Month: December 2006

Categories
Arts

Capsule reviews of films playing in town

Apocalypto (R, 138 minutes) For the follow-up to his worldwide smash, The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson has chosen this dark adventure drama set in the fading days of the Mayan empire. The story centers around Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a young man chosen for human sacrifice who flees the kingdom to avoid his fate. In Maya with English subtitles. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Blood Diamond (R, 138 minutes) Leonardo DiCaprio stars as an opportunistic South African smuggler who teams up with an enslaved farmer (Djimon Hounsou) to hunt down a fabulous pink diamond. With the help of an American journalist (Jennifer Connelly), the two men embark on a quest that could return one man to his family and offer great wealth to the other. Amid the adventure and thrills are some pointed comments about Africa’s unscrupulous diamond industry. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Babel (R, 142 minutes) Alejandro González Iñárritu (director of 21 Grams and Amores Perros) contributes another weighty ensemble piece. This complex, occasionally sluggish rumination on communication (or the lack thereof) in modern-day society takes place in three places at once. In Morrocco, a couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) gets involved in a shooting crisis. In California, a housekeeper tries to get to her son’s wedding down Mexico way. In Japan, a deaf-mute girls tries desperately to shed her virginity. The film is relentlessly grim, and the message may be lost on some; but as always, Iñárritu deserves credit for making a film that is actually about something. In English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Berber and Arabic with English subtitles. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Black Christmas (R, 84 minutes) If you like a little gore in your holidays, then this remake of the 1974 stalk-and-slash is right up your grubby, dimly lit alley. It’s Christmas Eve and a bunch of sorority sisters find themselves being menaced by a crazy serial killer who chopped up his family inside the sorority house decades ago. Former TV gals Michelle Tractenberg (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), Katie Cassidy (“7th Heaven”) and Lacey Chabert (“Party of Five”) are there to up the body count. Opening Christmas Day; check local listings

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (R, 82 minutes) Is he funny because he’s an annoying jerk or is he funny because he’s pretending to be an annoying jerk? Either way, the end result is the same. Rabid fans of Brit comedian Sasha Baron Cohen (“Da Ali G Show”) will love this embarrassingly rude faux documentary about a Kazakhstani journalist (Cohen) who comes to America to make a film. Non-fans will simply be aghast at the endless footage of fat, fully nude guys wrestling that comprises this film’s humor. Most of the run time is simply made up of “Jackass”-style pranks in which the racism and xenophobia of Americans is allegedly exposed. (Although it should come as no big surprise to anyone that rednecks at the rodeo get a little mad when you make up words to the National Anthem.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Casino Royale (PG-13, 144 minutes) Forget the 1967 version of Casino Royale starring Woody Allen. (Never heard of it? Good, that saves us time.) Like GoldenEye a few years back, we’ve got a successful reboot of the James Bond series. Daniel Craig (Munich) takes over as the younger, buffer 007, sent on his first mission to stop a banker from winning a casino tournament and using the prize money to fund terrorists. Eva Green (Kingdom of Heaven) is our Bond girl of the hour, Vesper Lynd. The film is dark, gritty and relentlessly thrilling. It’s just kind of a bummer they replaced Baccarat with Texas Hold ‘Em. Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Charlotte’s Web (G, 96 minutes) This live-action adaptation of E.B. White’s much-beloved book stars adorable Dakota Fanning as plucky farm gal Fern whose pet pig Wilbur conspires with a wise spider to avoid a one-way trip to the dinner table. The requisite all-star cast (Julia Roberts, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Oprah Winfrey, Kathy Bates, Cedric the Entertainer, Reba McEntire, André Benjamin, Robert Redford) is on hand to provide cute animal voices. Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Children of Men (R, 109 minutes) Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón, who’s given us everything from Y Tu Mamá También to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), helms this low-tech sci-fi film set in the year 2027. Seems that in this polluted, dystopic future, mankind has lost the ability to procreate. Clive Owen (Inside Man, Sin City) is a reformed activist who agrees to help transport a mysteriously pregnant woman (multiple Oscar nominee Julianne Moore) to a sanctuary at sea, where her child’s birth may help scientists save mankind. Based on the novel by P.D. James. Opening Christmas Day; check local listings

