Month: July 2006

Categories
Living

Michael\’s Bistro

It was for the balcony that we chose Michael’s Bistro on a summery Friday night, but as it turned out, the food was even better than the view. We ordered the red bean and rice cakes, expecting something down-home—but were delighted when they arrived in an artful stack, topped with tasty collards and scattered kernels of corn and surrounded by a spicy tomato sauce. Delicious and affordable! That’s why we went for dessert, too: a nice piece of chocolate bourbon cake. All in all, very French Quarter. (Minus the beads.)

Michael’s Bistro  1427 University Ave.  977-3697

Categories
Living

“Your own personal Internet” threatened!

www.savetheinternet.com

“It’s not a truck,” insists Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) during his long, rambling explanation of “the Internets.” This statement, and others like it, has made Stevens the laughingstock of every techie blog out there (which are accessible, Stevens assures us, through a “series of tubes,” in case you were wondering). All jokes aside, however, the so-called “net neutrality” battle is no laughing matter (though with Stevens commanding the forces, one has to wonder). Savetheinternet.com is the weapon of choice for the Save the Internet Coalition, a grassroots campaign comprised of small businesses and members of the community who don’t want big telecommunications companies controlling their Internet usage.
According to the site’s FAQ, congress is considering a revision of the Telecommunications Act—a rewrite that essentially allows large providers like Verizon and AT&T to determine customers’ access to websites depending on how much cash those sites are willing to pay. Which would, of course, end Hit This Site as you know it (teardrop).
The coalition offers proactive advice for concerned citizens hoping to preserve the free Internet we know and love. For example, you can call or send a letter to your senator (always an
effective measure)—the site even provides a script, along with a handy list of each senator’s current position on the issue. Best of all, it seems the members of the coalition have a sense of humor; check the blog for videos, songs and comics poking fun at Ted Stevens (almost too easy) and rallying for net neutrality. To familiarize yourself with what’s at stake (and seriously question the representation of a certain noncontiguous state), log on and read up. The Internet is important to all of us, after all—as Stevens helpfully explains, “[it’s] not something you just dump something on.”—Ashley Sisti

Categories
Living

All you can eat at home

Splitsville

What better way to relax on a hot summer’s afternoon than with a favorite ice cream treat? Well, Jeff Turner, owner of Dips & Sips, has just the thing for you: their “traditional” banana split. Even better, Dips & Sips has tables both inside and out, so you can enjoy your gooey treat in the sun or out, and split it with whomever you’d like. As Turner says, “We get a lot of people who share.” On the day we reached Turner at his shop in Seminole Commons, he sounded as cool and smooth as the ice cream he was scooping (even though the sinkhole under 29 South had just decided to resurface, or re-subsurface, right out in front of the parking lot). With temperatures in the 90s, and the temperatures of the ensnarled motorists undoubtedly higher, Turner was nothing but pleasant. Maybe some kind soul will bring cones of Superman or Bear Claw out to the sidewalk and help melt away the road rage.

Dips & Sips’ Traditional Banana Split
1 ripe banana, split lengthwise
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
1 scoop strawberry ice cream
1 scoop chocolate ice cream
1–2 oz. ea. chocolate syrup, strawberry topping and pineapple topping (Turner recommends Hershey’s for the chocolate syrup and Smucker’s for the fruit toppings)
2 tsps. diced nuts (almonds, pecans, or walnuts)
3 “good-size” squirts or dollops of whipped cream
3 maraschino cherries

Place the banana in the dish, with ice cream along top. Drizzle with syrup and toppings. Turner usually puts the chocolate syrup on the vanilla, the strawberry topping on the strawberry, and the pineapple topping on the chocolate ice cream. Sprinkle nuts over top, add whipped cream, and place one cherry on top of each whipped cream squirt. Serves 1-2.

Categories
Uncategorized

wellness • kids • arts • OUTDOORS • Grab Bag

Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society Walking Tours McIntire Building, 200 Second St. NE. 296-1492. www.albemarle

history.org. Guided tours of historic Downtown every Saturday from April through October, 10am. Free.

Beginner Bike Ride www.cambc.org. Join the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club for an easy, socially-paced ride, select Tuesdays and Sundays. Next ride is Tuesday, August 1, at Observatory Hill, 6pm. Free.

