Month: February 2010

Virginia (14-12, 5-8) lost their sixth game in a row Tuesday evening in Miami. The Wahoos played better than they had as of late, but did not have any way to contain Miami’s two best players. Miami (18-9, 4-10) had four players finish with double-figures led by Dwayne Collins who scored 18 points on 7-11 shooting. Collins also had a career high in assists. Miami’s Julian Gamble and James Dews both chipped in 13 points in the victory.

The Hoos were led (once again) by second-year Sylven Landesberg who scored 27 on 8-13 shooting. Sylven shot well from three-point-land as he made 6-8 for a career-high three-point shooting performance. Jerome Meyinsse actually played pretty well tonight as he threatened to finish with a double-double scoring 13 and grabbing 7 strong rebounds. Virginia continued to shoot the ball poorly as they only shot 35% for the game. The Hoos also got almost nothing out of the struggling Mike Scott, who looked lost out there tonight. He finished with 0 points on 0-7 shooting. Many of the attempts Scott shot tonight were outside shots that he really should have thought twice about hoisting up.

Mustapha Farrakhan did not play, and Virginia fans saw the return of Solomon Tat to action in the second-stanza. Sammy Zeglinski also struggled finishing with just 5 points on 2-10 shooting. The Hoos only committed 8 turnovers, their only bright spot of the game.

Virginia has almost a week to get ready for ACC leader Duke. The Blue Devils come to Charlottesville Sunday for a 7:45 p.m start. Times are tough here in Charlottesville for the once scrappy Hoos.

Feedback was a panelist at UVA’s Battle of the Bands this weekend, alongside The Corner’s Brad Savage, representatives from Nailgun and Red Light Management, as well as Michael Bishop, who was known as Beefcake the Mighty when he was in GWAR. Judges unanimously decided to pass the crown and scepter to Pompadour, who now get to open for an unannounced act at UVA’s Springfest. (A birdie told me that it might be the Dirty Projectors.)

If you’re wondering why this is editorial interest to the non-UVA crowd, past winners of the battle include Sons of Bill and Sparky’s Flaw, now Parachute, who take cruises on VH1’s dime.

I’ve heard for years about these Bigfoot-like rumors that former GWAR members live in town, where they probably buy groceries and drink coffee like the rest of us. I asked Bishop what he’s been up to, aside from teaching music history at UVA. He said he’s started playing bass for Sarah White and the Pearls. She’s apparently got a whole new lineup.

More on that to come. For now, enjoy this video of GWAR on the Joan Rivers show. For reasons that will become clear, I’m not positive that it’s Michael Bishop in the Beefcake the Mighty costume.

Joan Rivers asks GWAR who writes their music, and they respond: "After we destroyed the dinosaurs, we stretched their gizzards across the Grand Canyon and Beefcake composed the first song ever."

I was one of the many people who lined the Downtown Mall last night, hoping to get a ticket for the premiere of Chris Farina’s World Peace…and other Fourth Grade Achievements. I took my time getting there, figuring it wouldn’t be hard to get a ticket for a local documentary.

Was I ever wrong. A long line of people was turned away. Paramount volunteers were still canvassing the aisles for empty seats as the show got going. (For everyone who was turned away, there will be another World Peace screening at the Paramount at some point TBD. I’ll keep you posted.)

The one-hour documentary’s about the World Peace Game, which was invented by Venable School teacher John Hunter. Hunter divides the class into four imaginary countries and pits each against the other, throws in an imaginary United Nations, an indigenous tribe and some arms dealers, and tells the kids to solve the world’s problems.

More after the trailer.

One of the great things about Farina’s film is seeing the funny things fourth graders come up with when they’re asked to be creative. (The imaginary countries are called like Iceania, Paxland and Efstrom.) But the best part of the movie is probably Hunter, who looks as natural on camera as he does in the classroom. He’s clearly having fun. When two students come to him to resolve a tiff over oil rights, he smiles and says, "Well, what did the United Nations say?"

Last night’s showing comes before World Peace‘s official premiere next month at South by Southwest in Austin next month. Incidentally, Farina will appear at the festival in another capacity: as an employee at the Corner parking lot in Meghan Eckman’s Parking Lot Movie.

How do you think World Peace will fare at the festival?

Knowing is half the battle, people, and the Charlottesville Police Department wants to keep you informed. That said, a press release from the local police department announced the public launch of the city’s CrimeView Community website, which has been quietly mapping local crime statistics. The site is prominently linked from the Charlottesville Police’s homepage, similar to Albemarle County Police Department’s link to CrimeReports.com.

To test the site, C-VILLE looked at all mapped incidents reported in the last year in the "Downtown police neighborhood," which yielded a total of 231 incidents. Try your own searches here, and let us know what you think of the site below.

Archaeologists at Montpelier spent a portion of the fall digging through the Madison family’s trash that had accumulated outside a landscaping wall. The Montpelier Foundation is in the process of restoring the estate to the conditions that James and Dolly Madison knew. Our cover story this week focuses on these archaeologists and their discoveries. Read it here, and don’t forget to leave comments.

