Month: July 2009

Categories
Arts

Judd Apatow’s latest: Seriously Funny?

The funniness of people has been a subject of interest to entertainers for many years. We know this from TV shows such as “Animals are the Funniest People,” “America’s Funniest People,” and several called “People Are Funny,” from several different decades. We know it from movies such as Funny Stories, Funny People, a French-language film from Cameroon, and of course Funny People (1977) and Funny People II (1983) two Candid Camera-style adventures in South Africa from the director of The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Real stand-up guys: Adam Sandler cuts the act and gets serious with Seth Rogen in Funny People.

And we know it from writer-director-producer-comedy-godfather Judd Apatow, who has been involved with many shows and movies about the funniness of people, including, most recently, Funny People. This is only the third film Apatow has written and directed (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up are the other two), but it is distinctly his most ambitious. Which means it isn’t always funny. But in a good way. Sometimes it’s very tender and sad. Sometimes it’s angry, and so ashamed of its tenderness and sadness that it reflexively rebuffs them with hostility and absurdity. And dick jokes. But it knows it does this; it’s rather philosophical about it. Funny People, in other words, is a human comedy.

Imagine “Tears of a Clown” elaborated to two-and-a-half hours. And with Adam Sandler instead of Smokey Robinson.  Sure, it’s long, but it needs time to develop.

Sandler plays George Simmons, a successful but evidently miserable middle-aged comedy star (of such highly lucrative movie mediocrities as MerMan, Astro-Nut and My Best Friend is a Robot, among many others) whose jaded, monstrously self-absorbed soul gets an existential jolt when he’s diagnosed with a potentially terminal disease. Seth Rogen plays Ira Wright, a comedy up-and-comer still finding his voice, who lands a dubious gig as George’s personal assistant, joke writer, and reluctant emotional caretaker.

As George grapples with his illness, tries to reconnect with his now-married ex, Laura (Leslie Mann), and inevitably tangles with her husband (Eric Bana), Ira takes whatever mentoring he can get. But it strains Ira’s already competitive relationships with his roommates, Mark (Jason Schwartzman), the self-satisfied star of a dumb new sitcom, and Leo (Jonah Hill), another aspiring comedian (“the fatter version of you,” as George puts it). There’s also Daisy (Aubrey Plaza), a girl Ira likes, who’s also a comedian. But Funny People’s most essential and most developed relationship is between Ira and George. It ruminates on the simple, complicated question of whether or not they can manage enough maturity to really be friends.

We have no shortage of movies whose subject is vulnerable male self-centeredness, but Apatow is approaching mastery of the form. Funny People benefits greatly from his perceptive understanding of Rogen and Sandler’s comic personas, as it does from its maker’s overall generosity. Apatow articulates and allows his characters’ flaws with grace and good humor. We get it: They’re not just funny; they’re people.

Categories
News

The devil went down to FloydFest

It’s so much easier being a hippy these days. Case in point: FloydFest, a four-day summer music festival held just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Floyd.  Instead of Woodstock’s food shortages of 40 years ago, FloydFesters face a stupefying abundance of choices: local, grass-fed burgers, tempeh reubens, Thai coconut curry and, yes, sushi. Some of the food tents at FloydFest have kitchens larger than entire New York restaurants. Indeed, in the list of modern miracles that our hi-tech world has wrought, the ability to create a small, yet fully functioning and relatively comfortable city in the middle of nowhere, hold a four-day party, and then pack it up and leave, has got to rank pretty high.

“Shop your values,” reads a sign, by which organizers seem to mean, spend money at our spiritual buffet. Photos by Ashley Twiggs.

My first impression of FloydFest was that capitalism and the counterculture had reached détente, even if cell phone reception was lacking (though there was a tent with laptops and free wi-fi). Counting food, there were easily more than 100 vendors there last weekend, not to mention an ATM. Jewelry? Check. Clothes? Double check. Farmer’s market, vintage store, coffee shop? Yes, yes, and yes. Handmade butterfly wings? Of course. “Shop your values,” reads a sign, by which organizers seem to mean, spend money at our spiritual buffet. Tarot cards, palm reading, past life regressions, crystal healing and chakra balancing were available to keep the third eye clean, while yoga, Nia, Rolfing, five kinds of massage and a climbing wall took care of the body.