Bird Walk at Ivy Creek Natural Area 973-7772. www.ivycreekfoundation.org. Learn about Virginia’s  birds with experienced birders. Sponsored by Rivanna Conservation Society, Ivy Creek Foundation and Monticello Bird Club every first Saturday, 7:30am. Call for meeting location.

Charlottesville Astronomical Society On McCormick Road. 975-4231. www.cville

astro.org. Meets the first Wednesday of each month at the McCormick Observatory to hear various speakers discuss astronomy and space. Next meeting is August 2 with Remey Indebetouw, who will discuss infrared galactic surveys, 7pm. Free.

Charlottesville Hash House Harriers 963-9394 or 531-1937. www.chhh.com. This “drinking club with a running problem” meets for a three- to five-mile trail run and dinner every Sunday, 3pm. Free the first time, $5 afterwards.

Charlottesville Orchid Society 1165 E. Rio Rd. 975-4231. Meets the second Sunday of the month at the Church of Our Saviour to discuss various aspects of orchid growing, 2-3:30pm. Free.

McCormick Observatory On McCormick Road. 924-7494. www.astro.virginia.edu. Holds a visitor’s night the first and third Fridays of each month (except holidays) including observing with telescopes (weather permitting), audio-visual presentations and tours. 9-11pm. Free.

Montalto tours at Monticello off Route 53. 984-9822. Walking tours of the landmark peak, 410′ above Jefferson’s home. Daily, 1pm and 3pm, weather permitting. $12.  Reservations recommended.

Monticello Signature tours off Route 53. 984-9822. www.monticello.org. An extended guided tour of the main floor, the Dome Room and cellars, plus the gardens on Fridays, 6:30pm. $35. Reservations required.

Mornings in the Mountain 3421 Wintergreen Dr., Nellysford. 325-8169. www.twnf.org. Join a Wintergreen Nature Foundation naturalist for an interpretive hike. Saturdays and Sundays. 10am. $3-6.

Plantation Community Tours at Monticello off Route 53. 984-9822. www.monticello.org. Tour Mulberry Row, the center of slave life at Monticello. Daily, on the hour from 10am-3pm. General admission $6-14.

Rivanna Trail Foundation Work Party 244-5763. www.rivannatrails.org. Held monthly every second Saturday, meets at Melbourne Road trailhead; tools provided, but bring shears and clippers if you have them. Next work party on August 12, 9am-noon. Free.

Scheier Natural Area nature exploration Scheier natural Area in Palmyra 971-1553. www.rivannariver.org. All-ages guided nature exploration, every fourth Sunday. 3pm. Free.

SeaDevil Divers 2001 Commonwealth Ave. 975-5570. www.seadevildivers.com. A local scuba diving club, meets the second Tuesday of each month at Starr Hill Brewery. Social hour and speaker. Next meeting on August 8, 6:30pm. Free.

Senior Citizen Basketball at Downtown Recreation Center, 800 E. Market St. 970-3260. Every Monday and Thursday, 9:30-11:30am. Free.

Sunday Social Bike Ride www.cambc.org. Join the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club for a socially paced ride every Sunday. Free. Visit website for location and time.

Trout Unlimited meeting UVA Astronomy Building. Call Chubby Damron, 531-6938. Visit the Thomas Jefferson Chapter’s monthly gathering about coldwater conservation and fisheries. Every fourth Thursday, 6:30-8:30pm. Free.

Wednesday Night Bike Ride www.cambc.org. With the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club, an intermediate/advanced pace ride, every Wednesday, 8pm. Free. Visit website for locations.

Women’s Mountain Biking www.cambc.org. Join the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club twice a month for a noncompetitive, social ride. Bring helmet, trail bike and water. Next ride is August 10 at 6pm. For more info: women@cambc.org.

Categories
Arts

Galleries & Exhibitions 7/25 – 7/31/2006

Abundant Life 201 E. Main St., Suite Q (Above Zocalo). Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 9-11am; Monday and Thursday, 1-5pm; Tuesday and Wednesday, 1-6pm. 979-5433. Through July 31: Paintings and sculpture by Jason Roberson.

