Month: April 2007

music

In high school, I played the Tokyo Rose basement for my one and only time as the bassist for Moments Without. That band now goes by the name Worn in Red, and  on Friday night I saw their show at the renovated Tokyo Rose.

The Rose basement is a much different place than when I was 16 years old. Stainless steel and tile have extinguished the comforting red glow, and a karaoke projection screen hangs in place of the stage that once welcomed the likes of the Dismemberment Plan and Elliott Smith. Despite these conditions, the three bands on the bill did their best to put on a quality rock show.

House of hues: Tokyo Rose, a classic Charlottesville rock room, offers a brand new range of colors, from sterile, blue-lit tiles to jagged rockers Worn in Red.

Richmond’s Fred Gable opened the night with a trashing but anticlimactic set.  Whether it was the limitations of their amps or beginning-of-the-night PA problems, the songs didn’t deliver the punch that their build-ups promised.

North Carolina’s Thunderlip was the highlight of the night. The band’s tight, unabashed jams struck a careful balance between chops and playfulness, and the result was perfect for rocking out. Lead singer Chuck Krueger donned a purple dress and alternated between floor sprawls, mock menacing looks and vocal lines like “I’m just a man in leather pants.”

With the show scheduled to end at midnight, time constraints restricted both the length and energy of Worn in Red’s performance.  This was a shame, considering the band’s proven sock-knocking abilities.  While they set up the show and are one of the first local groups to give the new Rose a try, Worn in Red got the short end of the stick on Friday. 

In between songs, singer and bassist Eric Farr made a quip that summed up the evening.  “There used to be a stage here, I think.” The show was not bad, but it certainly wasn’t like the old days.

Following the violent shooting April 16 at Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead in a campus dormitory and classroom building, university officials everywhere are examining policies that protect students’ safety.

President John T. Casteen III addressed a group of mourners at an April 17 vigil for the Virginia Tech victims: “The University has detailed procedures in place to handle catastrophes of many kinds. We will review all of these procedures.”

UVA students noticed a rise in police presence on Grounds after Seung-hui Cho murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech. UVA is reviewing campus security and has plans to implement an alert system that includes text messages and high-tech LED screens next fall.

Patricia Lampkin, vice president of student affairs, also sent a notice to parents that University police were collaborating with staff “as needed.” “Finding ways to improve safety is at the forefront of our minds,” Lampkin wrote. Among those improvements: an “instantaneous notice system” for the fall, to include e-mail, text messaging and PDA alerts as well as strategically placed LED video screens around Grounds.

Students, too, are rethinking safety on campus.

“I was sitting in class earlier this week and I started to think about what possible exits I could take if someone were to come into the classroom with a gun,” says Kate McMillan, a senior. “I realized that there were only a limited number of exits for the number of people in the room. In many ways we are just as vulnerable to an attack as Virginia Tech sadly was.”
Carrington Dudley, a freshman, wrote over e-mail: “I’ve seen a lot more security guards and police around campus, but only the beginning of this week. We still use cards to get into our dorm, but I haven’t noticed that people are much more hesitant to let people in. I guess people feel like if they recognize the person and know that the person is a student…that it doesn’t matter. I just find that strange since the shooter was a student himself.”

Though these facts may seem chilling to parents of campus-dwellers, experts say universities are doing a fine job of securing students.

Sheldon E. Steinbach, a higher education attorney and former vice president of the American Council on Education, says, “I wrote the first white paper on campus security in 1983, urging our schools to increase campus security: sophisticated locks, more lighting, escort services, and dramatic increase in personnel, all of which has happened at enormous expense, by the way. It’s not like schools are negligent.”

Governor Tim Kaine has ordered a review of Tech’s actions surrounding the incident, and schools everywhere are reviewing their policies. But Steinbach says few gaps may be found.
“What we’ve been talking about is really Monday morning quarterbacking, all the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight that doesn’t, in the light of day, replace the fact that the institution as of this moment did everything right.”—with additional reporting by Stephanie Woods

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Dear Ace: I know gambling is illegal in Virginia. Is online gambling O.K.? —Tex S. Holdem

Tex: Kenny Rogers’ rotisserie chicken chain may have gone belly-up, but his wisdom springs eternal: You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run. But if you’re playing online poker, are you gonna have to know when to run from the cops? Ace went to the law to find out.