When I say that people were living at FloydFest, I don’t just mean that they spent four straight days there. I mean they had their mail forwarded and set out plastic flamingos. One popular choice was to hire Dancin’ Dave to set up a deluxe campsite with “comfortable sleeping bags, cots or self-inflatable pads, coolers if needed, lantern, first aid kit, water jug, and camp chairs” all included. Rent for four days ran $230 to $450 or more (the full kitchen option). So when I say that people were living there, I mean living well. We’re talking landscaping.

But do not think for a second that FloydFest isn’t all about the music. With seven stages and 82 musical acts, music played continuously in at least three places from 10 in the morning to 3 the next day. Had I known about the aforementioned real estate options, I might have gone down for the whole shebang, but the photographer and I opted instead to get a taste of the modern festival scene by hitting one full day of FloydFest on Saturday, July 25.

American Dumpster, possibly the world’s weirdest bar band, fronted by Charlottesville welder Christian Breeden, played a midnight set on Saturday that included “Viva Las Vegas.” Photos by Ashley Twiggs.

Eleven bands from Charlottesville played this year, including William Walter, voted top emerging artist at last year’s Fest. As a result, Walter and his band got to play over three days, including the opening 11am show on Saturday on the huge main stage. It’s hard to really capture a crowd early in the morning, especially one that is just waking up and eating spiritually sweetened French toast on a luminous sunny day in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But capture them he did, his clean folk/blues/rock bursting like a bubble over a large, dancing crowd. Afterwards Linda DeVito, head of development and marketing for Across The Way Productions, the company behind FloydFest, congratulated a sweat-soaked Walter.

“Two of our VIPS said that you are the best show at FloydFest,” she said, while female fans plied Walter with gifts. “We’ve never had an 11am crowd like that before!” Having played FloydFest four times now, Walter and his band are clearly moving up in the hierarchy of returning acts. “It’s a social networking opportunity,” he says of the gig. “You get to see how the guys above you are doing.”

The theme for the eighth annual FloydFest was Revival, and it was appropriate to the headlining group, Blues Traveler. Along with Phish, Blues Traveler was an original in the ’60s revival that took place in the early 1990s, out of which came today’s jam bands. In 1992 Blues Traveler started the H.O.R.D.E. Festival (Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere. Better left as an acronym, huh?), which led directly to the jam band festivals that currently litter the summer months, like the massive Bonnaroo and FloydFest—both started in 2002.

Blues Traveler is fronted by the once morbidly obese harmonica-genius John Popper (who plays that thing the way Eddie Van Halen plays guitar). After reaching a career peak in 1994 with the hit “Run-Around,” they met hard times: heart surgery, death, being dropped from their label—the usual. Blues Traveler faded from the mainstream, making last year’s album and recent headlining gigs at Lollapalooza and FloydFest seem like a revival as well. But the truth is they never stopped playing, and their tight set on the main stage Saturday night proved they are still a band to be reckoned with.

FloydFest’s musical strength is that it has stayed true to its essence, folk music, while continuing to grow bigger each year. We’re not talking folk music as in Peter, Paul and Mary, but music of the folk: worldwide grassroots and traditional music that is nonetheless rooted in Appalachia. FloydFest 2009 featured a Brazilian Gospel Choir, plenty of traditional bluegrass, and the 11-piece Latin funk orchestra, Grupo Fantasma. Standouts for me were the Byrds-inspired surf/garage rock of The Sadies, The Duhks’ Cajun-accented country/soul blend, and Rooster Blues. Part of the Emerging Artist series, Rooster Blues is a guitar/drums duo from Mississippi that veers from White Stripes-style blues to spare bluegrass songs featuring only mandolin and vocals.

Ten local acts played at Floyd, which featured many of the expected (and a few unexpected) festival sideshows. Photos by Ashley Twiggs.

Unlike Woodstock, FloydFest seemed to run like clockwork (and there were no deaths or births, as far as we know). Porta-potties, nice showers, and constant shuttles to the off-site parking spelled comfort, oh yes. The 2007 FloydFest was marred by a heavy-handed police presence, but this year there seemed to be no problems. (“It’s probably one of the best things we work,” Patrick County Sheriff’s Deputy Margie Stowe said.) But if disaster did strike, there was a first aid station staffed by nurses and doctors. Several ambulances waited nearby. “We treat just about everything here,” one of the nurses said. “It’s more than just Band-aids and tampons.”

