While guilt, shame, regret and sorrow have always been part of the mistake-prone human machine, one can’t help but think that, with so many people so filled with regret, something must be wrong. This week’s cover story is about saying you’re sorry. You can read it here, and if you forget to leave a comment, feel free to apologize.
Month: November 2009
It’s that time of the year again for two great traditions that go great together. We speak, ’natch, of the time-honored practice of lying about the status of your term paper. With finals looming, one corner of Charlottesville is teeming with procrastinators—the kind of people to whom we paid tribute 19 years ago for their many excuses for blown deadlines. Not that thesis-eating dogs are the only animals that deserve recognition in late November. Turkeys rank right up there—especially wisecracking ones like Tom “the Angry” Turkey, whom we “interviewed” four years ago, on the cusp of the slaughter.
Paging through the archives
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“‘Eagles, Ravens, Cardinals. If football and Thanksgiving are a natural pair, why not the Turkeys?’
“‘Not to get all self-loathing on you, but have you ever seen a turkey? Interacted with a turkey? Even caught a glimpse of a turkey on TV? If so, you would know that there is nothing about a turkey to inspire thoughts of fleet-footedness, fear, or alpha-maledom—all of which are qualities football teams aspire to conjure when they christen themselves.
“‘That said, Virginia Tech apparently didn’t get the memo. Their HokieBird is derived from a turkey, which sucks for them for the following reasons: First, turkeys are hardly athletic. They’re so fat their wings can barely lift them half an inch off the ground. They’d definitely be picked last for a fifth-grade game of dodgeball. Second, they’re dumb as a box of rocks. While they don’t drown in the rain as rumor has it, when they get scared they all crowd together in a corner and the stupid animal at the bottom often suffocates. One can only hope for the sake of the species that Darwinian theory ensures that in each instance the bird that dies is the stupidest of the stupid flock.’”
Nell Boeschenstein
November 22, 2005
Getting covered
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November 27, 1990 |
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Checking in with Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on a new piece for my company that is just beginning. I recently got back from the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in September, and I was doing a lot of work with dance-theater integration, and how to look at them not as two separate mediums, but making them more interdisciplinary. I’m thinking about a new project based on a poem by Margaret Atwood.
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In addition to sharing her “health food” snack with us, Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp also revealed her “junk food” answer: “Peppermint Patties.” |
What were you doing just before we called?
I just got home from work, and I’m watching my young son eat his toys. I was instructing a modern dance class at UVA.
Tell us about your day job.
Right now it’s been kind of a struggle to integrate my work at UVA and my work at my company, but in both places I’ve been interested in collaborating with lots of different people—not necessarily dancers, but musicians, engineers, scientists. At UVA, I’m trying to make it so that my students get to collaborate with a different group of people each semester. This fall, my students are working with engineers. Because we’re exploring the concept of ability and disability in dance, and how can people with disabilities still make art, we’re playing with the idea of giving ourselves limitations. Like not being able to use our arms, or legs, and trying to build a piece out of this in collaboration with the engineering students. [Read the Feedback blog on c-ville.com for more on this piece.]
Who would you like to collaborate with?
I actually would like to collaborate with Doreen Bechtol, a theater director. She just directed a show at UVA, and I’d really love to work with her.
What is your favorite tool of the trade?
The first thing that came to my head was “space.” I guess I feel like I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how space can affect things, how I’m creating movement in space, how my body is moving through points in space, but also how if something just isn’t working, I can probably fix it by changing the space.
What’s your favorite snack food while you’re working?
The health food answer, which I’m trying to go for lately…actually, I take that back, it isn’t health food at all, but my decaf soy latte. It’s the going out aspect of it that’s so important. Like if I’m in a creative rut, it’s good to take 20 minutes to decompress with a walk to the coffee house.
Plans to see any upcoming local events?
Possibly planning on buying a ticket to a ballet for the holidays. Probably The Nutcracker.
What music are you listening to?
I’ve been listening to The Dixie Chicks lately, but also getting back into classical music again, to help put my son to sleep with. Personally, I tend to be more into Radiohead or more along the lines of electronic music, but this has been a nice shift lately.
What single article of clothing would you take on a long trip?
I have this thing for boots. I think they would need to come with me wherever I went, except for the beach. I have a couple pairs, but I like tall boots. A pair of boots can really transform an outfit, make something casual feel less so.
