INDY Week 12.30.15 by Indy Week

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be bad, be good

or both?

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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2015

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DURHAM RALEIGH • CHAPEL • CARYHILL• •INDYweek.com INDYweek.com• •DECEMBER AUGUST 12, 30,2015 2015 •• 333

INSIDE NEWS & COLUMNS

VOLUME 32 NUMBER 52

FILM REVIEW: Tarantino teeters on selfparody in The Hateful Eight

BACK TALK: Readers sound off on the little people behind the eggnog, why shit holes are good enough for jail inmates and more

CALENDARS & EVENTS

PERIPHERAL VISION: Selfie incrimination

CITIZEN: Will Pat McCrory be re-elected?

(The answer is no.)

A R T S , C U LT U R E , F O O D & M U S I C 16

FOOD: After nine years of food, drinks and music, Carrboro’s Southern Rail is at the end of its line

WHERE WE’LL BE: The best arts and

culture events of the week 30

MUSIC CALENDAR

ARTS CALENDAR

FILM CALENDAR

MUSIC: The unlikely intersection of Dex

Romweber’s raucous rock and John Dee Holeman’s soulful blues

We resolve to … Our resolutions for the year to come—to be good, to be bad, to be both

Bright and bubbly C. Grace’s Matt Bettinger shares two Champagne-based drinks for your New Year’s needs

The INDY’s Act Now and Food/Farmers Markets calendars can be found at indyweek.com.

2015: The year in pictures Our photographers’ favorite images from an eventful year

MUSIC: A Chapel Hill puppeteer teams up

with The Beast for a new interpretation of the story of Pinnochio 26

F E AT U R E S

Enough isn’t enough

Matthew Bettinger at C. Grace PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

In 2016, local theater should resolve to solve longstanding marketing issues By Byron Woods

On the cover: PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE The INDY’s Act Now and Food/Farmers Markets calendars can be found at indyweek.com.

The INDY’S GUIDE to ALL THINGS TRIANGLE

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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Raleigh Cary Durham Chapel Hill A ZM INDY, INC. COMPANY PUBLISHER Susan Harper

EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jeffrey C. Billman MANAGING+MUSIC EDITOR

Grayson Haver Currin

Learn to code. Life’s too short for the wrong career.

ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Brian Howe STAFF WRITERS

David Hudnall, Jane Porter

CALENDAR EDITOR Allison Hussey COPY EDITOR David Klein STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS

Alex Boerner, Jeremy M. Lange OPINION Bob Geary THEATER AND DANCE COLUMNIST Byron Woods VISUAL ART COLUMNIST Chris Vitiello CHIEF CONTRIBUTORS

T H E I R O N YA R D . C O M G I V E U S A C A L L : 8 5 5 . 3 9 9. 2 2 7 5

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back talk

eigh y ham pel Hill Everyday hero

I wanted to take an opportunity to tell you how much I enjoyed your article (“Dairy Christmas,” Dec. 16). It was written eloquently. I would ask for you to do another article on all the gentlemen, man and especially about Roger Nutter and Bob Nutter’s partner, Mike Strowd. owe He is the man behind the scenes who spends most of his time, hard work and puts his whole heart into taking care of the ey cows so that eggnog, chocolate milk and ice cream can be made and enjoyed. He e and all the men who work around the clock in hot and extremely cold weather to care n Woods for the cattle from the newborn calves to iello the older cows that were born and bred at Maple View Farm. Klein, sey, In just the past year they had a cow, eil Morris, Princess Nip, that was classified as a eed, Schram, 95-point cow and is just one in 20 in the United States that was born and bred and was classified as a 95-point cow. Let me try to explain the classification: Cows can be more scored on various aspects from their type, stature, etc., similar to a beauty contest. illiams This cow is the first for Maple View Farm

and truly one of many contributors of the milk used to make the delicious eggnog. I was so glad to read of all the hardworking employees of the Maple View Creamery and people who are not seen behind the scenes. But Mike Strowd really contributes to making sure that the creamery obtains the milk and cares for the cows, to keep them healthy and happy. Please let people know of Mr. Strowd’s and his fellow farm employees’ hard work and tenderness for the cows that produce the tasty milk. Bonnie Ledford

Shit holes are good enough

As one who has been a victim of robbery four times and has had a brother spend six months in a jail in Virginia, I appreciate the job the sheriff’s office is doing to make things unpleasant in the county jail (“Insult and injury,” Dec. 16). As a contractor, I have been a visitor in multiple facilities and can assure you that the Durham facility is not special; the inmates are not being treated any different than any other jail. They are all shit holes. Filthy, unkempt cells, verbal abuse, a lack of salt and

The Enclave

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Last chance to see!

Richard Mosse

On view through January 10, 2016

2001 Campus Drive, Durham I nasher.duke.edu/mosse

Richard Mosse, Safe From Harm, a member of Mai Mai Yakutumba in a scene from The Enclave showing a simulated battle sequence performed by this rebel group in Fizi, South Kivu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 2012. © Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. The presentation of Richard Mosse: The Enclave at the Nasher Museum is made possible by Trent Carmichael, Katie Thorpe Kerr and Terrance I. R. Kerr, Lisa Lowenthal Pruzan and Jonathan Pruzan, Caroline and Arthur Rogers, and Gail M.D. Belvett.

pepper, dirty showers and poor heat all are part of the jail experience. It’s too bad the INDY feels the need to give the protesters a voice. How about asking the robbery victim of Ms. Fox’s son how they feel about the jail conditions? I am certain they would have no pity either. No Pity, via indyweek.com

Corporate ass bags

We’ve got to get rid of these GOP corporate-owned ass bags (“Counting to four,” Dec. 16). They are selling this state out to polluters and looters. The people are no longer represented in this state. The GOP has made this a one-party rule, and absolute power in the hands of crooks is unimaginable. Tony D, via indyweek.com

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

you need Jeb! (!) or someone else equally lackluster and pointless to secure the R nomination, which doesn’t look likely at this point. ProudlyUnaffiliated, via indyweek.com

Underestimate the problem

Actually, this report significantly understates the non-competitiveness of legislative elections (“Nearly half of all state legislative races will not be competitive this election cycle,” Dec. 22). Common Cause has defined “noncompetitive” as an election won by more than 10 percentage points. By that measure, close to 90 percent of the 170 legislative elections in 2012 were non-competitive. Lee Mortimer, via indyweek.com

Check back with us in a year

A lot of what happens will depend on the top of the ticket (“Counting to four”). If Hillary is the Democratic presidential candidate (of course she will be, you better be Ready For Hillary!) and the Republican candidate excites the base, then the Rs will hold these seats. For the Ds to have a shot,

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news

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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PERIPHERAL VISIONS • V.C. ROGERS

citiz

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“a tour de force performer and powerful writer” –Chicago Sun Times

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citizen

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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PREDICTION: MCCRORY’S TOAST

Unless, that is, voters overlook his sundry scandals and overall fecklessness BY BOB GEARY

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t’s now or never to make that year-ahead prediction: Will Gov. Pat McCrory be re-elected in 2016? Or will he be the first North Carolina governor ever to seek reelection and fail? So much is riding on the outcome. Republicans have cemented their hold on the General Assembly via gerrymandered election districts and on the state Supreme Court via a controversial new “retention elections” law, which prevents any Democrat from even running in 2016. A McCrory win would therefore leave the GOP in total command of the three branches of state government. The only way the Democrats will get a say is by knocking out McCrory while also winning enough legislative seats to uphold gubernatorial vetoes by his Democratic replacement, either Attorney General Roy Cooper or Durham attorney Ken Spaulding. For months, the likely race between McCrory and Cooper has been a dead heat, according to Public Policy Polling, with multiple lead changes and neither candidate ahead by much. In December, McCrory led 44–42 percent. From this, I deduce that McCrory’s fate will not be determined by what he’s done— or not done—on major issues. After a 2012 campaign in which he presented himself as a moderate, McCrory signed on for the full rightwing Republican agenda of tax cuts for corporations and the rich, cutbacks to the UNC system and K–12 public schools, privatization of key public services including Medicaid, rejection of federal funds for Medicaid expansion, sharp reductions in unemployment benefits for workers who lose their jobs, more curbs on voting rights and abandoning all pretense of environmental protection. From a progressive standpoint, his record is a disaster made worse—for McCrory’s purposes—by the fact that he’s so often been a hapless bystander when Republican bills were speeding to enactment. But let’s face it. For every voter who

thinks Republican policies are killing the state, there’s another who thinks the opposite—and who believes that a governor who does nothing is doing what he ought to do. The battles in Raleigh, moreover, have been epic since McCrory arrived in town. So it’s not like, on the big issues, the voters don’t have all the information they’ll ever want before choosing sides. So will the governor’s race be a coin flip? I don’t think so. And I don’t think turnout will decide it, either, because with polarizing presidential candidates on the ballot, turnout will be high on both sides. What will make the difference, I predict, are the host of small scandals and brewing screw-ups that surround McCrory. They will mark him, finally, as the kind of corrupt, Republican-establishment traitor so despised by the angry tea-party crowds backing Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Corrupt and—in Trump lingo—lowenergy. Plus, “stupid.” Which scandals do I mean? There’s a long list, but I’ll mention five: THE SIDE CONVERSATION. McCrory convened a private meeting in Charlotte that led, according to official memos unearthed by The News & Observer, to McCrory contributor Graeme Keith’s company retaining a lucrative contract to clean prisons, over the objections of prison officials. Keith is quoted as asking for “something in return” for his campaign cash. McCrory claims he didn’t hear him because he was talking to someone else at the time. SERVICES GALORE. McCrory’s Department of Health and Human Services has thrown so much money at no-bid contracts and inflated salaries for Republican cronies—with such dubious results—that U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker has opened an investigation. VOUCH FOR WHAT? Under the voucher plan signed by McCrory, the state is sending checks worth millions of dollars to private “schools” that barely merit the name. Veteran state Rep. Leo Daughtry,

R-Smithfield, visited one in his district. “It’s in the back of a church, and it has like 10 or 12 students. And one teacher. Or one and a half,” Daughtry told a legislative committee. “[It] didn’t seem to be a school that we would want to send taxpayer dollars to.” WHO, ME? Under a $650 million contract with the state, a private company has begun adding toll lanes to I-77 north of Charlotte. Toll lanes it will own. Whatever you think of this idea, vast numbers of suburban Republicans in North Mecklenburg and Iredell counties think it’s corrupt. They’re demanding that McCrory put a stop to it. McCrory’s position? He let it start, and now says it’s too late to turn back. TROUBLED WATERS. Pollution threatens Jordan Lake in Chatham County, the source of a lot of the Triangle’s drinking water. The state spent years developing a plan to attack the problem. But under McCrory, to the delight of lake-adjacent developers, the plan was pushed aside. Instead, the McCrory administration paid $2 million to a company to rent 36 floating “water mixers” for a tiny portion of the lake. After a year, the whirligigs don’t seem to be helping—hardly a surprise! In sum: Crony contracts. Taxpayers get the shaft with a weak governor who either doesn’t know what’s going on or is looking the other way. And to make these points, a primary opponent is challenging the governor: former state Rep. Robert Brawley of Iredell County, who came out of the gate hammering McCrory over the I-77 contract. Most voters are locked in as far as the big issues go—or they’ve tuned them out. But for the 10–15 percent who are undecided now and probably will be until the end, the small stuff—and the venality of it—will decide the race against the incumbent. McCrory, as Trump would say, will be fired. p Bob Geary is an INDY columnist. Email him at rjgeary@mac.com.

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DECEMBER 23, 2015

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I res

Our commitments to making 2016 a better year—for our state, our region and ourselves

nother New Year is upon us, and with it the opportunity to wash the stain of the year’s mistakes off our skin, to rectify all of the various things we’ve screwed up, to chart a different course: eat better, exercise, drink less, don’t be a dick. Or, you know, pretend to, until we decide that shit is just too hard. Resolutions are usually ephemeral things, but we make them anyway. And once in a blue moon, they actually stick—and when that happens, this bizarre annual ritual can almost seem worthwhile. For this, our last issue of 2015, we wanted to share with you our resolutions for the year to come—both for ourselves and for our community. These are broken up into two rather arbitrary categories: good and bad. Good, because we want to take care of ourselves and the cities we call home. Bad, because life is meaningless if it’s not fun. So here you go. Stay safe this weekend—New Year’s Eve is the most amateur of amateur hours, after all—and we’ll catch you on the other side.

PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE • ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS

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INDYweek.com

BE GOOD

I resolve to: Get off my ass In seventh grade, my unpromising career as an athlete came to an abrupt end when I tripped over a soccer ball and sustained the kind of broken forearm where the bone juts up at an almost right angle. This pretty much crushed the “no pain, no gain” mantra for me, and since then, when it comes to exercise, I’m of the European persuasion that says less is more. Walk to work. Take the stairs. Swim in the ocean at the beach. Go ahead and have a glass of wine and high-five yourself for participating in life. But I’m pushing 30 now, and it seems that dancing at the Royal James until 2 a.m. a couple of times a month does no longer a reasonable fitness routine make. I’m going to have to find some other ways to shake the -itis out of my bones and raise my heart rate that don’t actually require intense physical exertion. I live just across from Cirque de Vol Studios on Hargett Street in Raleigh, and every evening I see adults in colorful attire flying around on trapezes, walking on stilts or dancing and practicing yoga while suspended in the air from hoops and sashes. The studio’s website urges you to escape the “monotonous and limited confines of the weight room” for a “low-impact, full-body workout,” a perfect summation of my philosophical approach to fitness. I can train to be a circus performer or an aerial dancer; throw in a dash of what looks like hula-hooping parties, sounds like drum circles and is rumored to be naked yoga, and I’m so there. Sign me up for everything. These people get me. I will need a backup plan, however, for the days I’m not feeling the hippie-dippiness of Cirque de Vol. Enter Lap it Up in Durham, the indoor dog-and-activity training center. OK, so this one isn’t so much for myself as it is for my pit bull mix, Bosco. Bosco has grown bored of our jaunts about Lake Johnston, and of our very light jogs/ fast walks around downtown. He needs to work on his agility and his manners, so the boot camp, hoop-jumping, tunnel diving and swimming classes that Lap It Up offers are exactly what Bosco is looking for. And if I want to get in on the action, there are group activities in which we can play hide-and-seek, round robin and whatever track zoom is together. I will be purchasing the daytime activity pass. For Bosco. Now, for all that’s great about trying new things, I think there’s also a lot of value in getting back to your roots. For me, that’s dancing, and not just at Royal James. After the soccer ball incident, I turned to ballet to fill my days as a highly organized middle schooler. Even now, jazz dance helps me when I’m feeling down. I want to try something new in the realm of the movement arts—and also, one day, to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Why not get some exercise while working toward my goals? Like any great city, Raleigh has a school of Irish dance called Inis Cairde, which offers beginners Irish dance classes on Thursday evenings. I can’t think of a more worthwhile goal

for the year than to learn how to riverdance. My exercise resolutions may not be for everyone, but generally, the Triangle offers tons of ways to move for the non-physically inclined. Just in Raleigh, you could join one of the many, many intramural sports/beer-drinking teams (kickball is especially popular). Or sign on to the rockclimbing meetup or go on some group bike rides. Or visit one of the myriad yoga studios. Or explore the 114 miles of the greenway system with your bike, your dog or yourself. Whichever mode you choose, you’ll be doing you a favor in 2016. Go ahead and give yourself a high-five for participating. —Jane Porter

I resolve to: Never drive to work again For the last three years, my primary mode of transportation between my home in Raleigh and my office in Durham has been GoTriangle’s commendably trustworthy Durham Express. Door to door, the trip takes exactly 50 minutes, free Wi-Fi included. When I tell people this, they often seem mystified or concerned, as if I’ve relinquished my inalienable right to cart my own ass around. Actually, I think I’ve gained something. My primary motivation for taking the bus has always been selfish: I do not trust groggy, distracted commuters driving themselves to work. They are accidents waiting to happen. Who knows how much they’ve slept, let alone how they intend to navigate traffic while eating breakfast, applying makeup or shaving stubble and sending a text message. Instead, when I slide my cash into the meter each morning, I get the feeling

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DECEMBER 23, 2015

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that I am paying for a professional service, for a driver who will do his or her best to steer me clear of a Bojangle’seating, Odyssey-driving interstate cannonball. I am paying my way out of an untenable situation. Still, at least once a week, I drive myself to work, using the family car that remains to get myself into the office early or back home after the bus has stopped running. But this isn’t enough. By giving myself the option of driving to work when it seems necessary, I’m giving myself permission to be too good, too busy and too special for public transportation. I’m allowing my schedule to supersede a system that needs riders, revenue and warm bodies on every route more than lip service from those who demand “better mass transit” without ever seeming to use it. (I see you down there, in that Prius.) So, next year, I’ll do my best not to drive to work at all. In some cases, it may be hugely inconvenient, but in most cases, it will simply mean more planning and perhaps more time spent beneath city-owned shelters. Once I’m on board, however, I can eat, drink, browse, sleep and daydream, high above a pack of commuters I can see doing all the same things. —Grayson Haver Currin

I resolve to: Never pay for parking (and apply other poor-man’s life hacks) Apart from a buffet of emotional and psychological issues we will not unpack at this time, the pointiest thorns in my side on a day-to-day basis are money and health. That is, I don’t have very much money (I am a print journalist), and I am not as healthy as I would like to be—I resist strenuous exercise and feel entitled to sweet, delicious treats following most meals.

