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Arts

Adam Brock’s vision shines on Borrowed Beams of Light’s new EP

Borrowed Beams of Light.

For years, local music fans only knew Adam Brock as a drummer, the powerful force behind bands like The Nice Jenkins and Invisible Hand. But it’s always been clear that Brock was capable of more. His clear and exuberant singing voice added a perfect pop edge to his bands’ tunes, and his enthusiastic taste as a record collector ran towards the eclectic and the ornate end of the pop-rock spectrum: the Zombies, the Kinks, Sparks, and Harry Nilsson.

In 2009, Brock finally made his debut as a frontman, with a solo project called Borrowed Beams of Light. Over the past three years, this side project has included enough other members to qualify as a Charlottesville supergroup, and at its best threatens to overshadow the popularity of his other projects. The debut EP, followed by a split single and full-length album, won acclaim from many fellow musicians, as well as a devoted following among the rock DJs at WTJU.

The Beams are now preparing to release a new EP, a six-track record entitled Hot Springs. The list of studio personnel is an odd summation of the groups’ history; half the tracks were recorded by the original duo of Brock and his former Nice Jenkins bandmate Nate Walsh performing over simple drum machine backing—the remaining songs are fully fleshed out by the Beams’ current live band, which includes Jordan Brunk (another former Jenkin) and Marie Landragin of the retro-metal act Corsair, as well as Dave Gibson and Ray Szwabowski. The basic backing tracks were laid down at White Star Studios in Louisa County, and then fully fleshed out in smaller recording studios in the apartments and practice spaces of various band members.

For a record with such a patchwork recording history, Hot Springs is remarkably coherent; a testament to the consistency of Brock’s talent and aesthetic vision. His greatest skill as a songwriter and performer has always been the ability to put forward in odd, obscure, or downright impenetrable narrative conceits and conceptual whims in the form of breezy, largely unchallenging power-pop. Fancy breakdowns, odd turns of phrase and left turn bridges abound, but the end result is approachable and charming, even if they often sound more like an eclectic rock band playing with the idea of pop music than anything that might have actually appeared on the Billboard charts in the past 30 years.

The opening title track is bombastically catchy, with all of the manic hooks that Beams fans have grown to expect. “You’re such a lovely girl/to melt this awful snow!” Brock chatters, but it sounds less like a come-on than an insistence on the song’s own hook itself. “Wing Stroke” is stripped-down and simpler, but may be the record’s high point; yowling, yelping lines are interspersed with clear, straight-forward ones, as Brock wildly intones “I could waste my days in here/I might drink my weight in tears.” “Fine Lines” concludes the side with a credible soundalike of Roxy Music or vintage Bowie.

The B-side is more relaxed and glam-influenced, proving the band can still keep the quality control high even when they calm down a bit. Throughout, Marie Landragin’s harmonized guitar solos are the most anachronistic part of the record, but also the most enjoyable. Many of the songs are interspersed with confusing spoken-word snippets and vocal field recordings, never taking center stage but often adding texture and character. The EP concludes with “Simple Century,” which has a heavy early ’90s adult contemporary vibe. An aesthetic that I indelibly associate with “grocery store music”—which would almost be funny if they didn’t play it totally straight-faced; surprisingly, the style actually works to the song’s advantage.

This 45rpm 12″ record, issued by Harrisonburg-based Funny/Not Funny Records, is the Beams’ first vinyl-only release, though all copies come with an mp3 download code. “With a CD pressing, often the minimum amount you can do is in the thousands—and it’s actually cheaper in total to get, like 5,000 CDs than a few hundred.” Brock explains. “I just didn’t have it in me to fill the rest of my basement with another dozen boxes of unsold CDs.” Hot Springs is limited to 333 copies of the LP, but more download codes are planned; once the vinyl edition is depleted, the band may sell download cards featuring a miniature facsimile of the EP’s excellent cover art by prolific local artist and musician Thomas Dean.

Borrowed Beams opens for Dr. Dog at the Jefferson tonight. Brock relishes the idea of playing for a larger, potentially sold-out crowd: “There’s something nice about playing a bigger room. I think it works best for the type of music we’re playing. Plus, we’re all in our 30s now, and there’s only so many years of your life you can spend playing shows for three stoned kids in a living room and then crashing on the couch.” Although Hot Springs’ proper release date isn’t until August 14, those who have pre-ordered the record through Funny/Not Funny will be able to pick up their purchases at tonight’s show.

Categories
Living

Gettin’ sweet on sweet corn

Garrison Keillor once said, “Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.” To which we add—especially when it’s slathered in lots of butter. Corn tastes like nature’s candy, but it loses 50 percent of its sugar in the first 24 hours after it’s picked, so start gorging yourself now on these dishes that handle the cherished kernels with care.