Albemarle County Courthouse 501 E. Jefferson Court Sq. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. 804-362-3792. Through July 31: Central Virginia Watercolor Guild Members Awards Show.

Anderson and Strudwick 414 E. Market St., second floor. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. 293-8181. Through July 31: “Wanderings,” photography by Scott Keith.

Angelo 220 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Monday-Saturday, 11am-6pm. 971-9256. Through August 31: “Lightness and Weight,” paintings and works on paper by Laura J. Snyder.

Art Upstairs 316 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Wednesday-Saturday, noon-5pm. 923-3900. Through July 31: “Contrast by Design: Highlights and Shadows in Watercolor to Create Realism,” by Richard Gross.

Blue Ridge Beads and Glass 1724 Allied St. Monday-Saturday, 10:30am-5:30pm. 293-2876. Through July 31: New glass pieces, paintings and stained glass instruments by Jerry O’Dell.

Boutique Boutique 411 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm. 293-8400. Through July 31: “Married Life,” paintings by Baldwin North and Mindy North.

BozArt Gallery 211 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. Wednesday-Thursday, noon-6pm; Friday-Saturday, noon-9pm; Sunday 1-4pm. 296-3919.  Through July 30: “Ame-Technique,” a show in oils, spray paint, latex, trash and treasures by Kris Bowmaster.

Café Cubano 112 W. Main St., York Place, Downtown Mall. Monday-Tuesday, 6:30am-5pm; Wednesday-Saturday, 6:30am-10pm; Sunday 8am-5pm. 971-8743. Through July 31: Photography exhibition on Cuba by Tori Abrazo.

C & O 515 E. Water St. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm by chance or appointment. Through July 26: “Figures,” a new show by John Hetzel.

Charles L. Brown Science and Engineering Library Clark Hall, McCormick Road. Monday-Thursday, 8am-2am; Friday, 8am-9pm; Saturday 10am-6pm; Sunday 10am-2am. 924-7200. Through January 2007: “Exquisite History: The Land of Wandering,” prints by the Printmakers Left, artists and poets from UVA’s printmaking programs.

Charlottesville Community Design Center 101 E. Main St. Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm. 984-2232. Through August 25: “Working to Rebuild Pearlington, Mississippi after Katrina,” an exhibit from the Building Goodness Foundation.

County Office Building Second Floor Lobby 401 McIntire Rd. Monday-Friday, 8:30am-4:30pm. 295-2486. Through August 31: Charlottesville-Albemarle Art Association presents photographs by Charles Battig and paintings by Coy Roy.

Eppie’s Restaurant 412 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Monday-Saturday, 11am-9pm. Through July 31: Mixed-media works by Julie Garcia.

Fifth Floor Gallery at Keller Williams 300 Preston Ave., Suite 500, Commonwealth Building. Monday-Friday, 8:30am-5:30pm. 220-2200. Through July: Oil paintings by Heliardo Aragao.

Fellini’s # 9 200 W. Market St. Tuesday-Sunday, 5-10pm. 979-4279. Through July 31: “Summertime Watercolors,” by Sunny Leng.

The Gallery at Fifth and Water Henderson & Everett, P.C. and Stoneking/von Storch Architects, 107 Fifth St. SE. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. 979-9825. Through July 31: “Diving Into Color,” oil paintings by Randy Sights Baskerville and “Xcalacoco,” photographs by Sarah Hormel Everett.

Glo 225 E. Main St. Monday-Saturday, 10am-6pm; Sunday 1-5pm. 295-7432. Through July 31: New oil paintings on canvas by Christian Peri.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr., Peter Jefferson Place. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. 244-0234. Through August 19: “Mysterious Beauty: Edward L. Ruhe’s Vision of Australian Aboriginal Art;” through August 23: “Manta Wiru (Beautiful Land): Paintings from Amata.”

La Galeria 218 W. Market St. Monday-Friday, 11am-5:30pm; Saturday 11am-3pm. 293-7003. Through July 31: “Night Lights,” by Sue Sencer.

Lee Alter Studios 109 E. Jefferson St. 760-9658. Call for viewing.

