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COLORBEARER OF ATHENS ON FURLOUGH

LOCALLY OWNED SINCE 1987

Clue Me In Get to Know Your Local Crossword Writer p. 9

AUGUST 5, 2009 · VOL. 23 · NO. 31 · FREE

Habitat is 21!

Our Local Chapter Celebrates with a Big Night at Tasty World p. 21

A Green SPLOST? p. 5 · A Prof Talks $$ p. 7 · Reigning Sound p. 13 · A PostWar Drama p. 16

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

pub notes To Your Health If you live in the Cobbham-Normaltown-Boulevard area or nearby, you’ve got a great opportunity to learn how to relax, reduce stress and improve your well-being. Athens Regional Medical Center’s Mind Body Institute is presenting free of charge on seven consecutive Saturdays “Tai Chi in the Park.”

It’s free of charge because it’s underwritten by Carson Advisory, Inc./Raymond James Financial Services, run by Bob Carson, a denizen of the ’hood.

Beginning this Saturday, Aug. 8 these free tai chi (“tie chee”) classes will be taught from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. each Saturday through Oct. 3. They’ll be outdoors in the park on Talmadge Drive below ARMC’s Medical Services Building.

According to MayoClinic.com, “Anyone, regardless of age or physical ability, can practice tai chi. It doesn’t take physical prowess… Tai chi is used to reduce stress; increase flexibility; improve muscle strength and definition; increase energy, stamina and agility and increase feelings of well-being.”

This tai chi in the park was hatched by Dr. Rich Panico, Director of the Mind Body Institute, no doubt during a tai chi session. What have you got to lose but your stress? Make it a part of your Saturday morning routine; it’s just a short bike ride from the farmers market. Dr. Panico hopes these sessions will turn people on to the benefits of tai chi and will become an ongoing impetus for good health in our community.

Call 706-475-7329 or email mbiprograms@armc.org to let them know you’re coming.

Speaking of local health-care efforts, congratulations to Michael Smith and his Organizing for America group, along with the Clarke County Democratic Committee. They focused local attention on health care reforms in their forum at Ciné last week. It’s about time we had some rational local discussion about how to fix our broken system. There is such an incredible amount of misinformation that it’s good for local people to swap ideas and concerns face-to-face, instead of only listening to talking heads with vested interests.

In that regard, Ed Wilde pointed out an article I had missed in the Jan. 26, 2009 New Yorker by a doctor named Atul Gawande. Dr. Gawande’s article puts national health care programs into an interesting perspective and kind of gently explains why in his view we can’t just totally start over here in America with a brand-new single-payer system, which I wish we could do. He shows that national health care in Britain was not created all at once by the dictate of a Labor government but grew out of World War II necessities. When the war was over, everybody—doctors and patients included—wanted to keep what they had. Gawande also shows how in France, which has the health care system rated best in the world (we’re 37th), their universal-coverage system evolved from labor and employer-related insurance pools into universal coverage.

Even in France, they started with an informal system and kept extending it until it now covers everybody very well.

The moral of his story is that you’ve got to start with what you’ve got, however messy it may be. He likens our health insurance system to the telephone system, a patchwork going back a century—a jury-rigged nightmare of patches and improvisations that works. Dr. Gawande says that as bad as our present health insurance system is, we’ve got to build on it and put together a system that works, expanding the singlepayer parts like Medicare and the Veterans Administration plus employer-based insurance and the government-employee model, etc., until we have built a system that covers everybody and removes forever the threat of bankruptcy that now hangs over most of us if our health goes south. Surely the screamers who get their own subsidies from the insurance industry and the sabotage-minded Republicans can’t thwart this solution longed for by 70 percent of our citizens.

Finally, Athens native and sometimes Flagpole columnist Terry Burger sends this plea: “Logan Chesnut, 19, son of my good friend David Chesnut in Atlanta, has been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. He needs blood platelets, which can be donated by anybody, regardless of blood type. If you could spread the word, especially among friends in or near Atlanta, it might save this young man’s life.” If you live in Atlanta, you can donate platelets in Logan’s name with Atlanta Blood Services at Northside Hospital (404-459-8744) or their other facility in Cobb County. Outside of Atlanta, donate with the Red Cross (1-800-448-3543) in honor of Logan Chesnut.

Pete McCommons editor@flagpole.com

THIS WEEK’S ISSUE: News & Features City Dope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Athens News and Views

With the teachers on furlough, the cops fill in with a basketball clinic: perfect!

Puzzle Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Cruciverbalist Patrick Berry Wants You to Win in the End

A crossword writer for the New York Times and others, he’s an unassuming work-at-home guy here in town.

Arts & Events Grub Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Sausages & Sandwiches

The European Deli offers a wide range of hard-to-find gourmet items and a variety of cured meats.

Movie Pick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Laugh Till You Cry

In the new Apatow flick, Funny People, laughs are prolific but tempered by death’s looming visage.

COVER DESIGN by Kelly Ruberto featuring a painting by Scott Belville on display at the Lamar Dodd School of Art

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Music Get Down With . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Reigning Sound, Thomas Function and Vincas

The 40 Watt hosts a night of unadulterated garage-rock goodness.

A PostWar Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 When North Meets South

Yankees move to Athens and discover an Old World aesthetic.

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31 CITY DOPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 CITY PAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 CAPITOL IMPACT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 COBBLOVIATE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 GRUB NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 PATRICK BERRY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 MOVIE DOPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 MOVIE PICK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 THREATS & PROMISES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 REIGNING SOUND. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

RECORD REVIEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 UPSTART ROUNDUP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 A POSTWAR DRAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 DON’T MISS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 THE CALENDAR!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 BULLETIN BOARD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 ART AROUND TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 COMICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 REALITY CHECK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 EVERYDAY PEOPLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

EDITOR & PUBLISHER Pete McCommons ADVERTISING DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER Alicia Nickles PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Larry Tenner MANAGING EDITOR Christina Cotter ADVERTISING SALES Anita Aubrey, Melinda Edwards, Jessica Pritchard MUSIC EDITOR Michelle Gilzenrat CITY EDITOR Ben Emanuel CLASSIFIEDS, DISTRIBUTION & OFFICE MANAGER Paul Karjian AD DESIGNERS Ian Rickert, Kelly Ruberto CARTOONISTS James Allen, Cameron Bogue, Allison Butler, Joe Havasy, Missy Kulik, Jeremy Long, Clint McElroy ADOPT ME Special Agent Cindy Jerrell CONTRIBUTORS Michael Andrews, Christopher Benton, Hillary Brown, Jim Cobb, Tom Crawford, Andre Gallant, Michael J. Gerber, Jennifer Gibson, Jeff Gore, Chris Hassiotis, John Huie, Gordon Lamb, Bao Le-Huu, Scott Reid, Valentina Tapia, Drew Wheeler CIRCULATION Charles Greenleaf, Jimmy Courson, Swen Froemke, Anthony Gentilles, Eric Mullins WEB DESIGNER Ian Rickert ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Maggie Summers EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Erin Cork MUSIC INTERN Charlie Stafford ADVERTISING INTERN Brent Ducote

VOLUME 23 ISSUE NUMBER 31

Flagpole, Inc. publishes Flagpole Magazine weekly and distributes 17,000 copies free at over 275 locations around Athens, Georgia. Subscriptions cost $55 a year, $35 for six months. © 2009 Flagpole, Inc. All rights reserved.

CONTACT US: STREET ADDRESS: 112 S. Foundry St., Athens, GA 30601 MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Box 1027, Athens, GA 30603 EDITORIAL: (706) 549-9523 ADVERTISING: (706) 549-0301 FAX: (706) 548-8981 ADVERTISING: ads@flagpole.com CALENDAR: calendar@flagpole.com COMICS: comics@flagpole.com EDITORIAL: editor@flagpole.com LETTERS: letters@flagpole.com MUSIC: music@flagpole.com WEB SITE: web@flagpole.com

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AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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city dope Athens News and Views severe ones—might be avoided if our state legislature would meet in special session. At least we’re getting an education of sorts in political science.

Consider Yourself Furloughed: It was a sign of the times, that 9 a.m. email from the school district to local media saying, “Good morning.

Due to teacher furloughs, all back-to-school events scheduled for August 3 and 4 have been rescheduled. Attached is the revised list of events….” Ouch. On the schedule had been a whole bunch of open houses, meet-andgreets, cookouts and orientations—nothing major, apparently, and nothing that won’t be continuing to take place throughout the month. But it’s precisely the future of the public school year that’s worrisome. Seriously!

It starts with ice cream socials and before long, since there are probably no art classes or PE left to cut, there goes U.S. history and pre-algebra. And let it be stated once again, for the record, that the furloughs—or more

Just a Thought: Here we are in a recession, living in a county that’s expanding its landfill soon, and this August—just like every other— finds enough household goods and furniture to fill a whole chain of thrift stores piled along curbsides and next to Dumpsters all over town. The Habitat for Humanity ReStore is doing its part (even if to its own benefit) with its new free pick-up program (just call ’em up!), and UGA for several years has allowed Goodwill trucks outside the dorms at moveout time in May. But August’s apartmentand-house-moving en masse means too many people, all at once, don’t take the time to properly get rid of perfectly good stuff. Oh, well: maybe next year.

Ben Emanuel

Duck and Cover: The ominous rumbling you heard on Thursday, July 30 was the sound of Comrade Paul Broun, Jr. driving the steamroller of socialism into town. After months of warning us about the dangers of President Obama’s “socialist” economic stimulus bill, Broun hosted a grants fair at UGA’s Georgia Center for Continuing Education to help dole out some of the very same stimulus money he promised would destroy our freedoms.

Fearless patriot that City Dope is, he infiltrated the filthy den of Marxists bent on the destruction of America and everything good.

And seeing as an American’s second amendment rights are practically nil on a college campus, he even had to attend the event unarmed! The communist freedom-haters must have been hiding guerrillastyle behind the hotel’s Ficus trees, because all he found were well-meaning Americans working to resuscitate a severely troubled economy. He somehow made it out with all his freedoms intact. [Matt Pulver]

Community Spirit: Then again, maybe by pooling local resources we can fill the leadership void at the state level. That seems to have been the spirit behind the first-ever “Back to School Basketball Clinic” on Aug. 1, co-sponsored by the ACC Police and Leisure Services departments and staffed by Clarke Central coach Billy Wade and his players.

Since the governor wouldn’t dare furlough the cops (at least not until we get to California), it makes perfect sense that they step in a little bit on looking out for the schoolkids.

Who knows, maybe this will prove to have been a great pilot program when the Neanderthals in the legislature decide to shut down the public schools completely!

They Mean Business: Here’s another new one from the ACC PD. They’re going Water Spin: It was to start using the funny, in a way, that Crimestoppers Governor Perdue’s reward system press release statagainst the general ing how little the wave of propstate’s residents erty crime still Watering restrictions or no, SAEs, concrete is what you’d had increased their taking place in call drought-tolerant: it never needs watering! water usage in Athens—not just the remainder of June, after he lifted waterfor high-dollar, high-profile cases like, say, ing restrictions on June 10, came out at the recent theft of an ATM with a stolen the very end of July. It’s not that City Dope tractor. “Athens-Clarke County is in a crime necessarily disputes the guv’s and the EPD’s emergency,” says a department press release, findings, and it’s not that he considers them referencing residential burglaries that mostly unimportant, but it seems quite obvious that occur during the day while residents are at a fuller picture might emerge with July’s figwork. “If you see suspicious persons, vehicles ures. After all, wouldn’t it make sense to look or activity in your neighborhood, please call at a full month’s worth of quote-unqoute 911,” it says, and offer up as much identify“non-drought” watering, rather than just ing information as possible. Other helpful two-thirds? It’s no biggie for now, but if late notes: “Sometimes perpetrators will hide August doesn’t bring us a press release with stolen goods in wooded areas or behind other July’s usage, somebody better ask for it. The houses,” and, “If you see persons walking point is that Gov. Perdue seems to think we’ve down the street carrying items, please call conserved all we can as a state—he’s think911.” Seriously, though, the rewards go up to ing about what Georgia “needs” from Lake $1,000. Anyone with information is asked to Lanier here—and he’s completely ignoring the contact Lt. Mark Durham at 706-353-4218, fact that investments in infrastructure effiext. 124 or Lt. Mike McKeel at 706-613-3888, ciency and plumbing retrofits could do a lot ext. 270. Those who wish to remain anonymore. But since when does a lame duck need mous can call the Crime Stoppers Tip Line at details?

706-613-3342.

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com

city pages

Skate Shop O F AT H E N S

A “Green SPLOST?” “I have been thinking, for several months, about a green SPLOST,” Mayor Heidi Davison wrote to her “colleagues,” the 10 AthensClarke County Commissioners, in an email last month. If voters next year approve extending the one-cent “special-purpose, local option sales tax” next year (for another five or six years), it could fund a $70 million new jail, but what else? Over the past six years, those pennies generated $122 million, and in the next six, “it’s hard to think that there’ll be much more than that,” given the economic downturn, ACC Finance Director John Culpepper told Flagpole. SPLOST revenues by law must go to capital projects (investments like buildings, parks or sidewalks) and cannot be used for salaries or operating expenses.

And there’s the rub: some of those new facilities will require staffing, and most will need routine maintenance over time. Those costs add to the county’s general budget.

“Rather than building new, let’s maintain and retrofit what we have,” the Mayor wrote. “My goal was to look for ways that reduce costs over time,” she told Flagpole. She offered any number of suggestions, “merely as a conversation starter”: “cool roofs” that reflect the sun’s heat, roof gardens, small parks within a half-hour’s walk of all residents, community gardens, a bike-share program, recovering rainwater from roofs to water landscape plants, adding cigarette butt containers “all over town, not just downtown,” and adding adding solar panels at water treatment plants (where pumps use a lot of electricity). More traffic lights could be synchronized, she suggested; “more sidewalks (TONS of them) and bike lanes (TONS of them)” and end-of-trip bike facilities like showers could be built. (See more of her thoughts alongside this story at Flagpole.com.)

“My sense is that any large-scale project requiring long-term M&O [maintenance and operating expenses] will not be looked upon favorably by the community,” Davison wrote,

“with the exception of a jail and possibly one final Classic Center expansion.” The convention center may be missing out on some larger conventions, she says, but “at some point, you’ve got to quit building.” The only other large-scale project that “comes to mind,” she wrote, is replacing the existing courthouse parking deck with “an expanded judicial center tacked on to the Courthouse,” and building another deck “elsewhere (where is a good guess).” ACC voters have approved three previous sales-tax referenda, but if next year’s were to fail, the new jail would have to be built from general-fund revenues, Davison says.

A “green” SPLOST with more retrofits than new projects might appeal to voters, but energy-saving efforts are nothing new to the county government. For some time, a staff committee has sought out energy savings, and such upgrades are the reason the county used 5 percent less electricity last year than the year before, Central Services Director David Fluck says. (With electric rates going up, the county’s power bill was about the same.) The government expects to get a $1.3 million federal stimulus grant to reduce its greenhousegas footprint—which mostly means reducing energy use—and UGA will soon begin an engineering study of how the county can best do that, Fluck says.

But a couple of the county’s energyefficiency efforts have been placed on the back burner. It started using biodiesel fuel in trucks, buses and other vehicles, but had to stop early last year because the fuel is no longer sold locally. And while the government had planned to commission energy audits on its buildings to learn how to best reduce energy use, the companies that do those audits raised their prices because they’d become popular, Fluck says. “It just didn’t seem to be cost-effective,” he says, except for in large buildings.

John Huie johnphuie@gmail.com

Regional Bike/Ped Task Force Forming Planners at the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission (formerly the Regional Development Center) are assembling the firstever “Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force” for the 12-county area in which the agency works.

The group seeks local government officials in addition to “qualified individuals representing nonprofit organizations, bicycle- and pedestrian-related businesses, as well as unaffiliated private citizens,” according to a press release. To apply, interested parties should fill out an online survey found at www.negplanning.org by Aug. 14.

Envisioned as a body that will exist indefinitely, the new task force’s first task will be to help staffers update the bike/pedestrian transportation plan for the region. The last such plan was submitted to the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) in 2005, says NEGRC Senior Planner John Devine.

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“What we’re looking at with this task force is trying to use it as an advisory council for the bicycle/pedestrian plan…. This is the major jumping-off point for it,” Devine says.

In the end, of course, it’s a long road to getting any transportation project built, and it’s no secret that moving alternative transportation projects through the GDOT bureaucracy is a challenge. Still, Devine says, encouraging GDOT to include bike and pedestrian facilities in its own projects (when widening roads, say) is “a huge step,” and may be a focus of the task force. “I think there are some neat ideas that we can start talking about,” he says, and he’s been impressed by the support for railtrail concepts like an Athens-to-Union Point line. “I think things are coming together very well with all this stuff right now,” he says.

Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

The Economy Hurts Both Parties Will there ever be a light at the end of tunnel for all of the unemployed workers in Georgia? Labor Department officials recently announced the state’s unemployment rate reached the level of 10.1 percent—the first time in many years that the jobless number hit double digits. That means that nearly 500,000 Georgians are unemployed and looking for work. The employment picture isn’t much brighter on the national level either.

If the recession continues and people keep losing their jobs, who will pay the price politically?

It won’t be good news for President Barack Obama. His approval numbers have already been slipping in recent weeks, although they are still above the 50 percent level. That’s not a surprise. All new presidents typically start with a high approval level at the time of their inauguration and see that number go downhill after they’ve been in office a few months.

Obama can also argue that when he took office he inherited the worst economic downturn since the great depression, a problem that cannot be fixed overnight. But the American people aren’t very patient—they tend to have a limited attention span. With all the money that Obama and Congress have put into the economic stimulus packages, both Republicans and Democrats alike are starting to wonder why the jobs haven’t shown up.

“Quite frankly, we want to know where all the money is going,” state Sen. Valencia Seay (D-Riverdale) said during a legislative hearing last week. “People all over the state are hurting.”

Nationally, Obama and the Democrats in Congress have the most to lose if the job picture does not start improving. At the state level, Gov. Sonny Perdue may be feeling a little uncomfortable as well. Back in January, he unveiled a $1.2 billion package of state bonds for a wide range of projects such as schools, college buildings, roads and libraries.

This bond money, Perdue vowed, would jumpstart the economy and create 20,000 construction jobs within the state. An unemployment rate of 10.1 percent suggests that those jobs haven’t materialized, not even when you add in the $931 million Georgia is receiving in federal stimulus funds for highway projects.

Republicans in the General Assembly may also start feeling the heat as the jobless rate climbs into the stratosphere. Since the GOP took control of the Legislature in 2005, one of their priorities has been the adoption of numerous tax cuts for corporations and special interests. When each of these tax breaks was debated, Republican supporters promised they would generate all sorts of economic development and turn the state into a job-creation machine. That doesn’t seem to have worked either. In the period since January 2005, Georgia’s monthly unemployment rate has exceeded the national unemployment rate for more than half of those months.

There’s no question that the recession has destroyed jobs in every state. But the legislative leadership—along with Perdue—claimed that the tax breaks the state has been granting would result in thousands of new jobs. If those claims were true, you would think that Georgia’s unemployment rate would at least be a little better than the national rate. All of these corporate tax breaks have also drained the state’s coffers of money that could have been spent on schools, highways and medical care.

These facts could cause some problems for Republicans in the 2010 race for governor. The Democratic nominee will say at every opportunity: “You gave away the state treasury to your lobbyist friends and said we’d get all these new jobs in return. Where are the jobs?”

That’s a question that could be difficult to answer.

Tom Crawford

cobbloviate Why Not Kick Us Again?

You Might Have Missed a Tooth or Two! One of the numerous nasty side effects of a fiscal crisis is that it affords those in authority a prime opportunity to pursue their own personal and political agendas. Higher education has not been particularly popular in Georgia for a long time among a certain coterie of legislators who represent districts where even the Episcopalians handle snakes and some folks think the Bible and the Sears catalogue constitute a mighty fine library. This problem grew infinitely worse with the ascension to the governorship in 2002 of Republican Sonny Perdue, a self-serving slug who is unfortunately just smart enough to know a relatively defenseless political punching bag when he sees one. Throw in a university system chancellor who is a former businessman and thinks that a university should be run, you guessed it, “like a business,” and you have all the behindthe-scenes info you should need to understand what it’s like to teach at the University of Georgia these days.

Just in case you’re having trouble with the empathy thing, however, let me tell you about what happened in a recent twoday stretch, beginning on July 21, when I received the following email: To: UGA Faculty and Staff From: Tim Burgess, Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Re: Duty to Report Arrests and Convictions This is to remind all faculty and staff that, under policy mandated by the Board of Regents, all University of Georgia employees are required to report any arrest to the Office of Legal Affairs within 72 hours of the arrest and to report the outcome of any criminal case within 24 hours of a court decision. Failure to report is a violation of the policy and may lead to negative employment action above and beyond whatever action might be taken because of the arrest itself…

Feeling more like a probationer than a professor at that point, the next morning about 11 a.m., I signed a contract into which this language had been inserted: Notwithstanding any other provision of this contract, for fiscal year 2009–2010, the Board of Regents has authorized the president to implement a mandatory furlough program requiring employees to take not more than 10 days of unpaid annual leave. In the event it becomes necessary for the president to exercise this authority, employee furloughs will be implemented in accordance with guidelines promulgated by the Office of the Chancellor.

Well, let’s just say it didn’t take very damn long for it to become “necessary for the president to exercise this authority,” because about 5 p.m. I got this email from him:

To UGA Faculty and Staff: By now, most of you have heard or read about Governor Perdue’s order to state agencies to cut 5 percent from their budgets and implement three furlough days by the end of the calendar year. I know that you have many questions about what this is going to mean for you, your colleagues and your families.

We are working with the Board of Regents and their staff, and expect to receive further instructions on implementing these reductions. All of us are trying to work through budget scenarios both at the campus level and at the University System, and there remains a possibility of additional budget reductions and furlough days after the first of the year.

I will be making more information available as soon as possible, and I will be making a full report to the community on August 20… We will have a more detailed discussion on the furloughs and other budget issues at that time.

Until then, I would ask each of you as individuals and members of departments and units to continue to function as efficiently as possible. Throughout this time of economic challenge, we will continue to make the preservation of jobs a top priority, second only to serving students.

Thank you for everything you do for the University of Georgia.

Michael F. Adams President According to the local daily, “Each day of furloughs saves taxpayers $135 million when teachers, University System of Georgia employees and all state workers are included.” I don’t know who figured that out, but she or he must have one hell of a calculator. In any event, if these figures are correct, why not simply cut the budget 5 percent plus the equivalent of three furlough days, or $405 million? If the object is to avoid layoffs, where’s the guarantee that won’t happen anyway? What’s so magical about three days?

It will surely be interesting to see how this will work at UGA with a full-time faculty-staff population of roughly 9,000, where salaries range from the president’s reported $630K+ to clerical folks, I’m sorry to say, making barely 3 percent of that.

Obviously, furloughing the three-percenters isn’t going to help the state nearly as much economically as it will hurt the individuals forced to forego three days’ pay. In reality, the only humane way to go here is to impose more furlough days on administrators, assuming we can spare them for more than 72 hours (pause here for laborious removal of tongue from deep in cheek), and higher-paid faculty (of whom, I hasten to add, I am one.)

Maybe you believe this is all really just about money, but, like the Board of Regents’ Big-Brotherish obsession with monitoring faculty conduct off campus, these mandatory days off without pay (which have already been instituted in some state agencies but thus far avoided in four-year colleges) strike me also as a sharp reminder to faculty that, in the minds of the powers that be, they are no different from the folks who mow the shoulders of the highways or slave anonymously away deep within the bowels of the state bureaucracy. It’s true enough that the paychecks all come from the same place, and university faculty are certainly no more worthy of high regard than any other contributing member of society, but in this case, showing disrespect for them translates directly into devaluing what they do.

Finally, even taking the furloughs out of the equation, by my calculation, we have now absorbed budget cuts of 17 percent over roughly the last 18 months. Yet I read that officials are trying to figure how furlough days will be scheduled “so that absences don’t affect the smooth running of the university.”

“Smooth running of the university?!” Who, pray tell, has any right to expect smooth running after the butchering we’ve been subjected to? Better yet, if we can really appear to operate just as effectively after 17 percent budget reduction and faculty and staff taking the equivalent of 1 percent pay cuts (in addition to earlier reductions in benefits), just exactly who is going to believe that we needed all that money in the first place? Even if they wanted to, there is no way in hell that faculty are going to be allowed to take furloughs in a way that means canceling classes, which might not strike many students as forcing them to share our pain, although it might get through to some of their parents. However, if staff furloughs are coming anyway, bus service should be curtailed and the hours for computer labs, cafeterias, the student center and workout and recreational facilities should be reduced as well.

This may sound cold, but getting cut to pieces while trying to repulse repeated knife attacks with high-minded appeals to reason is getting a little old. Unless students, parents, clients and beneficiaries of our outreach efforts are made to feel that gutting their university has hurt them in some meaningful way, in this hostile environment, any hope we might have of recovering what’s been taken away is certain to fade from faint to non-existent.

Gloomy as things sound, not all the news around here is bad. With football season fast approaching, the $40 million expansion of our football and track facilities is proceeding apace. Any way you slice it, of course, the real thrust behind this modest project, said to include “a new weight training room, athletic training facility, a multi-purpose area, and new coaches offices and meeting rooms,” is the perceived need to impress 17- and 18-year-old athletes we are wooing to represent an institution, which, solely on the basis of their academic prowess, would not give more than a very few of them the time of day.

I have to confess that after all these years, trying to make sense of all these incongruities accomplishes little more than stoking my thirst for a beer or several. That reminds me! Just in case you’re watching, Regents-Voyeurs, can you tell me, if I have a few too many and wind up in the old gray bar motel, do I have to report it even if I’m on furlough?

