CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 VOL. 30, NO. 34
1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM
th
ua 29ann
l
1 2 A huge thank you to all our sponsors s r e e t n u l o ,v s t n a ip ic t r a ,p s vendor e t t o l r a h c f o t s e b g in k for ma a huge success!!! 2 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
Saturday
Sunday
O ctOber 15
O ctOber 16
F orlorn S trangerS H H H H H D aviD C hilDerS and t he S erpentS H H H H H
Dixie Moon BluegraSS H H H H H StepSiDe Deluxe
Over t he Rhine
H H H H H
Jim AVETT
Jam Sessions with Catawba River Bluegrass Association, Food Trucks, CornholeTournament, Family Activities and more. S ponSoreD B y
S tage S ponSor
B anD S ponSorS
C ornhole t ournaMent S ponSor 6500 South New Hope Road Belmont, NC 28012 Ph: (704) 825-4490 www.dsbg.org
Thanks CL readers for Voting us Best New store!
Visit us in Plaza Midwood for great gifts and accessories for men and women. Find us @cltchit 1512 Central Ave Charlotte, NC 28205 (704) 375-2444 CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 3
Selling Your Strongest Self:
Cut the Bullsh*t!
Join us! for a lively #DSPeakUp interactive discussion!
featuring PR expert Rachel Sutherland of Rachel Sutherland Communications!
Do you find it easier to talk about all the things your counterparts and friends are doing rather than yourself? Rachel Sutherland has been there, but emphatically says “Get over it!” Learning to speak strongly and clearly about what l you love and what you do is imperative to the success of your brand and your business!
Facilitated by Donna Scott.
Monday Oct. 17th 6:30 - 8 p.m. Wine and light appetizers will be served. Free admission, but RSVP required Limited seating available RSVP: http://bit.ly/28ZsNAa Donna Scott Productions’ Women Entrepreneurs in Business and Arts Speaker Series
Charlotte Art League 1517 Camden Road in South End
4 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
Carolina Book Fest 2016 Authors are swooping in to the Queen City to deliver an event you will not forget! Join us to meet over 90 bestselling authors from all genres!
October 15, 2016 Marriott City Center Charlotte, NC
Author Signing/Meet & Greet: 10-3pm Monster Mash After Party: 7:30pm-10pm CONNECT WITH US: www.carolinabookfest.com
www.facebook.com/carolinabookfest carolinabookfest@gmail.com
HAS ARRIVED IN CHARLOTTE
OPEN NOW!
8110 University City Boulevard - 704-509-2542
CLOAF - Coupon must be presented at time of purchase. Offer valid on any one non-discounted regularly priced item at ANY Bargain Hunt store. Excludes discounted merchandise, TVs, sale items, and/or clearance items and major appliances under the BBA deal code family. Coupon applies only to one single item (not entire purchase). Limit one (1) coupon per customer. Excludes prior purchases. Coupon valid through November 13, 2016. CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 5
CREATIVE LOAFING IS PUBLISHED BY WOMACK NEWSPAPERS, INC. CHARLOTTE, NC 28206. OFFICE: 704-522-8334 WWW.CLCLT.COM FACEBOOK: /CLCLT TWITTER: @CL_CHARLOTTE INSTAGRAM: @CREATIVELOAFINGCHARLOTTE
STAFF PUBLISHER • Charles A. Womack III publisher@yesweekly.com EDITOR • Anita Overcash aovercash@clclt.com
EDITORIAL
NEWS EDITOR • Ryan Pitkin rpitkin@clclt.com STAFF WRITER • Madeline Lemieux FILM CRITIC • Matt Brunson mattonmovies@gmail.com THEATER CRITIC • Perry Tannenbaum perrytannenbaum@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS • Corbie Hill, Erin TracyBlackwood, Vivian Carol, Charles Easley, Chrissie Nelson, Page Leggett, Alison Leininger, Sherrell Dorsey, Dan Savage, Aerin Spruill, Chuck Shepherd, Jeff Hahne
ART/DESIGN
GRAPHIC DESIGNER • Dana Vindigni CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS • Justin Driscoll, Brian Twitty
ADVERTISING
To place an ad, please call 704-522-8334. SALES MANAGER Aaron Stamey • astamey@clclt.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Candice Andrews • candrews@clclt.com Melissa McHugh • mmchugh@clclt.com ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Pat Moran • pmoran@clclt.com
FREE STUFF! CLCLT.COM/CHARLOTTE/FREESTUFF
Creative Loafing © is published by CL, LLC 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd., Suite C-2, Charlotte, NC 28206. Periodicals Postage Paid at Charlotte, NC. Creative Loafing welcomes submissions of all kinds. Efforts will be made to return those with a self-addressed stamped envelope; however Creative Loafing assumes no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. Creative Loafing is published every Wednesday by Womack Newspapers, Inc. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. First copy is free, all additional copies are $1. Copyright 2015 Womack Newspapers, Inc. CREATIVE LOAFING IS PRINTED ON A 90% RECYCLED STOCK. IT MAY BE RECYCLED FURTHER; PLEASE DO YOUR PART.
A MEMBER OF:
6 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
HEIDI MAY
18
20
Henry Rollins performs at McGlohon Theater on Oct 18.
COVER STORY DAY OF THE ALMOST DEAD: Local artist puts a twist on the traditional Mexican holiday.
BY PAGE LEGGETT THIS WEEK’S COVER, FEATURING A PHOTO OF BY JUILO GONZALEZ, WAS DESIGNED BY DANA VINDIGNI.
10
NEWS&VIEWS CRUNCH TIME: Two North Carolina natives discuss all things election with just a month left. BY RYAN PITKIN 12 NEWS COLUMN 12 THE BLOTTER 13 NEWS OF THE WEIRD
14
FOOD GETTING CRABBY: Navigating all-you-can-eat crab hot spots in Charlotte. BY CHRISSIE NELSON 16 THREE-COURSE SPIEL
22
ARTS&ENT COLORING THE COURT: Art Chansky discusses
Game Changers. BY CORBIE HILL 24 FILM REVIEWS
28
MUSIC
TIME TO BASSH: Matrimony members’ side project forges a new path. BY ANITA OVERCASH 30 CD REVIEW 32 SOUNDBOARD
18
ODDS&ENDS
18 TOP 10 THINGS TO DO 34 MARKETPLACE 34 NIGHTLIFE 35 CROSSWORD 36 SAVAGE LOVE 38 HOROSCOPE
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 7
ACTIVIST JOBS
*TO HELP STOP LGBT BULLYING*
FIGHT HATE GROUPS TEACH TOLERANCE SEEK JUSTICE
SOUTH CAROLINA STATE FAIR OCTOBER 12 - 23
RIDES ARE PAY-ONE-PRICE EVERY DAY SOUTH CAROLINA STATE FAIR
ARTS & DRAUGHTS
Full Time & Career Opportunities Earn $360-$535 a Week Call 980-819-0959 GrassrootsCampaigns.com
COLUMBIA MUSEUM OF ART NOVEMBER 11 MOUNTAIN GOATS
The Salvation Army is hosting an
AUCTION Every Mon-Fri
930am-11am
Closed Sat,Sun and Holidays
GERVAIS STREET BRIDGE DINNER OCTOBER 23
$2.oo
JAM ROOM MUSIC FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 12
THE ROOT DOCTORS AT DOWNTOWN JAMS
Bidding Fee
(non-refundable)
Auction Location:
1023 Central Ave Charlotte, NC 28204 704-332-1171
Show this Ad for 8 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
1 Free Bid
LEXINGTON ICEHOUSE AMPHITHEATER - OCTOBER 27
VISTA LIGHTS NOVEMBER 17
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 9
NEWS
FEATURE
CRUNCH TIME Two North Carolina natives discuss all things election with just a month left BY RYAN PITKIN
W
HEN REGGIE LOVE signed up for an internship on Capitol Hill in 2006, he had no idea how quickly the opportunity would turn into a role in a historical presidential campaign that ended with him serving as right-hand man to the leader of the free world. From his 2008 campaign until December 2011, Love served as President Obama’s “body man.” In charge of Obama’s news, music and other media, Love was expected to know the President’s needs before even he did. Love visited his hometown of Charlotte — he attended high school at Providence Day School before going on to become a football and basketball player at Duke University — on Oct. 5 to speak with students at Johnson C. Smith University about the importance of voting. It was one of multiple trips he’ll make to colleges around the state throughout October. Creative Loafing caught up with Love on campus that morning to chat about how life has changed for him since leaving the White House to complete his Executive MBA, his personal relationship with Hillary Clinton and his thoughts on watching the Charlotte Uprising take part in his home city while he watched from his home in Washington D.C. Creative Loafing: What do you miss most from your time in the White House? Reggie Love: I miss the people. There’s nothing better than working with people who you’re on the same team with who are just good people who you show up everyday to go fight with. But to work on such interesting topics and such interesting issues that had a significant impact on the lives of people, I think that’s what I miss the most. I also miss information. You always know what’s going on and you get to learn about a lot of different things — high-level information — from very, very smart people.
10 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
PETE SOUZA
Reggie Love (right, seated) watches a March Madness basketball game in 2010 with President Obama, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and senior advisor David Axelrod in the Outer Oval Office. What do you miss the least? I do like weekends. It’s like they’re this amazing thing. Saturday, it’s like there’s this whole day that’s really mine. I didn’t realize it was something that’s important to me until … basically I didn’t realize what it was like to have a free Saturday until I graduated business school. What are your thoughts on this year’s election? I think it’s one of the most important elections that we probably will face in the next two decades, because I think Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party have a chance to really build upon a lot of the great work that this president has already started to begin. That’s everything from social justice issues to equal wage pay and
the execution of the Lily Ledbetter Act, to the passing of the Affordable Care Act. And I think continuing to work on income inequality as a whole [is important]. During this president’s administration you’ve seen wages increase. Income inequality is one of those things that I am so dumbfounded how people think that Donald Trump is someone that even understands the idea of what income inequality is. Like a guy who has basically never paid taxes has no idea what it’s like to struggle. I think people like the President and Hillary, they’ve sort of come from a world where they know what it’s like to be on the other side of it, where you’ve had to work and scrap and it’s difficult and challenging, they know what it’s like. You’ve said of your personal relationship with Clinton that you were taken aback by how kind she was. Why
does she deal with a reputation for being cold? I think the way people report women is different than how they report men, so there’s a bias that we have. I think there are times when a woman can say something and people will be like, “Oh well, she’s a bitch.” A guy can say the exact same thing and they’ll be like, “Oh, he’s tough.” What made you want to participate in this tour of local universities? You see all the crazy stuff that our state legislature has done to try to prevent people from being able to register or to prevent them from being able to vote, so I want to be a part of the conversation to let people know that their voice matters and taking part in the political process is important. If
we really want to see our country continue to make the strides and the growth that we’ve made over the last few years in righting a lot of things that were kind of jacked up, people need to vote. They need to go out and need to show their support.
important that we both elect Roy and break the supermajority in one of two chambers. Are you optimistic of that? I fully expect that we will break the supermajority in one of two chambers, and that’s not political BS, I’m telling you it really looks probable at this point.
What are your thoughts on the recent unrest in Charlotte? How does that tie in to your talks on the political process? I think we do have biases, and the bias isn’t trained, they’re not things that academies are teaching. You turn on the TV, you read the newspaper, you do any social activity, everything that we do innately has biases embedded in them. What is very important is to understand that we have those biases and to understand that, for one, we may not even be able to change them. Even if we have these in-depth conversations about them, people still may have biases. And to be totally honest, I’m sure that Keith Lamont Scott had biases against white people and other people as well. But the thing is that the bias should never be so strong that police officers feel like they need to use lethal force. My hope is that by being a part of this conversation we can come up with structures in which we can have communities that are working and living with law enforcement officers that don’t feel that the only way to solve an issue or to subdue someone is by using lethal force. Can we expect you to run for office in the near future? When I was in school, I had my own biases about the political process. I was like, “Well, the only way to do anything is if you’re rich.” And I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not the case. There’s a real opportunity if you are vocal, if you’re active and if you’re engaged and involved to make a huge difference and to make a huge impact — to change lives and to change outcomes for the lives of people. So I hope that whatever capacity I’m able to be a part of, whether that’s as a candidate, staff level, surrogate, fundraiser, whatever, I always plan on having an active voice and an active role.