Les Yeux du Monde 115 S. First St. Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-5pm. 973-5566. Through August 25: Gloria and David Lee.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday 1-5pm. 295-7973. Through August 13: “Jean’s Gutsy Abstract Art Show,” oil paintings by Jean Sampson and “Summer Group Show” of members’ works.

Migration: A Gallery 119 Fifth St. SE. Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm; First Fridays, 11am-8:30pm; Sunday and Monday by appointment. 293-2200. Through August 31: “Elemental Harmonies,” paintings by Suzanne

Howes-Stevens and metal work by Jim Martin and “Inside/Out,” paintings by Lynn Boggess and clay vessels and plates by Tom Clarkson.

Mono Loco 200 W. Water St. Monday-Friday, 11:30am-10pm; Saturday 5:30-10pm; Sunday 11:30am-9pm. 979-0688. Through July 31: “Sand in the Eyes,” by George Andrews.

Mudhouse 213 W. Main St. Tuesday-Saturday, 7am-11pm; Sunday 8am-8pm; Monday 7am-8pm. 984-6833. Through July 31: New work by Sean Samoheyl.

New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St. Monday-Wednesday and Saturday, 9:30am-5:30pm; Thursday-Friday, 9:30am-8pm; Sunday noon-5pm. 295-2552. Through July 31: “Chimeras and Dreamers,” recent oil paintings by Lisi Stoessel.

Sage Moon Gallery 420 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Tuesday-Thursday, 12-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 10am-10pm; Sunday, 11am-7pm. 977-9997. Through July 31: A new exhibition by oil painter Raymond Chow.

Second Street Gallery City Center for Contemporary Arts, Second Street SE and Water Street. Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm. 977-7284. Through August 12: “Love Letter Invitational,” a multimedia installation with works on the theme of love by local writers and artists in the May Dove Gallery. Includes contributions from Gregory Orr, John Casey, Paul Curreri, Rita Dove and the Printmakers Left.

Sidetracks 218 W. Water St. Monday-Saturday, 10am-6pm; Sunday, 1-5pm. 295-3080. Through July 31: “Drawn from Music,” music-inspired drawings by Laura Lee Gulledge.

Spruce Creek Gallery 1368 Rockfish Valley Hwy., Nellysford. 361-1859. Through August 7: “Party Animals,” paintings by Cynthia Burke.

Starr Hill Restaurant and Brewery 709 W. Main St., Tuesday–Sunday from 5pm.

977-0017. Through July: Photography by Sean Thomas.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church 717 Rugby Rd. Sunday-Friday, 9am-2pm. 293-8179. Through July: “Pants, Puppets and Web Comics,” by Skyler Breeden.

Transient Crafters 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Monday-Thursday and Saturday, 10am-6pm; Friday 10am-9pm; Sunday noon-6pm. 972-9500. Through July 31: “Body of Work,” stained glass panels by Lynn Windsor.

UVA Art Museum 155 Rugby Rd. Tuesday-Sunday, 1-5pm. 924-3592. Through August 20: “Humanism and Enigma,” oil paintings by Honoré Sharrer in the main gallery. Through August 6: “Art/Not Art,” oceanic art and artifacts. Free to students and museum members, all others $3.

UVA Small Special Collections Library, McCormick Road. adjacent to Alderman Library. Main exhibit gallery hours: Monday-Saturday, 9am-1pm. Check library hours

at www.lib.virginia.edu/hours. Through Sep-

tember: “The Style of Power: Building a New Nation,” with works drawn from the Library’s Special Collections, the UVA Art Museum, Monticello and Mount Vernon. Free.

White Orchid 420 W. Main St. Monday-Sunday, 11:30am-2pm, 5-10pm. 297-4400. Through August 31: “Photographs of Vietnam” by Georgia Barbour.