Jim Cobb Jim Cobb is Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at UGA.

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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grub notes Sausages & SANDWICHES Sausages: The minute the words European Deli appeared in the business licenses, I figured we might be getting something pretty interesting in Athens. In Atlanta and surrounding areas, “European” is usually code for “Bosnian,” but in this case, it translates as “Russian, with a bit of this and a bit of that.”

This little food store (at 3579 Atlanta Highway, near China Star Super Buffet) not only carries an interesting selection of shelf-stable products (cookies that resemble chocolate-covered bananas; an amazing range of pickled vegetables, including garlic scapes and tiny squash; many brands of halva; little tins of pâté that are delicious enough that you might end up scraping the bottom of one with your spouse for dinner; and tons of other things that would serve for unusual stocking stuffers), but also makes sandwiches fresh to order. On the day I made it over there, the vegetable delivery truck had failed to arrive, which meant fewer options than usual were available, but the two I tried were still both unique and definitely worth the eating. One, on a hearty German rye that’s baked fresh daily—indeed, the counter girl had to go attend …jammed with exciting to the oven in the back cured meats… mid-sandwich making, when a timer went off— consisted of a beautifully mottled bologna and some mustard that resembles horseradish far more than French’s. The other was ostensibly French, prepared on a baguette with meat, a soft white cheese and pesto, but there was something undeniably Eastern European about the way the ingredients came together, or maybe it was the thinly sliced cucumbers. Tubs of potato salad (emphatically not vegetarian, with hunks of bologna lurking in the mix) and beet salad (full of dairy and with a bit of a caraway flavor) can be found in the refrigerators lining the room to complete your meal, but the biggest treat of all is in the deli case at the front, which is jammed with exciting cured meats, smoked fish and caviar, none of which have been easy to locate in Athens. I have what could be characterized as a small obsession with weisswurst in particular, a delicate pale sausage made with veal, pork bacon and parsley, that is so smooth and lovely I could eat it cold out of the fridge; I’ve literally had dreams about this sausage, which I only get when my mom cooks it at Christmas to top the choucroute, and the fact that it’s available at European Deli (and was just as marvelous as it could be) isn’t going to put a damper on my addiction. The store is open every day from lunch through dinner, takes credit cards, sells ice cream as well and has no seating, so you’ll have to take your goodies with you.

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Sandwiches: After two visits to the new Georgian Southeastern Chop House, opened in the former space of Trump’s (247 E. Washington St.), I remain impressed with the space, which is high-ceilinged and nicely renovated, the kind of place you could easily take a big client, and with the menu, which is cute and clever, but so far the execution of most of the offerings fails to live up to what’s promised. Restaurants should undersell and overdeliver, and “Granny Smith slaw” shouldn’t mean two matchsticks of apple crisscrossed. The ideas at work are good. The lunch menu is heavily footballthemed, but in a way that’s endearing, with each sandwich corresponding to an SEC team, from the Florida Gator Philly to the Kentucky Hot Brown (an open-faced ham and cheese topped with bacon and béchamel). Unfortunately, most of them aren’t nearly as exciting as they sound. The Georgia Bulldog hotdog with bacon and sauerkraut is weirdly bitter. The lamb burger is fine, but not immediately recognizable as lamb. The hot wings are a bright spot, with a good, crispy texture, but in general, the ingredients don’t seem to correspond with the prices. What I’d like to see is a more genuinely upscale effort, especially considering the room and the building. Put heirloom tomatoes in the salad rather than waxy, engineered cherry tomatoes, and people will (or should) be happy to pay an extra dollar or two. I’ll be back in a few months to check out dinner and see how things have evolved.

The restaurant is open every day, takes credit cards and has a few outdoor tables.

What Up? The eastside La Fiesta is open again. Simply Meats, on Baxter, is closing. Yo Spicy, also on Baxter, is open.

Hillary Brown

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

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PUZ Z LE

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PRO

Cruciverbalist Patrick Berry Wants You to Win in the End

P

atrick Berry has the ultimate cocktail-party job. Whenever he finds himself with a group of strangers, holding a glass of melting ice cubes in sweaty palms, someone will ask him what he does for a living, and Berry almost always has the most interesting career in the room.

He writes crossword puzzles for the New York Times.

Patrick Berry is a cruciverbalist, the formal title for a puzzle writer, and, yes, he pays his mortgage by doing so. His office attire is often a T-shirt and faded khakis. But Berry is quick to add that he doesn’t just spend his day firing off creative blasts of wordplay.

In fact, if he were to start explaining the ins and outs of his job, the conversation would quickly devolve into esoterica: databases, 180-degree symmetry, black and white square counts. Not so exciting, Berry thinks.

But Berry’s day at the office results in a test of America’s intelligence and ingenuity; crosswords are a simple cultural brainpower assessment much like a Rubik’s Cube. Can you finish a Sunday New York Times puzzle? Do you use a pencil or a pen?

Just over a year ago, Berry followed his college professor brother here to Athens from Chapel Hill, NC, and he’s been living an unassuming, work-fromhome life ever since. His house is shaped like the first letter of the alphabet, spartanly decorated with a wordsmith’s necessities: a coffeepot and bookshelves.

Berry graduated from Orlando’s Rollins College with a degree in computer science in the early ’90s, but it’s words, not ones and zeros, that enthrall him.

He has a devotional love affair with the English language and quotes Mark Twain when describing the awesome power of words: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

After college, Berry took a job in the desktop publishing business. He settled in Chapel Hill and continued constructing puzzles as he became increasingly dissatisfied with the corporate world. He honed his skills selling puzzles to Games magazine throughout the ’90s. Following an employment shake-up in 1998, Berry leapt into full-time puzzle construction, a decision that meant devoting a year to building a word and phrase database— an essential tool for any word puzzle maker.

A Puzzle’s Progress What does a database have to do with crosswords? Themes and clues are the stars of the puzzle, but it’s the database that performs the grunt work. Every year, Berry spends time grooming his database, chopping through lists, phrases and clever definitions in order to keep his puzzles fresh and relevant. Berry’s database contains a couple hundred thousand entries, which he recently began ranking according to quality. Words that contain rarely used letters such as Q or X, or those that have particularly good clueing potential, will receive a high rating; words like eel—short words that contain common letters and are

difficult to clue creatively—receive a low rating. His quality indication system isn’t finished yet, and won’t be any time soon.

Fully rating his entire database would be like entering a “black hole of time” similar to 1998—the initial year of word-logging and a period he’s not willing to revisit.

If evaluating your ammunition is the crucial first step to becoming a cruciverbalist, the actual first step to puzzle writing is an entirely different test: developing the theme.

Themes require time to brainstorm and must come first because they’re the puzzle’s hooks. Theme writing is the innate, creative

act that forms a great puzzle; a strong one is the difference between a software-leaning amateur and a hardcore cruciverbalist who likes to black out squares with a soft lead pencil. Even if you have a bunch of clever definitions and a well-filled grid, Berry believes a well-built theme makes a stronger product.

“Crosswords are a bunch of mini-epiphanies,” he says, and solving the theme is the big one.

For example, Berry once constructed a variety puzzle titled “Noah’s Ark.” Solvers had to answer the themed clues and then add or take out two extra letters to fill the entry. The clue would lead the solver to the word sturdy, and he or she would then add two “A”s to make Saturday.

Themes not only set a puzzle’s tone but also determine its shape; a puzzle’s longer entries are usually the same size lengthwise and are placed symmetrically in a puzzle. From there a constructor fills in the rest, or as Berry calls it, “backs into the grid.” There is a serious structure to this. All crosswords must have 180-degree rotational symmetry, which means that if you turn a blank crossword upside down, the pattern of black squares appears the same. Themed entries must conform to the symmetry as well: if there’s an eight-letter entry on the second line in the top right corner, there must be an eight-letter entry on the second-to-last line in the bottom left.

During the clueing process, when he’s

racking his database for words to fill the remaining white space, Berry runs into a frustrating part of puzzle construction: avoiding crosswordese, those infrequently used words, such as Ara (a constellation), that haunt the outer edges of puzzle grids. After packing in longer words with catchy definitions he’ll eventually get squeezed into a corner, in need of a three-letter word that starts with E and ends with L. At this point a database query is disappointing. “I hate to think about how many times I’ve clued eel,” he says.

Yet to his fans, Berry is a god at constructing clean, seamless puzzles. Crossword blogger, author and consistent top-10 tournament finisher Amy Reynaldo says that while other constructors fall back on boring clunkers (amuser) or unoriginal space fillers (oleo), Berry shines by constructing smooth, obscurity-free puzzles.

“In a Berry puzzle, odds are that all the words will be more familiar,” Reynaldo says in an email. “So if you’re stuck on a tough clue, don’t assume the answer is something you’ve never heard of. A regular word will eventually emerge from the haze.”

Berry says it’s important to use words that everyone knows; it’s their clues he prefers to make a little tricky or oblique.

But “not every clue can be a gem.” Some have to be serviceable. And the ability to recognize which entries deserve the most creativity is what makes Berry a puzzle god. If he clues eel occasionally, it’s in service to something much more whimsical and elegant, say elevator music. “Songs that might make you get out on a floor,” Berry writes. The difference is simple yet memorable.

By making the clues difficult and not the words themselves, Berry keeps the puzzle fun instead of frustrating. “You want to bedevil people as much as possible, but you want them to win in the end,” he says. “If someone spends an hour on a clue, you want him or her to be satisfied.”

Berry’s puzzles, however, are anything but breezy, uncomplicated time-killers. The 2009 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament used a Berry creation in the final round. He’s also considered a late-week specialist at the New York Times, which reserves its most challenging puzzles for Fridays and Saturdays.

Berry’s latest book, Puzzle Masterpieces: Elegant Challenges for Crossword Lovers, is a collection of variety word puzzles that take fanciful forms; they may wind across a page, use triangles instead of squares, or take serpentine shapes. He feels his craft shines in these puzzles; after all, his interest in wordplay began with variety puzzles, not crosswords. “Knowing the answer isn’t always enough,” Berry says. Once you’ve solved the clue, there’s the added difficulty of figuring out how the answer fits into the puzzle’s shape. Variety puzzles also require some instruction for the solver, but they’re free of what Berry considers a crossword’s weakness: crosswordese and short words like eel. Variety puzzles aren’t constrained by grid dimensions either; he can fill them entirely with five-letter words if he feels like it. While he considers them more interesting to solve, variety puzzles just aren’t as salable as crosswords, which is

why he constructs traditional grids to help make puzzle writing a viable career.

The Bottom Line In over 10 years as a self-employed puzzle constructor, Berry has published around 120 New York Times puzzles, two compilations of his work and a Crossword Puzzles for Dummies book that’s considered the manual for becoming a constructor. He also edits the crossword for the Chronicle of Higher Education and constructs a regular puzzle for Yahoo.

In terms of book and daily puzzle writing, Berry’s output places him in a small demographic: according to him, he’s one of roughly 10 full-time puzzle constructors in the country. So, while there might be two accountants, a few schoolteachers and a bunch of waiters at your next Oscar party, Berry is probably the only guy who writes Sit and Solve crossword puzzle books for commuters.

Even though there’s very little professional, full-time competition, Berry still hustles due to a shrinking number of venues for his work and a growing number of amateurs vying for the attention of the few major players: the L.A. Times, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Daily papers and other one-offs only pay when the puzzles appear in print, and because these spec gigs can sit on puzzles for an extended period, Berry relies on regular gigs like Yahoo and the Chronicle to meet the bottom line.

The top-tier venue, the New York Times, pays $1,000 for a weekend puzzle and $200 for a daily; the Wall Street Journal pays $350 for a weekend; and the L.A. Times recently raised its daily contributor pay to $85 a puzzle.

Opening Up Puzzlers are a tight-knit community, historically gathering at annual conferences such as the National Puzzlers’ League, and the personalities are known by their first names. But just as newspapers’ websites opened up reporters to the megabyte-quick reactions of their audiences through anonymous comments, a constructor’s work is now debated daily in online forums and blogs. Luckily, Berry appreciates that sort of give-and-take.

A solver once objected to Berry’s use of bedsore in a puzzle, an entry that he clued as “Possible result of pathological lying?” The solver said that if Berry had truly experienced a bedsore he would not have used the word.

Some constructors and editors discourage the use of words that suggest disease or death, and because he hadn’t suffered from bedsores and couldn’t speak to the experience of the wound, Berry paid attention to the criticism, eventually deciding not to use bedsore again.

Though he likes to err on the side of caution, Berry says that “some people are offended way too easily, so I’m not always going to back off.”

That’s a good thing, because what’s taboo in cruciverbalist circles is small-talk gold in others.

Andre Gallant

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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movie dope Some releases may not be showing locally this week.

ADORATION (R) For an assignment, high school student Simon (Devon Bostick) weaves the story of his parents (Noam Jenkins and Rachel Blanchard), both killed in a car accident, with a news story about a terrorist. Controversy arrives when his fact-meets-fiction tale goes viral.

ALIENS IN THE ATTIC (PG) A family moves to Maine and discovers the top floor of their new home has been invaded by aliens. The cast is all over the place. First, there’s High School Musical alum Ashley Tisdale; then you’ve got “SNL” vets Kevin Nealon and Tim Meadows. Director John Schultz (The Honeymooners) won some awards for his 1996 debut, Bandwagon. I honestly can’t decide whether I’m looking forward to this or dreading it more than I did G-Force.

ANGELS & DEMONS (PG-13) Angels & Demons, the Da Vinci Code predecessor turned cinematic sequel, offers the same lukewarm thrills as the 2006 blockbuster. Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks with a better hairdo) is tasked by the Vatican with solving a mystery involving a dead pope, four kidnapped cardinals and the Illuminati, a legendary cabal supposedly wiped out by the Catholic church centuries ago. Apparently, Langdon’s brainy brand of non-action reads better than it watches.

AWAY WE GO (R) Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph), a couple of self-described “fuck-ups,” are searching for a place to raise their yet-to-be-born child after Burt’s selfish parents (Catherine O’Hara and Athensborn Jeff Daniels) announce their plan to move to Belgium. Away We Go, written by novelists Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and his wife, Vendela Vida

(co-founder and co-editor of The Believer), reads like a quirky, humorous National Book Award finalist.

COLD SOULS (PG-13) How Charlie Kaufman-esque! Paul Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti, who pays to have his soul disembodied.

Unfortunately, Paul is a victim of soul trafficking and must travel to Russia to retrieve it from a soap opera actress.

Writer-director Sophie Barthes’s feature debut was nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. With Emily Watson, David Strathairn and Lauren Ambrose (“Six Feet Under”).

THE COLLECTOR (R) Certain horror fans might be excited about the directorial debut of Marcus Dunstan, one half of the writing duo behind the Feast flicks and Saw IV, V and the upcoming VI. When a desperate ex-con plots a heist of his new employer’s country home, he doesn’t plan on a second criminal who has rigged the house with deadly traps à la Jigsaw. Connections to Saw are fitting as the movie is reportedly an aborted prequel to the horror juggernaut.

DCI 2009: BIG, LOUD, & LOUD 6 (NR) Join Fathom and Drum Corp International for this year’s World Championship Quarterfinals, a live presentation of the very best marching music.

EAST OF EDEN (PG) 1955. Now playing is James Dean’s first feature, Elia Kazan’s adaptation of the John Steinbeck classic. Dean was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the tortured Caleb “Cal” Trask, who is always competing with his brother Aron (Richard Davalos) for the love and approval of their father (Raymond Massey). As the Trask boys’ morally destitute mother, Jo Van Fleet won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

FOOD, INC. (PG) Fast Food Nation’s Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, peek inside the pantry of America’s corporate kitchen, analyzing the effects of a corporate-controlled food industry on the country’s farmers and the health of its citizens.

FUNNY PEOPLE (R) See Movie Pick.

G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (PG-13) I don’t care what anyone says; I’m excited for the live-action

You’ve been very naughty boys.

G.I. Joe movie I’ve been waiting my entire life to see. The Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity (G.I. JOE)—an elite strike force led by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid)—must stop the evil terrorist organization known as Cobra.

Duke (Channing Tatum), Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) and fan-favorite Snake Eyes (Ray Park) take on Destro (Christopher Eccleston), the Baroness (Sienna Miller), Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) and Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in the fight of my life.

G-FORCE (PG) G-Force is being touted as über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s first 3-D and family film.

M OVIE L ISTI NG S

Theater schedules often change after our deadline. Please call ahead.

ACC LIBRARY (706-613-3650)

Persepolis (PG-13) 7:00 (Th. 8/6) Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (NR ) 2:00 (Th. 8/6)

BEECHWOOD (706-546-1011)

Due to production deadlines, Beechwood movie times are only accurate through Aug. 6. Visit www.Flagpole.com for updated times.

Aliens in the Attic (PG) 12:20, 2:50, 5:10, 7:25, 9:30 The Collector (R) 12:50, 3:05, 5:20, 7:35, 9:40 DCI 2009: Big, Loud, & Loud 6 (NR) 6:30 (Th. 8/6) Funny People (R) 12:40, 3:50, 7:00, 10:05 G-Force (PG) 1:00, 3:10, 5:30, 8:00 G-Force (3D) (PG) 12:00, 2:20, 4:50, 7:15, 9:30 The Hangover (R) 4:15, 9:35 (no 9:35 show W. 8/5) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG) 12:30, 3:45, 7:00, 10:15 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (PG) 1:30, 7:10 (no 7:10 show W. 8/5) Metropolitan Opera: The Magic Flute (NR) 7:00 (W. 8/5) Orphan (R) 1:05, 4:05, 7:05, 9:50 The Proposal (PG-13) 1:10, 4:10, 7:10, 9:55 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PG-13) 12:15, 3:30, 6:45, 10:00 Ugly Truth (R) 12:05, 2:30, 4:55, 7:20, 9:45

CARMIKE 12 (706-354-0016)

Due to production deadlines, Carmike 12 movie times are only accurate through Aug. 6. Visit www.Flagpole.com for updated times.

Aliens in the Attic (PG) 12:00, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 9:15 The Collector (R) 12:15, 2:45, 5:15, 7:45, 10:10 Funny People (R) 1:00, 4:05, 7:10, 10:15 G-Force (3D) (PG) 12:20, 1:15, 2:35, 3:30, 4:50, 5:45, 7:05, 8:00, 9:20, 10:15 The Hangover (R) 12:40, 3:05, 5:30, 7:50, 10:15

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

The heroes may be furry, well-animated guinea pigs voiced by Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz, Tracy Morgan and Nicolas Cage, but the loud, busy action movie definitely hails from Bruckheimer’s gated Hollywood neighborhood. It’s as good—or as bad—as any old Bruckheimer production.

THE HANGOVER (R) The summer’s most relentlessly funny comedy may have arrived. When three buddies— married schoolteacher Phil (Bradley

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG) 12:30, 1:30, 3:45, 4:45, 7:00, 8:00, 10:15 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (3D) (PG) 12:40, 2:50, 5:00 Orphan (R) 1:30, 4:20, 7:10, 10:00 The Proposal (PG-13) 7:10, 9:30 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PG-13) 12:30, 3:45, 7:00, 10:15 The Ugly Truth (R) 12:25, 2:40, 4:55, 7:10, 9:25

CINÉ (706-353-3343)

Away We Go (R) 5:15, 9:30 (new times F. 8/7: 5:00, 9:55) (no 9:55 show Su. 8/9) East of Eden (PG) 5:00, 7:30 (no 5:00 show W. 8/5 or Th. 8/6)(ends Th. 8/6) Moon (R) 9:45 (ends Th. 8/6) Rudo y Cursi (R) 5:15, 9:45 (starts F. 8/7) (no show Su. 8/9) Summer Hours (NR) 7:15 (new times F. 8/7: 7:30) (add’l time Sa. 8/8–Su. 8/9: 3:00) West Side Story (NR) 7:00 (add’l times Sa. 8/8–Su. 8/9: 2:00) (starts F. 8/7)

GEORGIA SQUARE 5 (706-548-3426)

Due to production deadlines, Georgia Square Five movie times are only accurate through Aug. 6. Visit www.Flagpole. com for updated times.

Angels & Demons (PG-13) 4:00, 9:55 Land of the Lost (PG-13) 12:40, 7:35 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (PG) 12:35, 3:00, 5:25, 7:50, 10:15 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (R) 12:50, 4:05, 7:20, 10:05 Terminator Salvation (PG-13) 12:55, 4:10, 7:25, 10:00 Year One (PG-13) 12:45, 3:00, 5:15, 7:30, 10:10

Cooper), emasculated dentist Stu (Ed Helms) and strange Alan (Zack Galifianakis)—take their pal, Doug (Justin Bartha), to Las Vegas for his bachelor party, all hell breaks loose.

Too bad none of these guys can remember one moment of it. Peppered with familiar funny faces, The Hangover is a perfect comedic convergence that’s funnier than it deserves to be.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALFBLOOD PRINCE (PG) In his sixth year at Hogwarts, young wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his pals, Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson), must contend with Death Eaters, a puffed-up new Potions prof and love potions. In his second Potter film, director David Yates gets what makes the books so special and translates that quality to the big screen unlike any of his predecessors; fivetime screenwriter Steve Kloves has perfected extracting only the essentials from Rowling’s doorstops.

ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS (PG) Don’t expect any surprises in the third installment of the mammoth animated franchise that isn’t Shrek or produced by Pixar. Ice Age: DotD is just for the kiddies. If you’ve got to see it, be sure to pay a little extra for the 3D version. It’s worth it.

JULIE & JULIA (PG-13) A secretary (Amy Adams) blogs about her yearlong attempt to cook every single recipe from legendary chef Julia Child’s (Meryl Streep) cookbook. You might as well go ahead and give Streep her 16th Academy Award nomination now.

Based on the book by Julia Powell and Julia Child’s My Life in France. With Jane Lynch, Stanley Tucci and Mary Lynn Rajskub (yeah, more Chloe!).

LAND OF THE LOST (PG-13) Big screen, bigger budget updates of the cult universes conceived by brothers Sid and Marty Krofft (“H.R. Pufnstuf”) are best left as cheesy, campy and bizarre as the grown-up fans, all hopped up on nostalgia, remember them.

METROPOLITAN OPERA: THE MAGIC FLUTE (NR) 2006. Dancing bears and giant birds accompany the

cast of this presentation of Mozart’s delighting opera. Performed in English and directed by Tony Award winner Julie Taymor, The Magic Flute will delight all ages of opera fans.

MOON (R) Moon constantly entertains; it’s a little scary, a little funny, and a little thoughtful. An obvious fan of ‘70s science fiction, Jones’ film acknowledges its forebears without strictly following any of their narrative paths; sometimes, those referents are cunningly used for narrative sleightof-hand. The robotic assistant, GERTY, smoothly voiced by Kevin Spacey, leads one to jump to HAL-like conclusions. And the effects are spectacular, appearing more tangible than digital.

The out-of-this-world film orbits in the good company of cult faves, Silent Running or Dark Star.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN (PG) Everything about NatM:BotS improves on the lifeless original, especially the thankful lack of monkey antics of which there are a mere toned down few.

ORPHAN (R) Orphan is an aboveaverage horror flick in the childrenwho-kill subgenre. The currently, amusingly named parenting duo, John and Kate (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga), wish to adopt. After a single visit to an orphanage, John and Kate decide to take home Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a 19th-century Russian orphan with ribbons tied around her neck and wrists. Suddenly, Kate begins to wonder, “What’s Esther’s deal?” The revelation in Orphan actually redeems the movie, turning this imitative flick into something half-way original.

A PERFECT GETAWAY (R) In The Perfect Getaway, two vacationing couples (Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn; Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez) discover some psychopath is stalking and killing tourists visiting the Hawaiian Islands. In thanks for Riddick’s one superb adventure, I’m going to be nice and hold any snarky comparisons to Turistas for the dope.

PERSEPOLIS (PG-13) 2007. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s film recounts recent Iranian history through the limited but expanding scope of a young Iranian girl. Persepolis depicts Iran with honest, sad resignation at what has transpired in a once proud nation.

THE PROPOSAL (PG-13) I was worn out by the trailer for this Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy way back in April. An unlikable career woman, Margaret Tate (Bullock), is about to be deported to her native Canada. Her quick fix requires her put-upon assistant, Andrew (Reynolds, whom I can’t help but like), to marry her. Naturally, a trip to meet his family—Mary Steenburgen, “Coach” Craig T. Nelson and Betty White as the loopy grandma—in Alaska is the next step.

RUDO Y CURSI (R) Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna costar in this film from Mexican director Carlos Cuarón about two brothers seeking to escape their small town world for soccer stardom.

SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH (NR) 1943. Basil Rathbone’s sixth outing as the famed detective will be screening at the ACC Library with audio narration for visually impaired viewers. Presented by the Special Needs Library, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death takes place during World War

II, when several murders at a convalescent home lead Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) to call on the services of the master detective.

SHORTS (PG) The discovery of a wish-granting, multi-hued rock causes chaos in suburban Black Falls when jealous kids and adults scheme and fight to possess it. With Jimmy Bennett (Young Kirk in Star Trek), Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), Leslie Mann, James Spader, Jon Cryer and William H. Macy.

SUMMER HOURS (NR) The death of their mother strains the bonds of three siblings—two brothers (Charles Berling and Jérémie Renier) and a sister (a distractingly blonde Juliette Binoche)—as they divvy up not only her prized possessions but also their own memories. An official selection of the Toronto, New York and AFI Film Festivals, Summer Hours didn’t snag any prizes, but it did pick up some good notices.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 (R) How many times can John Godey’s novel be made into a movie? Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw played cops and robbers in a 1974 version, and Edward James Olmos and Vincent D’Onofrio took over in a 1998 TV movie. Now megastars Denzel Washington and John Travolta hop on this express thriller about a hijacked subway train. Adapted by Oscar-winner Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential and Mystic River) and directed by Tony Scott, who has teamed with Washington for the fourth time.