ANOTHER CHARLOTTEAN WHOSE arrival in the political realm was perhaps even less expected than Love’s is N.C. Sen. Jeff Jackson. Jackson, a Chapel Hill native, says he remembers leaving work as a criminal prosecutor in Gaston County on March 26, 2014 and being told in passing that Charlotte’s mayor, Patrick Cannon, had been arrested by the FBI.
How much of the time in which you’re campaigning for your own reelection do you also spend campaigning for Cooper and others?
N.C. Sen. Jeff Jackson As a Charlotte resident himself, Jackson was interested in the news, but never thought it would affect him. Soon, N.C. Sen. Dan Clodfelter was appointed to take Cannon’s spot and friends were suggesting that Jackson — a National Guard veteran who had served in Afghanistan but never involved himself in politics before — throw his hat in the ring to replace Clodfelter. “If it had been a normal election, I would’ve lost. There would have been someone with more name recognition and more money,” Jackson says. “But because these three doors opened up, some unknown, basically reasonable and basically decent person got to enter the system. It was a fluke.” Creative Loafing spoke with Jackson in his Uptown office recently about the upcoming local elections, youth skepticism with the political process and how we can make more “flukes” happen. Creative Loafing: Which one campaign this election season do you see as most important to the average Charlottean? Jeff Jackson: No question, Roy Cooper [who is running for Governor against incumbent Pat McCrory]. I’m all for Hillary, I’m all for Deborah [Ross, who is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Richard Burr], but if Roy Cooper doesn’t win, then we are in the swamp for at least another 4 years. Because of gerrymandering, it is impossible to take back the majority in either the [North Carolina] House or Senate. The only way to get a seat at the table is to be able to sustain a governor’s veto. If Roy doesn’t win [long sigh] and here’s the thing, if Roy wins but we don’t pick up four seats in the House or five seats in the Senate, then his victory is largely symbolic, because all of his vetoes get overridden. That’s why it’s so
Every stop. I tell people, “If y’all don’t vote for Roy Cooper, I just don’t know what to tell you.” I need a friend in the governor’s office. North Carolina needs a friend in the governor’s office. I tell them what an amazing race Deborah Ross has run, really the most remarkable story, certainly in the state, this year. To come from 15 points down to basically tied is remarkable. Then I always try to put Josh Stein on their radar, who’s running for attorney general. That race doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage but it will be crucial, and to me, the choice is clear. What do you say to people who are on the fence about the value of becoming politically active? For example, members of the Charlotte Uprising who have long felt left behind by both parties? I get the frustration with the lack of progress. I get the cynicism about the political system, but there is no path to sustainable change that doesn’t go through our political system. There is no choice but to be committed to political solutions to these problems. As elusive as those solutions appear, it is the only way to create true change. I am deeply sympathetic to the frustrations of those who have seen very little action from politicians on these issues for decades. But I would caution those individuals to make sure that their skepticism doesn’t become cynicism. It’s one thing to be deeply skeptical, but at the point where that crosses into outright cynicism, it’s difficult to work together with other people to create change. What about folks who feel skeptical about both presidential candidates and don’t want to vote for either? I would say to people who have a preference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, please express that preference by voting for one or the other. If you truly don’t have a preference between the two and you think they’re equally bad, that’s a separate conversation we need to
have, but if you have a preference please pick one or the other, because if you don’t, you are delegating that responsibility to the rest of us. I truly feel my conscience could not bear the weight of not doing everything in my power to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. That is clearly the overriding moral imperative in this election. I wish this election were a high-minded debate between two political forces offering genuine policy ideas, but it’s just not. There is a deeply ignorant madman who is dangerously close to the nuclear arsenal and that must be prevented. We don’t get to talk about Jill Stein under these circumstances, I’m sorry. Do you sometimes feel frustration with the system yourself? Deep frustration. I truly get it when it comes to how infuriating the lack of progress can be. I see up close our political leaders take huge steps backward on behalf of the state and it’s alarming and discouraging, but I don’t quit. I don’t resign my seat out of frustration. The idea is to stick around until there’s a moment when you can actually make real progress. I fully expect it to take years. I get it. I talk to people about gerrymandering and I explain to them that 90 percent of their legislators are invulnerable in a general election. I see the look on their face and I feel for them. They say, “What can we do? How can we fix this?” And I don’t have a great answer other than to stick with it. On that note, are you optimistic about the court-ordered redrawing of district lines? That can only benefit, because the current maps are so terrible, so politically one-sided, that virtually any change brings the pendulum closer to the center. They’re still going to comply with the court order as minimally as possible, but we expect a significant number of seats that are now safe to become competitive. You’ve said it was a “fluke” that put you in your seat without having to run an expensive campaign. How do we get more flukes? That’s a great question. You have to end gerrymandering, number one. You need to publicly finance the campaigns, number two. And then we have to look at making the General Assembly a true citizen legislature, and probably fix the lengths of the terms so that people who own small businesses or work for small businesses or are raising families can make it work for their lives. RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 11
VIEWS
OPINION
NEWS
BLOTTER
RECOGNIZING WHITE PRIVILEGE
BY RYAN PITKIN
A moment of recognition from one of the privileged
returned to her southeast Charlotte home last week to find that she had been robbed … sort of. The woman’s 32-inch flat-screen television was nowhere to be found when she came home, but there was no evidence of any break-in. Later, a family member admitted that he had pawned the TV as soon as she left for vacation with the intention of buying it back before she returned. Clearly, however, that idea hadn’t played out and she would have to go buy her own TV back from the pawn shop for $300, assuming it was still there.
lens and who live under that lens every LET ME TELL you about the day I single day. understood my white privilege. White privilege means options. It It wasn’t even in the States. It was in Paris, 20 years ago. means choosing not carrying your papers if On December 3rd, 1996, a bomb went it’s considered to be too much of a bother. off in the Metro. The state responded with It means choosing which neighborhood to the usual actions, including bringing in live in, which college to go to, which city the army. This meant that major metro to move to, which job to take, where to and train stations were patrolled by gangs open a business, where to take the kids on of uniformed young men with automatic vacation. weaponry. That was the first time I’d seen We’re given those options because of anything in person that could be labeled a the role white supremacy played in world “machine gun,” and seeing it in the hands history; because our great-grandparents of uneasy 19-year olds with serious faces were allowed to read and write. Because and practically unlimited powers made me our grandparents went to the good public nervous. schools and the biggest church in town. But not that nervous. Even though, Because my parents were expected to go according to French law and especially as to college. Because of course their children a non-citizen, I was supposed to carry my would attend the best schools they could identification papers on me at all times, afford. I continued not to. And all this choice means I wasn’t about to bring my passport to work with we grow up knowing how to me every day, and I knew be heard. We know how that chances were slim I’d to seek out like-minded be stopped. I knew that individuals and form a even if I were stopped, non-profit to change being white, female unjustice around us. and American, I would For the most part, suffer minimal, if any, people like me don’t have consequences. to take the bus to work, to Thus as I walked ALISON LEININGER daycare, to Family Dollar for one morning through the toilet paper. We have cars and underground maze of the Gare folding tables and Saturdays off de l’Est metro station, I gave little when we can work to get out the vote. We thought to the group of four armed men have computers and internet access to tap in fatigues heading my way in the near into online resources like BBC or Nextdoor distance. or the city government’s website. We are That is until one of them reached out and connected to a greater society; we feel like put his hand on the arm of a man in front of me. A man with dark skin and darker we belong. hair, who one might expect to speak French We don’t have to scream to be heard. We with an Arabic accent. Or maybe speak little don’t have to break windows, throw rocks or French at all. set garbage cans on fire just to get the news As I passed by, I saw the man pull his cameras to point our way. And when the wallet out, and my heart went out to him. I cameras do point our way, we are seen and didn’t know if he had been born in France, heard as human beings, because of our skin if he was a citizen from one of the French and the way we pronounce our “r”s. territories, if he was here on a visa, if his I don’t feel guilty about being white. It’s papers were in order or not. not my fault. But I would feel guilty if I didn’t I only knew that he was certainly very, acknowledge that it’s made my life easy in very nervous. Even if he had spent every countless, nearly imperceptible ways. minute of his life on French soil — unlike And that acknowledgement means I me — his immediate future now hung in the can see “Others” as the people they are, balance because of his appearance. living the same life with different burdens. That’s witnessing the other side of the It makes me want to help. And if you’ve coin from my white privilege; the side that learned something from reading this, I hope suffers while I benefit. The side that is that means I’ve taken the first step. peopled by other beings with equally valid lives, but who are viewed through a different BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM 12 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
OUT OF TIME A 66-year-old woman
BAD LUCK A pair of men must have been
wondering what they did to deserve the karmic punishment they received while minding their own business in Uptown last week. The two men, both from Gastonia, were simply sitting on a bench on South Tryon Street when they say a branch fell from a tree above them, striking them both. Both men were transported to Carolinas Medical Center with minor injuries, treated and released.
KEEP IT DOWN Police responded to a south Charlotte home for a noise complaint last week, only to get more than they bargained for. The officers ended up uncovering a drug house hidden in the midst of a rich, suburban neighborhood. Police reported that, during the noise complaint, “a drug investigation ensued,” and officers ended up seizing over $1,000,000 worth of marijuana; $593,000 worth of crack cocaine, $1,000 worth of cocaine; a relatively small amount of ecstasy; four handguns; five cellphones; $8,000 in cash; ammunition; and paraphernalia. Two men in the house were arrested. Next time, I’m sure they’ll keep the music down. GONE TOO FAR A 27-year-old woman filed
a police report last week after her drinking partner made an unsolicited move on her and she wasn’t having it. The woman told police that the suspect, who is (was?) a friend of hers, was drinking with her in northeast Charlotte, and both were pretty drunk when he touched her face. She hadn’t asked him to touch her face, so the man was charged with simple assault. Take heed, Trump.
A-1 CRIME A northeast Charlotte woman
filed a report after someone broke into her home and stole her TVs, then made things personal. The woman told police that she returned home after a night out one morning to find that three of her televisions, totaling $950, were stolen. She then found that the suspect must have had a score to settle, as they also piled up her clothes and poured steak sauce all over them, damaging $500 worth of garments.
NO GOOD DEED A 25-year-old woman
from the Greenville neighborhood will be paying for her own lunch from now on, after learning firsthand last week why no one is to be trusted. She told police that she had given her friend her debit card information on the previous day so he could pay for her lunch when he went to pick it up. That all went smoothly enough, until she realized that the man had either saved the info or been making purchases on his phone during the lunch trip, as she soon learned that someone had made nearly $500 in unauthorized purchases at Amazon, NFL. com and Fanatics.com.
LICENSE AND REGISTRATION, PLEASE A 23-year-old woman living in
northwest Charlotte had her car broken into last week, but the suspect wasn’t interested in any of the normal valuables. The victim told police that the suspect seemed to go straight to the glove box and made off with the car’s title and registration.
LEASH LAW A 48-year-old University area
man called police after he was threatened by someone who is a strict observer of the leash laws in this county. The man said he was on the fenced-in patio of his apartment with his dog off the leash when a man he had never seen before approached him and began yelling at him to put his dog on a leash, despite the fact that the dog wouldn’t be able to escape the patio if it wanted to.
GOOD NEWS AND BAD Police visited a 66-year-old man’s home in University last week to speak to his family members about a missing persons report they were filing on his behalf. While officers were there, the man’s wife received a call that the man was actually safe and sound in Iredell County. The only problem? The call came from the Iredell County Sherriff’s Office and the man was in jail.
GEARED UP A 27-year-old man lost
thousands of dollars worth of racing gear during a car break-in in the Wilmore neighborhood last week. According to the report, the suspect stole a box containing 50 t-shirts with the victim’s racing company logo on them, but they didn’t stop there. The suspect also stole the jacket to the victim’s fire suit, which cost $1,500, and even made off with the victim’s racing helmet, worth $1,800.