One hundred seventy staffers and 500 volunteers ran the show over the full four days. The nerve center for the whole operation was a musty and dark trailer in the middle of the festival grounds. Inside, AJ Roller, the head of administration, manned a desk with a laptop, a fax, the only landline at the festival, and 105 constantly rotating walkie-talkies. Fun fact: The radios were under FCC jurisdiction, which meant no cussing. Friday night must have made that restriction tough, as there was a 90-minute power-outage at 8:30 that prompted much acoustic jamming.

Last year’s Fest drew 15,500 people and they were predicting 17,000 for this year. “It can be a 24-hour day,” Roller says of working the festival. For the volunteers, the fun of seeing the music for free was offset, in some cases, by some truly gross jobs. Cassidy Jarrett, a petite 16-year-old from South Carolina, spent three days from noon to 4pm on garbage duty. When I talked to her, she was standing by the trashcans in a green sundress, big sunglasses, and a rubber glove. Her task was to ensure that people put their trash in one of three receptacles: landfill, recycling or compost. Whenever someone would ignore her authority, she had to fish around in the garbage can and deposit the half-eaten veggie burrito or whatever where it belonged.

“It’s not bad,” she said. “I like organizing things. I didn’t have gloves at first. Then they gave me gloves, but they got nasty. I got this one from the first aid station.”

FloydFest is a hotbed for useless talents like juggling, devil sticks, hacky sack, Chinese yo-yo and hula-hoop. A late afternoon storm on Saturday produced a perfect rainbow, but really all of FloydFest is a rainbow, an incredible excuse for people that ordinarily wouldn’t wear costumes to do so, and for people who always wear costumes to see what it’s like to blend in. Children are everywhere. Family-friendly, FloydFest almost seems cynicism-proof, as well. I found myself using the phrase “mind-blowingly fun.”

When I first got to the festival I ran into Charlottesville’s Christian Breeden, returning for a third year with American Dumpster, his on-again-off-again musical project. Breeden had ridden down in Dirty Bird, an old Hackensaw Boys tour bus loaded with numerous rusted sculptures and welding equipment. He’d set up a full-scale metal shop and during the day gave bicycle-building lessons. This year, maybe because he got on the bill rather impromptu, he didn’t have a lot of merchandise to sell. (Most acts at FloydFest are unpaid, so merch is vital if they want to make some money.)

At the end of the night, after the slick rock show put on by Blues Traveler, I wandered down to the farthest stage to catch American Dumpster’s late-night set. Their name had been oddly left off of the schedule for that day, so the only people to see them begin to play were those who had wandered there by accident.

Under a stage shaped like a circus tent, the Dump, the world’s weirdest bar band, played messy dub-like originals and covers, Breeden doing his best Tom Waits-trapped-inside-Jim Morrison routine and the rest of the band casually reining in his chaos.

As midnight neared and things got Demerol-hazy, people began to show up to the massive fire-pit near the stage, like late arrivals to a party they weren’t invited to, and sat by the fire roasting marshmallows. The American Dumpster crowd grew and grew and really got into it, so that when they played their last song, “Viva Las Vegas,” and Breeden got everyone to do a Conga line and then bounced his guitar off the stage and said Goodbye, the crowd kept clapping and screaming. It was the first true encore I’d ever seen as the bemused band plugged back in and played one more, a raggedly beautiful version of “Folsom Prison Blues” that Johnny Cash would have loved. They were right on the edge of blowing it the whole time, but they didn’t. Instead they lent a darker passion that offset FloydFest’s carefully packaged spirituality, the rusted and anarchic heart I suddenly realized the festival had so desperately needed all along.

Categories
Living

Veraison is a critical stage for grapes from planting to harvest

It may not be strictly straight, but a line connects a Salvadoran farm worker named Señor Reyes, the octogenarian British wine sage Michael Broadbent, viticulturist Fernando Franco and me. Back in the 1970s, a question about rotting beans from Señor Reyes directed at his boss’s young son led Franco, the hijo in question, to college studies in agronomy. From there, once war intruded and he left his native country, Franco became vineyard manager, first at Prince Michel in Madison County and, in 1998, at Barboursville Vineyards. And that’s where Michael Broadbent tasted seven wines during a spring trip to the region this year and about which he wrote in superlative terms for the current issue of industry-leading Decanter magazine. This was exciting the staff at Palladio, Barboursville’s premier restaurant, on the Sunday afternoon when I had lunch there with Franco to discuss his work growing the very grapes from which those wonderful vintages are made.