INDYweek.com Every year I have some new plan to combat these problems. In retrospect, failure always seems built into the DNA of the idea. Treadmill desk. Tutoring. P90x. Coding school. Meatless Mondays. Drinking slightly less. Crazy things like that. This year, resolution season roughly coincides with a geographic relocation for me. I’m new here—new to the INDY, new to Durham, new to the South. I live alone in a one-bedroom apartment. I’m single. I know few people in the Triangle outside of my co-workers and those I talk to in my capacity as a reporter. I’m not drawing faces on volleyballs just yet, but it’s fair to say my world is pretty small at the moment. Which means I’ve got a) time to think about self-improvement, and b) time to actually implement it into my life. A truly terrifying prospect. Recently, though, I hit on an idea whereby I have been able to chip away at both issues—my meager finances and my sedentary lifestyle—through one act. And I suspect the theory behind it might be applicable to other areas of my life in 2016. Allow me to explain. I work in downtown Durham. The INDY has access to a parking garage around the corner from the office, but it costs something like $70 per month. I would rather eat a pinecone for breakfast every morning than pay that amount of money for parking. I realize it’s not even that much money. But I was raised Catholic in the Midwest. There’s no New Year’s resolution on God’s green earth that will ever change the fact that I am willing to suffer irrationally to avoid spending money. As a result, I have become rather wellacquainted with the nuances of street parking. Within about a two-block radius of the INDY offices (Main and Corcoran), you can park free for an hour. Go another few blocks out, and you can park free for two hours. Travel to the real fringes of downtown, though, and there’s no time limit. This is what I do. This is who I am. Well, it turns out that I kind of enjoy the walk to and from the office. And it’s exercise—20 minutes of walking every day—I wouldn’t otherwise be getting. I have turned a weakness (cheapness) into a strength (fitness). In what other areas of my life could I be practicing this poor-man’s voodoo? Food is one. Several nights a week, I sit around for far too long trying to think of places to get dinner that don’t serve tacos or pizza. I just want something kind of healthy. And yet I usually end up spending $12 or $15 on tacos or pizza—or if I’m feeling adventurous, Chipotle or Indian food. It would be nice if healthy food were cheap and easy to make. Then I could just train myself to like cauliflower, and voilà, another beautiful convergence of cost savings and health-positive living. But we live in a rotten, perverse society, where a Snickers bar is cheaper than a sweet potato. So creativity is required. The other night, I cooked up some beans, rice and two eggs. It took me so long that I was extremely hungry by the end. As a result, I devoured the meal. An ordinary person would have found the contents of my plate bland and visually unimpressive. But for me, it was about as satisfying as the pepperoni-jalapeno-pineapple pie I almost ordered. Cheap and healthy. No guilt.

So that’s a possible avenue moving forward: Starve myself and then eat like a prison inmate. It reminds me of something I once heard my uncle say about never getting premium gasoline at the pump. “Unleaded is fine,” he said. “Don’t let your car know it can do any better.” A preposterous thing to say. But I am beginning to understand what he meant. —David Hudnall

I resolve to: Say no When we talk about taking care of ourselves, most of us mean it in the physical sense: eating right, exercising, staying clean and well groomed. What we rarely consider, though, is our emotional and psychological self-care. Merely existing is exhausting, with balancing work and financial security with family and social lives. Everyone’s always asking you for something: File this report! Rent is due! What are we having for dinner? Hey buddy, let’s hang out this weekend! These stacks of demands can lead to our selfpreservation falling by the wayside. You say yes to every invitation and request because you don’t want to disappoint anyone or miss out on any fun. But in your efforts to have all the fun, you spread yourself too thin and have no fun whatsoever. You end up tired, grumpy and a general drag to be around. One small, simple word can turn this around, though: no. If you don’t want

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DECEMBER 23, 2015

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to go to your old college roommate’s boyfriend’s birthday party after an exhausting week at work, say so. Do it with pride. You don’t even need to give an excuse. Don some pj’s, pour a glass of wine, crank up a Netflix marathon and pass out by 8:30 p.m. Delight in the sensation of a stressfree, full night of sleep, and wake up feeling like a whole human again. If people give you grief about it, cut them loose from your life—anyone worth keeping around will understand that you can’t come to every party. Learning to say no seems like an obvious solution, but I’ve been surprised by the number of friends who’ve had the same revelation. The steps you take to protect your mental health don’t have to be big. Even removing social media apps from your phone can cut down on the needling, moment-to-moment distractions that make you feel like you’re missing out. If you can swing it, seeing a therapist can be immensely helpful, too. Even if you don’t feel like anything’s going seriously wrong in your life, having a neutral party who can help you sort out your thoughts does more good than you might think. And if shit does hit the fan at some point, you’ve got rapport with a professional who can help you clean up the mess. There are plenty of other ways to take care of your inner self: see a movie or a concert by yourself, take a class on yoga or meditation, read up on mindfulness practices or, even better, carve out the time to do something that you and you alone will love. It’ll make a world of difference in less time than you’d think. — Allison Hussey

I resolve to: Eat local In 2016, I resolve to become a locavore. You said the same thing eight years ago, right? In November 2007, the New Oxford American Dictionary named “locavore” (one who primarily eats locally produced food) its word of the year. And like wooly sheep, we all flocked to the farmers market. But it didn’t last. Bad news: A quarter of us abandon our New Year’s resolutions within a couple of weeks. “Locavore” fluttered around the food blogosphere—and then we all went back to Walmart. Good news: As we approach another New Year, there are more reasons than ever to eat local. Let’s hit the top three. First: flavor. This is why chef Sean Brock exclusively sources ingredients south of the Mason-Dixon line for his two Husk restaurants, in Charleston and Nashville. “The ingredients that thrive in your part of the world are the ingredients that you should seek out,” he writes in his best-selling cookbook, Heritage. “The rest will fall into place.” Second: economy. Seasonal cooking is cost-effective cooking. Think of it this way: If you live in Raleigh, would you rather commute to Durham or Orlando? Your watery, wintery tomatoes have the same answer. Out-of-season produce takes a pricey trip to reach you, whereas seasonal foods are not only at the peak of their supply, they come from just around the corner.

INDYweek.com Third: creativity. Head to the farmers market in the dead of winter—heck, head there right now—and you’ll see what I mean. There isn’t much to work with. Think of this as upping the ante on the locavore challenge. For inspiration, look to Magnus Nilsson, who runs the globally acclaimed Fäviken in frozen Järpen, Sweden. Because fresh ingredients are rarely available, he pickles and preserves just about everything. “In a way,” he says, “it’s kind of about defeating the seasons.” The list goes on. As Mark Bittman puts it in his conscious eating manifesto, Food Matters: “Eating locally has many more positives than negatives.” But those “negatives” are why we all cave two weeks into January, like when we buy those tasteless tomatoes because we saw Ina Garten making a Caprese salad on The Food Network. This year, then, I’m strategizing my resolution in anticipation of weak moments. But I don’t know what’s in season right now, you say. Head to the farmers market. The big ones in the area (State Farmers Market in Raleigh, Durham Farmers Market, Carrboro Farmers Market) are open year-round, albeit select days of the week. To resist tomato temptation until summer, pet, smell and sample everything in sight. But I don’t have time to go to the farmers market! Sure, who does? Sign up for a CSA instead and have local produce delivered right to your door. Most farms offer a program via website or phone. Coon Rock Farm in Hillsborough, for instance, has various options: winter produce, summer produce and meat. But I don’t have time to cook my own food! OK, OK. Head to a locally sourced restaurant instead. You can’t go wrong at Mandolin in Raleigh, Saltbox in Durham or Lantern in Chapel Hill. See? No more excuses. And only 365 days to go. —Emma Laperruque

I resolve to: Unplug My first extended thought this morning was certainly a strange one: “DO NOT CALL STRANGERS BY PET NAMES.” Just before dawn, that is the sentence I pondered and attempted to parse, rolling it around in my mind (and even whispering it aloud at least once, I must admit) as I stumbled around my bedroom, wiping the sleep from my eyes. Who would do such a thing, I wondered? In what context? What even qualifies as a pet name? And what had prompted a bar and restaurant owner I’d known for a decade to proclaim such an edict through Facebook five hours earlier, sometime just after midnight? But most important, why the fuck had I spent the first 10 minutes of my day analyzing her ultimatum, wandering around my house lost in thought about this very important issue until, at last, I pulled back the shower’s hotwater handle and broke the reverie? The answer, of course, is because

smartphones and social media have only exacerbated our very modern, post-industrial fear of missing out—FOMO, if you like. Each morning, before I’ve had the coffee necessary to jump-start my own life, I open the apps that tell me what’s been going on in other people’s certainly more exciting lives while I’ve been asleep. Where did they party? What bands did they see? What did they eat? Where are they traveling? What are their hottest takes? What are their best jokes? Somehow, this morning, “DO NOT CALL STRANGERS BY PET NAMES”—a policy that seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, because there’s no way people actually do that, right?—is what lodged in my mind. That’s not digital exhaustion; that’s digital distraction, a syndrome in which a constant stream of other people’s thoughts, desires and complete nonsense needlessly divert my own attention from, well, everything else. Next year, then, I resolve not only to fear missing out a lot less, but to do it by rerouting my gaze—away from the screens at which I get paid to stare for a beyond-sufficient span of the day, anyway, and at objects that don’t make me jealous of what I don’t have or things I’m not doing. No, I’m not giving up on the Internet, smartphones, Twitter, Facebook or the like; I just want to be more judicious in my consumption of it all, in hope of allowing it to affect my self-perception and attention span a whole lot less. This resolution is something of a personal umbrella initiative, or an overarching and ambitious ideal that I hope to achieve through a multitude of smaller, more manageable steps. Years ago, for instance, a friend gifted me a copy of Great Lives, an anthology of the “best obituaries from the last 100 years” published in the British newspaper The Times. It’s always struck me as a great

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learning resource, a chance to brush up on the biographies of some of the century’s most meaningful figures. Still, the 672-page volume has sat undisturbed on a library shelf since its arrival. And so, next year, I aim to read at least two entries per day until I’m done. (And, no, not on a Kindle or an iPad, especially since a mounting body of research suggests we retain more information from the printed page than the digital simulacrum.) Surely, there’s more there to reflect upon than an acquaintance’s status update. And, as difficult as it seems now, I want to stop looking at screens when I should be looking at people during a conversation. I’m not sure when it became acceptable for me (or sorry, for almost all of you, too) to gaze at a display while speaking to someone else, as though a face mattered less than the tweets streaming down some timeline. Sleep excepted, the one time each day in which I’m really able to step away from the inundation of social media streams is while running. Whether it’s for 30 minutes or three hours, I don’t look at my phone at all. I focus on the trail ahead, and I listen to the cars or birds or quiet around me, plus the sound of my own breath and feet (and less so these days, music.) It is a wonderfully blank mental state in which to linger. I am free to accept most any input because I’m not actively directing my attention toward anything; my mind is empty but open. Absent the ever-present glow of an always-scrolling screen, where I’m always worrying about what everyone else might be saying, finding that feeling more than once a day should be a little easier. I’d hate to miss out on that opportunity. —Grayson Haver Currin

BE BAD

I resolve to: Abolish the ABC We’ve all been there. It’s Sunday morning, kickoff is a couple hours away, and you’re busy collecting the necessities from the local corner store. You’re reaching for your wallet at the register, 12-pack in tow, and the cashier freezes. “Sorry, sir, we can’t sell alcohol until noon,” he offers sheepishly. The cashier’s embarrassed. You’re embarrassed. Matter of fact, the only ones who don’t seem embarrassed by this silly, ecclesiastical overreach are the North Carolina lawmakers who, year after year, overlook North Carolina’s paternalistic Sunday drinking laws, the “blue laws” designed to direct your ass to church, not brunch. (In a more just world, you could buy beer at church, which might make the whole thing more entertaining.) More than that, though, it’s positively confounding that outdated local ABC commissions—long dogged by allegations of wasteful spending and cronyism—endure in a GOP-dominated climate of privatization. Experts estimate the state could reap yearly tax benefits, as well as a massive one-time windfall of somewhere between $300 million and $700 million, if it abandoned this antiquated setup. The chief opponents, Christian-based organizations that haven’t entirely let go of that Prohibition thing, contend underage drinking and liquor advertising would drown our state in a pool of Jägermeister. We’ve had this conversation many times in North Carolina. Back in 2009, Gov. Bev Perdue toyed with the idea to address state budget shortfalls, but eventually backed off. Before his election, Gov. Pat McCrory raved about ending cronyism in local ABC boards, but that, like many of McCrory’s stump speeches, is a forgotten point in 2015. Indeed, it seems inevitable that liquor sales will eventually be privatized in North Carolina—if not statewide, then at least locally. Some reformers have proposed giving local ABC boards the power to issue private contracts. Yet every year it seems lawmakers lack the backbone or the initiative to buck the Bible-thumpers. No doubt, we understand the concerns over alcohol abuse. Yet we fail to see how eschewing North Carolina’s outdated public system and pedantic laws will exacerbate the problem. And, frankly, from a Republican Party that obstinately opposes any form of reasonable gun reform—despite overwhelming public support—there’s something particularly

INDYweek.com galling about the public safety argument. Additionally, given North Carolina’s very public struggles to generate tax revenues, public funds come at a premium. Divert a portion of the funds to alcohol treatment centers, or—crazy thought here—shore up a public education system that lags dangerously behind the rest of the United States. But let us resolve in 2016 to impose a modern system of liquor sales in North Carolina. And while we’re at it, let’s resolve to do something about the ridiculous Sunday drinking laws, a preposterous example of government overreach. Then maybe we can get past all this Sunday morning awkwardness at the grocery store. —Billy Ball

I resolve to: Eat meat We know ourselves by heart, which is to say, imperfectly. Ethics forged in a fire of conviction cool into hard, blunt habits of mind, unconsidered and automatic. From there, belief and action begin to uncouple. Once you’ve decided you’re a good person, you can let yourself off the hook for almost anything. I became a vegetarian a decade ago, when I was changing a lot of things in my life. I wasn’t exactly giving up the bar scene, but I was probing for something more conscious beneath it. I put down my postmodern fiction, which was starting to feel wan, and read a lot of Carlos Castaneda. I played Tibetan singing bowls in country fields under the stars. I traded my Speed Stick for deodorant made of lavender and hippie tears. Stuff like that. Of course, it was all tied up with a new girlfriend, who