Dean Maupin hails the Silver Queen at C&O Restaurant with his white corn soup that gets a pile of sweet and spicy lump crab added to it.

Feast!’s summer salad proclaims the season with a plate of greens, sautéed corn, crispy bacon, Maytag blue cheese, and local tomatoes all drizzled with a pesto vinaigrette.

If you looking to get down and dirty with good old corn-on-the-cob, head to The Whiskey Jar, where it’s roasted with the husk left on as a handle. A roll in butter and a sprinkle of salt and it’s the perfect side to a blackened catfish sammy.

At Rapture, Louisiana-style poached and pickled shrimp sit atop a stack of fried green tomatoes that rest on a bed of corn remoulade that’s made with roasted corn scraped from the cob, mustard, mayonnaise, cayenne, garlic, and lemon juice.

Orzo’s melt-in-your-mouth chicken confit gets spiced up Moroccan-style then combined with chorizo, fresh corn, tomato, zucchini, and cilantro before it’s finished with sherry jus.

Enjoy corn for dessert at Palladio Restaurant where Chef Melissa Close-Hart pairs a peach and basil crisp with sweet corn gelato.

Ears to you

Styrofoam trays of shrink-wrapped, already-husked corn’s a sin, but so is peeling back every single husk, so how are you supposed to tell the good ones from the wormy ones?

  • Dig towards the bottom of the pile where it’s the coolest.
  • Check that the stalk ends of the ears aren’t dry and shriveled.
  • Pick ears with tight, fresh, green husks and shiny, golden silk.
  • If you do find worms, simply cut out the invaded area before cooking.

Name that cob-eatin’ style

Around the world: Around the ear in even columns

Typewriter: Horizontally across the cob, dinging at the end of each row

Kamikaze: Anywhere and everywhere

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News

Chloramine complaints drive decision to go with costlier water filtration

A months-long debate over whether to add a new disinfectant to the area’s water supply or implement a more expensive purification system came to a head last week as elected and appointed officials from four local regulatory bodies heard a final wave of impassioned arguments against the use of chloramines. By the end of the lengthy public hearing at the County Office Building Wednesday, policy makers acquiesced to public outcry, voting unanimously to take the objectionable chemicals off the table and instead explore the more costly alternative of a carbon filter. Chloramine opponents hailed it as a victory. But several on the dais made it clear it was outrage, not evidence, that guided their decisions—and some remain concerned about rising water costs.

The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority announced earlier this year that it planned to start using chloramines, a compound of chlorine and ammonia, as a secondary disinfectant—the chemical added to water to keep it clean as it travels between the treatment plant and the tap. The EPA is rolling out stricter regulations that scale back the amount of carcinogenic chlorine byproducts allowed in drinking water, and the RWSA said the cheapest way to stay in compliance was to swap out chlorine for the longer-lasting chloramine in the last stage of water treatment and delivery. Switching to the new chemical would cost an estimated $5 million, according to the RWSA.

But local residents began raising concerns, voicing their fears at a series of meetings: The chemicals could cause skin rashes and other acute reactions, can contribute to lead leaching from pipes, and can create harmful byproducts. These include nitrosamines, the same nasty carcinogens that doctors warn are found in much higher levels in cured meats, and hydrazine, used in pharmaceutical manufacturing and as rocket fuel.

A core group of city and county residents urged the RWSA and the elected officials who appoint its members to consider an alternative—a granular activated carbon system that would act like a giant Brita filter—and responded with rebuttals when the authority said such a project would cost more than $18 million.

Last week, with all the decision-makers in one place, the anti-chloramines crowd came out in force. More than 200 people filled Lane Auditorium in the County Office Building, where the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, the Albemarle County Service Authority, the Charlottesville City Council, and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors gathered to listen. For about three hours, dozens of people, many toting signs, offered the same concerns about the chemicals.

City resident Colette Hall said there are still too many questions. “The EPA says chloramines are safe,” she said. “But what will they say in 10 years?”

Sarah Vose has heard that argument—and many more. Vose is Vermont’s state toxicologist, and she’s had a front-row seat as the debate over chloramines has unfolded there. When one Vermont water district switched to chloramines in 2006, complaints started rolling in, and vocal anti-chloramine groups started bringing up the same concerns about acute reactions and long-term byproducts heard here.

Things got so heated that Vermont’s health department invited the Centers for Disease Control to conduct a public health study in the Champlain area. But results were inconclusive, and a survey of 172 area physicians turned up only two who said they believed patients had been affected by the water.

Vose explained that a little understanding of water chemistry goes a long way in dispelling many chloramine concerns. The chemical’s cancer-causing byproducts only form under certain unlikely conditions, she said—specifically, when the pH is about 10 times more alkaline than baking soda. Lead leaching and the formation of potentially dangerous chloramine compounds also only occur at pH levels outside the normal drinking water range, she said.