TOSS UP A man who owns a business on North Tryon Street made a surprising find on the building’s roof last week. The man reported that he climbed up on the roof to do some work and soon found a .38 Special revolver in a holster lying unattended. Blotter items are chosen from the files of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty.
NEWS
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
BY CHUCK SHEPHERD
FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE Large kidney stones typically mean eye-watering pain and sudden urinary blockage until the stone “passes,” often requiring expensive soundwave treatment to break up a large stone. Michigan State University urologist David Wartinger told The Atlantic in September that he had recently happened upon a pain-free — even exciting — way to pass stones before they become problems: the centripetal force from a roller coaster ride. In a 200-trip experiment preparing for a validating “human” trial, he successfully passed stones in his hand-held, silicone model kidney (using his own urine) about two-thirds of the time when sitting in a rear seat at Disney World’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. PERSPECTIVE (1) With about 30 states having adopted some form of “stand your ground” defense to assault or murder charges, five membership organizations, charging up to $40 a month, have signed up a half-million gun owners concerned that law enforcement treat them fairly should they someday be forced to shoot — providing instructions and a “hot line” to coach members on what to tell police, plus liability insurance and help getting a lawyer. Critics say such organizations are also useful to those who might be prone to shooting people and want advice on how best to get away with it. The U.S. Concealed Carry organization’s wallet-sized card, to give to police, asks that the shooter under suspicion be given the same consideration as the officers might give to their own colleagues under suspicion. (2) In a dozen YouTube videos recently released, Syria’s Tourism Ministry praised the country’s sandy, fun-filled beaches as ideal vacation spots and its many World Heritage Sites as renowned tourist exhibits — attempting to distract world travelers from the country’s daily bloodshed and the wartime destruction of those priceless historical sites. Before civil war broke out in 2011, Syria was a fashionable, $8 billion-a-year destination, and
the now-devastated city of Aleppo was known worldwide for its food.
PLAY ON PLAYA Diego the giant tortoise, believed to be more than 100 years old, now lives in semi-retirement on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos, but from 1976 to 2010, Diego brought an almost-extinct species back to life by fathering about 800 babies in the captive breeding program on Espanola, another of the Galapagos Islands. Biologists did not realize Diego’s prowess until 2010 when DNA tests identified him as the father of 40 percent of all tortoises on the island. Even on Santa Cruz Island, Diego keeps busy, with a “harem” of six females. Another Galapagos tortoise species did die out in 2012 when the last male, the centenarian Lonesome George, maintained his celibacy until death. COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS (1) The New York City Council, grilling police officials in September about their practice of freely seizing money from detainees under suspicion, asked for a thorough accounting of that money, suspecting that innocent victims rarely get it back unless aided by high-powered lawyers. Though NYPD routinely boasts of its half-million annual seizures, an NYPD official told the council it would be “impossible” to account for everything — that keeping track of it all would cause its computers to crash. (2) The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is at the bureaucratic epicenter of the state’s drought crisis, but in September KCBSTV aired video of the department actually using sprinklers to water the artificial lawn at a substation in South Los Angeles. A DWP spokesperson said such watering is routine at substations to “clean” the plastic and wash off any dog urine, for example. THINGS YOU THOUGHT DIDN’T HAPPEN Wanda Witter, 80, had been living
on Washington, D.C., streets for 10 years, but insisting to anyone who would listen that the Social Security Administration owed her sums that recently reached $100,000, and that she
had documents to prove it. However, given her circumstances, most regarded her as just another luckless person confused by homeless life. In June, though, after social worker Julie Turner took a closer look and found, improbably, that Witter was indeed owed $100,000 and even more improbably, that all of her paperwork was carefully organized among the unimpressive possessions she hauled around daily, SSA paid her $999 on the spot, and the remaining $99,999 arrived in August.
FEEL-GOOD MARKETING “Considering
Cremation?” was the headline of the Aug. 7 advertising supplement to the Tampa Bay Times and other Florida newspapers, appearing just below a snapshot of a mom, dad and three youngsters frolicking in the grass, seemingly overjoyed. Nothing about cremation appeared except dates and sites of free cremation seminars, sponsored by the National Cremation Society, whose website is thankfully more somber.
RECURRING THEMES The most recent immigrant family living high on the hog in the United Kingdom is Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife, Jeanne, both 33, who drew the equivalent of about $130,000 in government benefits last year, but are still feuding with the Luton Borough Council near London over its inability to find free housing adequate for them and their eight children. They turned down four- and five-bedroom homes, were housed temporarily in a Hilton hotel, and said they would be satisfied only with a sixbedroom residence. Mr. Sube, from Cameroon, emigrated to France at age 18, then came to England in 2012 to study nursing at the University of Bedfordshire. THOMAS FROM IOWA CITY (1) Thomas
Morgan, 42, was charged in a May 7 incident at the University of Iowa’s Main Library when, using a men’s room urinal, he turned to reveal to a fellow user that he was “measuring” his penis with a hand-lettered cardboard “ruler.”
(2) Thomas Warren, 49, was arrested in September near the Iowa City home that he had allegedly trespassed into naked minutes before. He was discovered passed out in the grass, though his clothes, car keys and driver’s license had been left on the doorstep along with telltale evidence that he had used the doorstep as a toilet. Alcohol and a controlled substance were involved, said police.
THE PASSING PARADE (1) A woman
was arrested on Sept. 7 at the Italian Pizza Kitchen restaurant in Washington, D.C. She was chatting up a police officer she did not know, then playfully took a french fry from his plate. He asked her to stop, but she took another, and when the exasperated officer issued an ultimatum, she took yet another. The arrest report for second-degree theft, cited by WUSA-TV, included “property stolen” as “three” “French fried potato(es).” (2) At the seven-mile mark of the Allentown, Pennsylvania, marathon on Sept. 11, more than 100 runners were blocked off by an unanticipated, slow-moving train — causing the athletes one of their best chances to qualify for the gold-standard Boston Marathon by posting fast times at Allentown. The train lingered for 10 minutes, though some runners climbed over couplings and continued on.
NOTW CLASSIC (December 2012) Orly
Taitz, an Orange County, California, dentist and lawyer, is America’s most prominent “birther” — as of 2012, anyway — having filed dozens of lawsuits, appeals and other legal petitions expressing her certainty that President Obama was not born in America. In her latest legal foray, a California judge tossed her lawsuit against Occidental College to force release of Obama’s college transcripts and other papers. The loss brings birthers’ legal record, including Taitz and a few comrades’, to 0-for-258, according to the websites WhatsYourEvidence.com and LoweringTheBar.net. Taitz was described by one critic as “almost charmingly insane.”
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 13
FOOD
FEATURE
CHRISSIE NELSON
Before...
GETTING CRABBY Navigating all-you-can-eat crab hot spots in Charlotte BY CHRISSIE NELSON
T
HOUGH
FALL
HAS
finally arrived in the Queen City, some of us aren’t quite ready to dive head first into the pumpkin spice latte and blanket scarf season. For those folks who are dragging behind, I highly recommend 14 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
feasting on all-you-can-eat crab legs. While a crab leg feast is reminiscent of summer’s long, sunny days, the beach and the ocean, it’s actually entirely appropriate (and deliciously, basically necessary) to enjoy all year long. Those pop-up lingering warm days are the perfect excuse to indulge in a
pint and some crab legs on a patio for an outdoor feast, so don’t let the approaching fall temperatures deter you. Crab legs and Monday night football are a beautiful pair. All-you-can-eat crab legs may seem like a random culinary topic in landlocked Charlotte, but I promise you, it’s not. Did you
know “all-you-can-eat crab legs” drives the most traffic to my local food blog? Since it’s clear we have a lot of crab-loving Charlotteans, I’m here to tell folks about what they’ve seemingly been searching for. This includes where you can get all-you-caneat crab in Charlotte.
CHRISSIE NELSON
...and after My favorite spot to go to for an all-youcan-eat crab feasting is Kennedy’s Premium Bar & Grill in Elizabeth. On Monday nights after 5 p.m. you can eat all the crab legs you want at Kennedy’s for $29.99. Yes! Unlimited crab legs for under $30 bucks may be a gift from the seafood gods. I highly recommend getting there early, staking out a place on their expansive patio near a TV (it’s football season after all) and ordering a pint of your favorite Olde Mecklenburg brew for $3. Really, nothing makes me happier than unlimited crab legs and three dollar beers. Beware of their sneaky attempts to fill you up prior to your crab feast (swift move, Kennedy’s). I recommend that you limit yourself to one (okay, maybe two) hush puppies from the basket your waiter will bring while you’re waiting for the main event, and that you just pick at the standard house salad you’ll also get, before pushing it aside. Soon enough, your waiter will deliver a platter of crab leg clusters and a bucket for
KENNEDY’S PREMIUM BAR & GRILL 366 N. Caswell Road. 704-375-0218. kennedyscharlotte.com.
TREEHOUSE WHISKEY & FORK 4423 Sharon Road. 980-207-0949. treehouse-restaurant.com.
LURE OYSTER BAR 8420 Rea Road. 704-544-5268. lureoystercharlotte.com.
CRABTOBERFEST $40-$45; $10 for kids 12 years old and under. Oct. 29, 12 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. 1327 S. Mint St. carolinafishmarket.com.
You don’t have to just go straight melted butter
shells. Then, it’ll be time to get to work. The waiters do a great job of keeping the crab legs coming — when we go, it’s easy that we fly through platters and platters of legs and leave at least two buckets of shells in our wake. Besides having an excellent patio and an attentive wait staff, Kennedy’s cooks their crab just how I like it: steamed warm with a hint of salt. A pinch of salt is key to balancing out the natural sweetness of crabs. Your crab will come with a choice of dipping sauces, melted butter and something that resembles Thousand Island dressing. It’s good stuff, but honestly Kennedy’s succulent crab is so tasty that you could enjoy the meat without dipping it into anything at all. If you don’t feel like making the trek to Elizabeth on Monday nights, don’t worry, there are other places in Charlotte where you can get your crab leg fix. Treehouse Whiskey and Fork in SouthPark also does all-you-can-eat crab legs on Monday nights (it’s all served with fixins’ like corn on the
CHRISSIE NELSON
cob and potatoes. It’s all quite similar to a low-country boil). If you’re in the mood for all-you-can-eat crab on Thursdays, head to Lure Oyster Bar, where there’s a $25 special. Also, on Oct. 29, Charlotte’s Carolina Fish Market will host CrabToberFest. It’s an all-you-can-eat blue crab festival that’s going down at Unknown Brewing Company. There’s also shrimp and plenty of beer options for an additional fee. As usual, you’ll have to sign a shellfish waiver at the door in order to partake in the all-you-can-eat crab legs feasting event.
Chrissie Nelson is a public defender by day and a food blogger by night. Read about her foodventures, restaurant reviews and other Charlotte musings at offtheeatenpathblog.com.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 15
FOOD
FRESH SIMPLE GOOD Mon-Fri 11am-10pm
Take-Outs Welcomed!
Fri & Sat 11am-11pm
Sun 11am-9pm
SATURDAY & SUNDAY BRUNCH 9:30am-2pm
$2
Miller
High Life
& PBR’s
$3 Aluminum 16 oz
Bud Light
Half Priced Appetizers Mon-Fri 4-6pm
Premium Wings in 14 flavors! Hand Pattied Burgers!
4548 Old Pineville Rd
THREE-COURSE SPIEL
$3 Goose Island .50 IPA
DAILY DRINK SPECIALS BLOODY MARY BAR 12 WIDESCREEN TV’S!
