Nov 24-30, 2009

Nov 24-30, 2009 / Vol. 23 / No. 39

Amelie’s hosts Sweet Notions Boutique Shopping Event

Your favorite French bakery is hosting a Sweet Notions Boutique Shopping Event tomorrow, Dec. 1. Here’s the info (via Amelie’s Facebook): Amelie’s is hosting a Sweet Notions Boutique Shopping Event on Dec. 1, 2009, from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Here’s what it’s all about: Sweet Notions collects, respects and restores beautiful accessories donated by…

Kimberly Lawson

Sale of the day: TRCW

According to scoopCharlotte.com, TRCW in Phillips Place is offering you 25 percent off a casual or cocktail dress if you donate your gently used clothing to their collection for the Harvest Center. They are looking for donations of  women’s jackets, sweaters, skirts, pants, dresses and outerwear and their donation campaign lasts through the month of November — meaning…

Kimberly Lawson

Worst ‘Family’ since Manson’s?

It appears that some conservative Christians have gone completely off the rails — unless there’s some hidden connection between “Christians” and “killing sick people.” The government of Uganda is considering legislation — unfortunately, no we’re not making this up — to execute HIV positive men. Execute, as in “put to death.” In addition, the law,…

John Grooms

N.C. gas taxes being drained by corporate leakers

People complain about the price of gas but rarely remember to include gas taxes in their rants — and they should, since those taxes make up a significant percentage of the price tag. So, what is that tax revenue being used for? You’re not going to like this … North Carolina is struggling to find…

Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman

The ‘bonus’ fiasco: It’s a language thing

It’s the issue that won’t go away: bonuses for local government bigshots. Now, Mayor-elect Foxx says he’d like for City Council to start talking about whether they’ll give bonuses next  year to the city manager and city attorney. Which leads us to what may seem like a tangent, but actually gets to the heart of…

John Grooms

Perino and Beck: Stupid Things of the Week

We’ve got two Stupid Things of the Week in one for you today. Think of it as a complement to those two-for-one holiday sales deals you’ll be seeing a lot of this weekend. First up is former Bush spokesperson Dana “I don’t know what the Cuban missile crisis was” Perino. On FoxNews the other day,…

John Grooms

Celebrate Lime Green Friday

Green With Envy is offering holiday tasties while you shop with them today. With as the vast array of merchandise, it’s going to take you a while to get through this store.

Kimberly Lawson

Big sale for NASCAR fans

The Souvenir and Race Ticket Blowout goes down Nov. 27 and 28 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. NASCAR merch galore, y’all. From the Web site: Lowe’s Motor Speedway will become one of the nation’s largest outdoor shopping malls on the day after Thanksgiving as more than two dozen souvenir rigs line its…

Kimberly Lawson

Thankful for Obama, sort of, more or less

Unlike some of my progressive friends and acquaintances, I can understand the humongous bailout of Wall Street initiated by the Bush administration and continued by Obama. Nearly all economists agree that we would be in a new version of the Great Depression if the government hadn’t stepped in. That doesn’t mean we have to like…

John Grooms

N.C. investigating Blue Cross’ robo-calls

You remember earlier this month when Blue Cross Blue Shield of N.C. (BCBSNC) sent out a ton of postage-paid cards urging people to send them to Sen. Kay Hagan and urge her to oppose health care reform? And no one can forget all those cheery, welcome robo-calls about the evils of reform and all the…

John Grooms

Shop local Black Friday sales: It’s the circle of life

Dear shoppers, It’s been a tough year for us all. We’ve had to budget more, eat less and maybe even skip our vacations (well, I’ve had to, at least). But now it’s the holiday season. And news broke this morning that the number of initial filers for unemployment insurance hit its lowest since Sept. 13,…

Kimberly Lawson

Red pumps, ties encouraged

I think for Christmas, I’m going to ask for a pair of red stilettos. This upcoming event,  The Red Pump/Red Tie Affair: A Stylish World AIDS Day Event, makes me yearn for them. From the good folks at JSW Media Group: JSW Media Group in association with The Red Pump Project is proud to host…

Kimberly Lawson

Red Hot Turkey Bash, 11/24/09

The annual Red Hot Turkey Bash was held at the Wachovia Atrium Tuesday, Nov. 24. The fundraiser featured live music from Liquid Pleasure, open bar, and food from restaurants like Enso, Strike City, Maggiano’s and more. The event proceeds benefitted the American Red Cross. Photos by Jeaumane McIntosh.