C-VILLE Weekly defines an exhibition space or gallery as a venue that displays art and is either nonprofit, donates space to artists or hosts regularly rotating exhibitions. Gallery listing is at editorial discretion. To have your show considered for inclusion, please provide the names of artists and shows, media used, contact information and the show’s beginning and end dates

Categories
News

News from lake glow-be-gone

Dear A. Tom: Ace positively radiates with joy when he can answer readers’ questions, and yours is no exception. And so, to really melt down to the core of your query, Ace snapped on his triple-ply gore-tex gloves and dug into a heaping, radioactive pile of the truth.
    Lake Anna, Ace learned, is actually man-made. It was dug out in 1971 to serve as a coolant source for the nuclear plant that now operates under the aegis of Dominion Virginia Power. It wasn’t long until the area around Lake Anna started getting developed, and the Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation opened a state park there in 1983. According to park manager Doug Graham, some 500 swimmers take to the lake every weekend, in addition to dozens of boaters and fishermen.
    So how safe is that water? Graham told Ace that park employees don’t test radiation levels in the lake (though he assures Ace they test for fecal coliform bacteria every month, and “those always come back good”). Next, Ace got in touch with Michelle Boyd, the energy legislative director of the watchdog group Public Citizen. Her group had raised questions about the site—and nuclear energy in general.
    “Our concern is chronic exposure to tritium, a radio-active form of water,” Boyd said about people swimming in the lake, which receives coolant water from the plant. Boyd told Ace, however, that Public Citizen hasn’t done any testing of Lake Anna, either. And to her knowledge, no radiation-related health problems have ever been reported in connection with the lake.

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Letters to the editor

“Feelings” vs. “facts”

As a faculty member at UVA since 1987 and supporter of classified employees for the last decade, I’d like to respond to Carol Wood’s letter [Mailbag, July 18] disparaging staff concerns about the impact of “restructuring” on their jobs [“Restructuring Arrives in July,” June 27]. Wood suggests not only that Jan Cornell, president of a union representing hundreds of UVA workers, has “no connection” to the University, but also that her comments to C-VILLE are based on “feelings” rather than “facts,” and that anyone skeptical of restructuring simply hasn’t been “paying attention.” Perhaps the problem is that some of us have paid attention too closely—closely enough to notice the discrepancy between what Wood rightly notes have been repeated claims that restructuring will help staff and President Casteen’s own admission in the UVA Alumni News (Spring 2005) that “classified workers, sad to say, will have distinctly limited opportunities to benefit [from the restructuring plan].” In keeping with this admission is the fact that wages, benefits, and personnel policies for low-wage hospital staff have all been adversely affected since the hospital went through a similar “restructuring” back in 1996. Wood says that UVA seeks staff input, yet what her letter actually demonstrates is the University’s dismissive attitude toward employee perspectives and concerns. Fortunately, C-VILLE helps to ensure that UVA staff as well as administrative views are aired.

Susan Fraiman, professor of English, UVA
Charlottesville

No connection? Not hardly.

In Carol Wood’s recent letter to the editor [Mailbag, July 18] she criticizes the author, John Borgmeyer, for using a source “with no connection to the University.” Having been a colleague of Ms. Cornell’s at UVA’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, I beg to differ. Jan worked at UVA for 12 years, chaired the Provost Level Employee Council, and is a retiree of the University. She is currently the president of the Staff Union at UVA. To say she
has no connection to the University is simply untrue.
    Ms. Wood also asserts that Sara Wilson was here to meet with UVA employees on the topic of restructuring. While that statement is true to a point, she failed to include the fact that Ms. Wilson was an invited guest of the Provost’s Employee Council – invited to speak to the council itself rather than UVA employees in general. The chair of the council DID invite staffers to attend the meeting; unfortunately the room chosen could accommodate only 30 people total. Even with reservations, another staff member and I were greeted by two security guards at the front steps of Booker House. We were denied access to the meeting, and Booker House entirely, for showing up exactly one minute late.
    UVA employees have reason to be concerned about the new system. We have not yet seen a plan for it; we don’t even know what benchmarks have been set. No committee of staff members has been convened to work with the administration on the plan’s development. Morale among our colleagues at the hospital has declined steeply since restructuring.
    If the administration is serious about allaying employee concerns and creating a better HR system, they would be wise to include classified staff now. Commun-
ication with the University community should be frequent, and should include concrete information about benchmarks of the new system and its operations. We should be involved in the entire process, which should be transparent to everyone at UVA.