TERMINATOR SALVATION (PG-13) The ultra-grim fourth installment of the time-bending franchise makes minor improvements on the frivolous third film. Finally, we get to witness the epic battles between man and machine. The long-awaited battles between humanity and the endoskeleton army grow tedious in chunks larger than T2’s tantalizing bits.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (PG-13) The millions trekking to the theater to witness over two hours of robotic mayhem are going to get their money’s worth and their socks rocked by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The only people who won’t like it probably didn’t really want to gorge on a gigantic robot civil war anyway.

THE UGLY TRUTH (R) Why does anyone care whether or not an unappealing neurotic beauty (Katherine Heigl) and a charming, Neanderthalish brute (Gerard Butler) fall in love? A dirty version of Cyrano de Bergerac where Cyrano falls in love with Roxane while helping her woo Christian, The Ugly Truth cashes in on the naughty comedy trend with some f-bombs and masturbation gags yet keeps censoring itself so as not to actually offend the old people and prudes for whom Judd Apatow is akin to Lenny Bruce or Larry Flynt.

WEST SIDE STORY (NR) 1961.

One of the greatest musicals of all time. Winner of 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins), Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris) and Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno).

YEAR ONE (PG-13) A couple of lazy hunters, Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera), are banished and embark on an epic adventure that brings them into contact with numerous figures, ancient and biblical.

Uber-producer Judd Apatow produces this comedy written and directed by Harold Ramis. Apatow and Ramis had to personally appeal to the MPAA for the PG-13 rating. With David Cross and Paul Rudd as Cain and Abel and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) as Isaac.

Drew Wheeler

movie pick FUNNY PEOPLE (R) Is the dramatic-comic Meanwhile, Ira toils in the shadows of collaboration of former college roommates, his two pals, crappy sitcom star Mark (Jason superstar Adam Sandler and Knocked Up Schwartzman) and more successful fellow writer-director Judd Apatow, the best film stand-up Leo (Jonah Hill). Working for George either has made? Perhaps, but best and peris Ira’s big break, and that is kind of it. The fect are two differcharming Rogen ent things. Funny impresses as normal, People is a strange nice Ira, but his arc is animal. As raunchy tragically woeful for and immature as The a main character. His 40-Year-Old Virgin and tired romantic subplot Knocked Up, Apatow’s is only redeemed by third film is maturely the button-cute, deaddepressing. Laughs pan Aubrey Plaza. are prolific but temAt 145 minutes, pered by death’s Funny People is far too looming visage. The long. Apatow’s genius Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen assertive seriousness has been aggressively of the film’s subject lauded over the past matter occasionally outduels the humorous four years, and each successive film has become tone, slackening the pace to a crawl. longer. Someone who is not one of Apatow’s pet In Funny People, Sandler gives the best, editors, Craig Alpert and Brent White, needed to most nuanced performance of his career by step up and shear Funny People. essentially playing himself under the pseudWith the Academy doubling the list of Best onym George Simmons. A devastating diagnoPicture nominees to 10, many see Apatow’s sis leaves George pondering his life choices. serio-comedy as the funny film genre’s Great His only friend is a newly hired assistant, White Hope. Finding the laughter in mortality wannabe stand-up comic Ira Wright (Seth might be the only way a comedy can trick the Rogen), and his true love, Laura (Apatow’s Academy into acknowledging it. While no one wife, Leslie Mann) is married (to Eric Bana) was looking, Apatow became the new James with two kids (Apatow and Mann’s daughters, Brooks and Funny People is his penis-jokeMaude and Iris). But impending mortality filled Terms of Endearment. frees George to amend the mistakes of his past and he reconnects with Laura.

Drew Wheeler

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threats & promises Music News And Gossip FREE SHOW!

While things will stay warm for the next few months, fall semester will crank up in a few short weeks and mark the end of summer in Athens. Why not head out to some shows, catch up on what you’ve been missing and get a jump on the crowds coming into town? Get your field guide below…

Easier Than You Think: While WUOG 90.5 FM has been a standard-bearer for local music via its “Live in the Lobby” for decades, WUGA 91.7 FM show “It’s Friday” has done more than a great job of exposing daytime listeners to some fine local music, too. Host Rob Holmes enthusiastically presents artists, both local and touring, in the studio on the program each Friday at 4 p.m. If you’re in a band that would like to play the show, it’s as simple as contacting Holmes via rholmes@ uga.edu. All types of artists have appeared on the show, so I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules concerning styles of music, but you can discuss that when you contact him.

For more information about WUGA, our local National Public Radio affiliate, please see www.uga.edu/wuga.

Month o’ Tunes: Local songwriter Nicklaus Andersen (AKA Whiff Trophy) is doing a project this month whereby he’ll write and record a song each day for the whole month.

People can subscribe to the songs via an XML feed or just visit his site daily for the latest song. So, if you’re looking to bulk up your iTunes collection of tracks or want Jimmy Hughes to seriously check out a practically unknown yet seriously compelling and talented local artist, please visit www.whifftrophy.com for more information.

New Vids: The Athens Soundies people, Jason Miller and Ethan Payne, have some new material over on their site with The Packway Handle Band that was filmed at the Jittery Joe’s roaster over on East Broad Street. It’s a lively performance, definitely worth the few minutes of your time it will take. So far, there are 27 short films at their site featuring bands in non-traditional locations. You won’t like every artist featured, but it’s cool to explore the videos they’ve done; it’s like seeing the scene through another set of eyes. Check ‘em out at www.athenssoundies.com.

For the Faithful: Although Folklore front man Jimmy Hughes lives in Philadelphia, the band’s ties to Athens are still strong, especially considering Hughes maintains a separate Athens lineup down here. The latest news is that Folklore has completed its third fulllength album and is shopping it around. There are a few shows scheduled in the next several weeks, but none are anywhere near Athens.

Perhaps Hughes will return when Folklore undertakes a more extensive East Coast tour in October that is supposed to wind through the Bible Belt and then out to Chicago. In other

m

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news, there’s a new video out for the track “The Beginning” from the band’s 2008 album Carpenter’s Falls. Find that one on YouTube.

For all other Folklore stuff, please see www. fairmountfair.com/folklore.

Somebody Save Me: There’s a new joint in town for all you folks who want to throw back a few brews and get your jam on after a hard week of work. It’s called Club Chrome and is located way out on Atlanta Highway (115 Trade St.). I’m always suspicious of any place that uses the tagline “18 to party, 21 to drink,” and Club Chrome doesn’t disappoint.

A quick view of the venue’s website revealed pictures that, in my best estimation, looked like a bikini contest. The club also hosts live music on Fridays and Saturdays, with Helen, Dodge lined up on Friday, Aug. 7, Tangents on Saturday, Aug. 8 and The Daniel Lee Band on Friday, Aug. 14. If you head out there and feel like reporting back, please do. As they say, “fill your glass and shake your ass” over at www.myspace.com/ clubchromeathens.

Come One, Come All: Dark Meat is hosting a benefit for Nuçi’s Space on Thursday, Aug. 6 at the 40 Watt which is going to be a release party for the band’s new EP, When the Shelter Came. The lineup features Dark Meat, Quiet Hooves, Lawrence, KS band Drakkar Sauna and, headlining, Dead Confederate. The EP being released is coming out as a pink vinyl 7” with a free download card for both tracks on the record plus three more.

Released on Emergency Umbrella Records, it features Dark Meat “fairly mellow, folky and trippy” but with a few characteristic outbursts of noise (see our review on p. 14). In other news, Dark Meat will release its new fulllength album, Truce Opium, around Oct. 22.

It’s also courtesy of Emergency Umbrella and is a 50-minute, eight-song double LP mastered at 45 RPM! It was recorded at the Downtown Athens Recording Company and at The Bakery with engineer Joel Hatstat handling the sessions there. The band will tour Mexico in October and has plans for several more singles and other releases over the next year or so. See myspace.com/darkmeats.

Goodbye Blur, Hello New Earth: Local GLBTfriendly dance club Blur enjoyed its last dance party on Saturday, Aug. 1. But you won’t have to wait long to see what’s next for the club.

On Aug. 15 the doors will reopen and the New Earth Music Hall will make a soft debut, with a full-out grand opening scheduled for Aug. 28. Adrian Zelski of Dubconscious is the creative director behind this endeavor and promises a laid back, eclectic space that will feature international DJs, world music and live bands. Check back in closer to the launch date for more details! [Michelle Gilzenrat] Gordon Lamb threatsandpromises@flagpole.com

Get Down With

Reigning Sound, Thomas Function and Vincas

A

sheville, NC’s Reigning Sound, famously and originally of Memphis, TN, will stop through to garner attention for its upcoming album, Love and Curses, out Aug. 11. The album is the band’s first batch of new songs since 2004’s Too Much Guitar. But that doesn’t mean singer/guitarist/songwriter and mainstay Greg Cartwright has been twiddling his thumbs.

Reigning Sound served as the backing band for Shangri-La Mary Weiss’ solo album Dangerous Game, a job that took them to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, performing for millions on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Then Cartwright’s ‘90s garage-trash outfit, The Oblivians, reunited in June for several shows around the U.S. before jetting to Europe for a sold-out tour of seven countries.

If advance tracks of Love and Curses are any indication, it bears many similarities to 2002’s Time Bomb High School. That is, the album features soulful, well-written garage-rock with clean production, and in some cases, ballads that are neither rote nor boring. Cartwright recently told the blog Turn It Down that “There are happy songs that are about being glad for what you got and songs about being sad for what you don’t have.”

Cartwright is well known as an oldies, soul and classic garage-record collector, and Reigning Sound has always had a penchant for covering obscurities on its albums, bringing a fresh sound and new life to some forgotten classics. Past selections have included tracks by Sam & Dave, The Gentrys and The Beach Boys. Love and Curses is sure to include several tracks of re-envisioned nuggets, lost to the platters of time.

Reigning Sound is bringing along an excellent new combo to open the show: Huntsville, AL’s Thomas Function. This foursome (none named Thomas) turned many heads last year with its debut album, Celebration. The Alabamians have a hooky, keyboard-driven pop-rock sound not unlike The Kinks, The Voidoids or, even more recently, The Strokes, if any of those bands sang with disarmingly Southern accents. The band differs from many others in that its lyrics, crafted by singer/ guitarist Joshua Macero, are acid-fueled surrealistic adventures fraught with paranoia and debauchery. Barely home from a spring tour of Europe, Thomas Function, too, will celebrate the release of a new album this fall. In the Valley of Sickness is due Oct. 13 on Mississippi’s Fat Possum label. Advance tracks of this album also show similarities to the band’s previous work, but will presumably feature better production values than Celebration’s DIY genesis.

Thomas Function is adept at making a certain lewdness seem fun and sing-songy: Celebration’s “Peanut Butter and Paranoia Jam” featured the psychotic refrain “We don’t just laugh last/ we hope you die.” Likewise, In the Valley of Sickness’ “ADP” features the happy, catchy chorus “The only good cop is a dead cop.”

If you haven’t seen Athens’ Vincas yet, you’re missing out, friend. The trio does a mean wailing guitar, psychedelicdrenched punk, much like Mudhoney did in previous decades.

Vincas would’ve released innumerable seven-inch singles on labels like Estrus or Sympathy for the Record Industry 15 years ago.

If it’s unadulterated madness you’re looking for, these performances are gonna put the fervor of solid, Southern rock and roll back into you. Be like others and experience an event Friday night that will leave you speaking in tongues.

Scott Reid

WHO: Reigning Sound, Thomas Function, Vincas, DJ Kurt Wood & DJ Grrtch WHERE: 40 Watt Club WHEN: Friday, Aug. 7 HOW MUCH: $10

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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Hospice Frenchkiss Sending tingles throughout the cognoscenti upon its self-release earlier this spring, this stunning underthe-radar work has since been picked up, remastered and officially released by tasteful indie label Frenchkiss. It’s a concept album involving the precarious waltz between a mentally abusive terminal patient and a caregiver. Sonically, Antlers’ atmospheric dream-pop is swathed in shoegaze and psychedelia.

But despite the foggy palette, there’s a distinct clarity and exactitude to their detailed sound. While some artists’ use of effects is an illusion of depth, Antlers orchestrate their arsenal with precision and intensity.

The album is awash in hovering, sometimes harrowing contemplation like the crestfallen tremble of “Kettering.” But it’s truly exceptional when it goes big. When that happens, Hospice is a revelation capable of crippling beauty. “Bear” strokes lavish psych-pop impressionism that rivals the Flaming Lips at their best. “Two” begins as a trickle of a folk song that dramatically blossoms into a skystreaking anthem. Shaping a cyclone into a mountaintop symphony, the wuthering “Sylvia” hits heights so dizzying that it will steal your breath.

Though intellect and craftsmanship abound, this collection isn’t just an esoteric exercise. It’s a work of pathos and humanity. Hospice is poised to be one of this year’s biggest sleepers, making Antlers a band you need to know now.

Bao Le-Huu

JOHNNY WINTER The Johnny Winter Anthology Shout Factory As heard on the two-disc, eponymous anthology that spans the late‘60s to the early 2000s, Texan guitarist and singer Johnny Winter didn’t just pick or strum the blues. More often that not, Winter attacked them as if he and old Mr. Scratch were pitted against one another in a life or death slugfest. This 35-track compilation provides the most thorough portrait to date of Winter’s meat ‘n’ potatoes formula that combined monster riffs and gruff, extended solos with outlaw imagery self-penned or on loan from acts like the Stones, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

The set is arranged chronologically, and by the end of the first disc

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Winter has cooled his jets a bit and segued into a chugging boogie-rock mode he would carry through the late 1970s and into the ‘80s. But, the white-haired albino bluesman charges out of the gates steamrolling through the ferocious bent notes of “Rollin’ and Tumblin,’” as well as other fire and brimstone scorchers like the shuffling “Hustled Down in Texas.” A foursome of muscular cuts from the mighty 1971 concert album Live Johnny Winter are highlighted by the atom bomb vamping of the 8-minute “Mean Town Blues.”

By the middle of disc two, Winters has begun to downplay the predictable boogie arrangements of “Stone County” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll People” in favor of a return to the grittier style of electric roadhouse blues, heard on the closing “Lone Wolf” and the slideheavy “It’s My Life, Baby,” at which he really excels. Though his thin, reedy vocals were never powerful enough to make Winter an iconic blues singer, it was his hard-working axe that called the shots and, here, his supercharged, non-textbook melding of blues and rock consistently steals the show.

Michael Andrews

DARK MEAT When the Shelter Came EP Emergency Umbrella Dark Meat’s new EP When the Shelter Came only comes as a 7” vinyl pressing, with just the title track and “The Faint Smell of Moss” on the respective sides. That 7” comes with a download code, though, which nets you three additional tracks of psychedelicized bluesy punk, though those two original tunes are also the most worth your time. Recorded at multiinstrumentalist Tim Schreiber’s house, they feature the massive local band giving life to frontman Jim McHugh’s fever-dream imagery. “When the Shelter Came” winds a circuitous path, a horn-heavy rock and roll jaunt laced throughout with sitar.

“The Faint Smell of Moss” finds a mellower band at work, reminiscent of the occasional acoustic shows the band has played in town under the unofficial Soft Meat name. Melodies and instruments that get lost in the band’s electrified presentation come to the forefront, and the strings that seem almost superfluous in the Dark Meat’s live din justify their prominence. “The Faint Smell of Moss” is no acoustic softie, though, and wraps up in a warped, otherworldly squall. “Last of the Frontiersman,” a number off Dark Meat’s forthcoming double LP Truce Opium (due in late October), shows that the band’s not all free-jazz shapelessness, it’s a Stones-and-Stoogesinspired pop number that clocks in at just over three minutes.

The EP wraps with the under-aminute “New Millennium Prayer II” which is an improvisational piece featuring Zeb Malik from Popo on vocals followed by the oldest known Dark Meat recording, a live and loose version of “There Is a Retard on Acid

Holding a Hammer to Your Brain,” already one of the looser songs of Dark Meat’s debut disc Universal Indians.

This one’s fuel for the fire for Dark Meat’s less accessible tendencies; repetition, insularity and liberties with tunefulness. Overall, the EP is a fine preview of more to come.

Chris Hassiotis Dark Meat is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Thursday, Aug. 6.

rock scene until their relocation to Austin.

Their latest full-length effort is a considered rendition of a signature that draws from early millennium NYC indie rock. Between the urgent passion of Owens’ wails and Fluri’s vulnerable sighs lies serious romance. The stylish, grand union of ringing guitars, nocturnal dance rhythms and shimmering melodies just makes it all dig in deeper. Rather than be defined by flavor-of-the-week signposts, this outing aims for a classic tunefulness and sharply etches a svelte, accomplished silhouette.

Bao Le-Huu

TINY MASTERS OF TODAY Skeletons Mute Since their inception, the Brooklyn punk band—anchored by sibling urchins Ivan (15) and Ada (13)—has been both championed and assisted by indie royalty like Russell Simins, Karen O and Kimya Dawson while their peers are universally lost in the weeds of emo and pop-punk. But, as this muchhyped sophomore album affirms, they’ve got the goods.

In an era that’s seeing the punkification of everything, the timing couldn’t be more perfect time for TMOT. Their overdriven, damaged punk tornado sucks in everything from pop to dance to hip-hop. There are so many disparate elements colliding in this sonic punchbowl that it should be a ball of confusion but miraculously is not. Like good graffiti, it’s noisy, intricate and exciting all at once.

Though steeped in artiness, the fierce daring here is natural and free of self-consciousness and pretense. Amid TMOT’s real, often adorable sense of fun is a punk spirit that’s as genuine as it is modern.

Bao Le-Huu

WILCO Wilco (The Album) Nonesuch It’s tempting to take the title, Wilco (The Album) at face value and presume the band intended these 11 songs to represent its entire body of work.

Instead, the album finds Wilco going further into the dad-rock direction it gravitated toward on Sky Blue Sky, while reaching back towards the more straightforward fare of A.M. and half of Being There. The Wilco of 2009 has matured past melodramatics.

Wilco still uses its abrasive rock tendencies to complicate folk tunes into delicate ballads that juxtapose tension and relaxation. With more focus on relaxation, a sincere and sweet album is created where contentment replaces what was once anxiety. From jaunty upbeat songs to quiet moments so soft they almost disappear, the overriding theme is acceptance. The selftitled presentation represents a stage of bemused self-awareness, and it’s a pleasure to listen to.

Michael J. Gerber

RHETT MILLER Rhett Miller Shout! Factory

NEW ROMAN TIMES On the Sleeve New Granada You may not know New Roman Times yet, but some of your favorite indie bands probably do. Having been personally hand-picked to perform by artists like Cursive, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, VHS or Beta and the Good Life, they’ve existed just beneath broad recognition of their own for years now. Centered around the creative core of husband-wife combo Daniel Owens (vox/guitar) and Josie Fluri (bass/vox), the band originally rose to prominence as a cornerstone of Orlando’s indie-

Old 97’s front man Rhett Miller is strangely underrated as a songwriter.

His words are always a mouthful— intelligent, rhythmic and packed with meaning. He’s not as overtly lovelorn as his one-time rival Ryan Adams, but Miller can say more in five words than Adams can in an entire song. When you get right down to it, he’s a sly linguist with heart, which could make him cowpunk’s Colin Meloy.

On his third solo record Miller again indulges his love of early ‘90s pop and ‘60s arrangements and he does it well. Whether he’s making light of his dating situation in the Beatlesesque “Another Girlfriend” or gaining ground with perfect harmony on “I Need to Know Where I Stand,” Miller makes it seem calculated and effortless at the same time. Yet, sometimes it’s so pristine it lacks the character of his two previous works. But it’s still a record that will nestle in your gut, and, ultimately, that’s Miller’s specialty.

Jennifer Gibson

upstart roundup Introducing Athens’ Newest Talent DREAM DADS Oceanic Free Rock Lineup: Jim McHugh, B.P. Helium, Jason Robira, Rob Peterson. Members associated with: Dark Meat, Of Montreal, Elf Power, The Ginger Envelope and more. Influences: Ash Ra Tempel, Boredoms, Sonny Sharrock, Restless and Fatigue, Health Ramen.

Formed about three months ago, Dream Dads is preparing to make its live debut “if B.P. is around” later this month. There’s no website yet and no sonic preview, but judging by the lineup which features members of rather prominent Athens acts, this should be a free-form psychedelic guitar-centric mind-bender— at least, we can hope. Good ol’ Jim McHugh of Dark Meat fame says this project sounds like “things crumbling, things trembling, things wilting” and also “flanged and exploded miserypods, tape-echoed brainpans.” So… the usual? Who knows?

Everything is still in the works, but one thing McHugh says is most important about the band’s direction is retaining the freedom to react Arturo in Letto and create on impulse and to “not be locked in song structures.”

Next show: Aug. 26 @ Farm 255 (tentative) THE SHRINKS Ominous/Indie/Modern Lineup: Richie Williams, Dave Williams, Matt Tamisin, Dave Spivey, Brent Hedrick.

Members associated with: Flash to Bang Time, Commander Chameleon, Olympus Mans, The George W. Bush Cover Band, Half Dozen Brass Band.

Influences: Radiohead, Ween.

Richie and Dave Williams are the primary songwriters behind this brand-new band, and Dave Spivey says “the results sound like something in between Radiohead and Ween’s more foreboding catalogue” adding that his bandmates are “pretty savvy with effects and weird gear.” The group is busy producing some home recordings and hopes to have something out by late fall.

There are some really beautiful tunes online now at www. myspace.com/laughterbirthday. Don’t be confused by the “Gleemonex” page title—that was the band’s name for a minute there, but it has since permanently changed to The Shrinks.

Next Show: Friday, Aug. 14 @ Little Kings Shuffle Club DRAINBOW Experimental/Rock Lineup: Nick Holdaman, Rossy Sauce, Brair Brewery, Petey Crotch. Members associated with: Nexusnul, Mouser, Summer Hymns, Paper Tanks and Lil’ Wayne. Influences: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, Deicide, Elliott Smith, Violent Femmes, Estradasphere, Secret Chiefs 3, Steve Reich, Morricone, exploding pop sensibility, and the paradox of extreme self-deprecation while being shockingly awesome.

Drainbow is currently recording its first basement demo as a band and warns that the tunes up on MySpace at the moment are “very, very outdated and under-rehearsed but representative of our ethic of doin-what-the-hell-we-want and thrashing around uncontrollably as we do it.” Drainbow first popped up on the Flagpole Calendar in December of 2008, but then promptly ducked under the radar, where the band’s been busy writing and working on its live show. So far, the band characterizes itself as a “really dark band with a very colorful underbelly.” We should be able to taste the Drainbow more frequently as the band promises a lot more shows this fall.

The tracks “Cancer Is the Cure” and “Pillsville” are recommended listens at www.myspace.com/nickhileman.

Next show: Thursday, Aug. 6 @ Go Bar

ARTURO IN LETTO Indie/Rock/Pop Lineup: A.J. Weiss. Former member of: Painted Sky. Currently a member of: Allison Weiss & the Way She Likes It. Influences: Federico Fellini, Daphne Loves Derby, Kaki King, Air, St. Vincent, Tegan & Sara, Ladytron, Of Montreal, Wolftron, Jovanotti, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kings of Leon.

You probably know him best as Allison Weiss’ kid brother and guitarist, but A.J. is coming into his own as a solo artist.

He formed this project in February while studying abroad in Cortona, Italy. “The name Arturo in Letto sort of just popped up as a joke in regular conversation,” he explains, “and I decided to use it for my side project that I was working on over there. I ended up writing some songs in English and some songs in Italian, but they all received positive support from my friends over there and from the locals. So, it just made sense to keep Arturo in Letto going when I came back to the

States.” The tunes themselves are memorable, even while some of the arrangements are unconventional. He sings with sincerity and lyrically experiments with “cryptic wordplay.” Look for a debut full-length from A.J. in November! In the meantime, A.J. takes after his sis and is active on YouTube. Search for “Ciao Marco” or “Arturo in Letto” to find his most recent music video, filmed in Italy. Or, keep tabs on future shows by visiting www.myspace.com/arturoinletto.

Next show: Check website for updates.

EFREN Indie/Folk/Psychedelia Lineup: “Me and/or my friends playing various instruments.” Members associated with: Betsy Franck and the Bareknuckle Band, Breathlanes, Intergalactic Space Collective, Ori, SLO4, Athens A-Train Band, Pocket Full of Claptonite, Skleva, The Jerry Hendelberg Experience. Influences: Iron and Wine, Bon Iver, Jose Gonzalez, M. Ward, Bob Dylan, Drive-By Truckers, brown bottles and gold tall boys, and John Coltrane.

The intentionally anonymous Efren says his band (or, depending on the date and the venue, his solo project) offers “music by introverts being extroverted.”

He has plans to sell his upcoming album as a zip drive or digital downloads and all other output will be “fully reusable.”

That means no paper press kits, flyers or hard copies of the record. All booking and promotion is going to be done via the web exclusively. The tunes themselves are decidedly lo-fi, using just one digital mic. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a great deal of depth here, though… Also on the bill for the band’s debut show is Besides Daniel which features Efren’s younger sister.

Next show: Saturday, Aug. 29 @ Flicker (Efren debut and album release) Michelle Gilzenrat music@flagpole.com

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

15

A PostWar Drama

When North Meets South

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is songs are about space and food and love,” Will Chamberlain says of bandmate Zach Clayton, “and my songs are about self-doubt.” This is the Odd Couple-esque pairing of songwriters behind new local act A PostWar Drama. As Chamberlain considers the tracks on the band’s upcoming debut release, he has a distant, thoughtful air about him—his words come slowly and carefully, nearly whispered in a velvety baritone. He’s got that vibe that just says “artist.” In contrast, the jovial Clayton is more unassuming and wholly free of pretension.