Priscilla Tsai

Sue and Muslims on NPR

In case you didn’t hear it on NPR yesterday, WFAE-FM contributed a good story by Julie Rose on Rep. Sue Myrick and her campaign against what the congresswoman sees as a widespread radical Muslim conspiracy within the United States.

John Grooms

Sophia

passion: “Creating, optimal living, truth and Real Estate.”

Jasiatic

Another day, another damned bonus

People in the United States are generally pretty mad — make that mad as hell — at those in charge of running things. That applies across the board, from right-wing Tea Partiers angry at the government and corporate bailouts, to progressives seething over corporate criminality and Obama’s failure so far to grow a pair. That…

John Grooms

Going handmade for the holidays

The scent of peppermint and pine needle, the warmth of the crackling fires, and our wallets beginning to feel light — these are all signs of the holiday season charging toward us, full-speed ahead. Even if you are waiting for good deals, Black Friday isn’t the only chance to find affordable gifts for your loved…

Samantha Webster

Concert announcement: Further

Further, a new band featuring Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, will be coming to the Bojangles Coliseum on Feb. 10, 2010. The band is made up of Lesh, Weir, Jeff Chimenti, John Kadlecik, Jay Lane and Joe Russo. Presale starts on Nov. 30. General sales on Dec. 11 at 10 a.m.

Jeff Hahne

Fleur De Lys: ‘Downtown style meets Uptown elegance’

Art Couture Consulting Services presents “Fleur De Lys,” an event where “Downtown Style Meets Uptown Elegance.” This black-tie semi-formal will showcase plus-size and men’s designer fashion from Scarlett Plus Size, DW Designs, Just Ramona from New York and will also include dinner from Villa Francesca. Other sponsors include Fleming’s Steakhouse, Greek Isles Restaurant, Lavecchia’s, No…

Kimberly Lawson

Sale of the day: Our Place

Fall items at Our Place, a women’s boutique in Phillips Place, are 40 percent off through Saturday. Go before the chaos on Friday. 6700 Fairview Rd # 104 704-554-7748

Kimberly Lawson

Tonight’s Top 5, 11/24/09

Here’s a list of the top five nightlife-related events tonight, Nov. 24, as selected randomly by the folks at Creative Loafing. • Charlotte’s Weekly EDM Community Event at Dammit Janet • Red Hot Turkey Bash at Wachovia Atrium • Opening Night for Charlotte Artery Group at The Works at Tutto Mondo • Simplified at The…

Kimberly Lawson

Holiday: The Carolina’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

In its 62nd year, The Carolina’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has become a tradition for many folks in Charlotte and the surrounding area. With finely decorated floats and a variety of participants and marching bands in line to strut through the streets of Uptown Charlotte, it’s something to experience. It’s kinda like the Charlotte version of…

Anita Overcash

Visiting some hippie hangouts

My friends call me a dirty hippie — yes, to my face — but I beg to differ. I’m more of a hygienic hippie. I mean, I do hot yoga, but I shower afterward. I just prefer to live a holistic, peaceful, Zen lifestyle — and that includes having an enlightened nightlife. So, you can…

COMEDY: Jon Reep

Thanksgiving may have been yesterday, but stand-up comedian Jon Reep is still stuffed. Filled with humor, this winner of NBC’s Last Standing Comic can dish out a hearty helping of hilarious, faster than you can say leftovers. Reep picks on Southern customs and living in the Bible-belt, along with his own family’s quirks and his…

Anita Overcash

Creative Lounging: Inside the Q.C.’s coziest new nightspots

Going to a nightclub in Charlotte is sometimes like going shopping on Black Friday: The lines are ridiculously long, the crowds are thick with intoxicated people (whether that be by alcohol or the high of a great sale), fights break out over an object of desire and you leave with a huge dent into your…