Deck the Halls (PG, 95 minutes) Remember that 1996 movie Jingle All the Way with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad as two suburban dads who tried to outdo one another over the Christmas holidays? Well, this one stars Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito instead. Not a vast improvement exactly, but at least everyone learns a valuable lesson about the true meaning of Christmas at the end. (Awww.) From the director of See Spot Run, Malibu’s Most Wanted, Big Momma’s House 2 and the upcoming Cats & Dogs 2: Tinkles’ Revenge. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Departed (R, 149 minutes) Martin Scorsese seriously reworks the 2002 Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs, transferring the intense cops-and-robbers action from the Far East to the East Coast. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a fresh recruit from the Boston Police Academy who is put deep undercover in an Irish mob run by flamboyant gangster Jack Nicholson. At the same time, Nicholson has got his own undercover agent (Matt Damon) operating inside the police department. Much bloodshed erupts when our two moles are dispatched to find out each other’s identities. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Eragon (PG, 103 minutes) Based on the juvenile fantasy series by Christopher Paolini, this epic fantasy follows the adventures of an orphaned farm boy (newbie Edward Speleers) who finds a rare dragon’s egg, and uses his magical new friend to overthrow your basic evil king (John Malkovich). Jeremy Irons is in there too, bringing back uncomfortable memories of Dungeons & Dragons. Expect multiple sequels. Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

For Your Consideration (PG-13, 86 minutes) From the folks who brought us A Mighty Wind, Best of Show, Waiting for Guffman and, of course, This is Spinal Tap, comes another ripe mockumentary. This one follows the cast members of a dreary period drama (titled Home for Purim), who learn their respective performances are generating awards-season buzz. Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer, Eugene Levy, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Jennifer Coolidge: The gang’s all here, poking sharp fun at the Hollywood hype machine. Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre

The Good Shepherd (R, 160 minutes) Robert De Niro finally gets around to directing another film (after 1993’s A Bronx Tale). This one’s a detailed drama about the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency. Matt Damon plays an idealistic young man recruited to become the prototypical superspy. Angelina Jolie is his unsuspecting wife who watches her husband grow more paranoid and jaded as the Cold War wears on. The tone is grave and the pacing measured, but De Niro has created a Godfather-like saga about the Powers That Be. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Happy Feet (G, 87 minutes) Wouldn’t March of the Penguins have been so much more interesting if the birds could sing and tap-dance? Well, that’s the premise of this CGI musical featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Brittany Murphy, Hugo Weaving and Robin Williams. (Couldn’t rehab kept Robin out of at least a few movies this year?) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

The History Boys (R, 112 minutes) Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of King George, The Crucible) directs this story of a class of history students in pursuit of a spot at Oxford or Cambridge. Richard Griffths, Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances de la Tour and Clive Merrison are all aboard as the adult figures in the boys’ lives. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Holiday (PG-13, 138 minutes) Two romance-hungry ladies (Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet) engage in a cross-continent home swap for the holidays. In America, Winslet meets Jack Black, while in England, Diaz hooks up with Jude Law. Another star-driven RomCom from writer/director by Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give). Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

The Nativity Story (PG, 100 minutes) Director Katherine Hardwicke makes an interesting subjective jump from her previous work (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) with this reverent, fairly realistic take on the Biblical tale of the Immaculate Conception. Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) stars as the timid but resolute Mary, chosen by God to birth the Messiah. Newby Oscar Isaac is the faithful Joseph who takes his mysteriously pregnant wife on the long, dangerous journey to Bethlehem. The film treads a fine line between the secular and the religious, benefitting from some credible actors (Ciarán Hinds, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Alexander Siddig) and some realistic settings. (The film was shot in Italy and Morocco.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Night at the Museum (PG, 108 minutes) Ben Stiller stars in this fantasy-filled adaptation of the best-selling children’s book of the same name. In it, he plays a bumbling new security guard at the Museum of Natural History who accidentally lets loose an ancient curse causing all of the displays to come to life. Hijinks ensue. Cameos include Robin Williams, Dick Van Dyke, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Mickey Rooney and Owen Wilson. Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (R, 145 minutes) German director Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, Run) directs this sensory assaulting adaptation of Patrick Süskind’s best-selling historical thriller about an 18th-century Parisian who goes to murderous lengths to create the ultimate perfume. Süskind’s ironic prose and olfactory obsession are hard to re-create on screen, but the film looks great (in a grungy way) and moves fast. The film’s main role is thesped by relative newcomer Ben Whishaw, but old-timers Alan Rickman, Dustin Hoffman and John Hurt are around to fill in the smaller roles. Coming Wednesday; check local listings

