Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: My love life is terrible. I have been divorced almost five years; all my friends have been divorced and married. I don’t even have a prospect. I had an affair with a married man about two-and-a-half years ago. Could this be bad karma messing up my love life? Please help me cleanse.…
Coffee Jones
I just woke up and need a fix bad. Can’t think straight, flesh nagging, can’t hardly move until my addiction is sated, till the stuff gets in and makes me OK for a couple hours. I begin by boiling water. Find the bag of dope and spoon some of the fine, pungent grains into a…
Domestic Bliss
The domestic interior has long been an honored subject of paintings: Just think of the deliciously poignant work of the Dutch master Jan Vermeer. Something of this lustrous quality of commonplace events bathed in glorious light can be found in Philip Geiger’s New Paintings on view at Hidell Brooks Gallery through June 15, 2002. Geiger…
Darkness Visible
For several years I’ve been writing a book on the nature of innocence, studying the changing meanings and cultural significance of innocence and the causes of its recent, drastic devaluation. The metastasizing scandal in the Catholic priesthood is more than another chapter I have to write; it’s like an entrance to the catacombs — God…
Bena’s Back In Town
Lovers of good Southern fiction have been waiting nearly two years to learn the fate of Verbena Eckerd. When we last heard from the woman everyone calls Bena, she was reeling from a double-barreled blast of bad news. After an Alabama state trooper tells her that Bobby, her husband, has been killed in a car…
Summer’s Coming — Get Out The Oxygen!
If you’ve lived through a Charlotte summer in the past few years, we don’t have to tell you how bad the air gets: hazy, thick, yellow, just plain nasty. Not to mention really unhealthy. It’s gotten so bad, and so little apparent progress has been made toward fixing the problem, people tend to turn the…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music American Guild of Organists Recital Series featuring Stephen & Susan Talley and Laurel Talley on violin. Sun., June 9, 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public, a free-will offering will be taken to cover the costs of the series. Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1000 E. Morehead St. 704-588-1290. American Guild of Organists Summer…
Public Info or Campaign Brochure?
Callers to Creative Loafing wondered if the sheriff of Mecklenburg County had started his political advertising early. An eight-page special advertising section published in the Charlotte Observer two weeks ago even confused a former member of the county board of elections, who called to ask why Sheriff Jim Pendergraph hadn’t put the legally required notice…
Main Street, USA
Raccoons, bluebirds, toads, and turtles are not the only victims of the Charlotte metropolitan area’s sprawl and urbanization. Also rapidly vanishing are the area’s long-standing restaurants — those places that add character to our culinary repertoire. Thus, if only to maintain a few distinctive spots, it pays to patronize the ever-decreasing number of these neighborhood…
Arena Foes Laying Low
This week, the Charlotte City Council semi-officially kicked off the newest round of scrambling for a new arena. At an economic development meeting, committee chairwoman Lynn Wheeler laid out a process for once again pursuing an arena. But not a peep was to be heard out of the vocal opposition group Citizens Opposed to Sports…
A Cajun Farewell
The Charlotte Hornets are now officially the Cajun Hornets. All it took was several years of disingenuous negotiating on the part of the Hornets, inept leadership on the part of the city, fiscal shortsightedness on the part of the league, and a classic case of fans cutting off their noses to spite their unsaved face…
Letters to the editor
What’s Right For The Child To The Editors: Admittedly, I have had issues with Lucy Perkins’ column in the past, but I felt compelled to write this time and express my heartfelt agreement with the sentiments she shared in her latest article, “All In The Family” (CL, May 22). I am a social worker in…
Myth Busters
As much as we try to cut through all the crap perpetuated by wine snobs, there’s still a lot of misleading info out there. Take the old story about sniffing corks. This ritual does nothing to tell you about a wine’s quality, yet lots of people still think they’re supposed to do it. Myths about…
Teen Green
Green Cheese: Two Mondays ago, Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre played host to a teen-friendly bill the likes of which probably won’t be matched this concert season. You had the omnipresent Jimmy Eat World, whose song “The Middle” is played by modern rock radio at the middle of the day, the beginning, the end, and all places…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 400 S. Tryon St., 704-339-0303; 2001 E. 7th,, 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. $$ Fuel Pizza Cafe, 1501 Central Avenue, 704-376-3835; 319 W. Trade St., 704-344-1767; 404 S.…
Terror, Terror, Terror
The city suffered through a nightmare week in the grip of unrelenting terror — just as W. & Co. said we would. It all started when the Bush administration decided the best way to deal with growing concerns over their mishandling of pre-9/11 warnings was to scare the hell out of everybody. “Saddam Hussein has…
The Tao Of Poo