Fernando Franco, the vineyard manager for Barboursville, oversaw production of 520 tons of grapes last year. This year he says harvest is about 10 days off. The grapes are starting to turn from green to purple, which means harvest is about 66 days out.

You see how wine brings people together? Michael Broadbent to me: three degrees of separation!

The nominal topic of our interview was a process called veraison. In laymen’s terms, it’s the phase when berries ripen on the vine, softening and changing color from hard green to purplish—the stuff from which wine is made. Sugar starts to accumulate within the berries at this stage, so obviously it’s a pretty crucial point in the season. It hits about two months prior to harvest. Wanting to know what’s foremost on a vineyard manager’s mind at this time of year, I asked Franco. He’s in charge of 140 acres on which 13 varietals grow.

“Veraison is one of the turning points of what I do,” he says. “If you have escaped black rot and powdery mildew to that point, the grapes are on cruise control. Everything from this point on is to make sure that nutritionally the grapes have what they need to ripen.” A couple of major considerations at this stage: applying potassium and managing the leaf canopy so the grapes avoid sunburn.

Franco’s day begins at 7, when he writes out a plan and then begins to walk the vineyards. Nearly two-dozen workers, mostly on visas from Mexico and Salvador, assist him for eight months of the year, and he makes the point that vineyard management is not strictly about tending to plants. On top of training workers and bumping through the vineyard in an indestructible Ford pick-up, Franco spends plenty of time assuring the Department of Homeland Security that the bin Laden family is not trying to infiltrate the Virginia wine network. “Managing the people is sometimes more stressful than managing the vineyard,” he says.

Not that Franco is complaining. Watching the grapes change is a “joy” at this time of the year, he says. “It’s a beautiful expression of all the care I provide them,” he says. “I give the grapes caring love and they give me back beautiful wine.”

$12.5M career opportunity calls

Interested in joining the growing ranks of Virginia winery owners? Stephen Barnard, the winemaker and general manager at Keswick Vineyards confirms that the operation is for sale for $12.5 million.  The intention, he says, is for the property, which includes some 400 acres (43 planted with vines) a winery, tasting room, and 9,500-square-foot house, to be sold as a “viable business property.” In other words, he has hopes of staying put while the vineyard and winery changes hands. Indeed, he has quite an investment in calling it home: This coming weekend he will marry Kathryn Schornberg, daughter of current owner Al Schornberg. The wedding will take place on the property.

Categories
News

Cost of creating water plan is tough to quantify

It’s been more than a month since the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) announced on June 25 that it had fired Gannett Fleming, the engineering firm that developed the community’s water supply plan approved in 2006. What does the change mean for the ongoing debate about the plan? Unsurprisingly, it depends whom you ask.

Albemarle County supervisor Sally Thomas, for example, sees little controversy in the shift. “It was quite natural to have a parting of ways,” she says.

RWSA director Tom Frederick says that design work on the proposed new dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, already performed by fired firm Gannett Fleming, can largely be used by the next firm, still to be hired.

After Gannett Fleming drastically increased its cost estimate for a new dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir—announcing in August 2008 that costs could jump from $37 million to $72 million—the RWSA hired a team of independent consultants to review dam plans. The expert panel’s April 6 report suggested various ways to alter the dam design and reduce the cost, though it stopped short of offering a dollar estimate. In Thomas’ understanding, Gannett Fleming simply opted not to incorporate the expert panel’s suggestions—hence, the split.

Don Wagner, chair of the Albemarle County Service Authority (ACSA) board, has a similar take, shying away from the word “firing” to describe what happened. Wagner also sees the step as a good PR move by RWSA. “The water has been so poisoned by things said and published about Gannett Fleming, it’s time to move on to someone else.”

Dede Smith, a member of the group that’s most vocally critized the permitted plan—Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply (CSWP)—says that, based on correspondence between Gannett Fleming and RWSA before the firing, she believes Gannett Fleming was in fact willing to change its design as outlined by the expert panel. But, in her interpretation, the firm seemed reluctant to accept responsibility for potential problems resulting from those changes. “Gannett Fleming may understandably be very cautious,” she says.