The Pursuit of Happyness (PG-13, 117 minutes) Will Smith stars in this tear-jerking can-do drama as a struggling, largely homeless single father who takes custody of his young son (real-life offspring Jaden Smith). Unable to support himself, Dad makes a life-changing decison—to get a job as an unpaid intern on Wall Street. This “inspired by a true story” tale is just as schmaltzy as you would expect, but Smith the Elder does give a emotional, award-hungry performance. Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Rocky Balboa (PG, 102 minutes) Sylvester Stallone returns to his beloved boxer for the sixth time. You’ve got to give him credit, though, for making it a gritty, heartfelt drama along the lines of the Oscar-winning original. Hard up for money and grieving over his dead wife (Adrian!), our aging pugilist accepts an exhibition match with the reigning heavyweight champ. Does Rocky still have what it takes to go the distance? Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Stranger Than Fiction (PG-13, 113 minutes) This brainy, existential comedy (along the lines of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Truman Show) finds a humble IRS auditor (Will Ferrell) going slowly insane because he believes a narrator only he can hear is dictating every event in his life. Turns out, it’s the work of a reclusive novelist (Emma Thompson), who’s planning on killing off her main character. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah join in on the fun. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

We Are Marshall (PG, 127 minutes) This inspirational sports drama is based on the true, tragic story of a 1970 plane crash that wiped out nearly all of the Marshall University football team. Despite some emotional oposition, the team’s new coach (Matthew McConaughey) tries to revive the team as well as the spirits of his traumatized community. Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Categories
News

Dean Dass and Clay Witt, "Dark/Light"

art Collaboration tends to attract a lot of puzzled-sounding critical ink—who made which part, whether the match is fruitful—but when artists with compatible interests work together, the work speaks for itself. Divisions of authorship, real estate-style, are not really the point, as Dean Dass and Clay Witt’s show beautifully illustrates. Each artist contributes a body of work with its own obsessions and techniques, and in several collaborative pieces these strains effortlessly merge.

Both are working with complex, multi-stage printing techniques (including inkjet and intaglio) that speak deeply of time and result in objects more precious than the gold leaf and lapis lazuli that bedeck them. Dass’ delicate compositions often recall display cases in a natural history museum; for example, “Shield” uses a ground of hand-stitched linen, like a cleaned-up fragment of mummy wrapping, on which shards of mica and bits of gouache on paper form careful rows. Witt returns to central, circular forms; whether celestial or cellular (the lonely, waiting ovum), they function as ancient and elemental icons of nature.

The alchemy of the artists’ processes—intensive and mysterious—makes for endless particulars: the fractal complexity of the surfaces, the nearly geologic layers that reach off the page and beyond the mechanically reproducible status of two-dimensional photos or prints. The works are almost sculptural in their response to materiality. Whereas Dass’ work suggests human arrangement within nature’s enormity, Witt’s revolves around the abstract as it decays into something specifically, physically present before the viewer.

It’s no less alchemical when the two artists work together. New forms emerge: the meandering gold thread in “The Eighth Day,” for example. And these different approaches to the world’s abundance of natural forms seem to agree with one another on a molecular level.

