Month: August 2010

The art gods have lined up a great weekend for us. Here’s a few things I’ve had my eye on:

The rambling filmmaker and collector of American ephemera Bill Daniel comes to Random Row Books tonight for a screening called "Sonic Orphans", sponsored by the Bridge. He’ll show found footage of bands from 1965 through 1987 like the Beatles, Butthole Surfers and Sonic Youth, as well as lesser-known acts like Avengers and Boy Problems on 16mm.

From Daniel’s Who is Bozo Texino?

Local favorites We Are Star Children play a free show tonight at Trinity, the Irish hoochhouse on the Corner, in the approach of its CD release next month. Check out the celestial kids’ website for the disc’s super-modern pricing scale: Preorder $10, get an advance copy for $25, commission a custom song for $500—or watch them play free tonight from 9pm until 1am. Hear the single "City Saints" here.

I think we can all agree that the worst part of going to the movies is having to get out of your car when you get there. Solution: If you haven’t made it yet this summer, The Fork Union Drive-In has the solution, and this week it’s a double feature of two blockbusters, Salt and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Angelina Jolie (left) stars in Salt. Catch it at the Drive-In. More below.

C-VILLE’s favorite muffled folk duo Birdlips hits the Southern tomorrow night as part of its new project "DRIFT," for which Cliff Usher and Lindsay Pitts have left San Francisco in a musical search for the "soul of America." They might find it in the classic sound of Roanoke "dream punks" Eternal Summers or carefree local duo Red Rattles. Check out Eternal Summers’ eternally great "Pogo."

And it’s your last weekend to check out Four County Players’ season-ending production of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Noal Bastian, which has been a "huge hit for audiences 2-80."

But, y’know, whatever’s happening this weekend is only sort of a warm up for the Monday screening of This is Spinal Tap at the Paramount Theater. Here’s hoping you have a good one. What’re you up to this weekend?

My theory on stuff is that it all passes through a thrift store at some point or another. Obviously, some folks take their cast-offs straight to the landfill via the trash can but many, especially in this town, like to give their junk another chance.

Book bunker at McIntire Recycling Center

I can only vaguely recall my last excursion to the mall (I think I was meeting someone in the food court to check out a secondhand laptop off of Craig’s List). Whether it’s a new pair of pants for my son, an insane skirt for roller derby or a seasoned skillet- I’m shopping for seconds.

Once, when the whole Nalgene/BPA issue came to the fore I went out with a fancy, Swiss, aluminum water bottle on the top of my wish list. Amazingly, I found a (seemingly) brand new one at my favorite local thrift store that day. For a dollar.

Other times it has been a funky sunburst clock (it doesn’t work, but I love it all the same) ($1), a fabulous blue Kitchen-Aid mixer ($25), and a printer adapter ($1) to replace the one that had just been destroyed. Just this week I found a great pair of sunglasses that will also double as safety glasses ($1) and a great summer dress for the beach ($4).

Thrift store clocks find new home!

I guess it is a small thing, but to find things that retain use and value amongst the detritus on those thrift store shelves never ceases to delight me.

More thrift store/trash finds! Red lockers came from Circuit City via The Habitat Store.

What is your favorite thrift store find?
Is there anything you wouldn’t buy second-hand?

After nearly two years of consideration, Albemarle County’s chief concern (pun explained here) came to a close last night during a meeting of the Board of Supervisors. An ordinance that proposed to consolidate county fire and rescue squads under a single fire and rescue chief failed to win a majority vote, instead splitting supervisors 3-3. Supervisors Linday Dorrier, Rodney Thomas and Ann Mallek voted against the ordinance. Mallek, along with Supervisor Ken Boyd, served on a committee that designed and reviewed the ordinance alongside members of the Albemarle County Fire and Rescue Advisory Board.

The ordinance was contested by members of fire and rescue squads who felt altering the structure of services in the county would not necessarily improve response times, and might discourage volunteers.

Sons of Bill‘s latest dispatch of tour info, which includes a September 24 date in town, came with some extra good news: The hometown heroes are giving away their "Life in Shambles" EP—a tour-only release from their recent run—for free, zero, zilch, diddly-squat. Get it while it’s hot at Lonestarmusic.com.

On another note: The last time Feedback checked in with Russell Richards, who creates frantic, inaccurate maps of Charlottesville and is the CEO of an imaginary barbeque sauce company, he was selling off all of his art after breaking both of his arms in a terrible bicycling accident. At the end of June he wrote about the experience in a blog post called, "What breaking my arms did for my art," and it’s a fascinating look into a local artist’s creative process one year after losing the ability to make art: Being forced to take a step back made him reconsider his style. The irony? "My art was finally receiving a degree of praise and attention, all for the old work, just as I was on to something new." Read more here.