What do you carry with you at all times?
An idea notebook, journal, something like that. I’ve also been carrying around colored pencils and markers lately. Also, tennis balls to roll on, in case I have something that hurts. And kneepads, because I tend to fall on them
a lot.
Guilty pleasures?
I love really bad, really cheesy movies. Like teenage made-for-TV movies with Lindsay Lohan. That, and I love this new TV series called “Glee.”
Do you have an iPhone? Any killer apps?
Yes, and I’m addicted to it, but I don’t really have any applications. I thought of an app, though—there are so many weird insects in this town, that wouldn’t it be cool if you could take photographs of them and have the app identify them for you?
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Patience and rewards
Dan and Molly Laufer dated for half a decade before getting married. Three of those years were spent in separate cities. Dan, 25, lived in Atlanta, where he worked at a business strategy-consulting firm; Molly, 24, lived in Jacksonville, Florida, where she was stationed with the Navy. (The first two years were spent together in Charlottesville, where they met at UVA.) It’s a five-and-a-half-hour drive between Atlanta and Jacksonville, which the couple endured at least twice a month.
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Dan and Molly Laufer |
After so much long distance, they finally decided to close the gap by getting married this fall. But as wedding plans heated up over the summer, Molly, who is active duty in the Navy, had to transfer to San Diego, where she was expected to deploy to the Middle East (she’s had two prior deployments). The couple, who had hoped to dazzle their wedding guests with smooth moves on the dance floor, had signed up for a series of lessons at a Jacksonville dance studio. But the transfer cut the lessons short so they had to practice what little they’d learned in hotel rooms and hallways during the cross-country drive to California last August.
No sooner had the couple settled into their new digs on the West Coast, they had to fly back east again for their September 12 wedding at King Family Vineyard, in Crozet.
Molly, a Baltimore native, had been informed that she was to deploy a day after the wedding, which meant their honeymoon to Greece and Paris would have to be postponed. Luckily, plans changed at the last minute; she found out (during her bachelorette party, no less) that she was allowed to go on her honeymoon after all, but she was expected to ship out a mere three days after arriving back to San Diego.
With her deployment imminent, Molly and Dan did everything they could to ritualize their special day. On the day of the wedding, Dan, who’s originally from Charlottesville, decided it was bad luck to talk to his bride, a decision that can probably be explained by Molly’s description of him as “the most corny person I know but also someone who is deeply passionate about everything he does.”
“I was so excited to see him all day,” says Molly. “All I wanted to do was give him a giant hug.” At one point during the interfaith ceremony—Dan is Jewish, Molly is Episcopalian—the couple had to bless the wine. As Molly looked into her cup of wine, she noticed an insect floating in it. Her first words to her groom—even before “I do”—were “There’s a dead bug in there.” Dan’s hushed response: “It’s O.K.—it’s protein.” Molly whispered back: “O.K., I’m hungry.” No one understood why the 6’2" groom and his 5’2" bride shook with laughter as they stood under the chuppah.
For their first dance, the newlyweds twirled confidently across the dance floor—“probably more times than we were supposed to,” says Molly—to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
At one point, Molly stepped out of the reception hall to take a breather. “I closed my eyes and all I could hear were glasses clinking, the band playing, people talking. I thought this was the one chance in our lives to have everyone we know and love in the same place—the wedding was the best going away party I could have ever had.”
And now Dan, who just got a new job in his new city, tries to keep the home fires burning during his best friend’s absence. Molly is currently deployed with the NIMITZ Carrier Strike Group where she works as a surface warfare officer on the Al Basrah Oil Terminal, an offshore Iraqi oil facility in the North Arabian Gulf that, she says, “looks like something out of the Kevin Costner movie Waterworld.” To stay in touch, Dan e-mails her pictures from his iPhone nearly every day. And “We live on Skype,” she says.
It’s not easy being apart, but Dan says he’s “reminded that a lot of people have it worse than us.” For now, he’s just looking forward to the day she comes home so they can enjoy the little things together—and share the same ZIP code for once: “Cooking dinner together, taking day trips, walking around our neighborhood,” he says. “The reality is that I can do all of those things right now, but it’s just not as fun or as satisfying without Molly.”
