonna still sexin’ it up way past their sexin’ it…
A Schoolboy’s Tale
Marcel Proust had his madeleine. I have Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary. The French novelist, author of À la recherche du temps perdu, is famous for the passage where biting into a madeleine pastry brings back poignant memories of times past. For me, the same effect is achieved whenever I hear the trumpet and organ processional…
The Blotter
Sweet and Low: A middle-aged apartment dweller discovered that someone had cut the brake lines and poured sugar in the gas tank of his truck. The incident happened while the truck was parked outside his apartment. No Wedding Invite For You: A young man got into a verbal confrontation with his girlfriend’s stepfather while they…
Sit & Spin
50 Cent The Massacre Shady/Aftermath/Interscope Can anyone tell me why other than, say, his penchant for being a pincushion for stray ammunition, that 50 Cent sells so goddamn many records? For one, his lisp-y flow is mediocre at best, the Vanessa Carlton of The Hood. He disparages women every second song, tirelessly spins tales of…
See & Do
MARCH 23 – wednesday The Royal Shakespeare Company may have wrapped up its residency at Davidson College, but Break Thy Leg: Art and Design from the RSC Collection Exhibit will remain on view until April 15. Before the glitz and glamour of opening night, months of preparation go into every RSC performance, with highly specialized…
Music Menu
THURSDAY 3.24 Twinemen – Comprised of Dana Colley and Billy Conway from the late, great Morphine along with singer and songwriter Laurie Sargent, Twinemen still purvey the lo-rock sound that their former band made famous. But Sargent’s voice and the addition of multiple instruments and non-linear arrangements help keep the group from becoming mere methadone.…
Stargazer
Aries The Ram (Mar. 20 Apr. 19) You may have encountered an old wound or source of discomfort that needs to be healed. Make amends with friends or others with whom you have shared disagreements. The real wound is old history and it is probable today’s experience is not connected in any real way…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Mar. 23 Breakfast Club DJ Boney B Charleston Chops, Cornelius Kim Carper and Rodney SheltonComet Grill Open Mic w/ Bill McDonaldConnolly’s B.K. & ChrisCoyote Joe’s Out of the BlueDouble Door Inn Ginsu JukeboxThe Evening Muse Rod Picott w/ Rick Spreitzer and Kevin Edwards Milestone Horse Thief w/ Hulk Smash, Area Man, Ax & D-…
Love At First Bite
We liked Vampire Love in its original incarnation at Johnson’s Brewery in 2000, enough for us to proclaim Tony Wright’s script CL’s Best Original Show that year. The trashy, convoluted tale of deathless lust and adolescent rebellion seemed to roll out toward the roadhouse tables in the chthonic loft of the brewery with the quaint…
More Taste, Less Filling
The maxim that Less Is More gets taken for a test drive by Guess Who, a lightweight multiplex seat-filler that’s a loose remake of a motion picture routinely tagged with the label of “Hollywood classic.” Director Stanley Kramer’s 1967 Christmas release Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner turned out to be a gargantuan moneymaker (second only…
Curtis Turner, A Great Driver
With the world of NASCAR going uptown, following the money, its speedways dotting the urban countryside, it is easy to wonder if something fundamental is being lost. Not altogether, of course. There is, even now, the reassuring drawl of Earnhardt Jr. and the fender-banging competition of the sport’s new lions. Still, it’s different from the…
View From The Couch
BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON (2004). Bridget Jones is back, wobbly bits and all. Unfortunately, this follow-up to the delightful 2001 comedy Bridget Jones’s Diary is the laziest sort of sequel, lifting episodes wholesale from the first film before spinning off in directions that don’t even begin to make sense. So even though the…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Charlotte Symphony The Charlotte Symphony performs “The Music of Led Zeppelin: A Rock Symphony.” Amplified by a full rock band and accompanied by singer Randy Jackson. Fri., April 1, 8 p.m. $18-$38. Ovens Auditorium, 2700 E. Independence Blvd. 704-972-2000. First Tuesday Concerts Chamber Music at St. Peter’s presents Schubert’s “Rosamunde” String Quartet. AfterWork…
Film Clips
New Releases BORN INTO BROTHELS First, let’s give a round of applause to Wendy Fishman, Director of Film/Video at The Light Factory. Back in June 2004, after Born Into Brothels earned recognition at Durham’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Fishman managed to land the picture for a special Charlotte screening – an impressive feat considering…
Smooth Operator
Three servers encircle the six-top table beside me. In one well-rehearsed, choreographed move, they simultaneously lift the lids of the stainless cloche domes to reveal the six entrees. Ten minutes later, an even larger group of servers, expediters and busers perform another unveiling for a large birthday party in the back room. Amidst the chorus…
There´s A TV In My Dvd Player!
The advent of DVD may have been the best thing to happen to film geeks in a long time, but it hasn’t worked out too shabbily for couch potatoes, either. Much has been written about DVD being a boon for the movie industry, grinding the once omniscient videocassette market into the ground by offering films…
Peeling Back The Layers
Chef-owner Tim Henderson of Vidalia and Grapes brings tapas to the top of the dining experience and small portions with big taste to the table. When Vidalia and Grapes opened five years ago, Henderson made his mark in what is most likely considered to be the first tapas restaurants in town. Today, he considers his…
Should-A Beens
AMERICAN GOTHIC, a sort of deliciously twisted Southern Twin Peaks, starred Gary Cole as the charismatic yet evil Sheriff Lucas Buck and Lucas Black (Slingblade) as an orphaned boy who is really Buck’s son. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST starred The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton and Ron “Hellboy” Perlman in this 1980s romantic fantasy set in New…