Whatever the reason for the split, it certainly adds another link to a long chain of delays for the plan. RWSA expects to hire a new firm later this summer. RWSA director Tom Frederick says much of Gannett Fleming’s work remains valid and can be used going forward, though some backtracking will be necessary. “However, we see the revisiting of judgment and interpretation as a positive thing, because a ‘fresh look’ is expected to generate design decisions that result in substantial savings on overall project costs,” he says in an e-mail.

What have we spent?

In an attempt to quantify what the community has spent thus far to develop the water supply plan, C-VILLE asked RWSA and other government bodies what their costs had been. What is likely the largest number—the amount RWSA has already paid or will pay Gannett Fleming—was unavailable by press time. The expert panel cost RWSA $55,000, and a South Fork Rivanna Reservoir dredging study by the South Fork Task Force resulted in legal and administrative costs to RWSA of $9,632.

Other consulting firms who were part of the process, such as Gahagan & Bryant and Dominion Development Resources, did not bill RWSA for their work. A further dredging study and two pipeline studies, which were called for by Charlottesville’s City Council in November 2008 (largely in response to public scrutiny of the plan) and are now ongoing, will also carry costs, but those amounts are not yet known.

In terms of staff time spent, Frederick is careful to acknowledge that supply plan development under any circumstance is very labor-intensive, “because of the detailed and technical nature of the legal requirements for permitting under the federal Clean Water Act.” However, he adds, “It is also fair to say that the public involvement process requested by citizens in this community is far more extensive than what regulatory agencies deem acceptable and also far beyond what most communities provide.”

In addition to RWSA staff, the city and the ACSA have contributed labor hours to the planning process, too—for example, staff recently completed a water conservation study (also mandated by City Council in November 2008).

Liz Palmer, another ACSA board member, characterizes many of the costs for studies—particularly the dredging study—as “backtracking.” Back in the 1990s, she was a citizen activist who fought for a dredging study, as CSWP has done again more recently. “The 2004 Gannett Fleming report satisfied us beautifully,” Palmer says. “Dredging doesn’t give us the water we need. It was very clear that increasing the dam height was vastly less expensive….Now we’re reopening that entire thing. We’ve already paid for this.”

Wagner worries that costs could continue to multiply indefinitely. “We would be spending money on studying things forever,” he says. “It could be another Meadowcreek Parkway. That appears to be [CSWP’s] strategy.”

For her part, Smith says this: “Whatever costs have been associated with public scrutiny of this plan are a drop in the bucket compared to the disastrous costs of this plan on the ratepayer. Even compared to what they’ve spent on Gannett Fleming—that’s millions.” (Smith did not, however, have an exact figure for RWSA’s payments to Gannett Fleming.)

With a public project of this magnitude, says Sally Thomas, extensive conversation is par for the course. “If [RWSA] were a company or a business it could just say ‘This is the way we’re going to do business.’ But it is a public body and it has to be responsive to the public. That’s the cost of doing business.”

UPDATE, July 27, 3:10pm: After the print deadline for this issue of C-VILLE, we received the following information from RWSA director Tom Frederick. The amounts billed to RWSA by Gannett Fleming are $2,170,150 for development of the plan and $1,713,415 for dam design, a total of $3,883,565. Also, updated costs related to the expert panel are $74,265. Watch next week’s C-VILLE for a more complete update.

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

Categories
Arts

The dating game

“More to Love”
Tuesday 9pm, Fox

From the creator of “The Bachelor” comes “The Fatchelor.” At least, that’s what my bitchy friends call this new dating show. In truth, “More to Love” raises some interesting cultural questions. While the “Bachelor” franchise has had 13 seasons (and five of its “Bachelorette” spin-off), the vast majority of its contestants have been rail-thin with model looks. Since a significant portion of America has some junk in the trunk, how is that reality? “More” features a chunky bachelor (Luke Conley, 26, 6’3”, more than 300 lbs.) choosing between 20 plus-sized ladies. There are arguments that the show could be exploitative, or if nothing else, sets a double standard—why can’t big girls have a shot at a normal-sized guy? One thing’s for sure: Between this and “Dance Your Ass Off,” it’s a great time to be fat.

