Month: January 2007

Categories
Living

Shopper’s world

Truth be told, there’s pretty much nothing better (in my small world) than sitting at my office desk, looking like I’m a very busy professional, when I’m actually typing things like “Discounted Marc Jacobs bags” into Google. Online shopping. I whisper the words to myself in a kind of awe. But really, have you ever tried it? It’s so fun! Sometimes, I go online shopping, put stuff in my shopping bag, and then close out of Firefox without having purchased anything. Yet, still I have experienced the thrill of the act.

The crème de la crème of online shopping is Active Endeavors. The clothes and accessories are young, fun, and they arrive magically in the mail! Oh, and well, they can get a little expensive. But that’s where the sales come in. This place has sales that rock the house…or rather, the wardrobe. For example, just last week I bought a beautiful Catherine Malandrino summer dress that was $545, but that they had marked down to $164! Doesn’t get much better than that methinks.

Peruse the virtual sale racks today and there’s plenty o’ Rebecca Taylor, Imitation of Christ, Daryl K, Nieves Lavi, Marc Jacobs, Ya-Ya, and more at half off or better. The only downside of this whole online shopping thing is that I am definitely spending more money online than I would just walking through stores in the real world. Don’t tell my dad.

Categories
News

Corrections from previous issue

Due to an editorial error, last week’s Get Out Now calendar incorrectly listed the band Jolie Fille as playing at Atomic Burrito on Saturday, January 27. Jolie Fille actually played Atomic Burrito on Friday, January 26. C-VILLE apologizes to any Zydeco fans who might have missed the show and regrets the error beaucoups.

Categories
Living

Sweet and spicy cure

If ever there was a comfort food, it has to be soup. Forget Oprah with her mashed potatoes, and forget everybody else with their chocolate chip cookies and carbo-loaded bread. What could be a better serotonin booster on a bleak, snowy evening than a warm bowl of thick chowder? The owners of The Carving Board Café, located in Albemarle Square, have a spicy cure for the winter doldrums—Grilled Corn Soup with Chili Cream.


Justin Van Der Linde updates good ol’ corn chowder with a bit of Southwestern zing.

“I’ve always been a fan of corn chowders so this is kind of a New-Age version,“ says Carving Board Café co-owner Justin Van Der Linde, who created this recipe along with his partner Candice Liptak. Van Der Linde says it’s that touch of Mexican flavor from the chili powder that gives the soup added zing, “which is nice in these winter months to keep you warm.” he says. “Plus, sometimes corn chowders are a little bland so this has a little spice to it. The grilled flavor is really nice too.”

The Carving Board Cafe’s Grilled Corn Soup with Chili Cream

5 ears fresh sweet corn on the cob (husks removed)
2 oz. olive oil
5 oz. diced onion
5 oz. diced celery
5 oz. diced carrot
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 jalapeno chilies, minced
2 qt. vegetable stock
5 oz. heavy cream

Chili Cream (combine the following and keep refrigerated)
5 oz. sour cream
2 Tbs. chili powder
salt and pepper to taste

Brush corn with 1 oz. olive oil and grill on either a char-grill or flat grill until kernels are golden brown. Turn frequently. Remove corn from grill and allow to cool. In a large stockpot, heat 1 oz. of olive oil over medium high heat. Sauté diced onion, celery, and carrot until the onion is translucent, adding the garlic and jalapenos in about halfway through. Add vegetable stock. Remove corn from the kernels and add to the pot. Simmer until all vegetables are tender. Purée soup in either a food processor or with an immersion blender. Bring soup back to a simmer and reduce to a medium consistency. Remove from heat and add the heavy cream. Ladle into preheated soup cups. Garnish with a dollop of chili cream and enjoy! Serves 10.

Categories
Living

Take a side

Quick: Hoos or Hokies?

If you’re the type who has a deeply considered and passionate response to this question, Restaurantarama has A) nothing in common with you, and B) just the restaurant for you. Seriously—we are not a sports person. Blame it on one too many withering glances from not-at-all-well-meaning jocks in our high school PE class, as volleyballs hit the floor right next to our feet, or our whiffleball bat, well, whiffed. But that’s our problem, not yours. We can well imagine that for many of our hungry readers, the sight of sweaty uber-people doing strenuous things within given spatiotemporal limits is extremely appetizing. And that alliance to a particular team can lend great drama to a meal.


Get yer deep fried crab balls and yer favorite team fix at Rivals, the latest occupant of the building that used to house Wolfie’s.