Categories
News

45'33"

cd This album-length single was commissioned by Nike to serve as a soundtrack to a 45-minute run, and it’s only available online as a $9.99 download from Apple’s iTunes store. Music composed for exercise has a very specific set of challenges: It’s got to push you forward without burning you out, and it has to change over the course of the experience. What sounds good in those first few steps is very different from what you want to hear when the endorphins peak.  

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem gets it. When he’s not recording dance-punk records for New York’s hippest bands as half of the production duo the DFA, he likes to unwind with a jog, so he understands the ritual arc of the workout.
First, logically, comes the warm-up.

The opening gurgle of analog synths here serves that purpose, and then 45’33” picks up speed and gives way to a funky, neo-Latin piano incorporated into a shuffling disco beat. Gradually, the piece becomes faster and more mechanized, as early vocals and song-like structures flow into a gliding sense of perpetual motion, pushed by tightly sequenced synths and relentless drums.

Allusions to funk and synthpop touchstones from the ’70s and ’80s abound—a little bit of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” here, a touch of New Order’s “Temptation” there, continued references to Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”—and lend a welcome sense of familiarity. By the half-hour mark, 45’33” is humming, approaching purely electronic techno from its more organic beginnings. It cultivates a feeling every runner can appreciate, that moment when you sense your mind and body fusing as you become a tireless robot bent on forward motion. The final seven-minute cool down of wispy New Age, cheesy in any other context, is soothing and earned.

Obvious political questions arise when a hip independent band partners with everyone’s favorite global sports giant/anti-globalism punching bag: Is LCD Soundsystem up for sale? Are they comfortable being associated with Nike? Should we care?
These may well be yesterday’s questions. The reality in this era of media saturation and diminished sales is that bands are doing whatever they can to get their music heard. And 45’33”, however it came about, should be heard. You don’t have to be running while it plays, but you will want to be moving; it’s the perfect soundtrack to your next New Year’s resolution.

Categories
News

Hamburglar pleads guilty to arson

When Charlottesville fire fighters arrived at 990 Fifth St. on May 4, they found the roof of the one-storey portion of Charlottesville Church of Christ had collapsed, with flames shooting from the building and smoke billowing from behind its charred walls. They surrounded the church, which the congregation had built only 17 years back, and doused the flames that hadn’t yet reached the church’s steepled sanctuary.


James Scott Santos, 25, broke into the Charlottesville Church of Christ for food and shelter, but after accidentally setting the building aflame, he will pay with up to 20 years in prison.

After the flames had been soused, investigations showed that the kitchen suffered the most damage—a microwave had been burned to the point of oxidizing, a refrigerator had melted and collapsed. Firefighters managed to save the sanctuary, but the church’s administrative offices and gathering spaces had been decimated, with damages estimated at $1.2 million, according to court documents.

Police later discovered that as the church burned that day, a deaf homeless man named Jason Scott Santos watched from the woods across the street where he had been living. He had broken into the church looking for a meal, stolen a few dollars’ worth of hamburger and accidentally burned the church when he left a kitchen towel on a lit burner.

Santos was arrested when workers at UVA Hospital reported a man with a cut hand smelled strongly of smoke. Police found Santos’ blood in the church near the window that he broke to enter the building.

The 25-year-old Santos, who speaks in sign language, was uncooperative with interpreters provided at Region Ten Community Services during his mental evaluation. But, Santos was found intelligent and competent to stand trial.

Santos’ court-appointed counsel made a motion to drop the felony breaking and entering charge and lessen the arson charge because Santos broke into the church only to steal food. When the motion was denied, Santos pleaded guilty December 12 to breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony, petit larceny (for the hamburgers) and arson. He faces up to 20 years in prison—sentencing is scheduled for March 15.

Categories
Living

Smells like Old Spice

The wizened man steps to the mic and launches into “Mack The Knife,” while behind him the 17-piece band goes a-one-and-a-two and begins to really swing. Evelyn rises carefully from her chair and stalks across the dance floor, her eyes locked on her target: a tall man, distinguished, steel-rod-for-a-spine in a dinner jacket with a green bow tie and matching cummerbund. She grabs him, and they spin gracefully across the black and white tiles. I turn back to my table where Ted is pouring me another glass of white wine from a rapidly emptying jug. I am kicking it old school at the Senior Center Snow Ball, at least 20 years younger than everybody else here, and they are outdrinking me by 2 to 1. The man across from me, wearing two thick gold bracelets and three chunky gold rings, slaps his palm on the table. “We aren’t dead!” he says, baring his teeth.

