Ides of March, Real Steel, Dream House
THE IDES OF MARCH **1/2 Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Clooney, not to praise him. It’s not that I love Clooney less, but that I love good movies more. And for huge chunks at a time, The Ides of March is a good movie. What’s more, director-producer-cowriter-star George Clooney…
Urban forest is part of sustainability
Editor, Last week four candidates for the City’s alderman at large posts attended a forum sponsored by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign and the USGBC Savannah Branch. The forum’s theme was sustainability and transportation and discussion ensued for nearly 1.5 hours. “Sustainability” for Savannah is a complex puzzle with many pieces. Many hot topics were mentioned…
April in Savannah
The Savannah Folk Music Society is bring a world–class performer to Forsyth Park for this weekend’s Savannah Folk Festival, a player who wouldn’t be out of place at the prestigious springtime Savannah Music Festival. She’s 33–year–old April Verch, a past winner of the two highest Canadian honors for fiddling, the Grand Masters and the Canadian…
Pirate time on Tybee
Guess which of Tybee Island’s many public events is the best–attended every year? It’s not the Pirate Fest, which will descend upon the south end parking lot this weekend, for the seventh consecutive year. Although goodness knows, every hotel and motel will be jammed, the breakfast joints will be overflowing, and somewhere around 26,000 people…
‘Now I know what he won’t talk about’
One Marine, one story. It’s likely that Fallujah Good, Benjamin Mathes’ one–man play about the American presence in Iraq from 2003-2004, is the story of every soldier who lived to tell about it. Poignant, sad and (at times) uncomfortably brutal, Fallujah Good was taken, word–for–word, from the correspondence and journals of the writer’s brother, Capt.…
Arts and crafts and a whole lotta music
CYBERECLECTIC ART/CRAFT FAIR At 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7 Wormhole Bar, 2307 Bull St. Free Every time Eric Sommer plays around here, inevitably someone comes up to me the next day and says “Man, did you see that incredible acoustic guitarist last night?” I’ve been preaching the gospel of Sommer (pictured) for a while now.…
They see dead people
It’s one of the ironies of Savannah that a city so incredibly rich in real–life history would be so overrun with ghost tours talking about things which don’t exist at all, except in your feverish dreams and the minds of some of our more gullible tourists. But for those who are looking for a bit…
Mark Your Calendar: Mother’s Finest
A recent inductee into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, the veteran funk band Mother’s Finest has been booked to perform at Coach’s Corner Nov. 3. Fronted, as ever, by the incendiary vocalist Joyce Kennedy and heavy-riffing guitarist Glenn Murdock, Mother’s Finest was one of the first bands to combine bone-chilling funk and heavy rock…
No country for sleepy men
Police responded to Carolan Street after getting a call about a suspicious vehicle. As officers approached they saw two black males in the vehicle. Both had pistols in their laps and were asleep. When the men woke up, they fled in the vehicle for a short distance, then both jumped out and ran. One suspect was…
An abundance of cheap thrills
THE NUMBERS ARE IN, and it’s not pretty. Like haircuts and electrical work, some things are best left for professionals. So I’ll spare you my interpretation of the statistics and get right to the hideous: According to a census report on poverty released a few weeks back, America’s getting poorer. Georgians are more broke than…
A long way to go
Everyone has their issues. For the people who attended last Tuesday’s Alderman At–Large forum, those issues focused on transportation and sustainability, both big buzzwords for Savannahians concerned about safe bike and walking routes and energy efficiency. “Transportation and development are very closely linked,” said Savannah Bicycle Campaign chairman Drew Wade in his opening remarks. “Where…
5 Questions: Sonia Leigh
Anyone who saw Sonia Leigh and her band during the inaugural Savannah Stopover Festival will remember the diminutive, scrappy woman with black hair hanging over her left eye, hammering away at her electric guitar and singing strong, and clear, and powerfully at the head of a kick-ass combo. A fixture for many years on the…
Good mourning
People in Victorian times had a more personal relationship with death and mourning. A very personal relationship. As in, they sometimes posed with their dead relatives for photographs. Propped them up and sat right next to them. Sometimes they’d paint open eyes on their deceased loved one’s eyelids to make it look like they were…
Simply Horrible
ALTHOUGH IT HAS possibly the worst title of any play, ever, Dr. Horrible’s Sing–along Blog is amusing, poignant and has a score of some really wonderful songs. The melodic music is reminiscent of Rent (seriously!) in that the characters sing as exposition, to propel the story. Often, characters in different scenes sing at the same…
Mexican underground
Even with the door to Taco Abajo swung wide open to the broiling Broughton Street sidewalk, a few steps down, into the dimly lit but welcoming restaurant, I was enveloped in cool air conditioning. It’s a familiar scene to regulars who called T–Rex Mex their favorite hangout. Taco Abajo (Abajo means under, or beneath) partners…
Know thyself? Don’t be so sure
THE ANCIENT Greek maxim “Know thyself” is often the motivating force that drives people into therapy. Or, say, into the desert with a bagful of peyote buttons. However we choose to mine our minds and souls, the quest to find one’s most authentic self is usually subjective and certainly personal. Who could possibly know us…
Water under the bridge
THIS IS THE STINKY SEASON in Savannah: The time when the paper mill’s sulfurous odor becomes more prominent, either through an inversion effect brought on by cooler weather or, as the old–timers insist, because this is when International Paper secretly cranks up the output of its smokestacks. The past few days have seen a stinkier…