Which is why Rivals exists. What once was Wolfie’s, the bar and smokehouse on Rio Road, is now a monument to fandom. It’s very simple, really, as co-owner Gregg Powell explains: “I’m a Virginia fan, and my partner is a Tech fan.” Hence the restaurant’s divided decor: half orange’n’blue, half orange’n’maroon. Sit on whichever side makes you feel more powerful.

Powell and his partner Randy Snead took the place over from Powell’s brother Allen last October. (Allen Powell had run the place as Wolfie’s since late 2002; before that, it was a Cajun joint called Boudreau’s). They’ve gutted the space, rebuilt the bar, and added a slew of screens: 16 plasmas TVs with totally muscular 42" and 50" measurements. While you gaze at giants of sport on these giants of electronica, you can dine on a new menu that offers stuff from the smoker (smoked ribs, BBQ platter, “smoked bird”) and a bunch of sandwiches and burgers. And, of course, you can drink.

“Tech fans didn’t really have a place,” allows Powell, generously (remember, he’s our Hoo in this story). Rivals had its grand opening on January 19. In reference to the dance club attached to the restaurant, which used to be Club Rio and is now Club Rivals, Powell says he and Snead have “cleaned it up tremendously” and plan to offer live music on Saturday nights in the space.

Sports phobias aside, we commend for Rivals for having its finger on the national pulse, what with bipartisanship the ostensible watchword in D.C. at the moment. As for which display of cooperation will  last longer, well, that’s an easy call.

New room in the inn

Speaking of sports bars on Route 29N: Damon’s (“The Place for Ribs”) Grill, which has for nine years been the resident eatery in the Emmet Street Holiday Inn, is now called First Place Grille. A plastic sign announced the change a couple of weeks ago, and we called up hotel manager Charles Friend to get the lowdown.

It seems the owners of the Inn, who have managed Damon’s as a franchise for five years, decided to de-franchise and renovate at the end of 2006. “Of course we still like the same format of the sports grill,” said Friend. “It’ll be a more upscale sports grill when we’re finished.”

Somewhat confusingly, the restaurant, menu and all, is already open in the old Damon’s space, but will shut down for renovations April 1 and re-open in a different part of the hotel about five months later. That should go a long way toward making it “upscale,” as the Damon’s spot has, frankly, seen better days. 

Winds of change

Looks like the hip little Asian joint Monsoon, located in a so-close-yet-so-far spot just off the Downtown Mall, may have floated away on the breeze: A sign on the door and its outgoing phone message both say, “Closed for the holidays,” but, um, the holidays are over. We’ll keep checking on it.

Got some restaurant scoop? Send your tips to restaurantarama@c-ville.com or call 817-2749, Ext. 48.

Categories
News

Short timers

Dear Ace: Why is February the shortest month?—Cal N. Dar

We all remember the old rhyme: “Thirty days hath November, and please don’t forget September. But if April and May were candy today, we’d all have a happy tomorrow.” Or wait. Ace is a little confused. But there’s one thing he does know: February is damned short. Rehab programs last longer than February—and Ace should know. Zombies, according to the movies, can take over the world in a February’s worth of days. Ace hit the history books to sort out just why February’s so lacking.


If you think this page looks puny, blame Numa Pompilius.

Remember ninth grade Western Civ class? Remember Plutarch? No? He was an ancient Roman who wrote a big collection of biographies of even more ancient Romans in order to compare them to still more ancient Greeks. It was called Parallel Lives and Ace just wants you to know he actually read a big ol’ chunk of it in order to answer your question. Yeah. You’re welcome. Anyway, according to Plutarch, there was this king of early Rome named Numa Pompilius who decided that he needed to formalize and regulate the calendar, so he set about putting together a calendar from whose boring details Ace will spare you. Numa used most of the old month names, but he added January and February, named after the god Janus and an ancient purification festival called Februa.

In ensuing years, February got shaved down to 23 days, before being bumped back up by famed calendar reformer (Ace thinks he did some other stuff, too) Julius Caesar. Still, it only had 28 days most of the time, and even in leap years, only 29. Why the gyp? It looks like the simple answer is, the Romans just wanted February to be over ASAP. It was cold, they were whipping themselves with cords of goatskin (that’s what that whole “Februa” thing was about, apparently), and spring was on its way. Julius Caesar kept it short when he rejiggered the calendar. So did the Gregorian calendar reformers in the 1500s, and it’s their system we use to this day.