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stuck around for seven years. She was a vegetarian, which made me feel self-conscious about carnivorousness—a way I was finally ready to feel. I’d grown up eating flesh, including the ghastliest fast food, so that seemed normal to me. But it was one of those sporadic, heightened moments in life when normal things seem to reveal themselves as arbitrary, barbaric or perverse. A few choice documentaries about factory farming (ever seen live chicks being dropped down chutes by the handful in Our Daily Bread?) sealed the deal. I haven’t eaten meat since. Well, that’s not true. I’ve dabbled in fish. In some kind of fit of nostalgia, I ate microwave bacon at my grandmother’s house one Christmas morning. It was good. Once in a while, I miss almost-burned bacon, or the prosciutto I ate with tomatoes and baguettes on Sicilian beaches, or the hamburgers my mom wrapped in foil in the oven on the Fourth of July. But mostly, I have happily subsisted on soy proteins and leafy greens, and lots of potatoes and cheese, and cereal and milk, sleeping the sleep of the just. But over the course of 2015, one of those years when I found myself looking for petrified fossils of belief, something was stirring in my mind about my diet. As I pieced together my vegetarian meals from the increasingly enticing offerings of Durham restaurants, I could no longer remember exactly why. I never had a problem with the food chain, only with animal cruelty, unhealthy processing and disconnection from my food. The first two, at least, are much easier to circumvent in the Triangle now than they were when I quit meat. It’s not that there aren’t good reasons to abstain, or at least to practice moderation. The World Health Organization seemed to be trolling when it announced this year, with barely suppressed glee, that bacon causes cancer, a prospect so unthinkable that the Internet refuses to believe it. And even humane local dining has complex social and environmental consequences. But I realized I had settled into a thoughtless and ethically inconsistent binary—meat from anywhere, no; eggs and dairy from wherever, sure. With this oversimplified razor, I didn’t have to think about worker conditions or provenance or anything else in a more than superficial way. My vegetarianism’s moral center had become muddled. Now I’m wondering if eating meat again could be the same route to mindfulness that giving it up was 10 years ago. The key is the change, the hard reset. I have a fast-paced job; I’m very busy. Eating right is complicated, and you get discouraged. You fail. But maybe the really ethical choice is to make a choice, case by case, wading into the dilemma rather than self-deceivingly opting out. Maybe eating meat responsibly would refine all my eating habits, and who knows what other areas of life. I think I’m ready to try it in 2016. —Brian Howe

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I resolve to: Legalize weed Gather ’round, children—er, grown adults—for another discussion about why marijuana should be legalized in the United States. The tide has turned sharply over the past decade, with some states fully embracing the bud, while others—looking at you, North Carolina—have yet to hip themselves to the shifting public opinion. Opposition down here seems to come mostly from conservatives, but since when are they in favor of big gubmint telling people what they can or can’t do with their bodies? (Except for, of course, women and their uteruses.) Let’s start with the physiological facts: Weed simply doesn’t have the wild-card effects on your body that alcohol does. Pack a bowl, roll a joint, take a few bong hits—you won’t feel compelled to get behind the wheel of a car or fight anyone you think is looking at you funny. Drink too much and you could end up dead; smoke too much and you’ll just sleep like it. That said, setting something on fire and inhaling it into your lungs isn’t great for you, but it can’t be all that worse than the gunk that’s rolled up in cigarettes or whatever science-experiment chemicals make up vaping cartridges. And yeah, getting stoned out of your gourd is plenty fun, but research has steadily shown that marijuana is useful for helping people cope with pain and anxiety, among many other ailments. Why get in the way of improving someone else’s livelihood if it’s no skin off your back? Perhaps the most compelling argument to make to our dear state legislators is money. Between January and July of this year, Colorado—which legalized marijuana for personal, recreational use beginning January 2014—pulled in $73.5 million of tax revenue for the state. North Carolina has nearly twice the population of Colorado, so that number could, in theory, be much bigger for our state’s raided-for-taxcuts coffers. Also, let’s not forget North Carolina’s history as a major moonshine state, which all happened less than a century ago. We broke Prohibition the first time around, so why are we so fussy now about a product that would be more regulated and cause less damage? Hell, we even got a major sport out of it: NASCAR and stock car racing were born thanks to bootleggers souping up their cars to avoid authorities. So, North Carolina, the weed-laced cookie is starting to crumble across the country. What are we going to do about it? Do we really want to be dragging our feet when there’s so much tasty greenery—of the dank and the dollar variety—at stake? It’s high time we got with the program. —Allison Hussey

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I resolve to: Drink better (and more local) beer

I resolve to: Eat dessert first

Surely you’ve seen the bumper sticker: Support your local brewery. Around here, people do. And, happily, there are more and more breweries to support. “Eight years ago there were 85 breweries,” says Beer Study manager Taylor McAdams. “I think there are 127 right now.” Which makes the “drink local” mantra a bit of a challenge. There are too many options. I’m not just talking about beer. We have local distilleries, cider makers, crude bitters … you can’t spit without hitting something made locally. (Note to self: locally made spittoons.) But one reason, an obvious one, to drink locally is because “it supports the local economy,” says McAdams. But it’s not just that: “There’s a lot of good shit.” This is true. We are surrounded by good beer, and we’re a wee bit spoiled because of it. From the far reaches of the Triangle (Hillsborough’s Mystery Brewing to Smithfield’s Double Barley Brewing and all points in between) stretching to Charlotte (NoDa Brewing) and up to Asheville (Wicked Weed Brewing), there is no shortage of great beer in this state. And it is surely a reason for major craft breweries like Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Oskar Blues to build breweries in the Tar Heel state. North Carolina is the East Coast epicenter of craft brewing. “You have a lot of North Carolina beers winning medals at festivals,” says McAdams. “Which means people aren’t just drinking it because it supports the economy or that it is fresh, they are drinking it because it is good. Our N.C. beer is not just standing up to beers at the Great American Beer Festival. They’re beating some of the best.” So your goal, dear readers, should be to drink more fresh, good, locally made beer in the next year. As for me, I’ll be working on a patent for a spittoon. —Greg Barbera

Oh, dessert. Is there any more revered—or contested— course in the American diet than the daily dose of postmeal sugar? Let’s take a moment to set the record straight: Dessert is amazing. Dessert teaches us how to spell (two S’s for the thing that you want twice as much of, one S for the sandy, inhospitable place). Dessert bonds us to our grandparents, who first stuff us full of cookies and later teach us how to make them. Dessert tells stories about our culture, values and traditions. What’s more Southern than Mason jar banana puddin’, or more American than apple pie? Dessert teaches us about who we are and where we come from. But in this topsy-turvy, politically correct world, dessert has gotten bad rap. A 2015 study released by NPD, a market research group that has studied American eating patterns over the last 29 years, states that only 12 percent of home dinners include dessert. That’s down from nearly a quarter in 1986, and it means that 88 percent of us are not experiencing the exquisite flavor or—dare I say—health benefits of a daily sugar dose. Just like a glass of wine is apparently equal to an hour of exercise, research suggests that sweet treats aren’t the boogeyman they’ve been made out to be. “While there is no special physiological benefit to eating dessert, there may be mental benefits. In fact, some evidence supports improved diet success from having flexibility in what you eat, instead of rigidly controlling your diet,” says Molly Marsh, a cheerful clinical dietitian at Duke University

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Hospital with a slew of professional acronyms following her name. Eating dessert simply feels good, and those positive feelings can give you the boost you need to stick to a diet or exercise plan. “Personally, I feel food is meant to be enjoyed, whether it’s kale or cookies,” adds Marsh. “Plus, dessert is delicious.” She’s right. Dessert is so delicious, it’s come to represent an entire philosophy of prioritizing the things that bring joy over less exciting options. You’ve probably seen Ernestine Ulmer’s quip, “Life is short, eat dessert first,” in bakeries or on Pinterest boards, but what you may not know is that the saying holds truth beyond its ideological implications. According to “Dessert Before Dinner,” a research paper published by dental surgeon Howard Raper in 1962, eating dessert first is actually a smart move. By beginning your meal with the sweetest of snacks, you leave less sugar in your mouth once your meal is complete. In other words, the rest of your dinner brushes your teeth for you. I asked David Nightingale, a Raleigh-based dentist with an impeccably white, very trustworthy smile, to confirm or deny this theory. “The mechanical action of chewing your food can aid in removing particles that are stuck to the sides of teeth,

INDYweek.com so it’s plausible for this to reduce sugars in the mouth,” Nightingale says. Translated from dental parlance: There’s reason to believe the theory. However, Nightingale adds this caveat: “The kicker is probably what follows the dessert, or any sugary snack. It would not be helpful to follow a Milky Way with raisins or dried fruit that can stick to tooth surfaces and allow the bacteria in your mouth to have an additional food source.” So, go ahead and enjoy dessert for the benefits it provides—just don’t follow it with raisins. Sounds like a piece of cake to me. —Tina Haver Currin

I resolve to: Watch more television Oh sure, you can pretend that you’re actually going to go to the gym every day, or that you’re going to eat right and cut back on the booze, or that you’re going to quit smoking and go to bed early, or that you’re going to read more or go vegan or drink red wine instead of vodka. And you might, for a week, maybe a month. But by February, you’ll be right back where you are today. That’s a scientific fact, my friends, and you should embrace it. New Year’s resolutions are for suckers. But since we all make them, I would prefer mine to be somewhat realistic. So here goes: In 2016, I resolve to sit my ass on the couch and watch more television. It’s not

just that I’m lazy; it’s also that there’s so much good shit out there, too much for even the most ravenous TV bingewatcher to consume. On Netflix alone, you have Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Narcos, Master of None, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. On Amazon Prime, The Man in the High Castle, Transparent. On HBO, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Leftovers, Game of Thrones, Show Me a Hero, repeated sessions of The Wire and Six Feet Under. On basic cable, The Expanse, Mr. Robot, Star Wars: Rebels (shut up, it’s good sometimes), Better Call Saul, Doctor Who, Orphan Black, Fargo, The Americans. Even on the networks, there’s the occasional gem (e.g., Bob’s Burgers, The Flash) to be found amid the deluge of CBS procedurals and dumb-sitcom mediocrity. Long story short: It’s a glorious time to be a television watcher. Commit to it: three hours a day, every day. Pick a

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show. Follow it to the end, even if it starts to suck. Be a completist. Go on, haters: Brag to your friends about how you don’t even own a television. Spend your time at cocktail parties asking, “What’s a Hulu?” Pat yourself on the back for being more erudite than the rest of us. Good for you. Me? I’ve got a well-worn chair and a Twin Peaks marathon to keep me company tonight. —Jeffrey C. Billman Share your resolution at backtalk@indyweek.com.

music& drink eat

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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WHISTLE-STOP

The final night of Southern Rail, Carrboro’s reliquary of food, music, booze and history BY GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN

hris Young walks into the room, glances at the bar and the bartender, tosses three creased dollar bills onto the counter and lets out a sigh so heavy the whole crowd can hear it. “Hey, Chris,” Mike Benson exclaims, momentarily lifting his hands from the bar’s smooth surface. Undeterred by Young’s frown, Benson’s face lights up beneath an olive green stocking cap. “What can I get you? Want a beer?” Young declines. He’s only come to The Tiger Room—the antique-laden coffee shop and lounge that Benson owns as part of his massive Carrboro food-music-and-booze operation, Southern Rail—to use the bathroom. He’s just arrived from Asheville to participate in the open mic night next door in The Station, Southern Rail’s small music venue. It’s the club’s final show and the last hurrah ever for the entire complex, which will serve its final beer after nine years with the night’s last call. Next door, an eager crowd congregates early around sign-up sheets, vying for a chance to play The Station one last time before, presumably, the real estate is sold to the highest bidder. One participant says he’s visiting on a short tour from Philadelphia; everyone cheers, and he nabs the night’s first slot. “I hate to see this place go. I have a lot of mixed feelings that I don’t know how to talk about, so I just threw a few dollars on the counter,” Young tells Benson and his wife, Christy, next door. “I drove all the way here for this when I heard. It was like a family emergency. I owe a lot of stuff to this place.” Benson laughs, throws the money into a tip jar and slips from behind the bar. He puts his arms around Young and slaps his back three times. During the next hour, both Bensons do a lot of this—greeting old friends, offering hellos and hugs, saying “thanks for being here.” As the room fills with Carrboro characters, bar and club owners and folks just looking for a beer, the night starts to feel like a wake for an old friend. “This is bittersweet,” admits Benson. “I feel like we accomplished something here, but I wish we were finishing it with money. That way, we could start on another project.” Late last year, Mike announced he was selling the entire enterprise for $650,000. But two possible buyers fell through just days before the deals were done. In recent months, a delinquent tax bill of more than $150,000 and a series of outstanding construction debts put the squeeze on the Bensons. Rather than whittle the debts down, Mike—a former rock ’n’ roll photographer and art gallery operator who now might be looking to return to those fields—decided to let the banks decide for him. Though the restaurant closed in December, the Bensons had hoped to keep the bars open until January. But the creditors came calling, and tonight is it. “You have to make a strategic decision to either kick the can down the road or just say, ‘OK, let me retire as gracefully as I can, and move onto the next phase of my life,’” says Christy, a business law professor at Elon University.

Mike Benson, on the deserted stage of The Station at Southern Rail

PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

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music& drink eat “If the debts were the only issue, we would come up with a way to negotiate a settlement and keep operating. But making something creative like this actually work requires a lot of finesse and energy.” Both Christy and Mike grew up in Chapel Hill and attended Chapel Hill High School before shipping off to college, bouncing around the globe and running a series of successful spots in Washington, D.C. They returned to Orange County in 2006 after winning Southern Rail’s landmark train cars at auction and immediately started construction. For the last decade, Southern Rail, The Station and The Tiger Room—built in three phases in and around the set of abandoned train cars and the depot along Carrboro’s Main Street—have served as a microcosm of Carrboro. The venue has been as devoted to hosting music as it has been to updating classic Southern cuisine and functioning as a neighborhood gathering place and watering hole. Filled with railroad and regional relics bought largely during scavenging trips with Mike’s antique-dealing mom, Southern Rail also acted as a sort of casual living history museum for Carrboro and Chapel Hill. To

wit, The Tiger Room gets its name from its bar, salvaged from the old gymnasium floor of Chapel Hill High School; in letters rescued from the court’s baseline, it spells “T-I-G-E-R-S.” It’s one of a hundred different ways this space feels like an extension of the Bensons and builds on their ties to the town. Southern Rail’s demise stems from an admixture of vaulting ambition, tough timing and bad management, all factors to which Benson confesses with a sad smile. During initial construction of the restaurant, just before the recession brought prices back down, the Bensons accumulated high construction debts. They deemed each successive expansion necessary to help maintain growth and flesh out Mike’s vision for the space and the community. They’d both seen bands play at The Station as teenagers, for instance, and long dreamed of its return to music club glory. As the focus stretched, the logistical and financial burdens mounted. “It’s almost as if you own three or four small businesses at once,” says Christy. “It takes an unbelievable amount of energy and time and money and insurance and overhead

The INDY’s Guide to Dining in the Triangle

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to do all that. After a time, it’s like being a musician, where the need to make a living takes the fun out of being creative, especially with the reality of juggling four businesses under one roof and you’re not getting paid.” No one knows quite what will happen to the little empire the Bensons have built. In Carrboro, as in much of the Triangle, there is palpable tension between bright new developments—the nearby Hampton Inn, for instance, with its chain sports bar tucked beneath—and aged, quirky institutions like Southern Rail. A day after the end, Mike sounds positively ebullient as he talks about his opportunity to enjoy the other side of the bar and how, all things considered, losing a business you ran for a decade isn’t so bad. An optimist, he says he’s confident that the property will stay in local hands and that another area restaurateur he cannot yet name will push ahead with a variation on his vision. But Christy isn’t so sure. They can try to direct the bank’s decision now, she says, but it’s largely out of their hands. Back at the bar, Mike greets a new customer. The music in The Tiger Room is about to start, so he leans in close to take the

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order. But the man sitting at the bar cares less about his drink choice than the direction of his town and the fate of this space. “So what is this going to be now, Mike?” the customer asks. “A Houlihan’s? An Applebee’s? A steakhouse?” Mike leans back and laughs, grinning widely as if he’d just heard a brilliant joke, not a grim prediction. He takes the man’s cash, drops it in a bucket and reaches deep into a cooler of ice, fishing for a beer. s Grayson Haver Currin is the managing+music editor of the INDY.

BENEFIT FOR SOUTHERN RAIL EMPLOYEES with Randy Whitt, Dex Romweber, Joe Romeo & more Friday, Jan. 1–Saturday, Jan. 2, 4 p.m.–midnight Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 300 E. Main St., Carrboro 919-967-9053, www.catscradle.com

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

On New Year’s Eve, Champagne rules the night. Few things can beat the combination of evening attire, close friends and a few bottles of bubbly. You don’t want something so expensive that you’d feel bad about opening many bottles—or, possibly, even imbibing from them directly. But I also find that a classic Champagne cocktail satisfies the sparkling requirement and offers both the complexity of a cocktail and the benefit of aided digestion.