“Real Housewives of Atlanta”
Thursday 10pm, Bravo

During its first season this show helped redefine Bravo’s “Housewives” shows. Not only did it score the highest ratings for the franchise, but it formally cast off any remaining airs of legitimacy and firmly embraced its trashy, “Jerry Springer”-ish roots thanks to break-out star NeNe Leakes’ battling ways, especially her reunion-show throwdown with former friend Kim Zolciak. Season 2 brings back four of the five original women, with basketball wife DeShawn Snow replaced by former Xscape member/songwriter Kandi Burruss, reportedly because producers didn’t feel Snow brought enough drama.

“Megan Wants a Millionaire”
Sunday 9pm, VH1

After providing invaluable snark and bitchery to four other reality TV programs, Megan Hauserman has graduated to her own starring role in a VH1 dating show. (Hey, if dim, waxen-faced Daisy de la Hoya can get one, surely Megan is deserving.) Hauserman cultivated a love-her-or-hate-her fan base by winning “Beauty and the Geek 3,” coming in fifth on “Rock of Love 2,” fourth on “I Love Money,” and then getting kicked out of “Charm School” and having chunks of hair ripped from her head by Sharon Osbourne during the reunion special. It was amazing. Hauserman plays the ditzy blonde role to perfection, but she has proved many times over to be as cunning, ruthless and quotable as VH1’s other self-created star, New York. We’ll have to see how she fares running the game instead of scamming it, as she selects between 16 rich himbos, most of whom are beyond tragic. Can’t wait.

Interview: Tom Peloso is working for the weekend [VIDEO]

Ever heard anyone describe the country as a place where life "moves a bit slower"? Tom Peloso’s home in Nelson County sounds like it may fit the bill; in fact, Peloso—a founding member of the Hackensaw Boys and current member of Modest Mouse—said during a recent conversation that he feels "more domestic, for lack of a better word," since settling south of Charlottesville.

Of course, when you’re recording and gigging with a chart-topping act like Modest Mouse, life has a funny way of mashing down on the accelerator. Peloso has plans to release a full-length album titled The Last Saturday of the Year in the fall, but explained that, "[S]ince I made a commitment with Modest Mouse, I work it around what I have to do with them." A July 31 gig at Dust was recently postponed after Peloso’s presence was requested for more Mouse work.

Judging by a recent solo EP (recorded at Monkeyclaus) and a gig I caught at Outback Lodge, however, Peloso seems like he’s found a comfortable cruising speed with his music and life. He let Feedback hop in the figurative passenger seat last week for a chat. Read more from Peloso after the video for his song "The Leaves and the Trees," filmed by local photographer Aaron Farrington.

Tom Peloso, "The Leaves and the Trees"

On writing The Last Saturday of the Year: "For lesser words, it was an exorcising of demons. When I started it, it was kind of a therapy for me. I was coming out of crawling out of a hole, myself.

"The song ‘The Last Saturday of the Year’ is what really prompted me to finish this process for myself, which happens to be in the form of music… I kinda put down my therapy, or what was helping me. I don’t know if it was because I got really busy with the Hackensaw Boys and Modest Mouse. But the music made me realize that I still have some work to do."

On his band, The Virginia Sheiks, and Richmond roots: "I’ve known [Michael Bishop] since the early 90s, in that whole [Richmond] scene that was going on. Two of the other three guys—Austin Fitch and Darell Hyden—we’ve been in one project or another. Stewart [Gunter], we all knew of his band, the Dumm Dumms.

"Mike was somebody that I looked up to because he was in a successful band with GWAR. Those were the people that were in the scene that I was in that made me think, ‘I can kinda see how to do this, and that’s what I aspire to do.’ …I could see GWAR making school buses that they could tour with all their gear in. I would go out to their GWAR pit—the ‘Slave Pit,’ they called it—see those guys doing it, and think, ‘Wow, OK, I can do this.’"

On his love for Nelson County, and how he spends his time there: "Of all the traveling I’ve done, this part of Virginia is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been… Modest Mouse is getting ready to go on a tour right now—we’re going to be starting in Nova Scotia, ending up in Hawaii, and going to Iceland and England. After all that, it’s really nice to be in a nice, quiet place where I can relax.

