The Blotter
HUNGRY HELLIONS: Some unknown troublemakers, who apparently had the munchies, broke into a local high school and stole several cases of chips and candy, soft drinks, Gatorade, an ice chest, and two refrigerators. The crooks’ ill-gotten haul was valued at over $2,000. HUNDRED-DOLLAR BULLETS: A man called police after he discovered that someone had fired…
A Night at the Improv
There are many yardsticks by which to measure a city’s music fitness, perhaps none so overlooked or vital as its improvisational scene. What? You mean those a-tonal noise-fests that draw the idiot savants out from their hermit-like existences to share their misunderstood genius with half-a-dozen other beatniks? No, not really. Those misconceptions usually exist because…
News of the Weird
Who knew?: The unassuming town of Greensburg, Pa. (pop. 16,000, just east of Pittsburgh), was the site of two high-profile arrests recently. In July, James Kilpatrick, 21, was suspected as the man responsible for several toe-kissing incidents, including one underneath a public library table, when he allegedly kissed the feet of a 12-year-old girl and…
See & Do
SEPTEMBER 29 – WEDNESDAY Paul Krugman, economist turned pundit for the New York Times and author of the best-selling The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the 21st Century, has become one of the most quoted and respected columnists in America. Krugman will present the Wearn Lecture at Davidson College’s Duke Family Performance Hall at…
Sit & Spin
Giant Sand Is All Over the Map Thrill Jockey Howe Gelb and Giant Sand have wandered happily through the musical landscape for 20 years now. Like one of those fanciful 15th century mappe mundi with its colorful renderings of half-submerged mythic beasts and un-chartered coastlines, a Giant Sand record is more about the journey to…
Restaurant i Japanese Fusion Cuisine
Therefore “i” Am Exquisite Charlotte cuisine by the wharf Occasionally, I’ve gotten calls from out of town food show producers who ask where the best restaurant is by the wharf. I hate that CH confu-sion. “No, that’s Charleston,” I tell them. But honestly, I miss a wharf more than anything else here — well, except…
Ask the Advice Goddess
Some Like It Hothead I dated this girl for seven months. She was emotionally volatile, and would lash out at me inexplicably. Still, after a couple months she told me she loved me, and even said she’d marry me. Last month, halfway through a road trip, she broke up with me, saying she needed her…
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 9.29 Brand Nubian — The original members of this late 80s/early 90s quasi-militant rap ensemble have reunited for a new album and tour. Fire in the Hole is a return to the beats and poetic prowess that made them critical darlings. They imploded after early success and the members, including Grand Puba and Sadat…
Stargazer
For All Signs Our largest planet, Jupiter, moved into the sign of Libra on Sept. 24 and will remain in that sign for a full year. Jupiter is the planet of expansion, optimism, philosophy, travel and education. In Libra, Jupiter will expand our desire to make peace and create partnerships. Jupiter’s change of signs affects…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Sep. 29 Amos’ Southend Brand Nubian w/ DJ Ceez Blue Melinda Hansen, Royce Guin, Korey Dudley & Rob Knox The Boardroom Bar & Bistro David Harper Breakfast Club DJ Boney B Bricktop Lounge DJ Christian and Brigmunton Double Door Inn Wide Load McKenna The Evening Muse Alan Barrington George Washington Bookstore & Tavern, Concord…
Queens of Femininity
Off-Tryon Theatre Company, fresh from scoring an upset victory in the comedy category at the first-ever MTA Awards, now has pounced hungrily on the possibilities of producing Pageant. The Bill Russell/Frank Kelly book and lyrics (with comfortably forgettable music by Albert Evans) are an unabashed wallow in the ceremonies, stupidities, and outright objectifying sexism immortalized…
Terror Alerts
Mainstream movies can often cause career indigestion — just check out the case file on Julianne Moore. Clearly one of the three or four best actresses on the contemporary cinema scene, Moore’s independent film resume is pure gold: Far From Heaven, Boogie Nights, Short Cuts, A Map of the World, etc. Yet whenever a major…
9/11, Unmediated and Re-created
In a lengthy 1995 interview for The Comics Journal, while reflecting on the success of Maus, his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel detailing his father’s struggles for survival during the Holocaust, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman approvingly quoted the novelist Margaret Yourcenar: “The only way for art to happen is to have the confluence of personal and…
Plugged In
Film: PHREAKER Plot: The shady activities of a digital-age entrepreneur (Eric Wippo) land him in hot water with both the law (repped by Carl McIntyre) and a particularly vicious thug (John W. Love, Jr.). Guiding Light: Charlotte filmmaker Mark Young, who wrote and directed the movie. “I came to filmmaking as an artist,” Young explains.…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Burt Bacharach With numerous chart toppers, Bacharach has penned songs like I Say A Little Prayer, and will be joined by the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. Oct. 1, 8 p.m.; Oct. 2, 8 p.m. $18-$68. Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, 130 N. Tryon St. 704-372-1000. Canadian Brass The quintet presents works in the classical repertoire,…
View From The Couch
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004). The best film released this past spring found scripter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) coming up with another mindbender of a movie, an existential drama that, like a lovelorn Memento, often plays out in reverse order. When we first meet them, anally retentive Joel (Jim Carrey) and…
Therefore “i” Am
Occasionally, I’ve gotten calls from out of town food show producers who ask where the best restaurant is by the wharf. I hate that CH confu-sion. “No, that’s Charleston,” I tell them. But honestly, I miss a wharf more than anything else here — well, except a patisserie. Pike’s Market. Fulton Street. These are fond…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES GOING UPRIVER: THE LONG WAR OF JOHN KERRY Just as studios send out “For Your Consideration” screener cassettes to Academy members during Oscar season, what would it take for the Democratic party to bankroll distributor THINKFilm in order to ship out “For Your Election Day Consideration” passes to this film — not only…
