May 15-21, 2013

May 15-21, 2013 / Vol. 27 / No. 12

Cover Story

The 2013 Fiction Issue

For the first five years that I lived in Charlotte, my mother called me religiously (pun intended) every Sunday evening at 8:30 from her cellphone. She’d be just leaving the night service of her church, driving home. Before asking me about work or launching into a story about locking my dad out of the house…

Youth is served at the Blumey Awards

For the record, South Mecklenburg High School’s entry in the 2nd Annual Blumey Awards was their production of The Wiz. This will probably be news to most of the audience who packed Belk Theater to capacity for the Blumey ceremonies on Sunday night. Whenever an announcement of a South Meck nomination started booming over the…

Perry Tannenbaum

Book review: James Salter’s All That Is

Midway through James Salter’s new novel, his first in four decades, an editor at a small New York City publishing house has to turn down a novel from an aging writer still respected for a book or two early in his career. This latest novel, the editor/protagonist Philip Bowman says, is “done elegantly enough but…

John Schacht

Today’s Top 5: Monday

Here are the five best events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area today, May 20, 2013 as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing. * Isabel Wilkerson at McGlohon Theater * Kitten at The Fillmore * Mayhem Monday at Sanctuary Pub * Monday Night Allstars at Double Door Inn * Karaoke at Dixie’s…

Anita Overcash

Raising the bar: Building a cocktail culture in Charlotte

A decade ago, Charlotteans were in search of top-notch dining experiences. We have that now: imaginative, highly skilled chefs, stunning local produce, achingly gorgeous restaurants. Today, the national culinary focus has turned to cocktails, and not just the dressed-up, put-an-umbrella-in-it variety. I mean real cocktails created by inventive bartenders. But for Charlotte to create a…

Tricia Childress

High stakes at the Blumey Awards

The nominees have been announced and 15 winners will be named at the 2nd Annual Blumey Awards this Sunday evening at Belk Theater. Thirty-two high school musical productions are competing for bragging rights from across 16 counties in the Metrolina region. So literally hundreds of performers, teachers, classmates and proud parents will be sweating out…

Perry Tannenbaum

Puppets invade Theatre Charlotte

Lovers of irreverence can rejoice greatly, for the potty-mouthed puppets of Avenue Q are bringing their song-and-angst routine to Theatre Charlotte. Recent college grad Princeton is the newest tenement tenant on this queer city block, wondering how he can parlay an English degree into a livelihood while instantly smitten – how could he not be?…

Perry Tannenbaum

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (May 16)

Feel the burn: Police responded to a vandalism call last week in west Charlotte after a man got too heated during an argument. The 22-year-old victim told police that the suspect came into her home through a rear window and tried to take a television that he said belonged to him. The woman and three…

Ryan Pitkin

Star Trek Into Darkness: Beaming with pride

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS ***1/2 DIRECTED BY J.J. Abrams STARS Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto One of the promotional posters for Star Trek Into Darkness depicts a damaged Enterprise free-falling toward the planet below it, but any worries that J.J. Abrams’ series reboot will experience a similar tumble with this second installment can immediately be laid…

Matt Brunson

The Great Gatsby: Novel approach mars novel adaptation

THE GREAT GATSBY **1/2 DIRECTED BY Baz Luhrmann STARS Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire One of the Ten Commandments of movie reviewing, at least in The Gospel According to Matthew Brunson, is that “Thou shalt not compare the film adaptation with its source material.” As completely separate art forms, it’s a ludicrous exercise, and the only…

Matt Brunson

Fortune Feimster visits The Comedy Zone

We’ve got to hand it to comedian Fortune Feimster. She impersonates Honey Boo Boo well. From spastically dancing in a pink tutu to guzzling Go Go Juice, she captures the wild spirit of 7-year-old pageant queen Alana Thompson from TLC’s Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. But channeling the pint-size tornado seems to come from a…

Joanne Spataro

Design geek Aaron Draplin offers budding entrepreneurs advice

I came dragging into an Uptown office building at about 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, not really knowing what I was doing there. I knew that more than 100 members of Charlotte’s “creative community” would be in the house to listen to some speaker from out of town, and my recent desire to do more with…