“There are a lot of things in our environment that we should be concerned about,” she said. But when people go at the issue from the gut, it’s not easy to argue back with science alone. “It’s hard to communicate that when people have already convinced themselves that it’s toxic,” Vose said.

After receiving thousands of complaints and listening to residents for hours last week, some officials said they felt the need to protect against perceived dangers, if not real ones.

Charlottesville Vice Mayor Kristin Szakos said she wasn’t convinced the chemicals were harmful, but said she saw value in paying more for the public’s peace of mind. “It didn’t pose a clear and imminent danger to use chloramines,” she said. “But being known for something different—that is important in this community.”

The more palatable alternative put forward by RWSA director Tom Frederick was a hybrid system in which a limited carbon filter would be used to reduce the need for chlorine in the water, bringing down the total byproducts but avoiding the need for more disinfectant. The vote to explore the alternative with a three-week, $9,500 study was unanimous, but the jury’s still out on how much extra cost officials will be willing to swallow. Frederick said the final tab would likely fall somewhere between the $5 million chloramines would cost and the $18.3 million projected for a full-scale carbon system. The most expensive option would raise the average water bill in the area from $1.20 to $4.83 per month, he said.

Dave Thomas of the Albemarle County Service Authority said that if the estimate comes in on the high end, he’s still going to question the sense of going forward without strong evidence that chloramines cause problems.

“Any time you do a public works project, you’re balancing the best possible outcome with the price the community can bear,” said Thomas, and there are many local families for whom any extra cost is a burden. He offered an analogy: Local officials had the option to go for a cheap sedan or a luxury car. “We went with the Audi A6,” he said. “Look around the parking lot at Western Albemarle, and you don’t see that many Audi A6s.”

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News

NFL prospect Mike Brown Jr. sees success as outgrowth of parents’ work ethic

The Brown family—Mike Sr., Mike Jr., and Kim—standing in front of Brown’s Store on Avon Street. Mike Jr., a football star at Monticello High School and Liberty University, is currently trying to earn a spot on the Jacksonville Jaguars final roster as a wide receiver. John Robinson photo.

On a busy Monday afternoon at Brown’s Store on Avon Street, Kim Brown is packing up a tray of fried chicken and her husband is ringing up customers at the register. It would be just another day were it not for the presence of the tall young man with braids standing behind the counter, looking a little out of sorts.

Dividing time between sports and working for his parents is something Mike Brown Jr. has done his whole life, starting at an age when he needed a milk crate to see over the counter. In a few days, he will be where he belongs, on a football field, but for the time being he’s back at the store. The former Monticello High School quarterback is participating in the Jacksonville Jaguars training camp, hoping to earn a spot on the team’s final 53-man roster. He tried out for the team in early May and was signed to a three year, non-guaranteed contract as a wide receiver, a position he played at Liberty University for two seasons, before he moved back to quarterback, the position he prefers. The stakes are high (the average NFL receiver makes over $1 million per year) and the odds, even at this point, are long, but Brown has not made it this far without a strong sense of his own destiny and a commitment to his parents’ investment in his career.

“It takes a lot of work to get where I’ve gotten thus far and it’s going to take a ton more to get where I want to be,” he said.

Brown has been a remarkable athlete from an early age, an all-everything kind of kid who excelled at every sport he tried.

“He was always a standout, even at 5 years old,” his father recalled. “He was fairly quick, learned fast, and had a good arm.”

But it’s his work ethic, his father believes, that has gotten him his shot at a professional football career.

“The three sports keep you busy,” Mike Sr. said. “And then we’d get him in the store and put him to work when he had some free time. I think that’s why he played so many sports,” he laughed.

The Browns reoriented their lives around their son’s pursuit of his dream, covering for each other at the store to make his high school games and ultimately selling the market when he entered Liberty. They only opened the new location last year with one season left in Brown’s college career. Many important milestones were spent at games or on the road.

“One of my anniversaries I got by on just buying a hotdog at a baseball game,” Mike Sr. said.

Of course, the subject of their attention had to merit the devotion. Brown was disciplined with school and conditioning.

“When all those kids were on their PlayStations playing shoot ’em up games, he was always working on his game,” his mother added.

“I feel like I owe it to them for all the things they sacrificed,” Brown said.

Whether it’s God at work (as the Browns believe), or simply good fortune, things lined up again this spring when his wide receiver coach at Liberty—Charlie Skalaski—was hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars. Although Brown went undrafted as a quarterback, Skalaski rec-
ommended him for a tryout at wide receiver with a team that ranked 30th in the league in receiving last year. So far he has impressed, with one coach reportedly comparing him favorably to Pro Bowl receiver Wes Welker.