NEW YEAR’S EVE: CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL 1 barspoon (teaspoon) of simple syrup 2 dashes of Angostura bitters 1 glass of Champagne (A dry prosecco or cava will also work, but I recommend splurging for Champagne on New Year’s Eve. The bone-dry bubbles and strong minerality are a real treat.)

Combine simple syrup and bitters in a Champagne flute. Top with Champagne. Garnish with a long lemon twist, expressed over the cocktail.

DRINK IT SIMPLE

A Raleigh bartender offers a favorite recipe for the night of, and morning after, New Year’s Eve

atthew Bettinger stops just short of calling New Year’s Eve a fabricated Hallmark holiday. But the longtime Raleigh bartender and general manager at Raleigh jazz club and watering hole C. Grace insists that the year-end celebration is less about one central theme or idea than an overall festive atmosphere that’s easy to brand and buy. “It’s a Champagne-and-marketing holiday,” Bettinger says. “And your focal point isn’t any one thing. It’s not about what’s in your glass, but what you’re drinking is one of the most important side roles.” And so Bettinger prefers to keep it simple for New Year’s Eve with a Champagne cocktail that looks good and offers a little bit of big-meal digestive help but requires little preparation. That theme—and many of the ingredients—carry over into Bettinger’s potent post-party choice for New Year’s Day, an undiluted variation on the French Twist. “The effervescence gives it a celebratory feel, and the additional bitters add complexity,” Bettinger says of the yearend cocktail. “Everything bubbly with a little garnish on top? That makes for a pretty good time.” s

For the morning after, a bit of hair of the dog is the best bet. Who works on January 1, anyway? For these purposes, I enjoy a tweak on a Savoy French 75. We usually see this cocktail shaken with ice and served in a flute. But for the morning after, I like to skip the ice in the shaker, as there’s no need for extra dilution in the quest for the cure for what ails me. The cracked ice ensures a cold beverage—soothing to the palate and, hopefully, refreshing enough to get the day started.

NEW YEAR’S DAY: SAVOY FRENCH 75 1.5 ounces of dry gin .75 ounces of lemon juice .75 ounces of simple syrup Combine ingredients in shaker. Shake without ice. Pour into Collins glass, filled halfway with cracked ice. Top with Champagne. Garnish with an expressed lemon twist.

Top left: Matthew Bettinger behind the bar at C. Grace Above: Bettinger’s Champagne cocktail Left: Bettinger’s Savoy French 75 ALL PHOTOS BY JEREMY M. LANGE

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2015: THE YEAR IN PICTURES Photographs by Alex Boerner, Justin Cook and Jeremy M. Lange

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BILL BURTON ATTORNEY AT LAW Un c o n t e s t eAgreements d Di vo rc e Separation Mu s i c Bu s i n edivorce ss Law Uncontested InMusic c o r p obusiness r a t i o n / Llaw LC / Pa r t n e r s h i p Incorporation/LLC Wi lls Wills C o l l967-6159 ections (919)

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The INDY’S GUIDE to ALL THINGS TRIANGLE

• DECEMBER 30, 2015 • music visual arts performance books film sports INDYweek.com

Thu Dec 31

PULLING STRINGS

www.lincolntheatre.com

Big Something

DECEMBER

2 Shows Covering 7 Albums 2 night passes avail.

JANUARY

Feat: Albums I-II-III

Sa 9 ZOSO Ultimate LED ZEPPELIN exp Su 10 We 13 Fr 15 Sa 16 Su 17 Fr 22 Sa 23 Th 28 Fr 29 Su 31 Mo 1 We 3 5 & 6 Mo 8 Th 11 Fr 12 Fr 13 Su 15 Th 18 Fr 19 Sa 20 Su 21 Tu 23 Fr 26

Feat: IV-Houses-Physical Graf-Presence AFTON MUSIC SHOWCASE 6p

LIQUID STRANGER/Space Jesus STRUTTER (A Tribute to KISS) THE BREAKFAST CLUB 80’s 8p THE DICKENS 8p STEEP CANYON RANGERS 7p ANI DIFRANCO w/Hamell on Trial LUKE COMBS w/Blake Kearney7p REEL BIG FISH 8p GRAVEYARD w/Spiders 7p

ZOSO

The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Experience

FEBRUARY

EPICA w/ Moonspell/Starkill 6:30 GAELIC STORM 7p AMERICAN AQUARIUM 8p Fri Jan 22 FOR TODAY w/Like Moths to Flames CHERUB w/Gibbz @ THE RITZ THE SHAKEDOWN (Mardi Gras) WHO’S BAD Michael Jackson Trib. BOOMBOX THE MACHINE performs PINK FLOYD MOTHER’S FINEST + 7p NEVER SHOUT NEVER + 6:30p KELLY HOLLAND MEMORIAL SISTER HAZEL 7p Fri Jan 29 GEOFF TATE’S OPERATION MINDCRIME Sa 27 DAVID ALLAN COE 7p Su 28 MIKE GARDNER BENEFIT 7p

Fri Jan 15

Steep Canyon Rangers

MARCH

T u 1 Y&T 7p We 2 RANDY ROGERS BAND + T h 3 TITUS ANDRONICUS w/Craig Finn We 9 JUDAH AND THE LION 7p Sa 12 JOHN MAYALL BAND Su 13 CEE-LO GREEN Th 17 MAC SABBATH Th 31 STICK FIGURE w/Fortunate Youth 4 - 1 START MAKING SENSE 4 - 3 THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS 4 - 7 ELLE KING Advance Tickets @Lincolntheatre.com & Schoolkids Records All Shows All Ages 126 E. Cabarrus St. 919-821-4111

BY ERIC TULLIS

Fri Jan 8 Sat Jan 9

NEW YEARS EVE PARTY with 8p Th 31 BIG SOMETHING w/Groove Fetish

Sa 2 WINTER METAL FEST F r 8 ZOSO Ultimate LED ZEPPELIN exp

A master puppeteer and familiar emcee pair to reimagine the story of Pinocchio

Reel Big Fish Thu Fri Jan 22 Feb 11

@ THE RITZ

hen Pierce Freelon first encountered Tarish Pipkins, or the puppeteer known as Jeghetto, he was too taken aback by Pipkins’ contraptions to take notice of their maker. “I saw a little person going in on a child’s cello, killin’ it,” Freelon remembers of a 2010 craft market at Durham’s Motorco Music Hall. “I got a little closer and come to find out, it was Jeghetto, working a puppet. But the movements were so natural and organic. The puppet was awkwardly proportioned, because he wasn’t a real person. But it took me a minute to even realize that I was looking at a puppet.” It is a Sunday afternoon at Durham’s Vegan Flava Cafe. Once a week, the restaurant’s rear dining room is reserved for qigong, an ancient Chinese “life-energy” practice that integrates meditation, holistic medicine and wushu martial arts. For Freelon, the bandleader of The Beast and a hip-hop educator and activist, the sessions serve as a yoga alternative and an opportunity for intergenerational bonding among area men of color. He’s occasionally convinced a few students from his Beat Making Lab in

Sun Mar 13

CeeLo Green

Chapel Hill to carpool with him. Today, though, he’s accompanied by Pipkins, 43. In 2010, had Freelon not been so entranced by the cello-playing puppet’s human likeness, he might have noticed that Pipkins manipulated his latest wooden device with movements that suggested the grace and precision of qigong, only set to a hip-hop beat. “The puppet had so much character,” says Freelon, “it rendered Jeghetto invisible.” Freelon, of course, eventually noticed Pipkins, and he was so impressed with the display that he invited the puppeteer to join him onstage later that night for a performance at Duke University. That show became the start of a working relationship that will produce its most noteworthy results when Freelon and Pipkins premiere their reimagined version of the classic Pinocchio tale—the Afro-futurist hip-hop opera 5P1N0K10 (pronounced “spinokio”)—at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art. For Pipkins, the production represents the culmination of an unexpected, Fri & Sat exciting year. A year ago, Pipkins Feb 5 & and 6

American Aquarium

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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music visual arts performance books film sports Freelon were working on 5P1N0K10 when California-based puppet-building team Furry Puppet Studios recruited Pipkins to help bring the dancing marionettes in Missy Elliott’s “WTF” music video to life. In the clip, Pipkins is the puppeteer behind Pharrell Williams’ limber dance moves and drumming. So far, the video has earned more than 24 million YouTube views and Pipkins a lot of new attention. In mid-December, he even joined Elliott and Williams for a live performance of “WTF” on the season finale of The Voice. All of this happened two years after Pipkins flew to Hollywood to audition for another television competition, America’s Got Talent. That didn’t go as well. “The judges had no idea what to do with me [as an African-American master puppeteer]. Everything is categorized out there,” he remembers. “They just X’d me and sent me home.” Raised in Pittsburgh, Pipkins wanted to be a visual artist for as long as he can remember. But he only started making wire sculptures 12 years ago, not long after he’d turned 30. “I would twist the wire until it turned into a form,” he says. “It looked like scribble, so I used to call it ‘3-D scribble.’ One day I added joints and clothes. My first puppets were made out of wire—real abstract.” Soon, Pipkins began recycling old PVC pipes and wood scraps into more discernible, lifelike puppets. Pipkins subsequently moved to Chapel Hill, taking a job at the Carrboro restaurant Spotted Dog. One of the owners discovered Pipkins’ away-from-work craft and suggested he busk with his puppets in front of the restaurant. He could introduce his skill to the community and convert intrigued pedestrians into fans. Many full tip jars and a few gigs later, Donovan Zimmerman and Jan Burger—co-founders of area institution Paperhand Puppet Intervention—spotted Pipkins and his puppets and offered him a part in 2009’s The Hungry Ghost. Around the same time, Pipkins concocted the alter ego “Jeghetto,” a play on the fictional woodcarver Mister Geppetto, who built the Pinocchio marionette in the original story. That was the start of his big idea. “I said, ‘You know what? I need a Pinocchio. I’m going to make a breakdancing robot called 5P1N0K10 and he’s going to do headspins,’” Pipkins says. Building a puppet with such specialized acrobatic capabilities

Left: An early version of the puppet 5P1N0K10 PHOTO COURTESY OF PIERCE FREELON Above: Artist Ian Stewart’s rendering of 5P1N0K10 ILLUSTRATION BY IAN STEWART

posed several engineering challenges. Pipkins borrowed traits from two-dozen puppet types to build his 4-foot-tall b-bot protagonist. “You got the classic families, such as rod puppets, hand puppets and Muppets like the Sesame Street marionettes with the strings,” explained Pipkins. “I merge them together to get the movement that I need. I’ll make a rod puppet, but I’ll have strings on it to manipulate the hands, and rods on the feet.” He then merged his breakdancing

robot hero with the creation myth of the Pinocchio character. Beyond that, there are few similarities between the classic tale and 5P1N0K10. You won’t find any fairies, donkeys, talking crickets or expanding noses in Pipkins’ work. Instead, the story occurs in the distant future, when a tyrannical ruling class has stolen a master engineer’s toy-making technology to create warring robots. After retreating to the underground world, Jeghetto builds an oppression-fighting

b-boy robot, 5P1N0K10. His goal? Restoring humanity in a dystopian future overrun with militarization, racism, homelessness and hunger. Many of those same themes shape Freelon’s own Pan-African agitprop as a community activist and emcee of The Beast. Recognizing the similarity, Pipkins asked Freelon if The Beast would score his new screenplay. Freelon would need to provide his bandmates with rough sketches for certain scenes and then let them fill in the missing parts by developing short phrases or loops to serve as 5P1N0K10’s musical background. A year ago, Pipkins almost became the visual background for Elliott when he was “inches from being in the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show with Missy Elliott,” he says. He had made a 4-foot-tall “twerking robot puppet” of the rapper for the eventual “WTF” clip, but the puppet didn’t make the shoot. Pipkins resubmitted it, albeit too late, for the halftime show. Now, though, Pipkins is simply looking forward to the completion of his own production with Freelon and for a few more audacious projects together. He and Freelon, for instance, will soon pitch N.C. State’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on the idea of placing robotics inside 5P1N0K10—to, as Pipkins puts it, “make it walk.” The huge puppet firms, celebrity music videos, prime-time television, academia: None of this seems to have intimidated Pipkins. It’s only inspired him to try more audacious projects, this production included. “My craft is too…” begins Pipkins, pausing to consider the flattering descriptors available—masterful, unequivocal, uncanny? “People are blown away by what I do,” he says instead. “You have puppet builders and you have puppeteers: I do both very well. All the puppeteers respect that.” s Talk to Eric Tullis about music and Mike Krzyzewski on Twitter: @erictullis.

5P1N0K10 Wednesday, Dec. 30, 10:30 a.m., free Nasher Museum of Art, 2001 Campus Drive, Durham 919-684-5135, www.nasher.duke.edu

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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music visual arts performance books film sports

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Dex Romweber and Cool John Ferguson, experts in fresh takes on old sounds BY BRYAN C. REED

here’s a song Dex Romweber likes to play called “Is It Too Late?” Originally, he says, it was a honkytonk tune written by Durham’s Roy House. Years ago, Romweber owned the tune on a 45 RPM single, but he lost his copy. He set out to remake the song for himself, closing his 2009 album, Ruins of Berlin, with a spare acoustic turn rewritten from his memory of that old single. It stood apart from the work of the electric guitarand-drums duo he then had with his sister, Sara. Really, it makes little difference how far Romweber’s version strays from House’s original; in Romweber’s hands, “Is It Too Late?” becomes a standout. There’s a song South Carolina-bred blues guitarist Cool John Ferguson likes to cover, too. His take on “Hey Joe,” which Jimi Hendrix made famous, stretches to nearly nine minutes and builds into a fiery solo that showcases Ferguson’s ecstatic playing. He dives into scorching feedback and bobs back into crystalline tones, screeches through high-string runs and falls back into a comforting low-end riff. It sounds little like Hendrix’s more concise versions, even though its din suggests one of the icon’s more incendiary moments. Both Romweber’s “Is It Too Late?” and Ferguson’s “Hey Joe” are outliers in their repertoires. Romweber’s known best for fiery rockabilly, though he’s dabbled in classical and folk. And Ferguson often plays more subdued and nuanced blues guitar. But both songs are telling because they suggest the ways Romweber and Ferguson draw from wells of vintage inspiration to arrive at singular styles. Lately, Romweber has been revisiting some of his earliest influences by reigniting the Flat Duo Jets catalog, with drummer Crash LaResh standing in for Chris “Crow” Smith. When the duo debuted earlier this year, Romweber showed he hadn’t lost any of that old fire; his fresh take on those old rockabilly rave-ups seemed as loud and aggressive as they must have been when, in 1990, New York Times critic Jon Pareles called the Jets “noisy and frantic and sloppy and dangerous.” But Romweber’s most interesting

Above, Dex Romweber; below, Cool John Ferguson ROMWEBER PHOTO BY ANTHONY NGUYEN; FERGUSON PHOTO BY TIM DUFF Y

mined all manners of early American pop music and gave them new life. Ferguson taps even older tendencies. He was raised in the Pentecostal church on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. He honed his six-string craft by playing sacred music, field songs and traditional African music. “I’d learn everything I could get my hands on,” he has said. “It didn’t matter where the music came from, I just learned it all—TV themes, blues, R&B, jazz, gospel. It all came in my ears and out through my hands.” That inclusivity remains intact. Solo, Ferguson veers from blazing psychedelic rock to smoldering soul, from Gullah blues to easygoing jazz. With collaborators like Winston-Salem’s Captain Luke, with whom he recorded this year’s Live at the Hamilton, Ferguson offers an easy complement, adapting his style to match his partner’s. The pair moves gracefully from heavy riffs to airy melodies. Over the decades, Romweber and Ferguson have both built nuanced, varied catalogs. But to figure out what makes each an idiosyncratic player in his own right, listen to them play someone else’s song— they can’t help but make it their own. s Bryan C. Reed lives in Chapel Hill and on Twitter at @BryanCReed.