"I’m experimenting with gardening, figuring out how to water my garden without having to use a hose—I’m kinda using my gutter system for my house as an irrigation system. Just kinda being a home-body."

How does his garden grow? Or, more accurately, what does his garden grow? "A lot of it, as I said, is experimenting. I’ve got a lot of greens and beets, Russian Mammoth sunflowers, tomatoes, dill, a lot of herbs I’m figuring out more uses for…

"What I’m trying to do next is, they’ve found a chestnut tree that’s blight resistant. In this whole area, that was the tree, until a blight that occurred at the turn of the century, in the early 1900s. They literally harvested every chestnut tree they could."

Read next week’s Feedback column in C-VILLE for more on Tom Peloso and The Last Saturday of the Year. Look, we talked for a while, you dig?

Categories
News

Twenty years of local news and arts in the spotlight

Certain mysteries remain unsolved, lo these two decades. To wit: Why did local musician Stephen Barling pen his music column under the name Cripsy Duck? (We know, but if we tell you, then we’ll have to serve you with fried rice.) Why do people keep coming back for more once they decide to move away from Charlottesville? While the answers remain unknown, we consider it our duty to pursue them anyway from time to time. If nothing else, it amuses, and that, among other things, has clearly been part of C-VILLE’s mission for the past 20 years. And so it shall be for the next 20 or more. Why? We just can’t explain it.

Paging through the archives

 

“Somebody’s yelling at me. ‘Crispy! Yo, man, Crispy Duck!’ I turn around and am confronted by a bullish man who’s found me out. Drat! My secret identity’s been compromised!

“‘Mission control,’ I’m whispering into my lapel mic. ‘ABORT, ABORT!’

“He’s babbling: ‘Hey man, when you gonna cover my band, man?’

“‘Did they tell you not to do anything on us? I believe they got it out for us.’

“Clearly, the beer has soaked through his paranoia buffer. I spend the next five minutes explaining that, despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, C-VILLE doesn’t have it ‘out’ for anyone. It’s not journalistically proper. And it wouldn’t be cool. Besides, it’s easy enough to generate animosity just by telling the truth.

“‘And by the way,’ I state in closing, ‘it’s criPsy, not criSpy.’ That always gets ‘em.”—Stephen Barling, aka Cripsy Duck, November 2, 1999

Getting covered

 

“We’re here because Charlottesville is a place where we can work and live and date and have friends and theoretically copy our files to computer disks without the computer eating them. In most places you have two areas of operation: you and your intimate associates—lovers, friends, family—and a nebulous ‘society’ out there in the distance—the stuff on TV, the stuff in newspapers. In New York, there’s your intimate circle and the untouchable myth of New York beyond. In Richmond, there’s your intimate circle and the untouchable myth of America beyond.

“But in a town of this size with a public space like the Mall, a middle ground opens up. A space where you’re not on intimate terms but still influential, a space between the near and the far. That means Charlottesville isn’t starkly divided between the Somebodies and the Nobodies. Everybody is sort of a Somebody, and nobody is entirely a Nobody. (The down side is that nobody is entirely a Somebody and everybody is something of a Nobody.) The Mall has grown so much in popularity it’s becoming more like a vague outer circle (You should have been here back before people like you showed up!), but you can still learn things about group behavior you can’t learn watching TV.”—Joel Jones. June 24, 2003

Missing Albemarle man found, arrested and charged

Michael Comer, the missing man who was the treasurer of Glenmore Homeowners Association, has been found, arrested and charged with five counts of embezzlement.

Comer, who went missing on July 1 in Wintergreen, disappeared the same morning that he was to meet an auditor. After the audit was done, more than $650,000 was missing.

According to the Newsplex, Comer turned himself in on Monday and he is now being held at the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Jail.
 

Let summer be summer, sans A/C

Check out one of my favorite stories from last week’s news. It’s a Times report on how air-conditioning has become—even for some folks in Florida—a luxury to be shunned. People are just shutting off the A/C and (imagine it!) dealing with the heat.

The Times opines that this is yet another effect of the recession. What other motivation, besides an economic one, could there possibly be for going without the chillers?

Personally, I think there are several. Air-conditioning is one of those extremely recent developments in human history that, in no time at all, has come to be seen as necessary to survival. (Gasoline and telephones are also in this camp.) I think it’s sad when people believe they are too weak in mind and body to endure any temperature below 60 or over 75. That’s a mighty narrow range. It’s like saying you can’t walk three blocks to your car, except it’s a lot more socially acceptable.

