Month: February 2010

No love for local developers Dave Matthews Band at the Grammys last night. They were up for two categories—best rock album and album of the year—but lost to Green Day and Taylor Swift, respectively. Come on, RIAA—No love for Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King, the impeccably-titled album that almost broke up the band?

Queen Beyoncé took home six, setting the record for the biggest ever haul by a female artist. Speaking of records, they awarded more awards than ever before, a healthy 109.

For her performance, Lady Gaga resurrected a one-piece bathing suit from her childhood, complete with refashioned swimmies, and then walked away with awards for best dance recording for “Poker Face,” and best dance/electronica for The Fame. Jim DeRogatis, at the Chicago Sun Times blog has a funny analysis of her performance: Gaga began the show with “an elaborate production number on ‘Pokerface’ that found her simultaneously providing the quintessential 2010 pop moment and mocking the superficiality of the star-making machine as she was literally fed into the foundry amid a burst of flames.” The Washington Post reported that Eminem’s performance with L’il Wayne was so heavily bleeped that the performance was rendered unintelligible.

I’m quoting these other papers, of course, because the whole affair took an astounding three and a half hours. That’s hard TV to watch if they don’t go out on a limb for anybody. Sure, they’ll retroactively award those they didn’t recognize when their contributions were relevant (Neil Young, Loudon Wainwright). But isn’t selling millions of albums enough of an award for most of these people? It brings to mind an article from the Economist from late last year, which argues that increasing choice in the kind of media we can consume has the surprising effect of making the hits even bigger, and the margins more marginal.

Looks like th e National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which gives the awards, is circling its wagons around the stars.

Still, you have choices. The good folks at WTJU have some nice programming that celebrates Black History Month (which starts today) by acknowledging the contributions of black artists throughout time. Here‘s the whole listing for the week-long celebration. Happy February.

Announcements of school closings began last night, with spots like St. Anne’s-Belfield making the call to shut doors. This morning, websites for both the city and county schools bear the same news—no pencils, no books, no classes today. (And here’s a big ol’ list, courtesy of 106.1 FM.)

Weather days, however, are beginning to run thin. Last week, Albemarle County Schools scheduled a make-up day for February 16, to compensate for a day of school lost to heavy rain and flooding on January 25. Switch those schedules up, students and parents.

A view of the Downtown Mall from the C-VILLE Weekly office. No snow day today; the paper must go through.

Friends and readers, and I hope that’s a redundant greeting, allow me to introduce the February issue of ABODE, just out this morning. As usual, our shelter monthly includes a lovely range of green content, including a feature about this house:

Yes, that is a house.

This is the Batesville home of Robin Dripps and Lucia Phinney, who are incredible innovators in their fields (architecture and landscape architecture, and the increasingly blurry boundary between the two, the owners of many many books, and proponents of the "100-yard diet," which essentially boils down to culinary self-sufficiency. I think you’ll enjoy the tour.

ABODE also has you covered on the questions of greening your fireplace, and what the eco-minded gardener can be doing during this last of the winter months. (You hear me, weather gods? The last!) And Lisa Reeder, local foodie extraordinaire, explains what the heck you should do with that cabbage that came in your CSA share last November. I personally got inspired to make kimchi from mine, and we’ll soon have a video of the process on the ABODE site.

Read, comment, and be in touch!