All this and free cake? My experience on Allegiant Air
South Florida is a 100 mile long sprawl of abundance and oddity: great shopping (mini and full size malls, tanning salons, outlet stores, and boutiques), the worst drivers in the country, amazing restaurants of every kind, beautiful beaches, sunny weather with postcard-perfect tropical foliage, uninspired architecture and an amazing parade of humanity from the most…
Bites & pieces: Form follows function
What is it? In a city not known for its ready adaptation to change, the business flying under the banner “Form” on Habersham Street is a new model that’s long overdue – but one that will take some open-mindedness. It’s part package fine wine store, part gourmet cheese, meats and foods store, part cheesecake retailer/wholesaler…
Give the gift of alcohol!
I went trolling the busy aisles of World Market last week, scouring stacks for the annual Samuel Smith Selection gift box. The youngest Rutherford is gonna find it under his holiday tree, part of an ongoing strategy to ruin his palate for cheap, fizzy, yellow beer. The oldest son? Mission accomplished. The box contains three…
And the budget plays on…
Whether it was intentional or not, anyone who watched last week’s City Council meeting in its entirety, received a lesson about the importance of budgeting. The meeting drew a full house crowd for the public hearing regarding the City’s 2011 budget, which will include cuts to several high-visibility offices as well as some major re-organizing…
Branded!
It’s been nearly 30 years since Ohio composer, arranger and musician Chip Davis made his first all-instrumental album under the pseudonym Mannheim Steamroller. That release, Fresh Aire, was Davis’ attempt at what he liked to call “18th Century Classical Rock,” using synthesizers alongside bass, drums, guitars and various keyboards to create a unique hybrid of…
Review: National Arts Program Exhibit
While discussions over the City’s 2011 budget continued last week, a different side of municipal government was highlighted by an exhibit that opened at the S.P.A.C.E. gallery on Henry Street – its creative side. Featuring more than 100 works, the 4th annual National Arts Program exhibit opened hallowed gallery walls to work created by folks…
Some things don’t fit in a big box
The new building doesn’t really stand out from the Southside’s tradition of sprawl, and there are no signs announcing the imminent arrival of a new business opening soon, despite how far along the exterior work has progressed. The announcement heralding the city’s newest Walmart Supercenter, opening early next year across from Savannah Mall – ironically…
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Unstoppable, Fair Game
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 *** We won’t know until July 15, 2011, whether or not the final book in J.K. Rowling’s franchise really needed to be divided into two motion pictures. But until the release of Part 2 on that forthcoming summer day, the evidence based on Harry Potter and the…
Swamp metal, with all the trimmings
The three musicians who make up Black Tusk have a lot to be thankful for this year. Their first Relapse Records album, Taste the Sin, got great reviews (Spin called the band “Mastodon’s Backwater Brethren”) and the road has beckoned, opened wide and given them more work than they can handle. More than any other…
Crowbar, Randall Bramblett Band
CROWBAR/BLACK TUSK At 11 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 27. With Guzik The Jinx, 127 W. Congress St. $10 advance, $12 day of show However the music media try to cleverly spin it, it’s true that metal from the Southern states is its own force of nature – the explosive thunder takes on a grittier, somewhat swampier…
Don’t touch our junk!
This is just horrible… I’d much rather be blown up by a terrorist than be reduced to this crap. — Commenter on TSA’s official blog (blog.tsa.gov) IT’S BEEN A JOKE around the world for years that Americans will tolerate any act of malfeasance from their leaders as long as it’s not a sex scandal,…
Burning desire
A WOMAN CALLED POLICE after her ex-boyfriend tried to set her apartment on fire. It was shortly before 5:57 a.m. when the woman awoke to a loud crashing sound coming from her kitchen. She checked on her two children and then proceeded to investigate the disturbance. When she walked downstairs, she recalled stepping in some…
A contrarian view of ‘Extreme Makeover’
THEY CAME, they saw, they conquered. And they left a giant new home that dwarfs the neighborhood. It was like living on Broadway, watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Savannah just across from my beautiful and solemn home – the one I bought when I left Historic Savannah for a simpler and more subdued way of…
Mixed ‘Nutcrackers’
The big thing in Savannah theaters this Thanksgiving weekend is … Christmas! That’s right, we’ll barely have the leftover turkey tucked into Ziploc bags before The Nutcracker, that venerable dance of tinsel-time joy, is upon us. There are two productions of The Nutcracker this year, each a mix of professional and non-professional ballet artists, each…
Exhibits & openings this week
AASU Undergraduate Art Exhibit – A group show, titled “9+1”, featuring work that includes pottery, photography and design by 10 senior art majors at AASU. Reception: Dec. 3, 5:30pm. Savannah Mall, first floor, 14045 Abercorn St. , http://www.armstrong.edu/ Art Basel Shuttle – Catch a ride down to Miami for Art Basel. Shuttle departs Savannah on…