Doing without A/C saves energy, so it’s better for the planet; that’s obvious. But like a lot of green actions, it has the additional benefit of adding harmony to one’s life. Blasting yourself with artificial coolness, while the summer heat waits like a wolf outside your door, is kind of delusional. The weather is real. You can handle it a lot better than you may think, given a chance to acclimate. And smarter buildings can elegantly minimize indoor heat without the need for A/C. Those abrupt transitions in and out of refrigeration are the climatic equivalent of ranch dressing: They lack subtlety.

Here at the C-VILLE office, it’s no secret that I think our A/C is cranked way too high. I’m told it’s a tough system to control, but I keep on wishing I could dress for summer weather without risking frostbite at my desk. At lunchtime, I go outside and bask in the sun like a lizard, storing heat for the long chilly afternoon to come. What if we left our front door open, set up a fan here and there, and risked being a little warm on some days? Would that really kill us?

Anyone out there want to weigh in?

Categories
Living

Cantina opens on Elliewood

When Cantina opened on Elliewood Avenue on Friday, July 17, owner Elizabeth Manatad still had paint on her arms. She’d been spending the previous two weeks since acquiring Martha’s Café from its most recent owners, Mike and Carrie Payne, giving the old blue house a face more fitting of its subtitle: “Taqueria & Watering Hole.” She has plans for still more updates—repairs to the brick patio in the near term; a more service-friendly redesign of Martha’s inverted L-shaped bar in the longer term, but with mere hours to spare, the initial refreshening work was done, much of it with her own stained hands: “A few customers asked me when we’d finished, and I said, ‘This morning!’” says Manatad.

Elizabeth Manatad brings West Coast taqueria inspiration to Cantina, which she’s opened on Elliewood Avenue in the former home of Martha’s Cafe.

A veteran of the local restaurant industry, the Hawaiian-born Manatad, former general manager of Bel Rio, says Cantina was inspired in style and menu by her favorite west coast taquerias, including Blue Water Taco in Seattle, which is best known and loved (by Restaurantarama, anyway) for its fish tacos. Cantina serves regular specials of those (on the day of Restaurantarama’s visit, it was mahi-mahi), as well as a regular line-up of made-to-order tacos, burritos, fajita wraps and salads in a choice of chicken, vegetable, tuna, mako shark, chipotle steak or shrimp.

With its fun and funky paint, goldfish in the bathroom (a legacy of Martha’s) and indoor-outdoor seating (with a capacity for 40-50, the patio actually seats more than the indoor dining rooms), Cantina gives off a laid-back vibe most identified with West Coach beach shacks. But a month ago, life was a bit more stressful. That was when Manatad was told by the Health Department that she’d have to bring the old place up to code.
“Martha’s had been around for, like, 30 years so it was grandfathered out of a lot of stuff.”

But the bureaucrats told Manatad that by giving the place a new name and concept, she’d have to get the old place up to snuff.

“I guess I have to call a plumber!” she tells us she said to herself (although, we speculate she must have uttered a few obscenities as well). In any case, she turned the place around quickly, and it’s already been hopping with music on the patio several nights a week. Christian Breeden played on opening night to a packed house.

Cantina is open for lunch and dinner until 2am Monday-Thursday and until 4am (for the post-bar hopping crowd) Fridays and Saturdays. Brunch is offered on Sundays.

From "crazy dog" to Chevy coup

Back in January, we told you that Brian Helleberg had put Il Cane Pazzo—his Italian-inspired spot in the old L’Avventura digs next to Vinegar Hill Theater—up for sale.

“I’m investigating whether someone might want to buy it,” he told Restaurantarama then, “but so far there hasn’t been the right fit. I may hold onto it and make some changes myself.”

Well, the right fit seems to have come along, and Helleberg has turned over the keys to new owners, who are reopening as El Camino. We’ll tell you more about that later. In the meantime, Helleberg is concentrating on his two Downtown Mall establishments, Fleurie and Petit Pois. The former is enjoying is first full summer season with a patio tables and the latter has expanded its hours to include Saturday lunch and Sunday brunch (e.g., poached Polyface eggs and sausages), which Helleberg prepares himself.