MUSIC: Trans-Siberian Orchestra

If you could mesh an off-the-hook opera performance with a blaring rock show, the end result would be something like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The group of multi-instrumentalist musicians, including founder and mastermind Paul O’Neill, is known for putting a rock-hearted spin on Christmas-themed songs. It will bring its very extravagant show — which features everything…

Anita Overcash

New Moon soundtrack is just one avenue for Band of Skulls’ music

There’s a lot of buzz going around the Internet these days about the next movie in the Twilight series, New Moon. Along with that is the accompanying soundtrack that’s garnering attention due to the presence of a Thom Yorke solo track juxtaposed with numerous talented bands that are familiar or unknown — Death Cab for…

Jeff Hahne

SPECIAL EVENT: The Pretty Things Peep Show

OK, picture this: Dita Von Teese gets it on with Criss Angel (Not really! It’s just a thought). Can you imagine how they would foreplay? The Pretty Things Peep Show is exactly how I would picture it. It features vintage-style burlesque dancers, as well as popular SuicideGirls Bettina May and go-go Amy. The jaw-dropping excitement…

Marian Drayton

20 years of Belmont Playboys

On Nov. 27, at the Double Door Inn, the Belmont Playboys will celebrate 20 years of making music with one helluva anniversary party. You can expect to hear new tunes, old favorites and a rarity or two (or more) when the guys — Mike Hendrix, Chipps Baker, Jeff Hendrix and Mark Painter — hit the…

Jeff Hahne

FILM: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope

The series “The Master of Suspense: Alfred Hitchcock Classics” continues with a screening of 1948’s Rope. Dismissed in many circles as merely a gimmick — Hitchcock shot this as if the entire movie was filmed in one long take (camera switches were made at discreet moments in the action) — this actually stands up on…

Matt Brunson

CL previews upcoming concerts (Nov. 25-Dec. 1)

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 25 Crowntown Showdown We can’t say it any more plainly. If you’re looking to get a good sample of local and regional music, all in one night and all for a low price, then this is your best bet. For $5, you get to see five bands – all of which go through…

THEATER: Grease

For many of us, reminiscing over the trials of high school isn’t fun. Broken hearts and crummy cliques dominated what should have been “electrifying,” you know, like in the film/musical sensation Grease. Its plot centers on the complicated, yet exciting, lovey doviness between a tough greasy-haired fella named Danny and a preppified cheerleading chick named…

Anita Overcash

CD Review: The Swell Season’s Strict Joy

The Deal: Oscar-winning duo, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, follow up critically acclaimed debut and soundtrack to the movie Once. The Good: If you liked the movie, soundtrack or first album, chances are that you’ll enjoy The Swell Season’s latest effort. While the debut and movie focused on Hansard and Irglova becoming a couple (which…

Jeff Hahne

EXHIBIT: Cool Stuff

After a lenthy series of renovations, Discovery Place is unveiling its newest interactive exhibit, Cool Stuff. It allows visitors to launch objects into the air, lie on a bed of nails, crush a garbage can, use a laser to listen to messages, and more. Now, that’s pretty cool. Located across from Cool Stuff, is Explore…

Anita Overcash

CD Review: Susana Baca’s Seis Poemas

The Deal: Peruvian vocalist and songwriter Susana Baca sings poems by Latin poets. The Good: Toning her voice for poems rather than songs, Baca expands her prowess on this six-song EP. The recording is musically flavored, albeit in sparse and unobtrusive manner, with Latin jazz and folk, and occasionally, a soft African percussive beat. The…

Samir Shukla

Yankee Tavern: Bold play tackles big issues

We’ve seen it before. Steven Dietz’s view of America, sampled here at the defunct SouthEnd PAC in God’s Country (2005) and Lonely Planet (2004), embraces paranoia, deceit and mass killing as the engines that drive our troubled lives. Those earlier plays were ominously topical, to be sure, Lonely Planet fixated on the AIDS pandemic and…

Perry Tannenbaum

Sarah Palin or Bob Dylan lyrics?