COOL JOHN FERGUSON Saturday, Jan. 2, 8 p.m., $10 Blue Note Grill, 709 Washington St., Durham, 919-401-1979, www.bluenotegrill.com

DEX ROMWEBER & CRASH LARESH

material arrived in the interim between the Jets’ 1999 flameout and the neo-Jets’ arrival. Solo and in various full-band configurations, Romweber explored beyond rockabilly, expanding his body of pensive torch songs, surf-rock deep

cuts, exotica and classic country, and then combining it all. He added horns and dancers for the big band Dexter Romweber & the New Romans, conjuring a slinky nightclub vibe. He also released an album of classical piano compositions. Romweber

With Cool Party Thursday, Dec. 31, 10 p.m., $7 The Cave, 452 1/2 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, 919-968-9308, www.caverntavern.com

DEX ROMWEBER (SOLO) Friday, Jan. 1, 9 p.m., free The Kraken, 2823 N.C. Highway 54 West, Chapel Hill www.thekrakenbar.com

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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music visual arts performance books film sports

ENOUGH ISN’T ENOUGH

In 2016, local independent theaters should solve longstanding issues of marketing and publicity BY BYRON WOODS

anuary 1 is the day of resolutions, and there is much to be resolved in our theatrical ecosystem. But I mean that in a specific sense. For a moment, let’s forget highminded, abstract proposals. Instead, think math. We all know the words from high school or the S.A.T., appearing below some algebraic hieroglyph: “Solve for x.” In a way, a theater production is a series of intricate equations. A company fills in a set of variables—these actors, those designers, director x in venue y—and the performances ultimately reveal the solution they produce. Do that once and your company has a show. Keep doing it and you’ve solved a greater artistic problem: durability. But the Triangle’s theatrical ecosystem faces a larger problem. The math almost all of its members have been using hasn’t changed in years, and it contains basic miscalculations of the optimal potential audience. As a result, its solutions have been provisional at best— guesstimates that don’t meet the companies’ actual needs or the needs of their community. Yet the math has seldom been challenged in years. As a result, our independent theaters have embraced artificial limits that not only compromise their individual potential for improvement and growth, but that of the ecosystem we all live in as well. For that reason, on day one of the new year, we suggest that every independent theater company in the region should abandon the outdated formulas on their ledgers and re-solve for 2016. I am not prepared to believe that, in a progressive region of 1.4 million people, one-tenth of 1 percent, at most, could be persuaded to take in a show at Burning Coal Theatre Company or Manbites Dog Theater. But that is the practical ceiling those organizations have set for themselves. A sold-out three-week run in both rooms maxes out between 1,000 and 1,800 seats. However, neither of these companies regularly sells out entire runs. A mere handful of patrons was present when I saw the July performance of Burning Coal’s Dark Vanilla Jungle, a five-star show that deserved packed houses and added dates. The work onstage was brilliantly complete. But clearly, the work offstage, equally necessary to the production’s success, was incomplete. Since the show wasn’t effectively marketed and publicized, it ultimately reached a smaller audience than Burning Coal’s already modest average. This is not meant to single out Burning Coal or Manbites Dog as dramatically worse at marketing their work than most theaters. No regional company has truly solved that problem; none have effectively connected with more than a fraction of their potential audience. Most appear to have given up trying. In so doing, they’ve locked themselves into a mathematics that doesn’t permit real growth. Marketing and promotion are one indication of how

Caitlin Wells gave a captivating performance in Burning Coal’s Dark Vanilla Jungle. With better marketing and outreach, more people might have actually seen it. PHOTO COURTESY OF JILLIAN CLARK

diligently and consistently theater companies seek out and meaningfully connect with their communities. A company must do these things before its constituency can grow. Instead, a mentality of “enough” has crept in among too many groups: enough supporters and audience to keep the lights on, fund the next production and pay the artists—no, not a living wage, of course. Just a token sum, enough to keep their collaborators impoverished but still coming back for more. In reality, this mythic “enough” was never truly enough— not to upgrade the nights-and-weekend rehearsal model that holds local theater back, and certainly not enough to end the day jobs that split the attentions of most local creators. Nor is it enough to establish support structures artists need to realize their best work. So directors keep rounding up props and working on costumes, actors hang lights and distribute flyers and everybody pitches in on set construction. And since everyone has so much more to do than focus on their roles, the production is ultimately compromised. That’s been the fate of hundreds of shows. And the math that keeps producing this result is wrong. In 2016, the costs of creative infrastructure and professionalgrade marketing should be factored in as mission-critical, as much as paying royalties for scripts. If you haven’t connected with your audience before putting on a show, you simply have to hope it’s not too late.

More than 18 months ago, the region saw two important get-togethers in theater and dance. Artists resolved to create structures to support their work, continue their development and cross-pollinate with others from around the world. Through cooperation and radical hospitality, they co-promoted and produced, and provided residencies where creators could refine their work. Culture Mill is becoming a regional force; DIDA, Durham Independent Dance Artists, has launched two full seasons. Both have helped focus their community’s efforts and made independent dance, and other performing arts in the case of Culture Mill, more vibrant and viable here. A year and a half later, theater artists are still searching for a similar course of action that enough companies will agree to follow. In 2016, will next-generation theater artists, including Honest Pint, Mortall Coile, Sonorous Road, Black Ops and Delta Boys—and old guards like StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance or Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern—resolve to cooperate in the joint scheduling, promotion and support of one another’s work? When they do, will they call their effort RITA: Regional Independent Theater Artists? We’ll find out. Happy New Year. s Byron Woods is the INDY’s theater and dance columnist. Twitter: @ByronWoods

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GLAD Study

The Frohlich Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill is looking for individuals who would be interested in participating in a clinical research study. This study is testing the effect of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on mood symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder. Transcranial current stimulation is a technique that delivers a very weak current to the scalp. Treatment has been well tolerated with no serious side-effects reported. This intervention is aimed at restoring normal brain activity and function which may reduce mood symptoms experienced with Major Depressive Disorder. We are looking for individuals between the ages of 18 and 65, diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder currently not taking benzodiazepines or antiepileptic drugs. You can earn a total of $280 for completing this study. If you are interested in learning more, contact our study coordinator at: courtney_lugo@med.unc.edu Or call us at (919)962-5271

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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music visual arts performance books film sports

STAGE OF RAGE

With his latest historical bloodbath, The Hateful Eight, Tarantino teeters on self-parody BY NEIL MORRIS

he best things during the interminable three hours of the latest film by Quentin Tarantino are the stirring new musical overture by the great Ennio Morricone and the 12-minute intermission, when you can flee the theater without bothering the rest of the audience. Set in post-Civil War Wyoming, The Hateful Eight is a Western ensemble piece that revolves around a gaggle of mercenaries and miscreants forced into close quarters while escaping a blizzard en route to the town of Red Rock. Arriving by stagecoach are John Ruth (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter who doesn’t like cheating the hangman, and Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a fugitive guilty of sundry sins and a nasty disposition. Apparently, to Tarantino, this justifies a man slugging her in the face every time she grouses a cross word. They pick up fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former Union soldier who carries a letter from Abe Lincoln as a conversation starter with white folks, and Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins), a onetime renegade with his daddy’s Confederate marauders, who says he’s the new sheriff of Red Rock. In all, 10 people take shelter in the stage stopover called Minnie’s Haberdashery, including “the Mexican” (Demián Bichir), a taciturn cowpuncher (Michael Madsen) and the local hangman (Tim Roth). As their furtive motives and backstories are gradually revealed, the plot assumes the guise of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Christie’s novel was originally published in the United Kingdom, in 1939, under the title Ten Little Niggers, a pejorative Tarantino deploys excessively throughout The Hateful Eight. Though it was divisive, Tarantino’s frequent use of the racial slur in his early films, like Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, felt organic in the vernacular his modern urban milieus. But he treats his Civil Warera settings, here and in Django Unchained, as license to gorge on the insult to a cartoonish, wearying degree. In a typical exchange, a character makes a declaration containing the N-word; another basically repeats it as a question, ostensibly seeking clarification, and then the first character

I come in fleece: Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight

says it again. This happens over and over. Tarantino’s script is garrulous, but it produces few memorable sequences. The main exception is a tense, lengthy tête-à-tête between Warren and an aging ex-Confederate general (Bruce Dern) that devolves into literal revenge porn. The film’s final chapters are a nihilistic fever dream, filled with projectile blood-barfing, splattered brains and balls, and a lynching. What’s missing is maturity and meaning. The characters are mere ciphers for Tarantino’s base indulgences. Russell’s performance is a watered-down version of his well-worn John Wayne impersonation. Leigh’s snarling redneck is like Linda Blair in The Exorcist by way of Deliverance. Sam Jackson plays Sam Jackson, and it’s the least of his four Tarantino-film performances. Tim Roth is just a foppish British version of Christoph Waltz’s character in Django. Still, Tarantino’s devotion to classic cinema suffuses The Hateful Eight, the first motion picture shot using Ultra Panavision 70 cameras in decades. The “roadshow presentation,” in select theaters now, is

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREW COOPER

the first fictional feature screened with a single-projector Cinerama system in anamorphic 70mm since Khartoum in 1966. A slightly edited digital version will then roll out nationally. Tarantino can still be a captivating, adroit filmmaker who is thrilling because of his visual dexterity and eye for detail, as in a close-up of a stagecoach step conspicuously weathered by a thousand boot heels. But his narrative predilections have become entirely predictable, and his films are teetering on self-parody. Redemption can begin only if he jettisons his period revenge fantasies and returns to the wheelhouse of contemporary hyperrealities. Otherwise, Tarantino will soon feel as dated as his film stock. s Neil Morris writes about film for the INDY and others. Twitter: @ByNeilMorris

THE HATEFUL EIGHT HH Opening wide Friday

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Where we’ll be

CALENDARS MUSIC 30 VISUAL ARTS 33 PERFORMANCE 34 BOOKS 34 FILM 34

MUSIC + ART + PARTIES

VISUAL ART

VARIOUS VENUES, DOWNTOWN RALEIGH THURSDAY, DEC. 31

FLANDERS GALLERY, RALEIGH THROUGH MONDAY, JAN. 18

FIRST NIGHT RALEIGH

ng, because detail, ep usand lections and dy. ettisons eturns to hyperl soon INDY

In a year, First Night Raleigh will celebrate not only the start of 2017 but also the end of its first quartercentury as the largest New Year’s event in the Triangle. Of course, the landscape of area downtowns, particularly Raleigh, has changed considerably during that period, so what was once something like a government-office oasis and nightclub void now thrives both day and night. So when, you might wonder, will some private entity emerge to stage a rival, alternate counterpart for First Night Raleigh—a massive concert or block party, perhaps something a bit less family-focused and more consistent with the evening’s widespread revelry? Not this year, at least, when First Night Raleigh remains the biggest bash in the region by a factor of about 10. Organizers have worked faithfully during the last two decades to keep reinventing the event, or at least adding enough attractions to make it relevant to changing demographics and younger audiences. This year, for instance, there’s an “Indie Rock Stage” featuring See Gulls and T0W3RS (too bad it’s in Vintage’s hipster-baiting church…) and a Mexican folk music dancing troupe in addition to blues, country and ballroom dancing. There’s comedy, henna tattoos, a Ferris wheel, something like The Scrambler that’s called The Sizzler, an Andy Griffith movie marathon (but with only two movies?), a people’s procession at dusk and horsedrawn sleigh rides around the Capitol. The best addition might just be a supreme piece of North Carolina General Assembly trolling, a pop-up “wedding chapel” where folks are encouraged to marry their pets. Happy New Year, Amendment One! 2 p.m.–midnight, $10–$14, 919-832-8699, www.firstnightraleigh.com. —Grayson Haver Currin

T0W3RS

MUSIC

BANDWAY, THE TROUSERS

KINGS, RALEIGH | FRIDAY, JAN. 1

TIME STANDS STILL

“[It’s] not as hard as you might think. War was my parents’ house again, only on a

So you’ve seen the movie—probably, if you’re a diehard fan, more than once. You’ve bought all the merch for stocking stuffers and read all the supplementary comics. What’s an oversatiated Star Wars fanatic to do now for his or her post-holiday withdrawal? An ongoing art show at Flanders Gallery is just the ticket, and unlike an IMAX ticket, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Near Mint: In Lucas We Trust features 20 artists—some Star Wars fans, others not—who were commissioned to impose their visions on the blank variant covers of the first issue of Marvel’s 2015 Star Wars comics. An illustrious group that includes local art scene standouts such as Heather Gordon, Bill Thelen, David Eichenberger, Rachel Herrick and Derek Toomes explores the franchise’s outsize role in our culture from perspectives both critical and appreciative. Not only is it a novel use of those blank covers (they’re supposed to be for you to hire your favorite comics creators to sketch on at conventions), it’s a way to let visual artists weigh in on the topic everyone’s talking about, using their particular language, with expressive possibilities beyond rants, quibbles and raves. Noon–5 p.m. Weds.–Fri.; 1–5 p.m. Sat., free, 505 S. Blount St., Raleigh, 919-757-9533, www.flandersartgallery.com. —Brian Howe

THEATER

SONOROUS ROAD PRODUCTIONS, RALEIGH FRIDAY, JAN. 1–SUNDAY, JAN. 17

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NEAR MINT: IN LUCAS WE TRUST

PHOTO BY JUSTIN COOK

with m in m in ion will

DECEMBER 30, 2015

different scale.” Sarah, a photojournalist who has just returned from Iraq, is trying to explain her work to Mandy, the new (and much younger) girlfriend of her editor, Richard. Sarah doesn’t get their relationship. She’s already made that clear in a calculated, catty remark or two to Mandy’s face—oh, nothing too vicious; that would be déclassé—as Sarah’s partner, war journalist Jamie, smirks in approval. But as what The New York Times calls Donald Margulies’ best drama since Dinner With Friends unfolds, Sarah and Jamie have to re-examine their own relationship. Iraq changed them both; Sarah nearly died and Jamie’s still shaken from his own experiences. Do they fit together anymore? What do they really have in common besides trauma? Andy Hayworth directs Olivia Griego, Katie Barrett, Brook North and John Honeycutt in this South Stream production at Sonorous Road. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat.; 2 p.m. Sun., $16–$18, 209 Oberlin Road, Raleigh, 919-803-3798, www.sonorousroad.com. —Byron Woods

12.30–1.06

W COOPER

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BANDWAY PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

Earlier this year, I interviewed Bandway to talk about Buddies, the duo’s first new album in more than a dozen years. I swear that all they did the whole time was giggle. Lots of longstanding friends are like this—get them together, and soon they’re firing in-jokes back and forth and until they cry from laughter. The difference with Bo Taylor and Brooks Carter is that their in-jokes provide the foundation for infectious, irrepressible comic cock-rock numbers. As Bandway, Taylor and Carter make already overblown and ludicrous ’80s testosterone rock even sillier. It’s the musical equivalent of Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers—muscle-headed, loud and rip-roaringly funny in its accuracy. Years can pass between Bandway shows, so catch this if you can. For this rare date, Bandway welcomes The Trousers, another sterling Raleigh act that also appears onstage with marked infrequency. 9:30 p.m., $10, 14 W. Martin St., Raleigh, 919833-1091, www.kingsbarcade.com. —Corbie Hill

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LOCAL 506: Jakeem. Sage the 64th Wonder, Crosby; 9 p.m., $5. See indyweek.com. NASHER MUSEUM OF ART: Hip-Hop Hooray; 10:30 a.m. See page 24.

THU, DEC 31 BEAN & BARREL: Marie Vanderbeck Trio; 10 p.m., $10. BEYU CAFFE: Tom Browne and Friends; 9 p.m., $75. THE CAVE: Dex Romweber and Crash LaResh, Cool Party; 10 p.m., $7. See page 26. DEEP SOUTH: Undercover, Homedraft; 8 p.m., free. HAW RIVER BALLROOM: Clockwork Cabaret New Year’s Eve Party; 9 p.m., $15–$17.

KINGS T0W3RS Two of Raleigh’s great rhythmheavy bands combine for this three-act sendoff of 2015: On tape, T0W3RS creates billowing, beating pop wonders, with big hooks cast wide over florid keyboard lines. But on stage, leader Derek Torres takes it all to another level, summoning the Bowie extravagance his records suggest for hyperkinetic, theatric shows. In the middle slot, Heads on Sticks deliver complex tunes where the beats, hooks and melodies move in a calculated sort of dynamic equilibrium, each part shifting just to allow its counterpart to spring to the surface. Wool, whose 2015 EP added necessary gusto to its long-stare rock, opens. $12/9:30 p.m. —GC LINCOLN THEATRE: BIG Something, Groove Fetish; 9 p.m., $25.