The virtual showdown has so much less flourish, but online poker play has its advantages (and legality for now).

The Code of Virginia has a long, boring definition for gambling that boils down to placing a wager on anything that has the potential for profit based on chance. With a few exceptions (“contest[s] of speed or skill between men, animals, fowl or vehicles” and bingo), anything that falls under that definition makes the bettor guilty of a Class 3 misdemeanor. But don’t start frantically deleting your Internet browser history yet, ‘cause there’s a big loophole.

Section 18.2-334 of the Virginia Code mandates that the law doesn’t apply to any “game of chance conducted in a private residence, provided such private residence is not commonly used for such games of chance.” The law does go on to say that if there’s a gaming operator in your house who “conducts, finances, manages, supervises, directs or owns all or part of an illegal gambling enterprise, activity or operation,” you’re in trouble. In the context of online gambling, however, that means you’d have to be running AlbemarlePoker.com to raise the Commonwealth’s suspicions. Clearly, the law was enacted to ensure that smoky five-card stud games played around a buddy’s kitchen table are kosher, but it should also set you in the clear as far as online gambling’s concerned. Right?

Well…sort of.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Act of 2006 was Bill Frist’s pet project at the very end of last year’s Senate session. It ties the hands of banks in funding online gambling sites, but the law doesn’t explicitly apply to individual poker players. So you’re entering some murky legal territory, Tex. Provided you can find a legit way to pay to place your bets, however, and provided you’re playing a game like poker that involves some degree of skill (it’s the pure chance stuff that can get you in trouble), then game on. And hell, no individual has ever been prosecuted for online gambling, so Ace puts the odds of your arrest at, let’s say, 1 million to one. Any takers?

Steve Ferguson was born to be a game warden. His father was a game warden, his uncle still is. When he was in the sixth grade, Ferguson wrote a school paper on what he wanted to be when he grew up. Guess what he picked.

Ten years later, his ambition was realized when he completed eight weeks of game warden training following 16 weeks at the Police Academy. “We have so much more equipment and so many unusual situations we end up in, so we need extra training,” Ferguson says.

He’s got game: With his Glock by his side, game warden Steve Ferguson tours the countryside for pot-smokin’ picnickers and amorous motorists.

Now, he is one of two conservation police officers (the newly adopted title for game wardens in Virginia) in a district that covers four counties, including Albemarle. Ferguson performs his job in two-week cycles and an average day might be like the Saturday morning we spend together, driving in his Chevy Tahoe across western Albemarle to stop at places like Lake Albemarle and Sugar Hollow.

“This time of year we check mainly fishing licenses and creel limits,” Ferguson says. For instance, you can only catch five bass a day, and six trout. In the winter, hunters are the main target of inspection.

Spontaneity is obviously a main element of a game warden’s life, since he spends much of his time exploring back roads and inlets. “Every day is different,” Ferguson says. “You never have two days that are the same.” We pull down a winding dirt lane by Lake Albemarle and arrive in front of a picnic table. “Last year, I got four people at that table for smoking dope,” he says.

Game wardens are, in fact, licensed police officers. Ferguson has a Glock pistol strapped to his waist and a machine gun in his SUV that he affectionately calls “Charlene” (an homage to Full Metal Jacket).

“A lot of folks come out here to fish, they’re out in the middle of nowhere, and they don’t think anybody else is around,” he says. “They light up a bowl or smoke a joint. Lo and behold, the game warden is standing behind them.”

As such stealth implies, voyeurism is also part of a game warden’s daily existence. On more than one occasion, Ferguson edged over to the side of the road and pulled out his binoculars or a spotting scope to spy on unbeknownst fishers. He has also frequently come across people in the process of having sex.

“I don’t know why people think nobody else is around in the woods,” he says, cackling.
“What do you do in those instances?” I ask, chortling myself.

“I usually just clear my throat real loud so they know somebody’s there and they scramble,” he says. Reassuringly, in such instances, Ferguson checks to make sure both partners are safe and there of their own volition.

