Categories
Arts & Music

Theater Calendar

Deep Dish Theater
The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, directed by Derrick Ivey. A comedy by one of Italy’s most prolific playwrights about a servant trying to double his wages, but instead landing himself between feuding lovers $12-$16; Aug. 21-Sept. 13

DSI
Mister Diplomat, Aug. 1, 15, 22, 29 at 9:30pm, free;
ComedySportz, Aug. 2, 9, 16, 23 at 7:30pm $12;
Best Show Ever, Aug. 2, 23 at 9:30pm $12;
Standup Comedy, Aug. 7, 14, 21 at 8:00pm $10;
Cage Match, Aug. 16, 30 at 9:30pm $12;
CSz Sunday, Aug. 24 at 7:30pm $10.

Categories
Arts & Music

August Shows & Happenings

8/1-9/28
Paperhand Puppet Intervention
Forest Theater
9th Annual summer puppet extravaganza featuring giant eye candy and live music. Every weekend of August and September. Adults $10, kids 12 and under $7, kids 2 and under free.

8/1
Embarrassing Fruits
Local 506
Basement-rock CD release party with Hammer No More The Fingers and Opening Flower Happy Bird, 9:30pm

8/2
Don Dixon AND
The Jump Rabbits
Cat’s Cradle
Scene legends play with Jeffrey Dean Foster and The Birds of Prey. 8:30pm, $10-12

Categories
Arts & Music

Music Spotlight: Don Dixon

Influential Chapel Hill musician Don Dixon will play two shows this month at Cat’s Cradle. Don Dixon & the Jump Rabbits play this Saturday, Aug. 2, and he will appear again Aug. 23 with Arrogance. Dixon was a founding member of Arrogance, an influential and popular band in Chapel Hill in the 1970s, and produced R.E.M.’s 1983 popular debut album, Murmur. Come out and see an original Chapel Hill favorite and one of the men responsible for our rich local music history.

Categories
Arts & Music

Music Calendar

The ArtsCenter
Open Jazz Jam (8/11)

Blue Horn Lounge
David Spencer Band (8/1) See No Weevil (8/2) Jule Brown Band (8/8) Blue Diablo (8/9) Erin Brown Band (8/13) Tain Collins (8/14) Dogwood Deddy (8/15) Steve Jack Band (8/16) Pete Waggoner (8/20) Bill West (8/21) Marla Vickers Band (8/22) Good Rocking Sam (8/23) Chackalacky Tabachi Blues Band (8/26) Wes Collins (8/28) Steve Jack (8/29)

Categories
Arts & Music

Firecrackers & Fiction

July starts with a bang and has for a good while now. And around Carrboro on Friday, the town’s annual Fourth of July celebration starts with the most red, white and blue community parade you’ve ever laid eyes on. You might hear the good name of this town disparaged elsewhere as un-American because many folks here share left-of-center views (such as a fondness for habeas corpus), but we’ll match our Fourth celebration, our love of country and our stylish bunting against anybody’s.

The Fourth is also one of those events where Carrboro and Chapel Hill have managed to work out a way to share a holiday. Carrboro is the daytime spot with baby races, face-paining, Sousa, watermelon, ice cream, bluegrass, rock and roll and a lot of other fun stuff to see and do. In the evening, it’s the big city’s turn to shine, with the annual music and fireworks show at Kenan Stadium.
While the month starts with a bang, the true essence of July is easy-going, some might even say slothful. It used to be that come mid-July, tumbleweeds rolling on the eastward breezes were unencumbered from the hundred block of Franklin clean through to Carrboro and on down to University Lake.