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The apocalypse less traveled
At last, the long-delayed, Viggo Mortensen-intensive adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, about a man and his young son wandering through a glumly gritty post-apocalyptic world, has arrived. Just in time for the holiday season! Here is a movie to remind you that you’ve got a lot to be thankful for.
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From Lord of the Rings to king of The Road: Viggo Mortensen guards Kodi Smit-McPhee through the cinematic waste land of Cormac McCarthy’s story. |
“Each day is more gray than the one before,” Mortensen’s nameless character says in solemn narration early on. He’s not lying—unless you consider it a lie of omission that he doesn’t also say each day is more brown than the one before. The Road may be the grayest and brownest movie ever made. And it is starkly beautiful, in just such a way as to warrant the mention here of cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe in advance of mentioning screenwriter Joe Penhall or director John Hillcoat.
Many movies have rendered trite the notion of surviving in the post-apocalypse gloom with flashbacks to the pre-apocalypse. This will be one that leaves much of the past out. McCarthy set that precedent in his book, apparently because if mankind must insist on besmirching its own dignity, it’ll seem magnanimous in saying so to allow for the dignity of narrative restraint. We see a ruined city, and some vestigial carnage (not to mention a couple of off-screen butcherings), but the details of what actually happened remain artfully obscured.
All we really know is that earthquakes are involved. And that most of our species—in America, at least—didn’t make it. And that Robert Duvall, with his soulful, turbid eyes, saw it coming. But of course he did. He’s Robert effing Duvall. Small roles in The Road are like food: precious, savored. There’s one for Michael Kenneth Williams, whom you may recall as Omar from “The Wire,” and one for Guy Pearce, too.
As for the big role, it might be called the performance of Mortensen’s career, if only because he seems most in his element when greasy-haired, or nude, or both. The Road is always there for him, as he is for it.
Now here’s another Cormac McCarthyish thing Mortensen’s character says: “All I know is the child is my warrant. And if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.” The child is played by Kodi Smit-McPhee—quite well, given what might be the most potentially traumatizing role for a young actor since Danny Lloyd was cast in The Shining, and quite feasibly the offspring of Mortensen and Charlize Theron, who plays the boy’s mother.
For all of The Road’s reserve, maybe there’s a tad too much talk of what it means to be “the good guys”—namely, “carrying the fire.” Ah, and just look what we’ve done with that gift from Prometheus, whose reward for giving it to us was torture. Well, if this road really is the one ahead for humanity, he can consider us even.
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C'vllle Coffee spruces up
On any given day at C’ville Coffee you’ll likely see a cross-section of Charlottesville’s diverse citizenry. Among the masses on Restaurantarama’s last visit were (1) a harem of harried mothers frantically sipping coffee while their wild toddlers scaled the wooden climbing turtle, (2) City Councilor Holly Edwards in intimate discussion with a constituent, (3) a real estate agent negotiating a deal, (4) a half a dozen students huddled over laptops and (5) no less than three separate community groups meeting over mugs and muffins. Free Wifi, plenty of seating separated into an Adult Zone and a Kid’s Corner and a unique line-up of gourmet sandwiches, salads and noodle bowls make the Harris Street establishment popular with people who need a place to get stuff done and want the company of other people getting stuff done—whether that “stuff” be studying, organizing a fundraiser or exercising a rambunctious kid into a nap-ready coma. Restaurantarama wondered if all that use and abuse is what led owner Toan Nguyen to give the place a bit of a makeover this month: There’s a fresh coat of exterior paint, more prominent signage and a new patio seating area in front of the building. Turns out that freshening-up is only part of the story.
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He’s put his wholesale cookie distribution idea on hold because of it, but the economy won’t stop C’ville Coffee owner Toan Nguyen from sprucing up his place and adding evening entertainment to the bill. |
Earlier this year, Nguyen, a Darden Business School alumnus and former corporate professional before starting the small coffee shop almost 10 years ago with his wife Betsy Patrick, was embarking on an expansion of the retail coffee business: a wholesale and online distribution strategy for the signature “Honey Bunches” cookies made fresh at the shop. Unfortunately, the economic crisis intervened.
“We’re no longer pursuing that,” says Nguyen. “Because of the recession, we’ve decided to focus again here.”