So to recap, why is February so short? Because ancient Romans didn’t like it, Julius Caesar didn’t like it, the dudes who made the Gregorian reforms didn’t like it, and Ace isn’t gonna like it if you keep asking him these kinds of questions about it.

If you think this page looks puny, blame Numa Pompilius.

Categories
News

“Fernand Léger: Contrasts of Forms”

gallery The 13 works gathered here fill a single, smallish room that many museumgoers will walk through too quickly. Besides holding works from a crucial, concentrated period in Léger’s development, the room also serves as a passageway between two other rooms. That makes it the perfect space for a show that reveals an artist who stood, during the two-year period when these works were made, on many thresholds at once: between abstraction and representation, between old and new subject matter, between centuries of tradition and a bold push for modern ways of seeing.


What a square: Studies for "The Staircase" (above) and "Still Life" by Fernand Leger, efforts from a few formative years on display at the UVA Art Museum.

As part of a group of Cubist painters in pre-WWI Paris, Léger was involved in an experiment, larger than any one individual, whereby the norms of painting began to fracture into pure elements of color, line and shape. One result of this approach is that the illusion of depth begins to flatten. The eye skips along the surface of a 1913 study for “The Staircase” (in which a figure becomes a tumble of tapered cylinders and crescents, showing with furious energy all the spaces a forearm did or could occupy) rather than being drawn to a distant vanishing point (think of the far reaches of landscape behind the “Mona Lisa”).

It’s well worth stopping in this little room. Along with helpful wall text by curator Matthew Affron, a patient viewer will appreciate both Léger’s ambition and how thoroughly his radical moves have, in the intervening century, become part of the way we see. In 1914’s “Village in the Forest,” houses and trees are simple forms—thick black outlines filled roughly with color. These familiar objects exist in a thicket of lines and strokes of color, as though a traditional painting of a village had been jumbled. A red roof in the center is so vivid, and so vividly speaks to other red roofs and walls, that it seems to prove what Léger proposed—that in a world made strange by modernization, a more assertive visual language was necessary to make us see more deeply.

Categories
Living

The agony of defeat

I’m not at the Super Bowl (www.nfl.com).

I may be the only sports writer in America not at Media Day five days before the big event.

ESPN is there.  So are Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports along with all the major networks.   You’ll see that weasel Pat O’Brien asking stuff for Access Hollywood. Even those little pains in the butt from Nickelodeon are there!

Not me. C-VILLE decided not to pick up the tab this year (some issue with me, a large bar bill, and an expense report from last year’s bowl game).


Peyton Manning’s smooth road to the Super Bowl contrasts sharply with the Cowboys’ bumbling quarterback Tony Romo, and the unsure hands of the Patriots’ Reche Caldwell.

So in protest I refuse to talk about the Colts and the Bears.  While Chicago head coach Lovie Smith and Indianapolis colleague Tony Dungy become the first black head coaches ever in a Super Bowl, I choose to ignore the historical relevance.

Nevermind that the NFL’s golden boy Peyton Manning got the “Monkeys” named Brady and Bill off his back, and don’t even think I’m going down the path of “with a win is Brian Urlacher placed into the lineup of greatest linebackers ever” debate.

Let’s talk about teams that are like me…not there.  The teams that “could-a, would-a, and should-a been there”…like me.  (Are you getting the idea, that I’d rather be on South Beach than Barracks Road?)

Sure the Colts and the Bears earned it, they deserve it, and they were the teams that fought blah, blah, blah!!!!!! 

How about the teams that fate turned its ugly rear on?

What happens if Tony Romo doesn’t let that snap slip through his fingers on the potential game-winning field goal in Seattle on Wild Card weekend?  What happens if Jordan Babineaux doesn’t pursue and make that tackle of Romo on the one-yard line? 

Could the Cowboys have pulled the upset the Seahawks failed to do?  Would it have made Bill Parcells stay?  Way to go Romo, you ruined the Cowboys!

The “what ifs” were so emotionally bitter cold for some teams this playoff season it would’ve made Minsk seem balmy.

What could have been if Philadelphia’s replacement offensive guard Scott Young doesn’t move early on a fourth and 10 completion from Jeff Garcia to Hank Baskett? Instead, Eagles head coach Andy Reid freezes, deciding to punt with 1:56 left and two timeouts and the Birds never see the ball again.