Categories
Arts & Music

Music Calendar: July

ArtsCenter
10 by 10 in the Triangle: an international festival of new, ten-minute plays (7/10-20) The Music Man (7/24)

Cat’s Cradle
Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band (7/4) Dirty South Fest feat. Lower Class Brats, Murphy’s Law, Patriot, Hub City Stompers, Iron Cross, Antagonizers, Wednesday Night Heroes, Vangaurd (7/5) Boris Torche, Clouds (7/6) Funasshit, Diamond Studs (7/8) Langhorne Slim (7/11) The Club Is Open Festival feat. Roman Candle, Red Collar, Lud, Future Kings Of Nowhere, American Aquarium (7/12), Ben Davis and The Jetts, I Was Totally Destroying It, Animal Music, Shakermaker, Salvo Hunter (7/13) The Bars & Tone Experiment: Local Films & Local Bands feat. Wembley, Maple Stave, The Octobers, Grappling Hook (7/16) DubConscious, DJ Ras J (7/18) Girls Rock NC: Showcased by campers (ages 10-17) from the NC Girls Rock Camp (7/19) Hieroglyphics, Blue Scholars, Knobody, Musab, Tanya Morgan (7/24) Tilly and the Wall, The Ruby Suns (7/25) She & Him feat. Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward (7/28) Immortal Technique, DJ G.I. Joe, Poison Pen, Da Circle, J Arch (7/29) Cosmic Charlie (7/30)

Categories
Arts & Music

July Shows & Happenings

7/03 African American Dance Ensemble 7/4 Festival for the Eno
Red Hot Poker Dots
The Cave
They’re from Australia. They have a song about Saxapahaw and they are quite active on stage. 10 p.m.

7/04
Fourth of July
Carrboro, Chapel Hill
Annual event celebrating a stand against tyranny with colorful bunting, summer foods, baby races and rockets emitting red and other colored glare. Carrboro Town Commons and Kenan Stadium. (See special insert for details.)

Categories
Miscellany

A survey of local bookstores

Our reporter travels the area for locally owned shops offering good reads
By Emily Buehler

By now, the reasons to shop at locally owned businesses are ingrained in our heads: keep money in the community, don’t contribute to the sprawl of box-store shopping centers, maintain the uniqueness of our town centers. Buying books at locally owned bookstores has additional importance: Independent bookstores can sell small-run, self-published or locally produced books – books that might not sell a lot of copies and are therefore not worthwhile to the big guys. A friend at a major NYC publishing house told me her company actually looks to the big guys, since most sales come from them; if Barnes and Noble won’t sell it, they don’t publish it. So in addition to profiting off our community, the big stores have a major role in which ideas are available to us.

Buying items from local businesses feels good. Your money is going to one of your neighbors and back into your own community. And local bookstores have unique identities. Get to know one today.

Categories
Miscellany

Other options

McIntyre’s Fine Books
2000 Fearrington Village Center
Pittsboro
542-3030
fearrington.com/village/mcintyres.asp
Monday–Saturday 10am–6pm, Thursday 10am–8pm, Sunday 10am– 5pm
Located in the Fearrington Village, McIntyre’s is a pleasant place to visit and has a packed schedule of readings and events.

PTA Thrift Store
103 Jones Ferry Rd.
Carrboro
967-1272
Monday–Saturday 8:30am–6pm
For the cheapest books in town, visit the basement of the Carrboro PTA. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, go back in a few days and you may find an entirely different selection.

Categories
Miscellany

Summer Reads

We did a little fishing this month, casting out a request to local authors and avid readers on what books they’re planning to delve into or recommend delving into during summer reading series. What follows are their comments unvarnished.

Brunson Hoole, managing editor,
Algonquin Books

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Mary Roach, the author of Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, infectiously combines humor and science to explore all manner of sex research. That we’ve spent so much time and effort studying animals to learn about our own sexuality speaks volumes about what strange creatures we are.

The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
I first read this in high school, and the setting had me wondering, “Where the heck is this place?” It certainly isn’t the U.S. or England. Oh, Canada! Yankees with manners. Davies was a scarily wise and skilled writer who knew how to entertain.

Categories
Arts & Music

Uncommon impressions

Artist Rick Hermanson relaxing in The Uncommon Garden. Photo by Lucy Butcher.Entering The Uncommon Garden is like stepping into another world. Reality vanishes, and a magical, serene jungle takes its place.

You won’t want to leave.

The air is cool, and running water can be heard from all directions. Dead trees are transformed into sculptures, and Japanese maples grow at angles among cedars, ferns, pools, and rocks. The real magic is in the detail, in the parts you wont notice the first time you look. Dragons, snakes, and other creatures emerge from the plants. A nook in the wall houses stones from all over the world. Every rock is a work of art, and every detail holds a whimsical surprise.