If he’s able to make the next cut, Brown will appear in the Jaguars’ first preseason game August 10. After the third week of preseason the team’s roster will be cut to 75 players, then to 53. If he doesn’t make the roster and can’t catch on with another team within two years, Brown said he’ll likely get into coaching. If not, he also has a business degree to fall back on.

“He’s got a plan,” his father said. “I think that was one reason he played three sports. You never put all your eggs in one basket.”

Next week, his parents will be here, running the store, but their hearts will be in Jacksonville. They’ve already made plans to attend the first preseason game there, but regular season games might be more difficult to take in. “I’d like to make them all,” said Mike Sr. “But I’d better get Direct-TV just in case.”

That’s if their son makes the team. Brown takes a professional athlete’s view when asked if it bothers him that he might end up with little to show for his earlier successes.

“Every day you’re fighting for your job and everything that you’ve ever dreamed of, so there’s definitely motivation,” he said. “It’s nerve wracking, but I love to compete, and that’s what I’ve always loved to do.”

Categories
Living

A biography of Charlottesville’s coal tower

A view of Charlottesville's coal tower. Photo: Jack Looney

A partly cloudy day, late March, unseasonably warm. Two men look up as I step into a small clearing in the woods beyond the coal tower.

“Hope I’m not bothering you.”

“It’s cool,” one of them says. He moves over on the makeshift bench so I have room to sit down.

“I saw you taking pictures,” he says. “You know two kids were killed here?”

I know, and that’s part of the reason I’m there. But only part of it.

Surviving structures from the age of the steam locomotive are increasingly rare. They’ve been torn down for safety reasons or because they’re standing in the way of progress.
Six coaling towers, as the railroad called them, remain in Virginia and two of them, in Lynchburg and in Clifton Forge, are still in use. The rest, like the one that stands between East Market Street and the railroad tracks, are relics, analog structures in a digital world.

In 1942, the Ogle Construction Company built the 91’-tall, concrete coaling tower, capable of holding 300 tons of coal, that still stands between East Market Street and the CSX railroad tracks today. (Photo by John Robinson)

The railroads rose and fell, and the view from the tower changed from a landscape of ash and steel to one of corporate offices, condominium complexes, and parking lots. The coal tower has seen our city come of age; it’s been a muse to street kids, artists, and developers; and every now and then it has stood silent witness to the human desperation laid at its feet.

I know this guy named Lucky. He’s a friend of a friend, short, with black hair going gray, and basically homeless. Many times on dark nights in Belmont when the stars were spinning and we’d all pushed it a little too far over the line, he would start to rage about the coal tower. “That thing’s evil,” he’d say. “They should just tear it down.”

Should we? Tear it down, I mean? Or would we be losing something we can never get back?

Railroad town
High up on the hard, gray body of the tower there’s graffiti that reads, “Out of Site [sic], Out of Mind.” After the C&O train station on Water Street shut down, it was possible to live in Charlottesville your whole life and never know the coal tower existed. But there was a time when it was at the center of everything. When the C&O freight yard finally closed in 1986, Fred Compston, the last trainmaster to run the yard, addressed the Charlottesville City Council.

“I remember as a kid growing up in Kentucky along the Ohio River,” he said. “And if you stood on top of a hill, you could see the coal train with the steam engine spouting white smoke. It was beautiful.”

In many ways the railroad made our city. The first train pulled into Charlottesville on June 27, 1850, arriving at the newly built station at the east end of town. It was, I assume, moving some sort of cargo. Corn, maybe, or tobacco. Albemarle County was the biggest corn producer in Virginia at the time, and in 1850 the county grew 1.5 million pounds of tobacco. Or maybe it was carrying coal. The second commercial railroad in the country was in Virginia, built to shuttle coal from the mines near Richmond to the factories along the James River. Corn, coal, and cigarettes. American as red, white, and blue.

The Louisa Railroad was started in 1836, its tracks laid westward from the town of Doswell, hitting Louisa in 1838 and reaching Gordonsville in 1840. The route was supposed to proceed northwest to Harrisonburg and then across the Blue Ridge Mountains at Swift Run Gap, but that plan was deemed too expensive. So the tracks were re-routed through Charlottesville, crossing the mountains near Afton via Claudius Crozet’s famed Blue Ridge Tunnel, built by Irish workers who earned $1.25 a day to dig through a mile of solid granite using only picks, hand drills, and black powder. By the time the tracks rea

ched Charlottesville in 1850, the line’s name had changed to the Virginia Central Railroad.Huddled on the banks of the mighty James, the town of Scottsville had long been Albemarle County’s transportation hub. The James River and Kanawha Canal, begun in 1785, was Scottsville’s big bid for transportation supremacy, but it was only half finished by 1851, and the railroad was in ascension. After the Civil War, Scottsville and the canal sunk into obscurity. It was suddenly a brand new, steam-and-coal-powered, Charlottesville-centered world.