The next day, in San Diego, the Chargers yak up five different opportunities to bury New England including a certain Bolts interception of Brady that gets fumbled right back to the Patriots.   If San Diego wins, they host the AFC Championship and maybe the Colts aren’t that lucky this time around?

Then again, fate did turn nasty on New England when Reche Caldwell dropped a third quarter touchdown pass last weekend that my 4-week-old niece could have hauled in.

Yet this is reality. 

Super Bowl XLI will feature the Colts, who finally got over a hump so big it’s registered as a mountain, and the Bears will try to run to a Lombardi Trophy with former Virginia star Thomas Jones.

You won’t be seeing the Cowboys. Neither the Chargers nor the Birds. The Patriots aren’t there…and neither am I.

Prediction:  Colts 24 Bears 16.

Wes McElroy hosts “The Final Round” on ESPN 840. M-F 3pm-5pm.

Categories
News

Wincing the Night Away

cd By indie standards, The Shins are huge. They’ve been helped along the way by a catchy tune in a McDonald’s commercial and the words Zach Braff put into the mouth of Natalie Portman in his film Garden State: Surely, The Shins Will Change Your Life will one day be the title of a book about the turn-of-the-millennium rise of independent rock. But The Shins’ greatest strength is that they’ve always seemed like a small band—like your band—even as their first two albums sold very solid numbers for the Sub Pop label.

Which is why the opening few seconds of “Sleeping Lessons,” the first track on their new album, Wincing the Night Away, come as such a shock: There’s a single, spacey synthesizer pulse playing a scale, then the entrance of leader James Mercer’s vocals, sounding (with the studio processing) like he spent last year listening to Thom Yorke’s solo album. An acoustic guitar eventually folds in, followed by big, electric power chords until we find ourselves in the middle of a hugely appealing (and huge) rock song. The Shins, suddenly, don’t sound so small. But then the following track, “Australia,” feels more like the Shins of old, with its bouncy acoustic guitar strum and instantly appealing, singalong melody; the mid-tempo, Smiths-like “Phantom Limb” is almost as catchy.


The Shins, former small fish of the indie rock world, upgrade to a bigger pond with 2007’s Wincing the Night Away.

Clearly, the tunefulness of the band’s songwriting is what carries the day, no matter how their sound changes. So it’s disturbing when this quality begins to flag somewhere near the album’s midpoint. The ethereal mood piece, “Black Wave,” pokes around the edges of a structure without committing; the dirge-like “Split Needles” is modern rock for the working man and little more. These duffs would stand out less if The Shins weren’t so admirably committed to economy, with the 11 songs here whipping by in just over 40 minutes. For half an album, The Shins sound bigger and better than ever, but then something unnameable happens. Their sound has lost some personality and, for a band like The Shins, that counts for a lot.

Categories
Arts

The great unknown

Lots of great out-of-town bands will stop in town in the next couple weeks, with Yo La Tengo (www.yolatengo.com) and Jonathan Richman at Starr Hill, as well as SH presenting Jeff Tweedy (www.wilcoworld.net)  at The Paramount Theater.

MV and EE can sound like the Flaming Lips or the Velvet Underground or just their own bad-ass selves.

With the bigger names sucking up the press ink, you might miss out on some of the more interesting shows. On Sunday, February 4, MV and EE with the Bummer Road (www.myspace.comm/veebummerroad), who get lumped into the freak-folk crowd, will play at Dust. Their CD Green Blues is out on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, and features J. Mascis among other guests. At times the band sounds like The Flaming Lips or The Velvet Underground, and other times they wallow happily in their own noise. It should be very interesting to hear how the band re-creates their sound live.

Across town the same night, The Satellite Ballroom presents an intriguing show. Vashti Bunyan was discovered by the Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham and was in tight with the late 1960’s English folk scene.  She released a lone Joe Boyd-produced LP in 1970, Just Another Diamond Day, featuring members of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. Rather than promote the record, Vashti left to live with the ISB in Scotland, and then on to Ireland and anonymity. Thirty-five years later, she found out that she still had an avid group of fans, including Devendra Banhart, who were influenced by that one LP. Diamond Day has been re-released, and her second album, Lookaftering, has been compared to Nick Drake and features Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Big ups to The Satellite’s Danny Shea, who continues to dig deep to bring the most interesting acts to town.