Richards’ inaccurate map of Charlottesville. Click to link to his site. More below.

Speaking of growing more fond of something after you lose the ability to do it, the film critic Roger Ebert—who used to come to town to perform shot-by-shot analyses of classic films for the Virginia Film Festival—has a book coming out in September about his favorite kitchen appliance: the almighty rice cooker. Why is Ebert writing a book about cooking when, irony of ironies, he lost the ability to eat, drink and speak four years ago? Whatever the case, his writing is great. His recipe for soup: "Assemble your ingredients. Throw them in the pot." And stew: "Like soup only with less water, Albert Einstein." Read more here.

Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?

Today, the Virginia Department of Education released the Adequately Yearly Progress (AYP) reports as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and it’s bad news for Virginia schools. Virginia did not make its AYP marks—and neither did 91 percent of school divisions in the state.

Locally, five schools in the city school division (Burnley-Moran, Greenbrier, Jackson-Via, Johnson and Venable) made the AYP grade, but four schools and the overall school division failed to meet AYP standards. This year, schools were required to meet or exceed scores of 81 percent for reading and 79 percent for math.

In the county, 73 percent of schools made AYP marks, including two that failed last year: Sutherland Middle School and Cale Elementary.

Today, the Virginia State Police (VSP) announced the conviction of a 51-year-old Northern Virginia man, Alvin T. Daniels, for “maliciously and intentionally” providing false information during the 2009 search for Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington.

In November 2009, Daniels called in anonymously to the VSP tip line to identify a 34-year-old Prince William County man as a suspect. Further investigation by FBI and state police tound that the Prince William man was instead a “victim of an act of vengeance on the part of Daniels.” Daniels was sentenced to six months suspended jail time on the condition of good behavior, and must reimburse the VSP for time wasted on investigation efforts.

In January, Harrington’s body was found on Anchorage Farm; the homicide investigation into her death is on-going. Lieutenant Joe Rader of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Appomattox Division encourages the public to call into the VSP tip line and Crime Stoppers, but warns the public of penalties for “purposefully misleading investigators with a tip.”
 

On tonight’s agenda for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors: Come for the 90th anniversary commemoration of the 19th amendment, stay for the discussion of funding for the new Martha Jefferson Hospital.

As NBC29 points out, supervisors will vote on a resolution to transfer $7 million in bonds from the hospital’s current location to its new site on Pantops, slated to open on August 28, 2011. (The county’s Economic Development Authority approved the reissuance for the 176-bed facility yesterday.) Meanwhile, the hospital’s Downtown site is still looking for a developer after North Carolina-based company Crosland dropped the project earlier this year. Last month, the Board of Architectural Review granted the Martha Jefferson Neighborhood the county’s first Historic Conservation District status.

A few brief arts notes for a hot Wednesday:

• Is your undergraduate humanities degree gathering cobwebs some dark corner, along with your artistic aspirations? Fear not, for UVA feels your pain. Check out the School of Continuing and Professional Studies arts and music class listings for the fall. There’s a nice array of classes that range from the Art of Listening to Music, and the Art of Screenwriting, both a very reasonable price of $190. Check out the complete listings here.

• Remember when I told you that Neko Case had postponed her August 21 date at the Jefferson Theater because of an "overextended work schedule," and then, like, you thought to yourself, "boo-hoo, I go to work every day so why shouldn’t Neko Case have to, and gee whiz, I was really looking forward to it?" The bad news is that it’s still true; the good news? Sarah White and the Pearls will step in for $5 show there with Audra Mae.

• If there’s one thing you should know about this blog, it’s that any excuse is good enough to bring up The King of Kong, the documentary about a showdown between two astounding characters at a "Donkey Kong" arcade tournament. (Added bonus: Charlottesville expat J. Clay Tweel served as an associate producer and editor on the film.) One of the documentary’s main characters is a hot sauce mogul and veteran gamer named Billy Mitchell, previously known to the gaming world as the first to ever play a perfect game of "Pac-Man." Mitchell walks away shamed at the end of the film, unable to break the Donkey Kong record. But at an induction ceremony at the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, Iowa last weekend, Mitchell took the record for both "Donkey Kong" and "Donkey Kong Jr."

Would ya get a load of this Billy Mitchell guy?

Is it time for a sequel?

Do you hear ghosts? Mark Higgins and his team, Spirit Search Paranormal Investigators, do—at a Gordonsville hotel. The Exchange Hotel in Gordonsville is the last Civil War-era receiving hospital standing in Virginia. More than 70,000 soldiers passed through the space; of those who died, more than 700 were buried on-site. Investigators say, this week’s cover story, that hundreds of ghostly voices speak out there. Read the story here, and listen to audio files to hear some spooky sounds first-hand.