2017 Issue 29 Creative Loafing Charlotte

CLCLT.COM | SEP. 7 - 13, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 29

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CREATIVE LOAFING IS PUBLISHED BY WOMACK NEWSPAPERS, INC. CHARLOTTE, NC 28206.

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STAFF

PUBLISHER • Charles A. Womack III publisher@yesweekly.com EDITOR • Mark Kemp mkemp@clclt.com

EDITORIAL

NEWS EDITOR • Ryan Pitkin rpitkin@clclt.com FILM CRITIC • Matt Brunson mattonmovies@gmail.com THEATER CRITIC • Perry Tannenbaum perrytannenbaum@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS • Corbie Hill, Erin Tracy-Blackwood, Vivian Carol, Charles Easley, Allison Braden, Page Leggett, Alison Leininger, Sherrell Dorsey, Dan Savage, Aerin Spruill, Chuck Shepherd, Jeff Hahne, Samir Shukla, Courtney Mihocik, Debra Renee Seth, Vanessa Infanzon, Ari LeVaux

ART/DESIGN

ART DIRECTOR • Dana Vindigni dvindigni@clclt.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS • Justin Driscoll, Brian Twitty, Zach Nesmith

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SALES MANAGER Aaron Stamey • astamey@clclt.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Candice Andrews • candrews@clclt.com Melissa Rustemov • mrustemov@clclt.com ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Pat Moran • pmoran@clclt.com 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.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF AFROPOP!.

14

It’s going to be on and AfroPop!-pin’ at Morehead Tavern on September 9.

We put out weekly

8

NEWS&CULTURE A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN Charlotte Art League is being

forced out of South End, and only the neighborhood stands to lose

BY RYAN PITKIN 6 THE BLOTTER BY RYAN PITKIN 9 MUSLIM IN CHARLOTTE: DUSTON BARTO BY LARA AMERICO

10

FOOD THE LITTLE TOMATOES THAT COULD Never underestimate

this juicy red fruit

BY ARI LEVAUX

14 16

TOP 10 THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

MUSIC FOLK YOU Rapper Nige Hood borrows from music’s storytelling

tradition

BY MARK KEMP 17 MUSICMAKER: ODDBOY COLLECTIVE BY MARK KEMP 20 SOUNDBOARD

22

ARTS&ENT WHO AM I THIS TIME? With ‘Eat the Runt,’ the audience picks the players

BY PAT MORAN

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24 SUMMER CINEMA WRAP BY MATT BRUNSON

ODDS&ENDS 26 MODERN EROTIC BY ALLISON BRADEN 26 NIGHTLIFE BY AERIN SPRUILL 27 CROSSWORD 28 SAVAGE LOVE BY DAN SAVAGE 30 STARGAZER BY VIVIAN CAROL

GO TO CLCLT.COM FOR VIDEOS, PODCASTS AND MORE!

COVER DESIGN

BY DANA VINDIGNI

CLCLT.COM | SEP. 7 - 13, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 29

Website: www.clclt.com Facebook: /clclt Pinterest: @clclt Twitter: @cl_charlotte Instagram: @creativeloafingcharlotte YouTube: /qccreativeloafing 1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 5

NEWS

BLOTTER

BY RYAN PITKIN

NEVERGREEN Last week we reported on a

man who called police because his neighbor was spreading mulch and got some in his yard, but a woman in northwest Charlotte was a bit more justified in turning to police when her neighbor’s landscaping efforts actually did real damage. The 50-year-old woman filed a police report stating that some unknown suspect sprayed some “grass killer” on two large evergreen trees in her yard, completely killing them, leaving us to think, “Holy shit, that’s some damn good grass killer!”

DROP OFF Police filed a report last week

after they received an unsolicited drug delivery while working a crash scene in east Charlotte. An officer stated in the report that he was directing traffic after a wreck on E. W.T. Harris Boulevard when one of the cars driving by tossed a small canvass pouch out the window. Officers picked up the pouch and found that it contained $50 worth of drugs (the report did not say what type of narcotics). Officers weren’t sure which car dropped off the stash, so they simply turned it in as found evidence.

PROTECT THE PLATE A man in northeast Charlotte called police last week after his drunk girlfriend hit him, and although as a rule we never include domestic violence in The Blotter, after reading this report, an exception was made. The man told officers that his girlfriend was intoxicated and when he said something to her about it, she hit him. According to the report, however, the man suffered no injuries, and told police that he really called them because she knocked a full plate of food out of his hands.

MURDER WEAPON Employees at a Goodwill on Sardis Road in southeast Charlotte called police to retrieve something that someone donated but they couldn’t really use. When officers arrived, the manager handed over a fake gun that was made to be used as a stage prop in plays, but could easily lead to someone getting shot when they shouldn’t.

SINGLES TO MINGLE Police responded to

a break-in on Eastway Drive in east Charlotte after someone broke into a water vending machine and made off with a thick wad of ones. According to the report, the thieves smashed a part of the machines that only takes $1 bills. Nevertheless, they made off with $500 worth of ones. I’m no detective, but if I were, I would be checking the strip clubs right off the bat.

HANDBALL A couple of kids were going

at it on the field of a youth soccer game this week, and at one point it got to the point where police had to get involved. A responding officer filed a report stating that an 11-year-old victim was pressing charges for simple assault after another young boy on the field grabbed his genitals and yanked

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them. The victim did not report any serious injuries, although the pain will remain in his memory for years to come.

TAKE IT A 47-year-old woman filed a

police report after she lost some important paperwork in north Charlotte last week. She told police that she was sitting at a bus stop and put down a bag containing her tax paperwork, her last three stubs and two letters from the IRS. When she got onto the bus, she left the papers behind. The woman said she went back but couldn’t find the bag, but if she already had the IRS on her back in that way, maybe her best bet is to just let someone else have her identity and disappear off the grid.

PIZZA PARTY Management at a Pizza Hut on Freedom Drive in west Charlotte called police last week after they were forced to make 25 pizzas and drinks just before close without anyone to deliver them to. According to the report, someone called and ordered the large amount of food and gave a credit card number that was later found to be stolen.

The store was out $182 worth of food, but on the bright side, the employees were all eating free that night.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED A 33-year-old construction worker filed a police report last week after his truck was broken into in front of his west Charlotte home. The man told police that the thief first tried to jimmy into a passenger side window, but was unsuccessful. Undeterred, the suspect then tried to break into a trailer in the driveway by damaging the lock, but failed again. Getting desperate, the thief then simply sliced open the liner that was covering the bed of the truck, and hit the jackpot. The thief made off with more than $15,500 worth of construction equipment.

ACTION REACTION A 48-year-old repo

man called police last week after he was assaulted by a deadbeat car owner. The man said the suspect confronted him when he was attempting to tow the car, but when he was told how much he would have to pay to stop the repossession, he flipped out. The suspect picked up a stick from the yard and struck the repo man across the face, forcing him to fall to the ground and injure his knee. Now the suspect still owes the same amount of money on his car but has to face an assault charge, as well.

BAD MEMORIES A 53-year-old woman was so sketched out by a call from someone she once knew that she decided she would turn to police. The woman said she received a phone call to her north Charlotte home at 11 a.m. one morning, and it turned out to be someone she hadn’t heard from since 2015.

She didn’t say that the caller said anything weird, or that she had any sort of restraining order against them, only that they seemed to be calling “for no apparent reason,” so she hung up and called police.

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NEWS

FEATURE

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN Charlotte Art League is being forced out of South End, and only the neighborhood stands to lose RYAN PITKIN

O

N A RECENT Thursday

afternoon, the scene outside Charlotte Art League was glum.

Rain clouds promised to spoil the Panthers’ last preseason game later that night, but for now were content to dump a steady drizzle on the Camden Road construction site across from the building, creating a pit of mud where Common Market and Black Sheep Skate Shop once stood.

But inside the large warehouse, the mood was vibrant. Volunteers moved art around and chatted cheerily, while a little white Peek-a-poo (Pekingnese and poodle) named Gabi sat at the receptionist desk, ready to help anyone who walked through the door.

It would have been hard to tell that day that CAL had been informed just a week earlier that the organization wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the building it had called home for 22 years. The way the ladies inside CAL were facing that rainy day, however, was a metaphor for how they look at any news that tries to bring them down.

Cindy Connelly, executive director at CAL, took a seat on a modern-but-worn leather couch in the back of the building and explained that, while the short notice from the venue’s owners — Asana Parnters enacted a clause in the lease that would force CAL out in six months — was a surprise, the move was something the whole team had anticipated and was looking forward to.

Connelly had watched as community staples had shut down around her to make room for business offices and condos over the last three years, and she had already begun planning to move into a new space.

She expected they would have to leave within three years, but not by January 24, 2018, which is what she faces now.

“Asana never gave us the indication that they were going to give us that small timeframe, but there was never much communication there,” she said. “So when the letter came it was kind of like, ‘Ugh, oh man.’ We had been working on it, because we knew it was inevitable, we just didn’t think it was going to be that short of a timeframe.”

Still though, the team’s proactive approach paid off. Three months before the letter came, they had started planning, figuring out their budget and outlining proposals for potential new facilities.

“So really it was a fantastic time, because 8 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

A look at the 22-year home of Charlotte Art League on Camden Road from inside and out.

PHOTOS BY RYAN PITKIN

“It was really hard watching [Common Market] go. You feel hurt, you feel anger, you feel loss. You feel so many things, and then you know it’s coming for you. You feel like instead of looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, you look for a darkness at the end of your tunnel, and you anticipate that it’s going to happen to us. But were also realizing that it means a change, it means growth opportunities for us, and I’m excited about that.”

-KRISTEN WINGER, CHARLOTTE ART LEAGUE ARTIST we already had most of the work done,” Connelly said. “We knew how much we could afford, we knew what we were looking at, we were just working on our talking points for when we went out to talk to facilities and partners. So the timing really couldn’t have been better. We knew it was inevitable, we just got a bit complacent. We kept thinking, ‘Oh, 2020 maybe?’ So when the letter came, we were halfway through. We just ripped the Band Aid off and now we’re running.”

Connelly hopes CAL can find a bigger space as they continue to expand, and looks at the unexpected letter as a positive.

“We’ve grown out of this building,” she said. “We need more space. We have more nonprofits that are in need of space. So I think it’s a good thing. We’re going to be a bigger, better CAL. There’s nothing negative about it.