Lynda Myers
Batesville

Categories
Arts

The Zen of Zap

When Martha Mendenhall was thinking about the idea of Wunderkammer, a multifaceted arts carnival profiled in C-VILLE just last week, she picked longtime Zen Monkey Dance Troupe member Zap McConnell to take the reins as artistic director. McConnell has been involved in many different aspects of performance art, from theater and dance to studying clowning in Mexico. When I talked to her, Zen Monkey was in preparation for their seventh annual Summer Dance Intensive, which hosts students from all over the region, and I got to ask Zap about her influences.

Spencer Lathrop: Dance influences?
Zap McConnell: I started late, at 19. I was in the theater department at North Carolina School of the Arts, and I was watching actors and I didn’t believe a word of what they were saying because of their body movement. I switched to dance and fell in love with improvisation. Pina Bausch is a choreographer who is so visual, and I feel like I have more of a visual style also. I got to see her work at Brooklyn Academy of Music several years ago, when the whole Zen Monkey troupe piled into a van and made a crazy midnight voyage up to Brooklyn. She makes things larger than life. The Bread and Puppet Theater has influenced my art through its combination of theater and dance. Bill T. Jones is a heavy hitter. And Sigfrido Aguilar was my teacher in Valencia, Mexico, when I studied abstract-movement theater. Later I took some workshops in New York with him. He is a real old-school clown.

Music?
One reason I started dancing was because of music. My older brother was turning me onto music, and I was sneaking into clubs in Charlotte at 12 and listening to a lot of punk bands. The bass player from Anti-Scene was working in a record store, and for my birthday he picked out Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced. I listened to that a lot. I love when people mix sounds, like Bad Brains. And I am finicky, but I love all genres: Neil Diamond, Ralph Stanley, The Kinks, Flipper, Bauhaus. And for dance, I love Radiohead. They create an environment, and for me dance is all about an altered state.

Wunderkammer?
Wunderkammer is a celebration that bring artists and people together, which attracts me to it. It is about embracing the spectacle. And it is really good to look at all we do have here in town. The festival will be a combination of dance, theater, installation art, ritual and storytelling. We will have jugglers and an aerial act. And, of course, music: The Falsies, Las Gitanas, American Dumpster, Jim Waive, Three Dollar Date and others. Plus, I  always wanted to grow up and join the circus.

Categories
Arts

Movie Reviews

Monster House
PG, 91 minutes
Now playing at Carmike Cinema 6

For some reason, live-action films now aspire to be cartoons, and cartoons aspire to be live-action films. And then there are those weird hybrids. Monster House, like last year’s The Polar Express, started with live actors, who were required to wear special suits embedded with thousands of tiny reflectors. The performances were digitally recorded, then animators used the reflectors as reference points, constructing animated characters that would have the fluidity of motion that human characters have. Or so the theory goes. Myself, I found these characters to be a little marionette-like—but then there would come this moment where, like Pinocchio, they suddenly seemed realer than real. It’s creepy.
    And so is Monster House. Ostensibly for kids, it’s a haunted-house movie in which the house itself is the monster, gobbling up anyone who happens to step past the property line, especially on Halloween. But the kid who lives across the street, a Harry Potterish youngster named DJ (Mitchell Musso), can’t stay away. Along with his Ron-like sidekick, Chowder (Sam Lerner), and their new Hermione-esque friend, Jenny (Spencer Locke), he launches an assault on the old place armed only with Super-Soakers. But first they have to get past the decrepit man who lives there, an Oscar the Grouch with bloodshot eyes and cadaverous skin played by—who else?—Steve Buscemi.
    “Motion capture” more than proved its usefulness in Lord of the Rings and King Kong, where Andy Serkis gave a captivating performances as both a 90-pound weakling and an 8,000-pound gorilla. Here it’s used to create characters who look like they’ve just stepped out of a children’s storybook. The movie gains momentum, but loses focus, when the kids enter the morphing house. But before that it has a nice early Spielberg flavor, thanks in part to a very kid-savvy script by Dan Harmon, Ron Schrab and Pamela Pettler. There’s also some lovely artwork, as in the film’s opening, where a leaf drifts to the sidewalk, only to be run over by a tyke on a trike on her way to wherever. But here’s the real question: Why isn’t this scary little movie coming out in late October?