LOCAL 506 BENJI HUGHES Benji Hughes knows his way around a gimmick. “It’s Time to Have a Merry Christmas,” the holiday single he released earlier this month, tweaks the saccharine tactics of traditional yuletide fare. He matches his throaty delivery with jaunty piano and winking glockenspiel. But don’t take such tongue-

• DECEMBER 30, 2015 •

in-cheek stunts as proof that Hughes isn’t genuine. The subtle magic of his off-kilter pop is the fragile sincerity that hides behind each joke—just check out “Girls Love Shoes,” the first single from his upcoming LP debut with Durham’s Merge Records, which trips through clichés as a way to highlight earnest bewilderment at the ways of the opposite sex. With Melissa Swingle Duo. $15/9 p.m. —JL

N.C. Symphony: New Year’s Eve in Vienna; 8 p.m., $52–$82. MOTORCO: Motoroboto New Year’s Eve Party; 9 p.m., $15–$18. NIGHTLIGHT: 2016: Mike D, Persona DJs; 9 p.m. THE PINHOOK: Cheap Date: A Queer NYE Dance Party; 10 p.m., $8. PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: NC Revelers Big Band Orchestra; 9 p.m. PLAN B: Dr. Bacon; 10 p.m., $10.

POUR HOUSE THE LOVE LANGUAGE

One year after being the biggest name on the First Night Raleigh LORRAINE’S COFFEE HOUSE: bill, The Love Language headlines Lorraine Jordan and Carolina a much more intimate bash. Road, Sideline; 7:30 p.m., $20. Frontman Stuart McLamb howls out the larger-than-life hooks of THE MAYWOOD: Slugnut, his rarely stable outfit, delivering Bandages, Agony Divine, Heron, late-night lyrical confessions Flytrap; 8:30 p.m., $8–$10. that contrast the often upbeat, MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: retro-leaning pop ditties. Zack SEE GU Mexico’s brooding, psychedelic pop lets melodies twist from a noisy haze venture of M spins tonigh veteran sing THE ATOMIC RHYTHM ALL-STARS to have larg MONDAY, JAN. 4 energy of G NEPTUNES, RALEIGH—If George Knott, the bandleader dreamier te and bassist for The Atomic Rhythm All-Stars, could travel back $15–$20/9

in time to see any musical act, he says he’d dial up the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in 1928. He’d hear legendary trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke and bassist Steve Brown making red-hot jazz. “To me, nobody touches Bix,” Knott says. “He and Louis Armstrong are the two pillars of everything that jazz was for the next 15 years. Everybody wanted to be Bix.” Knott’s visit would have been short: Beiderbecke drank himself out of Whiteman’s orchestra within two years and died screaming about men with knives under his bed in 1931, just shy of his 29th birthday. Still, the spectacular and often-romanticized trumpeter is a fitting representative of the brief period of jazz—the late-1920s and early-1930s—on which Knott and his seven-piece band focus. During the next nine Mondays at Neptunes, they’ll offer listeners a rare chance to make the kind of time travel Knott desires by playing historically accurate arrangements of a music that would soon be tamed and streamlined by the big bands and then exploded by the bebop cats. “I think it’s a more sincere form of music, to be honest,” Knott says. “And a lot of musicians get pissed off when they hear that.” Knott finds bebop’s improvisational bent to be a bit narcissistic. And for him, the standardization of big band arrangements comes at the expense of a composition’s original spirit. Knott’s band plays the tune, rather than rushing through it to solo in the stratosphere, or flattening it out into background music. “Paul Whiteman would play the verse and the chorus and the verse and the chorus, and then he might have a halfchorus of someone soloing. It was only to make it interesting musically,” Knott says. “It’s more true to the song and to the composer.” 8 p.m., $3–$5 suggested donation, 14 W. Martin Street, Raleigh, 919-896-7063, www.kingsbarcade.com. —Chris Vitiello

THE RITZ BRILLZ

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•

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Year’s Eve –$82. boto 9 p.m.,

NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTIES | THURSDAY, DEC. 31

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THE RITZ BRILLZ

The Nightmoves party returns to Raleigh for this year-end celebration, headlined by Los ank Angeles trap ambassador Brillz. Best known for his official remix and n 1931, of Zedd’s “Clarity,” Brillz delivers a dirty, flamboyant take on bass music that toes the line ter is a between predictability and fun. te-1920s On TWONK, he marries ATL trap band sonics with the cathartic logic of y’ll offer current EDM for tasteless, partyready jams. Support comes Knott f a music courtesy of Ancient/lakes, DVUS, Oak City Slums, Tronix and Subbands dominal. $18–$22/8 p.m. —DS

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SOUTHLAND BALLROOM: Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band, Fat Cheek Kat; 10 p.m., $20–$25.

FRI, JAN 1 BEYU CAFFE: Carlitta Durand; 8 & 10 p.m., $8. THE CAVE: Pegasus Dance Party; 9 p.m.

DEEP SOUTH FS, STELLA The sound of Durham’s FS is of an old acquaintance not quite

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

AGE

VARIOUS VENUES, TRIANGLE-WIDE—Whew, 2015 was a rough one, huh? At least the Triangle’s got several dozen strong party possibilities to help you usher this year out and next year in. The big draw in the Triangle remains FIRST NIGHT RALEIGH, the capital city’s all-encompassing extravaganza that features family-friendly activities and music. This year’s performers include bluesman John Dee Holeman, the Johnny Cash-covering Johnny Folsom 4 and Scythian’s pseudo-Celtic jangle. T0W3RS plays First Night Raleigh with See Gulls, but catching it means venturing into the hipster sanctuary of Vintage Church (see page 29). Just catch T0W3RS a few hours later, a few blocks away at KINGS with Heads on Sticks and Wool. There’s a dance party downstairs at NEPTUNES, too, and no one is going to be looking to proselytize. Over at THE POUR HOUSE, The Love Language takes the stage after Zack Mexico and the new Faults. But if you’re looking for something fancier, the North Carolina Symphony will perform its annual “New Year’s Eve in Vienna” program at MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL. At Deep South, there’s a retro cover band, while the THE LINCOLN THEATRE supplies the jammy BIG Something and Brillz offers big beats at THE RITZ. Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band is taking the stage at SOUTHLAND BALLROOM, or you can get your ears ringing for the new year with a heavy metal lineup that features the reunion of the mighty Slugnut at THE

forgotten. With impressive energy, the band nails the kind of soaring pop-punk that once elevated acts on the Warped Tour into popularity. Stella’s influence comes from the same era, as the band rescues emotional volatility from the early highs of Taking Back Sunday. With Summer Wars, Family Breakfast. $5/9 p.m. —JL KINGS: Bandway, The Trousers; 9:30 p.m., $10. See page 29.

THE KRAKEN THE LOW COUNTS, DEX ROMWEBER Like the Black Keys and White Stripes before them, High Point duo The Low Counts aim to revitalize rock by digging into its blues roots. Singer/guitarist Matt Walsh and drummer Austin Hicks make the most of their minimal setup, backing Walsh’s low rasp with strong, simple beats and clouds of distortion. Their second album, this year’s Years Pass By, offers the sort of gritty riffs and casual melodies that filled the Black Keys’ early catalog. Tonight, they’ll share the stage with Dex Romweber, a veteran iconoclast who has spent decades combining disparate strains—from blues and rockabilly to surf and lounge—in search of new inspiration. (For more on Romweber, see page 26.) Free/9 p.m. —BCR LORRAINE’S COFFEE HOUSE: Salt and Light; 7:30 p.m., $5.

POUR HOUSE THE GET RIGHT BAND Asheville’s Get Right Band aims to keep the New Year’s party going into First Friday with high-energy funk rock that should fill the dance floor, even if the trio lets up for the occasional reggae groove. On “You Can Come,” the relaxed rhythm matches the lyrics of the laid-back work-ending anthem. Charly Lowry’s killer voice leads the soulful roots music of opener Dark Water Rising. Free/9 p.m. —SG

SAT, JAN 2 BLUE NOTE GRILL: Cool John Ferguson; 8 p.m., $10. See page 26.

CITY LIMITS HAPPY Q YEAR The New Year is a fitting time to reflect on the past and set goals for the future—or forget all that and live it up with the bro country lineup of the annual Happy Q Year, the B-list country concert of local station WQDR-FM. (To be fair, it may also be a chance to see next year’s big stars, as Kelsea Ballerini and Dustin Lynch jumped to fame after past appearances.) Duo LoCash headlines with the hit single “I Love This Life,” while Michael Ray shows what he’s learned from mentors Big & Rich. Local singer Kasey Tyndall rounds out the lineup for the second year in a row. $10–$15/7 p.m. —KM

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DECEMBER 30, 2015

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MAYWOOD. If Top 40 tunes are more your bag, G105 takes over the SHERATON for fun with DJ Steve Wazz. Find 9th Wonder at MOSAIC WINE LOUNGE, too. Around Chapel Hill and Carrboro, you’ve got a few more options. Benji Hughes brings his boogie to LOCAL 506, while a few blocks away at THE CAVE, Dex Romweber and Crash LaResh will serve up rowdy rock. Slip out of The Cave’s back door and scoot over to NIGHTLIGHT, where DJs from Nightlight’s monthly Persona parties will be on the decks to spin deep cuts for dancing. Mac McCaughan, meanwhile, deejays ORANGE COUNTY SOCIAL CLUB’s bash, while Craig Powell promises classic soul at BOWBARR. Between Chapel Hill and Durham, Dr. Bacon celebrates a new CD at PLAN B. All the way in Durham, THE PINHOOK—another dance party hot spot—is hosting DJs PlayPlay and Bitchcraft for its “Cheap Date Queer New Year’s Eve” dance party. Head down Rigsbee to MOTORCO for some throwback jams courtesy of JFK Jr.—the cover band, not the man, long deceased. At the DURHAM ARMORY, Phonte Coleman hosts a throwdown that includes a performance by Joshua Gunn. If you want to escape to the Triangle’s borders, there are a few other options that aren’t so city-centric. Have a swingin’ good time at the PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE with the NC Revelers Big Band Orchestra, or dance the night away at the HAW RIVER BALLROOM’s steampunk-themed Clockwork Ball. For more information on each gig, check venue websites. —Allison Hussey

DEEP SOUTH: Cosmic Superheroes, Eyes Go Lightning, Poinsettia; 9 p.m., $5.

DEEP SOUTH COSMIC SUPERHEROES Cosmic Superheroes unofficially celebrate a two-year anniversary with this gig, in which the fun-loving Triangle quintet takes an eclectic journey through atmospheres studded with psychedelic guitar workouts and slightly funky, slightly folky alt-rock. In the opening slot, fellow area upstarts Poinsettia recall your favorite indie rock icons thanks to fuzzy riffs and full bluster. Raleigh garage vets Eyes Go Lightning roar recklessly. $5/9 p.m. —SG

KINGS FRIENDS AS ENEMIES When Raleigh metalcore group Friends as Enemies sticks to strengths, like leaden breakdowns, furious blastbeats and acid-gargling vocals, it offers admirable results. But its insistence on adding textural flights of fancy doesn’t always help. Consider “Revolt,” a teaser released in early November. The saturated tape delay that coats the tremolo-picked guitar lines and coasts into runaway feedback during rests adds some color to the otherwise grayscale metalcore, but the brostep-y electronic static pulses near the song’s end enervate the song’s savagery. It’s good, at least, when it’s simple. With Magnolia,

Unicron and Oceans. $6–$8/8:30 p.m. —PW

LINCOLN THEATRE WINTER METALFEST

POUR HOUSE: Psylo Joe; 11 p.m., $5–$7.

SUN, JAN 3

As this Winter Metalfest marches through the evening, it moves from the scrambled to the straightforward, from the revisionist to the revivalist. Arrive not long after the start for Chaosmic, whose very good 2015 LP, Sunborn, positions the Raleigh band as a more demented and detour-loving High on Fire. Bedowyn stays a similar course, adding bits of halcyon atmospherics, trash churn and death metal aggression to its stoner and doom loves. In the top spots, Widow and Salvación aim for and execute classic heavy metal—wind-whipping riffs, righteously heroic vocals and hooks that anchor anthems. Audio Ashes and Krosis take the first two slots. $10/7 p.m. —GC

IRREGARDLESS: Larry Hutcherson; 10 a.m. Matt Walsh; 6 p.m. JOHNNY’S GONE FISHING: Yotam; 7-9 p.m., free. PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Dave Corlett; 11:30 a.m.

THE MAYWOOD: The Water Between, Six Shots Later, Apples and Airplanes; 9:30 p.m., $7. PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Lester Fricks; 8 p.m.

THE CAVE: Tim Vee; 9 p.m. POUR HOUSE: The Nitrogen Tone; 9 p.m., $5–$8.

MON, JAN 4 NEPTUNES PARLOUR: The Atomic Rhythm All-Stars; 8 p.m., $3–$5. See box, page 30.

TUE, JAN 5 IRREGARDLESS: Whit Grumhaus; 6:30 p.m.

WED, JAN 6

During the holiday season, the schedule for some events may change. Call or check venue websites before making plans. CONTRIBUTORS: Grayson Haver Currin (GC), Spencer Griffith (SG), Jordan Lawrence (JL), Karlie Justus Marlowe (KM), Bryan C. Reed (BCR), David Ford Smith (DS), Patrick Wall (PW)

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visualarts Galleries

from Vick Benson Farm—A Visual Communique from the Family Farm, work by Robert Cassanova. 150 Metro Park Dr, Cary. 919-4623970, www.townofcary.org.

Jan 24, 2016: Cary Photographic Artists. — Thru Jan 21, 2016: Synesthesia: Connecting the Senses. 101 Dry Ave. 919-4694069, www.townofcary.org.

CARY TOWN HALL: Thru Jan

HILLSBOROUGH GALLERY OF ARTS: Jan 4-24: Resolutions

MORNING TIMES GALLERY:

INDYPICK CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY: Thru Jan 9, 2016:

2016. Free. 121-D N Churton St. 919-732-5001, www. hillsboroughgallery.com.

Fri, Jan 1, 6-10 p.m.: Reception. — Jan 1-31: Britt Flood. 10 E Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-459-2348, www. morningtimes-raleigh.com.

PAGE-WALKER ARTS & HISTORY CENTER: Jan 6-Feb

20: Books & Pages, work by Christine Adamczyk. — Jan 6-Feb 20: Painting on Silence, work by Frank Myers. 119 Ambassador Loop, Cary. 919-460-4963, www. friendsofpagewalker.org.

UMSTEAD HOTEL & SPA: Jan

1-Apr 30: Constance Pappalardo, paintings. 100 Woodland Pond, Cary. 919-447-4000, www. theumstead.com.

ONGOING ARTSPACE: Thru Jan 23, 2016:

Carpe Diem, work by Rachel Campbell, Judith Condon and Jane Paradise. — Thru Jan 16, 2016: The

Moving Pictures/Figure and Forest, work by Dan Gottlieb. — Thru Jan 9, 2016: Animal, Vegetable, Mandible, work by Iris Gottlieb. 1106 1/2 Broad St, Durham. 919-286-4837, www. cravenallengallery.com.

DUKE CAMPUS: CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES: Thru Feb 27, 2016:

South Side, photographs and writings by Jon Lowenstein. — Thru Feb 28, 2016: Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila, photographs by Nadia Sablin. 1317 W Pettigrew St, Durham. 919-660-3663, www. cdsporch.org.

DURHAM ART GUILD: Thru Jan 9, 2016: 2015 Members’ Holiday Market. 120 Morris St. 919-560-2713, www. durhamartguild.org. DURHAM ARTS COUNCIL:

During the holiday season, the schedule for some recurring events may change. Call or check venue websites before making plans.

Thru Jan 3, 2016: I Am Quixote - Yo Soy Quijote, work by North Carolina artists celebrating the 400th anniversary of El Quixote. Free. 120 Morris St. 919-5602787, www.durhamarts.org.