980-430-5403
STAYING IN THE LOOP H
a
n
d
a
d
f
v
a
d
f
v
Larkin Duran takes the reins at Lupie’s Cafe BY RYAN PITKIN
WHEN LUPIE DURAN, owner of Lupie’s Café in east Charlotte, broke both ankles in an accident early in 2015, it was time for her daughter Larkin Duran to step up and run things for a while. In the following months, as Lupie recovered, she realized that her daughter was handling things well enough on her own. It makes sense, since life in the 30-year-old diner has been the only life Larkin, 31, has known. Once she fully recovered, Lupie decided she could retire from the daily grind of running two restaurants — there’s also a 14-year-old location in Huntersville — and leave Larkin at the helm. Creative Loafing sat with Larkin in the original Monroe Road location recently to discuss how things have gone since she made the move from Huntersville, where she had been managing for years and still splits her time twice a week, to the flagship on the curve just east of Uptown (at least two folks have driven through the front of the shop. Watch out, would ya, drivers?). Creative Loafing: How have you been taking to life in charge and at a new location? Charlotte is like a totally different world than Huntersville. At first it was a little weird, it was kind of hard because it was a snap decision. I actually like it a little bit more now. I feel like people — I don’t know if it’s just because this place has been here longer — but there’s just a whole different type of demographic here. We get every kind of person that comes in here to eat and it’s fun to get to meet different people and interact with them. What’s your history been here? Lots of childhood memories? Like so many. I definitely got my love for funk music early on from the guys back in the kitchen. When I was in elementary school I used to get dropped off by the school bus here every afternoon, so I spent a lot of my life in this building, probably more than anywhere. I started working here as a teenager during the summers. [The Huntersville location] opened my senior year in high school. I was just waiting tables up there and taking classes at CPCC. We were having some management issues and it somehow
16 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
Larkin Duran
RYAN PITKIN
just landed on me. My mom’s always created this really awesome environment. It’s a fun workplace. It’s definitely not easy. The restaurant business in general is not easy. But the people that work here, we’ve all worked together for so long, we have a very low turnover rate, and we’ve gone through good times and bad times together. It’s just a really unique place. There’s not any other place I’ve been to that has the same environment. I definitely admire my mom for what she’s created and hope – I have huge shoes to fill – but I hope to continue that. Have you made any changes to the menu? I grew up eating this food, so I love it. Some of the newer things on the menu are things that I’ve incorporated; the chicken casserole that we do on Tuesdays, the baked chicken that we do on Wednesdays and we have a roasted pork special that we do on Fridays. These are all collaborations, trying to do something different. Our store in Huntersville, I’ve been thinking of it now looking back as a test run for me. She gave me a lot of freedom having that store up there. The chicken casserole and baked chicken are things that we started at our Huntersville location and have now brought down here. RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 17
THURSDAY
13
SHIPROCKED WITH ABDU ALI AND JOY POSTELL What: The folks who present weekly Shiprocked offerings are giving a warm welcome to Abdu Ali for this week’s installment. The Baltimore-based musician should fit in well, as he’s known for his cosmic wordplay and delivery — a combination of rapping, singing and chanting. There are hypnotic elements to his music, making the chance to see him live in an intimate atmosphere like Snug a real treat. When: 10 p.m. Where: Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St. More: 704-561-1781. snugrock.com. — ANITA OVERCASH
18 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
THINGS TO DO
TOP TEN THURSDAY
Charlotte Contemporary FRIDAY
FRIDAY
13
FRIDAY
14
FRIDAY
14
14
SORDID LIVES
EDEN
TELE NOVELLA
What: The movie and play are cult classics among LGBTQ audiences. The play, in this case, revolves around a Bible-thumping family that’s reunited to mourn the death of a loved one. True characters come out and “Brother Boy” gets sent to a doctor to be “dehomosexualized,” bless his heart. Actress Ann Walker (she played LaVonda in the 2000 movie and 2008 TV series) is reprising her role for the Charlotte production.
What: The Dublin multiinstrumentalist’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” put him on the map. His version starts sparsely, focused on the lyrics, before taking an electronic left turn in the middle. It’s one example of the 20-year-old’s talent as a musician, singer and producer that’s quickly winning him a fanbase with his original music. Don’t get him confused with Eden XO or other artists, this guy’s on his own path.
What: Hailing from Austin, Texas, this indie pop band presents punchy psych rock melodies. The band signed onto Yellow Year Records and just released its debut album, House Of Souls, earlier this month. It features refreshing pop anthems like “Heavy Balloon,” as well as the haunting jingle “Dead Canary,” making for a good addition to the record collection. With Truckstop Preachers and Toleman Randall.
When: 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 14-15, 8 p.m. Where: McGlohon Theatre, 345 N. College St. More: $32.09. 704-372-1000. blumenthalarts.org.
When: 9 p.m. Where: Visulite Theatre, 1615 Elizabeth Ave. More: $15-$18. 704-358-9200. visulite.com.
When: 8 p.m. Where: Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave. More: $7. 704-332-6608. petraspianobar.com.
— OVERCASH
— JEFF HAHNE
— OVERCASH
CHARLOTTE CONTEMPORARY What: The entire Park Expo Center will be filled with artsy finds and while you’re there you can meet artists and designers and learn more about the story behind the pieces. Paintings, jewelry, pottery, sculptures, clothing and more is featured, making this a great time to jumpstart holiday shopping or reward yourself with a treasure. When: Oct. 14, 12 p.m.-6 p.m.; Oct. 15, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Oct. 16, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Where: Park Expo & Conference Center, 800 Briar Creek Road. More: $10-$25. charlottecontemporary.com. — OVERCASH
DIANE JONG
Henry Rollins TUESDAY
HEIDI MAY
ANGEL CEBALLOS
NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS
Tele Novella FRIDAY
Eden FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SATURDAY
15
15
SATURDAY
SATURDAY
TUESDAY
15
15
18
THE WAVES
BIKETOBERFEST
CAROLINAS WORDFEST
LGBTQ FALL FESTIVAL
HENRY ROLLINS
What: Formed out of the remnants of local rock quartet Shot Silk, The Waves is the inspiration of guitarist/singer Hayley Lakeman. Lakeman, also known a tattoo artist, brings a positive outlook and down-to-earth vibe to her lyrical content. She finds inspiration in psychedelic soundscapes with help from guitarist Rocketman McNeely. Featuring some collaboration with local singer Deirdre Kroener (Grown Up Avenger Stuff).
What: The second annual Biketoberfest will be a scavenger hunt that consists of bicycling, walking or taking public transit to various destinations in the city. Each participant will be issued a Biketoberfest Passport, and the more stamps you get, the more chance you have to win prizes. The Sustan Charlotte event aims to get you acquainted with moving around the city sans car.
What: Writers — novelists, poets, playwrights and more — come together for this innovative outdoor festival. Authors will be present for book signings and some will also lead panels and workshops throughout the day. Presented by the Charlotte Writers’ Club, this event is a must for folks who love to read and write, as well as those who understand the beauty of word construction and word play.
What: The second-annual LGBTQ Fall Festival and open air market will feature hundreds of vendors offering everything from HIV/STD testing to home decor to health and beauty products. Attendees at this family-friendly event can also expect to find food trucks serving Latin, Caribbean, American and seafood, as well as live music and games. Inspirational hour by Sanctuary Outreach Ministries & Spirit of Unity Worship Center.
What: Singer, actor, columnist, television/radio host Henry Rollins might be known for any of the above roles. On stage these days, he’s no longer the frontman of the Rollins Band or Black Flag, he’s a spoken word artist whose talks range from old touring stories, travel experiences, politics and everything in between. His depth of knowledge is beyond what you’d expect, even in comparison with his many talents.
When: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Where: First Ward Park, 301 E. 7th St. More: Free. carolinaswordfest.com.
When: 12 p.m.-8 p.m. Where: Old Eastland Mall site, 5471 Central Ave. More: Free. creativityforms.com
When: 10 p.m. Where: Double Door Inn, 1218 Charlottetowne Ave. More: $7-$10. 704-376-1446. doubledoorinn.com. — HAHNE
When: 12 p.m.-5 p.m. Where: Triple C Brewing Co., 2900 Griffith St. More: $10-$25; children under 18 years old free with a registered adult. — RYAN PITKIN
— OVERCASH
— PITKIN
When: 7:30 p.m. Where: McGlohon Theater, 345 N. College St. More: $20-$49.50. 704-372-1000. blumenthalarts.org. — HAHNE
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 19
ARTS
COVERSTORY
DAY OF THE ALMOST DEAD Local artist puts a twist on the traditional Mexican holiday BY PAGE LEGGETT
M
ANY AMERICANS WOULD rather not think or
talk about death, even though it’s the only certainty in life. (I used to think taxes were the other — that is, until Donald Trump proved that theory wrong.) Charlotte artist Julio Gonzalez, 38, wants us to “look at life through the lens of death.” Carpe diem, everybody. So, the Atlanta native asked eight volunteers to think about what brings value to their lives now. He videotaped them sharing their answers, and he hopes visitors to the Día de los Casi Muertos (Day of the Almost Dead) exhibition will ask themselves the same questions. Finding volunteers wasn’t easy. “I was having to ask friends, family and strangers if they or their grandparents would pose naked for this project dealing with death,” Gonzalez said. About the nudity bit, we’ll get to that. During this time, Gonzalez must have been cocktail party poison. “Have you met the creep who keeps asking people to pose nude and talk about death? Steer clear.” Now that he’s finally finished, Gonzalez (who’s not creepy in the least) will transform the C3Lab space into an homage to the Mexican tradition that celebrates the dearly departed. But in contrast to the traditional Día de los Muertos, his show honors the living, a.k.a. the “Almost Dead.” Hey, none of us knows how much time we have left. To many Americans, talk of death is unsettling. But in Mexico, as in many Latin-American countries, death is just the next phase of life. Loved ones who die are mourned, but then their lives are celebrated each year on a day set aside to honor them. Gonzalez calls Día de Los Casi Muertos (running from Oct. 15 through Oct. 22) a “cross-cultural celebration of life.” Like the occasion it’s patterned after — and life itself — it’s both somber and joyful. Of the eight volunteer subjects, only six — mostly in their 50s and 60s — chose to participate in the second part of the project. This was the part that involved posing for photographs wearing nothing but body paint. Getting painted involved two potentially uncomfortable things: being naked and standing for five hours. 20 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
DIA DE LOS CASI MUERTOS EXHIBIT Admission is free, but a $5 donation is suggested. Oct. 15, 6 p.m. C3 Lab, 2525 Distribution St. Closing ceremony, including live musical performances, on Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $5, and costumes are encouraged. wonderwhatif.com.
Some traditional icons — Aztec eagles, owls — were worked into the, um, bodies of work. But Gonzales mostly left the designs up to Cheryl Ann Lipstreu, a champion body painter (there really are competitions for fine art body painting), and her assistant, Amber Michael.
ALIVE AND WELL: HEAVEN CAN WAIT
SUBJECTS IN THE exhibition were asked 10 questions about death — questions like, “What do you want to happen to your body after you die?” — developed by UNC Charlotte professor Jillian Tullis. Visitors can answer the same questions and contribute their thoughts to the project. It may not be easy for people accustomed to skirting the issue. In America, we tend to use euphemisms for death: She passed on. He went to the great beyond. She’s gone to her reward. He started his heavenly life. If America had a “Day of the Dead,” we’d probably hesitate to turn it into a party. We should take a lesson from our neighbors to the South ... before Trump has a chance to build his wall. “The celebrations are a mixture of joy and sorrow,” Gonzalez explained. “Inside the cemeteries, you find people cleaning grave stones and paying their respects, while outside in the city there are festivals that honor the dead. Musicians roam the cemetery playing traditional songs for coins.
JULIO GONZALEZ
Dia de Los Casi Muertos exhibit opens on Oct. 15 at C3 Lab. As night falls, the adults drink and tell stories while playing cards. It’s not uncommon to see children playing hide and go seek among the headstones.” Gonzalez said families will often set out a deceased loved one’s favorite food — as fuel for their continued journey. He asked what my favorite food was. “French fries,” I said. “OK, your family would leave out French fries for you.” I’d like to make an official request now for a side of East Blvd. Bar & Grill’s honey mustard. Families often tell stories about their dead loved ones — and not necessarily of their kind or heroic deeds. Bawdy stories and tales of misdeeds are fair game on the Day of the Dead, a time for revelers to keep it real.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
THANKS TO AN Arts & Science Council (ASC) regional artist grant, Gonzalez was able to bring his idea about death to life. Since C3Lab is more than a gallery space — but a “creative hub” — it was the perfect fit for his vision. “This project has been made possible by the village that is Charlotte,” Gonzalez said. Union Shop Studio and The Light Factory provided space and support for the photo shoot and video interviews. A “Chair Fair” is also part of the exhibition. Chairs painted and decorated in memory of deceased loved ones will be on display at the exhibition. And The Spoke Easy, a bike shop/bar in Elizabeth, will host a
JULIO GONZALEZ
MORE WAYS TO CELEBRATE DAY OF THE DEAD Cultural Connections: Exploring Dia de Muertos Preview Make arts and crafts in honor of the holiday. Free with paid admission. Oct. 22, 1:30 p.m. to 2 p.m.