Chamberlain was raised on Dylan and Lennon; Clayton’s first love was ZZ Top. Regardless of their differences, the duo are obviously fast friends, having written music together on and off for four years before making the big move down to Athens from their home in Peoria, IL. “We talked about moving to a better scene,” says Chamberlain, “somewhere we could make music and something more could come of it.” Adds Clayton, “We couldn’t find a niche in Peoria. It seemed like the scene wasn’t excited about new music.”

Recently the “scene” in Peoria has been dominated by hardcore and metal, a far cry from the Old World-tinged Americana that Chamberlain and Clayton have been exploring as of late, and the rough crowds made being a local band of any genre pretty challenging.

“We used to just rent out legion halls,” says Clayton, “but when hardcore got really big there were a lot of people breaking arms and stuff so they raised the rent of the legion hall due to insurance issues. So, it wasn’t affordable…”

Relocating to the Classic City came much easier to Chamberlain, who has traveled across the U.S. and beyond in pursuit of creative endeavors. Most recently he took off to Glasgow with a musical collaborator, playing in an experimental 12-piece (or more) band for a year until he was eventually deported.

Clayton, on the other hand, had never lived outside his home town.

Chamberlain really wanted Clayton on board as a guitarist, and Clayton had total faith in his friend’s poetry and lyricism, so he was finally persuaded. They considered other music towns, but a recommendation from Dark Meat sealed the deal.

The pair landed in Athens a week before AthFest 2008, a perfect crash course on what our town has to offer. “The [Flagpole Athens] Music Awards kind of let us realize what this town is all about,” Chamberlain says.

Assimilation came naturally for these northern boys. Even if they didn’t realize it at the time, they started doing things the Athens way right away. Chamberlain scored a job at The Grit and found himself among a network of supportive musicians who were quick to refer him to producers, venues and future bandmates. Flicker Theatre was particularly supportive of the fledgling group, says Clayton. They played their first five or six

shows there, with Flicker owner Clint McElroy giving them total freedom to book whatever supporting acts they chose. Those initial shows proved pivotal in generating a fan base.

“From the first time I heard PostWar,” says McElroy, “I recognized their talent. They had great songs and a lot of passion for their music. I was happy to schedule them because I wanted other folks to see what I saw.”

After a few incarnations, A PostWar Drama finally stumbled upon its current lineup which includes Morgan Flemming on violin, Ashley Floyd on harmonies and accordion, plus former Complete Adventurers bassist Collin Dibble and drummer Randy Singer.

The eclectic instrumentation came about almost incidentally. Floyd was recruited as singer initially, and she just happened to have an accordion that her grandmother gave her. She had some keyboard experience in the past and learned how to play on the fly.

That gypsy melody, coupled with Flemming’s mournful strings, has taken A PostWar Drama in a particularly invigorating direction, and Chamberlain has plans to continue broadening the band’s sonic horizons.

“For me, the songwriting I am moving toward is very Old World eclectic meets, hopefully, modern-day pop music.”

It’s not a move Chamberlain was all too confident in initially, but since exploring these European sounds, friends and fans have introduced him to other modern acts like Gogol Bordello that have found success in the genre. “Since we’ve made this music, a lot of people have shown us music that is like ours… they’re making us feel like what we are doing is the right thing.” He also feels more confident about taking risks.

“I feel like we can push those limits a bit more and be a little more wild and even a little more funny. We were apprehensive to be comical before, and we had a lot of downhearted songs… but we have this new song that I think is hilarious, and it breaks all our own rules, but it still sounds just like us. I am interested to see how people respond to it.”

A PostWar Drama recently wrapped up recording at M. Cadet studios and should have their album ready for release by the end of the month. The Thursday night show was originally booked as a CD release party, but there’s been a slight holdup with pressing the album.

Nevertheless, you can get a great preview of the release at the upcoming show, and return back to Flicker on Aug. 29 when the album will definitely be in hand.

Michelle Gilzenrat

WHO: A PostWar Drama, TBA WHERE: Flicker Theatre & Bar WHEN: Thursday, Aug. 6 HOW MUCH: FREE!

don’t miss OUR MUSIC EDITOR’S WEEKLY PICKS There’s just a couple weeks of summer left before school begins for many Athenians, so let’s live it up before we have to buckle down.

Don Chambers: If you’ve never seen this local treasure play his bluesy dirt road folk, you’ll have at least four chances to make things right as he takes up residency at Farm 255, playing every Thursday in August.

“These shows are workshop-like in approach,” says Chambers, “with some new songs, covers, guest players and a general off-the-cuff-let’s-either-makemountains-move-or-wreck-thetrain” approach. This is a solo residency, but it sounds like members of his band GOAT may drop in occasionally. (Farm 255, Thursdays) k Rock and Rap Mayhem: The folks at local music conglomerate TNEB-RCP put this show together with the hope of “opening minds” and bringing fans of disparate genres Molly together. “Some of the best shows I had ever seen was in the early- to mid-’90s before the segregation of sound,” says TNEB-RCP main man Nolan A. Terrebonne III, “when you could see Rage Against the Machine

blow it out with RZA…We want to blend the crowds and open peoples’ minds… give everyone a chance to influence each other.” The lineup is more heavy on the hip-hop side, with acclaimed battle rapper Bear, Southern rap/

alternative crossover artist Big John Bourbon, DJ Killacut, rising star Molly and thunderous hard rock act Stone Thrower filling out the bill.

(Caledonia Lounge, Friday 7)

The Judies: Hey David Bowie fans: please see this band, especially if you’re into the Hunky Dory or maybe Ziggy Stardust era stuff.

Some of The Judies’ new songs remind me a bit of Spacehog as well…Either way, their tunes have a theatrical swagger to them, with beautifully arranged melodies and a wonderfully charismatic frontman in Warren Ullom.

I just hope they don’t face any backlash with their latest tune called “You’re So Gay.” It’s really a delightful track, but with that new ad campaign discouraging the pejorative use of the word “gay…” Well, on second thought, the delivery of the athematic chorus “baby, you’re so gay!” is sung with such earnest enthusiasm that it could only be interpreted as celebration rather than insult. This show is part of Athens Habitat for Humanity’s 21st Birthday Party. There will be cake. (Tasty World, Saturday 8) Incatepec: Nothing says summer heat to me like a night of steamy salsa! Locally based Incatepec will start the party at 9 p.m. with a set of jazz-infused traditional tunes from Cuba and South America. Incatepec got its start in town playing community events, restaurants and schools, and it’s been exciting seeing this eclectic group branch out into more traditional music venues. We’re so lucky to have them here! They’ll be followed

by Latin Mix which, as the name suggests, features band members from across Central and South America and offers a unique blend of music from across the continent. The usual Saturday Night Disco will follow. (Go Bar, Saturday 8)

Miwa Gemini: Miwa gets compared to Bjork a lot, but I think it’s just because of her cute, slight accent more than her songwriting style.

The Japanese-American performer, based in New York City, actually draws more from Patsy Cline or even Tom Waits for inspiration, with lonesome tales of heartache that are both haunting and beautiful, performed on guitar, mandolin, banjo or piano. Even when the themes are dark, there is a sweetness about her demeanor and tone that is especially charming. Also of note, Miwa did some recording here in Athens a few years back at The Bakery! (Farm 255, Sunday 9) Randall Bramblett: Widely respected Athens staple and recent AthFest headliner Randall Bramblett is a master of funky blues and soul.

But even if that isn’t your cup of tea, it’s worth it just to drive out to Watkinsville to enjoy the laid back vibe of Ashford Manor’s concerts on the lawn. Where else in town can you kick back with a picnic and soak up the rays while enjoying feel good music? It’ll cure your case of the Mondays, that’s for sure.

(Ashford Manor, Monday 10) The Nashvillain Family Band: What do you mean you haven’t been to The Melting Point on a Tuesday night yet? The venue’s bluegrass series features a surprisingly diverse array of Americana performed out on the cozy patio, and it’s only $3 to get in. This week is a perfect opportunity to swing by with The Nashvillain Family Band headlining. This group has been described as “country music for punk rockers,” and while the fiddle/mandolin/banjo melodies are deceivingly rustic, the lyrics (delivered so sweetly) are raw, aggressive and occasionally humorous, too—should be a lot of fun. (Melting Point, Tuesday 11) Michelle Gilzenrat music@flagpole.com

ALIBI FORMERLY SPIRITS PUB

FRIENDLIEST BAR IN ATHENS! FRI. AUGUST 7th

THE COMMON PEOPLE MOTOWN BAND

SAT. AUGUST 8th

tracer bullet JOIN US MONDAY-SATURDAY! MONDAYS

GRAB YOUR FRIENDS FOR TUNE TRIVIA W/ BOBBY NETTLES

TUESDAYS

POOL TOURNAMENT house throws in $50 LAdies’ night $2 Wells all night

WEDNESDAYS 2ND STOP BIKE NIGHT PLUS $5 BEER BUCKETS FOR ALL til 11pm THURSDAYS - biggest KARAOKE night in athens WITH LYNN $2 WELL DRINKS $ 5 PITCHERS EVERY NIGHT!

LIVE MUSIC EVERY WEEKEND! $2 ICE COLD DOMESTIC BEER ALL DAY, EVERY DAY!

MON-sat noon-2am • COME WI-FI AT ALIBI!

50 Gaines school rd. • 706-549-1010 AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

17

the calendar!

WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS WEEK

Deadline for getting listed in the calendar is every FRIDAY at 5 p.m. for the issue that comes out the following Wednesday. Email calendar@flagpole.com.

Tuesday 4 EVENTS: Swing Dancing (Rubber Soul Yoga Revolution Studio) Beginners welcome, no partner necessary. Lesson starts at 9 p.m.

Social dancing continues until midnight. Tuesdays. $5. www.rubbersoulyoga.com PERFORMANCE: Open TOAD Comedy (Flicker Theatre & Bar) A unique open mic experience. The audience gets to pelt the performers who go over their six-minute time limit with foam rocks. Performers get in free but must sign up by 8 p.m.

8:30 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/ flickerbar KIDSTUFF: Back to School Bash (Evergreen Pediatrics, Watkinsville) Face painting, games, giveaways, door prizes, live music and more. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. FREE! 706-769-9410 KIDSTUFF: Chapter Book Review (Madison County Library) Every Tuesday and Thursday elementary school-aged children meet in the lobby to read aloud and share thoughts about books. 4:30 p.m.

FREE! 706-795-5597 KIDSTUFF: Storytime (ACC Library) For ages 18 months to 5 years. 9:30 & 10:30 a.m. FREE! 706-613-3650 GAMES: Drunken Bingo (283 Bar) Great prizes and fun all night long.

10 p.m. FREE! 706-208-1283 GAMES: Locos Trivia (Locos Grill & Pub) All three Athens locations of Locos Grill and Pub (Westside, Eastside and Harris St.) feature trivia night every Tuesday. 8:30 p.m.

FREE! www.locosgrill.com GAMES: Movie Trivia (Ciné Barcafé) With drink specials and prizes every Tuesday. Sign up at 7:30 p.m. 8 p.m.

FREE! www.athenscine.com GAMES: Pool Tournament (Alibi) APA Pool League. 8 p.m. FREE! 706549-1010

Wednesday 5 ART: ADCG Meeting (JD Withers Building, Auburn) General membership meeting for the Arts Development Council of Georgia.

Bring a representative piece of your art for “Two Minutes of Fame” showand-tell exercise. 10 a.m. FREE! 706-342-8225, www.adcg.org OUTDOORS: Full Moon Canoe Ride (Sandy Creek Park) Paddle a canoe on Lake Chapman guided by the full moon. Participants may use one of the park’s canoes/kayaks or bring their own. Ages 12 & up. Must pre-register. 9 p.m. $5, $3 (with own canoe/kayak). 706-613-3631 KIDSTUFF: Storytime (ACC Library) For ages 18 months to 5 years. 9:30 & 10:30 a.m. FREE! 706-613-3650 GAMES: Rock Band Game Night (Wild Wing Café) Try your luck as a virtual musician! Every Wednesday.

9 p.m. www.wildwingcafe.com

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GAMES: Sports Trivia (Beef O’ Brady’s) Every Wednesday. 8:30 p.m.

FREE! 706-850-1916 GAMES: Trivia (Willy’s Mexicana Grill) Every Wednesday. 8–10 p.m.

FREE! 706-548-1920 GAMES: Trivia Wars (283 Bar) “If you know your stuff you can win great stuff.” 9 p.m. FREE! 706-2081283

Thursday 6 OUTDOORS: Full Moon Hike (Greenway) Experience nature in a different light. Call for fees and registration. 8:30 p.m. 706-613-3631 KIDSTUFF: Chapter Book Review (Madison County Library) Every Tuesday and Thursday elementary school-aged children meet in the lobby to read aloud and share thoughts about books. 4:30 p.m.

FREE! 706-795-5597 KIDSTUFF: Read to Rover (ACC Library) Beginning readers in grades 1–4 read aloud to an aid dog. Trainer always present. 3:30–4:30 p.m.

FREE! 706-613-3650 MEETINGS: Spanish Conversation Group (1000faces Coffee, 585 Barber Street) Practice Spanish conversational skills every Thursday.

7–8:30 p.m. FREE! 706-534-8860, 1000facesmail@gmail.com GAMES: Bridge Tournament (Chaplewood United Methodist Church) Hosted by the Women Build program of Athens Habitat for Humanity to raise funds for its current campaign, “Investing in Our Community.” Refreshments and door prizes. Call to register. 1–4 p.m. $15. 706-208-1001 GAMES: Pool Tournament (Fat Daddy’s) 7 p.m. 706-353-0241 GAMES: Texas Hold ‘Em (Club Chrome) Every Thursday night. 8 p.m. FREE! 706-543-9009 GAMES: Trivia (WOW Café & Wingery) Every Thursday. 706-5435510

Friday 7 EVENTS: Men with Aprons Bake Sale (Downtown Watkinsville) Featuring baked goods made by men in the community and held in conjunction with Oconee First Fridays.

Presented by Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build Program. 6–9 p.m.

706-208-1001, www.athenshabitat. com/womenbuild EVENTS: Sock Hop (Buffalo’s Southwest Café) Do the twist, shag and other popular dances of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Wear your poodle skirt, saddle shoes, penny loafers or pedal pushers to win a prize. Every Friday.

7 p.m. FREE! 706-354-6655 ART: Opening Reception (White Tiger Gourmet Food & Chocolates) For Michael Lachowski’s photography exhibit “CHAD: Charleston

FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

Historical Art, Dude.” 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

FREE! 706-353-6847 PERFORMANCE: Athens Choral Society (Seney-Stovall Chapel) ACS sings oldies for its presentation of “Back to the Fifties.” Monetary donations to the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia can be made at the door. Aug. 7–8, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 9, 2:30 p.m. $10. 706-369-1947 OUTDOORS: Courteous Mass (Athens City Hall) A casualpace bike ride around town with BikeAthens. Bring a helmet and water. 6 p.m. FREE! www.bikeathens. com KIDSTUFF: Open Playtime (ACC Library) For children ages 1–3 with their caregivers. 10 a.m. FREE! 706613-3650 KIDSTUFF: Preschool & Toddler Storytime (Madison County Library) Includes stories, fingerpuppet plays, songs and crafts for literacy-based fun. This month’s themes include school, oceans and birthdays. Ages 2–5. 10:30 a.m.

FREE! 706-795-5597 MEETINGS: Drinking Liberally (Little Kings Shuffle Club) Informal, inclusive and progressive social group that gives left-leaning individuals a chance to talk politics.

First and third Friday of every month. 6:30 p.m. athens@drinkingliberally.org MEETINGS: Happy Hoop Hour (Canopy Studio) Hooping fun with friends. Unwind from the week and chat while practicing your hoopdance skills. No formal instruction is provided. 7–8 p.m. $5. www.athenshoopdance.wordpress.com GAMES: Game Night (Main Street Yarns) Play your favorite games the first and third Friday each month. To be included for dinner at 6:30, call before 5 p.m. (cost is $5). 7 p.m.

FREE! 706-769-5531, www.mainstreetyarns.com

Saturday 8 EVENTS: Athens Farmers’ Market (Bishop Park) Buy fresh, locally grown organic produce, locally crafted goods and freshly baked breads. Live music, cooking demos and educational classes, too. Every Saturday. 8 a.m.–12 p.m. athensfarmersmarket.net EVENTS: Athens Heritage Walks (UGA Main Library) New series sponsored by the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation continues with a presentation of clippings and artifacts documenting the history of Athens at UGA’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Led by archivist Steven Brown. Space is limited; call to reserve spot. 2 p.m. $15. 706-353-1801, www.achfonline.org* EVENTS: Block Party (Howard B. Stroud Elementary School) The community is invited to celebrate the

Kevin Sipp’s mixed media work “Garden of Erzulie” is on display at the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center through Aug. 29. start of the school year with HBS. Bring own lawn chairs. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. FREE! 706-380-1362 EVENTS: Classic City Rollergirls Bout (Skate-A-Round USA) The Classic City Rollergirls take on the Camel City Thrashers from Winston-Salem, NC. 7 p.m. $10 (adults), $5 (ages 6–10), FREE! (ages 5 & under). www.classiccity rollergirls.com* EVENTS: Saturday Stroll (Oconee County Courthouse) Joe Ruiz, Executive Director of the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, leads an informal, hour-long tour of OCAF. 9 a.m. $5. www.oconeedemocrats.org PERFORMANCE: Athens Choral Society (Seney-Stovall Chapel) ACS sings oldies for its presentation of “Back to the Fifties.” Aug. 7–8, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 9, 2:30 p.m. $10.

706-369-1947 PERFORMANCE: Comedy Club (Buffalo’s Southwest Café) Regional comedians put on a hilarious show.

9 p.m. $15. 706-354-6655 THEATRE: Why Am I Not Married?

(Historic Elbert Theatre) Playwright Chantell Christopher brings her play about the trials and tribulations of being in relationships to Elberton.

Chantell’s performance group, Destiny of Greenwood, has a 17-person cast. 6 p.m. $15 (advance), $20 (door). 706-283-1049* THEATRE: Snow White Dinner Theatre (Buffalo’s Southwest Café) Young Actors Studio presents a preview of its production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Aug. 8–9, 2 p.m. $5. 706-354-6655 KIDSTUFF: Cupcakes for Teens (Madison County Library) Learn to tie-dye your baked treats. Tastetesters needed as well. Ages 11–18.

2 p.m. FREE! 706-795-5597 KIDSTUFF: Family Fun Day at Bear Hollow (Memorial Park) Enjoy the end of summer with games, crafts, animal encounters

and fishing at the zoo. 10 a.m. FREE! 706-613-3616 KIDSTUFF: Second Saturday Storytime (Sandy Creek) Join Center staff for nature stories. 2:30 p.m. FREE! 706-613-3615 KIDSTUFF: Storytime (Barnes and Noble) A story and craft every Saturday morning. 11 a.m. FREE! 706-354-1195 KIDSTUFF: Stream Adventures (State Botanical Garden of Georgia) Activities planned include hiking along the Middle Oconee River to search for animal tracks, writing poetry about water and wading in streams to collect, identify and release stream critters. Ages 7–10.

Call to register. 9:30–11:30 a.m. $5.

706-542-6156 MEETINGS: Athens Area Democrats Breakfast (Trumps on Milledge) Dr. Larry Nackerud from UGA’s School of Social Work discusses Obama’s appointees.

Space is limited; call to register. 9 a.m. $12. anitabarney@charter.net, 706-543-1480*

Sunday 9 EVENTS: Farmer for a Day (Mills Farm) Athens Locally Grown hosts the fourth of six monthly tours highlighting the benefits of sustainable agricultural practices. Lunch provided. Carpooling available. Limited space, email to register. 10 a.m.–2 p.m. FREE! farmerforaday@gmail. com, athens.locallygrown.net EVENTS: Salsa Party (1000faces Coffee, 585 Barber Street) Event to benefit NICA HOPE offers live music, salsa dancing, local foods and special coffee-infused drinks by 1000faces. 7–10 p.m. FREE! 706534-8860 PERFORMANCE: Athens Choral Society (Seney-Stovall Chapel) ACS sings oldies for its presentation

of “Back to the Fifties.” Aug. 7–8, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 9, 2:30 p.m. $10.

706-369-1947* THEATRE: Snow White Dinner Theatre (Buffalo’s Southwest Café) Aug. 8–9, 2 p.m. $5. 706-354-6655 GAMES: Full-Contact Trivia (Allen’s Bar & Grill) Sports-themed rules with diverse categories. 9 p.m.

FREE! www.allensbarandgrill.com GAMES: Team Trivia (Wild Wing Café) Every Sunday. FREE! www. wildwingcafe.com

Monday 10 EVENTS: San Lorenzo Night Celebration (Bottleworks, A Tavolia) Slow Food Athens hosts a three course dinner. Call to reserve a spot. 7:30 p.m. $25. ccabney@ gmail.com, 706-850-6148* PERFORMANCE: Monday Night Comedy (The Office Lounge) Weekly comedy show presented by KINGh Productions. 7:30 p.m. $5.

706-546-8209 OUTDOORS: Bike Ride (Main Street Yarns) A leisurely ride to the town of Bishop (8-ish miles) and back.

Every Monday. 6:15 p.m. FREE! 706769-5531 MEETINGS: Zen Meditation and Book Discussion (Email for Location) The Key by Cheri Huber.

Meets every Monday. 7:15 p.m.

FREE! meditateathens@gmail.com GAMES: Darts (Broad Street Bar & Grill) Every Monday. 10 p.m. 706548-5187 GAMES: Sports Trivia (WOW Café & Wingery) Every Monday. 706543-5510.

GAMES: Texas Hold ‘Em (Fat Daddy’s) Every Monday. 6 & 9 p.m.

706-353-0241.

GAMES: Tune Trivia (Alibi) Test your knowledge of music trivia. Hosted by Bobby Nettles and APA Pool League.

9 p.m. FREE! 706-549-1010

Tuesday 11 EVENTS: Swing Dancing (Rubber Soul Yoga Revolution Studio) Tuesdays. $5. www.rubbersoulyoga. com KIDSTUFF: Chapter Book Review (Madison County Library) Every Tuesday and Thursday elementary school-aged children meet in the lobby to read aloud and share thoughts about books. 4:30 p.m.

FREE! 706-795-5597 GAMES: Drunken Bingo (283 Bar) Great prizes and fun all night long.

10 p.m. FREE! 706-208-1283 GAMES: Locos Trivia (Locos Grill & Pub) All three Athens locations of Locos Grill and Pub (Westside, Eastside and Harris St.) feature trivia night every Tuesday. 8:30 p.m.

FREE! www.locosgrill.com GAMES: Movie Trivia (Ciné Barcafé) With drink specials and prizes every Tuesday. Sign up at 7:30 p.m. 8 p.m.

FREE! www.athenscine.com GAMES: Pool Tournament (Alibi) APA Pool League. 8 p.m. FREE! 706549-1010

Wednesday 12 KIDSTUFF: Eatin’ with the Critters (Sandy Creek Nature Center, ENSAT) Bring a sack lunch for an hour of learning about our world and the animals that inhabit it. For ages 3–5 with an adult. Call to register. 12:30 p.m. $0–$13 (scholarships available). 706-613-3615 LECTURES & LIT.: “Adult and Adolescent Substance Abuse and Treatment” (Athens Technical College) Former President of the Board of the Mental Health Association of Northeast Georgia, Dr. David Jarett presents on addiction and treatment options. 6 p.m. FREE! 706-549-7888.

GAMES: Rock Band Game Night (Wild Wing Café) Try your luck as a virtual musician! Every Wednesday.

9 p.m. www.wildwingcafe.com GAMES: Sports Trivia (Beef O’ Brady’s) Every Wednesday. 8:30 p.m.

FREE! 706-850-1916 GAMES: Trivia (Willy’s Mexicana Grill) Every Wednesday. 8–10 p.m.

FREE! 706-548-1920 GAMES: Trivia Wars (283 Bar) “If you know your stuff you can win great stuff.” 9 p.m. FREE! 706-2081283 * Advance Tickets Available

Down the Line ART: Opening Reception 8/15 (Lyndon House Arts Center) For “Lord Love You: Works by R.A. Miller from the Mullis Collection,” a display that includes more than 75 paintings, drawings, sculptures and whirligigs created by the Georgia self-taught artist Reuben Aaron Miller. 6–8 p.m. FREE! 706-6133623 PERFORMANCE: Moyuba! 8/15 (Morton Theatre) Afro-Caribbean Drum Ensemble brings the timeless rhythms of the Caribbean in the first of the “Countdown to the Centennial” concert series. 7:30 p.m. $10 (adults), $5 (students).

706-613-3771* EVENTS: Farmer for a Day 8/22 (Roots Farm CSA, Winterville) Athens Locally Grown hosts the fifth of six monthly tours highlighting the benefits of sustainable agricultural practices. Lunch provided.

Carpooling available. Limited space, email to register. 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

FREE! farmerforaday@gmail.com, athens.locallygrown.net*

LECTURES & LIT.: Lou Brissie 8/22 (Borders Books & Music) The 85-year-old hero behind The Corporal was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ira Berkow, signs copies of the book about his life. 1 p.m. FREE! 706-583-8647 THEATRE: Family Mess 8/22 (The Classic Center) Touring stage comedy that deals with the complications of marriage, divorce and alternative relationships. 8 p.m. $10–$35. www. classiccenter.com* LECTURES & LIT.: Nene Leakes 8/23 (Borders Books & Music) In Never Make the Same Mistake Twice the Athens native shares her journey from a scandalous past to the pinnacle of reality TV stardom on Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.” 3 p.m. FREE! 706-583-8647 LECTURES & LIT.: Sean Astin 8/31 (UGA Tate II) The actor gives a speech entitled “Leadership and Fellowship: What I Learned as a Goonie, as Rudy and as a Hobbit Named Sam.” 7:30 p.m. FREE! (UGA students), $5 (non-students). www. uga.edu/union* ART: Gypsy Artist Market 9/19 (Lyndon House Arts Center) Outdoor art sale featuring eclectic wares by artists of all ages. Art Expo, which features local artists demonstrating their craft, will be held simultaneously. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. FREE! 706613-3623

No Where Bar 10 p.m. $2. 706-546-4742 ASHUTTO MIRRA This alternative rock quartet features members of alterna-soul group The Revival.