I mean, it’s a short time frame, sure, but we’re running with it. We have no choice.”

CHARLOTTE ART LEAGUE originally formed in 1965 as a group of local artists who would meet at each others’ homes or in local churches to create and share artwork. Thirty years later, the League found a home in the old biscuit factory on Camden Road in an area that was then known for Price’s Chicken Coop and not much else. It began as a “clubhouse” of sorts for local artists, and eventually gained a reputation as a fine arts gallery, but in recent years CAL has transformed into a studio for nonprofit organizations and a venue for a diverse range of expression, from pottery kilns to stage plays.

In the last three years, CAL has acted as a haven and gallery space for 25 nonprofit and for-profit partners. The League works with organizations like UMAR Services Inc.,

which promotes inclusion and independence for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities; and Studio 345, an out-of-school youth development program that teaches students an array of multimedia art forms.

Susan Dunn, president of CAL’s board of directors, said the League’s increased work with its various community partners has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of her threeyear tenure.

“We’re bringing together people and making partnerships with people that would have never met each other,” Dunn said. “Studio 345 is housed in Spirit Square. We didn’t know that those kids were learning graphic arts. We’ve got the perfect opportunity for them to fill that need for us, while at the same time validating their skills and talents as artists.”

Another example Dunn cited was CAL’s work with Guerilla Poets, who work to “give poetry back to the people” with spontaneous poetry readings and community volunteering with at-risk youth.

“I know in my day-to-day life, I wouldn’t have met them or heard their stories or their experiences had they not come here,” Dunn said of Guerilla Poets. “It’s giving everybody a platform to tell their story, and it’s all within the art field. We’ve got spoken word, we’ve got theater, we’ve got musicians who come in — it’s not just oil on canvas. Everybody needs to open up to all the different arts, and I think that’s really the direction that CAL went, was from just being a gallery with beautiful paintings, to we’ve got everything now.”

WHILE CAL HAS built up its repertoire to include just about “everything” in the local arts scene, the surrounding South End area has

seen its culture slowly vanish into a scrum of similar-looking breweries and condominiums.

The loss of CAL, for example, will be a huge loss to the popular South End Gallery Crawl, which takes place on the first Friday of each month. Some have compared the potential effects to how the development of the Camden Avenue lot where Food Truck Friday was held eventually led to that event being split up and scattered around town.

Larry Elder’s recent sale of Elder Gallery, which sits across the construction site from CAL, sent rumors swirling that it might be South End’s next loss, but gallery director Cassandra Richardson told Creative Loafing that new owner Sonya Pfeiffer is a longtime family friend of the Elders and has no intentions of selling the building to developers.

Everyone Creative Loafing spoke with during a recent visit to CAL spoke of the recent demolition of the Common Market across the street like they were referring to the death of a close friend.

“It’s very heartbreaking,” said Kristen Winger, a volunteer and artist at CAL. “Charlotte doesn’t seem to hold on to its history, whether it’s funding or whether it’s volunteers or whatever, so watching directly across the street from us, as the Common Market and those buildings we demolished. It was really hard watching it go. You feel hurt, you feel anger, you feel loss. You feel so many things, and then you know it’s coming for you.

You feel like instead of looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, you look for a darkness at the end of your tunnel, and you anticipate that it’s going to happen to us. But we’re also realizing that it means a change, it means growth opportunities for us, and I’m excited

Kristen Winger in her studio with her dog, Gabi. about that.”

Artists at CAL turned the demolition of they’re beloved Common Market, Black Sheep and Modern Fabrics locations into an art project, of course, photographing in sequence as the buildings fell. Many of them snatched up mementos from the rubble.

Connelly emphasized that it was about more than the easy access to a good lunch, but that CAL lost a neighbor they had built a strong bond with. For Dunn, it was the symbol of a neighborhood on the decline, despite what the development firms tell you.

“It’s been sad,” Dunn said. “I hated losing our Common Market across the street and the other artists that were in the buildings around it. The charm of the neighborhood kind of left when Common Market left, and that eclectic, funky feel is not really here anymore. So, you know, maybe we’ll bring our funky, eclectic feel to a new area.”

FOR NOW, THE question remains: Where

will CAL bring that funky, eclectic feel?

At Creative Loafing’s press deadline, the folks at CAL were still waiting to hear back about a proposal for a space on Hawthorne Avenue, in a rapidly developing area between the Belmont and Plaza Midwood neighborhoods.

With plans pending there, the board has continued searching for a space that would fit their expanding needs. Camp North End, the hip, new spot on Statesville Avenue, was out of CAL’s price range, so the search has continued in spots down South Tryon Street and in different areas of east and west Charlotte.

“It’s like doing House Hunters: Commercial Edition,” said Connelly. “It’s been really interesting to see all these properties that aren’t air conditioned and are smelly and haven’t been occupied for 30 years. It’s like seeing a little bit of Charlotte’s history. There are a lot of opportunities out there, we’ve just got to find that one place that’s going to have the foot traffic and that’s going to be safe for the artists to be in at night. I’m sure we’ll find it.”

If CAL hasn’t finalized a plan by the end of September, Connelly said, they will begin looking for a smaller, alternative space to serve as a placeholder until a bigger space

is ready, but she’s optimistic that won’t be necessary. Whatever happens, she said, CAL won’t go dark.

For Winger, the ideas come spilling out when she’s asked about what she’d like to see come out of a new location. Emphasizing that she was just expressing her personal wishes and not speaking for fellow board members, she was at the ready with plans for a more communal CAL than what it’s been in South End. Her dreams sound a lot like a new version of what Camp North End has become in recent months.

“My dream, personally, is to have a place where local bands can play, and we could have a coffee shop and a co-op type atmosphere,” she said. “Maybe a yoga studio, and you come in for yoga class, ‘Oh my gosh, I like that art piece, I never knew that was here.’ And, ‘Hey look there’s a crawl going on next week,’ or something, and just in the community getting out there. I hope we find a bigger, brighter place with an opportunity to draw a different crowd of people in, whether it be a different group of artists or a different group of clientele that comes in and looks at the art.”

For Dunn, the search gives CAL a new opportunity to continue expanding its work with nonprofits and other community organizations, so that CAL can reach community members that may be Charlotte’s next great artists, they just don’t know it yet.

“That’s the exciting part about this move.

Yes, we’re sad to leave South End, it’s been a great community for us, but we think we can find a larger facility, maybe in an area of town that doesn’t have as much going on,” Dunn said. “Maybe we’re going to reach people who wouldn’t have had access to canvass and paint. We’ve got a lot of nonprofits that come in and work with us, so we’re hoping to be more accessible. In a larger facility we would have more space to share with our partners.

“So I’m not looking at this as doom and gloom. I’m looking at this as, it’s a bump in the road. Nobody likes change, but if we can get to that place where we say, ‘Wow, that was great but look what we’ve got now,’ that’s where I want to get to.”

NEWS

MUSLIM IN CHARLOTTE

EVERYDAY FANBOY Meet Duston Barto

BY LARA AMERICO [Editor’s Note: Last year, CL contributor Lara Americo debuted her photo series “Trans & Queer in the Workplace” in Creative Loafing between August and December. The series was eventually picked up by Huffington Post and served as the basis for Americo’s Chrysalis exhibit at C3 Lab. This year, Americo highlights another marginalized and misunderstood population, the local Muslim population.

Every other week, we will be running a photo and some insights from Muslim Charlotteans, as they discuss their work, their personal lives and the judgment they often live with. This week, Americo features Duston Barto. Visit clclt.com for previous entries and videos of Americo’s subjects.]

After 35 years of working for other people, Duston Barto wanted a change, so he and his wife opened up Kitty in a Box, a gift shop of sorts featuring anime and Asia-inspired products.

“I’ve been directly involved with the Charlotte Muslim community for — I guess it’s been about five years now. I was the editor of the Muslim American magazine for quite some time. Christians and Muslims should coexist. Christians and Muslims have a long history of coexistence. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon them, Christians were in the society. And Christians were able to live according to their rules and according to their laws in Muslim societies throughout history. The only difference between Muslims and Christians is on the subject of Jesus, and that shouldn’t be something that we have to fight each other over.

As Muslims, when my wife and I started the business we made a decision that we would only carry clean products. So we not only carry products that are related to series that we’re passionate about and that we love, but we want to carry things that we’re proud of, things that exhibit the fun and the excitement of the anime and kind of stay away form the risqué side.”

RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 9

FEATURE

FOOD

THE LITTLE TOMATOES THAT COULD Never underestimate the juicy red fruit

BY ARI LEVAUX

I

N THE LATE 1980s and early

1990s, Hollywood produced four movies about zombie tomatoes.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! spawned the sequels Return of the Killer Tomatoes!, Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!, and my personal favorite, Killer Tomatoes Eat France. The plots of these movies were thinly veiled attempts to tap-dance around the idea that, deep down inside, tomatoes can be relentless.

To the farmers market customer who just paid $3.50 for a splotched, cracked heirloom, the idea of running away from tomatoes may seem quaint. You might even clench an imaginary paring knife as you feel yourself mouthing the challenge, “Come at me, bro.”

But I have a friend, a vendor at my local farmers market who is so aggressively grumpy that they call him Mr. Sunshine.

His gift for tomatoes borders on the supernatural. He brings stacks of boxes each week, flush with sports car-red tomato fruits, and sells them at a price that’s hard to refuse, giving zero fucks about the grumblings of other growers. At the end of market, rather than load his tomatoes back in the truck, he drops the price even further.

There’s nothing like a 20-pound box of tomatoes, ripening in your kitchen, to make you feel the weight of the ticking clock, or the inadequacy of your tomato-processing skills.

Spoiler alert: I’ve solved the riddle of what to do with all those tomatoes, but before I share my oven-roasted tomato preserve recipe, let me share a little more about my grumpy farmer friend’s supernatural tomato plants.

In spring, Mr. Sunshine seeds his tomato plants in tiny pots, and transplants them small. He sells the rest at market — or, I should say, he brings them to market in their yellow and withered glory reminiscent of Mr. Sunshine himself. I used to wonder why he brought the sorry-looking plants to market at all, until he gave me one. Since then I’ve begun to understand the success of his tomato patch.