Prior to 1850, traveling from Richmond to Charlottesville took all day and involved hopping off the train in Taylorsville to hitch a ride the rest of the way on a stagecoach. After 1850, you could take the train the whole way and make it to C’ville in time for lunch. The population of Charlottesville subsequently jumped from 1,890 in 1850 to 2,600 in 1853, and the University of Virginia, which in 1855 got its own train station, saw its enrollment increase by almost 300 students over the next few years.

In 1864, Union General Philip H. Sheridan was sent into Virginia with orders to “[do] all the damage to railroads and crops that you can.…we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.” Sheridan’s campaign through the valley was called “The Burning,” and although Charlottesville was basically left alone, Sheridan did drop in and burn down the train station.

When the war ended, the station was rebuilt, and by 1870, Charlottesville was the busiest stop on what was now called The Chesapeake & Ohio line. In 1905, the wooden station was replaced by a grand, colonial mansion, brick with white columns, signifying the importance of the railroad in a newly powerful America. Thirteen trains a day were running through town by the 1920s. The Charlottesville freight yard was crowded, busy and big, covering the entire area between East Market Street, Carlton Road, and the end of the Downtown Mall. There was a semi-circular building called a roundhouse where the trains were serviced, a sand tower, a water tank, several wooden tool houses, an inspection pit, and a 115′ wooden turntable where engines could be turned around and sent back down one of the many tracks reaching out like fingers.

The first steam locomotives ran on wood, a few on oil, but after the Civil War, coal became the railroad’s dominant energy source. So you needed coal and you needed a way to get it into the trains. At first, stations relied on a pile of coal and men with shovels, but by the end of the 19th century, most train depots had elaborate towers to house and dispense coal to the waiting trains. Early towers were made of wood, later towers steel or concrete. By the 1940s, some stations had towers that stood hundreds of feet high and spanned multiple tracks. The Charlottesville station had a wooden coaling tower originally, until in 1942 the Ogle Construction Company built a 91′-tall, concrete bullet capable of holding 300 tons of coal.

Even as they hit their peak, the writing was on the wall for steam-powered trains. As early as 1910 they began to be replaced by cleaner, easier to use diesel trains; by the ’50s the demise of the steam locomotive was basically a fait accompli. Railroad traffic declined through the 1960s and ’70s. In 1979, Amtrak moved its operations to Union Station on Main Street, and three years later, commercial trains ceased stopping at the Charlottesville C&O station altogether. In 1986, after 136 years of service, the station was shut down despite protests from local members of the National Railway Historical Society, who’d been running nostalgia trips through the station since 1964. The turntable and most of the yard were destroyed the following year, leaving the tower standing alone beside a significantly smaller number of tracks, while the station, converted into offices, sits across from the Transit Center, facing its replacement.

Continue reading “A biography of Charlottesville’s coal tower”
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News

The other border: Immigration policy divides Latino community

Richard and Ena Franco Aguilar at their home in Southwood Mobile Home Park. John Robinson photo.

I arrived at Southwood Mobile Home Park through the back entrance, an unmarked driveway off Old Lynchburg Road just past the Albemarle County Police Department offices. It’s so easy to miss that, even though I’d been there before, I drove past the turn and had to double back to catch the narrow access road, which leads over a rise into a different world. A mature oak grove, dotted with metal-sided trailer homes stretched as far as I could see in every direction.

I hung a right down a side road, past trailers adorned with Mexican flags, home to miniature vegetable gardens and pickup trucks with soccer team stickers in the windows, and stopped at a nondescript rust brown trailer parked next to a derelict food truck.

A young man wearing a dress shirt, slacks, and a tie stepped out on the porch to meet me. Richard Aguilar is a 21-year-old straight-A student going into his senior year at James Madison University. Southwood is where he grew up and where nearly 1,000 Latinos, mostly undocumented, live in Albemarle County.

Richard and I had spoken in person once before, and we would spend the next hour and a half walking around the mobile home park, talking about what it was like to grow up there, and talking about why the place is a living, breathing reason for immigration reform.

“I saw a lot of things. I saw the gangs. I saw the drugs. I saw the prostitution,” Aguilar said. “I don’t blame Southwood for being like that, I actually blame society for letting a neighborhood like that exist.”

Aguilar is a U.S. citizen born in South Central Los Angeles to undocumented immigrants from El Salvador. There are around 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today and last year a record 396,906 people were deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The U.S. government spent about $17 billion on immigration enforcement and created a 3 percent dent in the problem. Meanwhile families all over America in places like Southwood, live in total fear.

Doug Ford is the director of the Immigration Law Clinic at UVA School of Law and handles cases for the immigration advocacy program at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville. Here’s how he sums up the legal situation facing undocumented immigrants.