* Advance Tickets Available

Caledonia Lounge 9:30 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18+). www. caledonialounge.com CIRCLE IN FLIGHT Local metal act inspired by Mastodon.

DAYS OF HYSTERIA Local metal band formerly known as Stereo Gun. Ask for a copy of the new self-titled EP! ETHOS North Carolina outfit with a ska/reggae bent similar to acts like 311 and Sublime.

FRANKLIN GROVE Local metal band with a new demo on the way.

Live Music Tuesday 4 Buffalo’s Southwest Café 7 p.m. $3. 706-613-8178.

TANGO AND LATIN DANCE NIGHT The Argentine Tango Club hosts this night of tango, salsa, cha cha, rumba and merengue.

Caledonia Lounge 9:30 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18+). www. caledonialounge.com BEFORE THE SOLSTICE Heavy alt-rock trio whose weight lies in its social and political views.

SHINING THROUGH Radio-friendly modern alternative act with vocalscentered songs.

SHOOTOUT THE STARS Old-school pop-punk trio, like Blink used to make it.

WOLFGANG WILD Local indie rockers who revel in atonality and a dirty guitar sound.

Farm 255 11 p.m. FREE! www.farm255.com DAN NETTLES Celebrated local jazz musician known for his work fronting Kenosha Kid. Fat Daddy’s 10 p.m. FREE! 706-353-0241 KARAOKE Huge karaoke dance party hosted by Lynn every Tuesday.

Lucky Dawg Billiards 7 p.m. 706-354-7829 HONKYTONK DAREDEVILS Southern rock delivered with outlaw country style.

The Melting Point 7 p.m. $3. www.meltingpointathens. com* THE INCORRIGIBLE STRING BAND Self-described as “hardcore bluegrass,” this band takes the darkness and attitude of hardcore (minus the screaming and distortion) and combines them with bluegrass instrumentation.

Rye Bar 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/ryebarathens LATE NIGHT KILLERS Lo-fi garage punk/metal.

TEENAGE ILLITERATES Garage punk from Atlanta.

Square One Restaurant and Bar 8–11 p.m. FREE! www.squareonefishco.com ROBBY WELLS Vocalist for the Savannah-based jam band Mellow Motion plays a solo acoustic set on the patio.

Tasty World Uptown 10 p.m. www.tastyworld.net ERINA’S BIRTHDAY BASH Come celebrate Erina’s birthday with free performances from Empire Down, Marissa Skolky and Touch!

Wild Wing Café 10 p.m. FREE! www.wildwingcafe.com KARAOKE Every Tuesday night at the downtown wing chain’s upstairs space.

Wednesday 5

Fat Daddy’s 10 p.m.–1 a.m. FREE! 706-353-0241 OPEN MIC Every Wednesday featuring Avery Dylan.

Gnat’s Landing 6 p.m. FREE! www.gnatslanding.net DAVID PRINCE This Athens staple and one-time member of The Jesters plays your favorite soul, rock and R&B oldies.

Go Bar Eddie Whelan’s Going Away Party! 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/gobar JOSH AND NATE A. Armada’s Josh McCauley and local songwriter Nate Nelson make their DJ-ing debut spinning indie dance tunes.

DJ RAPEDOGG 40 Watt club employees and local rockers Jeff Rapier (The Dumps, American Cheeseburger) and Zack “Z-Dogg” Hosey make up this rad DJ duo, spinning dance classics, punk, ‘80s and more. The night will start with everything from Buzzcocks to Prince and end with “booty shaking hip-hop.”

Harry Bissett’s Bayou Grill 8–10:30 p.m. FREE! 706-552-1193 GRAINS OF SAND This cover band performs classic Motown, soul and R&B hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Jot ‘Em Down Country Store & BBQ “Yappy Hour.” 6:30–8:30 p.m. FREE! 706-549-2110 THE RICK FOWLER TRIO Local guitarist Rick Fowler (of Lonely White Boys, Ralph Roddenbery, etc.)

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FIVE POI N TS

www. flagpole .com FIVE POI N TS

Better than

TV!

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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THE CALENDAR!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6

specializes in a classic sort of British blues rock. Playing during “Yappy Hour,” the pet-friendly happy hour.

Bill’s Surprise Birthday Party! 3 p.m.

FREE! 706-549-2110 KEN WILL MORTON Athens’ own Ken Will Morton is an engaging and prolific songwriter with several fulllengths under his belt. His soulful rasp and sharp lyrics encompass both the heart of folk and the rough and tumble vitality of rock. Also playing tomorrow at Terrapin.

Locos Grill & Pub 8 p.m. FREE! 706-549-7700 (Westside location) NAPOLEON SOLO The multitasking one-man rock band handles it all.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7

MONDAY, AUGUST 10

The Melting Point 9 p.m. $5. meltingpointathens.com BABY’S BLUE SWINGSET Vocalist Mary Sigalas delivers classic jazz, swing and blues band.

Monday, August 3 continued from p. 19

rage-rock rave-ups ranging from the tight and efficient to the expansively sprawling, drawing inspiration from free-jazz, punk and showboating funk. Tonight the band celebrates the release of its new EP. DEAD CONFEDERATE With its moody, dark weaving of Southern rock and grunge, Dead Confederate is quickly ascending in popularity across the nation and beyond. Catch them now.

DRAKKAR SAUNA Rootsy, highspirited oldtime folk with lots of banjo pickin’ and fiddlin’.

QUIET HOOVES Increasingly poporiented experimental psych-folk from here in town featuring toy instruments and creative arrangements.

Alibi 9 p.m.–1 a.m. FREE! 706-549-1010 KARAOKE DANCE PARTY WITH LYNN Every Thursday.

rootsy guitars, banjo and pedal steel.

Playing every Thursday in August at Farm 255.

Fat Daddy’s 10 p.m. FREE! 706-353-0241 MAC-N-CHZ These Southern rockers do originals and classic covers with their own unique spin.

Flicker Theatre & Bar 9 p.m. FREE! myspace.com/flickerbar A POSTWAR DRAMA Local act plays folk-rock with an occasional eastern-European bent. Dramatic tales of loss and hardship are mixed with driving, upbeat stomps. See story on p. 16.

Girasoles 6–9 p.m. FREE! 706-310-0410 SONNY GOT BLUE Local jazz group featuring James Goodhand (bass), George Davidson (tenor sax), Andrew Murdison (trumpet) and Karl Friday (drums) plays swing and Latin jazz standards for the dinner crowd every Thursday.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15

High-energy battle rapper Bear heats up the Caledonia on Friday, Aug. 8.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27

THE JAKE MOWRER TRIO Guitarist Jake Mowrer (of Brazilian-style band Cachaça) teams up with a couple of buddies on this new side project.

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!

The Office Lounge 9:30 p.m. FREE! 706-549-0840 KARAOKE Every Wednesday with Stan.

COMING SOON

Rye Bar 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/ryebarathens CHUCK WAGON Country songwriter Chuck Wagon sticks to the basics: livin’, leavin’ and raisin’ hell.

Square One Restaurant and Bar 8 p.m. www.squareonefishco.com TJ MIMBS This local acoustic singersongwriter plays melodramatic pop in the vein of Dave Matthews.

Tasty World Uptown 10 p.m. $5. www.tastyworld.net KAOS House music every Wednesday!

Thursday 6 283 Bar 10 p.m. FREE! 706-208-1283 DJ SHINE(Y) Mixing up dance hits from female artists in celebration of ladies night.

40 Watt Club Nuci’s Space Benefit. 9 p.m. $5.

40watt.com DARK MEAT Super group of 10+ members playing psychedelic ga-

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Allen’s Bar & Grill 6:30 p.m. FREE! www.allensbarandgrill. com JON PENLAND This acoustic singersongwriter from Toccoa, GA is influenced by artists like Switchfoot, Creed and Jack Johnson. He has a “rare comfortableness in front of a crowd” thanks to years performing at his church.

Broad Street Bar & Grill 10 p.m. 706-548-5187 KARAOKE Every Thursday.

Caledonia Lounge 10 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18+). www.caledonialounge.com LAZER/WÜLF This instrumental local avant-metal trio mixes in prog, thrash and more eclectic influences.

SWANK SINATRA Funky and energetic riff-heavy rock trio from Atlanta.

UTAH Head-banging three-piece featuring Wil “Mantooth” Smith on guitar, venturing through rapid tempo changes and monster riffs.

Club Chrome 9 p.m. 706-543-9009 KARAOKE Every Thursday night at the new dance club off Atlanta Highway across from Sam’s Club.

Farm 255 11 p.m. FREE! www.farm255.com DON CHAMBERS AND FRIENDS This local favorite’s whiskey-soaked bootstomps capture a certain dusty closing-time chic. Rough and tumble vocals scratch and howl over

Go Bar 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/gobar “DR. FRED’S KARAOKE” Hosted by karaoke fanatic John “Dr. Fred” Bowers, every Thursday, following the live music.

DRAINBOW Local prog-metal band delivers rollicking guitar licks aplenty.

MOESHA JENKINS This Virginia death metal band asserts that “you will never hear a band more metal than this band.”

The Melting Point 8:30 p.m. $7 (adv), $10 (door). www. meltingpointathens.com THE BIG DADDY’S BAND Covering rock legends like Eric Clapton and The Allman Brothers.

No Where Bar 9 p.m. 706-546-4742 3 FOOT SWAGGER Local band featuring musicians Dave Cardello, Jake Cohen, Scott Lerch, Charlie McCoy and Jeff Reusche. The Swagger plays dynamic, highenergy rock and roll with a lot of funk thrown in.

DJ TRIZ Local talent performs his brand of electro-turntablism, blending original compositions with an array of electronica/hip-hop/house/ funk/D&B and dubstep.

Rye Bar 10 p.m. $2. 706-354-6629 ASHUTTO MIRRA This alternative rock quartet features some members of the alternative soul group The Revival.

Saturday, August 8

Athens Area Habitat for Humanity 21st Birthday Bash Tasty World Uptown Very little is as effective a centerpiece to a successful birthday party as a righteous and flowing supply of cake. The Athens Area Habitat for Humanity, now in the midst of celebrating its 21st actionpacked year of community service, has taken steps to get that party started, cake- and fun-wise. Both can be expected at its The Judies birthday bash at Tasty World on Saturday.

“We just want to celebrate and extend it to the community, and have everybody come and have a good time, and remember what we’re doing and why it’s important,” says Laura Dempsey, public outreach director for Athens Area Habitat for Humanity.

Cakes will come from local bakeries like Cecilia Villaveces Cakes and Creative Cookies and Creamery. The fun comes by way of Slush Fund Records’ presentation of Athens and Atlanta bands The Judies, Trances Arc and Velveteen Pink.

In its 21 years, Habitat has served 70 families in Clarke, Oconee and Oglethorpe counties with homes, according to Dempsey. And in the past year alone, Habitat’s ReStore, the Barber Street thrift store, prevented approximately 150 tons of material from getting cozy in landfills—a substantial jump from 2007’s 116 tons.

Further, Habitat instituted a number of new programs in the last year, like its ReHOUSE program (Recycling Home Owner Units Safely & Efficiently), in which volunteers work to erase residential decay, and its Brush with Kindness program, which seeks to restore neighborhoods on a small-projects basis.

“Our whole mission is built on community and partnerships and people coming together for a great cause,” says Dempsey. “Everything that we do is supported by the community. Without the support of all the organizations and business and volunteers, we couldn’t do what we do.”

One would be hard pressed to find a better reason to share birthday cake with the neighbors. Doors open at 8 p.m. [Valentina Tapia]

Square One Restaurant and Bar Full Moon Party. FREE! www.squareonefishco.com TROPICAL BREEZES STEEL BAND Bringing the sounds of the Carribbean to Athens.

Tasty World Uptown 10 p.m. $5. www.tastyworld.net B-SIDE REVOLUTION Local piano pop-rock fronted by Kyle Rogers.

BLUESWATER BRIDGE Local rock outfit inspired by classic Southern rock and blues.

RAPPORT Jack Johnson-inspired acoustic soul from Atlanta. CD release show!

Terrapin Beer Co. 5:30 p.m. www.terrapinbeer.com KEN WILL MORTON Athens’ own Ken Will Morton is an engaging and prolific songwriter with several fulllengths under his belt. His soulful rasp and sharp lyrics encompass both the heart of folk and the rough and tumble vitality of rock.

Wild Wing Café 9 p.m. FREE! www.wildwingcafe.com JUSTIN BROGDON Rock vet Justin Brogdon puts a lot of Southern soul into his epic songs, drawing from artists like The Black Crowes and Tom Petty. His sound owes a lot to his all-star backing band.

Yo Spicy 7:30–9:30 p.m. FREE! 1074 Baxter Street MENDOZA BROTHERS Noe and Huberto of Incatepec and La Rondalla are joined by a special guest as they play music from across Latin America.

Friday 7 283 Bar 10:30 p.m. FREE! 706-208-1283 IMMUZIKATION Celebrated local DJ Alfredo Lapuz Jr.— also known for his over-the-top Daft Punk tribute act—mashes up high-energy electro and rock.

40 Watt Club 10 p.m. $10 (adv). www.40watt.com* DJ KURT WOOD & DJ GRRTCH Spinning danceable selections from their expansive vinyl collection featuring garage, psychedelic 45s, soul, funk, R&B and surf.

REIGNING SOUND What would happen if The Black Lips went country?

They would turn into Reigning Sound. See story on p. 13.

THOMAS FUNCTION With an amalgam of blues, soul, and indie electropop, these Alabama natives deliver catchy pop tunes to sing and dance along with.

VINCAS New project from Chris McNeal (ex-Paper Lions, Teenage Meth Lab, Maserati). Energetic, erratic garage punk with growling guitars, howling vocals and a bit of rockabilly blues swagger.

Alibi 9 p.m. FREE! 706-456-0840 THE COMMON PEOPLE’S BAND Local band pays tribute to Motown’s greatest hits.

Allen’s Bar & Grill 9 p.m. FREE! www.allensbarandgrill. com THE MARK ALLAN WOLFE BAND Acoustic singer-songwriter from here in town.

Broad Street Bar & Grill 10 p.m. FREE! 706-548-5187 REDSTONE RAMBLERS Country and old time bluegrass originals and covers. This local three-piece features members of Samurai Trout.

Performing every Friday!

Caledonia Lounge “Rock and Rap Mayhem.” 10 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18+). www.caledonialounge.com BEAR Acclaimed high-energy battle rapper and T-NEB star, Bear is offering fresh new tracks off his upcoming release Stack City due out in November.

BEN STEVENS & NOLAN TERREBONNE Young local pop and R&B singer whose silky voice is a little Teddy Pendergrass, a little Phil Collins. Local producer-musician Nolan Terrebonne (AKA Jone Gris, ex-Planet Jive) accompanies on acoustic guitar.

BIG JOHN BOURBON Former drummer for local bands Burn Circle and Miazma, Big John has worked in both the rap and rock scenes, and currently performs a mix of Southern rap, rock and alternative. He recently teamed up with platinum producer and remixer “Million Dollar Beat” (George Clinton, TLC, Yung Joc).

DJ KILLACUT Local deejay Killacut is the guy manning the wheels of steel for many of Athens’ hip-hop showcases, and his style focuses on oldschool spinning and beat matching while incorporating newer sounds.

MOLLY Local rapper and trained dancer with influences ranging from M.I.A. to Billie Holiday.

STONE THROWER Local blues metal band that is equal parts doom, k continued on next page

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

21

THE CALENDAR! sludge and Southern rock. Key influences include acts as diverse as Black Sabbath, The Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin.

Club Chrome 10 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/clubchromeathens HELEN, DODGE Local Americana act featuring Neal Canup, Mark Cunningham, Roger Alan Wade and Corey Holland performing both original music and obscure covers.

Farm 255 11 p.m. FREE! www.farm255.com FREEBIRD COVER BAND Lynyrd Skynyrd covers from members of well known Athens bands Quiet Hooves, Titans of Filth, ‘Powers, Rand Lines and more provide you the only acceptable place for druken requests of “Free Bird!”

TITANS OF FILTH This local band combines droll Southern voices with easy-rolling, efficient and uncomplicated indie-pop rock about the ups and downs of young love.

Fat Daddy’s 9 p.m. FREE! 706-353-0241 JOHN MONROE & THE GHOST RIDERS Seasoned country crooner John Monroe will play a rockoriented set.

continued from p. 21

Square One Restaurant and Bar 9 p.m. FREE! www.squareonefishco. com TENT CITY This local four-piece fuses elements of jazz, funk, blues and world music.

Tasty World Uptown 10 p.m. FREE! www.tastyworld.net THE IBILISI TAKEDOWN This Athens band plays energetic Southern rock and sultry blues punctuated by fiddle, harmonica and guitar.

OCTOBER FREQUENCY Northeast Georgia quartet brings back Southern rock-metal.

THE RON JONSONS Brand new progressive rock band that incorporates unique Latin and jazz influences.

Terrapin Beer Co. 5:30 p.m. www.terrapinbeer.com 4EVERBLUE This band asks you to “unleash your inner hillbilly” as they jam out to some quality bluegrass.

Wild Wing Café 9 p.m. FREE! www.wildwingcafe.com THE BIG DON BAND Don Spurlin’s band delivers “workingman’s blues from a country perspective” with a catalog of Southern blues covers and originals.

Flicker Theatre & Bar 8:30 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/ flickerbar SEAN ARINGTON Rip-your-heart-out acoustic pop originals and covers from Athenian singer/songwriter formerly of bands Big Atomic and One Big Eye. KATE MORRISSEY Best known throughout this corridor for her dark velvet voice that stands on its own, Morrissey’s songwriting is literate and sincere, and her conversational live shows come punctuated with an off-beat sense of humor. She is accompanied by upright bass and jazz drummer.

WUGA 91.7 FM 4 p.m. FREE! www.wuga.org “IT’S FRIDAY!” Randall Bramblett and Kyshona Armstrong will perform on the local radio station’s weekly program.

University Cable Channel 15 will also broadcast the show.

Gnat’s Landing 6 p.m. FREE! www.gnatslanding.net TJ MIMBS This local acoustic singersongwriter plays melodramatic pop in the vein of Dave Matthews.

Saturday 8

Little Kings Shuffle Club 10 p.m. $5, $2 (if dressed like MJ). www.myspace.com/littlekingshuffleclub MICHAEL JACKSON DANCE PARTY Celebrate the King of Pop! The Melting Point 9 p.m. $5. www.meltingpointathens. com THE DONNER PARTY This Pogues tribute band features “drinking songs, traditional singalongs, more drinking songs, and also some songs for drinking to.” The all-star cast features members of local bands Olympus Mans, Half Dozen Brass Band, Greyhounds and Positraxion.

ONE L Afro-Cuban-inspired music that blends rock, funk and soul with clave patterns and electric guitar.

Featuring Afro-Cuban percussion, a searing horn section and authentic Cuban instruments.

The Office Lounge 8:30 p.m. 706-546-0840 KARAOKE Be the star!

Rye Bar 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/ryebarathens EDDIE & THE PUBLIC SPEAKERS Local blues-funk trio led by frontman Eddie Speaker.

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Yo Spicy 7:30–9:30 p.m. FREE! 1074 Baxter Street MENDOZA BROTHERS Noe and Huberto of Incatepec and La Rondalla are joined by a special guest as they play music from across Latin America.

40 Watt Club 9 p.m. $5. www.40watt.com THE HEAP Funky local indie-soul band that’s been praised by the likes of Violent Femmes and Kevn Kinney.

THE RATTLERS Energetic Southern rockers with a guitar-driven sound and an exciting show that often features surprise special guests.

ROLLIN’ HOME This band jams on originals with a Dead groove and a Southern rock leaning.

Alibi 9 p.m. FREE! 706-456-0840 TRACER BULLET Local band performs originals and some covers in a Southern rock style.

Allen’s Bar & Grill 9 p.m. FREE! www.allensbarandgrill. com THE MUDFLAPJACKS This local band performs old-time country and bluegrass jams.

Athens Farmers Market 8 a.m. FREE! www.athensfarmersmarket.net ATHENS FOLK SOCIETY BAND Featuring rotating Folk Society members on fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harmonica and banjos. Confirmed for this show are Susan Staley, Tommy Jordan, Dale Wechsler and Wallace Denton. Bring an instrument and join in.

REPENT AT LEISURE Traditional Celtic tunes. (On at 10 a.m.)

FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

Caledonia Lounge 10 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18-20). caledonialounge.com LELIA BROUSSARD Reminiscent of what Jack Johnson might sound like if he were a female and more country.

NATE NELSON Young local singersongwriter whose songs offer both mainstream accessibility and more indie-oriented idiosyncrasy.

BESS ROGERS Singer-songwriter Rogers performs indie-folk-pop with eclectic instrumentation and her gorgeous vocals.

ALLISON WEISS Heartfelt singer/ songwriter with quirky charm, sharp pop sensibilities and an avid online following.

Club Chrome 10 p.m. $5. www.myspace.com/clubchromeathens TANGENTS This country-fried rock group from Watkinsville carries Lynyrd Skynyrd licks and John Mellencamp melodies.

Farm 255 11 p.m. FREE! www.farm255.com DEACON BRANDON REEVES Hailing from Gainesville, this bluesman delivers a non-derivative blues sound complemented by his blazing guitar fingers.

Fat Daddy’s 9 p.m. 706-353-0241 KARAOKE Hosted by Stan.

Gnat’s Landing 6 p.m. FREE! www.gnatslanding.net TONGUE & GROOVE The acoustic quartet of Henry Williams, Don Henderson, Jason Peckham and Amy Moon plays lively covers and originals.

Go Bar 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/gobar INCATEPEC A combination of traditional tunes from South America and Cuba with a unique jazz twist.

“LATE NITE DISCO” The house deejay and occasional special guests spin a cool mix of disco, new wave and modern dance tunes.

LATIN MIX A salsa band featuring members from Peru, Domincan Republic, Cuba and Mexico.

The Office Lounge 8 p.m. 706-546-8209 HELEN, DODGE Local Americana act featuring Neal Canup, Mark Cunningham, Roger Alan Wade and Corey Holland performing both original music and obscure covers.

Rye Bar 10 p.m. www.myspace.com/ryebarathens APOB Self-proclaimed “un-punk” band based out of Lilburn, GA influenced by punk, ska, rock, hip-hop and metal. The name is pronounced “Eh-Pahb.”

WAVEPOOL Atlanta pop-punk band that won’t disappoint any Warped tour fans.

WRIST BANDITS Energetic new teen-pop-punk trio rocking out in the vein of Millencolin or NOFX. Square One Restaurant and Bar 8:30 p.m. FREE! squareonefishco.com RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN AND ANDREW LASTRAPPES Vocalist and guitarist from local jazz-funk band Free Lunch do a set of covers and originals.

Tasty World Uptown Athens Habitat for Humanity 21st Birthday Party! 10 p.m. $5. www. tastyworld.net THE JUDIES Delightfully glammy and theatrical rock from Atlanta. See

Sunday, August 9

Jason Ajemian with High Life, Miwa Gemini, Ham1 Farm 255 One day, in the future, among heaps of dollar-bin Passion Pit compact discs and a rack of Technicolor Jasom Ajemian snuggies, you may think back to that confusing time when you really wanted a wearable blanket or that one time you missed ridiculously talented bassist/composer Jason Ajemian at Farm 255. Jason Ajemian may or may not be remembered as a jazz great in that future, but, hell if he’s not trying.

He plays in several projects including Born Heller, The Chicago Underground Trio, Mandarin Movie, Ken Vandermarks’ Crisis Ensemble and Dragons 1976. All in, he’s an active member in about 15 groups. Academic, spiritual and, frequently, wildly experimental, Ajemian’s oeuvre is impressive to say the least, and his output, prolific—still, saying the least. Take for instance his From Beyond project, where he deconstructed Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void,” re-arranging it backwards for a chamber ensemble.

Blasphemous, you say? Or, look to his Who Cares How Long You Sink experiment that injects a slowcore aesthetic into folkloric jazz, using the breathing processes of the individual members to keep in time, to evoke the even slower processes of the natural world, like the motions of glaciers and tides. Some of his works even utilize quadraphonic sound setups, placing instrumentalists around the perimeter of the audience.

Always inventive, Ajemian sent Flagpole his poster for his Aug. 9 show: an enigma in monochrome, a legal-sized abstraction of tabula rasa featuring a blueprint of a building.

It’s a complete acoustic schema, with musical notes previewing the scores to be played, curiously composed with the architectural software AutoCAD. Pretentious? No. Arty? Yes. And very cool. Eluding genrefication and easy labels and challenging orthodoxy are just the surface-level idioms that Ajemian works in with his compositions. Odd and innovative, he is sure to turn out something that you’ve never quite seen before—don’t miss out. [Christopher Benton]

Don’t Miss on p. 17. See Calendar Pick on p. 21.

TRANCES ARC Highly polished, tight alternative rock quartet currently based in Atlanta, but featuring several UGA alums.

VELVETEEN PINK This matchingoutfit-clad quartet of funksters (including DJ Alfredo of Immuzikation) plays electro-based, groove-laden, upbeat stuff in the Prince, Stevie Wonder and Jamiroquai style.

Terrapin Beer Co. 5:30 p.m. www.terrapinbeer.com HIGH STRUNG Ramblin’, upbeat, bluesy folk on acoustic guitar and mandolin.