I put down my plant next to a bunch of flower pots, intending to plant it in the garden when I got around to it. But thanks to its underwhelming stature, putting this little thing in the ground wasn’t a priority.

Eventually, I forgot about it.

10 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

As weeks passed and June turned to July, the little plant got almost no water. Weeds grew around the area, and I eventually went in with the weed whacker, dug out the pots and pruned the little plant from 15 to 5 inches tall. No leaves, just a faded green stump with a severed end. That it had any green at all was a miracle.

Moved, I planted the tomato. As if a nob was turned on a dimmer light, the faded green trunk immediately turned a few shades brighter. I know it can be risky to anthropomorphize one’s tomato plant, but it looked hungry, pissed and motivated. Within days it sported burley little buds. They sprouted leaves and flowered, producing a single fruit that now hangs close to the main trunk, turning yellow.

The lesson: Never underestimate a tomato plant. Especially one to which voodoo has clearly been applied.

Luckily, I’ve developed an easy way of dealing with any amount of tomatoes. I make an oven-roasted tomato sauce that can incorporate a variety of garden vegetables in moderation. It’s so versatile and satisfying that even with Mr. Sunshine practically paying me to take away his tomatoes, there’s no such thing as too many. I call this concoction. . .

ZOMBIE SAUCE Ingredients • Tomatoes • Vegetables (onions, garlic, zucchini, sweet peppers, carrots, eggplant) • Salt • Olive oil Protocol Cut large tomatoes in half to speed the process, but you can leave small and even medium ones whole. Lay them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt, drizzle with olive oil, and bake at 350 degrees.

While that’s happening, prepare your veggies. Slice the onions, peel the garlic, grate the carrots, chop the peppers and zucchini — my last batch I used small zucchini that still had flowers, which I included in the sauce. You can include any combination of these ingredients, but they must not amount to more than 25 percent of the total amount of materials, with tomatoes being the 75 percent majority.

When the tomatoes have begun to cook down, filling the pan with dilute tomato juice that simmers around the collapsing orbs, gently add the vegetables, folding them in.

Continue cooking another 30 minutes.

I don’t add any herbs or spices, because I like the sauce to stay uncommitted. If, when the time comes, you wish to make a pasta sauce, adding some oregano and red wine will get you there.

Turn off the oven and allow the sauce to cool with the oven. Transfer contents of the tray(s) to a large mixing bowl and puree with an immersion blender (alternatively, use a blender or food processor).

Transfer the sauce to quart-sized freezer bags.

When it’s time to use your sauce, customize it however necessary, adding garlic, vodka, Italian seasonings, or whatever you need to get it where you want to go. It is a tomato-flavored blank slate onto which you can paint any design you can imagine.

You can also use this product as a stealth ingredient. I add a hit of it to my bone broth, and to my coconut curry, and my green chile stew. Though none of these are dishes that make you think tomato sauce, they do usually contain tomatoes, and the sauce does the job.

It just goes to show: tomatoes are everywhere, but don’t be afraid of them.

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

SPACE FOR SUBLEASE AVID XCHANGE MUSIC FACTORY phone. 336.316.1231 email. publisher@yesweekly.com

Even Your Grandma Gets it.

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 11

U.N.C C FOOTBALL BE PART OF THE EXCITEMENT

HIRING EVENT STAFF (USHERS, TICKETS TAKERS) & SECURITY FOR UPCOMING 2017-18 SEASON

2017 JOB FAIR AND ORIENTATION SUNDAY September 10th JOB FAIR & ORIENTATION 12:00 AM TO 2:00PM PPSB TRAINING AFTER ORIENTATION 2:00PM TO 3:00PM Enter UNCC off of North Tryon Street at Institute Circle, to Robert D Synder Road, to Philips Road Park in the Stadium Parking Lot, look for the job fair signs

JERRY RICHARDSON FOOTBALL STADIUM AT UNC CHARLOTTE

8701 PHILIPS RD. CHARLOTTE, NC 28223 We are seeking energetic people ages 18 and older.

People with criminal records need not apply. Background checks will be conducted.

Must bring state issued driver’s licesnse or ID.

12 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

BE BOLD Nellysford, VA

| Mills River, NC

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 13

THURSDAY

7

FRIDAY

8

THINGS TO DO

TOP TEN

Chinese Lantern Festival THURSDAY PHOTO COURTESY OF DANIEL STOWE BOTANICAL GARDEN

FRIDAY

8

FRIDAY

8

FRIDAY

8

UNTETHERED

BRAD PAISLEY

PURPLE DREAMS

APOCALYPTICA

What: Hold off on traveling to China — not that there’s anything wrong with them, they just don’t take kindly to free press like us. Asian culture comes to our backyard with this annual event.

The sky be illuminated by authentic Chinese lanterns at night, but guests can enjoy Asian cuisine, art and activities like Kung Fu shows and other traditional customs.

Don’t miss your chance for a literal taste of Chinese and Asian culture.

What: What keeps you anchored?

How do you create the world you inhabit — and what happens when you break loose from that world?

Charlotte Storytellers are back, and eight raconteurs will be sharing stories about finding freedom personally, professionally and emotionally. The only question now is: What’s keeping you tethered to your couch on a weekend instead of joining the bards with the beer?

Childlike wonder encouraged.

Children themselves? Not so much.

What: Country McDreamy and his perfectly white cowboy hat are coming to PNC for another boot-stomping, beer-chugging night. Paisley’s recent support for the LGBTQ community is one more reason to turn out. Fans take over the lyrics as Paisley strums his guitar and by the end of the night, they walk away voiceless, but the memories never fade! Oh, he also likes to throw his hat to the crowd, so real fans might want to sit super close if you want a chance at it.

What: Dreams come in all colors, shapes and sizes. This 2017 documentary tells the story of local Northwest School of the Arts’ production of The Color Purple, only the second high school in America to stage the Broadway musical version of Alice Walker’s classic novel focusing on AfricanAmerican women in the 1930s South. As renowned Northwest teacher Corey Mitchell says in the film, “This is what Glee looks like in real life.”

When: 5:30-9:30 p.m.

Where: Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, 6500 S. New Hope Road More: $16-25. facebook.com/ DanielStoweBotanicalGarden

When: Sept. 8-9, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Free Range Brewing, 2320 N. Davidson St. More: $5-10. charlottestorytellers. com

When: 7 p.m.

Where: PNC Music Pavilion, 707 Pavilion Blvd.

More: $23 and up. charlottemusicpavilion.com

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: Halton Theater, 1206 Elizabeth Ave. More: $10, free for CPCC students. tix.cpcc.edu

What: To love Metallica is to love Apocalyptica, you just might not know it yet. Apocalyptica is so epic that they created their own genre through their approach to Metallica songs, playing the legendary heavy metal band on cellos. There’s nothing classical about these renderings of “Enter Sandman,” “Master of Puppets” and extra bonus tracks like “Nothing Else Matters” from the group’s debut album, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos. If you’re not already a heavy metal fan, try them on the cellos.

CHINESE LANTERN FESTIVAL

14 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

When: 8 p.m.

Where: McGlohon Theatre at Spirit Square, 325 N. College St. More: $15-25. blumenthalarts.org

2 Chainz TUESDAY

NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS

Brad Paisley FRIDAY

Purple Dreams FRIDAY PHOTO COUTESY OF BRAD PAISLEY

SATURDAY

9

CHARLOTTE ROLLER GIRLS DOUBLE HEADER What: Haven’t been to a CLTRG bout yet this season? Here’s your last chance. Our local All-Stars will take on the opposing Greensboro Roller Derby teams for this doubleheader. The season closer will start with a BYOB tailgate party at 3:30 in the Grady Cole lot. An hour later, doors open and the body checking begins. As always, players and experts will roam the crowd explaining the game to newbs, no judgement.

When: 4:30-9 p.m.

Where: Grady Cole Center, 310 N. Kings Drive More: $7-16, kids under 5 free. charlotterollergirls.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE FILM FESTIVAL

PHOTO BY DEMXX

SATURDAY

9

TUESDAY

12

TUESDAY

12

AFROPOP!

GOSPELSHOUT!

2 CHAINZ

What: AfroPop! wants to end summer with a bang (or a Pop!).

There’s no excuse to miss jamming into the night with The Dynamic DJ Kato and DJ Steel Wheel while dancing with the Kizomba Alegría Dance Company. Afrobeats, soca, live African drums, African fashion and vendors are just a few features to this party. Dress up in cultural attire like dashikis and kente for special discounts, but do it respectfully folks, if you’re going to do it at all. (We’re talking to you, white people.)

What: You might be a loyal, church-going servant to the Lord, or you might be a skeptical agnostic sneering at the dogooders, but nobody can deny the powerful, spirit-lifting vibes that the Charlottean Shout Bands radiate. The annual concert is celebrating religious “roots music,” with harmonizing a capella singers.

A soul food dinner will make it the perfect evening to get right with God and go wrong with your diet.

What: 2 Chainz is mighty excited about his fourth studio album Pretty Girls Like Trap Music. Over the summer he even opened up a nail salon coinciding with the album’s release so fans could get free manicures. Not quite as cool as the pink “Trap House” he rented in Atlanta in the lead up to the album’s release, which was used as a free HIV testing center, church and art space, but hell, we support all of it.

When: Dinner, 6 p.m.; Doors, 7:30 p.m.

Where: United House of Prayer for All People, 2321 Beatties Ford Rd. More: $10 for dinner, music free. tuhopfap.org

When: 8 p.m.

Where: The Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St. More: $39.50. fillmorecharlottenc. com

When: 9 p.m. - 2 a.m.

Where: Morehead Tavern, 300 E. Morehead St. More: $10. afropopnation.com

WEDNESDAY

13

KEITH SCOTT - ONE YEAR LATER What: No Charlottean went unaffected by the shooting of Keith Scott and the community response that followed. The Charlotte Uprising would change our city forevermore. WBTV reporter Steve Crump will moderate this conversation featuring a panel of Charlotte figures like Vicki Foster, assistant chief of support services with CMPD. It’s important to note, however, that conspicuously missing from this panel is a single Charlotte Uprising organizer.