Ryan Pitkin

Fork it over with Wenonah Hauter

Wenonah Hauter wants to start a debate. The lifelong activist and executive director of Food & Water Watch, a watchdog agency and nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., wrote the book Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America to get the conversation going. In Foodopoly, Hauter casts a deep and bold…

Keia Mastrianni

In the streets: Brass Connection

It’s nine o’clock on a Friday night and abnormally cold for May. Four members of Brass Connection are camped out at the intersection of Trade and Tryon, seemingly oblivious to the dozen or so passersby who have now stopped and are waiting for the band to play. Casual conversation between band members suddenly turns into…

Ladianne Mandel

Center of the Sun battles beyond shoegaze label

In the case of Machine Gun — the debut LP from Charlotte’s Center of the Sun — the title of the opener is far more telling than the song’s sound. Guitars chime from far off, blurred by reverb and delay as similarly shrouded female coos offer a tender invitation. It’s shoegaze at its most delicate…

Jordan Lawrence

Princes of the Internet: Museum Mouth

A life-sized cardboard cutout of the Grim Reaper looms behind Karl Kuehn. He lounges awkwardly to one side so the thing shows up on camera, laughing at his own joke. The Museum Mouth drummer is in a Google Hangout with his bandmates: guitarist Graham High, wearing the T-shirt of a public school sharing his name,…

Corbie Hill

Picking sides in the World Baseball Classic

In March, as college basketball teams competed over the NCAA’s highest honor, my family was more invested in a different sporting event: the World Baseball Classic. This fairly new tournament — this year marked its third edition — brings together 16 national teams from five continents for two weeks of play. The winning country is…

Ailen Arreaza

Weekly horoscope (May 16-22)

Taurus The Bull (April 20-May 20): You may be experiencing a re-enactment of an old scenario, particularly in relation to authority figures. Before you go into reflex mode, consider responding differently than you have in the past. At least make an effort to understand why you are struggling. It is time to let go of…

Vivian Carol

Busk! a move

Remember when The Washington Post sent renowned classical musician Joshua Bell to perform in street clothes at a busy metro station? The Post recorded the details, which showed the violinist being largely ignored by passers-by. The human experiment went viral on YouTube and reminded us of the importance of slowing down. But did all those…

Anita Overcash

A beautiful mind in Proof

As Christian as the concept may be, forgiveness is not at all pervasive in theater works, especially in drama, where there’s more mileage per grudge. Yet in Proof, David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama now at CAST through June 1, forgiveness is as crucial to our heroine’s growth and mental well-being as self-respect. People that…

Perry Tannenbaum

1st Place: ‘The Second Coming’

Jesus came back last Sunday. Satellite photos show the initial break in the atmosphere around 11:00 a.m. I Googled the images. They’re insane. Regular imaging just shows a big hole in the clouds, but on the infrared you can see a giant heat spot directly over the southeastern part of the United States. It’s so…

Emilia Fuentes Grant

2nd Place: ‘On Meeting God’

When the end came, she wasn’t ready, though the jagged lines down her thin white arms might have told you otherwise. The pain was gone, she was sure of that, but beyond that, she didn’t know what else to expect. She wasn’t even sure if she could move, or if she even were a “she”…

Sarah Klapprodt

3rd Place: ‘Sanctuary to Sanctuary’

I traded in my Sunday morning church-going with going out every Saturday night to a bar, aptly named Sanctuary. It’s the type of place where if a fight broke out, the crowd might cheer for a few minutes before trying to break it up. Until a couple years ago, I was a twice-a-week church-going Christian.…

Kelly Jo Bladl

Oprah ‘It Girl’ chooses JCSU

Some might say Nompumelelo “Mpumi” Nobiva was born lucky. As a gangly 13-year-old, she managed to convince Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King that she was an “It” girl. Now 20, the Johnson C. Smith freshman gigglingly confesses, “I don’t know what I came up with; I didn’t even know what that meant!” Tall and athletic,…

Emiene Wright

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