And if you like bad-ass horns in the Tower of Power style, get your tickets now for the Johnny Sketch (www.johnnysketch.com), the late show at Gravity on February 9. According to their press release, the band, which hails from New Orleans, were on tour in Colorado and wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. They could not get home so they continued touring. Judging from their CD, they did not have to. The six piece band plays original rock and funk tunes, but it is the horn section, tenor, baritone and trumpet, that is honking (read: big compliment). “What you’d get if Phish had been born at Tipitina’s and studied under George Clinton and Frank Zappa late every night on the levee,” says David Fricke of Rolling Stone.
   
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Back in Charlottesville, local rock bands are banking on The Outback Lodge filling the void left by Tokyo Rose’s basement. Terry Martin and crew at the Outback have put in a new corner stage downstairs and will follow up with a new PA. The place has a nice rock club vibe and Martin has a lot of plans to keep the space full of live music. Besides The Dawning’s regular goth and industrial shows on Saturday nights, he sees the spot as an opportunity to host a lot more punk rock and metal shows. Some bands, like Bella Morte and This Means You, are too big for the downstairs space, but up and comers now have a great space to build an audience.

Martin is also strongly considering a regular matinee slot, Saturday evenings from 6-9 pm, for teen and high school bands. Like The Dawning, the matinee shows will always be for all ages. Any high school band interested in playing a great local club should contact Martin at the Outback.

The other Outback event that is exploring the possibility of change in the future is the regular Sunday night salsa party. The dance event, which has been packing them in for five-plus years, may soon offer up an international dance night, with different styles like reggaeton and African music.
   
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Although punk is not the usual offering at Fellini’s #9, you can catch a very good band, The Screaming Infidels, one Wednesday night a month there.
   
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New local CDs released recently include The Graboids’ (www.myspace.com/graboids) Infinite Delay. The band, made up of brothers Matthew and Stuart Watson, has released a disc of often sublime ambient sounds mixed with more rocked up noisescapes.

Folk music’s buried treasure, Vashti Bunyan, dusts off the cobwebs and comes to Charlottesville to play songs from two records released more than 35 years apart.

And online, Jay Pun and Morwenna Lasko have some new and reworked tunes ready for download on their myspace page, www.myspace.com/morwennajay.

Categories
Arts

Bowl-ing for dollars

“Top Design”
Wednesday 11pm, Bravo

First, let me just say: Did not see that coming. I’m referring to the finale of “Top Chef,” which precedes the debut of this new Bravo realty/talent competition. I had pegged either Sam or Elia as the winner pretty early on, and the fact that it’s Ilan vs. Marcel for the title is blowing my mind. I don’t like either of them, and if I can’t root for a winner, what’s the point? Anyway, following “Top Chef” you’ll have “Top Design,” which further burgles from the “Project Runway” format, this time focusing on the world of interior design. I’m not sure how exciting it’ll be to see people picking out chaise lounges or backstabbing each other for that last Tiffany sconce, but it’s probably worth at least one viewing. Based solely on snap judgments, I’m calling young and smug Michael and older and smug John as the people we’ll most likely come to love to hate.

“Super Bowl XLI”
Sunday 6:25pm, CBS

So, you know the drill: Indianapolis Colts, Chicago Bears, Peyton Manning’s got a bum thumb, blah blah blah. What you really care about are the commercials. This year expect a lot of viewer-generated commercials, which is kind of gross —average Joes are basically making millions for ad men doing approximately nothing. Web company GoDaddy has now had two different spots rejected for fear of offending the masses. And Fed-Ex, the Britney Spears sperm donor formerly known as K-Fed, has sparked the ire of fast food workers across the country for his insurance spot in which he dreams of being a music star rather than a lowly burger flipper. Sometimes I long for the days of beer-loving frogs. Prince handles the half-time show, and that’s pretty boss.

“Criminal Minds”
Sunday post-Super Bowl, CBS

The Beek! Is! Back! That’s right, Dawson Leery has been let out of cold storage for one night only, as James van der Beek guest stars on this surprisingly popular CBS procedural. Perhaps it’s the undeniable lure of Mandy “Battleship” Patinkin, but what should have been just another derivative criminal profiling show has actually been rivaling “Lost”’s ratings for most of the season. Seeing how past post-Super Bowl episodes have given major boosts to buzz shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” CBS wisely signed up the surging sophomore series for a special episode featuring a Super Bowl party murder that somehow involves The Beek as “a troubled young man” (per the network). Great casting, since anyone who managed to sit through the entire run of “Dawson’s Creek” knows that if anybody’s got troubles, it’s The Beek.—