When: 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Where: Mint Museum Uptown, 500 S. Tryon St. More: Free. mintmuseum.org

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 15

MUSIC

FEATURE

NIGE HOOD (W/ MAMMOTH INDIGO, GLENN) 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 7. $6. Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave. 704-3326608. petrasbar.com

FOLK YOU Rapper Nige Hood borrows from music’s storytelling tradition

BY MARK KEMP

H

E CALLS HIS music “folk rap,” but don’t expect Nigel Hood to be dropping knowledge over strummed acoustic guitars, bongos or pristine, three-part harmonies. To Hood, folk is a philosophy.

“At its purest form, folk rap is music about day-to-day life — everyday life in the pursuit of happiness,” Hood says. “Sonically, folk rap is groovy, it’s funky, it’s got soul.” He pauses between sips of coffee. “But mostly, it tells a story.”

Like the story of the “cool kids with no cares at all,” in “Funkshun,” from Hood’s 2016 EP This is Folk Rap. It’s a simple song about the Funkshun parties thrown by local hippie party promoter Oba Amitabha.

In “Funkshun,” Hood raps and sings over a sweet, bumping, ‘70s-style keyboard line and percussion: “Big Afros, the girls gone natural / Lookin’ at themselves in the mirror of the bathroom / Steppin’ out the door like a motherfuckin’ classroom.”

“Nige’s nature is energetic and charismatic,” Amitabha says of Hood, who goes by his nickname Nige when performing. “His music genuinely casts about bringing people together to have a good time.”

“Funkshun” could be any song from any album by any member of the late-1980s Native Tongues collective. But the song doesn’t sound dated — it sounds timeless.

“If I were to put other artists into the category of folk rap,” Hood says, “I would say it’s the tradition of A Tribe Called Quest.

That’s folk rap. I would even say Chance the Rapper would be considered folk rap. It’s rap that talks about things we all can relate to.”

The 28-year-old rapper is sitting at a bistro table inside Amélie’s French Bakery in NoDa, wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, black jeans and white Adidas. It’s a rainy Thursday in late August.

Bleak news reports about the hurricane that devastated Texas are coming in every half-hour or so. Even the sky over Charlotte is dark and menacing. But Hood’s smile lights up the café like the sun peeping out from behind charcoal gray clouds when he describes his music. He searches for the right words to distinguish his sound from other rappers.

“A lot of rap is self-promotion, and that’s cool,” Hood eventually says. “But I don’t really get into that.”

In the past year, Nige Hood has released This is Folk Rap and put together a band to back his signature mix of rock, R&B and rap that bubbles with golden-age hip-hop stylee. On September 7, Hood will bring this concoction to Petra’s on a bill with the atmospheric indie-pop of the band Mammoth Indigo. Two days later, Hood will 16 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Nige Hood stares into the sun. be off to Raleigh to perform at a Hopscotch Festival day party called The Art of Sound, along with Charlotte rapper Black Linen and several regional acts including experimental ambient-noise artists blursome, from Raleigh, and Kendall Cahan, from Boone.

Then next month, on October 21, Hood will be among numerous Charlotte acts performing at LeAnna Eden’s big Bla/Alt Music Festival at Camp North End, a local version of the Afropunk fest in New York City. That event will surely drive home Hood’s ideas about folk music.

“I see folk music as the pulse of people,” Hood says. “That’s why I feel like it was so strong in the ’60s, and it’s why in the ’60s folk was so heavily laden with protest. People were at a consensus on that stuff back then; it was what was on everybody’s minds.

“But if you look back even further to traditional folk songs like ‘House of the Rising Sun’ — that was a simple story about going to a gambling house,” he continues, as he picks at a flaky pastry and checks his phone for text messages. “So folk music, to me, is just songs about people and their day-to-day lives. It’s Simon & Garfunkel, but it’s also the tradition of West African storytelling.”

He pauses and laughs. “I guess I’m a griot,” he says.

HOOD MAY BE a griot, but he was born

and raised in the middle-class suburbs of Charlotte, his dad a buyer for Duke Energy and his mom an engineer for the same company.

When he was just 5, Hood remembers, his dad would play the Temptations, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett. Nigel loved the sound of his dad’s deeply soulful, oldschool R&B, and as he got older, he gravitated to Charlotte’s then-oldies station Magic 96.1.

There, he heard songs by the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Mamas and the Papas, and the real king of rock & roll, Chuck Berry.

PHOTO BY CAREY J. KING

“Chuck Berry, in particular, was a big influence on me, because if you listen to all the stuff he was saying, it was just about having fun,” Hood says. “It was basically folk songs about day-to-day life.”

Then one day, a friend turned Nigel on to Eminem’s “My Name Is.” It changed his life.

“I was always a little rambunctious, so I guess I related to Eminem’s juvenile jokes,” Hood says. “From then on, I was just sucked into rap. I watched VH1’s Behind the Music on Dr. Dre and learned about N.W.A and other artists. It was then that I wanted to start writing songs.” He began rapping with classmates. “I got a lot of notoriety for that in middle school,” he says, “and then in high school, there was a kid who said, ‘Yo, do you want to record this stuff?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And that’s when it all started.”

He was 18 when he released his first mixtape as Nige Hood, Lost Boy: Dynamics of a Child of Color, in 2007. He never looked back.

During his college years at Howard University in Washington, D.C., then North Carolina Central University, in Durham, where he studied history, he continued writing, rapping and recording music, and even got a chance to open for Kendrick Lamar. Hood returned to Charlotte in 2013, and immediately founded the local free-style rap collective UNCC Cypher, an offshoot of the N.C. State Cyper movement that began in the Triangle.

“I knew a lot of the people involved in the N.C. State Cypher when I was at North Carolina Central, so I started one here,” he says. “But I’m not really a free-style rapper, so other people, like [Charlotte rapper] La La Specific, really got into it and it took off. I’m so glad to see what they’ve done with it.”

Since he’s been back, Hood has continued to put out new music, releasing Excursions, in 2013; the two-series Thoughts (Vol. 1, in 2013, and Vol. 2, in 2014); Return of the Nasty, in 2015; and last year’s This is Folk Rap.

Hood says his studies in history — in particular, his concentration in the history of ideas — taught him that “time doesn’t really exist.” That freed him up to borrow from across the historical spectrum of music for his own sound.

“This may sound cliche, but music is timeless,” Hood says. “And having that perspective allows me to pull in certain styles, certain sounds and certain ideas from older music.” He gives an example. “Like, if I listen to [the Beastie Boys’] ‘Paul Revere’ or Kid Rock’s ‘Cowboy,’ and I get caught up in, ‘Oh, this is just an old-school beat,’ I would never have come up with the idea to do the song that I wrote called ‘Cowboy.’”

Hood says he listens to older music to get ideas about the continuum of popular culture — the importance of context in everything we listen to or look for in our music and art.

“Tone Lōc taught me a lot about just writing a song — just tell people what happened and let it live. It’s that simple,” Hood says. “So for my song ‘Fried on Friday’” — his upbeat tune about partying after work, from Return of the Nasty — “people can listen to it, and it doesn’t matter what time period or era it comes from, they can relate to it.”

For some, Hood’s continuum is more of a spectrum, in the literal sense. “Nige has a way of colorizing words; he has very colorful music,” says fellow Charlotte rapper Black Linen. “I think he sees music in color.”

In other words: folk rap. Songs for everyday people. Timeless tunes. Like “Monday Monday,” by the Mamas and the Papas, or “Daydream,” by the Lovin’ Spoonful — or “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,” by A Tribe Called Quest.

“Or ‘Funky Cold Medina’ or ‘Wild Thing,’” Hood adds, citing two Tone Lōc songs. “My music is potent,” he continues, “but at the same time, the fact that I’m kind of oblivious to music that’s on the cutting edge right now makes what I do sound new and different.”

Not that he doesn’t get self-conscious from time to time. He laughs. “I do sometimes ask myself, ‘Am I stuck in the past?’ And then I’m like, ‘Nah, nah, nah — let’s just see how these songs stand the test of time.”

He points to two other acts that have drawn from the past to create potent new music: Green Day and The Strokes. The success of those bands gives Hood the confidence to know that being himself and not following the latest trend is what makes him special.

“It definitely gives me the zeal to dig my heels in and remain focused on what I do best,” he says. “When we talk about music that may be separated by 40 or 50 years, but that remains timeless — I know what it is about that music that make it stick. And that keeps me from getting too caught up in the ‘now.’” Hood looks up and a ray of sunshine peeps through the window of Amelie’s.

“We give ‘now’ so much more importance than it deserves.”

MKEMP@CLCLT.COM

the time to cast your vote is here. visit clclt.com

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 17

18 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

The Oddboys are (from left) Jarrod Hayslette, Mike Rice and Michael Kuhn.

MUSIC

MUSICMAKER

2017: A SNUGROCK ODDITY Oddboy Collective brings another month of DIY variety to Snug residency

BY MARK KEMP

SNUG HARBOR IS known for its excellent month-long Wednesday residencies featuring mostly local acts, and this month’s residency is no exception. Well, aside from the fact that the Oddboy Collective is not a band, per se.

The collective — Jarrod Hayslette, 28, Mike Rice, 27, and Michael Kuhn, 24 — initially formed to launch a ’zine, but it turned into much more. Rice and Kuhn both are musicians who have played in several local bands including one together, Oddczar.

Hayslette has followed numerous groups on the road and gone out on cross-country excursions with the Warped Tour. The trio’s blog (theoddboycollective.com) eventually turned into house parties in Plaza Midwood, and finally the first Oddboys residency last December at Snug Harbor.

This month, the Oddboy Collective is doing a second residency, and it’s a winner.

The first night, which occurred last week, featured Mineral Girls and other artists on the local indie lable Self Aware Records. This week’s event features a roster of heavier bands, including Funeral Chic, Suit City and the more straightforward raw punk of Hungry Girl. The third one (Sept. 20) will feature TKO Faith Healer, ET Anderson, Vacation State and Ernie. And the final one (Sept. 27), will include an Oddczar reunion.

I phoned up Oddboy Mike Rice last week to talk with him about the collective.

Creative Loafing: What is the Oddboy Collective?

Mike Rice: That’s kind of a thing we struggle with a little bit. [laughs] Basically, we’re just three old friends with weird ideas who came

PHOTO BY JOSHUA THOMAS

together over music and mutual friends who were in the same bands. We initially had the idea of doing a DIY magazine and we started getting the ball rolling on that. But deadlines are hard to meet, so we had all these articles that were finished and needed to get out, but we didn’t have enough to put together a full issue. So we decided to translate it to a blog, which we’ve had for about three years now.