Not only has Nguyen given the shop a fresh look, but he’s in the process of building a small stage in anticipation of a regular schedule of acoustic acts, poetry readings and open mic nights to begin on January 15 with a performance by jazz trumpeter John D’earth. After that, C’ville Coffee will host entertainment Thursday-Saturday, 7-9:30pm, with the kitchen staying open for the later hours. Beer and wine will also be available subject to an ABC license for which Nguyen is reapplying—“We had one a few years ago when we were doing the [more extensive] noodle bowls, but it never took off.”
This time, Nguyen is betting there will be plenty of demand for C’ville Coffee’s next foray into a later, “spirited” performance scene.
From Diner to diner
Last week we told you about Expresso Italian Villa’s new name (The Villa), menu and look, under its new ownership. What we didn’t tell you is that the family who started the Italian Villa has quietly been serving up some of their same signature Italian and Greek fare plus all-day breakfast across town at the Cavalier Diner, which opened earlier this year. The couple, Margarita and Nick Vlavianos, came out of retirement in Greece to take over the old Sam’s Kitchen space.
Kyle Woolard—the fuzz-folk, almost-Mark Kozelek songwriter behind Uncle Jemima—e-mailed me in October to let me know that he’d joined up with local trio Astronomers. Not long after, the band booked an EP release gig at Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, and local musician/producer Lance Brenner sent me a note to let me know that the band’s six-song EP, Think Fast!, was available for listening online.
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The right stuff? Local rock act Astronomers team up with producer Lance Brenner for the bottle rocket dance-rock album, Think Fast! |
Here we are, two weeks after the EP release show and a month after Woolard first contacted me, and the Astronomers’ EP is only now entering Feedback’s orbit. And there’s plenty to say about the six tracks and the space-rock cadets that lit their fuses.
Remember when Coldplay borrowed from the New Order songbook on “Talk” and “Speed of Sound” and became, briefly, less cloying? Nate Bolling has the words to accompany the band’s anxious jitters on tracks like “The Singularity” and “Perpetual Emotion”—we won’t dock him points for that particular pun. And Brenner’s production is a reminder that, before he busied himself with production work for Corsair, Travis Elliott and Pantherburn, he has an ear for pop-punk hooks that makes the genre seem a lot less saccharine.
The Astronomers’ EP was a reminder that it’s easy to make a meal of a single album or film or painting. This week, Feedback decided he’d survey the buffet, see what he’d missed recently and load up his plate. Starting with…
WTJU: Specifically, “Auntie Beast’s Radio Theatre” on Wednesday nights at 11pm. Last week, DJ Sarah Lawson started the last-call show with The Black Heart Procession’s “All My Steps” and moved on to Karl Blau and Kurt Vile before peaking in the middle of the show with Sleater-Kinney’s “Heart Factory.” Both Lawson and DJ Lady D play pop that can flirt with heaviness, but not in an existential, up-all-night way. Listen late and listen up.
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Four County Players: The Barboursville theater packed its newly utilized basement, dubbed “The Cellar,” for Mafia on Prozac—enough to add a date for November 20. The yule-tide B.B. gun comedy A Christmas Story opening on December 4, so book your tickets now. And don’t shoot your eye out.
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Second Street Gallery: Sandeep Mukherjee’s exhibit of four Duralene paintings remain up through December 31, which should give you enough time to sort through your feelings of vertigo. Standing in the middle of the gallery and panning the room gives the feeling that Mukherjee’s work is racing forward around craggy black mountains to embrace you. Approaching one piece at a time inverts the effect, pulls you towards tree rings, pond ripples, a nautilus shell.
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DJ eSc’s Poptarts mixtape series: The best DJs look at mixes as if they were logic problems—equations in which solving for X means finding a rational transition from a remix of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Want.” Eric Cross, a.k.a. DJ eSc, is our rhythmic Rain Man—persistent and productive, able to leap between buried remixes of Madonna’s “Frozen” and Pussycat Dolls with a single, indulgently sweet trip through his record collection. You can find hours of his mixes archived at escisme.blogspot.com.
Open Studio stretches out
When Open Studio caught up with dancer Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp, a founder of inFluxdance and one of the main forces behind the new dance minor in UVA’s Drama Department, she was in the thick of planning “Structurally Sound.” Beauchamp tasked her dance students with choreographing dances that they could perform while wearing things like braces and restraints—medical tools as uniquely inhibiting as they are enabling.