The Senior Center is 46 years old (too young by four years to be a member), and every year it hosts the Snow Ball, a winter dance featuring the big band orchestra Sentimental Journey. The party starts at 8pm, as does the music, and on the dot almost everybody is up and moving, no preamble whatsoever, in the dark, low-ceilinged ballroom. The Snow Ball is BYOB. Deb, who sits down at Table 5 with me, pulls a bottle of single malt Scotch out of a yellow paper bag and pours herself a healthy two fingers. By the end of the first dance, my table is full and everyone is talking. Ted introduces me to his date, Esther, tall and pretty. He tells me they met at the Senior Center two years ago. Are they married? I ask. No one at the table is married, he tells me. At my table and the adjoining one are members of Schmooze, a singles group for seniors that meets at the center. Ted points out the various couples at the tables and explains that many people here are divorced or widowed, but they don’t want to remarry. “What is important,” he says, “is companionship. I would say this is a happy place.”

I slide over next to Evelyn. What does she enjoy about a party like this? “Not much,” she says, laughing. “I was just sitting here thinking I’ve got to be here another three hours!” She does like to dance, however, and claims she is regarded as quite good at it. Just then she is asked onto the floor. Maybe 5′ tall, with short white hair, black pants and a sparkly black and white top, she moves her feet quickly and fluidly. The man seems twice her height, but she is every inch his equal. No sooner has she resumed sitting when she is asked up again. “You barely had time to sit,” I say. She squeezes my arm and smiles.
   
I get pulled to another table, where “the original Lady Di” introduces herself, telling me in her Welsh-accented voice that the piano player is her beau and extending a heavy hand loaded with silver for me to kiss. After sending me for water, she pours me a glass of red wine upon my return, and tells me about drinking Champagne with Jeremy Irons way back in 1981, before he was a star.

By 10 o’clock the crowd has thinned by half, and the band is taking its second break. I drink my wine and gaze around at the rather nondescript ballroom. With the current divorce rate roughly four times what it was in the 1950s, how much more will my generation need events like this? I wonder. Will I dance one day in a similar room, gray-haired and stooped in a suit twirling a woman in a sparkly dress, while Sentimental Journey plays “Heart Shaped Box” and “Gin and Juice”?

Eleven o’clock approaches, and I ask Lady Di if she will join me for the last dance. She takes my left hand in hers and positions my right hand properly on her black satin dress. I tell her that she is going to have to lead. “When your hand is in the small of my back,” she says, Elizabeth Taylor eyes staring up at me from above her billowing feather boa, “then you have to lead.” She has the good grace to ignore my clumsiness, telling me softly, “Forward. Now back.”

“Are you going to write about us old people?” Pat asks me. Earlier I had seen her and her husband, Richard, dancing slowly and with some difficulty, and now they’re helping clean up the stained paper plates and crumpled napkins. She walks with a cane, and when she moved here from Pennsylvania, the only people she knew were her children and her doctors—that is, until she began coming to the Senior Center. “If you know anybody who’s feeling sad and lonely in Charlottesville,” she says, “send them here for a week.”

Categories
Living

Snapshots from 2006

How will you remember the year in sports? Which story will stick?


Blood, sweat and tears: Well, maybe not the blood, but after losing The Masters and his father, coach and mentor, Earl Woods, to cancer, Tiger Woods captured The British Open title and our hearts all over again with his emotional breakdown.

Was it the classic game of the year? The Rose Bowl National Championship between Texas and USC? Ohio State vs. Michigan? Or the night the Los Angeles Dodgers hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back homeruns in the ninth just to tie the San Diego Padres?