Our first story was an interview with our friends in Junior Astronomers.

Can you talk about your house shows?

Yeah, we started booking shows under the same name. The first show we did was a band called Xerxes, which put out a really great post-hardcore record a couple of years ago.

And then, our friends in Frameworks, from Florida, came and played a couple of times.

And then our friends in Riot Stares, from Charleston, played. Our last show as with [Charlotte’s] Deep 6 Division, which was Rapper Shane and Mike Astrea’s group. They played the night before Shane moved out to the West Coast, and it was great.

What made you decide to do house shows?

Our home base is this converted duplex in Plaza Midwood. I used to live there, then Jared and Michael and a couple more of our friends were the second wave of our homies who have lived there. It’s a perfect house for shows. Because it was once a duplex, it’s set up where there’s a door cut in the middle of a hallway, so you get exactly the same house on both sides. But nobody needs two living rooms, so we decided to use one as a stage. It came about because Jared, who’s made a lot of connections on the road, was getting hit up from bands who needed help with shows in Charlotte. We were like, ‘Let’s just have them play in the living room.’

How did the first Oddboy residency at Snug come about last year?

For that one, we collaborated with some friends of ours who had a now-defunct promotion company called Know Good Entertainment. We went under the model where each night we’d have a certain theme — one night would be electronic, one night would be a bunch of heavy bands, stuff like that. It worked out well. So Michael reached out to the people at Snug again, and September was open, so we thought we’d give it another go.

MKEMP@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 19

MUSIC

SOUNDBOARD

SEPTEMBER 7 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH John Alexander Jazz Trio (Blue Restaurant & Bar)

COUNTRY/FOLK Open Mic with Lisa De Novo (Temple Mojo Growler Shop, Matthews)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Le Bang (Snug Harbor, Charlotte) That Guy Smitty (Birdsong Brewing Co.)

POP/ROCK Cabinet (U.S. National Whitewater Center) Chuck Johnson (Mac’s Speed Shop, Matthews) Crystal Fountains (Comet Grill) Free karaoke night with Battleship and Wyley B! (Milestone) Karaoke with DJ ShayNanigans (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Live Band Karaoke (RiRa Irish Pub) Mammoth Indigo, Nige Hood, Glenn (Petra’s) Sean McConnell (The Evening Muse) Shorty & Leisure (Mac’s Speed Shop Lake Norman, Cornelius) Throwback Thursdays: 80s and 90s Music (Morehead Street Tavern) Todd Johnson Band (Tin Roof) U-Phonik (Mac’s Speed Shop Steele Creek) The Winter Sounds, Pinky Doodle Poodle (Petra’s)

SEPTEMBER 8 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The 4 Korners (The Evening Muse) Jazzy Fridays (Freshwaters Restaurant)

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Steven Engler Band (Blue Restaurant & Bar)

COUNTRY/FOLK Brad Paisley, Dustin Lynch, Chase Bryant, Lindsay Ell (PNC Music Pavilion) The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill)

DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Complete (RiRa Irish Pub) Player Made : An Ode To Southern Rap Of All Eras (Snug Harbor) Weekend Rooftop DJ! (The Peculiar Rabbit)

POP/ROCK Apocalyptica – Plays Metallica (McGlohon Theater) Ben Sollee & Kentucky Native (Neighborhood Theatre) Brandon Stiles (Tin Roof) David Childers with Heart Hunters (Petra’s) Lettuce, Maddy O’Neal (The Underground) Major Player, Morrowville, Deion Reverie 20 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

SEND US (Milestone,) Malhond, Solemn Shapes, Shark Jackson, Human Pippi Armstrong (The Station) Nate Randall Duo (Birdsong Brewing Co.) Pen15 (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Sirsy (The Evening Muse) Thirsty Horses (RiRa Irish Pub) Up in Smoke (Mac’s Speed Shop, Matthews) Will Hoge, Dan Layus (Visulite Theatre)

SEPTEMBER 9 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL 10th Annual Spasta! Greek Night: DJ’s Thanasti and Kosta X (Visulite Theatre)

DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Method (RiRa Irish Pub)

COUNTRY/FOLK Josh Phillips, Riley Green, Out of the Blue (Coyote Joe’s)

POP/ROCK 3rd Year Anniversary with The Normans (The Kilted Buffalo, Mooresville) Blackwater Drowning, Divine Treachery, Annabel Lee, Den of Wolves (Milestone) The Business People, Jaggermouth, Old Heavy Hands (The Underground) Caution! Blind Driver (Mac’s Speed Shop, Steele Creek) Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub Grand Opening: DJ Dan, Melodius Funk, Briddy (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub, Charlotte) The Get Right Band (U.S. National Whitewater Center) Kinobe & Friends Benefit Concert (C3 Lab) Lilly Hiatt, Brian Dunne (The Evening Muse) Matt Bennett Band (Tin Roof) MoSART (Comet Grill) Radio Lola (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Randall Bramblett (The Rabbit Hole) Randall Bramblett Album Release Show (The Rabbit Hole) Russell in the Woods (Mac’s Speed Shop, Matthews) Strong Maybe (RiRa Irish Pub) THePETEBOX, Dr Dice, Blank Ocean (Snug Harbor) Trea Landon (Tin Roof Trial by Fire - Journey Tribute (The Fillmore)

SEPTEMBER 10 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Jazz Brunch (RiRa Irish Pub)

POP/ROCK Carmen Tate (Mac’s Speed Shop Lake Norman, Cornelius) Crystal Fountains (Mac’s Speed Shop South End)

Dark Tranquillity, Warbringer (The Underground) Kayo Dot, El Malpais, Pullover (Milestone) Omari and The Hellhounds (Comet Grill) School of Rock Charlotte: Summer Showcase (Visulite Theatre)

SEPTEMBER 11 HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Knocturnal (Snug Harbor) Stone Soul Mic Love (Freedom Factory @ Seeds) #MFGD Open Mic (Apostrophe Lounge)

POP/ROCK Find Your Muse Open Mic with Matt Hectorne (The Evening Muse) Locals Live: The Best in Local Live Music & Local Craft Beers (Tin Roof) The Monday Night Allstars (Visulite Theatre) Music Trivia (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Paramore (Ovens Auditorium) Open Mic with Jade Moore (Primal Brewery, Huntersville)

SEPTEMBER 12 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony Opening Night: Lang Lang plays Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto (Belk Theater) Bill Hanna Jazz Jam (Morehead Tavern)

COUNTRY/FOLK Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill) Open Mic hosted by Jarrid and Allen of Pursey Kerns (The Kilted Buffalo, Huntersville) Tuesday Night Jam w/ The Smokin’ Js (Smokey Joe’s Cafe)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B 2 Chainz (The Fillmore)

POP/ROCK Allison Pierce (The Evening Muse) Paint Fumes, Trouble Boys, Plastic Pinks (Snug Harbor) Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill) Spencer Rush (Tin Roof) Trapt (Neighborhood Theatre)

SEPTEMBER 13 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The Clarence Palmer Trio (Morehead Tavern)

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Bugalú – Old School Latin Boogie (Petra’s)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Cyclops Bar: Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor)

COUNTRY/FOLK

SOUNDBOARD

MUSIC

Open Mic/Open Jam (Comet Grill)

POP/ROCK Curtis McMurtry (The Evening Muse) Karaoke with DJ Pucci Mane (Petra’s) Little Johnny Trailer Trash (Mac’s Speed Shop South End) Open Mic & Songwriter Workshop (Petra’s) Open mic w/ Jared Allen (Jack Beagles) Penny & Sparrow, Lowland Hum (Neighborhood Theatre) Pluto For Planet (RiRa Irish Pub,) September Residency : Oddboy Collective presents Funeral Chic, Hungry Girl, Suit City (Snug Harbor) Songwriter Open Mic @ Petra’s (Petra’s) Trivia & Karaoke Wednesdays (Tin Roof, Charlotte)

COMING SOON Bruno Mars (September 14, Spectrum Center) John Prine (September 16, Belk Theater) Dead Cat (September 16, Snug Harbor) Adam Ant (September 22, The Fillmore) Stephane Wrembel (September 22, Evening Muse) Astrea Corp (September 23, Snug Harbor) Kings of Leon (September 27, PNC Music Pavilion) Katy Perry (September 27, Spectrum Center) Jack Johnson (September 28, PNC Music Pavilion) Alison Krause, David Gray (September 29, PNC Music Pavilion) The Secret Sisters (September 29, Evening Muse) Rhiannon Giddens (September 30, Neighborhood Theatre) Mastodon (October 4, The Fillmore) Beats Antique (October 4, Neighborhood Theatre) Zac Brown Band (October 5, PNC Music Pavilion) Cafe Tacuba (October 6, The Fillmore)

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CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 21

ARTS

COVERSTORY

WHO AM I THIS TIME? With ‘Eat the Runt,’ the audience picks the players

BY PAT MORAN

F

ORGET WHAT you’ve heard about the casting couch.

Theatrical productions are costly and risky to mount, so the notion that producers hire actors solely on their willingness to sleep with the boss is mostly a myth.

But a casting voting booth? That’s definitely a thing. For audiences at the September 7 opening night of Donna Scott Productions’ Eat the Runt at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture the instructions couldn’t be more direct: Cast a ballot, cast the show.

Ticket buyers will see eight actors file onstage and form a line, explains the show’s producer Donna Scott. “(The voting) will be the very first thing we do,” Scott says. “There will be a facilitator, most likely the director (Tonya Bludsworth) or me, and we’ll say, ‘Now you’re voting to cast the character Merritt.’”

The first actor will step forward and say one sentence: “Hi, I’m Merritt,” and then fall back into line, Scott continues. Then the second actor will step forward and say, “Hi, I’m Merritt,” then the third advances and says – you guessed it - “Hi, I’m Merritt.”

“We go all the way on down the line,” Scott says, “until everyone onstage has introduced themselves as that character.”

Next the audience takes over with their phones, texting their votes for who gets to play the role. The process is repeated until each of eight parts is filled for this wickedly funny workplace farce. Originally Scott and her co-producers were going to develop an app for voting, but they decided not to reinvent the wheel. They went with texting because they wanted to include as many people as possible in the voting process.