Going to see a live band is always a foray into the unknown. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen ’em. It doesn’t matter if it’s a local club show or an all-ages basement blowout. There are just too many variables. Now, having said that, there are certain elements you can count on; band…
Sting Is Staying If Support Is There
Charlotte’s best professional sports team looks to repeat last year’s championship runWhen the Charlotte Sting tips off its 2002 season June 1 against the Los Angeles Sparks, the question won’t be whether the team will be fun and exciting. Given that all starters are returning from last season’s Cinderella run to the Eastern Conference title…
Rekindling The Fire
* Tom Byars (ex-Cyclone Mack) is back in action with Out of the Fire, a band he originally formed back in 1984 with Bruce Joyner of the LA punk band The Unknowns (circa late 70s/early 80s). Back in the day, the band worked with R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, who produced some of their material (Buck…
I’ll Give You Vision
June 2010: It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. The uptown arena was supposed to be an economic booster, not an economic sinkhole. But things didn’t go exactly as planned, probably because no one took the time to plan exactly how they would go. In the beginning, it seemed that there was no way…
Tall In The Saddle
This Tuesday, the Fuel 2000 label issues Ride Pony Ride, a terrific new anthology documenting The Golden Palominos and their 1980s underground avant-funk clique. Built on the rhythm of drummer and bandleader Anton Fier, the band’s ever changing coil featured ace players like saxophonist John Zorn, guitarists Nicky Skopelitis and Arto Lindsay, and bassists Bill…
All Work And No Pray
Despite certain pervasive problems within our country, not to mention our speckled history, one thing that stands out about the United States is our willingness to combat prejudice. Certainly, we have not always been unprejudiced and we’re not unprejudiced now, but it’s still impressive that in only 200 years Americans have made inroads against gender,…
Soundboard
Wednesday, May.a29 * Amos’ Southend King’s X w/ Tapping the Vein Arnie’s Tavern, Huntersville Scott Johnson Bayou Kitchen Bill Noonan Big Al’s Pub, Mooresville Jes & Sherry Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Cajun Queen, Pineville 7th Street Gator Band II Charlie Brown’s, Charlotte Robin Brown Connolly’s Craig & Rich Acoustic Dilworth Coffeehouse Open Mic…
The Blotter
* And the Oscar Goes to” A pregnant woman in Charlotte? The key scene involved an argument between the woman and a friend, on the subject of her pregnancy. The friend pushed the woman against a wall and kicked her four or five times, causing her many bruises and a black eye. According to police,…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 5.29 Bill Mize — Mize is a Tennessee acoustic finger style guitarist and past winner of the National Finger Style Guitar Competition. One of his pieces, “The Road Scholar,” was also included on the Narada Records Masters of the Acoustic Guitar CD, and he’s released four records independently during his career. In other words,…
Bats In The Belfry
* High school baseball pitcher Daniel Hannant, after being hit in the head by a line drive, filed a lawsuit in Chicago in April against the makers of Louisville Sluggers, claiming that the company’s aluminum bats are “unreasonably dangerous” to pitchers because they are designed to hit baseballs very, very hard. * Kinder, Gentler Revolutionaries:…
8 Days A Week
WEDNESDAY 29 The Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte presents David Linsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers tonight through June 16 at Spirit Square. Showtimes are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday June 16 at 2pm only. Tickets are $9 tonight for opening night, June 4 is Pay What You Can Night, and all…
You Don’t Know Jack
If the James Bond film series evokes the spirit of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray — after 40 years, the secret agent with a license to kill hasn’t aged one iota — then the Jack Ryan franchise would suddenly seem to have established some sort of link with H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.…
Dud to Stud
Women have always had a nasty reputation of wanting what they can’t have or have been told they don’t need. It typically applies to tangible items such as cars, clothes, and jewelry. More often it applies to the opposite sex. The names in this story have been changed to protect the guilty. A few weeks…
Enough: Mental Apted-tude
It’s rare enough when one director has two movies opening in the same year, but in the same week? That’s the present situation in Charlotte, as last Friday saw the local releases of both Enigma, already playing in limited release around the country, and Enough (* out of four stars), opening nationally. This side-by-side release…
Stargazer
For All Signs Saturn and Pluto have completed the last of three precise oppositions, but the ongoing theme will continue for several weeks. Saturn represents the status quo, tradition, and business as usual. That which has been the custom for a very long time is like a block of concrete, not readily moved or changed.…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES ENIGMA Although equally responsible for the repellent Enough, director Michael Apted puts his considerable talents to better use with Enigma, a wartime thriller centered around the complex code the Germans used during World War II and the British masterminds who tried cracking it. Dougray Scott stars as Tom Jericho, a codebreaker who, after…