“Basically you are deportable every single day you are here,” Ford said. “If an officer doesn’t like you and puts you into the system, unless you have some amazing claim to hold you here, there’s almost no way to get you out. Because you are deportable, it’s just at the discretion of ICE how to use its resources.”

The country is at a decision point. Unemployment is high, politics polarized, and immigration is a touchstone. So often, the conversation around immigration centers on abstract talking points. Amnesty versus the rule of law. Black and white. But the issue already exists in shades of gray, impacting almost every aspect of life in the Latino community.

“I grew up in that lifestyle knowing that my parents weren’t citizens, that they couldn’t live in the United States, that they faced the threat of deportation any day,” Aguilar said. “If my mom got pulled over for running a stop sign, or if my dad did something, I could never see them again, despite the fact that I was born in the United States. That’s a horrible feeling.”

Here are some more numbers to consider. The Pew Hispanic Center (PHC) estimates that there are 200,000 undocumented immigrants in Virginia, 12th most in the nation. According to the U.S. Census, Charlottesville and Albemarle County are home to about 7,000 Latinos, somewhere between 5 and 5.5 percent of the total population. People familiar with the community estimate that between 40 and 60 percent of the adult Latino population is undocumented. Albemarle County schools are already 8 percent Latino, with some schools (Cale, Agnor-Hurt) close to 20 percent. Another number: Pew Hispanic Center estimates there are 4.5 million U.S.-born children with at least one unauthorized parent.

A month ago the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of one major piece of Arizona SB 1070, the most severe immigration law ever proposed, paving the way for state and local law enforcement officers to determine people’s immigration status during stops and to detain them if they are unable to prove that they are legal residents. Prince William County enacted similar legislation in 2007 and proposed its adoption statewide late last year.

Ford: “In some ways, Prince William paved the way to Arizona.”

Corey Stewart, the county supervisor and lieutenant governor candidate who pushed for its adoption, claims that Prince William County law enforcement officers have identified 4,700 “illegal immigrants” since the measure went into effect. If the GOP backs the legislation’s adoption statewide, it would likely have the votes to push the measure through the General Assembly. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down farther reaching components of Arizona SB 1070, including a provision that would have made it illegal for unauthorized immigrants to seek work and for citizens to house them. Polling data shows that nearly 60 percent of Americans approve of the law, but 75 percent of Latinos oppose it.

Just before the court decision was handed down, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would no longer deport undocumented immigrants under the age of 30 who came to the U.S. before they turned 16, have lived here for at least five years, and possess clean criminal records. The policy will make it possible for between 800,000 and 1.5 million people to obtain driver’s licenses and work legally when it comes into effect, which may happen as early as next month.

In reaching out to the Dreamers—the name for the under-30 group—through his enforcement policy, Obama courted the Latino vote and vocalized a liberal agenda.

“They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper,” Obama said, as he introduced the policy from the Rose Garden.

The undocumented immigrants in Charlottesville are nearly invisible, but they are here. They work cleaning our houses, offices, and country clubs, as roofers and landscapers, in restaurant kitchens. They can’t speak for themselves, because, on the record, they don’t exist. But other members of the Latino community are ready to speak for them, and to explain how immigration reform can bring them out of the shadows.

Categories
Arts

T.V.: “XXX Olypmic Games,” “All the Right Moves,” “Rat B*stards”

“XXX Olympic Games”
All week, NBC and its affiliate networks
It’s the first full week of the Olympics, which basically means most of the other networks are raising their hands and slowly creeping backwards toward the nearest exit. Thankfully there’s plenty of excitement coming out of London. This week you can take in a heap of swimming events (including the much-trumpeted face-offs between Americans Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps), women’s gymnastics, diving, beach volleyball, and come the weekend, the start of an overwhelming number of track-and-field events. And that’s just NBC’s primetime coverage (make sure to tune in Friday night for the men’s trampoline finals—trampoline, you guys). You can catch all manner of other events on NBC’s sister networks throughout the week. Check nbc olympics.com for a full schedule.

“All the Right Moves” 
Tuesday 9pm, Oxygen
Fans of “So You Think You Can Dance” probably recognize the names Travis Wall and Nick Lazzarini. Lazzarini won the first season of Fox’s dance competition, while Wall came in second place in season 2, but has since gone on to become one of the show’s most successful choreographers, scoring an Emmy nomination for his truly breathtaking work on the series. This new reality series documents the friends’ attempt to start their own contemporary-dance company, also featuring dancers Teddy Forance and Kyle Robinson. Expect some fantastic dancing, plenty of drama, and lots of hot guys dancing shirtless. Sold!