“Even if you had an ancient flip phone, you can still text. If people don’t want to use their phones, we have what we call Luddite voting. They can cast their vote by dropping a picture of the actor they’ve choosing into a package.”

Onstage video screens will allow the audience to watch the votes as they’re tallied.

But the voters’ task is not as easy as it first may seem.

The cast is evenly split along gender lines – four men and four women – and the play features no overtly male or female characters. In direction and dialog, the text of playwright Avery Crozier’s comedy avoids 22 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Eat the Runt Cast: (Clockwise from upper left) Tracie Frank, Kevin Shimko, Ericka Ross, Stephen Seay, Andrea King, Kevin Aoussou, Jennifer Grabenstetter, Stephen West-Rogers the use of pronouns.

“All of the names of the characters are unisex,” Scott adds. “There is one character called Pinky, but with a little suspension of disbelief (anyone) can accept a male Pinky.”

“We’re dressing the cast members similarly, because we don’t want to sway anyone’s vote one-way or the other.”

In fact, the only overtly visual cue that may sway a theatergoer’s decision is skin tone. The diverse casting pool boasts a mix of black and Caucasian actors onstage.

It’s a hell of a way to cast a show, and the producers, with a liberal assist from paying customers, are repeating the process every night of Eat the Runt’s run, which after opening night, switches locale from the Gantt

to Donna Scott Productions’ customary home at Charlotte Art League.

“The play’s the thing,” goes the oft quoted line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but a theatrical production is not usually a thing at the Gantt. So how did Donna Scott Productions and their longstanding collaborators Charlotte Art League come to partner with the Gantt on the production of Eat the Runt?

Scott credits serendipity. Donna Scott Productions and the Gantt had wanted to collaborate since last year. They were just looking for the right project to launch their inaugural partnership, says Scott.

Concurrently, the perfect project had been right under their noses – Eat the Runt, which

PHOTO BY WELDON WEAVER

Scott had already been planning to produce.

In retrospect, the partnership seems like a no-brainer, particularly considering the play’s storyline. The plot revolves around a series of interviews for the job of Grants Manager at an art museum. Why not set a show based in an art museum in an actual art museum?

“It made sense for all three of us to collaborate and bring this production to the Charlotte community,” says Gantt President and CEO David Taylor, adding that show creates a cross-marketing opportunity for the Gantt Center and Donna Scott Productions to bridge the gap between their audiences. “We saw the value in joining forces around a play that that is set in a museum and addresses diversity in a comedic way.”

“THERE’S SO MUCH GOING ON IN THE WORLD WITH GENDER EQUITY AND TOLERANCE. THIS SHOW DEALS WITH IT IN A FUN WAY THROUGH OFFICE POLITICS.”

Tonya Bludsworth

PHOTO BY WELDON WEAVER

Donna Scott

PHOTO BY WELDON WEAVER

- TONYA BLUDSWORTH

Taylor touches on a key theme for this production. The show’s constantly changing cast is not just a stunt designed to break the fourth wall and draw the audience into the onstage antics. The constantly shifting cast is an integral component of the play’s message about how we aid – or obstruct – diversity in the workplace and beyond.

“There’s so much going on in the world with gender equity and tolerance,” says the show’s director Tonya Bludsworth. “This show deals with it in a fun way through office politics.”

The play’s relevant theme of tolerance, plus its innovated use of extreme audience participation, is what first drew Scott to the show when she saw it staged in New York City in 2002.

“I could not believe that these actors were going to learn all the parts and the audience just gets to vote every night. What I saw exceeded my highest expectations.”

“At that point their voting apparatus was a keypad on the arm of your chair,” Scott remembers. “You voted and watched the tallies came up on a video screen onstage. It was mesmerizing.”

After the show, the company held a talkback. Often this theatrical ritual can be a deadly dull experience, but Scott was bursting with questions. There are over 40,000 possible combinations possible with an eight-member cast. Could they ever get to a fraction of those combos? Did they have more rehearsal time than normal? How did they even rehearse this kind of a play?

Similar questions were swirling through Bludsworth’s mind when Scott first approached her to direct Eat the Runt this

spring. Bludsworth, Scott’s partner along with Charlotte actor Glynnis O’Donoghue in Donna Scott Productions, was excited about the challenges posed by the property.

Chief among them is the fact that this show turns a theatrical truism on its head.

It’s often said that casting is 90 percent of a director’s job, but in this case the director is ceding part of that task to people who have literally come in from off the street.

Bludsworth has hit the challenge head on by picking a crew of eight experienced and adaptable players who are more than up to the task, she says. Still, it takes a lot of preparation to get the actors trained to be comfortable with a show that’s as shape shifting as a funhouse hall of mirrors, boasting all the twists and turns of a Rubik’s cube.

“I love puzzles,” Bludsworth says, “and this show has certainly been a test of my puzzling skills.”

“There’s no traditional way to rehearse this kind of show,” she says.“We’ve done some rehearsal techniques to make sure everybody gets to play every character at least once.”

A primary tool Bludsworth employed to get her cast at the top of their game is a process she’s coined “round robin rehearsals.”

“A lot of the scenes are two person scenes so I would take two people and we would work the scene. Then we would reverse the roles, and next we would rotate to a different group of two and work our way through the scene.”

The actors already face a daunting task in learning their blocking and lines. But they confront extra challenges due to the production’s role swapping. Casting changes

Eat the Runt Rehearsal: Stephen Seay, Stephen West-Rogers, Ericka Ross can also flip the meaning of a scene and alter the play subtext and impact. Consider a simple kiss between two characters. How does the action change when the kiss crosses racial boundaries? What if the two actors happen to be the same sex? Suddenly this antic and fun comedy takes on dramatic weight, casting racial and sexual prejudices in a new light.

The show has an 18 years old and older warning on it, Scott cautions.

“It’s definitely adult comedy.”

Adding to the production’s challenges is the space where the show will be staged on opening night. To be sure, the fourth floor of the Gantt is a beautiful and impressive space.

“When we first laid eyes on it, (the Gantt’s) fourth floor space took our breath away,” Scott says. “One side of it is windows.

Part of it is an outside open air balcony that faces Bank of America Stadium.”

But it’s not exactly suited for theater.

“The biggest thing we lose at the Gantt is

PHOTO BY CHUCK BLUDSWORTH

DONNA SCOTT PRODUCTIONS, HARVEY B. GANTT CENTER AND CHARLOTTE ART LEAGUE PRESENT EAT THE RUNT

by Avery Crozier Thursday, September 7, 8p.m.

Harvey B. Gantt Center Friday, September 8 – Saturday, September 23 Charlotte Art League, $25-30 in advance; $30-35 at the door. donnascottproductions.com

SEE

TIME P. 24 u

lighting,” Bludsworth says, adding that the production team already brings in their own lighting for productions they mount at the Charlotte Art League. They plan to bring in CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 23

UNIVERSAL

SCENE STEALER: Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip.

ARTS

FILM

SUMMER CINEMA WRAP The highs and lows of a middling movie season Eat the Runt Rehearsal: Jennifer Grabenstetter, Tracie Frank

ARTS

PHOTO BY CHUCK BLUDSWORTH

COVERSTORY

BY MATT BRUNSON

W

ITH GLORIOUS SUMMERTIME tragically wrapping up, it’s time for Creative Loafing’s annual glance at the movies audiences enjoyed (or endured) over the past four months. Here, then, are some of the seasonal highlights and low points.

TIME FROM P.23 t limited lighting to the Gantt but they won’t be able to do a complete blackout in the space.

That said, Scott and Bludsworth are excited to be at the Gantt, if only for one night.

“A big draw was the opportunity to put on a play in this beautiful space,” Scott says. “It’s very different from what we have been able to do in the past.”

With luck, resiliency and professionalism Bludsworth and her cast will pull off opening night without a hitch. Then the very next day they will pack up the show and move it for the remainder of its run to Charlotte Art League.

“Yes. We’re moving because (our job) wasn’t hard enough already,” Scott says laughing. The decision to stage one of the shows at the Gantt came later in the planning process she continues.

“I didn’t even know that was an option,” Scott explains. “It wasn’t until (the Gantt) asked if we wanted to do one of the performances there that we considered it.

Luckily, we had enough time to work it out.”

24 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

For her part, Bludsworth factored the move into her plans.

“Once we knew we were going to be in the Gantt, I modeled my set and my blocking to match the site,” she says.

“At the Art League we have moveable flats on rollers, that I can move them around. I’ll set the stage the same way it will play at the Gantt. So when the actors move from one venue to another it will be fairly seamless.”

Both Scott and Bludsworth are quick to praise their cast. They note that the actors got together on their own last spring, months before rehearsal officially started, to familiarize themselves with the show, and to come to grips with the power structures depicted in the play.

“They’ve made such a great connection with each other, and they’ve become a really tight cast,” says Bludsworth. “Our actors are prepared no matter what happens.”

For a tricky show like Eat the Runt, the theatrical equivalent of a high wire act without a net, they have to be.

Best Use Of A Classic Song: George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Runners-up: Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; George Michael’s “Father Figure” in Atomic Blonde; Simon and Garfunkel’s “Baby Driver” in Baby Driver; David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Worst Use Of A Classic Song: Michael Jackson’s “Bad” in Despicable Me 3. Runnersup: Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” in Despicable Me 3; A-ha’s “Take on Me” in Despicable Me 3; Madonna’s “Into the Groove” in Despicable Me 3; Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” in Despicable Me 3.

Best Villain: Michael Keaton as Adrian Toomes/Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Runners-up: David (Michael Fassbender) in Alien: Covenant; The Colonel (Woody Harrelson) in War for the Planet of the Apes.

Worst Villain: A jaundiced Mr. Hyde

(Russell Crowe) in The Mummy. Runners-up: Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales; Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker) in Despicable Me 3.

Best Kick-Ass Heroine: Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) in Wonder Woman. Runner-up: Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) in Atomic Blonde.

Best Animal Act: The German shepherd Varco as real-life combat dog Sergeant Rex in Megan Leavey.

Worst Animal Act: Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Best “Girls Night Out” Movie: Girls Trip.

Worst “Girls Night Out” Movie: Rough Night.

FILM

Movie I’m Most Sorry to Have Missed In Theaters: The Big Sick. Runner-up: Wind River.