In February of 2009, Frank Hardy of Frank Hardy, Realtors, Inc. filed suit against Vineyard Estates, LLC, a.k.a. Patricia Kluge and William Moses, for breach of contract on two listing agreements. On Friday, an Albemarle County Circuit Court judge will decide whether the case will head to trial on April 2.

According to the suit, the listing agreements in question were signed and executed by both parties in late 2007 for separate properties—one for a house, and one for a group of lots in Meadows Estates.

In the suit, Hardy claims that Vineyard Estates, LLC, asked to be released from the listing agreements in April 2008. Hardy declined and, according to documents, the defendant contracted another real estate firm, Sotheby’s, to sell the properties. According to court documents, Hardy filed a breach of contract for both listing agreements for $1.8 million in damages.

Yet, according to a counterclaim filed by Vineyard Estates, the defendant claims that a settlement with Hardy was reached to terminate the listings.

“When they dismissed Frank Hardy, there was some discussion about a settlement and they claimed that that discussion can constitute a legal settlement in the case,” says D. Brock Green, Hardy’s attorney. “And we claim it does not, that there was never any kind of meeting of the minds that they would pay a certain amount of money by a certain time and that Frank Hardy would therefore release his rights under both of the contracts.”

Ronald Tweel, attorney for Vineyard Estates, disagrees. According to Tweel, the case was settled for $25,000 and an agreement to release the listings. “That was in our view the final settlement of the case and the court should rule that that should be the final resolution of the case,” says Tweel.

In other Vineyard Estates-related news, a foreclosure sale for Lot 5 of the Meadows Estates will be held in front of the County Circuit Court on March 1 at 9:30am.

“The referenced foreclosure is on only one of the 24 lots and will reduce the debt overhang for purposes of reconfiguring and restructuring the full project for Kluge’s future development interests,” said Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard spokeswoman Kristin Moses Murray in a prepared statement. “Like most real estate projects, it was developed with partners. As a result of the collapse in the real estate market, some of those other partners went bankrupt, and many of the remaining investors abandoned their continuing obligations. In short, they have gone under and we have not.”

The property, sold “as is,” is located at 2621 Coopers Lane in Albemarle County and is assessed at $2.7 million. 
 

Two days after the Albemarle County School Board agreed to send an unbalanced budget proposal to the Board of Supervisors, both the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates unveiled their proposed state budgets. Delegate Rob Bell told the Daily Progress that a compromise between city and county officials could do the budgetary work instead of the amendment, which would move $2.8 million in funding from Charlottesville schools to Albemarle County schools.

With the Charlottesville City School Board preparing for a vote on a proposed budget on February 25 and the county’s proposed budget on its way to supervisors, Bell’s call for a county-city sit-down is timely. Amendment, or city-county negotiations? Share your thoughts on the revenue-sharing agreement and the proposed $2.8 million exchange below. (The complete text of the 1982 revenue sharing agreement is here, courtesy of cvillenews.com.)

Last week, Delegate David Toscano wrote to elected officials—among them, Bell, Senator Creigh Deeds and county supervisor Ann Mallek—to propose a public meeting to discuss "a wide variety of options for future cooperation," to be held as early as March 6.

"Some ideas may be reasonable and worthy of further exploration; others will be discarded quickly for a wide variety of reasons," wrote Toscano. "But all ideas should be heard." Toscano’s letter proposes possible meeting days from March 6 through April 29 on Saturdays and Thursdays.

Over lunch yesterday I browsed a new book that came into the office: Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff. An Internet movie of the same name is a "sensation" according to the book jacket, and indeed it was referenced on this blog a while ago, so I think the "sensation" label fits.

Basically, the movie and the book dive into the particulars of the global economy: where all these consumer goods come from, what their true costs are, and what happens when we throw them away. Along the way, it critiques some of the basic tenets of capitalism, including the fact that countries and corporations chase growth "as a goal unto itself, above all else." And a country’s GDP is not a true measure of how well it’s doing by its people. Leonard writes:

"In his book Deep Economy, Bill McKibben gave this real world example of the failure of GDP to measure success: for years in Africa, the non-native water hyacinth was clogging waterways, and herbicides had done nothing to solve the problem. Then someone discovered that dried water hyacinth made great material for growing highly nutritious mushrooms, and that when the mushrooms broke down the cellulose in the hyacinths, it made a great medium for earthworms.

"The worms chomped that down and created high-quality fertilizer, then were themselves feed for chickens. The chickens, of course, provided people with eggs, while their droppings could be used to fuel biogas digesters that produced power, and this reduced the need to cut down more trees for firewood from the already deforested regions in that part of Africa. Because monetary transactions—like the purchase of fertilizer—were reduced, a solution like this actually shows up on a measure like GDP as diminished ‘growth.’ Yet it’s clear to anyone with eyes, a brain, and a heart that the hyacinth-mushroom-worm-chicken solution is true progress: healthy and sensible."

I’ll have to hunt up McKibben’s book next. Anyone read it?