“Rat B*stards” 
Tuesday 10:30pm, Spike
Are you aware that giant rat-like creatures from South America—alternately called nutrias or coypus—are currently wreaking havoc on the wetlands of the southern coast of our country? I was not. Apparently it is a huge problem, as this invasive species is extremely destructive. They burrow and can chew through everything from tires to house paneling, and more importantly, have been found responsible for the destruction of thousands of acres of marshlands. In response, the government has enacted several programs to incentivize the “harvesting” of nutria (read: people get paid to kill them), and given the success of shows like “Swamp People,” reality TV has taken an interest. This show documents the exploits of giant river-rat hunters in Mississippi who are trying to protect the wetlands, make a buck, and some are even trying to introduce nutria meat as a legitimate food source to Americans. Hey, it’s low in cholesterol.

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Arts

The Watch; R, 98 minutes; Regal Downtown Mall 6

Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller, Richard Ayoade, and Vince Vaughn buddy up to protect the neighborhood in The Watch. (Twentieth Century Fox)

Do not think that just because its name was changed, the movie formerly known as Neighborhood Watch has in any way been neutered. Granted, it does have some fertility issues, even within the plot, but those were there to begin with. You can rest assured that The Watch, as it’s now called, takes the maintenance of male genitalia very seriously.

Which seems a little weird given that it’s a comedy. But maybe that’s just the special signature of its auteur, director Akiva Schaffer, who made a movie five years ago called Hot Rod and also is responsible for the SNL Digital Short “Dick In a Box.” Now he wiggles his way through a raunchy script co-written by Seth Rogen, with perfunctory parts for Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill as self-appointed custodians of suburban safety who wind up warring with invading aliens. For no one involved does this seem like a career triumph. The Watch might just as easily, or maybe even more easily, have been made by a bunch of unknown guys who once got high together and had an eager conversation about how much they loved Ghostbusters, but then got distracted, possibly by masturbating.

Stiller plays the passively domineering manager of a suburban Costco, which turns out to be a focal point of product placement—oh, right, and also of sinister alien activity. As the designated drolly earnest straight-man, he convenes a neighborhood watch group, whose too-few enlistees include Vaughn, in his standard motormouth-bro mode; Hill, tetchy and self-effacingly creepy; and British TV star Richard Ayoade as a peppy odd geek out. There’s a twist involving Ayoade, which is that he’s fresher and funnier than everyone else in the movie.

That’s partly because Schaffer’s way of playing to his more familiar performers’ strengths is to take them shruggingly for granted. It’s hard to tell whether this has to do with feeling intimidated or just lacking inspiration, but it’s even harder to care. With a narrative strategy that seems mostly like wishful thinking, The Watch gets its laugh-out-loud moments to bloom by surrounding them with manure and hoping for the best. The overall experience is not exactly like strolling through a garden.

Helplessly, a few other people are on hand, including Will Forte as a clueless cop, Billy Crudup as a weirdo neighbor, and, as a patient wife, Rosemarie DeWitt, seeming as gracious as possible about getting the chore of her part in this movie over with. So really all that’s left are the dick jokes. And yes, as their man-cave banter reveals, emasculation aversion is important to these would-be macho vigilantes. It’s just not very interesting to the rest of us.
The title became The Watch after George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin in February; the movie itself, going through its motions of video-gamey violence and crass, common gags, maintains the integrity of its own dull indelicacy.

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Arts

Brock’s vision shines on Borrowed Beams of Light’s new EP

Supergroup Borrowed Beams of Light includes Ray Szwabowski, Dave Gibson, Marie Landragin, Nate Walsh, Adam Brock, and Jordan Brunk. (Photo by Sam German)

For years, local music fans only knew Adam Brock as a drummer, the powerful force behind bands like The Nice Jenkins and Invisible Hand. But it’s always been clear that Brock was capable of more. His clear and exuberant singing voice added a perfect pop edge to his bands’ tunes, and his enthusiastic taste as a record collector ran towards the eclectic and the ornate end of the pop-rock spectrum: the Zombies, the Kinks, Sparks, and Harry Nilsson.

In 2009, Brock finally made his debut as a frontman, with a solo project called Borrowed Beams of Light. Over the past three years, this side project has included enough other members to qualify as a Charlottesville supergroup, and at its best threatens to overshadow the popularity of his other projects. The debut EP, followed by a split single and full-length album, won acclaim from many fellow musicians, as well as a devoted following among the rock DJs at WTJU.

The Beams are now preparing to release a new EP, a six-track record entitled Hot Springs. The list of studio personnel is an odd summation of the groups’ history; half the tracks were recorded by the original duo of Brock and his former Nice Jenkins bandmate Nate Walsh performing over simple drum machine backing—the remaining songs are fully fleshed out by the Beams’ current live band, which includes Jordan Brunk (another former Jenkin) and Marie Landragin of the retro-metal act Corsair, as well as Dave Gibson and Ray Szwabowski. The basic backing tracks were laid down at White Star Studios in Louisa County, and then fully fleshed out in smaller recording studios in the apartments and practice spaces of various band members.