Most Disappointing “Girls Night In” Movie: The Beguiled.

Movie I’m Least Sorry to Have Missed In Theaters: The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature.

Runner-up: The Emoji Movie.

ARTS

Most Miscast: Tom Cruise in The Mummy. Runners-up: Matthew McConaughey in The Dark Tower; Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Scene Stealers: Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip; Michael Rooker in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Most Insufferable Performances: Jillian Bell in Rough Night; Jon Bass in Baywatch.

Most Underrated: Alien: Covenant.

Working in references to Milton, Michelangelo and Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” rather than to Marvel, mutants and Depp’s Jack Sparrow, this proved to be even more divisive than Prometheus and infuriated fanboys expecting nothing more than wallto-wall action.

Best Multiplex Movie: Wonder Woman.

Following a rash of genre flicks that mistake nihilism for gravitas, this marvel of a movie is one of the few to unequivocally maintain that there’s still a place for uncompromised champions in our world. It punches this across with a savory mix of inspiring action, good-natured humor, and a formidable heroine perfectly embodied by Gal Gadot.

Runner-up: Dunkirk.

Worst Multiplex Movie: The Mummy. A plastic product made by mercenaries, pimps and profiteers rather than filmmakers who actually give a damn, this is an insult to anyone who claims to love classic monster movies. Scratch that; it’s an insult to anyone who claims to love movies, period. Runnerup: Transformers: The Last Knight.

Most Overrated: Logan Lucky. It’s a fairly fun bit of Southern-fried hokum, but the main difference between this and the lambasted Masterminds is that this one is directed by critics’ darling Steven Soderbergh, giving it something of a free pass.

Top 12 Moneymakers

1. Wonder Woman - $406 million 2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - $389 million 3. Spider-Man: Homecoming - $320 million 4. Despicable Me 3 - $255 million 5. Dunkirk - $174 million 6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales - $172 million 7. Cars 3 - $149 million 8. War for the Planet of the Apes - $143 million 9. Transformers: The Last Knight - $130 million 10. Girls Trip - $109 million 11. Baby Driver - $103 million 12. Annabelle: Creation - $80 million

WARNER BROS.

SUMMER’S BEST: Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman.

Biggest Stateside Bombs (Domestic losses of $40+ million) 1. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets – Cost: $177 million; gross: $39 million; loss of $138 million 2. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – Cost: $175 million; gross: $39 million; loss of $136 million 3. Transformers: The Last Knight – Cost: $217 million; gross: $130 million; loss of $87 million 4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – Cost: $230 million; gross: $172 million; loss of $58 million 5. The Mummy – Cost: $125 million; gross: $80 million; loss of $45 million (Source: Box Office Mojo. All grosses are for U.S. only. Grosses as of August 30.)

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 25

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HOLD MY CROWN WHILE I GO DOWN

A LABOR OF LOVE

The great Queen City Oral Sex Survey

Four-day weekends make for more recovery time

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ABOUT A YEAR ago, a woman made a now-

know about you, but the service experience I

BY NOW, if you’ve perused social media always receive there is lackluster. or watched the news you’ve probably seen The highlight of my time spent there the meme featuring a collection of pictures involved pigging out on nachos with my of Tiger Woods face leading up to his latest friends, then getting another surprise shot “portrait” – a mug shot. Above each picture, represents a day of the weekend. On Friday, of Patrón tequila sent my way. *Gags* he’s smiling and looks happy, and naturally, Nevertheless, I was a trooper and kept on Monday he’s posing for his mug shot. the party moving. Until later that night, The meme epitomizes what my selfies when I tripped over a trailer pull and busted look like when strung together across a my chin — hence the horrendous bruise I am typical weekend. However, after a four-day currently wearing like a scarlet letter. weekend like this past Labor Day, you can Outside of a little pain on my chin, I still only imagine. felt grand on Sunday. See? I wasn’t too bad!

As I write this, for example, I am sitting I got a much later start on the party at work with a big bruise on my chin, but I’ll game. My friends went to brunch at Ink N fill you in on that soon enough.

Ivy, then stopped by The Corkscrew Vue On Friday, I’d wanted to plan a Coffee and Wine Bar. getaway to Asheville or the beach, All the while, I was more but restrictions on gas and concerned with getting my on my wallet reminded me hands on a seven-layer bean that I needed to save my dip at Harris Teeter, a long wanderlust for another cry from my original plans weekend. of “treating myself” to Instead, I sauntered dinner at Customshop to Latta Arcade after Handcrafted (the cheese/ work and pregamed for charcuterie board/burrata a coworker’s departure ravioli were so tempting, celebration and happy though). hour.

AERIN SPRUILL Dinner consisted of a Little did I know that one seven-layer bean dip, black bean of my other coworkers would hummus, brie, honey and salami. “offer” a round of tequila shots — and that’s where I messed up.

I was going to make my own version of Hours later, I traversed Ink N Ivy the meal I would’ve tried at Customshop Charlotte then found my way to The Corner for a third of the price. And later on, after Pub. I’d hadn’t had quite a lot to drink, I decided to go out, I felt like I’d set a solid honestly, but I hadn’t eaten and was mixing base. my liquors and beers more than I preferred.

Sure enough, I ended up chatting up That’s why it was no shock when, at 9:41 random strangers in NoDa about their p.m., I made one of the biggest social faux thoughts on nightlife in the Queen City. The pas of all time. most popular opinion of the area? There’s I started to get nauseous while riding not enough nightlife venues that have that home in an Uber when all of a sudden I asked “wow factor.” him to pull over. It was too late. The next So that’s what I’ll be directing my morning, I woke up to an $80 cleanup fee attention toward over the next few months and pictures of my blunder — oops!

— what is missing from the Charlotte I had made up my mind I wasn’t going to nightlife scene? have a repeat of that moment on Saturday as On Monday, I was so proud of how I’d I prepared for a tailgating party. A few of my redeemed myself after Friday’s mishap that I friends are NC State and USC fans so a few wanted to keep up the good work, but it was of us decided to get together in one of the going to be hard. parking lots off of Bland Street. I opted for I called around to a few venues I wanted a spiked seltzer and a beer instead of liquor to visit – Recess Charlotte, Slate Billiards, All and watched everyone get pumped for the American Pub, Draught Restaurant & Bar game with a series of flip cup. and 8.2.0 were all closed in observance of I’m not going to lie, tailgating took me Labor Day. I’ll keep that in mind as I prepare back to the good ol’ college days. for the next holiday and four-day weekend!

Once it was time for the majority of How’d you spend your Labor Day our group to go to the game, a handful of us decided to grab a drink at Hot Taco weekend in the Q.C.? before heading off to our usual spots. I don’t BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

orgasmed during oral sex encounters.

The history of oral sex goes back infamous video demonstrating her favorite generations, and the experience of our elders tip for giving good blowjobs.

In it, she sliced the ends off of a grapefruit, has produced a few standby pearls of wisdom cut a hole in the center of the remaining on technique: Keep teeth out of the action. section, and demonstrated how she used the Spell the ABCs with your tongue.

Provided, of course, that you can find the fruit in combination with her mouth on a lucky fellatio recipient. What impressed the clitoris. In spite of this long, nearly universal masses about this video was not only the history, the actual location of the clitoris grapefruit strategy but also the sounds she seems to require discovery every several made while demonstrating her technique. years. See Men’s Health circa 2010: “Q&A: That “Wait, what?” moment reminds us how Help Me Find the Clitoris!”

And of course, Cosmopolitan has made little we know about the sex lives of our fellow regular people — meaning, not porn a veritable industry of dispensing tips on seduction and sex of all kinds, including oral. stars.

We wonder: Do people really do that? Here are some memorable ones: “Chew a small piece of mango…

How many people really make noises then take him in your mouth. like that? Do people really enjoy You can use whatever fruit you this or that? How many have, just don’t try anything of my coworkers enjoy too acidic, as it can burn transgressive sex? Am I him.” normal?

“As you move your One thing that’s mouth up and down his pretty normal and unites shaft, rotate your hand in sex aficionados up and a corkscrew motion while down the Kinsey scale spiraling your tongue in is oral sex. The National the opposite direction.”

Survey of Sexual Health “Very softly bite the skin and Behavior, conducted in ALLISON of his scrotum.”

2009, found that more than “Sprinkle a little pepper 50 percent of men and women BRADEN under his nose right before he between the ages of 18 and 49 climaxes. Sneezing can feel similar to had received oral during the previous year. Oral sex seems most popular among an orgasm and amplify the feel-good effects.”

To each his own in the pursuit of pleasure, respondents between the ages of 25 and 29 — 77 percent of men and 72 percent of I guess.

So, do people really do these things? How women in that age group reported getting are our neighbors going down? head in the previous year.

To help answer these questions, I invite Despite its popularity among my fellow millennials, it’s obviously nothing new or you to complete the Great Charlotte Oral Sex trendy, nor was it some sort of fad in the Survey of 2017. You can find it at tinyurl.

1970s when the enormously popular movie com/OralSurvey.

The survey includes questions about Deep Throat was released. (The plot, yet another example of the genius and creativity your first time performing or receiving oral of the American male mind, centers around a sex, whether you have any crazy cunnilingus woman who can only orgasm via performing or fellatio stories, and your best tips. It’s completely anonymous (duh), and I’ll explore oral sex.)

Fellatio and cunnilingus have a long the findings in an upcoming column. This will history. Ancient art found in Europe, Asia and not be scientific — I aspire to about the same South America depict oral sex. In the Middle polling rigor and accuracy on display in the Ages, people were still getting freaky despite 2016 presidential election.

Speaking of politics, it turns out that the strictures against non-traditional sex of any kind. In Ireland, according to a history of our primate cousins the bonobos are quite oral sex on Mic.com, a medieval penitential the nymphos. They prefer to ease social document prescribed four years of penance situations and solve problems by having sex instead of using violence. They’re the only for cunnilingus and five for fellatio.

Its popularity has continued apace. For other primate that French kisses. And, like women — who are on the wrong side of the our ancestors and our ancestors before that, orgasm gender gap — there’s a good reason they like getting good head.

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM to like cunnilingus. The survey I mentioned found that 81 percent of women respondents 26 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

ENDS

FeeLing Lonely?