A.M. Meeting & Greeting Eating
Breakfast is quickly replacing the business lunch. For one, bosses like to start the day off right. Others may decide to have a morning meeting near their house in order to avoid the morning mayhem. Some professionals, like real estate agents, attorneys, and mortgage brokers, prefer early morning meetings for their customers’ convenience. So, where…
Big Brother In Your Car
Deep inside the United States Department of Transportation, Big Brother is rearing his head. On the third floor of the USDOT building in the heart of Washington, DC, a shadowy government agency that doesn’t respond to public inquiries about its activities is coordinating a plan to use monitoring devices to catalogue the movements of every…
A Passion for Cooking
As the owner and Executive Chef of Sante, Adam Reed attributes his cooking style and his culinary ambitions to his familial French roots and influences. Growing up in a French family that included a long line of French chefs, Reed wound up creating food that he describes as, “American style cuisine with French influences, like…
A Marketer’s Dream
The purpose of the information superhighway is to save lives and ease congestion, insist the system’s biggest proponents. But the same people working to create the system also want to control it and profit from the information it collects. Chief among them is the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA), whose strategic goals include not…
Everybody’s Toque-in’
If you’ve been around Gateway Village in center city recently, you may have noticed an influx of big baggy pants. It’s not a meeting of MC Hammer revivalists, it’s Johnson & Wales culinary arts students garbed in traditional chef’s attire. The baggy pants allow for ease of movement — there’s a lot of activity in…
Only the Beginning
Over the last few years, Budget Rent-a-Car customers in Tucson, Arizona, have found out the hard way just how powerful modern auto tracking technology is. That franchise is one is one of several rental companies that now use Global Positioning System (GPS) and wireless technology to track the location of rental vehicles and fine customers…
Hummus: The seven-minute wonder
Among the canned tuna, pasta, olive oil, strong mustard and coarse salt on my pantry shelves, you’ll always find cans of chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans), plus a jar of tahini paste in the fridge. These items comprise my essential kitchen staples — the things that make it simple to whip up somethin’ when there’s seemingly…
Gang Of Five, Pt. 2?
This year, voters could wake up the day after the election to find that the infamous Gang of Five is back. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same gang that drew national attention to the county six years ago when it defunded arts groups over gay themes in a play. But right now, another group…
Thinking Inside The Box
Once, at an outdoor concert, my corkscrew went missing. While my friends watched with horror, I banged the wine bottle’s butt flat against a tree until it spat out its cork. Thankfully, I won’t have to worry about corkscrews much longer. For the first time in history, we’re getting vintage-dated, high-end wines with “alternative” packaging,…
We’d Rather Not
I’ve wrung my hands forever about the network TV anchorsauruses, the men we call Peter, Tom, and Dan, and how outdated the 30-minute, 6:30pm newscasts seem now. The giant cable universe, and the polarization of viewers to separate viewing camps, is well-documented in a recent Time cover story. The magazine examined how, when polled, liberals…
A Walk in the Park
The Festival in the Park has been a favorite of Charlotteans for a long time, and for good reasons. It lasts more than one day, and it doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. To boot, the Festival is now in its 40th year, so there’s a little bit of history involved. People that came…
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…
Here’s What It Takes
The school system’s attempts to explain why a student who had committed a sex crime at school was allowed to return are growing more bizarre by the day. A confidential memo from Superintendent James Pughsley to the school board two weeks ago only added to the confusion. Apparently, the police and prosecutors took the sexual…
Cat Walks
I knew it would be a strange week when — on the day Creative Loafing hit the streets with a cover story about the US government turning away a growing number of foreign artists — the feds sent Yusuf Islam packing. Somehow, Islam — aka 70s superstar Cat Stevens — showed up on a homeland…
Kings of Southern Rock
For the first time (aside from appearing at the same festival together back in 1974), the two bands usually credited with creating Southern Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band, are touring together. Upon the announcement of this seemingly inevitable pairing, discord quickly spread through the halls of CL — which act was the…
“Community” Means Being Connected
Charlotte loves the word “community.” It’s everywhere, from planners’ optimistic blueprints for a better society, to developers’ advertisements promising instantly cozy utopias. Everybody, it seems, believes in community. Everybody, that is, except most residents. Let me explain. The whole concept of community is based on connections — between people, between people and the places they…
Word On The Street
Scott Cohen Restaurateur “Absolutely. I mean, what if I turned on the TV and had to watch the Panthers play the New York Hebes? Think I’d be happy?” Maybonne Smith Librarian “Actually, I think all sports teams should have Native American names — especially lacrosse teams, since we stole the sport from them.” John Hauser…
Furtado Adds Country Flavor
When Tony Furtado expresses his musical philosophy, that background noise you hear is record execs tearing their hair out. “You can’t play a type of music just to please people,” says the former Grand National Banjo Champion. “Every couple of years I just refocus a little bit and make sure that I’m doing what I…
Letters
Walters Knows It’s the 21st Century Thanks for the interesting articles over the past few weeks from David Walters. He is the only voice that speaks about design in Charlotte. Judging from all the construction cranes uptown, the city is moving fast without a peep from the people. Charlotte really is the “City of Consensus.”…