“We’re not out to try to write somebody a ticket,” he says. “I don’t get any personal pleasure out of it. It’s my job and I raised my hand and swore to do it.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

The kids had plans with friends at Chris Greene Lake, so last August 19 their parents, Colin and Virginia Glasgow, packed them into the family’s blue Toyota van and headed out from their home in Crozet. The plan: drop the kids (a son and daughter) and Virginia at the lake while Colin, unemployed, would continue his job search. Sadly, what should have started out as an unremarkable Saturday ended up in trauma.

Colin Glasgow, 44, who will serve 12 years for taking his family on a terror-filled ride, keeping them in the car for hours, then crashing the vehicle into a tree. Reportedly, his wife wanted a divorce.

Colin Glasgow kept his family hostage in the vehicle while he took them on a wild and dangerous driving spree, eventually wrapping the van around a large tree in an Earlysville yard in what law enforcement authorities categorized as an attempted murder-suicide. With his family inside and injured, Glasgow ran away from the scene.

On Tuesday, April 17, after being held without bond in the regional jail, he was sentenced to serve 12 years for abduction, child endangerment and domestic assault. In January, he entered an Alford plea on these and other charges, meaning he acknowledged that there was enough evidence to convict him. When Glasgow, 44, gets out of jail, he will have three years of supervised probation. If he puts together 40 years of good behavior, including getting and keeping a full-time job, then he will be allowed to see Virginia and his children again.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jon Zug, who tried the case in Albemarle Circuit Court, says that Virginia Glasgow believes her declared intention to divorce Colin prompted his reckless behavior. As for whether 40 years without contact between him and his family is an exceptionally harsh restriction, Zug is emphatic: “He tried to kill them, so no.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

stage

The collegiate cast of Hair—and most of the audience on opening night last week—could be forgiven for thinking the recurring song “Manchester” was an homage to the birthplace of the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays. For though the musical is 40 years old, under Thadd McQuade’s direction it seems to be located nowhere specific, neither in terms of time nor space, and insofar as there are no visual cues to suggest that the score and plot relate to East Village hippies who resist the Vietnam War—well, who’s to say the catchy number isn’t being sung by a guy wanting to pass himself off as part of the Madchester scene of the 1990s?

Locks of love: Thadd McQuade directs a relatively tamed Hair. Well, we’ll always have the original cast recordings.

And therein lies the challenge with staging today a musical that shocked and thrilled audiences two generations ago. The Broadway-era Hair inspired courtroom discussion about whether government could close down a show before it opened (town fathers in Tennessee apparently found lyrics about cunnilingus and sodomy along with the mass nudity that ended the first act to be just too much to anticipate). But these days, post-American Pie, with every middle schooler in America well versed in the art of going down, what can possibly be done with Hair to retain the vibrancy of its counter-cultural themes while acknowledging that times, as measured by the shock-o-meter, have changed?

McQuade, always an interesting director and much appreciated since his days with Foolery, has avoided going the nostalgia route. Nary a thread of tie-dye is in sight, and, even more significantly, the coiffures are pretty darn tame. He’s not presenting a ’60s homage act. Fine.
But what is he presenting? If it’s a commentary on how the current unpopular war and society’s response to it parallels Lyndon Johnson’s mess, well that doesn’t exactly work. All those songs about burning draft cards bear marginal relevance now (though one character’s line about how the draft is “white people sending black people to kill yellow people to defend the land they stole from red people” needs only a teeny bit of tweaking to sound current). If it’s a distillation of Hair’s themes, well, O.K., the completely stripped, vaguely industrial set helps toward that goal, though it mostly got me thinking about art from the Gulag or other such drab Eastern European themes. If it’s a collection of well-executed songs about youthful disgruntlement and the complications of freedom, now you’re getting close.

For if there’s one thing that can still be said about Hair, however the cast is costumed and wherever the scene is located, it’s this: Great score. “Aquarius,” “Easy To Be Hard,” “Colored Spade,” the list of hits goes on and on. Even if I couldn’t be sure why these kids were up there and what it was that motivated them, I was reassured by their musical performances. Let the sun shine in, indeed.