If you couldn’t get enough of Sarah Palin’s surreal mix of lies and fractured syntax last week, you’re in luck. One Internet smart-aleck described Palin’s thoughts during her Oprah interview as “stream of unconsciousness,” while another said of her tweets, “If fortune cookies were written by high school dropouts, that’s what they’d look like.” A…

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files

Repunzel: The parents of a 16-year-old girl called police after they realized that their daughter had run away from home. They told police that they thought she was upstairs in her room listening to music until they went to check on her. It was then that they noticed that she had repelled down from her…

Ryan Pitkin

PFLAG sets up shop in Gaston County

You’d think starting a gay rights group in Gaston County would be an uphill battle. We’re talking about the county where, in early 2009, commissioners voted to support a gay-marriage ban in the state constitution — an issue they have no authority to change. An area where there aren’t organized meeting places for the LGBT…

Cheris Hodges

What I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is here once again, and I must say that this year has been a good one. Heck, every year is a good one for me because regardless of what happens, I always see a light at the end of the tunnel. My best friend Cindy calls me an eternal optimist, which belies what I…

Nsenga Burton

Horoscope for Nov. 25-Dec. 1, 2009

Sagittarius The Archer (Nov. 22-Dec. 20): This holiday will be full of laughter, talk and play. You will be in touch with someone at a distance, perhaps one you haven’t seen for a long time. Relationships to siblings or roommates are highlighted. Old wounds, if they exist, may be healed. For All Signs: The “Hallmark…

Vivian Carol

‘Ho’ High School?: Pimp that if you will

Half of the minority students in our school system don’t graduate. The system is slashing programs for gifted children, and middle-class parents are fleeing. Half the kids left in our school system are now poor. All of the above is endangering what little stability is left in the county’s property values and making Charlotte a…

New Moon: Back into the Twilight zone

Hollywood’s second foray into the Twilight zone features enough fantasy and romance to satisfy most hardcore devotees of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga, but just as many viewers will notice that this is too often a case of the emperor — or, more specifically, buff teenage boys — wearing no clothes. A step down from last…

Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Nov. 25

THE BOX The Box is the latest picture from writer-director Richard Kelly, who with the cult fave Donnie Darko proved that he’s one filmmaker able to think outside the box (ouch). Adapting Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button,” Kelly has fashioned a complex tale out of a simple premise: A solemn stranger (Frank Langella) hands…

Matt Brunson

An Education deserves high marks

Coming-of-age movies are a dime-a-dozen, but one as exemplary as An Education deserves nothing less than the opportunity to command top dollar on the open market. Sensitively directed by Lone Scherfig and exquisitely penned by Nick Hornby (adapting Lynn Barber’s memoir), this lovely drama set in London during the early 1960s stays true to its…

Matt Brunson

Books not bombs

California campuses have been rocked by protests this past week, provoked by massive student fee increases voted on by the University of California Board of Regents. Following a year of sequential budget cuts, faculty and staff dismissals and furloughs, and the elimination of entire academic departments, the 32 percent fee increase proved to be the…

Amy Goodman

Precious: Raw and realistic

“Kitchen sink realism” was the term invented to describe a specific type of artistic movement that took place in England in the 1950s and 1960s, and here comes Precious to borrow that expression for a more modern, decidedly Americanized look at life among the lower classes. Adding to the appropriateness of subletting that term is…

Matt Brunson

The Blind Side too one-sided

Precious is different in that it allows an African-American character to tell her own story, never ceding the camera to anyone else and remaining the focal point throughout. The Blind Side is more typical of the sort of racially aware films Hollywood foists upon middle America, purportedly focusing on a black protagonist but really serving…

Matt Brunson

Suburban Japanese in Matthews: One-U

Weddington Road in Matthews has gone from cow fields to soccer fields in a decade. Where once a singular shopping strip graced that stretch of road, outcroppings of businesses abound. Before banks slashed payrolls and expense accounts imploded, the rolling hills of suburban Matthews had as much green as the Siskey’s playing fields. In the…

Tricia Childress

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