The body painting process.
JULIO GONZALEZ
bicycle procession for the closing celebration Oct 22. It will begin at The Spoke Easy and end at C3Lab. Riders are encouraged to decorate their bikes and wear costumes. Gonzalez thinks grief is exacerbated when we haven’t discussed life and death with our families and friends. Knowing how someone feels about facing the end helps lessen the pain of their passing. “I hope the show will create conversations about how we chose to live our lives,” Gonzales said. “From this project, I have learned that by sharing our thoughts and feelings on death we can better appreciate life.”
Day of the Dead/Día de Muertos Festival Features arts and crafts, altars, music and authentic food. Free. Oct. 30, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Both events are held at Levine Museum of the New South, 200 East 7th St. museumofthenewsouth.org. Day of the Dead/Día de Muertos Free. Ongoing altar. Pura Vida, 3202 N. Davidson St. puravidaart.com. Day of The Dead /Dia de los Muertos Featuring dance performances by Alma De La Luna and a “La Catrin a” contest led by artist/costume designer Emily Andress. Free. Oct. 29, 6 p.m.-10 p.m. LaCa Projects, 1429 Bryant St. lacaprojects.com.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 21
ARTS
BOOKS
COLORING THE COURT Art Chansky discusses Game Changers BY CORBIE HILL
A
T A BASKETBALL game in February 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina, now-legendary University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith lost his cool completely. It had been a tight game, but Smith could handle that. It was the racial abuse from the crowd that he couldn’t take. They’d been cursing and shouting the n-word the whole game, and Smith was stressed. He was about to take a smoke break when a South Carolinian shouted that Charlie Scott, the only black player on the team, was a “baboon.” It drove Smith over the edge and the coach charged into the stands, almost making it to the ignorant fan. It took five people to hold him back. “How do you razz a white guy?” Art Chansky asks rhetorically. “There’s nothing you can say to him. You wear glasses? You’re fat? You can’t jump?” There’s nothing on the same level he can think of, not compared to what Scott experienced as UNC’s first black scholarship athlete in the ‘60s. In his latest book, Game Changers: Dean Smith, Charlie Scott, and the Era That Transformed a Southern College Town, Chansky takes a closer look at those years for Scott, Smith and Chapel Hill itself. Chansky has been writing about UNC basketball since the early ‘80s, but this is his first book that’s more related to social history than sports. On Oct. 19, the author appears at Park Road Books in support of Game Changers. With all the myths and legends that have since grown around the people involved, Chansky wanted to get at the real complexity of this rocky period: integration wasn’t coming easily to Chapel Hill, Scott had an impressive college career but was painfully lonely on campus and Smith’s future at UNC wasn’t even guaranteed. “Mainly I think the story, hopefully dispels several myths about the whole situation,” Chansky says. “One was that Chapel Hill was always this liberal bastion. It really wasn’t. It’s not even as liberal as people think it is right now.” Though there was a liberal faculty, Chansky explains, sitting in a coffee shop just south of Chapel Hill, the town itself was fairly conservative and segregated. There was less overt violence — if there were lynchings, Chansky’s not aware of them — 22 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
ART CHANSKY Oct. 19, 7 p.m. Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road. 704-525-9239. parkroadbooks.com.
Art Chansky
SP MURRAY
but rather a racist status quo. Segregationists didn’t go around boasting about segregation, he continues, but instead gathered in traditionally white conservative groups like the Jaycees. “One myth is that Dean Smith integrated restaurants in Chapel Hill, which that’s the big story about him, and that’s not true at all,” Chansky says. “He went (to The Pines restaurant) in ‘59 with a black theology student and Leroy and Agnes Merritt fed him because they didn’t want to lose the business of the basketball team, but they never served another black person for five years.” What Smith did, however, was integrate the basketball program. He was continuing family tradition: his father, Alfred Smith, coached the first integrated basketball team in Kansas in 1934. He brought a sense of fairness and equality with him when he came
The cover of Game Changers. to Chapel Hill for an assistant coaching position in 1958. Smith knew exactly what he needed to open the door for minority players: he needed Carolina basketball’s first black scholarship athlete to be a superstar. The idea wasn’t to tentatively tap away at the color barrier, but to bulldoze right through it. Scott was that player. He was brilliant, resilient and a spectacular player. Chansky remembers watching Scott play: he was simply a superior athlete. “It became a phenomenon in the ACC where he would play way above the rim, and they had all these white guys who couldn’t
Rusty Clark, Charlie Scott and Dean Smith.
HUGH MORTON
Final Four bound
JACK LAUTERER
SLUGGISH SOCIAL PROGRESS FOR NC AS WE TALKED with Chansky about 1960s Chapel Hill — and how much work there is
The team poses with the 1968 NCAA Regional Trophy.
HUGH MORTON
even jump,” he says. Scott led the Carolina team to two Final Four appearances, yet he was lonely at UNC. Out of the university’s 13,000 students, Chansky says, only about 50 were African American. Even as a star ball player, he felt isolated on the overwhelmingly white campus. Most of his free time he spent at historically black college North Carolina Central University with his small group of friends. “Charlie has days he’s proud of it and other days he’s angry,” Chansky says. Scott opened the gates for other black athletes to come to Carolina, but it was an isolating and exposed position. “I can’t even pretend to put myself in anybody else’s shoes and know what that feels like,” Chansky says.
to be done in terms of race and civil rights — a thread emerged: 2016 isn’t the first time North Carolina lawmakers have dug in their heels and fought social progress. In the ‘60s, the Speaker Ban Law prohibited appearances by “known Communists” at the college (until 1968, when the bill was deemed unconstitutional and struck down). “The speaker ban was all about free speech and [House Bill 2] is all about social rights,” Chansky says. “They were very similar in the fact that they were both rushed through the legislature in the darkness of the night.” Because of HB2, the ACC is pulling neutral site games from North Carolina, including an ACC football championship game that would have been held in Charlotte in December. On a personal level, Chansky had tickets to see Bruce Springsteen earlier this year: he respects the Boss for pulling his date, but laments that he didn’t get to see him play. Chansky doesn’t get it — he simply doesn’t understand what North Carolina lawmakers are trying to accomplish with HB2, and it doesn’t gel, in his mind, with the hard work of Dean Smith or the civil rights activists he wrote about in Game Changers. “The speaker ban was around for five years,” Chanksy says. “Who the hell knows how long HB2 will be around and how many things we’ll lose?”
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 23
ARTS
FILM
FOX SEARCHLIGHT
Nate Parker and Armie Hammer in The Birth of a Nation.
NOT BLACK AND WHITE Separating the artist from the art BY MATT BRUNSON
N
OW, AS ALWAYS, it’s important to separate the artist from the art, although in the case of Nate Parker and his motion picture The Birth of a Nation (*** out of four), that’s often difficult to do. In 1994’s Bullets Over Broadway, a scandal-plagued Woody Allen has one of his 24 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
characters declare that “An artist creates his own moral universe.” Great movie, ludicrous and self-serving line. And now, Parker and coscripter Jean Celestin, both at the center of controversy for the college rape of a girl who then suffered from depression and committed suicide years later (Parker was acquitted while Celestin was initially convicted before being
acquitted as well), has made sure to include the scene where Nat Turner offers forgiveness and baptism to a white man seeking to atone for all his past sins. “I forgive you” is the message to the man from Turner. “I forgive myself” is Parker’s message to himself. The Birth of a Nation is problematic in other ways as well. It tells the story of Turner
from his childhood to his execution, and it details how this man (played as an adult by Parker himself) who initially was rented out by his owner (Armie Hammer) to quote from the Scriptures in an effort to assuage unruly slaves later found Biblical words to support his growing belief that the atrocities being committed against blacks needed to be
here do not matter). Once the rebellion is quelled and whites start slaughtering blacks by the dozens (even ones who had nothing to do with the uprising), Cherry cries, “They’re killing people everywhere, for no reason but being black” — a chilling line in an era in which black males are being systematically gunned down at an alarming rate. Nate Parker may be a vile and unrepentant abuser, but whatever one thinks of the messenger, the delivered movie is worthy of attention. Now, whether you want to support his career through ticket sales is entirely up to you.
Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train.
UNIVERSAL
stopped by any means necessary. Historical record asserts that his decision to lead an uprising stemmed wholly from his belief that it was a mandate from God, yet in the movie, it’s turned into a Death Wish scenario, with Turner largely motivated by the rape and beating suffered by his wife Cherry (a fine turn by Aja Naomi King) at the hands of white crackers. Employing a nondocumented rape for this purpose is, at best, queasy and tone-deaf and, at worst, heinous and insensitive. And while the picture shows Turner’s army slaughtering scores of white men and even some women, it’s careful not to show any children getting murdered, even though several were. It’s an understandable omission, but also a misleading one. And yet, to deny the power and importance of The Birth of a Nation as its own entity would be equally misleading. While not in the same class as the excellent, Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, this picture nevertheless has plenty of merit, starting with a title that brilliantly recalls the one for D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist opus and throws it back in its face. It’s a film that’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the groin, and yet its righteous anger helps rather than hinders the piece, particularly in the ghastly sequences in which Turner stands by helplessly as enormous evils are committed against his fellow sufferers (the “dental” scene is almost unwatchable). Production values are top-notch, with the camerawork by Elliot Davis particularly worthy of praise: Displaying remarkable range, the d.p. traffics in dark, dour shots that suit the material but then also tosses in some sequences of notable beauty and grace. Most crucially, though, this is a movie for the here and now, a document that nicely supports the BlackLivesMatter movement (and throws shade on the AllLivesMatter nonsense; sorry, the lives of those who still think like the vicious slave owners showcased
THE HERRINGS IN The Girl on the Train (** out of four) might be the usual shade of robust red, but the film itself is largely a bloodless affair, not so much a whodunit as a wellobviouslythatpersondunit. Based on the smash bestseller by Paula Hawkins, the film version finds Emily Blunt delivering a strong performance as Rachel, an unrepentant alcoholic who continues to harass her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) and his wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Tom and Anna live in the same neighborhood as another couple, Megan (Haley Bennett, currently co-starring in The Magnificent Seven) and Scott (Luke Evans) — Rachel rides the train that passes alongside their property on a daily basis, thus allowing her to catch glimpses of their life as she whizzes by. She imagines Megan and Scott as the perfect happily-ever-after couple, and thus she’s shocked when she spots Megan making out with someone else on the balcony; this event is soon followed by Megan’s disappearance, and Rachel takes it upon herself to find out what’s going on. It’s perhaps an unwise move, since her involvement has the detective (Allison Janney) on the case tagging her as a leading suspect. I haven’t read Hawkins’ novel, although my wife informs me that one of its biggest failings is that the identity of the villain is ridiculously easy to figure out. In that case, the movie is a faithful adaptation, since the celluloid counterpart is head-smackingly obvious from an early point. Honestly, even the culprits in those Encyclopedia Brown children’s books were harder to suss out. Couple this lack of mystery and suspense with a plethora of thinly defined characters and the result is a story that probably should have remained on the printed page. Given its seasonal fall positioning, its initial vagueness about Megan (victim or femme fatale?), and even its title, The Girl on the Train clearly has aspirations to be another Gone Girl. But after a couple of weeks, we can probably expect it to be gone, baby, gone.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 25
ARTS
HAPPENINGS
THEATER/DANCE/ PERFORMANCE ART Charlotte Ballet: Fall Works kicks off the season with this double-feature, featuring the choreography of Ohad Naharin and Charlotte Ballet resident Dwight Rhoden. The production mixes 1980s house music with electric techno to create a score to match the unique choreography. $25-$85. Oct. 20-22, Knight Theater, 430 S Tryon St. 704-372-1000. blumenthalarts.org. Sordid Lives It’s a black comedy about white trash set in Texas, following a family dealing with the death of the matriarch. When the original play began in 1996 in L.A., it won 14 Drama-logue awards. $32.09. Oct. 13-15, 7 p.m. McGlohon Theater, 345 N College St. 704-3721000. blumenthalarts.org. First Date: A Musical Comedy Aaron, a newbie to blind dating, meets with Casey, an expert blind dater, for a first date. A simple night of drinks turns into a chaotic dinner when the couple realizes they are not alone. The people in the restaurant turn into best friends, ex’s, and even parents in this comical musical about the chances we take to find true love. Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 14, 8 p.m.; Oct. 15, 2 and 8 p.m.; Through Oct. 23. Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St. 704-372-1000. blumenthalarts.org. Over the River and Through the Woods A comedy for all ages about grandparents who try every scheme they can think of to keep their grandson from moving away to pursue his dream job. $12-$20. Oct. 13-15, 8 p.m.; Oct. 16, 2 p.m. Armour Street Theatre, 307 Armour St., Davidson. 704-892-7953. davidsoncommunityplayers.org.