Wild Wing Café 10 p.m. FREE! www.wildwingcafe.com PAUL LOMBARD Backed by George Norman, Edward Hunter and Mora, Lombard performs a blend of folk, bluegrass, country and blues.

Sunday 9 Farm 255 9:30 p.m. FREE! www.farm255.com MIWA GEMINI Country-informed folk with Miwa’s airy and idiosyncratic vocals (which have drawn comparisons to Bjork, Nina Simone, Tom Waits and Patsy Cline, among others) and bluesy guitar work, elaborating on a love of Leonard Cohen, Robert Johnson and other porch-type music of the AntiFolk variety.

HAM1 A breezy take on straight-ahead ‘60s garage rock, brightened by swoon-worthy harmonies and a pop sensibility.

JASON AJEMIAN AND THE HIGH LIFE Jazz greats from NYC hit Athens for a night of blaring horns and noodling guitars. The star lineup features Ajemian on bass and vocals

along with White Rocket’s Jacob Wick (trumpet), Owen StewartRobinson, (guitar), Peter Hanson (tenor) and Marc Riordan (drummer). See Calendar Pick on p. 22.

Square One Restaurant and Bar 1-4 p.m. FREE! www.squareonefishco. com SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH Rotating local jazz artists play on the patio.

Monday 10 Ashford Manor 6 p.m. $15 (adults), $6 (children 12 & under), FREE! (children under 6). www.ambedandbreakfast.com* AMBER LYNN BAND Young songwriter Amber Lynn recently returned to Athens as a student, bringing along her lively brand of acoustic blues and country twang.

RANDALL BRAMBLETT Longtime Athenian Randall Bramblett will perform his blend of funky, soulful Southern Americana.

Caledonia Lounge 9:30 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18-20). www. caledonialounge.com BUDDHA HEROES Vocally driven punk rockers from New York featuring crunching guitar and bass riffs.

SO IT GOES Socially conscious punk rock band that infuses elements of Spanish rock, folk and ska.

WRIST BANDITS Energetic new teen-pop-punk trio rocking out in the vein of Millencolin or NOFX. Ciné Barcafé 6–8:30 p.m. FREE! www.athenscine. com OPEN JAZZ JAM Calling all jazz musicians. Now you can join local jazz group Sonny Got Blue every Monday for an open mic jam.

Go Bar 10 p.m. FREE! www.myspace.com/ gobar GENTLEMEN & SCHOLARS This pop-punk sextet sounds similar to Fallout Boy, with lyrics moaning over a bed of rumbling guitars.

MERCURY VEIL Emotional alternative rock with crunchy guitar riffs, male and female vocals as well as an obvious affinity for bands like Tool and Smashing Pumpkins.

THE PROMISE ESTATE Columbus, OH band that mixes post hardcore and melodic indie with edgy screamo.

SHOOTOUT THE STARS Old-school pop-punk trio.

Half Moon Pub 11 p.m. FREE! 706-208-9712 THE PRIDE Local musician Lon Martin creates experimental melodies using synth, samples and noise.

The Melting Point The Hoot. 8 p.m. FREE! www.meltingpointathens.com THE MUSICSMITHS Natalie Smith from Grogus and Brian Smith from the Georgia Guitar Quarter do a set on flute and guitar.

THE SOLSTICE SISTERS Energetic renditions of old-timey country ballads, traditional folk and ‘40sstylized swing.

THE VINYL STRANGERS Timelessly charming classic-sounding pop rock reminiscent of early Beatles and Byrds.

Tuesday 11 Caledonia Lounge 9:30 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18-20). www. caledonialounge.com ADAM PAYNE BAND Payne’s impressively versatile tenor is somewhat reminiscent of Neil Young’s

nasal delivery. Payne writes songs with a lot of heart - the kind of tunes that can either make you tear up or laugh out loud.

ASHUTTO MIRRA This alternative rock quartet features members of alterna-soul group The Revival.

JAMES & THE RAINBROS Indie poppers from Detroit that like to mix in a dash of funk, soul and reggae.

SPACE CITY No info available.

Farm 255 11 p.m. FREE! www.farm255.com CARL LINDBERG Jazz bassist Carl Lindberg (Grogus, Squat, Kenosha Kid, etc.) performs standards, originals and some surprising tunes from divergent styles.

Fat Daddy’s 10 p.m. FREE! 706-353-0241 KARAOKE Huge karaoke dance party hosted by Lynn every Tuesday.

The Melting Point 7 p.m. $3. www.meltingpointathens. com THE NASHVILLAIN FAMILY BAND This Atlanta band is like The Ramones meet bluegrass.

No Where Bar 9 p.m. 706-546-4742 SUEX EFFECT The trio of guitarist Ricky Barrett, drummer Jonathan Daniels and bassist Miles Karp plays psychedelicized funk-rock instrumentals, relying on spacey harmonies.

Tasty World Uptown GA Theatre Presents. 10 p.m. $5. www. tastyworld.net JOHN BROWN’S BODY Massachusetts 9-piece that streches the perception of dub reggae.

PASSAFIRE Savannah band with a unique sound that is sometimes bluegrass, sometimes reggae, and sometimes something else altogether.

Wild Wing Café 10 p.m. FREE! www.wildwingcafe.com KARAOKE Every Tuesday night at the downtown chain’s upstairs space.

Wednesday 12 Caledonia Lounge 10 p.m. $5 (21+), $7 (18-20). caledonialounge.com THE LOLLIGAGS Danceable yet dark electro tunes fill out The Lolligags’ latest record, Out of Perversity Join Hands.

MARSHMALLOW COAST Local group that once featured smooth and airy, swirly indie-pop recently turned up the funk on its release Phreak Phantasy.

HOW I BECAME THE BOMB Synthheavy danceable pop rock from Nashville with an extra dose of geeky charm.

Fat Daddy’s 10 p.m.–1 a.m. FREE! 706-353-0241 OPEN MIC Every Wednesday featuring Avery Dylan.

Harry Bissett’s Bayou Grill 8 p.m. FREE! 706-552-1193 PAUL LOMBARD Backed by George Norman, Edward Hunter and Mora, Lombard performs a blend of folk, bluegrass, country and blues.

The Melting Point 9 p.m. $5 (adv), $7 (door). www.meltingpointathens.com DR. SQUID Jangly, frenetic rock and roll at its best when emphasizing its British Invasion sounds.

VENICE IS SINKING With boy/girl vocals, a cinematic jangle and a

sweeping, emotional punch courtesy of a viola, Venice Is Sinking’s pianobased torch songs burn bright.

The Office Lounge 9:30 p.m. FREE! 706-549-0840 KARAOKE Every Wednesday with Stan.

Tasty World Uptown 10 p.m. $5. www.tastyworld.net BANGTAIL CATS Rugged blues rock that names Spencer Davis Group, Dire Straits and The Band as influences.

MARSHALL RUFFIN TRIO Roots and blues singer/songwriter from Columbus, GA. NOBLE THIEVES Local folk-rock duo with an eclectic multi-instrumental approach. * Advance Tickets Available

Down the Line 8/13 DJ Shine(y) (283 Bar) 8/13 Karaoke Dance Party with Lynn (Alibi) 8/13 Lullwater (40 Watt Club) 8/13 Jon Penland (Allen’s Bar & Grill) 8/13 Karaoke (Broad Street Bar & Grill) 8/13 Panda Riot / Tunabunny / Twin Tigers (Caledonia Lounge) 8/13 Don Chambers and Friends (Farm 255) 8/13 Sonny Got Blue (Girasoles) 8/13 Mercury Veil (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/14 Amy Ray / Bellafea / The Holland Dutch (40 Watt Club) 8/14 Redstone Ramblers (Broad Street Bar & Grill) 8/14 John Fernandes / Summer Hymns (Farm 255) 8/14 Sons of Sailors (Higdon House Inn and Gardens) 8/14 Monahan (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/14 “It’s Friday!” (WUGA 91.7 FM) 8/15 Caroline Aiken / Mary Sigalas and Friends (Athens Farmers Market) 8/15 Dr. Ian Johnson (Borders Books & Music) 8/15 Jazz Night (Buffalo’s Southwest Café) 8/15 Chrissakes / GG King / Vincas (Farm 255) 8/15 The Brunettes / Throw Me the Statue (Go Bar) 8/15 Kyshona Armstrong (Morton Theatre)* 8/15 Moon Taxi (Rye Bar) 8/15 Celeb Stine (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/15 Strawberry Flats (The Melting Point)* 8/16 Sunday Jazz Brunch (Square One Restaurant and Bar) 8/17 The Pride (Half Moon Pub) 8/18 Dan Nettles (Farm 255) 8/18 High Strung (The Melting Point)* 8/19 Open Mic (Fat Daddy’s) 8/19 Karaoke (The Office Lounge) 8/19 KAOS (Tasty World Uptown) 8/20 The King Live: One Night with You (Buffalo’s Southwest Café) 8/20 Dave Howard (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/20 Sensational Sounds of Motown (The Melting Point)* 8/21 The Suex Effect (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/21 Abbey Road LIVE! (The Melting Point)* 8/21 “It’s Friday!” (WUGA 91.7 FM) 8/22 Heathens / Mike Eudy and Sean Arington (Athens Farmers Market) 8/22 The Mantras (Farm 255) 8/22 Rachel O’Neal (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/24 Mama’s Love / Grant Mitchell (Ashford Manor)* 8/25 Carl Lindberg (Farm 255) 8/25 Grogus (State Botanical Garden

of Georgia)* 8/25 String Theory (The Melting Point)* 8/26 Gay Africa / Here Comes a Big Black Cloud (Farm 255) 8/26 The Eric Culberson Blues Band (The Melting Point)* 8/27 The Hypsys / JazzChronic (No Where Bar) 8/27 Hills Rolling (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/27 Sam Bush Band (The Melting Point) 8/28 Green River Ordinance / Griffin House / Needtobreathe (40 Watt Club)* 8/28 Heavy Petty (Farm 255) 8/28 WILX (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/28 “It’s Friday!” (WUGA 91.7 FM) 8/29 High Strung String Band / Dave Howard (Athens Farmers Market) 8/29 Kyshona Armstrong (Farm 255) 8/29 Efren (Flicker Theatre & Bar) 8/29 Vinyl Strangers (Terrapin Beer Co.) 8/29 Francine Reed (The Melting Point) 9/2 Matthew Pop (Rye Bar) 9/3 Holiday Shores (Flicker Theatre & Bar) 9/3 Curley Maple (Terrapin Beer Co.) 9/5 Fiddle-DW / The Musicsmiths (Athens Farmers Market) 9/7 Dirk Howell / Adam Klein (Ashford Manor)* 9/8 The Driftwood Band (The Melting Point)* 9/10 Tea Leaf Green (40 Watt Club)* 9/12 Will Hoge (40 Watt Club)* 9/15 Smokey’s Farmland Band (The Melting Point)* 9/17 Bloodkin / Leon Russell (The Melting Point)* 9/18 Efren (Rye Bar) 9/18 The Border Lions (Terrapin Beer Co.) 9/18 John “JoJo”Hermann (The Melting Point)* 9/21 Lera Lynn / Packway Handle Band (Ashford Manor)* 9/24 Ian Thomas (Terrapin Beer Co.) 9/25 Corey Smith (The Classic Center)* 9/25 The Jesters (The Melting Point)* 9/29 The North Georgia Bluegrass Band (The Melting Point)* 10/2 A Darker Shade / Matthew Pop (Rye Bar) 10/2 Rack of Spam (The Melting Point) 10/6 Lonesome Traveler (The Melting Point)* 10/13 Steel String Session (The Melting Point)* 10/20 Tasty Tuesday (Tasty World Uptown) 10/20 Curley Maple (The Melting Point)* 10/27 Buck & Nelson (The Melting Point)* 11/3 The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show (The Melting Point) 11/14 Rachel O’Neal (Terrapin Beer Co.) 12/22 Tasty Tuesday (Tasty World Uptown) * Advance Tickets Available

In the ATL 8/5 Drakkar Sauna / Hope for Agoldensummer / Dancer vs Politician (The EARL) 8/6 Thrash & Burn Tour (The Masquerade) 8/7 NOMO (The EARL) 8/8 Elbow (Center Stage) 8/8 Sara Evans / O’Shea (Mable House Barns Amphitheatre)* 8/9 Lil’ Wayne / Young Jeezy / Soulja Boy (Lakewood Amphitheatre)* 8/13 Akron/Family (The EARL)*

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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bulletin board DO SOMETHING; GET INVOLVED! Deadline for getting listed in Bulletin Board and Art Around Town is every THURSDAY at 12 p.m.

Email calendar@flagpole.com. Listings are printed based on available space, more listings are online.

ART Call for Artists (Hampton Fine Art Gallery, Greensboro) Artists are invited to submit work for the “Third Annual Local Art Exhibition.” This year’s theme: the roaring 20s, 30s and 40s. $25 fee. Entries must be delivered Aug. 21–24, 12–4:30 p.m. www.artistcameronhampton.com Call for Entries (ATHICA) Seeking strong, focused proposals from curators, teams or potential featured artists for slots in late 2010 and 2011. Deadline Sept. 19. www. athica.org/callforentries.php

AUDITIONS Appointment with Death (Elberton Arts Center) Encore Productions is holding auditions for upcoming production of the Agatha Christie murder mystery. Cold readings from the script. Aug. 10–11 & 13, 5:30–7:30 p.m. 706-283-1049, tking@cityofelberton.net

CLASSES Acting for Film Workshop (106 West Performing Arts Venue, Winder) Next six-week session of

this ongoing workshop led by Dick Mays starts July 14, but you can come anytime (no charge for first trial class). Consistent class attendees will have the opportunity to work on a short film. Open to ages 16 & up. No acting experience necessary.

Tuesdays, 6:45 p.m. $95 (adults), $65 (students). 770-868-1977, beckytollerson@106west.com Art Classes (Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation) Now registering for fall classes. Offerings include drawing, watercolor, oil painting, folk art, clay arts, book making and bag pipes.

706-769-4565, www.ocaf.com Belly Dance for Fitness (Floorspace) Women of all sizes and experience welcome. Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m. $12 drop-in. bellydancebody@gmail.com Clay Classes (Good Dirt) Weekly “Try Clay” class every Friday from 7–9 p.m. and “Family Try Clay” every Sunday from 2–4 p.m. ($20/ person). 706-355-3161, www.gooddirt.net Computer Class (ACC Library) “Mouse and Keyboard Skills.” In the Educational Technology Center. Call to register. Aug. 6, 10–11:30 a.m.

FREE! 706-613-3650 Computer Classes (ACC Library) “Intro to Word” (Aug. 20, 10–11:30 a.m.) and “Intro to PowerPoint” (Aug. 27, 7–8:30

ART AROUND TOWN ACC Library (Top of the Stairs Gallery) Paintings by Teddy Johnson. Through Aug. 31.

Antiques and Jewels “Athens Fine Art Gallery,” an exhibit featuring works by Mary Porter, Elizabeth Barton, Brandon Zinninger, Greg Benson, Jim StipeMaas, Taylor DuBeau, Judy Dudley O’Donnell and Susan Elizabeth. Through September.

Aurum Studio New show featuring work by local potter Maria Dondero, painter Joy Stanley from Macon and fiber artist Margaret Hunt from Clarks Hill, SC. Through Aug. 15.

Big City Bread Cafe Abstract paintings by Michele Chidester. Through August.

Black Forest Bakery & Deli New floral paintings by Marshall L. Reddoch. Through Sept. 20.

Ciné “Mighty Monsters” explores inner monsters and social monsters though photography and mixed media by Jillian Guarco and Liz Williams. Through Aug. 16. Reception Aug. 14.

Downtown Watkinsville Artscape 2009, an outdoor display of art boards created by 10 local artists that is sponsored by the City of Watkinsville and Grassroots Arts Program. Through Sept. 30.

Elements Hair Salon Abstract paintings by Meg McConnell. Through August.

Espresso Royale Caffe Photography by James Cowart. Through Aug. 8.

Gallery 110 (Watkinsville) Brightly colored terra cotta pottery and sculpture by Katie McFarland.

Good Dirt New work by Wisconsin potter Joe Singewold and a new collection by Min Soo Yuh. Through mid-August.

The Grit Screenprinted, collaged and embroidered work by Stephanie Anne Blair. Through Aug. 23.

Highwire Lounge Black and white photography by Chrissy Reed. Through mid-August.

Ice House Underground (Madison) Exhibit featuring landscapes by Sam Traina, abstract work by Shannon Candler and paintings inspired by Norse mythology by Liselott Johnsson. Through Aug. 22.

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

p.m.). In the Educational Technology Center. Call to register. FREE! 706613-3650 Concrete Leaf-Casting (State Botanical Garden of Georgia) Learn how to use large leaves to cast concrete forms that can be used for bird baths or creative garden accents.

Pre-registration required. Aug. 13, 6:30–8:30 p.m. $27. 706-542-6156, www.uga.edu/botgarden Conditioning Boot Camp (Canopy Studio) Boot camp using trapeze, weight balls and the body to strengthen and build muscle tone.

No experience necessary. Tuesdays, 5:30–6:30 p.m. $15/class. 706549-8501 Craft Classes (Main Street Yarns, Watkinsville) Offering instruction in knitting, crocheting, wheel spinning and more. Full schedule online.

706-769-5531, www.mainstreetyarns.com Expressive Pottery in the Electric Kiln (Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation) Maria Dondero leads a two-day, intensive workshop that covers techniques for bringing varied, layer surface design to pots fired in an electric kiln. Aug. 8–9, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. $60. 706-769-4565, info@ocaf.com Genealogy on the Internet (ACC Library) A brief intro to Internet resources for geneal-

Jittery Joe’s Coffee (Five Points) Paintings by Elaine Oye. Through August.

Just Pho…and More Work by Stephen Humphreys. Through Sept. 15.

Lamar Dodd School of Art (Gallery 307) “Renovations: In Progress,” featuring work by Scott Belville. Through Aug. 21. Closing reception Aug. 21.

“Imago Mundi: Painting Inner/Outer Space,” featuring work by Rocio Rodriguez, Don Cooper and Betsy Cain. Aug. 17–Sep. 15.

Lyndon House Arts Center “Light After Dark,” featuring a selection of dream-like landscapes by photographers Karekin and Ginger Goekjian. Through Aug. 15. “Lord Love You: Works by R.A. Miller from the Mullis Collection” includes more than 75 paintings, drawings, sculptures and whirligigs created by the Georgia self-taught artist Reuben Aaron Miller.

Aug. 8–Oct. 24. Reception Aug. 15. A juried exhibition of works by members of the Southeastern Pastel Society. Through Aug. 15.

Madison-Morgan Cultural Center “The Reclamation of Memory,” an exhibit curated by renowned Atlanta mixed-media artist Lynn MarshallLinnemeier. Presented in conjunction with the 2009 National Black Arts Festival. Through Aug. 29.

Mama’s Boy Encaustic painting, jewelry and metalwork by Laura Wood. Through Aug. 15.

Marigold Cafe (Winterville) Abstract paintings by Meg McConnell. Through August.

Monroe Art Guild Summer Members’ Show.

Through Aug. 26. www.monroeartguild.org State Botanical Garden of Georgia “Botanical Fantasy,” featuring contemporary brightly colored floral canvases by award-winning Southeastern artist Veva Dunckel. Through Aug. 23.

Strand Hair Salon “That Seafaring Life, Those Sweet Figs, Life by the Sea,” featuring photographs

by Lis Carney. Through Aug. 5.

UGA Aderhold Local artist and UGA faculty member Jamie Calkin helps the College of Education recognize its centennial year with “Celebration,” a rotating exhibit of original watercolors of the UGA campus and downtown Athens. Through Aug. 30.

“Lord Love You: Works by R.A. Miller from the Mullis Collection” is on exhibit at the Lyndon House Arts Center Aug. 8–Oct. 24. ogy. Databases in Galileo will be introduced. Registration required.

Aug. 14, 6–8:45 p.m. FREE! 706613-3650 Genealogy on the Internet (Oconee County Library) Learn how to research your family online using Ancestry Library Edition, Heritage Quest and more. Space is limited; registration required. Aug. 8, 2–3:30 p.m. FREE! 706-769-3950 Gentle Yoga (St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church) Bring your own mat or towel and wear loose clothing. Julie Horne, instructor.

Tuesdays, 5:30–7 p.m. $9/class.

706-354-1996

Intro to Computers (Madison County Library) Alisa Claytor, computer specialist, offers an Introduction to Computers series.

Two weekly meetings, and you may attend one per week or all three. Preregistration required. 706-795-5597.

Tuesdays, 2–3 p.m. or 7–8 p.m.

Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12 p.m.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (Mind Body Institute) Four-week course starts Aug. 11.

Tuesdays, 6–8 p.m. $75. 706-4757329, www.armc.org/mbi Online Job Application Tips (ACC Library) Learn tips and strategies for filling out job applications

on the web. Aug. 18, 12:15 p.m.

FREE! 706-613-3650 Open Art Studio (Art School, Watkinsville) Led by Tracy Jefferies.

Participants work at their own pace, and instruction is provided as requested. Reduced fee if you bring your own supplies. Open to all experience levels. Tuesdays, 6:30–8:30 p.m. $175 for 8 classes (includes supplies). artschoolstreet@gmail. com, www.artschoolwatkinsville.com Tai Chi in the Park (Mind Body Institute, Athens Regional Medical Center) Offering Tai Chi instruction.

Saturdays, 9:30–10:30 a.m. 706475-7329, mbiprograms@armc.org

Take One: A Fundamental Look at Screenwriting (Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation) An intro to screenwriting taught by veteran writer Terry Kay, a regional Emmy winner for his teleplay Run Down the Rabbit. Sept. 26 & 27. $150. 706-769-4565, www.ocaf.com Tech Tips: Skype (ACC Library) Learn how to use Skype to communicate in a cost-effective way. Aug. 12, 7–8 p.m. FREE! 706-613-3650 Yoga Classes (Om Town Yoga, 190 Park Avenue) Ongoing classes with detailed asana instruction.

Multi-class discounts. Mondays, 6:15 p.m. Wednesdays, 5:45 p.m. $10/drop-in. www.athensomtownyoga.com Yoga Classes (Mind Body Institute) Safe, effective classes for every body. Beginner and specialty classes with morning, afternoon and evening meeting times. 706-4757329, www.armc.org/mbi Yoga Classes (Sangha Yoga Studio) Gentle Yoga (Tuesdays, 12–1 p.m.) and Prenatal Yoga (Thursdays, 10:30–11:45 a.m.) led by Bobbi Jean Singleton. $14/ drop-in, $60/6-class punch card. bjm_js@bellsouth.net Yoga on the Eastside (Full Bloom Center) New classes Wednesdays (6 p.m.) and Sundays (9 a.m.). All levels welcome. www. fullbloomparent.com Yoga Teacher Training (Rubber Soul Yoga Revolution Studio) 200hour training provided by the Vastu School of Yoga in early September that prepares students to be confident and competent instructors. $100 tuition discount for students who register before the end of June. $1000. 561-723-6172, vastuyoga@ hotmail.com

HELP OUT! American Red Cross (Red Cross Donor Center, 3525 Atlanta Hwy.) This month all donors will be entered for a chance to win a $1,000 gas card. 706-546-0681, www.redcrossblood.org Athens Farmers’ Market Volunteers (Bishop Park) Looking for people willing to help out anytime between 6:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on any Saturday through Nov. 14. Volunteers usually get fresh vegetable donations from the farmers. marketmanager@athensfarmersmarket.net Become a Mentor (Boys and Girls Clubs of Athens) Volunteer one hour per week to make a difference in the life of a child. Training provided. 706-546-4910, mentor@ athensbgca.com, www.fflife.net Bike Recycling Program (Chase Street Warehouses) Join BikeAthens volunteers as they clean and repair donated bicycles for local service agencies. Bike repair skills a plus, but not necessary. Sunday, 2–4 p.m. Monday & Wednesday, 6–8 p.m. www.bikeathens.com Foster Homes Needed (Athens Area Humane Society) AAHS is looking for dependable foster parents to take in cats/dogs for a limited time (often 2–4 weeks).

Download an application at www. athenshumanesociety.org. foster@ athenshumanesociety.org Volunteers Needed (Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic) Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic is seeking volunteers who can contribute 90 minutes per week reading and recording textbooks for the print disabled. 706-549-1313, kstanley@ rfbd.org Volunteers Needed (CASA, 220 College Avenue) Athens-Oconee CASA, a program of Children First,

is now recruiting volunteers for a fall training session. CASA volunteers provide legeal advocacy for abused and neglected children. 706-6131922, www.athensoconeecasa.org

KIDSTUFF Babies & Beasties Series (Sandy Creek Nature Center) Help your toddler discover nature. Ages 18 months–2 years, with adult.

Registration required. Summer session: Thursdays, Aug. 6–27, 10 a.m. $7. 706-613-3615 Mommy/Daddy and Me Trapeze (Canopy) Parents will guide their children in a range of exercises on the floor and low trapezes. Each child must be accompanied by one parent. Ages 1–3. Sundays, 10–11 a.m. $10/class. 706-5498501, info@canopystudio.com Yoga Sprouts (Full Bloom Center) Fun, playful yoga for kids ages 2–6.

Builds strength and flexibility while enhancing confidence. Wednesdays, 3:30 p.m. $14/single class, $60/6 classes. 706-353-3373 Yoga Sprouts (Memorial Park) Now registering. Learn fun, playful yoga poses and breathing exercises.

Session I: Aug. 25–Oct. 13. Session II: Oct. 20–Dec. 8. Ages 3–6 & 7–12. Tuesdays. $0–$48 (scholarships available). 706-372-7137, me-yogasprouts@gmail.com

SUPPORT Domestic Violence Support Group (Call for location) Dinner begins at 6 p.m. and group at 6:30 p.m. Children are welcome for supper and childcare is provided during group. Call Project Safe hotline at 706-543-3331 for location. 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month in Clarke County. 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month in Madison County. 6–8 p.m.