Which left you scratching your head more? Trying to figure out if Floyd Landis’ beer caused him to test positive or if Mike Vanderjagt missed that field goal just to put the screws to Peyton Manning?

What sound will echo louder in your head? Dennis Green freaking out after a Monday night collapse in the desert, Michael Strahan trying to show up a female reporter or Terrell Owens’ publicist telling the world he has $25 million reasons not to kill himself?

Which underdog captured your heart? Wake Forest finding themselves in the BCS? The Detroit Tigers being the boys of summer? Or was it George Mason making the greatest run in college basketball history?

Who got taken too young? Army women’s basketball coach Maggie Dixon or Miami defensive end Bryan Pata? (Answer: Both.)
   
Locally, who had you talking the next morning in the office? Was it Dave Leitao turning an apathetic basketball environment around? A dreadful Cavaliers football season? Michael Buffer opening the John Paul Jones Arena? Dom Starsia’s perfect lacrosse season and national championship or Sean Doolittle stopping soon-to-be Major Leaguer Andrew Miller on a spring night at Davenport Field?

Which new kid on the block turned your head? Minnesota Twin Francisco Liriano, Detroit Tiger Justin Verlander, or Chicago Bear Devin Hester?

When did your American blood get most boiled? Watching our baseball team get embarrassed in the World Baseball Classic? Watching our basketball team get embarrassed in the Olympic qualifiers? Or watching our golfers get embarrassed in the Ryder Cup?

Which moment made you cringe more? Zinedine Zidane’s head butt, the Duke lacrosse scandal or the Washington Redskins doing anything?

Who got stronger as their year went on? Vince Young, Tony Romo or Alfonso Soriano?
Who brought the larger tear to your eye? Jerome Bettis going out, having finally gotten his ring? The New Orleans Saints’ welcome-home party in September? Tiger Woods missing his dad on the final hole of the British Open? 

Hard to believe, but we learn it again every year: These headlines that leave us momentarily shocked, stunned or dismayed, only become afterthoughts in the passing weeks.

Hope your new year is more than an afterthought. Have a happy one.

Wes McElroy hosts “The Final Round” on ESPN 840AM from 3-5pm Monday-Friday.

Categories
News

BAR relents on nine-storey building

A nine-storey building planned for 201 Avon St. finally was conditionally approved at the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) meeting on December 19 by the slender margin of one vote. A 4-3 decision, it came down to whether enough board members could stomach having such a massive building at the site, which shares a block with the Beck-Cohen building between Friendship Court and the Downtown Mall.


This rendering shows what passers-by on the Belmont Bridge will soon see: a nine-storey luxury condo building that won conditional approval from the BAR.

The building will house 100 luxury condos with a six-room boutique hotel and a health club/spa. The design, as suggested by the BAR at a prior meeting, will also allow the lower floors to convert to retail if area foot traffic increases. Architect Randolph Croxton of New York worked diligently to incorporate BAR recommendations on details, according to several board members.

“The debatable issue overwhelmingly was just the mass of the project in that neighborhood,” says Michael Osteen, planning commissioner and member of the BAR, who voted for the project. “It is a big building. It’s a site that could take a big building and if we’re looking for the density and the activity on the street then we need to have people living over there so that can happen.”

After deferring a decision at their November meeting, the BAR was required to vote this time around. Croxton will still need to change a few details and present physical samples of his materials for ultimate approval.

Members Amy Gardner and William Adams were not present for the meeting. “I don’t know if it would have gone differently had we had all the members,” says Chair Fred Wolf.

Categories
Living

They’re watching you

TMZ isn’t a classy site; in fact, TMZ isn’t even a klassy site. But it really is the perfect site for your inner idiot—meaning the part of you that lives for a little schadenfreude at the expense of celebrities. Looking for the Lindsay Lohan’s Red Bull and Vodka-crazed insane Black-berry message? Check TMZ: Chances are they will have the entire transcript posted on the Internet within hours of LiLo having sent it to 100 of her best (and most trustworthy) confidantes.