MORE EVENTS Carolina Renaissance Festival In its 23rd year, this is the time to dress up, people-watch and savor the meatiness of turkey legs and 16th-century Europe. You’ll find music, comedy, theater, food and drink, fine hand-made arts and crafts, artisan demonstrations, games and rides. Held on Saturdays, Sundays, 10:30 a.m.5:30 p.m. Continues through Nov. 20. $14-$24. Carolina Renaissance Festival, 16445 Poplar Tent Road. carolina.renfestinfo.com.
26 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
New Frequencies at McColl Imagine a vivid cast of art pop cartoon characters pasted over bleak black and white photos of Los Angeles. That’s the aesthetic of Lewis Klahr’s Sixty Six exhibit, presented by New Frequencies at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation. $7. Oct. 14, 8 p.m. 721 N. Tryon. 704-332-5535. mccollcenter. org. Carolina Book Fest More than 100 authors from across the country will be attending Carolina Book Fest. That means signings galore. $15-$25. Oct. 15, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Charlotte Marriott City Center, 100 W. Trade St. carolinabookfest.com. Apple Harvest Festival You can enjoy local hard cider (and obligatory doughnuts) at Windy Hill Orchard all season long, but the annual Apple Harvest Festival only comes once a year. In addition to partaking in the usual cider shenanigans, there will be hayrides, a pumpkin patch and lots of sweet treats. Oct. 15, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.. 1860 Black Highway, York. 803684-0690. windyhillorchard.com. 6th Annual Brewer’s Ball Get your sample glass ready: the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is hosting the 6th Annual Brewer’s Ball at Discovery Place. Stock up on beer and snack samples from the best Charlotte breweries and restaurants, and then shamelessly explore the hands-on ‘Cool Stuff’ exhibit without a kid in sight. $75-$125. Oct. 15. Discovery Place, 301 N Tryon St. brewersball.eventscff.org. South End Wine Fest Held in the heart of South End and featuring local and regional vinters, the South End Wine Festival gives folks a chance to taste the wines from right in your metaphorical backyard — more than 25 wineries to be exact. Live music and food trucks, too. $35-$50. Oct. 15. 308 W. Carson Blvd. 2p.m.-6 p.m. southendwinefest.org. Carolina BalloonFest Worth a north-bound I-77 tread to Statesville, the Carolina BalloonFest features a parade of hot air balloons. Wanna fly in one of them? There are sign-ups to go up, up, and away. Or, you can stay happily on the ground and just enjoy the sight of them floating about, as well as live music and entertainment in a family-friendly atmosphere. Oct. 21, 3 p.m.8:30 p.m.; Oct. 22, 7 a.m.-8:30 p.m. and Oct. 23, 7 a.m.-6 p.m. $15-$25. Statesville Regional Airport, 260 Hangar Drive. carolinaballoonfest. com.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 27
MUSIC
FEATURE
SKINNEEMONKEY
Bassh performs at Visulite Theatre on Oct. 19.
TIME TO BASSH Matrimony members’ side project forges a new path BY ANITA OVERCASH
W
HEN JIMMY BROWN
and CJ Hardee started writing more aggressive alt-rock tunes, they weren’t sure what to do with them. They didn’t fit with the folk/pop rock sounds of Matrimony (fronted by Brown and wife, 28 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
Ashlee Hardee), the band they were both currently in. And yet Brown, a Belfast, Ireland native, kept writing them on the side with his brother-in-law. It was all following Matrimony’s success — the band had signed onto Columbia Records and debuted its first
album, Montibello Memories in 2014. But what was then a mystery is now a side project that Brown and CJ Hardee have dubbed Bassh, because it feels more like a party than it does work. “It’s a little bit more aggressive sort of
music than Matrimony or anything else that me and CJ have done before,” says Brown. “We knew that they weren’t Matrimony songs. I had been writing a lot of songs that I was thinking were for Matrimony but I could tell something different was happening
BASSH W/ BUSINESS PEOPLE AND MILLENIAL $8-$10. Oct. 19, 8 p.m. Visulite Theatre, 1615 Elizabeth Ave. 704-3589200. visulite.com.
creatively and it wasn’t so folksy anymore. I was really gravitating towards a different kind of songwriting. CJ would come over and help me with these songs and we both very quickly realized that we had something that was a project and so then it happened very quickly and naturally.” The timing couldn’t have been better, since Ashlee was pregnant. It made a Matrimony hiatus appropriate — though the group did return to Charlotte and reunite for this year’s Housing Fest, presented by Urban Ministry, at The Fillmore on May 28. In regards to his work with Matrimony, Brown explains that the future is uncertain. “Ash and I have sat down recently and talked about making a new record but we don’t know when we would do it. I’m really focused on Bassh right now and she’s about to have a baby [Update: Brown and Hardee are now the proud parents of a baby girl] and is writing a book at the moment. It’s just not the right time for another Matrimony album, though we’re not opposed to it.” Bassh has already played Visulite Theatre twice this year and has another show in the works — they’ll be back in Charlotte to play Visulite on Oct. 19. While Matrimony has garnered a huge Charlotte fanbase (they all resided in Charlotte before a move to Nashville, Tenn.) over the years, Brown admits that playing as Bassh has been a different kind of experience. “We haven’t played one show where someone has come up to us and said they remember Matrimony or that they’ve seen Matrimony before, which has been odd because we thought that there would be that. You’d think that people would be interested to hear what you’re up to creatively because they like what you did before but that doesn’t seem to be the case,” says Brown. Despite that Brown is positive and excited about the new experience. He explains the feeling as akin to “starting afresh” and believes the band has “taken on a life of its own.” “It’s actually been really cool,” he says. “Nobody really knows who we are and when we turn up at clubs or anywhere really, we have to win over a crowd. We’re usually the opening band and nobody knows our
songs or what to expect. It’s made me better at performing and entertaining and it’s brought me back to the music. I love that feeling. With Matrimony, we had a decent following across the states and you’d turn up and people would know the songs and singalong and it felt so easy because of that.” While the duo is only comprised of Brown and CJ Hardee, they have a regular drummer that they use for shows and other hire-forplay musicians on hand. They also have plans to add an extra guitarist in the future. The duo is savoring the creative freedom that the project has given them. Brown describes the band’s mantra as being driven by creativity and not control. “We thought, ‘Let’s let this thing take us instead of us taking it,” he says. Bassh currently has around 24 songs, 12 of which have been recorded with producer Bill Reynolds of Band of Horses back in Nashville. The band’s first single “Bodies,” conjured similarities to Fleetwood Mac, but its second single “Animals,” due out later this year, has a different feel. On it, Hardee raps during a portion of the track. James fondly reminisces over CJ rapping for fun over the course of their years of touring. When he sent Hardee an unfinished version of “Animals,” he was pleasantly surprised with the rapping supplements that Hardee added on. “I remember bursting out laughing because I would never have expected anyone to rap on the song because it was beyond my capacity for thinking about the song. But I thought it was really awesome and I liked the sound of it. So, it became a thing that we do.” The band is slated to go to Los Angeles after the Charlotte gig to record the rest of
the songs with a producer that’s worked with Twenty One Pilots. They hope to release Bassh’s first EP in February or March of 2017. Along with the band’s alternative rock sound and harsher singing, Brown says the songwriting process for Bassh varied from his previous music ventures. “We kind of wrote these pretty quickly and I think we’ve both gotten better at writing songs. We’re able to trust ourselves more and these have more of a male perspective. Matrimony songs were a little more hopeful and these are exploring a slightly darker side of our personalities and experiences. They’re quite vulnerable and a little more tender, too,” he says. There’s more distortion and synthesizers, contributing to the soundscapes drastic departure from Matrimony. While Matrimony songs felt upbeat and at times reflective of the duo’s love for one another, Bassh presents a slightly more skewed stance on life. Having seen the group when they performed earlier this year, I noticed the music was louder and angrier with some songs lamenting on heartbreak and the philosophy that “nothing lasts forever.” “Everything should be about constantly renewing yourself and creating things fresh and looking at life that way,” says Brown. “It’s a theme I have been thinking about and I think that comes through on the songs. You don’t have to carry past experiences, you can leave them behind and let them die. In a way, it’s a hopeful message, but it usually doesn’t come across that way.” AOVERCASH@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 29
MUSIC
REVIEW
ELEVATOR JAY SLURRED IN MECKLENBURG INDEPENDENT; RELEASE DATE: AUG. 6, 2016 In the summer of 2015, Charlotte rapper Elevator Jay made waves in the local hip-hop scene by dropping Sum’na Say, a bouncing and colorful album marked by syruppy Southern production and razor-sharp delivery, both courtesy of Elevator himself. About two months ago — yes, we’re late, a lot’s been happening in our fair city — Elevator followed that up by releasing the eight-track EP Slurred in Mecklenburg. Charlotte may not have the hip-hop name recognition of our neighbors down I-85, but make no mistake, Elevator Jay is every bit as dangerous an MC as anyone to come from the South. Jay controls his flow with expert precision, delivering crystal-clear lines with a satisfyingly percussive rhythm. He’s also adept at creating infectious hooks with a smooth singing ability that you might not expect at first. It’s a result of having sung choir in church when he was a kid. Perhaps
30 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
most impressive of all, Elevator never uses the same flow twice on Slurred (or Sum’na Say, for that matter), hitting you with a new melody and rhythm with each new song. Mecklenburg isn’t a markedly different product than Sum’na Say, which can often times be a sign of a creative plateau from young artists. In Elevator’s case, however, it underscores an extremely talented dual threat MC and producer continuing to sharpen all aspects of his craft like a sculptor sanding marble until the finish is just right. From the opening track, “Crank Up and Dip”, Elevator invites you into his world of Southern slang, chicken wings and bass fishing in CLT’s ponds. Jay pays homage to growing up on the Queen City’s west side in “Mosquitoes & Gnats” while reminding the listener he’s still always down for a party on “Pimps & Players.” Jay effortlessly moves his vocals in and out of keys,
cadences and tones, most notably on “Cold”. Jay’s rhymes are rooted in the reality of his upbringing in Charlotte, and are void of many of those tired rap clichés. Instead, he channels his love for his community into a positive energy. “I see you hungry / I got food for days / but it ain’t special, got no roof to raid / cuz it’s that southern playalistic nature player funky music / we could use it in my hood today,” he raps on “Hold Me Down”. Slurred is also a lively project from a production standpoint, with Elevator taking EP credits. The instrumentals are more lush and dynamic than the stereotypical Southern trap sound, and owe quite a bit of inspiration to the pioneering work of the Dungeon Family. Live bass and guitar are provided by Ronald Timmons and Ethan Gardner respectively. “Ain’t It” and “Doin’ my Thang” both feature synth-driven, slow-as-molasses minimalist beats reminiscent of Riding Dirty-era UGK. The EP was mastered by Kevin “Black Pearl” McCloskey, and well done, as Elevator’s vocals live in harmony and clarity with the instrumentals with each passing bar. The final track on the album, “The Seven”,
may be the weakest song on the project, marking a bit of an underwhelming end to the effort. Both the beat and the lyrical flow sound like concepts for a larger song, but don’t develop to that point before fading out. However, you’re still left wanting more when the EP reaches its conclusion. For fans of Southern hip-hop, Slurred in Mecklenburg is a must have for the fall season. — ANDY GOH
