Lisa Denton and Barry Courter
BARRY COURTER: Lisa, just a gentle reminder that there only nine shopping days.
LISA DENTON: Does that mean I owe you nine ladies dancing or four calling birds? I’m not sure which way to count it off.
BARRY: Quick joke: Guy gets drunk and falls out a window and lands on the sidewalk. A guy rushes up to him and says, “What happened?”
Drunk guy says, “I don’t know. I just got here myself.”
Anyway, this is another busy week both for traditional local holiday events, and nontraditional, non-holiday-related events. Hopefully you’ve gotten your shopping done and can take in some of these events. Just to name a few, both James Rogers and the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera are doing their annual “Home for the Holidays” concerts. Rogers will be at the Colonnade on Thursday, and the CSO is at the Tivoli on Saturday and Sunday.
LISA: Grammy Award-winning banjoist Alison Brown will be the main guest artist, and The Metropolitan Bells and Chattanooga’s favorite fiddle player, Fletcher Bright, will perform too. I always wonder if Fletcher’s fiddle thinks it’s a violin during CSO shows.
BARRY: Ballet Tennessee will present “The Nutcracker” at UTC on Friday and Saturday, and Christmas With The Metropolitan Bells, a full concert by the handbell choir, is Thursday at First United Methodist Church in Cleveland.
LISA: Speaking of Nutcrackers, Chattanooga Dance Theatre in Hixson is doing a modernized, localized version of the ballet Saturday and Sunday. In “The ‘Nooga Nutcracker,” the angels are mountain fairies, the marzipan dancers are Southern belles and the Chinese and Russian music segments feature Tennessee Aquarium fish and Choo Choo dancers. Sounds interesting.
And we still have the last weekend of Chattanooga Market’s Holiday Market at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The Holiday Market has 200 artists, crafters and food artisans selling their goods. That’s where I need to go to find something to suit a man of your tastes.
BARRY: I’ve done some shopping at the Holiday Market the last two years and found plenty to like. And I don’t particularly like shopping. In fact, I’d rather take a beating.
If your shopping is done and it’s live music you seek, Track 29 has two good shows back to back. Trampled By Turtles is there on Wednesday, and The North Mississippi Allstars return to town for a show there the next night.
And we probably don’t need to remind people who might care, but “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” opens in movie theaters on Wednesday. It’s the final piece in the film trilogy based on the book that wasn’t a trilogy.
LISA: That reminds me that McKamey Animal Center and the Humane Educational Society are having a 12-hour adoption celebration Friday called the Holiday All-Nighter. From 4 p.m. until 4 a.m., you can go to either place and adopt a cat for $12 or a dog for $24.
BARRY: “The Hobbit” reminds you of a pet adoption?
LISA: Well, yeah. I used to have a kitten named Smeagol, after the J.R.R. Tolkien character.
And Cirque Dreams Holidaze is coming Thursday to Memorial Auditorium. This has big production numbers, acrobatics, illusions and performers dressed up as snowmen, penguins, angels, reindeer, toy soldiers, gingerbread men, ornaments and Santa. Now that’s how you want to spend Christmas.
Get event details every Thursday in ChattanoogaNow or online anytime at www.ChattanoogaNow.com.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354. Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.