TMZ (an acronym referring to the “Thirty Mile Zone” around Hollywood) is basically Reuters for celebrity gossip. All the gossip blogs link to it daily, and it’s updated with “news” stories as fast as they happen. They have reporters on the scene and those reporters are filing stories…stories like “Preggers Tori Practices on Pug” or “Brit Ditches Clothes to Celebrate Mom’s B-Day.”

TMZ’s biggest bangs, that is, the stories it’s famous for breaking, include transcripts of Mel Gibson’s infamous drunken and anti-Semitic tirade last July and footage of oil heir (and Paris Hilton cohort) Brandon Davis leaving an L.A. club and screaming obscenities about Lohan’s nether regions. Apparently, Paris and Lindsay are, as the tabs say, frenemies. At the time of this incident, their relationship was apparently more enemy than friend. Not the stuff of legend, but the stuff of Hollywood, and that’s the way I like it.

Categories
News

Correction from previous issue

In an article about circuit judge candidates [“Who are you outside of the law?” Courts & Crime News, December 19], we incorrectly reported the name and marital status of one of the candidates. Her name is Elizabeth Brady, not Patricia Brady, and she is unmarried. Apologies to Ms. Brady.

Categories
Living

Life of the party

“People blather on about themselves and their petty concerns. Do they ever stop to ask themselves, who is this person listening to my monologue?” This lament spilled from the lips of La Prof, one of Sweet Cakes’ beloved Girlfriends, one whom, though she was not officially employed in the teaching profession, nonetheless managed to stitch much instruction and mentoring into her daily life. To her, Sweet was posing questions about parties, specifically, how to have fun and maintain one’s fetching qualities at a social gathering.

And the friends had already covered the basics: Never give anyone reason to describe you as “sloppy” when it comes to alcohol, even if the spirits have been procured at a charming local wine shop and bear labels with words like Rhone and Gruner Veltliner on them. That a lady never slurs should go without saying, so agreed La Prof and La Cake.

Additionally, dressing to meet the occasion was another basic so well understood between the confidantes, it was dispensed of within minutes. Tiaras are appropriate where ponies and juvenile birthdays are involved; flip-flops (even the ones that reach for sophistication with the addition of a kitten heel) are appropriate never. This the friends knew well. Sparkly earrings catch and cast warm light around one’s face all evening; both understood it best to wear jewel-toned eyeliner to make the most of it.

No, it was not the essentials of comportment and couture that formed the core of Sweet’s questions. Rather, she asked La Prof, what artifice could Sugar-candy employ to make the most of small talk at parties. Were there tricks to bringing out the best in people, conversationally?

La Prof wanted nothing more eagerly than to provide a crib sheet full of clever questions for her darling Sweet, the better to equip her dearest Girlfriend with a party-ready accessory. Alas, La Prof had to confess to Honey-pie, peering over her mauve eyeglass frames, that she had no such easy solution. Indeed, La Prof had been around the world in terms of interlocutions, and yet, as the start of this column suggests, she came each time to the same dreadful conclusion: Most party talk is insufferably dull.

La Prof could dish out the most amusing questions: “What did you do on this, the last day of the year?” “What have you been listening to in your car lately?” “Do you enjoy cooking? Do you have a special dish?” Other guests seemed happy with La Prof’s inventive conversation-starters—happy to talk about themselves, that is. Yet, how terribly rare were those occasions when they volleyed a similar (or even the same) question into the court of their interlocutor!

Still, La Prof was not content to leave her darling Sweet with such a pessimistic answer. Her friend wanted guidance to get out of the party-talk rut, not just more creative details by which to describe it. At last La Prof reckoned some advice for Sweet Cakes: When someone answers your inventive and caring question, listen politely, offer a follow-up query, and then cap the exchange with some gentle direction: “That sounds simply charming,” La Prof urged Sweet to say. “May I tell you what I did today, December 31, 2006? Perhaps you will find my adventure as interesting as I found yours.”

It was a polite pointer, the Girls agreed, and whether its sentiments were entirely true—well, that is a matter the ladies discussed amongst themselves, a conversation that it would be untoward to repeat here.