Emotional Abuse Support Group (Call for location) Demeaning behavior and hateful words can be just as harmful as punches and kicks. Childcare is provided. Call Project Safe hotline at 706-543-3331 for location.

Wednesdays, 6:30–8 p.m.

Emotions Anonymous (Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens) Informal and supportive 12step program open to anyone with a desire to become well emotionally.

Sundays, 4–5 p.m. 706-202-7463, www.emotionsanonymous.org Mental Health Support Group (St. Mary’s Hospital) Meets in the lobby conference room.

Thursdays, 6:30–8 p.m. 706-7835706, www.athensmentalhealth.org

ON THE STREET 4e Dungeons & Dragons Game New weekly D&D game in Athens looking for players. All levels of experience welcome. athensDnD@hotmail.com Creative Consultants UGA’s student-run PR firm, Creative Consultants, is looking for new clients for the upcoming academic year. The group offers free PR services for local businesses and non-profits. 614-946-2225, kaitlyn. darr@gmail.com Men with Aprons (Downtown Watkinsville) Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build Program will host a Men’s Bake Sale Aug. 7. The program is looking for men interested in baking treats and joining the “Men with Aprons” team. Baked goods must be dropped off at the office by noon on Aug. 7. 706-208-1001, womenbuild@athenshabitat.com f

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comics

Local Celebrity

by Allison Butler

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FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

reality check Matters Of The Heart And Loins I met this guy on one of those online dating sites. We exchanged a few messages, and things seemed to be going well, so he wanted to meet.

I agreed, but I suggested that we talk on the phone first. He said he wasn’t much of a phone talker, but agreed. He gave me his number, and then I tried to call him. We already had the date set up, and what wound up happening was we never did get a chance to talk on the phone first. The restaurant was his suggestion.

We sat down, I ordered my dinner and a drink, and he ordered hot broth and hot water with lemon. When the waitress walked away he explained that he was “doing a cleanse.” I was irritated because I have no idea why he suggested a restaurant if he wasn’t going to eat. It got worse. He talked about chakras, tantra and a bunch of other New Age-y stuff that was NOWHERE in his profile. I might have gotten past this, but at the end of the meal, when the bill came, I did the polite thing and offered to split the check, and he grudgingly agreed, saying that he thought it was “Okay, even though his cost less.” I got out of there quickly and went home to call a friend to complain. Her reaction was not what I expected, and now I want to know what you think. Am I wrong to be shocked at his response about the bill? I was under the impression that this was a date. He suggested the restaurant. He made the plans. And I thought he should pick up the check. What do you think?

Check Please I agree that his suggestion to have dinner was ridiculous in light of his cleanse. I also think that if he is so into the newage (the way I like to pronounce that makes it rhyme with “sewage”) that he definitely should have made that more clear on his profile, and I think he avoided talking to you on the phone on purpose. As far as the check thing goes, I don’t think it was necessarily his responsibility to pick up the check, but I do think his response was odd, to say the least.

In short, I think you should be glad you didn’t waste more time on the guy. And in the future, you should plan on paying your own way regardless of who makes the plans. Unless somebody says “let me buy you dinner,” you shouldn’t assume.

I have been with this woman for a couple of years. I love her. She is a great person; she’s smart and funny, and I am attracted to her. We like each other’s families. Our moms always talk about us getting married and having kids. I am almost 40, and my girlfriend is in her early 20s.

And the thing is, it’s not like I refuse to get married, I just don’t feel compelled to marry her right now. And I feel like they all think it

is a foregone conclusion, my girl included. I can’t tell if I don’t want to get married or if she just isn’t the one. I mean, how do you know?

I don’t want to do it just because that’s what people expect, and I definitely don’t want to waste her time. If I knew that I would never marry her, I would just break it off. But I don’t know, and I don’t know when or how or if I will ever know. The other problem is that I feel like she is so young. I have tried to encourage her to do other things, maybe go back to school or try some hobbies—grow into her own person outside of me and my friends and family.

But she doesn’t really seem to want to. I am about to leave the country for six months for work and I feel like everyone expects me to pop the question before then, but I can’t. So, what should I do?

Anonymous The fact that you are leaving is actually perfect. I think that when you are away from your girlfriend for that long, you will either miss her and be ready to move forward, or you won’t miss her enough, and then you will know it’s time to move on.

In the meantime, maybe you can talk to her again about doing some soul-searching while you are away. This will give her an opportunity to find herself a little since she won’t be able to focus on you as much while you are gone.

If she does, and if you still aren’t sure after that amount of time, then you should leave her, because stringing her along while you wait for lightning to strike isn’t fair. You seem like a fair guy. I think you will figure it out.

I have to agree with you about the guy whose friends keep telling him he should “just go out with Mary” (July 15 issue). I have been in this situation before and I don’t care what anybody says. If you aren’t attracted to a person, then you aren’t.

It doesn’t make her ugly, and it doesn’t make you stupid or a bad person. It just makes you a realist. And why would you try to force something with somebody who you already have a great friendship with? Don’t do it, man. It will cause drama between you and her, it may ruin your friendship, and it will certainly cause rifts between you and the other friends in your group, who will never take the blame that they richly deserve for the impending Mary fiasco or its fallout. Stand firm, Anonymous guy!

You are not shallow for not wanting to sleep with a girl you aren’t attracted to. In fact, you are the opposite. It would be much easier to give in and just sleep with somebody, especially when you are lonely and heartbroken, but you shouldn’t. It won’t help. Believe me. I have been there.

Former Mary Jyl Inov Got a question for Jyl? Submit your anonymous inquiry via the Reality Check button at www.flagpole.com.

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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Real Estate Apartments for Rent $450/mo. Alexi Apartments.

1 lg. BR/1BA w/ lg. lv. r m.

New laundry facilities. 18 unit complex, 1 block off Milledge w/ bus stop. (706) 207-9902, (706) 835-8401.

1BR/1BA some utils. $525/ mo. Garden apt. Nice. $490/ mo. Call (706) 425-9626.

2BR duplexes star ting at $450/mo. (706) 549-6070.

2BR/1BA. CHAC, W/D, nice y d . $ 8 2 5 / m o . A R M C a re a .

Call (706) 425-9626.

2BR/1BA. Central location off Broad St. at King Ave. 125 Honeysuckle Lane. Total e l e c t r i c . Wa t e r / t r a s h i n c l . $450/mo. w/ $300 sec. dep.

Lease/dep. Ref ’s req’d. No pets. (706) 227-6000.

2BR/2BA condo. Screened porch, tennis & pool in complex, no pets, NS. $600/ mo. (706) 540-2818.

3BR/2.5BA Eastside townhome. Spacious & c o n v e n i e n t , o n b u s ro u t e .

Pets allowed. Incl. W/D. Only $700/mo. Call Aaron (706) 207-2957.

1BR apt. for $475/mo.

2BR apt. starting at $700/ mo. 3BR apt starting at $1000/mo. All close to campus! Howard Properties (706) 546-0300.

Borders! Print section of the Classifieds. Pictures! Check them out on the Flagpole website. New Categories!

To satisfy Athens Classified Ad needs! All coming this August. And still the lowest rates in town, Flagpole Classifieds helping Athens keep your ear to the ground!

Special! Lg. 1BR/1BA apts.

Great location, W/D on property.

Kitchen w/ all appls., parking. $450/mo. Call (706) 546-0600, go to www.parkerandassociates.com.

Best deal in town! El Dorado 2BR/1BA & studio apts. in N o r m a l t o w n . F r e e w a t e r, gas, basic cable & wireless Internet. W/D in 2BR units. Dog runs. $420–$675/mo. Joiner & Associates (706) 549-7371.

Blvd. 1BR apt. NS, no pets.

(706) 340-1283.

Cedar Shoals Dr. area. 4 or 5BR/4BA. Lg. rms., quiet n’hood, W/D incl. $1K/mo. + dep. req’d.

(706) 742-8555.

Hill St. 2BR/1BA. All electric apt. W/D, water, trash, lawn incl. $575/mo. Call (706) 549-6070.

2BR Riverbend Rd. Incl.

CHAC, DW, W/D hookups. $500/ mo. Flexible move-in dates.

Call (706) 546-6900 or email ValerioTeam@aol.com. $475–525/mo. 1BR/1BA, 2 Blocks to town & campus.

Lg. BR, CHVAC, great view of city, ceiling fans, some screen porches. Owner pays water & garbage. Avail. for July or Aug. move–in. Boulevard Proper tyManagement. com, (706) 548-9797.

$575/mo. Lg. 1BR (possibly 2BR) apt. on main flr. of Blvd. area historic house. 4 rooms + BA. Big porches, W/D, even a piano. (404) 421-0925. $700/mo. 2BR/2.5BA. Woodstone Park condo. 1.5 mi. from UGA on busline. CHAC, W/D, DW, deck. Water/trash incl.

Pets OK. Avail. 8/1. (706) 2029628.

1BR efficiency apt. in quiet residential n’hood. Lv. rm., BR, BA & kitchen. $350/mo. Call (706) 548-5869.

1BR/1BA + study/guest rm.

Security gates, pool, fitness center, 1 mi. from campus.

Excellent condition. $650/mo.

Pets OK. Call Rob (706) 3384984 or email robwimberly@ gmail.com.

1BR/1BA Normaltown in–house apt. CHAC, W/D, DW, ceiling fans, HWflrs, near busline. Water, trash, internet incl. NS grad student, professional preferred.

Dog possible. Avail. 9/1. $550/ mo., neg. w/ babysitting. (706) 227-9116.

2BR/1BA renovated apts., perfect for grad students, nice & quiet, close to campus & Dwntn.

245 China St. $500/mo. Incl. water & trash, no dogs, laundry onsite. Chris (706) 202-5156.

2BR/2.5BA condo. Along river. Avail. now. HWflrs., W/D, DW, ceiling fans, deck, amenities galore, convenient to everything.

Call Matt at (706) 248-9088.

2BR/2.5BA well maintained condo avail. at Stones Creek.

Lg. living space, eat–in kitchen.

All appls stay incl. W/D. Pool. $800/mo. Call Beth (706) 2961352.

2BR/2BA at Mooseclub Condominiums. Close to campus. W/D. On busline.

Recreation complex w/ volleyball & swimming pool. Avail Aug. $650/mo. Call (706) 202-4777.

WELCH PLACE

G SPECREAT IALS!

The BEST Deal in Five Points Just Got Better!

PRE-LEASING FOR FALL!

HUGE 3BR Townhomes Newly Remodeled and 4BR/3BA Townhouse w/ Study Includes Washer & Dryer, Free Wireless and 42” Plasma TV! Call Today for viewing.

Hamilton & Associates 706-613-9001 · 706-613-1776(fax)

www.athens-ga-rental.com

28

FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

2 B R / 2 B A v e r y l g . g a rd e n apts. at 350 S. Pope St., at the Georgetown Apts. 1 block from dorms on Baxter. Rent incl. water, monthly pest, garbage p/u, & lawn maintenance. $850/ mo. Call (706) 338-2534 for more details, & I can email you pics too.

2BR/2BA Harris Place Apartments. 1 block from Varsity! Move in today, pay 1st rent 9/1! Incl. CHAC, DW, W/D. $650/mo. Flexible move–in dates. Call (706) 546-6900 or email ValerioTeam@aol.com.

Best property in town!

Wo o d l a n d s o f A t h e n s .

3BR/3BA full of amenities. Gated community, great specials.

Reduced to only $1050/mo. Call Pete (706) 372-3319.

Condo for rent. 3BR/2.5BA, close to UGA. Dep. req’d. Pool. $800/mo. Call (770) 307-7003.

Condo in Tivoli. Cedar Shoals Dr. East Athens. On bus route, 3BR/2BA. W/D, DW, garbage disposal. 1400 sq. ft. $600/mo.

(706) 338-3224.

DGH Properties Inc. 112 Foundry St. Now leasing for Aug. Dwntn. Close to everything but out of bar scene. 1 & 2 BR avail.

Enjoy living in the ambiance of a historic bldg. Call George at (706) 340-0987.

Efficiency 1 rm. garage apt. on Lumpkin St. Lease & dep. req’d.

Avail. immediately. $400/mo. incl. water. Call (706) 714-8409.

Looking for fun M/F roommate to move into townhouse. Private BA. $395/mo. Woodsong n’hood. Pets welcome! Lv. msg.

(229) 343-3636.

Luxury Studios. UGA Campus Locat ion. Well apportioned, private laundry & on UGA bus stop. Move–in special: no security deposit! (706) 540-2829.

Milledge. Ave 1BR/1BA in 5 Pts. $600/mo. Incl. 1BR/1BA, lv. rm., kitchen, & study rm., W/D provided. Off–street parking.

Water & sewer incl. in rent. Call (706) 202-2371.

South Milledge Area.Newly renovated. 4BR/2BA, W/D, DW, private fenced backyd. $975/ mo. Pamela, Property Manager (706) 247-1805. Go to www. azevedoproperties.com to see listings. Bruce Azevedo, Inc. Tucked away off Prince Ave. Apartment for rent.

Across from Navy School. 2BR + Jack & Jill BA. New carpet, fresh paint. Great for grads, young professionals, & families. $650/ mo. + utils. Move in Aug. 15th.

No rent until Sept! Call Cord (478) 696-2244.

Westside condos.

2BR/2BA, $600/mo.

3BR/2BA, $700/mo. Converted clubhouse into a huge open flr. plan. 4BR/2.5BA, $1200/mo. 5 Pts. 2BR/2.5BA. lv. rm w/ FP. Corner lot. $700/mo. Eastside quadraplex 2BR/2BA, $525/ mo. 2BR/1BA, $490/mo. Call McWaters Realty, (706) 5493222, (706) 353-2700 or cell (706) 540-1529.

Apartments for Sale Condo. 2BR/2BA. Near campus/busline. Community pool, low assoc. fees. W/D, FP, HVAC, ceiling fans, private patio, new paint, move–in ready. $96K. (706) 546-0290, (706) 296-3313.

Commercial Property Paint Artist Studiofor rent.

300 sq. ft. $150/mo. 400 sq. ft. $200/mo. 160 Tracy St. Historic Boulevard Area, Artist/Crafts Community. (706) 546-1615 or athenstownproperties.com.

Borders! Print section of the Classifieds. Pictures! Check them out on the Flagpole website. New Categories!

To satisfy Athens Classified Ad needs! All coming this August. And still the lowest rates in town, Flagpole Classifieds helping Athens keep your ear to the ground!

Amazing Office Spaces for lease above Dwntn Five Guys restaurant. No better location!

Call Reign at Coldwell Banker Upchurch Realty (706) 3724166, or (706) 543-4000.

Athens Executive Suites.

Offices avail. in historic Dwntn bldg. w/ on–site parking. All utils., Internet, & janitorial incl.

Single or multiple offices avail.

Call Stacy (706) 425-4048 or (706) 296-1863.

Eastside offices for lease.

1060 Gaines School Rd. 170 sq. ft., $375/mo., 500 sq. ft., $625/mo., 1200 sq. ft., $1200/mo. (706) 546-1615 or athenstownproperties.com.

Retail Suites for lease at Homewood Village.

1K–12,500 sq. ft. avail. For more info call Bryan Austin at (706) 353-1039 or visit www. sumnerproperties.net.

Salon/office. Could be used for massage therapist. nail tech, esthatician, or office. All utils except phone incl. Centrally located on Milledge/5 Pts. Awesome location! $600/mo.

(706) 202-2260.

Houses for Rent 1130 Rankin Rd. 2BR/1BA home w/ convenient location in Oconee Co. $550/mo. Avail.

7/15! Pls. call (706) 540-1810, (706) 433-2072, or email cbolen@upchurchrealty.com.

2 & 3 & 4 & 5BR. $500–$1300/ mo. Awesome walk & bike to campus & town! Pre–leasing for Fall! Many historical houses w/ lg. rms, high ceilings, big windows, HWflrs., old–world char m, moder n amenities.

Porches, & yds. Pet friendly.

These go fast! Email for list: luckydawg96@yahoo.com.

2 & 3BR houses. Pre–leasing for fall. Close to UGA & Dwntn.

Call (706) 255-0066.

2BR/1BA Blvd. area duplex.

Energy efficient, total electric, recently renovated, W/D, DW, HVAC, shared fenced yd, some pets OK. Avail. now. Lease/ dep./refs. req’d. $650/mo. (706) 227-6000.

2BR/1BA Duplex on Eastside.

172 Laurie Dr. off Cedar Shoals Dr. $525/mo. Avail. ASAP. Clean w/ W/D, FP, CHVAC. Call (706) 201-9222.

3–4BR/4BA house. Great location! Walk to Dwntn. $1400/ mo. All appls. 200 MLK Jr. Pkwy.

Avail. 8/1. (706) 713-0626.

3BR/1BA on Northcrest Dr. $750/mo. Granite countertops, new paint, total electric, CHAC. Bonus rm., W/D, screened porch, storage bldg, big yd. Walk to bus line, shopping, restaurants, 5 min. drive to campus. Avail. now. (706) 247-1398.

3BR/2BA historic home near Dwntn, off Pulaski. Brand new renovations, energy efficient w/ lg. rooms & HWflrs., laundry.

Very clean & nice. $1100/mo.

Avail. 8/7. (706) 614-3557.

3BR/3BA Eastside. Quiet n’hood. $1100/mo. All appls.

213 Springtree St. Avail 8/1.

(706) 713-0626.

3BR/3BA. Modern style houses.

New construction! Only 1 mi. from Dwntn. Concrete & bamboo f l r i n g t h ro u g h o u t . E n e r g y efficient, unique materials.

Over 1400 sq. ft. Awesome opportunity to live in a brand new custom house by local design/build firm. (706) 4259626 w/ any questions or to see houseplans.

4BR/2BA quaint house in country. 9 mi. from Dwntn Athens. Avail. now! $950/mo.

(706) 540-8461. $900/mo. 4BR/2BA remodel on Greenway. 2 blocks to Dwntn.

Granite countertops, sunrm., W/D. Pets OK. Call (678) 491-4800. $950/mo. 1060 Oglethorpe Ave. 3BR/2BA house, HWflrs., CHAC, lg. deck, pets OK, lg. fenced backyd. Great for dogs, walk to Transmet, Allen’s, Navy School. On busline. Avail. 8/1.

Call Bill (770) 540-5896.

Affordable housing. Houses, condos, A-frame all $550/mo. or less. Various locations. Excellent cond. Cats permitted w/ dep.

Call (706) 202-0147.

Flagpole Classifieds! $9/ wk. for your merchandise, $13/ wk. for your house, $15/wk. for your business! Go to www. flagpole.com or call (706) 5490301. Deadlines every Monday at 11am.

Avail. Aug.! 3 & 4 Bedroom Cottages. Close to campus!

Features incl. DW, W/D, private BAs, pool! Leasing special! $400–$485/BR. Call (706) 543-1910 or email becky@ landmarkathens.com.

3BR/2BA w/ basement. Fenced backyd., carport. All electric.

W/D. 1 mi. from Dwntn. $900/ mo. 145 Conrad Dr. Call Brian (706) 613-7242.

New Construction! 3BR/2.5BA Historic–Style Cottage on Lake St., 1569 sq. ft., $1350/mo., tin roof, HWflrs., greenspace & trails. www.fullcircleathens.com. $1050/mo. 3BR/2BA house in country. 9 mi. from Dwntn. W/D hookup, DW, FP. Call (706) 5408461. $1100/mo. 4BR/2.5BA house, Eastside. W/D, DW. 5 min. from campus. 2–car garage. Fenced yd. Pets OK w/ dep. (706) 6140522, lv. msg. $475–525/mo. 1BR/1BA, 2 Blocks to town & campus, Lg. BR, CHVAC, great view of city, ceiling fans, some screen porches. Owner pays water & garbage. Avail. for July or Aug. move–in. Go to boulevard proper tymanagement. com, (706) 548-9797. $500 lease–signing bonus!

4BR/4BA. New construction, all appls. incl. $450/BR. A view of Dwntn. Off North Ave.Avail. July.

(706) 202-4648.

$850/mo. 3BR/2BA. HWflrs., fridge, stove, DW, CHAC, W/D hookups. Pets OK. 100 Field Ave. Off–street parking. Call (706) 540-0093.

3BR/2BA home in Oglethorpe Co. 2.5 mi. from Clarke Co. line.

CHAC. Quiet area. Well/septic. $700/mo. (706) 743-3111, (706) 224-1400. No pets, NS.

145 Mell St. 3BR/3BA, 5 Pts., 2 blocks to UGA, $500/BR. Free utilities. CHAC, W/D, DW, wood flrs. hathawayproperties@ gmail.com, (706) 714-4486.

3BR/2BA house. Cedar creek subdivision. Fenced backyd., gas grill attached to sundeck, FP, wooded lot. Quiet family n’hood. Swimming community.

360 Sandstone Dr. Avail. 7/1. $1025/mo. + dep. (706) 3191846 or (706) 548-4819. GA. R, E, lic. 300830.

180 Old Cleveland Rd. Bogart.

Near loop, 78 & 316. 3BR/1BA ranch. CHAC, appls., W/D hookup, incl. water, sewer. $700/ mo. + dep. (706) 353-0196, (706) 247-3499.

1BR/1BA duplex. Garage, storage shed, private wooded yd. FP, CHAC, DW, close to new park. Avail. now! $500/mo. Call (706) 202-4792.

200 Magnolia St. Fenced–in yd. 3BR/2 full BA. HWflrs. $950/mo. Call (706) 540-0093.

2BR renovated house in Paradise. 30 mi. to UGA. Hardwood floors, CHAC, huge front porch, separate workshop, fenced yard surrounded by 100 acres. $565/mo. (706) 549-4580.

2BR/1BA duplex. Willow Run near ARMC. Incl. W/D hookups, DW, CHAC. $595/ mo. Call (706) 546-6900 or email ValerioTeam@aol.com.

2BR/1BA, 151 Marlin St. off North Ave. Split level duplex.

4 blocks from Dwntn, recently renovated. New kitchen, W/D, bamboo flrs., CHAC, fenced yd. $675/mo. Dave (706) 2019222.

2BR/1BA. 270 Laurie Dr. Great quiet grad student housing, 5 min. from campus. Newly renovated, DW, CHAC, NS, no pets, alarm wired. $600/mo, lease/dep./refs req’d. Contact 270laurie@gmail.com.

2BR/1BA. 2790 Danielsville Rd . Woo d e d . Wi d e p orch.

CHAC, W/D hookup. Wood flrs., lawncare incl. $570/mo. + dep. (706) 546-5390, lv. msg.

3BR/1.5BA. 1–story Westside established n’hood. $795 monthly. (706) 201-9341.

3BR/1BA attractive brick h o u s e i n q u i e t re s i d e n t i a l n’hood. Nice condition. CHAC, DW, W/D, & carport. $750/mo.

Call (706) 548-5869.

3BR/2BA on private wooded 1 acre lot near Homewood shopping center. $900/mo. NS, pets w/ dep. Call Rose (706) 548-6222.

3BR/2BA, Renovated bungalow in the Chicopee-Dudley area, Reduced to $800! For photos & info: www.1596eastbroad. blogspot.com, (706) 2550659.

3BR/2BA. $1100/mo, Rent/ Lease/Purchase. Barnett near College Station.

Hardwood kitchen, appls. W/D. Covered porch. 1 car garage.

Pets w/ add’l dep. (770) 3100587.

3BR/2BA. Avail. 8/8 or after.

HWflrs., CHAC, DW, W/D, bonus room, fenced yd. Pet friendly. Close to Dwntn & Riverwalk. $825/mo. Flexible lease. (646) 247-5646.

3BR/3BA like new! 1 mi. from Dwntn Athens. Close to campus, perfect for students!

Bridgewater Subdivision. $1200/mo. Pets OK. Call Barbara (770) 237-9148.

3BR/3BA, 145 Mell St. 5 Pts. 2 blocks to UGA, $500/BR. F re e u t i l i t i e s .

CHAC, W/D, DW, wood flrs. hathawayproper ties@gmail. com, (706) 714-4486.

3BRs. 180 O’Farrell, Check out these great houses in the heart of 5 Pts. Online at b o u l e v a rd proper tymanagement. com or call (706) 548-9797.

AT !

GREIA LS SPEC

4BR cool houses. Walk to UGA & town. Renovated, lg. farmhouse, $1150/mo. or newer 2–story, 4.5BA, $1300/mo. Charming character. CHAC, W/D, DW. Avail. now or 8/1. (706) 215-4496.

4BR/1.5BA on Northcrest Dr. $850/mo. Huge fenced backyd,. pen & storage bldg. Pets welcome. New vinyl & paint, W/D connections, CHAC. Walk to bus line, shopping, restaurants.

5 min. drive to campus. Avail. now. (706) 247-1398.

4BR/2.5BA beautiful plantation house on 3 acres. High ceilings, HWflrs., lg. kitchen & rooms w/ a country setting. Front porch, screen porch & rear sunroom.

Pets welcome. 3–sided fence.

990 Double Bridges Rd. Avail.

6/1. $1200/mo. + dep. (706) 319-1846, or (706) 548-4819.

GA. R, E, lic. 300830.

4BR/2BA brick cottage. CHAC, W/D, DW, 2K sq. ft. HWflrs., screen porch, 10 ft. ceilings. 1 mi. from Dwntn/campus. $1560/mo.

1st mo. rent free! (706) 247-1998.

4BR/2BA. $1050/mo. HWflrs., fridge, stove, DW, W/D, CHAC, fenced front yd. Extra lg. backyd. Walk to 24hr. IHOP & public library. 257 Magnolia Ave. Pets OK. Lawn maintenance incl. (706) 540-0093.