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 31
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
SOUNDBOARD
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
THIS FRIDAY
TRENT TOMLISON’S CD RELEASE PARTY FEATURING
DARRELL HARWOOD & OUT
OF THE BLUE
TICKETS ON SALE NOW $5
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
OCTOBER 22
COREY SMITH
LIMITED ADVANCE TICKETS $20 ALL OTHERS $25
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
OCTOBER 28
TRAVIS TRIT T
LIMITED ADVANCE TICKETS $20 ALL OTHERS $25
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
OCTOBER 29
BOO BASH
BEST COSTUME CONTEST IN CHARLOTTE $1800 CASH PRIZES TICKETS ON SALE $10
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
NOVEMBER 5
BRE T T YOUNG
LIMITED ADVANCE TICKETS $12 ALL OTHERS $15 NOVEMBER 11
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
MICHAEL RAY TICKETS ON SALE NOW $10 NOVEMBER 18
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
ERIC PASLAY SPECIAL GUEST CALE DODDS
LIMITED ADVANCE TICKETS $15 ALL OTHERS $17 NOVEMBER 19
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
RUSSELL DICKERSON TICKETS $10 AT DOOR 1-2-3 NIGHT
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
NOVEMBER 26
CHRIS LANE WITH MORGAN WALLEN
LIMITED ADVANCE TICKETS $15 ALL OTHERS $18
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
WILD1-2-3 NIGHTS OCTOBER 15, 21 & 29
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
ON SALE AT COYOTE JOES AND COYOTE-JOES.COM COYOTE JOE’S : 4621 WILKINSON BLVD
704-399-4946
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
32 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
MUSIC
OCT. 13
Vanic (The Underground)
POP/ROCK
POP/ROCK
Anything New (Amos’ Southend) Blue Healer w/ The Ballroom Thieves (The Evening Muse) *Driskill w/ Subliminal Confession and Chris Frisina (Visulite Theatre) Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ w/ The Feeds (Double Door Inn) *Shipocked w/ Abdu Ali, Joy Postell (Snug Harbor) *The Wood Brothers w/ Patrick Sweany (Neighborhood Theatre)
OCT. 14 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven Symphony No. 3 (Belk Theater)
COUNTRY/FOLK The Nighthawks (Double Door Inn)
POP/ROCK Andrew Leahey & the Homestead w/ Jerry Castle (The Evening Muse) Armory (Tin Roof) Bad Romeo “The Baddest 80s Rock Experience” (Amos’ Southend) *Eden with Elohim (Visulite Theatre) Griffin House (Stage Door Theater) Mipso w/ The Honey Dewdrops (Neighborhood Theatre) No Power No Crown, Tradeskin, Black Ritual, In Red Ink (Milestone) Player Made (Snug Harbor) Rust Buckett’s (Puckett’s Farm Equipment) Sean McConnell w/ Derik Hultquist (The Evening Muse) *Truckstop Preachers, Tele Novella, Toleman Randall (Petra’s)
OCT. 15 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven Symphony No. 3 (Belk Theater)
COUNTRY/FOLK Matt Bennett (Tin Roof) *Turnpike Troubadours w/ Dalton Domino (Amos’ Southend)
DJ/ELECTRONIC New Wave Undertow with DJ Price (Milestone)
Chrome Pony w/ That’s My Kid (The Evening Muse) Flying Wolves (Puckett’s Farm Equipment) Latin Night w/ Ultima Nota (Snug Harbor) Local Natives w/ Charlotte Day Wilson (The Fillmore) Loving The Alien, David Cox & The Extenders (Petra’s) *The Situationals w/ The Waves (Double Door Inn)
OCT. 16 POP/ROCK Erick Baker (The Evening Muse) He Is Legend, Space Wizard, Green Fiend, Violent Life Violent Death (Milestone) Omari and the Hellrasiers (Comet Grill) RED w/ Disciple, Spoken, Random Hero (The Underground) Rusted Root w/ Daisy Ghost Flower (Neighborhood Theatre)
OCT. 17 DJ/ELECTRONIC Knocturnal (Snug Harbor)
POP/ROCK Ben Rector w/ Jacob Whitesides (The Fillmore) Find Your Muse Open Mic (The Evening Muse) Locals Live: The Best in Local Live Music & Local Craft Beers (Tin Roof) Lucero w/ Cory Branan (Neighborhood Theatre) *The Monday Night Allstars (Double Door Inn) Wicked Powers (Comet Grill)
OCT. 18 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Bill Hanna Jazz Jam (Double Door Inn)
POP/ROCK Attila w/ Chelsea Grin, Emmure, Sylar (The Underground) Bella’s Bartok (The Evening Muse) Court Of Owls, Footage of a Yeti, Arborlea, Vices and Vessels, Remembrance (Milestone) *Henry Rollins (McGlohon Theater) Open Mic (Puckett’s Farm Equipment) Royal Hounds (Tin Roof)
THU 10/13
DRISKILL -Subliminal Confession- CHRIS FRISINA FRI 10/14
EDEN Futurebound Tour
+ Elohim
FRI 10/21
OCT. 19 POP/ROCK
SUN 10/30
*Henry River Honey w/ Heather Mae (The Evening Muse) Kara Grainger (Double Door Inn) *Mall Goth (“The Edge of Known Space”) w/ Patois Counselors, Sext Message, Sinergismo (Snug Harbor) Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor)
THU 11/3
*Bassh and Millenial (Visulite Theatre)
COMING SOON Die Antwoord (Oct. 25; The Fillmore) Bonnie Raitt (Oct. 26; Ovens Auditorium) Genitorturers (Oct. 26, Amos Southend) Band of Horses (Oct. 28, The Fillmore) Phantogram (Oct. 29; The Fillmore) Switchfoot and Reliant K (Nov. 2, The Fillmore) Bob Dylan (Nov. 6, Belk Theater) Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders (Nov. 10, Spectrum Center) Keller Williams (Nov. 11, Neighborhood Theatre) Drive-By Truckers (Nov. 12, The Fillmore) The Marshall Tucker Band (Nov. 13, Bank of America Stadium) Evanescence (Nov. 15, The Fillmore) Sloan (Nov. 17, Visulite Theatre) Steve Vai (Nov. 18, Neighborhood Theatre) Good Charlotte (Nov. 18, The Fillmore) A$AP Ferg and Playboi Carti (Nov. 21, The Underground) Maxwell, Mary J. Blige and Ro James (Nov. 22, Spectrum Center) The Black Lillies (Dec. 1, Visulite Theatre) Josh Ritter (Dec. 2, McGlohon Theater) I Love The 90s w/ Vanilla Ice, Salt-N-Pepa, Color Me Badd, Coolio, Tone Loc, Rob Base (Dec. 4, Spectrum Center) Trans-Siberian Orchestra (Dec. 8, Spectrum Center) Southern Culture on the Skids (Dec. 9, Visulite Theatre) The Avett Brothers (Dec. 31, Bojangles’ Coliseum) * - CL Recommends
NEED DIRECTIONS? Check out our website at clclt.
com. CL online provides addresses, maps and directions from your location. Send us your concert listings: E-mail us at aovercash@clclt. com or fax it to 704-522-8088. We need the date, venue, band name and contact name and number. The deadline is each Wednesday, one week before publication.
RAINBOW KITTEN SURPRISE WED 11/9
WED 11/16
NOW HIRING INTERNS. THE BRIGHTER, THE BETTER. EMAIL BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM
Grand Opening! Savings!
Treat Yourself Our Location 6157 E. Independence Blvd. Charlotte NC 28212 704/567-9531 CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 33
ENDS
MARKETPLACE
JOBS | POSTINGS | LISTINGS | RENTALS
ENDS
NIGHTLIFE
A SERIES OF FORTUNATE EVENTS: PART ONE Turning lemons into lemonade in the Queen City
PHOTOGRAPHY Family Engagement Real Estate Events and more
www.JeffHahnePhotography.com
704-737-2145
The Perfect Combo.
34 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
RECYCLE ME, PLEASE (Only after you’re done reading me)
weren’t allowed to take pictures — one outMY BOYFRIEND AND I were on the of-towner who we joked with while standing outs for all last week. Instead of rolling myself into a ball and forcing myself into in line actually got caught when her digital seclusion, I decided to surround myself with camera’s flash went off; talk about awkward people who genuinely bring a smile to face. turtle. We giggled nervously, concerned that What happened was totally unexpected, but security would confuse us with the culprit what I’d like to call a series of fortunate and kick us out of line. events. Have you ever thought about what you Every single day of the week I had “plans” would say to your favorite musician? Let — i.e., a distraction from reality. Most of alone, one you’ve never really heard of that these plans involved one too many drinks, you’d just fallen in love with? What if you but hey, it was better than doing the same only had a few moments to capture their thing alone. The first? An invitation to a attention? I’d thought about it many times musical performance Uptown. over in regards to other favorites of mine. On Wednesday, one of my closest friends If I ever got the chance to meet Lil who I’ve known since high school, asked Wayne, who I’m obsessed with, what would if I wanted to go with her to a show — Esperanza Spalding: Emily’s D+Evolution. I do if the words never quite came out? And Even though I was familiar with the as I watched Esperanza fully engaged name, I didn’t know exactly what to in a conversation with a man just expect. After all, my music taste a few steps away, I wished is fairly diverse and I wasn’t desperately that I could sure which Pandora station hear what he was saying had led me to Esperanza. that was so intriguing to a But free tickets to a show Grammy-Award winning with my bestie? I wasn’t artist. going to turn that down. Another fan, a young Coincidentally, the girl with a guitar in her performance was held arms, cried incessantly at McGlohon Theater after Esperanza had left her at Spirit Square, a venue AERIN SPRUILL the two of us had visited mark on what was sure to frequently for Elevation be the instrument she would Church Uptown. treasure for the rest of her life. As soon as we found our seats, we I sighed because I appear to be young were captivated by the soulful and unique but not small or cute enough to gain her presence of Esperanza. A petite frame with sympathy as an aspiring rock star. the eccentricity of Erykah Badu, I fell in love I looked down at the song list on the back with every word she sang, movement she of my newly-purchased vinyl and located made and instrument she played. I sat on the titles of my two favorite songs from the edge of my seat as Emily’s D+Evolution the performance, “Unconditional Love” and unfolded in the form of a stage play in front “Funk the Fear.” Maybe I could explain to of me. As it turns out, the intimate venue her how those songs meant so much to me was perfect for viewing this performance. especially while going through a separation It was a nice surprise to revisit this venue considering how so many popular Charlotte period? It was too late. music spots are shutting their doors this As I approached the table, armed with year. my phone that had been recording a voice After the show, I jokingly asked an memo for 10 minutes preparing for the attendant if there were any way for us interaction, the only words that came out of to meet her. She responded, “If you buy my mouth were, “Such an amazing show, will something, she’ll be signing autographs for you marry me?” 15 minutes.” I looked at my bestie and knew She looked up at me, smiled kindly and immediately that we’d be pulling out our responded, “I’m sorry, I can’t.” debit cards. I have a secret obsession with vinyl, and Share some of your meet and greet memories so does she, so we snagged two records and with bands and musicians at backtalk@clclt. waited patiently in line. We were disappointed com. when the line attendant informed us we
ENDS
CROSSWORD
TURN OF PHRASE ACROSS
1 Dying fireplace bits 7 Clock or watch datum, in Spanish 13 Larynx sites 20 Eye component 21 Reach, as a goal 22 Accessory for Minnie Mouse 23 Parasite infecting big crowds? 25 Steel mill input 26 “Get faster,” on mus. scores 27 First-rate 28 Excavated 30 Halo, for one 31 “Such gall!” 33 Baseball tool used to tap in a golf ball? 35 “Zip- -- -Doo-Dah” 36 Heptathlete Jackie --Kersee 38 Hydrocarbon suffix 39 Starring role as a malicious character? 43 Atoms with charges 45 “Send help!” 48 Shake like -49 Stat for Sosa 50 Tough puff 52 Early arcade giant 54 Ruhr article 55 Classic dog name 58 Noises made by U-boat control switches? 61 Hydroxyl compound 63 Martinez of baseball 65 Hockey legend Bobby 66 Green Giant bagful 67 Mariner org. 68 Notice displayed in neon? 72 Skateboard park feature 75 Positions 77 Juan or senor ender 78 “Dang!” 79 Sour, blackish fruit 80 Dessert-wine allotment? 85 Aide for Frankenstein 87 Vex 88 Sum up 89 “That should come -- surprise” 90 Air hero 92 Playground comeback
94 Wrath 95 Outline sharply 97 First step in making a razor sharpener? 100 Stitch (up) 101 Lost intensity 104 Links target 105 Hair favored by a husband? 109 #1 hit for Shirley Ellis, with “The” 113 Hub for Air France 114 “Cabaret” director Bob 115 Demonstrate 117 Play hard -118 Contradict 120 Inability to tolerate furtiveness? 123 Serene 124 Big Brother creator 125 Grub hub? 126 One cuddling 127 “I Need a Girl” rapper 128 Dutch beer brand
DOWN
1 Acclaim 2 Cadge 3 Actor Willis 4 Baja tourist city 5 Recited readily 6 -- Paulo, Brazil 7 Resort lake 8 “Blame -- Rio” 9 To be, to Camus 10 Really riled 11 Simple Simon met one 12 At the locale itself 13 Burglar 14 Clay layer under soil 15 -- de Oro 16 Fancified 17 More or less 18 Joe of baseball 19 Curse 24 Top picks, informally 29 Money-back, maybe 32 Arbiter 33 “Cheerio!” 34 Perilous 36 Triangular sail 37 Of the ears 39 Burdened 40 Justice Kagan 41 Of rockets, missiles, etc.