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THE SCRAP EXCHANGE: Thru Jan 9, 2016: $24 Art Show. 2050 Chapel Hill Road, Durham. 919688-6960, www.scrapexchange. org.

CARY ARTS CENTER: Thru

25, 2016: Getting to Know Me, work from the LeTouquet and Town of Cary Children’s Cultural Exchange. 316 N Academy St. 919469-4000, www.townofcary.org.

DECEMBER 30, 2015

Exhibition. — Thru Jan 2, 2016: Functional Art Pottery, work by Kenneth Neilsen. 119 Ambassador Loop, Cary. 919-460-4963, www. friendsofpagewalker.org.

Forest for the Trees. Free. 919-8212787, info@artspacenc.org. 201 E Davie St, Raleigh. 919-821-2787, www.artspacenc.org.

BOND PARK COMMUNITY CENTER: Jan 4-Feb 29: Dispatch

“JULY” BY IRIS GOTTLIEB IS ON VIEW AT CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY THROUGH JAN. 9. DURHAM CONVENTION CENTER: Thru Apr 14, 2016: I

Want Candy, work by Stacy Crabill. 301 W Morgan St. 919-956-9404, www.durhamconventioncenter. com.

ENO GALLERY: Thru Jan 15,

2016: Celebrating 40 Years, work by Nancy Tuttle May. — Thru Jan 15, 2016: Fine Southern Clay, studio ceramics and sculptural clay by Southern artists. 100 S Churton St, Hillsborough. 919-883-1415, www.enogallery.net. INDYPICK FLANDERS GALLERY: Thru Jan 18, 2016:

Near Mint: In Lucas We Trust, an exhibition featuring the works of 18 artists who were commissioned to wreak havoc on copies of the blank variant covers of issue 1 of Marvel’s 2015 Star Wars comics series. 505 S Blount St, Raleigh. 919-757-9533, www. flandersartgallery.com. See p. 29.

GALLERY: Thru Feb To advertise or feature a pet for7,FRANK adoption, 2016: The Human Touch: Portraits of Care. — Thru Feb 7, please contact rgierisch@indyweek.com 2016: Intersections, work by Sasha

Bakaric, Shelly Hehenberger and Suzanne Krill. 109 E Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-636-4135, www. frankisart.com.

GOLDEN BELT: Thru Jan 3,

2016: The Spirit of Lolong, work by Maready Evergreen. 807 E Main St, Durham. www.goldenbeltarts. com.

HERBERT C YOUNG COMMUNITY CENTER: Thru

Jan 25, 2016: Serenity in the South, work by H. Lee Dawson. 101 Wilkinson Ave, Cary. 919-4604965, www.townofcary.org.

HILLSBOROUGH GALLERY OF ARTS: Thru Jan 3, 2016:

color field, figurative and narrative paintings by the late Raleigh artist. 225 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh. 919828-7557, www.leehansleygallery. com.

LIGHT ART + DESIGN: Thru

Jan 16, 2016: Metal V, Annual exhibition of metal artists with works from sculpture to jewelry. 601 W Rosemary St, Chapel Hill. 919-942-7077, www. lightartdesign.com.

MIRIAM PRESTON BLOCK GALLERY: Thru Jan 14, 2016:

National Arts Program, works by City of Raleigh and Wake County employees and their families. 222 W Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-9963610, www.raleighnc.gov/arts.

To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, NCSU DH HILL LIBRARY: Jan 4, 2016: Life’s Little please contactThru Dramas: Puppets, Proxies, and Spirits. 2 Broughton Dr, Raleigh. LEErgierisch@indyweek.com HANSLEY GALLERY: Thru The Art of Giving, art for the holiday season by HGA’s 22 member artists. 121-D N Churton St. 919-732-5001, www. hillsboroughgallery.com. Jan 23, 2016: Acclaimed Artists, works by celebrated deceased North Carolina artists — Thru Jan 23, 2016: George Bireline Revisited, abstract expressionist,

919-515-3364, www.lib.ncsu.edu.

PAGE-WALKER ARTS & HISTORY CENTER: Thru

Jan 2, 2016: Fine Arts League of Cary’s Annual Member

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THROUGH THIS LENS:

Thru Jan 9, 2016: Industrial Blues, photographs by Gunther Cartwright. — Thru Jan 9, 2016: Trees, photographs by JJ Raia. 303 E Chapel Hill St, Durham. 919-6870250, www.throughthislens.com.

UNC WILSON SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY: Thru

Jan 10, 2016: Chronicles of Empire: Spain in the Americas, featuring more than 50 early printed volumes from UNC’s Rare Book Collection. 201 South Rd, Chapel Hill. www.lib.unc.edu/wilson.

VILLAGE ART CIRCLE: Thru Dec 31: Art for the Holidays. 200 S Academy St #130, Cary. www. villageartcircle.com.

Art Related

THE EL QUIXOTE FESTIVAL:

Thru Apr 23, 2016: art exhibits, performances and more in various locations celebrating Don Quixote. See website for more details. www.iamquixote.com.

Museums

ACKLAND ART MUSEUM:

Thru Jan 3, 2016: Testing Testing, survey of paintings and sculpture since 1960. 101 S Columbia St, Chapel Hill. 919-843-1611, www. ackland.org.

NASHER MUSEUM OF ART: Thru Sep 18, 2016: The New Galleries: A Collection Come

www.baxterarcade.com

919.869.7486

INDYweek.com to Light. — Thru Feb 28, 2016: Reality of My Surroundings: The Contemporary Collection. — Thru Jan 10, 2016: Richard Mosse: The Enclave. 2001 Campus Dr, Durham. 919-684-5135, nasher.duke.edu.

NC MUSEUM OF ART: Thru

Mar 20, 2016: Chisel and Forge: Works by Peter Oakley and Elizabeth Brim. — Thru Jan 17, 2016: Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester and the Creative Mind. — Thru Jan 31, 2016: Robin Rhode Video Installations. — Thru Jan 17, 2016: The Worlds of M. C. Escher: Nature, Science, and Imagination.

2110 Blue Ridge Rd, Raleigh. Info 919-839-6262, tickets 919-7155923, www.ncartmuseum.org.

8150, www.dsicomedytheater. com.

NC MUSEUM OF HISTORY:

midnite: Trailer Park Prize Night, comedy drag show with gag prize giveaways. 2 S West St, Raleigh. 919-832-8855, www.flex-club.com.

Thru Jun 19, 2016: Treasures of Carolina: Stories from the State Archives, public records and private archival materials from the state archives. — Thru Feb 28, 2016: Hey America!: Eastern North Carolina and the Birth of Funk. — Thru Jul 10, 2016: North Carolina’s Favorite Son: Billy Graham and His Remarkable Journey of Faith. 5 E Edenton St, Raleigh. 919-807-7900,

performance Comedy

COMEDYWORX THEATRE:

Fridays, 8 p.m. & Saturdays, 4 & 8 p.m.: ComedyWorx Improv Show, 2 teams of improv comedians earn points by making the audience laugh. $6-12. — Fridays, 10 p.m. & Saturdays, 10 p.m.: The Harry Show, Ages 18+. Improv host

film Film Capsules

Our rating system uses one to five stars. Signed reviews are by Brian Howe (BH), Laura Jaramillo (LJ), Kathy Justice (KJ), Craig D. Lindsey (CDL), Glenn McDonald (GM), Neil Morris (NM), Zack Smith (ZS) and Ryan Vu (RV).

Current Releases

 1/2 BROOKLYN—John Crowley and Nick Hornby capture the nostalgic melancholy of Colm Tóibín’s novel in this elegiac old-school melodrama. Saoirse Ronan is Eilis, an Irish girl who goes to work in Brooklyn in the 1950s, thanks to the sponsorship of a U.S.-based priest (Jim Broadbent). Leaving behind a

leads late-night revelers through potentially risque games, with audience volunteers brought onstage to join in. $10. 431 Peace St, Raleigh. 919-829-0822, comedyworx.com.

DSI COMEDY THEATER:

Fridays, 10 p.m.: Mister Diplomat. Free. — Fridays, 11 p.m.: The Jam. free. — Saturdays, 10 p.m.: Pork, 5 NC comics perform. Free. 462 W Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-338-

mother and sister she adores, she’s initially homesick, living in an all-female boarding house. That changes when she meets a sweet-natured Italian plumber who falls for her. Striking work by cinematographer Yves Bélanger and costumer Odile Dicks-Mireaux makes Ronan—with her moony, wholesome looks—the brightest thing in the movie. Things get complicated when she starts seeing a suave Irishman (Domhnall Gleeson), turning the story into an intercontinental torn-betweentwo-lovers affair. Like so many films about immigrants looking for a better life, this one lays out a wondrous and romantic (if oddly minority-free) vision of America’s past. Rated PG-13. —CDL  CREED—The boxing-film genre reached its narrative limits long ago. But by using conjoined character arcs, the Rocky series’ seventh film ably honors, updates and even deconstructs its legacy. Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), the son of late champ Apollo Creed—Rocky’s respected nemesis—is rescued from a delinquent childhood by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow. Haunted by her husband’s death in the ring, she discourages Adonis’ impulses. But he moves to Philadelphia to coax an aging Rocky Balboa (Sylvester

FLEX NIGHTCLUB: Thursdays,

GOODNIGHTS COMEDY CLUB / THE GRILLE AT GOODNIGHTS: Saturdays,

10:30 p.m.: Anything Goes Late Show. free. — Thu, Dec 31, 8 & 10:30 p.m. & Sat, Jan 2, 7:30 & 10 p.m.: Dom Irrera. $22-$49. 861 W Morgan St, Raleigh. 919-828-5233, www.goodnightscomedy.com.

Theater

FIRE WITH FIRE: Wed, Dec

30, 7 p.m.: puppet show by Total War Puppets about militarism. Internationalist Books, 101 Lloyd St, Carrboro. 919-942-1740, www. internationalistbooks.org.

INDYPICK LOVE AND INFORMATION: Jan 6-9:

Manbites Dog Theater, 703 Foster St, Durham. Tickets 919-6823343; Office 919-682-4974, www. manbitesdogtheater.org.

INDYPICK TIME STANDS STILL: Thursdays-Sundays. Thru

Dance PA R T I C I PATO RY TRIANGLE COUNTRY DANCERS CONTRA DANCE:

Thu, Dec 31, 8 p.m.: $15. Carrboro Century Center, 100 N Greensboro St. 919-918-7385, carrboro.com/ centurycenter.html.

TRIANGLE SINGLES DANCE CLUB NEW YEAR’S EVE DANCE: Thu, Dec 31, 8:30 p.m.:

Jan 17: $16-$18. Sonorous Road Productions, 209 Oberlin Rd. Raleigh. 919-803-3798, www. sonorousroad.com. See p. 29.

ONGOING HIGHWAY 47: Jan 6-10, 7:30

p.m.: presented by PlayMakers Repertory Company. $15-$45. 919962-7529, www.playmakersrep. org. UNC Campus: Kenan Theatre, 120 Country Club Rd, Chapel Hill. 919-962-7529, www. playmakersrep.org.

non-alcoholic, semi-formal. $15$20. Northbrook Country Club, 4905 North Hills Dr, Raleigh.

INDYPICK THE BOOK OF MORMON: Wed, Dec 30, 7:30

Stallone) to train him. Balboa runs an Italian restaurant and doesn’t visit Mickey’s gym anymore. Still, he reluctantly agrees to train Adonis, though his guilt over failing to prevent Apollo’s death is a motivation the film doesn’t sufficiently explicate. Ryan Coogler, who also directed Jordan in Fruitvale Station, reclaims the blackness of a franchise originally framed through the prism of the Great White Hope. It’s not only the first Rocky film in which Rocky doesn’t fight, but also the first that doesn’t spotlight a white boxer. Jordan and Stallone, utterly at ease, conjure an alchemy of wit and poignancy. The film doesn’t conclude with a celebration in the ring. Instead, a movie icon haltingly climbs the same steps he once galloped up to glory, in an elegy for a cultural phenomenon. Rated PG-13. —NM  THE DANISH GIRL—Eddie Redmayne (last year’s Oscar winner for best actor) stars as landscape painter Einar Wegener, one of the first recipients of gender reassignment surgery. Set in 1920s Copenhagen, the tale is inspired by actual events, although director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables) takes liberties to present the story as a tender portrait of a remarkable marriage. Alicia Vikander plays Einar’s wife, Gerda, and

her performance is every bit as vulnerable and wrenching as Redmayne’s. As Einar begins his gradual transformation into a woman, the story becomes a psychologically complex love triangle between two people. But Hooper’s overwrought visual strategy keeps the film from really soaring. The style is too composed and conventional for the material. Rated R. —GM  THE GOOD DINOSAUR— The publicity materials for Disney and Pixar’s latest focus on the fact that it’s set in a world where an asteroid didn’t hit Earth and dinosaurs continued to evolve. What goes unmentioned is that the premise is an excuse for an old-fashioned children’s adventure story—a “boy and his dog” tale where the dog is the boy and the boy is a dinosaur. Set in an untouched American West, The Good Dinosaur is a simple story of a dino homestead where a four-legged Apatosaurus family is apparently quite good at irrigation and growing corn despite a lack of opposable thumbs. Family runt Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) is terrified of everything and despairs of never “making his mark,” a point the film illustrates literally. An encounter with a loin-clothed “critter” (Jack Bright) leads to a tragedy, and then

p.m., Thu, Dec 31, 7:30 p.m., Fri, Jan 1, 8 p.m., Sat, Jan 2, 2 & 8

•

DECEMBER 30, 2015

•

p.m., Sun, Jan 3, 1 & 6:30 p.m., Tue, Jan 5, 7:30 p.m., Wed, Jan 6, 7:30 p.m.: $50-$130. Durham Performing Arts Center, 123 Vivian St. Info 919-688-3722, Tickets 919680-2787, www.dpacnc.com.

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER: Wed, Dec 30, 11 a.m.: $23-$55. Fletcher Opera Theater, 2 E South St, Raleigh. 919-996-8700, www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

books Readings & Signings

Heaven. Flyleaf Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill. 919-942-7373, www.flyleafbooks. com.

CHRIS BOHJALIAN: Tue, Jan

5, 7 p.m.: with novel The Guest Room. Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade Ave, Raleigh. 919-8281588, www.quailridgebooks.com.