All about Japanese tentacle p*rn
Sorry if this question is too graphic, but I’m baffled by Japanese tentacle porn. Why are there so many rapist octopuses living in the Land of the Rising Sun? — Michael Tentacle porn is hardly Japan’s only out-there erotic category-try Googling “koonago” sometime. I’m not about to launch into some Lost in Translation-style the-Japanese-sure-are-weird riff,…
Without quality, sustainability is unsustainable
AT THE CORNER of Meeting Street and Hasell Street in downtown Charleston is a restaurant called FIG (Food Is Good). It’s generally considered one of the finest restaurants in the country. Executive chef Mike Lata recently won the coveted James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast. The sustainable foods-based menu at FIG changes…
Sticking up for chardonnay
Chardonnay gets a bum rap, let’s face it. This ubiquitous white wine became a mundane staple of house wine lists everywhere. It became the poster child for boring party wines and even gave rise to its own mantra: ABC: Anything But Chardonnay. I’m guilty of a little disdain myself. Sure, I like Chardonnay, but to…
Hopeless
NEW YORK — It’s just after the Republican sweep we all knew was coming. If Obama had any dignity, if he was honest with himself and with us, he would resign. It’s abundantly clear that he isn’t up to the job. But you don’t become president by being honest or dignified. So now it’s wound–licking…
The Black Lips, Sol Driven Train
THE BLACK LIPS At 11 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19. With Mass Plastic The Jinx, 127 W. Congress St. $10 advance, $13 day of show Known far and wide for raucous live shows that involve (take your pick) nudity, urination, vomiting and everything shy of chicken-sacrificing (“a go-to band for filth-rock puritans,” said Pitchfork), this Atlanta…
Mark your calendar: Merle Haggard
Can we just go ahead and call Merle Haggard The Coolest Guy in Country Music? “Workin’ Man Blues,” “Mama Tried,” “Mama’s Hungry Eyes,” “If We Make it Through December,” “Big City,” “Kern River,” “Silver Wings,” “The Fugitive,” “Are the Good Times Really Over,” “I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,” “Today I…
No five finger discount
A clerk at a convenience store on Drayton Street called police to notify them of a shoplifting in progress. When officers arrived on the scene they made contact with the young woman who was believed to have stashed several items in her purse without paying for them.She was asked if she had any merchandise she…
Truman construction devastates habitat
Editor, Wild places in Chatham County are so few and far between that when another one is wiped out it’s heartbreaking. Whenever I used to drive by a church on Abercorn and White Bluff and see the expanse of woods behind it, in my mind’s eye by that coincidence it was several rungs higher up…
The dark side of butterflies
I hope it’s not some sort of metaphor for my life. Ugly caterpillars have denuded my passion vine. I realize that it’s not politically correct for a green gardener and deep ecology advocate to call a creature of nature ugly. I have lashed out in frustration, so I take a deep cleansing breath and regroup.…
Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
There’s an expectation among some American moviegoers that foreign films, particularly those with subtitles, are boring, inaccessible works that sacrifice action in order to search for elusive higher meaning. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the movie that disproves any such notion. The Swedish film screens at Muse Arts Warehouse on Sunday, kicking off…
Have you heard the Word?
Like a Frankensteinian automobile that’s been built from the ground up, piece by unrelated piece, the Savannah band Word of Mouth consists of disparate but essentially–consistent elements. And what do you know? This old car purrs like a kitten. “We all come from drastically different musical backgrounds,” says Jeff DeRosa, who plays cello and electric…
‘My job on this earth is to do one thing’
Even over the telephone, Yolanda Adams exudes such positivity and warmth that the interviewer feels as if he’s known her for years. As one of the most consistently popular gospel singers of the last two decades, and the host of a wildly successful syndicated radio program, Adams knows the value of direct and honest communication.…
Grad inflation
At the end of October, just a few days before the mid-term election and the beginning of his “lame-duck” denouement as the state’s executive, Governor Sonny Perdue announced that Georgia’s high school graduation rate had reached a startling 80.8 percent, a clear vindication of the Republican administration’s campaign to improve education, and the graduation rate…
Bites & pieces: Wiley’s, Brasserie 529
Wiley’s Championship BBQ This whole “fall back” thing had me in a funk. The body resists this legislated tweak to the internal clock. It takes me more than a week to adjust anymore — and my usual sleep habits are throw into disarray. I try to slow down, take more time for myself, and do…
The King in Exile
He would have been an old man pushing a broom or mop across the floor of Connie’s Billiard Hall on West Broad Street, but whether he was still known as one of the towering figures of the first generation of jazz players seems unlikely. Joe “King” Oliver might have made two of the most lasting…