After hearing Beauchamp’s comments about the show, Feedback decided he’d head to Helms Theatre last Monday to catch the one-off performance of “Structurally Sound.” Read the Feedback blog at c-ville.com for more on the show.
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Guns, pumpkins and rock 'n' roll
“Lock N Load”
Wednesday 8pm, Showtime
The hidden-camera series wraps its first season tonight with an episode about a Christian couple that loves its guns as much as the Lord, and a feisty senior citizen who owns a small arsenal of vintage firearms. The series follows charming gun store owner Josh T. Ryan, who is aware enough to understand the absurdity of his business (how can you not take a beat when a postal worker comes in looking to buy an assault rifle?), but neither he nor the show openly mocks the very mockable people who come into his store to purchase or test guns in the adjacent firing range. It’s interesting, although occasionally hard to watch as a wide range of folks discuss their love of guns and thoughts on gun control. (Spoiler: Most of them are staunchly against it.) Think of it as National Geographic for the Second Amendment set.
“Punkin Chunkin 2009”
Thursday 9pm, Science Channel
By Thursday night most of you will probably have had your fill of pumpkin pie, and will be cursing the orange gourd’s delicious existence as you struggle to button your pants and repeatedly reach for the Rolaids. (Not me; I am strictly an apple pie kind of guy.) Get your vicarious revenge by watching this special, which chronicles the 2009 World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association championships. Teams from around the country design and build air cannons, slingshots, catapults and other propulsive machines and descend on sleepy Delaware in the hopes of shooting pumpkins as far as possible. Last year Young Glory III broke the world record by launching one of the veggies 4,483 feet. See if they can clear the extra 800 feet this year and score the much-coveted mile mark. Tune in an hour early for the warm-up “Road to Punkin Chunkin” special.
“Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert”
Sunday 8pm, HBO
I could write a whole bit on the merits and demerits of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but instead I’m just going to list off the names of the performers for this concert special: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, U2, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Jeff Beck Band, Metallica, Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby Stills & Nash. Also look for appearances by Mick Jagger, Sting, Billy Joel, and maybe some people who are still musically relevant.
I just got back from checking out the Design Marathon‘s exhibit at the CCDC. No trainers required! This "marathon," which happened on October 2, was the second time that local designers have volunteered one very, very long day, contributing their expertise to local nonprofits. See the local-local connection there? It’s very cool. The CCDC has exhibits up through November 30 that explain each team’s project and give some tantalizing behind-the-scenes glimpses of the caffeine-fueled process.
Some projects, like this one for the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, focused on creating new logos and brochures. Others were more architectural or landscape-focused. Jackson Via Elementary is, it seems, planning "outdoor learning centers" for its students, and the display on that project is a riot of kids’ drawings and diagrams and architectural renderings, showing ideas that range from a groundhog viewing deck to a "musical roof":
Some of the beneficiaries have obvious green aspects (the Jackson Via project, Cville Rail, Mountaintop Montessori, the Habitat Store) but others don’t (Hospice of the Piedmont, Quality Community Council). Nonetheless, I like this event as an example of a wider kind of "sustainability," in which smart, focused volunteer efforts can hugely benefit the organizations that make our town work better.
Anybody else checked it out? Anybody know more about that Jackson Via project?
The Faculty Senate at the University of Virginia voted unanimously in support of creating a Masters degree in Middle Eastern and South Asian (MESA) Studies at its last meeting of the semester on November 20.
The Senate Academic Affairs Committee, chaired by Commerce professor Robert Kemp, presented the proposal to the Senate and claimed full support of its passage.
Prior to the vote, the floor was opened for questions directed at Daniel Lefkowitz, Chair of the MESA Department. Lefkowitz explained that the Masters program will not seek additional resources and will satisfy a sufficient demand.
Given the interdisciplinary nature of MESA studies, the bulk of the graduate course of study will come from classes in other academic disciplines, from politics and history to religious studies and anthropology. Furthermore, current upper-level language courses (500-level and higher) already grant credit to graduate students.
As a result, no new faculty hires in the MESA Department will be needed.
“Introduction of masters students will be a win-win situation,” says Lefkowitz. “Graduate students will enrich their knowledge of language skills while also increasing the vitality of courses with the added interest.”
This proposal has been in the works for a couple of years. Now, with the unanimous endorsement of the Faculty Senate, the proposal will be presented to the Board of Visitors in the coming months.