Oct 16-22, 2013

Oct 16-22, 2013 / Vol. 27 / No. 34

Cover Story

The elusive James Beard Award

Television has the Emmy. The film industry has Oscar. Collegiate football has the Heisman trophy. The culinary world, though, has the James Beard Foundation metal — honoring chefs, restaurateurs, food bloggers, cookbook authors, mixologists and even restaurant designers. Since the James Beard Foundation (JBF) awarded the first recipients in 1990, the awards have grown in…

Tricia Childress

Theater review: Good People

Like so many playwrights since theater was birthed by the ancient Greeks, David Lindsay-Abaire relishes those moments when the underpinnings of a worthy person’s self-concept are suddenly ripped away. In Fuddy Meers, amnesia tore the heroine’s world apart; in Wonder of the World, it was the discovery of her husband’s secret fetish that pitched Cass…

Perry Tannenbaum

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (Oct. 17)

What a gas: Police responded to a theft call near Carowinds last week after a man duped a gas station out of some gasoline. Employees told officers that the man pulled up to a pump at 11:30 p.m. and somehow rigged it to dispense gas without charging him any money. After filling his car, he…

Ryan Pitkin

Escape Plan: Last action heroes

ESCAPE PLAN ** DIRECTED BY Mikael Håfström STARS Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger “It’s not a tumah!” declared Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1990’s Kindergarten Cop, one of the few instances when the muscle-bound actor knew how to properly deliver one of the countless quips that he was handed over the course of his career. Because let’s face…

Matt Brunson

Paradise lost

PARADISE *1/2 DIRECTED BY Diablo Cody STARS Julianne Hough, Russell Brand Where’s Jason Reitman when you need him? He seems to possess the magic touch when it comes to directing scripts penned by Diablo Cody, as witnessed by both Juno (for which Cody won a well-deserved Oscar) and the underseen, underrated Young Adult. But under…

Matt Brunson

CD Review: Heads on Sticks’ Phantasm in Tutu

Heads on Sticks started as a side project. Raleigh’s David Mueller, the bassist in Birds of Avalon’s hugely hooky psych-rock, established the moniker six years ago as a catch-all for his self-recorded tinkerings. With 2010’s Mocking Bird, he established a clear direction, contorting kinetic dance jams and shading them with all sorts of experimental grime.…

Jordan Lawrence

Unnatural Selection

Voir dire: the process by which a judge and attorneys ask prospective jurors the same question 10,000 ways, until only 14 people are left alive. I’m guessing it’s French for “to die of boredom.” It was looking like I’d be a juror in a rape trial. I’d survived about 8,000 versions of the question when…

Kim Green

Grand Theft Auto V: A steal at any price

When Grand Theft Auto V, the latest installment in Rockstar Games’ controversial video game franchise, was released last month, it broke industry sales records by earning $800 million in the first 24 hours of its release and $1 billion within its first three days — making it the fastest selling entertainment product in history. Set…

Adam Frazier

Congo Week features purposeful partying

Funk. Art. Tech. Congo? Maybe not the most intuitive progression in American minds — you may instead jump to images of child soldiers and war crimes — but the makers of Congo Week/Congo Strong want to create a fuller impression of their homeland. “Kony 2012 was good to bring attention to the situation and shed…

Emiene Wright

Weekly horoscope (Oct. 17-23)

Libra the Scales (Sept. 22-Oct. 22): The probability is high that you will discover some error made in the past that must be rectified fairly soon. It may be as simple as finding a bill that was left unpaid. Or it could be a little more complicated. For All Signs: We have the eclipsed full…

Vivian Carol

Monday Night Allstars still shine

If you ever closed your eyes and listened to Charles Hairston sing, you might not have believed that the resonating, soulful R&B voice was coming from his five-and-a-half-foot frame. His stage presence easily overshadowed his stature and by the end of the first song, sweat beads would be glistening on his forehead. Hairston poured himself…

Jason King

Music, beer and more at Brewzfest

God Save the Queen City, TreasureFest, RecessFest, A.W.O.L. … Charlotte music fans love a day-long music festival. And with plenty of local breweries popping up, it makes sense to combine both passions into one big event. From that idea, Cameron G. Lee, founder of the entertainment company CLTure, created Brewzfest, with the help of Rockhouse…

Jeff Hahne

Immigration reform advocates arrested

You know what’s a really good conversation starter? Sharing the story of how I got arrested when I was 7 in Cuba. I guess technically, it wasn’t an arrest. I didn’t get fingerprinted and there isn’t a mugshot of me in pigtails, both teeth missing, floating around some file cabinet in Havana’s police department. You…

Ailen Arreaza

Citizens Review Board proposed reform will change little

At a city meeting on Monday, Sept. 24, the Citizens Review Board task force offered suggestions in response to the community’s outcry for reform of the board, which oversees citizen complaints against Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. But the recommendations essentially maintain the board’s ineffective appeals process. In its 16 years of existence and of the 79 cases…

Isabel Carson

Activists talk turkey … and blast the dangers of GMO

On a crisp autumn morning in Huntersville, a turkey is preparing for an act of rebellion. The gangly brown bird clutches a low-slung pine branch, hops twice in a flurry of rustling feathers and flapping wattle, and in one brief, awkward moment, flies. “No industry turkey is capable of roosting off the ground,” says Jonathan…

Sara Patterson

Artist Colleen Galeazzi brings life to discarded instruments

Anyone who has ever tinkered with anatomy models will have quickly discovered the complexity of the human body. Outlining the placement of the skeletal and other vital systems and mapping major organs, arteries and veins, the scaled-down plastic kits assist in helping us to understand human anatomy. Not that this is must-have knowledge — plenty…

Anita Overcash

Carmen: Ready for a baseball dance?

Sasha Janes had no idea that he would ever be choreographing a new version of Georges Bizet’s Carmen until the morning when N.C. Dance Theatre artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux called him into his office. On the heels of his triumphant Dangerous Liaisons last season, Bonnefoux wondered whether Janes might have another torrid one-act up his…

Perry Tannenbaum

The Pull List (10/16/13): X-Men Legacy builds its own

It’s probably no surprise that this week’s Title You Can’t Miss is an X-book. Mutants have had no shortage of coverage recently, even in this column. But this humble honor doesn’t go to a book within the Battle of the Atom storyline: This week, we’re talking about X-Men Legacy. The arc of Legion (a.k.a. David…

Andy Smith

Project Censored’s most underreported news stories of 2013

This year’s annual Project Censored list of the most underreported news stories includes the widening wealth gap, the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaking classified documents, and President Obama’s war on whistleblowers — all stories that actually received considerable news coverage. So how exactly were they “censored” and what does that say of this…

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

The government shutdown, my boyfriend and me

“Babe, can we survive financially with me being off for 4 to 5 weeks?” That was the text message Kenny, my boyfriend of more than four years, sent me a few days ago. As one of 76 percent of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, I wasn’t sure how to respond. Before that text message,…

Kimberly Lawson

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