Strangers with Candy
R, 97 minutes
Now playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

I suppose I should tell you to beware of Strangers with Candy. It’s nowhere near as good as the Comedy Central show it’s derived from. But those of us who used to set our clocks by the demented misadventures of Jerri Blank—“a boozer, a user and a loser” who, after a lengthy stay in prison, takes another swing at high school, having struck out the first time—will accept whatever comes our way. And that’s what sent me running out to see this strangely disappointing movie, a lost episode that remains to be found. The good news is that Amy Sedaris, the woman who yanked Jerri from the far reaches of her fetid imagination, is in top form, scoring laughs off her face alone: that vicious overbite, the nervous eye tic, the ski-jump hairdo. Unless you’ve caught one of her hilarious “Letterman” appearances, where she shares her own demented misadventures, you’d never know that Sedaris is actually quite attractive. But what makes her such a great comedian is her willingness to let things get ugly.
    That was the TV show’s strength as well. Taking off from those ‘70s after-school specials where, when life dealt you lemons, you made Lemon Pledge, it showed us just how bad high school can be—wave upon wave of intense boredom, punctuated by random acts of senseless cruelty. And the movie version doesn’t let up a bit, sending Jerri back into the educational sausage factory, where she spends half her time sucking up to the cool kids, the other half warding off blows. And rest assured, she remains a rather dim bulb. When Principal Blackman (Grey Hollimon, as amusingly deranged as ever) asks her what her I.Q. is, she doesn’t miss a beat. “Pisces,” she replies. And yet she winds up competing in the annual science fair, an intramural wrestling match that brings out the worst in everybody—and I mean that in a good way. Still, you have to wonder: Is this the best the filmmakers could come up with? A science fair? Do schools even have science fairs anymore?
    Paul Dinello (who also directed) and Stephen Colbert (who co-wrote the script with Dinello and Sedaris) are back as Mr. Jellineck and Mr. Noblet—a priggish pair whose office romance is a secret to nobody but themselves. And a number of big-name actors—Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, and even Philip Seymour Hoffman, who acts like he just stopped by to have his parking ticket validated—put in appearances. But nobody can seem to lift this thing out of what appears to be a bad case of the doldrums. Dinello gives many of the scenes a shadowy noir look, which makes no sense at all. And the comic bits, though often amusing, don’t build. Except for the script, which contains some wonderfully wicked lines—“I need more out of this relationship than I’m willing to put in,” Noblet tells Jellinek—the movie seems to have been flung together on a couple of spare weekends. And that’s too bad, because Jerri Blank, the buck-toothed poster girl for No Child Left Behind, deserves much, much more.

Categories
News

UVA snuggles up to HealthSouth

The UVA Medical Center is planning to create a new long-term acute care hospital somewhere in Albemarle County. The venture will be a 50/50 partnership with Alabama-based HealthSouth Corporation, one of the largest health care service providers in the United States. The new 40-bed facility will serve the clinical needs of acute patients who require care for more than 25 days. The purpose is to consolidate such patients in one location with physicians and nurses who specialize in long-term acute care.
    The Medical Center is no stranger to private partnerships—it already has several, including an existing 50/50 joint venture with HealthSouth called UVA-HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, a 50-bed inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation center at Fontaine Research Park launched in 1998. Although HealthSouth has recently been rocked by scandal, UVA appears confidant the corporate giant has successfully cleansed its tarnished past.
    In 2003, HealthSouth found itself mired in a $1.4 billion accounting fraud scandal, along with several class-action securities lawsuits. These troubles eventually led to a complete overhaul of the company’s senior management team and board of directors, followed by a $100 million civil settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Former HealthSouth CEO Richard M. Scrushy, who was acquitted in the fraud case (in a surprising blow to federal prosecutors), was convicted earlier this summer of bribing former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman for a seat on that state’s health care board.
    Despite HealthSouth’s recent history, Peter Jump, public relations director at the UVA Health System, says, “Our [current] partnership with HealthSouth has been very successful in providing care for patients that need physical rehabilitation services. Based on our experience, we have tremendous confidence that our [new] partnership will benefit long-term acute care patients.” Pending negotiation and final approval of the deal by UVA and regulatory authorities, Jump expects the new hospital to open sometime in 2008.