4BR/3BA townhome. Total electric. All applsl incl. W/D. $800/ mo. + $800/dep. (678) 699-2984, or after 4:30 at (770) 957-1442.

599 W. Hancock. 2 blocks from Dwntn. Avail. 8/1. New construction. 4BR/4BA. W/D, off street parking. On busline. (706) 247-3147.

All wood & glass cottage. All amenities. 1BR/1BA. 100 acres. On river. 8 mi. from town. At Earthsong. $800/mo. (770) 725-2667.

Avail. Aug. 1st. 3BR/1BA , CHAC, W/D. 5 mins. from UGA. HWflrs. No pets, NS. Near greenway & bus line. $785/mo. + utils. (706) 338-1859.

All Around Athens & near Campus! 105 Redstone Dr. 2BR/1BA, $550/mo. 4930 Mars Hill Rd. Oconee Co. 3BR/2BA, $895/mo. 597 Dearing St. off Milledge. 4BR/2BA, $1495/ mo. 105 Whitehall Rd., 2BR/1BA, $675/mo. (706) 5467946, Flowersnancy@bellsouth. net. See virtual tours www. nancyflowers.com.

Available immediately!

3BR/2BA in Normaltown.

HWflrs, CHAC, quiet street.

Grad students pref’d. (706) 549-2283.

Comfortable 3BR/2BA Brick Home. Eastside, Green Acres. Lv. rm., din. rm., den, HWflrs. 2–car garage. Private, quiet. Refs/lease & $750/mo. + dep. (706) 335-2082, (706) 540-3759. Lv. msg.

C u t e c o t t a g e . 2BR/1BA o n H w y 1 0 6 , 2 0 m i n f ro m UGA. Sunroom, living, dining, laundry. Country surrounds.

NS. $625/mo. + dep. (706) 614-8875.

Duplex for rent. 2BR/1.5BA. Jolly Lane in Sleepy Hollow Subdivision. Near UGA, Memorial Park & Birchmore Trail. W/D, DW, CHAC, FP. $700/mo. Call April ( 7 0 6 ) 5 4 9 - 5 0 0 6 , g o t o w w w. athenscondosales.com.

Eastside brick. Clean & updated. 2BR/1.5BA + office.

HWflrs., fenced yd., 2–car garage. $850/mo. Lease/ Refs/Dep. req’d. 5 mins. to UGA, close to bus line. (706) 543-0560.

Eastside. Close to Campus.

3BR/2.5BA. Spacious living area. $995/mo. JS Ivy Realty. www.johnivy.com, (706) 2075649.

Eastside. Nice, clean 2BR/1BA houses, quiet n’hood. Cul-de-sac, many extras. $645-$745/mo. Call (706) 340-4619.

First month free. Walk to campus! 2 & 3BRs from $625/ mo. W/D, DW, priv. deck, pets welcome. Mention this ad & pay no pet fee! (706) 548-2522, www.dovetailmanagement.com.

Great 3BR/4BA houses. 1/2 mi. from campus.Front porch, back deck, nice yd., DW, W/D, CHAC. Pets OK. Pre–leasing Avail. 8/1. Special! $850/mo.

(706) 369-2908.

Great 4BR/4BA house. 1/2 mi. from campus.Front porch, back deck, nice yd., DW, W/D, CHAC. Pets OK. Pre–leasing Avail. 8/1. Special! $950/mo.

(706) 369-2908.

Normaltown/ARMC. 180 Willow Run. Very nice 3BR/1BA. HWflrs, DW, W/D, CHAC. Lg. fenced backyard. Pets OK w/ dep. $900 mo. (404) 210-7145.

Northside 2BR/1BA, lg. lot, $600/mo. H o s p i t a l a re a Fenced–in yd. Avail. June. $800/ mo. Five Points 2BR/2.5BA, lv. rm. w/ FP, corner lot, $700/mo.

Eastside 3BR/2BA. Lg. yd., on dead–end street. $1100/mo.

4BR/2BA w/ lg. yd. $1300/mo.

2 or 3BR/1BA w/ screened front porch, $800/mo. Cedar Creek 4BR/2BA $1100/mo. Oconee County 3BR/2BA. Lv. rm. w/ FP, din. rm., double garage, $1100/ mo. Call McWaters Realty, (706) 549-3222, (706) 353-2700, (706) 540-1529.

Unique small house. Clear story, open concept, 3–level cedar center post. W/D, AC, DW, huge yd. $650/mo. 769 Whitehall.

Jason (706) 353-1750.

Houses for Sale $79,900. Cute 2BR/1BA cottage.

HWflrs., CHAC, fenced yd., butterfly garden. In town, on bus line, biking/walking distance to Dwntn & campus. Call Michael at Full Circle Realty, (706) 2558600. ➤ continued on next page

WELCH PLACE

PRE-LEASING FOR FALL!

2BR/1BA Flats in 5 Points

Includes Washer & Dryer and Free Wireless! Call Today for viewing.

Hamilton & Associates

706-613-9001 · 706-613-1776 (fax)

www.athens-ga-rental.com

Two Brick Classic-Style Homes 3BD/2.5BA,

4BD/3.5BA,

Best Lot in Subdivision (Fronts Gazebo and Backs Conservation Tract) Master Down

Glorious Hardwoods & Finishing, Tin Roof, Master Up, (Former Model Home), Smaller Yard

$4100/mo.

$3100/mo.

Prices include yard maintenance, HOA dues, trash and amenities.

Security deposits and background checks required.

Call 404-931-3434 for information

$825/mo. 3BR/2BA, lg. house. 5 min. to campus. Popular Eastside, safe n’hood, excellent condition, no pets. 475 Crestwood Dr. Mike (706) 207-7400, email mikejoyner@charter.net.

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

29

3BR/2BA countr y house. 9 mi. from Dwntn. FP. $138,000.

(706) 540-8461.

Downtown. Beautiful new construction. Key West–style home on hidden street next to Dwntn. Lush tranquil setting!

140 Hendrix. Photos at www. fullcircleathens.com. Michael Littleton (706) 255-8600.

Hundred yr. old renovated Athens farmhouse on .5 acre in hear t of pecan orchard.

Beautiful heartpine flrs. Tall ceilings, fixed mantles, 2 porches, clawfoot tub, metal roof. Contact Michael Littleton at www.fullcircleathens.com or (706) 255-8600.

In–town historic style cottages w/ 3 acres greenspace. Green bldg. practices. Homes can be customized. $150K to low $200K. Michael Littleton (706) 255-8600 or visit www. fullcircleathens.com.

Motivated Seller. Excellent move–in condition 2BR/2BA, fenced yd., 2 mi. from UGA campus Eastside. Many upgrades. $118,900. Call for pics & appt. (706) 549-9382.

New Construction Homes! 3BR/2BA, 4BR/3BA eco–friendly homes for sale.

Featuring 3.5 ac. green space, walking trails, community garden, & rear alley access.

1.1 mi. to Downtown, .3 mi. to Greenway, HWflrs, custom kitchens, artistic tile, metal roofs, Energy Star certified, & more! $174,900 & $205,000. Call Jared at (404) 797-1034 or visit website at www.jwyorkhomes.com.

Open House. Sunday A u g u s t 9 t h f ro m 2 p m – 5 p m . 2 5 6 Vin e y a rd Dri ve, Athens. $106,999. 3BR/2BA great home on .75 acre corner lot. Upgrades included. Tile flrs. in kitchen & BAs, & tile backsplash in kitchen. Wood flrs. in lv. rm.

100% financing avail. Call Brittany Purcell-Success for Realty for more details.

Cell (770) 713-4278, Office (770) 623-1086. Visit www. brittanysells.com for pics.

Own your own rental property! 139 & 143 Strickland Ave. 4BR/3BA on each side of duplex. Entire duplex for $359,800. 1 side for rent $1200/mo. Call Reign at Coldwell Banker Upchurch Realty (706) 372-4166, or (706) 543-4000.

Romantic 1918 Victorian & historic 2–story guest cottage on 8 private acres. Excellent period restoration! Must see photos at www.fullcircleathens. com or Michael Littleton (706) 255-8600.

Roommates Room avail. for student roommate to share 3BR/1BA behind ARMC. W/D, CHAC, HWflrs., renovated house, fenced-in backyd. Pets welcome. $300/mo. + 1/3 utils.

(404) 713-0655.

1 roommate needed. 2BR/2BA condo at Eaglewood Court. FP. Pets allowed. Small fenced–in backyd. $550/mo., utils. incl.

(478) 361-4999.

Great location! Close to campus on bus line. 3BR/1.5BA house.

Must be pet friendly. Nice yd. $400/mo. + 1/2 utils. Avail. 8/1.

Call (706) 248-0738.

M/F Grad student/professional.

2BR/1BA $350/mo. + 1/2 utils.

Quiet n’hood. 5 Pts. Walk to campus/bus line. HWflrs, W/D, CHAC, DSL, med dog. Email thedobhran@hotmail.com.

Mature student to rent suite in 3BR home furnished private BR/ BA w/ study. Shared kitchen.

Incl. utils., dish, Tivo, WiFi, quiet, safe, near UGA. (706) 296-6956.

Roommate needed 2BR/2BA apt. w/ M student. Walk/bike to UGA. W/D, DW. on Cloverhurst. $400/mo + 1/2 utils. Avail. 8/6.

No pets. Exterior patio. (706) 247-3949.

Roommate needed immediately f o r h o u s e o ff P u l a s k i S t .

Screened porch, W/D. Only a 10 min. walk from Dwntn. Only $250/mo. Call (706) 548-9744 today!

Roommate needed in 4BR/2BA house located in Crawford, 15 mins. from Athens. Avail. now! $275/mo + 1/3 utils. CHAC, W/D. Call (706) 743-7060.

Share 2BR apt. w/ M student.

Walk/bike to UGA/5Pts/Dwntn. 2 blocks from busline. Swimming pool. W/D. DW, $375/mo. Incl. utils. Avail 8/1. (706) 410-5989.

Very nice room w/ lg. closet in a great house. HWflrs, WiFi, CHAC, W/D, DW, screened–in porch. No pets pls. Avail. now. $325/mo. + 1/3 utils. (706) 2542991.

Rooms for Rent Perfect situation for mature F professional or grad student who only needs a rm. & private BA in lovely home. Historic district. Refs. req’d. Shared kitchen. W/D, AC, WiFi. (706) 614-5223.

Room avail. for grad student in 2BR/1BA house. Fenced yd., dogs OK. $300/mo. Biking distance to UGA. Very quiet street. (706) 247-3487.

Spacious BR w/ private BA for rent in East Athens. Whitehall Village. $500/mo. includes cable, Internet, & W/D. Call w/ questions (678) 908-6826.

Spacious, furnished BR. Quiet, close to campus, kitchen, laundr y privileges. Shared BA, priv. entrance. No pets. M students only. $275/mo. incl. utils. (706) 353-0227. Avail. immediately!

30

FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ AUGUST 5, 2009

For Sale Appliances KitchenAid mixer for sale. 4 1/2 quarts., white, brand new in the box $250. 300 Watts. (706) 743-3473.

Businesses Great business in Winder. For sale due to death. Full kitchen, full bar, 7 top of the line pool tables! Price negotiable.(706) 255-5899.

Computers Brand new laptops & desktops.

Bad credit, no credit, no problem. Small wkly payments.

Order today & get free Nintendo Wii game system! Call now (800) 816-2232 (AAN CAN).

Flea Markets Recycled/Used Furniture, Antiques, Rugs, Home fur nishings & Collectibles Galore. 30+ vendors selling treasures, art, locally grown produce, & baked goods.

Outside tables avail. for rent.

790 Gaines School Rd. Wed–Sat 10am-5pm, Sun. 1pm-5pm.

Furniture Eat your veggies, don’t spend all your money, shop Mom’s Garage. Gently used furniture for frugal people. Sat. from 12 to 5pm and appts. Chase Park Warehouse on Tracy St. (706) 207-7855.

Pillowtop Queen Mattress set.

Never used. Still in factory plastic. $260. Full size mattress set. Never used. Still in factory plastic. $160. (706) 769-1959.

Delivery avail.

Tables, chairs, sofas, antiques, clothes, records & players, retro goods, & more! Cool, affordable furniture every day. Go to Agora! Your favorite everything store! 260 W. Clayton St., (706) 316-0130.

Miscellaneous Come to Betty for vintage quilted Chanel bags, just in for Summer! On the corner of Pulaski & Clayton, next to Agora.

Open 1–4 daily. (706) 424-0566.

Music Announcements Leaving town? Don’t know how to get your weekly Flagpole fix? Subscribe! $35 for 6 months, $55 for a yr.! Call (706) 549-9523.

Equipment Better than Ebay! Sell your goods locally without the shipping fees! Place your ads in the Flagpole Classifieds.

Awesome run–till–sold rate! 12 wks for only $36. Go to www. flagpole.com or call (706) 5490301.

Athens School of Music.

Instruction in Guitar, Bass, Drums, Piano, Voice, Brass, Woodwinds, Strings, Banjo, Mandolin, Fiddle, & more. From beginner to expert. Instrument repairs avail. (706) 543-5800.

Mural Painting. Residential, commercial, hand painted borders, & nurseries. Unbeatable prices! Quality guaranteed.

Call or email for estimate. (706) 961-3633 or scarborough_78@ hotmail.com.

Guitar lessons taught by UGA Doctoral guitar instructor.

All styles. 18 yrs. exp. Students have won several guitar competitions. 1st lesson free.

Composition/theory & bass lessons too. David Mitchell, ( 7 0 6 ) 5 4 6 - 7 0 8 2 o r w w w. mitchellmusicguitar.com.

Misc. Services

Music Services G u i t a r R e p a i r , setups, electronics & fretwork by 20 yr. pro. Thousands of previous clients. Proceeds help benefit N u ç i ’s S p a c e . C o n t a c t Jeff, (404) 643-9772 or www.

AthensGuitar.com for details.

F r e t S h o p . P ro f e s s i o n a l guitar repairs & modifications, setups, electronics, precision fretwork. Previous clients incl.

R.E.M., Widespread Panic, Cracker, Bob Mould, John B e r r y, A b b e y R o a d L i v e ! , Squat. (706) 549-1567.

Looking for a fun, classy alternative to the typical wedding band? If you are looking for “YMCA” than Squat is not your band. If you want Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, & salsa, then visit www.squatme.com/ weddings. (706) 548-0457.

Wedding Bands. Quality, professional bands. Weddings, parties. Rock, Jazz, etc. Call Classic City Entertainment. ( 7 0 6 ) 5 4 9 - 1 5 6 7 . w w w. classiccityentertainment.com.

Featuring The Magictones— Athens’ premiere wedding & party band. www.themagictones. com.

Services Cleaning Angles Cleaning Service. 12 yrs. experience house cleaning, Dependable, low rates! Space limited (706) 549-0059. Pls. lv. name & number.

Health Amazing poo breakthrough!

How would you like to get your health back & waistline too. Free trial offer. What have you got to lose? Visit www.Toxin-AwayColon-Cleanse.com.

Home and Garden Backyard Solutions.

Make your neighbors jealous!

Wa t e r f a l l s , p o n d s , f e n c e s , d e c k s , g a z e b o s , p o rc h e s , & more! Call Robin for free estimate! (706) 340-4492.

Instruction

B o rd e r s ! Print section of the Classifieds. Pictures!

Check them out on the Flagpole website. New C a t e g o r i e s ! To s a t i s f y Athens Classified Ad needs! All coming this August. And still the lowest rates in town, Flagpole Classifieds helping Athens keep your ear to the ground!

Affordable piano lessons from recent UGA graduate, Jenny Bailey. Conveniently located on the Eastside. Register today!

Visit www.lestostudio.com, Email info@lestostudio.com, call (706) 850-7580.

Experienced Tile Setter offering design, installation and repair services. Ceramic and natural stone. Floors, showers, backsplashs, etc.

Free estimates. (706) 6124144.

Piano for sale. Cable Nelson Spinet. Great condition. $500.

(706) 473-1275. Greensboro, GA.

Assigned parking spaces $ 2 0 0 / s e m e s t e r. S o u t h Thomas St., private lot, 1 block from Jackson St., UGA bus stops, & North Campus. (706) 548-9137, calls returned.

Jobs Full-time Hardcore Sales Reps Needed. Hourly + commission.

PT & FT positions avail. I need the best & forget the rest! Call Chris (770) 560-5653.

Multi-tasking assistant for busy plant nursery. Must enjoy outdoors, self motivated & have green thumbs. Apply at Thyme After Thyme, 550 Athens Rd., Winterville. Mon.–Fri. 9am–4pm only.

Dental Office Person needed for busy Athens practice. Ability to Multitask a must. Mon–Fri. Following on–the–job training, the right person will primarily perform dental assisting but also be asked to perform front office duties. B a c h e l o r s degree and min 3.5 GPA p re f e r re d . Must provide w o r k re f e re n c e s s h o w i n g long-ter m employment per job. Computer literate.

Great opportunity for a great e m p l o y e e . $ 1 5 / h r. d u r i n g training phase. Employer contributes 100% to retirement plan. Apply at DentalAthens@ gmail.com.

Blind Pig is now hiring experienced line cooks, servers, & hosts. Apply in person 485 Baldwin St. Marketing Communication S p e c i a l i s t . Join an est.

Athens company calling CEO’s & CFO’s of major corporations generating sales leads for technology companies. $9/hr.

BOS Staffing www.bostemps. com, (706) 353-3030.

Jobs Wanted 27 yr. old experienced Babysitter w/ education degree seeks PT childcare job. Weekends & evenings, also avail. for tutoring K–12. Call (678) 637-7465.

Opportunities $600 wk. potential. Helping the gov’t. PT. No exp., no selling.

Call (888) 213-5225 AD code L-5. Void in MD & SD. (AAN CAN).

Are you tired of businesses t h a t d o n ’t w o r k ? S e r i o u s entrepreneur? If you’re financially motivated, driven & want to excel in life call (800) 303-8159, pre–recorded msg, not MLM (AAN CAN).

Bodyguards wanted. Free tr ai ni ng f or m em ber s. No experience OK. Excellent $.

Full & part time. Expenses paid when you travel. (615) 2281701, www.psubodyguards.com (AAN CAN).

High School diploma! Fast, affordable & accredited. Free brochure. Call now! (800) 5326546. Ext. 97. Go to http://www. continentalacademy.com (AAN CAN).

Part-time Mystery shoppers earn up t o $ 1 0 0 / d a y. U n d e r c o v e r shoppers needed to judge retail & dining establishments.

No exp. req’d. (800) 7438535.

Barberitos seeks outgoing individual to dress up as giant Pepper. Must be energetic, dependable, punctual. Avail. on nights/weekends/game d a y s . A b i l i t y t o g e t o n e ’s groove on a +. $20/hr. (706) 316-3344.

Inoko Express is looking for chefs. Apply in person from 2–4pm at Inoko Express, 3190 Atlanta Hwy. (706) 4258828.

Project Safe seeks 2 PT Sales Associates for Eastside Re-sale shop opening in Sept. EOE. Send cover letter/ resume to PO Box 7532, Athens 30604. No ph. calls pls.

Vehicles Autos 1985 MB 300D, 268, XXX miles. Bombproof. Daily driver. PW/Pl/sunroof. Run anything combustible. New Greasecar kit, w/ 13-gallon tank. Free WVO everywhere! $2750 neg. (706) 621-0135.

2005 Honda Civic LX for sale.

71K mi. Auto, CD player. In excellent condition. Price: $9500. Call Judith (706) 2078755.

Notices Messages Hairstylist Jason Peckham, formerly of Fantastic Sam’s, has returned to Strand Hair Studio in 5 Pts. Now avail. for appointments! Reach him there at (706) 5498074.

Mulefest 2009 is seeking ar tists or vendors that are i n t e re s t e d i n p a r t i c i p a t i n g in the upcoming festival, 8/21–8/23. Please contact info@muletrainrecords.com.

Organizations Adver tise your business in 111 alternative newspapers like this one. Over 6 million circulation ever y wk. for $1200. No adult ads. Call Rick at (202) 289-8484 (AAN CAN).

B e l l A c re s N u d i s t R e s o r t .

4 5 m i n . f ro m A t h e n s . C a l l (800) 432-1436 or visit www. bellacres.com.

Personals Pregnant? Considering a d o p t i o n ? Ta l k w / c a r i n g agency specializing in matching birthmothers w/ families nationwide.

Living expenses paid. Call 24/7 Abby’s One True Gift Adoptions (866) 413-6293 (AAN CAN).

Pets Bird, Reptile, Exotic, Small Mammal & Special needs pet sitting from knowledgeable & experienced sitters. Dog & cat sitting also avail. Salina (706) 621-3091, Justin (706) 621-3309.

everyday people LaWanda Laster, House Mom—Toppers LaWanda Laster has a big family. Sure, she only has three biological children (and two soon-to-be step-children), but she also counts over 30 women at the Toppers International Showbar as her sisters—women who can either be called strippers or entertainers, depending on your appetite for political correctness. Engaged to the son of the club’s owner, LaWanda has been working for her future in-laws for the past eight years, and except for an eye-opening year in Detroit, she has lived in Athens her whole life.

Anya Rice

Flagpole: What does a house mom do?

LaWanda Laster: A house mom consists of a lot of things.

Scheduling, supplies, whatever the girls need. It’s two of us, myself and Kelly Gardner…throughout the night, they get hungry, so we try to keep snacks so they won’t have to keep going to the store and getting their own. And it keeps them from leaving the building. So, basically I just tend to the girls… I look at a lot of ’em as my sisters. …We try to mediate situations, because dealing with 30-plus girls, there’s a lot of different personalities, so a lot of the personalities do clash… we have to be the one that gives them the level head. In this kind of business, people tend to drink, a lot of emotions come out… some of ’em like to get stuff off their chest, like family problems, or the stuff at home with their kids, and we’re just here to listen. …You wanna be someone they can look up to. I always tell the girls all the time that, “Don’t think that just because you’re in this business that you’re less than what you wanna be or what you should be. You should never feel like you’re below anybody, because this is a job… this is how you make a living, this is how you raise your kids, and so what, you take your clothes off? You don’t get fully nude. You don’t grind on guys or perform any sexual acts…what makes you feel like you’re less than what you should be?”

FP: The ones with kids, do they tell them what they do?

LL: Their kids don’t know what they do.

FP: None of them?

LL: Nuh-uh. Their life here is not their life outside here.

Their life outside of here is just an everyday person.

FP: Do think it’s a social stigma of being a stripper that keeps them quiet about it?

LL: It’s definitely a social stigma thing… I’ll give you an example. College girls come in here a lot… they point, they laugh, they whisper, they might even sit at the stage and not even tip—when you’re at the stage, you have to tip. College girls always come in here and turn their nose up at everybody here.

FP: Are there any similarities between being a real mom and being a house mom?

LL: There’s a lot of similarities as far as attention… as a parent sometimes you have to tell your child more than one time to do or don’t do something. And you have to do that here. You’re repeating yourself about certain rules that we have… but I love it. I love being a mom; I love being here. I wouldn’t change it for nothin’, really.

FP: What would you say is the age range of the girls that work here?

LL: Our oldest one is probably a little over 30.

FP: Besides money, what’s the best thing that one could offer the girls here?

LL: Conversation.

FP: What if you didn’t have any money, but still offered conversation?

LL: That’s kinda hard to say.

FP: How has the economic situation affected things here?

LL: With the economy being the way it is, you’d be surprised at who has even come into audition or who has inquired about working in a strip club, only because the economy is really bad… And I kid you not, no matter how bad the economy is, you’ll still have money to go to a strip club.

FP: What’s the best drink you can get at Toppers?

LL: I don’t know… I’ll tell what we all drink is O-Bombs… it’s a Bacardi and Red Bull.

FP: How did you get into this job?

LL: I’ve been working for this family for eight years… my fiancé, we’ve been together for eight years.

Him, his brother and his mom are the owners. I started off working for them as a waitress at Jersey’s. I moved from Jersey’s to Insomnia as a bar manager, then I moved from Insomnia to Toppers.* FP: How has Athens changed since you were a kid?

LL: It hasn’t. Athens is still behind time.

FP: Behind time?

LL: That’s my slogan for Athens… the reason I say “behind time” is because typically, just because I am an African American… they tend to stick to what they know instead of branching out. Meaning: before I moved to Detroit, before I met Dwayne or whatever, I didn’t know nothing. Hardly anything. I didn’t eat any different kind of food, I was a big McDonald’s fan; if you took me on a date, you could take me to McDonald’s and I’d be happy, you know what I mean? So, I feel like a lot of people here are like that because they haven’t went anywhere. They haven’t seen anything else. They haven’t experienced anything else.

FP: Do your kids know that you work here?

LL: Mm-hmm. They don’t know exactly what I do…

FP: What do you tell them?

LL: They know that it’s a club. They don’t know what kind of club. They know that daddy owns clubs… but you know what? It’s not something that I would keep from my kids… because it’s what makes [us] a living, [gives] them shoes and clothes and food in their stomachs. So, when the time is right, and they actually ask me exactly what it is, I’ll tell them.

this week on the miller lite stage at the wing!

8.6 • thursdays

justin brogdon 8.7 • friday night rocks

big don band 8.8 • saturday

live music with paul lombard 8.9 • sunday

team trivia!

8.10 • mondays

food & bev night 8.11 • 2 fer tuesday wing night

& karaoke night

312 E. Washington Street 706-227-WING (9464) wildwingcafe.com

WUGA C the lassic

91.7

97.9fm

Jeff Gore *Jersey’s Sports Bar and Grill closed in early 2003. Insomnia, a no-alcohol dance club that featured a controversial 5 a.m. closing time, closed for good in 2007. Level 131 now occupies the location.

AUGUST 5, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM

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