CROSSWORD

CERTAIN VARIETY OF BEEF ACROSS

1 Went by ship 7 Old TWA rival 12 Exit doors, e.g.

20 Not certain 21 Top-drawer 22 Feeling like suede, say 23 Actor Freeman 24 Start of a riddle 26 -- snail’s pace 27 Layer 29 Behavioral quirks 30 Eat soup undaintily 31 Riddle, part 2 35 Short swims 38 Lean (on) 39 Horse cousin 40 Parked oneself 44 British noble, in brief 47 Mountain in Thessaly 51 Cost to get out of jail 52 Pro at W-2s 53 Riddle, part 3 58 Open field 60 Actor Sean 61 -- Grey tea 62 Curly’s friend 63 “For -- Know” (1971 hit song) 65 Stephen of “Still Crazy” 67 Rent splitter, often 70 Not only that 74 Riddle, part 4 78 “Anti-art” art 79 New York governor Cuomo 80 Beauty spot?

81 City in Japan 82 Pull hard 84 Camelot wife 86 Grandson of Eve 88 Diesel of film 89 End of the riddle 96 Balladeer Janis 97 Oahu shindig 98 Relative of “psst” 99 Polish port on the Baltic 102 It’s currently newsworthy 105 Flight takeoff abbr.

108 Be like a sot 109 Tex-Mex staple

110 Start of the riddle’s answer 116 Set of beliefs 120 Mixed bag 121 Painter Nolde 122 Kylo -- (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” character) 123 End of the riddle’s answer 127 Singer Siepi 129 In a tomb 130 Garlic mayonnaise 131 Las --, New Mexico 132 Unrivaled 133 Pulls hard 134 Optimally

DOWN

1 Neighbor of Java 2 One more of the same 3 Dish of finely diced vegetables 4 Pull along 5 Muse with a lyre 6 Jeans fabric 7 13-Down of June 8 Sitcom alien 9 Mob boss Frank 10 Didn’t dine out 11 “Thank you, Yves!”

12 Manning of the gridiron 13 Precious stones 14 Stair user’s aid 15 “And you,” to Caesar 16 Pot bits 17 Stage scenery item 18 Up ‘til 19 Barrett of rock 25 “It -- fair!”

28 Clean air org.

32 Bladderlike sac 33 Beginning on 34 Mongolian desert 36 Dad 37 See 124-Down 41 Rower’s tool 42 Destiny 43 Choir woman 45 Melville novel 46 Corrida cry 48 Holy Mlle.

49 Give some of yours to 50 1974 and ‘75 World Hockey Association

winners 54 2002 scandal company 55 Ceaselessly 56 Big failures 57 Irish poet 58 Sgt. Friday’s force 59 Fitzgerald of jazz fame 64 Marshal Earp 66 Up -- (stumped) 68 Power bike 69 Qom resident 71 Remove any potential evidence 72 Pen name of H.H. Munro 73 Where Muscat is 75 Spicy stew 76 Skin-coloring dye 77 “Such a pity” 83 The NCAA’s Bruins 85 ‘50s prez 87 Texter’s “Yikes!”

89 Olympic figure skater Katarina 90 “Funny one!”

91 Entertaining little tale 92 Innuendo queen West 93 Need to 94 “-- Him on a Sunday” 95 Perry of pop 100 Round solids 101 Most acute 103 Observer 104 “-- shalt not ...”

106 Grad-school proposal 107 Like Obama: Abbr.

111 Revlon brand 112 Bone of the shin 113 Wise, skillful lawgiver 114 Neopagan religion 115 Observant 117 Young lady 118 Nothing but 119 Quite a while 123 Shred 124 With 37-Down, very poor rating 125 Sts. 126 Moose’s cousin 128 Fill in (for)

graB Your copy today

SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 30.

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 27

Always FREE to listen and reply to ads!

ENDS

SAVAGE LOVE

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as dangerous sex maniacs, MICASA, but a I’m a lady considering taking on a foot fetishist as a slave. He would do chores kinky guy isn’t any more or less dangerous around my house, including cleaning than a vanilla guy. And a kinky guy you’ve and laundry, and give foot rubs and gone to the trouble to vet — by getting pedicures in exchange for getting to his real name and contact info, by meeting worship and jack off to my modelin public at least once, by asking for and perfect feet when I’ve decided he’s following up with references — presents less earned it. Am I morally obligated to of a threat to you and your roommates than tell my roommates? Technically the some presumed-to-be-vanilla rando one of guy would be in their common space you brought home from a bar at 2 a.m. too. I will fully vet him with references Strip away the sensational elements — and meet him in a neutral location at his thing for feet, his desire to be your chore least once — and anything else you slave, the mental image of him jacking off might suggest I do for security’s sake. all over your toes—and what are we left Though my roommates are not what with? A friends-with-benefits arrangement. you would call conservative, I’m not A sparkly clean apartment benefits you (and sure they’d understand this kind your roommates); the opportunity of arrangement. I would have to worship your feet benefits my slave come over when no him. This guy would be a one is around, and then semi-regular sex partner of my roommates could yours, MICASA, and while come home to a sparkly the sex you’re having may clean common area! My not be conventional, slave would never have the sex you have in your access to their personal apartment — including spaces, nor would I the sex you might have leave him alone in any in the common areas area of our home until a when no one is at home— DAN SAVAGE strong bond of trust had is ultimately none of your been established. No harm, roommates’ business. no foul? Or am I crossing a That said, MICASA, unless or line? until all your roommates know what’s MAN INTO CLEANING A SHARED APARTMENT up, I don’t think you should ever allow this guy to be alone in your apartment.

A friend in Berlin has a similar arrangement.

This guy comes over to clean his apartment once a week and — if my friend thinks he’s done a good enough job — my friend rewards him with a knee to the balls. It’s a good deal for both parties: My vanilla-butkink-adjacent friend gets a sparkly clean apartment (which he loves but doesn’t want to do himself), this guy gets his balls busted on a regular basis (which he loves but can’t do himself). But my friend lives alone, MICASA, and that makes all the difference. Or does it?

Time for some playing-games-with-footfetishists theory: If you were having sex with a boyfriend in the common areas of your apartment when your roommates weren’t home — let’s say your boyfriend (or even Meet sexy friends some rando) wanted to fuck you on the who really get your vibe... kitchen floor — you wouldn’t be morally obligated to text your roommates and ask Try FREE: 704-731-0113 their permission. But we’re not talking about More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633 a normal guy here or normal sex — we’re talking about a fetishist who wants to be your slave. Does that make a difference? vibeline.com 18+ It might to people who regard kinksters

CLCLT.COM | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | 29

LILLY SPA

ENDS

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SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE

FOR ALL SIGNS On Sept. 6, 2017. we will experience the Full Moon in Pisces at 3 03 am EDT. It imparts the message of the Pisces/Virgo axis of the zodiac Have we sewn enough of the right seeds, watered at the right time, and cleared enough weeds from our gardens (lives) to produce a good crop for the “winter?” Will there be adequate supplies to last through the long snows of the cold season? Self evaluation occurs here with the promise of a few more warm weeks to catch up and fill in the gaps. Are the New Year’s resolutions still in motion or do we need more monitoring, more personal adjustment before this year comes to an end?

ARIES This is a week in which you will tend to be thinking obsessively. It is an opportunity to learn how to better control your mind. Shift your attention to something less dramatic, such as whatever is happening this moment, rather than worrying over what might happen in the future.

TAURUS Much of this week involves marking time and waiting for the right cogs to fall into place. Near Sept. 12, an older person may offer you a gift from your family of origin. Perhaps it represents an “inheritance” that arrives early or a special keepsake. It is meant to grace your home and increase your sense of family ties.

GEMINI Mercury is poised and ready to turn direct. This time for the Twins, the area of focus is related to property, family, and issues of security. You are likely reworking things in one of these territories. Family members may be erratic or hard to pin down, making it difficult to conclude open agendas.

Have patience. The full cycle of Mercury will be complete on Sep. 12, 2017.

CANCER Your security is enhanced through

your property, your family, and your income.

This is one of those “feel good” periods in life. Everything and everyone are in their proper places and all is well again. After a turbulent eclipse month, this is your time to kick back and relax.

LEO Activities involving education, travel and siblings are favored. Life is less hectic and more to your liking now. This is a good time to communicate with almost anyone.

A nearby road trip would be rejuvenating and it would rest your mind from the usual humdrum.

VIRGO THE VIRGIN (Aug 22-Sep 22) Think carefully about what is truly important to you now, at this time. Don’t allow old habits or rules from the past to make your decision for you. If you do let that happen, you will truly resent the outcome. Rise above your circumstances to a level that can see beyond your ego and the situation becomes more workable.

30 | SEPT. 7 - SEPT. 13, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

LIBRA Social and romantic life is favored this week, particularly after the weekend.

You may be mixing business and pleasure in a pleasant combination. This is a good time to discuss issues within a relationship because you are steady of mind and likely to be realistic, in relation to yourself as well as others.

SCORPIO You occasionally confuse what you think with who you are. There are those who will disagree with you this week. Just don’t let it become a battle to the death.

Remain aware that your identity is not at stake in this situation.

SAGITTARIUS Stay awake to make note of the “messages” that come your way. They say that you are on the right path. Activities involving the internet, travel, legal interests, education and publications are given positive signals. One or more of these may fall right into your lap.

CAPRICORN You may come upon a momento that offers favorable feelings of love from earlier in your life. Memories, even if not codified in an object, will help you maintain your sense of balance now. You are in an effective position. Others agree with your guidance and leadership. A project begun near the New Year is beginning to blossom now.

Activities involving the internet, publishing, legal interests and travel have favorable signals.

AQUARIUS Someone new may enter your life who will encourage you toward personal healing, diet and/or exercise. Your relationship to partner(s), whether marital or business, is favorable. This is a good time to discuss important subjects and work toward balanced solutions to relationship problems.

PISCES The Pisces Full Moon is in your sign this week. Please see the opening paragraph. This Full Moon is exactly on the planet Neptune, original god of the sea. You may have a need to involve yourself with the arts or with beauty in one of its forms. Don’t worry about yourself if it seems like you are lacking concentration or “zoned out”. This is passing.

Are you interested in a personal horoscope?

Vivian Carol may be reached at 704-3663777 for private psychotherapy or astrology appointments. You may also visit her at www. horoscopesbyvivian.com.

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