42 Plug point 44 Missions for the CIA, say 45 City on San Francisco Bay 46 Moon, e.g. 47 Certain sib 50 Maiden 51 Bitter-tasting 53 Nicholas I and II, for two 56 “-- Easy” (1977 hit) 57 502, in old Rome 59 For dieters, in ads 60 Decide that you will 62 First lady after Hillary 64 Smelly bulb 69 Other, in Madrid 70 Actress Pam 71 Witchy type 73 Lamebrain 74 Kind of black 122-Down 76 Plains homes 80 -- Lanka 81 “She’s the one” 82 Sch. staff 83 Skeptics’ interjections 84 Indulge fully 86 Competitive shooting group 91 Lout of a guy 93 Nannies 96 Scarred “Batman” villain 97 Revered Fr. nun, maybe 98 Softens up 99 -- -pah 100 Evil computer system in “The Terminator” 102 Miter wearer 103 Scared, in dialect 105 Lara of “60 Minutes” 106 Talk formally 107 Curtails 108 Vestibule 109 -- zone (restricted airspace) 110 Tip of a shoelace 111 39.37 inches, to a Brit 112 Car fuel additive 115 Sown bit 116 Adhere (to) 119 “My Gal --” (1942 film) 121 -- -nighter (stadium event) 122 Brewed drink
SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 38.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 35
FREE TO LISTEN AND REPLY TO ADS
ENDS
SAVAGE LOVE
Free Code: Charlotte Loafing
SENIOR MOMENTS Never give up WHO ARE YOU AFTER DARK?
Try FREE: 704-943-0057 More Local Numbers: 1-800-700-6666
redhotdateline.com 18+ FREE TRIAL
Discreet Chat Guy to Guy
980.224.4669
Dating made Easy
FREE
to Listen & Reply to ads.
FREE CODE: Charlotte Loafing
FIND REAL GAY MEN NEAR YOU
Charlotte
(704) 643-6437 For other local numbers:
Charlotte:
(704) 556-0006
18+ www.MegaMates.com
REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.
Try FREE: 704-943-0050 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000
Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+
36 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
www.megamates.com 18+
Meet sexy friends who really get your vibe...
Try FREE: 704-731-0113 More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633
vibeline.com 18+
they make your grizzled old dick hard — so I’M 64 YEARS young, a musician, you take a dump on all older women. Issue chubby, full head of hair, no Viagra number two: male entitlement syndrome. needed, no alcohol, I don’t mind (The universe doesn’t owe you a younger if you drink, smoker, yes I am. I am woman, OLDER; the universe doesn’t also faithful, loyal, and single for five actually owe you shit.) years. No health issues, nada, zero, Unless you’re a billionaire or an A-list zilch. Not gay, not prejudiced against actor, OLDER, the young woman of your gays, pro-woman, Democrat, masculine. dreams is unlikely to break into your Except I only like the younger women apartment. (There’s not a lot of overlap and women without tattoos. And I like between the young gerontophile community them feminine. Ladies my age are a and the burglar community.) Not even the shopping bag of issues with children prospect of inheriting a used car 24 years and ex-hubbies. No thank you. So what’s from now is going to land you a young my problem? Young women see me as woman. My advice, OLDER: Keep dreaming. an old gizzard. I am not ugly, and I look And if you want to be with a young woman younger than 64. But I see what younger once in a while, consider renting. But please women go for. These girls are missing don’t misconstrue anything I’ve written here out on me because they would rather be as encouragement to date women your abused, cheated on, and kicked own age: They deserve better. around by some young prince. Be my guest, dear! Another I am a 63-year-old problem is that I don’t go man and I am engaged to bars or really go out to a wonderful woman at all, so how the hell in her 50s and our sex am I going to meet a life is great. My libido girl? But I long for a is off the charts when girl I can cherish. I’m I am with her, and she even willing to marry is always initiating. She the right girl if she told me she used to enjoy wishes, no problema. DAN SAVAGE teasing and watching Who cares about age? I guys online shoot while sure don’t, but they sure do. she played with (and exposed) Of course, I will die first; she herself, and she loves to see huge can keep the car and everything loads. It is a massive turn-on for her. else for that matter. I can’t take it with But I’m at an age where I produce hardly me. So I have about 24 more years of life anything when I ejaculate. Is there a and I don’t want to wait. Dreaming is way to increase my production? Is there free, of course, but I want it right here, some way to increase the volume of right now. Am I asking for too much? my loads by a large amount? We watch Oblivious Ladies Disregard Elder porn that has guys shooting seemingly Romeo endless streams and she gets crazy horny watching them. I would love to be Who cares about age? You, OLDER, you able to do the same! care about age. Need To Fill The Girl You rule out dating women your own age and then toss out two and possibly three Hydrate more, NTFTG, and go longer stupid rationalizations for not staying in your actuarial lane: Women your age have between orgasms (days, weeks), and you children, ex-husbands, and tattoos(?). All might see a moderate increase in volume. bullshit. Women your own age might be But you’re never gonna blow loads like you likelier to have children and ex-husbands, did in your teens and 20s or like guys do but there are plenty of childless women in porn. Porn producers, professional and out there in their 50s and 60s, OLDER, amateur, select for big load blowers, NTFTG, younger women are likelier to have tattoos, so those samples are skewed. So what you’re and everyone (yourself included) has exes. doing now — enjoying your fiancée while And excuse me, but women your own not denying her the pleasure of watching age are a shopping bag of issues? You’re a her porn (and then reaping the rewards shopping mall’s worth of issues yourself, yourself) — is without a doubt your best OLDER. Issue number one: You can’t be course of action. honest, even in an anonymous forum, about For questions, email Dan Savage at mail@ why you wanna date younger women — savagelove.net.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 37
LILLY SPA
ENDS
STARGAZER
704-392-8099 MON-SUN 9AM-11PM LOCATED NEAR THE AIRPORT EXIT 37 OFF I-85 WE ACCEPT ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
SOUTH ON BEATTIES FORD ROAD THEN FIRST RIGHT ON MONTANA DRIVE (LOCATED 1/2 MILE ON THE LEFT | 714-G MONTANA DR)
SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE
60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL
THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE
1-704-943-0051 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000
www.guyspyvoice.com
Ahora en Español/18+
FOR ALL SIGNS: Venus, the goddess of
love, is caught between the crosshairs of Saturn and Pluto. Venus rules romance, loving relationships, available money supply, beauty, and luxuries. Saturn and Pluto add lack of tolerance and manipulation in relationships. This suggests a time for serious game playing and lack of authenticity among us. It can show up in the forms of global, national, local and personal situations. Step back as soon as you realize you are caught in any inauthentic communications. If you remain in the game, a disagreeable development in an important relationship may be the result.
ARIES: Your warrior self is front and center during this period. The best use of this energy is on behalf of the greater good or another person who needs a champion. Use that energy with thoughtful intentionality. Your reflexes may be off kilter. Ground your adrenaline with heavy exercise. TAURUS: If you share resources with anyone, now is the time to work out whatever arrangements need to be made. This could be over a debt, home resources, insurance, stocks, bonds, or checking accounts. It is time to settle pending financial matters and make a plan for your future.
GEMINI: Irritability and a tendency to short temper may be your companions this week. Beware the temptation to obsess over minor issues. Take especially good care of your body at this time. You are in a physically low cycle and subject to accident or minor injuries with tools or vehicles. CANCER: Although others are not fair on
the playground of life, you and your partner are synchronous. The two of you are focused on practical affairs of living and you are in agreement about many things. You have what it takes to be a warrior on behalf of yourself or others. People will listen to you as long as you speak with truth, confidence and integrity.
VIEW FROM THE COUCH For reviews on the latest in home entertainment, visit
CLCLT.COM/CHARLOTTE/VIEW-FROM-THE-COUCH/
38 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM
LEO: It is probable that others in your life may be erratic. Partner(s), clientele, good friends, and even professionals may be far less reliable than you would like. If this has already started, then do your best to choose activities that depend only upon yourself for a short time. Take some time and also do activities on your own for the time being. This is a good time to catch up on reading, organizing files and sending emails and writing. VIRGO: You are somewhat edgy and irritable
this week. Parts of your mind are scattered into so many corners that it is hard to pull everything together. But you know clearly where boundaries need to be drawn and you are not hesitant to do so. The best of verbal
warriors is concise and says what is needed, but no more. Watch your words carefully and don’t speak too quickly.
LIBRA: During this week you will be
finishing projects of the last couple of months. It is also possible that a relationship is coming to a closing phase. This could mean eventual separation. On the other hand, it does not have to be permanent, and may represent preparation for moving into the next phase of growth with this relationship. Sometimes it can be good to take a short break from seeing those that are the closest to us.
SCORPIO: Whatever is occurring in your life at this time is clearly intense and emotionladen. You may feel as though your very life depends upon making your point of view heard and acknowledged. It is important to play your personal political cards carefully. Don’t attempt a takeover unless you are prepared for a serious pushback.
SAGITTARIUS: For much of this week you
are in a gregarious and talkative mood. You want to reach out to friends and share ideas. Love, relationships, and social life are given a go signal. Your mind is stable and organized to improve your higher good. Study and writing activities will go favorably.
CAPRICORN: You are the initiator in
every arena of your life. You are strong and confident. I would not want to be on your enemy list right now, lest you attack. Count to 10 and rattle your sabers before you explode. Give people a fighting chance. No doubt others will let you speak, break in line, or generally do what you want to do. Use this power for the benefit of all.
AQUARIUS: Your ability to concentrate
upon projects that require management of details is strong. Organizing files, closets and cabinets will clear the clutter from your mind. Fortunately you are able to make mindful decisions. If information is needed, you can find it readily. The week favors education in practical skills.
PISCES: There are vampires loose in the
world and the Fish tends to attract them. If you have experience, you probably have begun to smell them when they enter your vicinity. Those who have not will be learning a lesson soon. It’s a required course for this sign. Save some energy for yourself, so that you can push forward. Don’t take over someone else’s problem or else you may end up having a problem in the future. You can’t help everyone.
Are you interested in a personal horoscope? Vivian Carol may be reached at 704-366-3777 for private psychotherapy or astrology appointments. Website: www.horoscopesbyvivian.com.
CLCLT.COM | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | 39
40 | OCT. 13 - OCT. 19, 2016 | CLCLT.COM