MICHAEL LIVINGSTON: Tue,

Jan 5, 7 p.m.: with historical fantasy novel The Shards of

Arlo is swept downriver, where he discovers that the cave-boy he resents is a surprisingly loyal companion on the long, dangerfilled trip home. Like the Cars films, this one seems aimed at a tradition-loving Middle American audience. But there’s a darkness to this story that contrasts with the soft, toy-like pastel dinosaurs; Arlo suffers about every physical and emotional trauma possible in a Disney flick, dead parent included. It’s all a little old-fashioned for Pixar, which has done its best work breathing fresh life into tired ideas. It doesn’t feel particularly innovative, or even interested in exploring the dinosaur-based society it’s created. But it’s nice to see that old-fashioned children’s adventure stories aren’t, well, extinct. Rated PG. —ZS  THE HATEFUL EIGHT— The best things during the interminable three hours of Quentin Tarantino’s latest are the musical overture by the great Ennio Morricone and the 12-minute intermission, when you can flee without bothering the rest of the audience. Set in post-Civil War Wyoming, The Hateful Eight is an ensemble Western revolving around a gaggle of mercenaries and miscreants forced into close quarters while escaping a

blizzard en route to the town of Red Rock. In all, 10 people take shelter in the stage stopover, including “the Mexican” (Demián Bichir), a taciturn cowpuncher (Michael Madsen) and the local hangman (Tim Roth). As their furtive motives and backstories are gradually revealed, the plot assumes the guise of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Christie’s novel was originally published in the United Kingdom, in 1939, under the title Ten Little Niggers, a pejorative Tarantino excessively deploys throughout The Hateful Eight. Though it was divisive, his frequent use of the racial slur in his early films felt organic in the vernacular of modern urban milieus. But he treats his Civil War-era settings, here and in Django Unchained, as license to gorge on the slur to a cartoonish, wearying degree. Despite a garrulous script, few sequences are memorable. The final chapters are a nihilistic fever dream, filled with projectile blood-barfing, splattered brains and a lynching. What’s missing is maturity and meaning; the characters are mere ciphers for Tarantino’s base indulgences. Still, Tarantino can still be a captivating, adroit filmmaker who is thrilling because of his visual

INDYweek.com dexterity and eye for detail. But his narrative predilections have become predictable, and his films are teetering on self-parody. Redemption can begin only if he jettisons his period revenge fantasies and returns to the wheelhouse of contemporary hyper-realities. Otherwise, Tarantino will soon feel as dated as his film stock. Rated R. —NM  THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 2— Drenched in violence and darkness, this last installment of the teenage wasteland franchise finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) wearily slouching to her final bloody victory over the Capitol. Bombs shred refugees, cannibals devour soldiers and children kill children in what is essentially a war picture marketed as YA sci-fi adventure. The heaviness that worked so well in Part 1, released last year, is unbalanced and off-kilter here. Lawrence is her usual bad-ass self and manages to hold the center for a while, but the story finally collapses under its own weight. That PG-13 rating has nothing to do with viewer discretion. It’s a marketing tag that says the Hunger Games are open for business one last time, to all teenagers and their parents’ credit cards. Rated PG-13. —GM  1/2 THE MARTIAN— Director Ridley Scott’s latest is one nerdy-ass science fiction movie—in a good way. In a recognizable near future, NASA sends interplanetary space ships on regular trips to Mars. Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is separated, presumed dead and left behind by his crew. But he survives, and most of the movie documents his ingenuity in gathering and creating what he needs to stay alive. As you get swept up in the story, it’s easy to forget how amazing Scott’s visuals are—he has created a new world onscreen. The film has a few weak spots: Some dodgy cloakand-dagger elements toward the end strain credulity. But overall, the film delivers what it should. A thinking person’s big-budget sci-fi movie, it’s talky and intelligent. The filmmakers worked with NASA to make the science as accurate as possible. The story is compelling, the visuals are spectacular and the movie even manages to make math exhilarating. Rated PG-13. —GM  1/2 SISTERS—Sisters stars Amy Poehler and Tina Fey as Maura and Kate Ellis, terminally immature siblings whose empty-nester parents decide to finally sell their childhood home. Poehler sweetly plays the straight woman to Fey’s not-totallybelievable middle-aged lady gone

wild. It’s a completely competent comedy that occasionally hits some very funny notes, though it mostly stays within the triedand-true formula of mainstream American comedy: toilet humor meets family values. Directed by Jason Moore, Sisters mobilizes a cadre of Saturday Night Live talent in bit parts, including Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch and Bobby Moynihan. Unfortunately, none of them are allowed enough screen time to really let their jokes rip. The famed chemistry between Poehler and Fey remains; it’s best expressed when they’re obviously going off script. The pair has an uncanny gift for physical comedy, but the script by Paula Pell seriously hampers Fey’s comedic gifts, stifling the brainy absurdist humor that is at the heart of her appeal and shoehorning her into the Sarah Silverman-esque territory of dick and pussy jokes. Fey and Poehler have been writing some of the best comedy of the aughts on 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, respectively. Television seems to be a more nurturing context than movies for weird talents like theirs. Though female comedians have gained tremendous ground in the past few years, Sisters highlights how limited a category “funny” remains for women in Hollywood. Rated R. —LJ  SPECTRE—Until now, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and the rest of the SPECTRE global crime syndicate hadn’t appeared in a James Bond film since 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. But after decades of rights-wrangling, MGM and the estate of film producer Kevin McClory finally reached a legal settlement, allowing Bond’s original infamous foes to return to the franchise. The 24th Bond film is overeager to reintegrate its birthright, shoehorning it into the narrative reboot that began with Daniel Craig and temporarily rejuvenated the franchise. But the slapdash Spectre is a nostalgic deviation that rolls back the Craig films from a reinvention to a mere rehash. A power struggle threatens to render the 00 section obsolete. With the help of Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Bond (Craig) goes rogue (again) on a globe-trotting search for the mastermind behind the worldwide tentacles of criminal mayhem dogging him. A few moments prove memorable: An extended tracking shot through Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities, a train-car brawl between Bond and henchman du jour Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista). Otherwise, the action scenes fall flat. The film has a basic appeal for aficionados, with its copious callbacks to Bond lore, but this distended 140-min-

ute theme-park ride doesn’t leave us shaken or stirred.Rated PG-13. —NM  STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS—Director J.J. Abrams has delivered a triumph by flouting the usual reboot expectations to make a disco remix of franchise mythology. Three decades have passed since the events of Return of the Jedi, and the collapse of the Empire has created a power vacuum. The fascist First Order has stepped in, and Luke Skywalker, the last of the Jedi, has disappeared. On the desert planet of Jakku we meet our new heroes. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), a hotshot Resistance pilot, finds an unlikely ally in the morally conflicted Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega). We also meet the resourceful scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), who plucks high-tech debris from derelict space cruisers half-buried in the sand. The early scenes of wrecked Star Destroyers and Imperial Walkers are like ruin porn from a galaxy far, far away. Over on the Dark Side, the mysterious Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) wears a mask and cape that evoke Darth Vader. Details on his actual identity are among the first of the script’s many unsettling surprises. As the story progresses and more characters are put into play, it becomes clear that Abrams isn’t creating a new Star Wars so much as he is retelling the original saga, but with all the components mixed up. Rey is a little bit Luke and little bit Leia. Poe is a little bit Han and a little bit Luke. Snoke is part Vader and part Palpatine. Rey’s companion droid, BB-8, is R2-D2 with a new form of locomotion. The narrative shape of the movie is familiar, too, set in motion by a droid with coveted information. Harrison Ford is one of the very best parts of a very good movie. For the first time in a long while, he looks like he’s having fun. Not everything clicks into place: As Leia, Carrie Fisher isn’t given much to do; the political state of affairs between the First Order and the Republic isn’t clear; the pace is a twinge too speedy. But it builds to a satisfying crescendo—watch how Abrams updates the series’ signature cross-cut editing in the final battles. And the quiet coda is just about perfect. The last image is a gorgeous visual metaphor for what the filmmakers have accomplished. It’s helpful to keep in mind the notion that myths are stories we tell ourselves over and over again, in different guises and different eras. Star Wars is one of the great tales of our modern mythology, and The Force Awakens successfully re-imagines the legend for a new generation. Rated PG-13. —GM

•

DECEMBER 30, 2015

•

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All real estate advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise ìany preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.î We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity. For more information or assistance, contact Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Fair Housing Project at (855) 797-3247 or visit www. fairhousingnc.org.

rent/wake co. APARTMENT FOR RENT -

1 bedroom, 1 bath efficiency apartment available on Boylan Ave. One block from Glenwood Ave, one block from Hillsborough Street. Glenwood South area. Rents for $750.00 which includes all utilities and basic cable. (No Smoking. No Pets) Please contact our management team at 919.828.3081.

groups

misc.

IS IT HARD TO IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT WEED? Do you want to stop, but can’t? We Can Help! Marijuana Anonymous: www.NorthCarolinaMA. ORG 919-886-4420

Bolinwood Condominiums Affordability without compromise

Convenient to UNC on N bus line 2 & 3 bedroom condominiums for lease

www.bolinwoodcondos.com • 919-942-7806

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ACORN STAIRLIFTS

T’AI CHI Traditional art of meditative movement for health, energy, relaxation, self-defense. Classes/workshops throughout the Triangle. Magic Tortoise School - Since 1979. Call Jay or Kathleen, 919-968-3936, or Lao Ma: 919-542-0688. www.magictortoise.com

massage FULL BODY MASSAGE by a Male Russian Massage Therapist with strong and gentle hands to make you feel good from head to toe. Schedule an appointment with Pavel Sapojnikov, NC LMBT. #1184. Call: 919-790-9750.

MARK KINSEY/LMBT Feel comfy again. 919-619NERD (6373). Durham, on Broad Street. NC Lic. #6072.

The AFFORDABLE solution to your stairs! **Limited time -$250 Off Your Stairlift Purchase!** Buy Direct & SAVE. Please call 1-800291-2712 for FREE DVD and brochure.(NCPA)

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classes & instruction

2BR/2BA upstairs apartment. Available January 1. On-site parking. Approx. 1150 sqft. No Pets or smoking. Washer/Dryer. $1400 per month. 919-215-3559

share/ elsewhere

XARELTO USERS have you had complications due to internal bleeding (after January 2012)? If so, you MAY be due financial compensation. If you don’t have an attorney, CALL Injuryfone today! 1-800-419-8268. (NCPA)

THE MEDICAL ARTS SCHOOL

Raleigh: 919-872-6386 • www.medicalartsschool.com

Body Therapy Institute ★

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Book your ad • CALL Leslie at 919-286-6642 • EMAIL classy@indyweek.com • ONLINE www.indyweek.com

4 3 8 1 9 6 5 2 7

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5 3 crossword

this week’s puzzle level: # 13

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MEDIUM 9 2 4 1 3 5 7 6 8

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MEDIUM

# 16

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “Diversions”. Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com

30/10/2005 # 14 6 1 7 4 9 3 5 8 2

last week's puzzle

www.sudoku.com

9 3 3 7

4 2 1 7

12.30.15

solution to last week’s puzzle

# 13

2 3 2 5 1

3 1 4 7 6 9 2 8 5

2 7 9 5 3 8 1 4 6

8 6 5 2 1 4 7 9 3

1 2 8 4 5 6 9 3 7

9 5 3 1 2 7 4 6 8

7 4 6 9 8 3 5 2 1

6 9 7 8 4 5 3 1 2

DECEMBER 30, 2015

•

MEDIUM # 14 If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “Diversions” at the bottom of our webpage.

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

3 4 8 2 6 3 7 1 3 9 4 1 9 5 4 2 9 4 1 6 62 7 1

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4 8 2 3 7 1 6 5 9

5 3 1 6 9 2 8 7 4

# 15

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9 1 3 6 5 2 4 8 7

2 4 6 7 8 9 1 5 3

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1 5 9 2 7 8 6 3 4

7 8 4 1 6 3 9 2 5

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# 16

1 8 6 5 9 4 2 3 7

5 7 9 3 8 2 1 4 6

4 2 3 7 1 6 8 5 9

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3 1 8 9 6 7 4 2 5

9 6 4 1 2 5 3 7 8

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30/10/2005

INDYweek.com

studies

If you are a man or woman, 18-55 years old, living in the RaleighDurham-Chapel Hill area, and smoke cigarettes or use an electronic nicotine delivery system (e-cigarette), please join an important study on smokers being conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). What’s Required? • One visit to donate blood, urine, and saliva samples • Samples will be collected at the NIEHS Clinical Research Unit in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina • Volunteers will be compensated up to $60 Who Can Participate? • Healthy men and women aged 18-55 • Current cigarette smokers or users of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes (can be using both) The definition of healthy for this study means that you feel well and can perform normal activities. If you have a chronic condition, such as high blood pressure, healthy can also mean that you are being treated and the condition is under control. For more information about this study, call 919-316-4976 Lead Researcher Stavros Garantziotis, M.D. • National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

• DECEMBER 30, 2015 •

Do You Use Black C oho sh? If you are a woman living in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and take black cohosh for hot flashes, cramps or other symptoms, please join an important study on the health you cohosh are a woman livingbyinthethe Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and(NIEHS). effects ofIf black being conducted National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences take black cohosh for hot flashes, cramps, or other symptoms, please join What’s required? an important study on the health effects of black cohosh being conducted • Only one visit to donate a of blood sample • QualifiHealth ed participants will receive up to $50 by the National Institute Environmental Sciences (NIEHS). • Blood sample will be drawn at the NIEHS Clinical Research Unit in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina What’s Required? Who Can Participate? Only one visit women, to donate sample • Healthy aged a18blood years and older • Not pregnant or breastfeeding Volunteers compensated upthe to $50 For will morebeinformation about Black Cohosh Study, call: Blood sample will be drawn919-316-4976 at the NIEHS Clinical Research Unit in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Lead Investigator: Stavros Garantziotis, M.D. Who Can Participate? National Institute of Environmental Healthy women, aged 18 years and older Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Not pregnant or breastfeeding

· · · · ·

National Institutes of Health • U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services

For more information about the Black Cohosh Study, call 919-316-4976 National Institutes of Health • U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services

Lead Researcher

services

tech services GOT A MAC? Need Support? Let AppleBuddy help you. Call 919.740.2604 or log onto www.applebuddy.com

financial services IRS Are you in BIG trouble with the IRS? Stop wage & bank levies, liens & audits, unfiled tax returns, payroll issues, & resolve tax debt FAST. Call 844-753-1317 (AAN CAN)

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Stavros Garantziotis, M.D. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina you want to learn more

home improvement

ALL THINGS BASEMENTY! Basement Systems Inc. Call us for all of your basement needs! Waterproofing, Finishing, Structural Repairs, Humidity and Mold Control. FREE ESTIMATES! Call 1-800-698-9217(NCPA)

professional services TREE HOUSES & PLAYGROUNDS

misc. HOME REPAIR SPECIAL Place an ad in the Professional Services section for 4 weeks, get 2 extra weeks FREE! Ads start at $19/week. 919-2866642 or e-mail classy@indyweek.com

SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY BENEFITS. Unable to work? Denied benefits? We Can Help! WIN or Pay Nothing! Contact Bill Gordon & Associates at 1-800-371-1734 to start your application today! (NCPA)

ROOF REPAIR and gutter cleaning. Over twenty years experience. References available. Call Dan at: 919-395-6882.

misc. notices

PREGNANT? THINKING OF ADOPTION?

EMERGENCIES CAN STRIKE AT ANY TIME.

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classes & instruction

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renovations

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INDYweek.com

•

DECEMBER 30, 2015

•

entertainment

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to Listen & Reply to ads.

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BARTENDERS NEEDED MAKE $20-$35/HOUR Raleigh’s Bartending School 676.0774 www.cocktailmixer.com 1-2wk class

THE GIFT THEY’VE ALWAYS WANTED. 1895 5’6” CHICKERING GRAND PIANO

with bench. Restored by Craftsman of the Piano Technicians Guild. It looks and sounds beautiful. Valued at $11,300. $8,500 or best offer. 919-265-3869.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

The Sun, a nonprofit, ad-free magazine, needs an associate editor to edit text for publication, solicit new writing, evaluate submissions, and work with authors to develop and revise their work. Visit thesunmagazine.org for details.

GARDENS TO DIE FOR

Find Peace, Beauty, and Abundance in your own yard! Mark N. Jensen. 919-528-5588 GardensToDieFor.com

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T’AI CHI

Traditional art of meditative movement for health, energy, relaxation, self-defense. Classes/workshops throughout the Triangle. Magic Tortoise School - Since 1979. Call Jay or Kathleen, 919-968-3936, or Lao Ma: 919-542-0688. www.magictortoise.com

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HELP KEEP DOGS WARM!!

Coalition to Unchain Dogs seeks plastic or igloo style dog houses for cold dogs in need. To donate, please contact Amanda at director@unchaindogs.net.

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You give us $20, we’ll run a 20 word ad with a color photo for 4 weeks. Call 919-286-6642 or emailclassy@indyweek.com

919.286.6642

back page

Weekly deadline 4pm Monday • classy@indyweek.com BEGIN TAI CHI & AIKIDO

HIRE THE BEST!

HOME REPAIR SPECIAL

DECLUTTERING? WE’LL BUY YOUR BOOKS

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Find the best candidates for your job opening in the INDY! Employment ads start at 70 cents/ word/week. Call INDY Classifieds: 919-286-6642 or email classy@indyweek.com 9:00 Saturday January 9. The Pinhook. 117 W. Main St, Durham. thepinhook.com $5. Caller: Sarah Gibson, w/ Five Points Rounders.

Place an ad in the Professional Services section for 4 weeks, get 2 extra weeks FREE! Ads start at $19/week. 919-286-6642 or e-mail classy@indyweek.com

LOTUS LEAF GIFTS/APPAREL

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Available for overnight stays, can give meds incl. sub-q & intramuscular injections. 19 years kennel texch experience. Excellent references! 919-815-8956 or paullnoelle@hotmail.com

2 East South Street Raleigh, NC 27601 919-996-8700 TICKETS & INFO

800 745 3000 800-745-3000

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JANUARY 12-17, 2016

RALEIGH MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM

JANUARY 14-16, 2016

A. J. FLETCHER OPERA THEATER