For a record with such a patchwork recording history, Hot Springs is remarkably coherent; a testament to the consistency of Brock’s talent and aesthetic vision. His greatest skill as a songwriter and performer has always been the ability to put forward in odd, obscure, or downright impenetrable narrative conceits and conceptual whims in the form of breezy, largely unchallenging power-pop. Fancy breakdowns, odd turns of phrase and left turn bridges abound, but the end result is approachable and charming, even if they often sound more like an eclectic rock band playing with the idea of pop music than anything that might have actually appeared on the Billboard charts in the past 30 years.

The opening title track is bombastically catchy, with all of the manic hooks that Beams fans have grown to expect. “You’re such a lovely girl/to melt this awful snow!” Brock chatters, but it sounds less like a come-on than an insistence on the song’s own hook itself. “Wing Stroke” is stripped-down and simpler, but may be the record’s high point; yowling, yelping lines are interspersed with clear, straight-forward ones, as Brock wildly intones “I could waste my days in here/I might drink my weight in tears.” “Fine Lines” concludes the side with a credible soundalike of Roxy Music or vintage Bowie.

The B-side is more relaxed and glam-influenced, proving the band can still keep the quality control high even when they calm down a bit. Throughout, Marie Landragin’s harmonized guitar solos are the most anachronistic part of the record, but also the most enjoyable. Many of the songs are interspersed with confusing spoken-word snippets and vocal field recordings, never taking center stage but often adding texture and character. The EP concludes with “Simple Century,” which has a heavy early ’90s adult contemporary vibe. An aesthetic that I indelibly associate with “grocery store music”—which would almost be funny if they didn’t play it totally straight-faced; surprisingly, the style actually works to the song’s advantage.

This 45rpm 12″ record, issued by Harrisonburg-based Funny/Not Funny Records, is the Beams’ first vinyl-only release, though all copies come with an mp3 download code. “With a CD pressing, often the minimum amount you can do is in the thousands—and it’s actually cheaper in total to get, like 5,000 CDs than a few hundred.” Brock explains. “I just didn’t have it in me to fill the rest of my basement with another dozen boxes of unsold CDs.” Hot Springs is limited to 333 copies of the LP, but more download codes are planned; once the vinyl edition is depleted, the band may sell download cards featuring a miniature facsimile of the EP’s excellent cover art by prolific local artist and musician Thomas Dean.

Borrowed Beams opens for Dr. Dog at the Jefferson tonight. Brock relishes the idea of playing for a larger, potentially sold-out crowd: “There’s something nice about playing a bigger room. I think it works best for the type of music we’re playing. Plus, we’re all in our 30s now, and there’s only so many years of your life you can spend playing shows for three stoned kids in a living room and then crashing on the couch.” Although Hot Springs’ proper release date isn’t until August 14, those who have pre-ordered the record through Funny/Not Funny will be able to pick up their purchases at tonight’s show.

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Arts

T.V.: “Top Chef Masters,” “3,” “XXX Olympiad Opening Ceremonies”

“Top Chef Masters”
Wednesday 10pm, Bravo
Although I love “Top Chef,” I have never been able to get into its “Masters” spin-off. It’s basically the kinder, gentler version of the competition, featuring already world-renowned chefs at the top of their game. But honestly, I do need a little drama in my reality competitions. And since I still don’t get to taste the food, it’s a tough sell. If you like the show, or host Curtis Stone (who I swear is on TV all the time, constantly), it’s back for its fourth season.

“3” 
Thursday 10pm, CBS
Despite its scandal-baiting name, this new dating show has a simple concept and prides itself on taking the competition out of dating. Three very attractive single women—a young widowed mother of two, a Baptist model with a focus on faith, and an entrepreneur who would happily give up her career to be a wife and mother—are introduced to a variety of potential suitors, go on dates, and work together to help each other pick the guys of their dreams. It certainly sounds like the least humiliating televised dating option, but I always wonder: how awkward must it be to date someone with cameras following you? My dates are bad enough when it’s just the two of us and I can embarrass myself in private.

“XXX Olympiad Opening Ceremonies” 
Friday 7:30pm, NBC
To celebrate the opening ceremonies, my friends and I are throwing an Olympics party. Everyone has been assigned a random country participating in the games (the more obscure the better), and we’ll each do little presentations on the foreign locale and its athletes, plus bring sports-themed dishes. Oh my God, we’re so lame. But we are going to have so much fun! And that’s all before we start ripping apart the terrible, terrible outfits worn by most of the delegations in the Parade of Nations. (Cough. Team USA’s Ralph Lauren-designed, made-in-China beret prep-school looks. Cough.) The games run through August 12. This weekend you can catch coverage of swimming, men’s gymnastics, and beach volleyball on NBC, and its affiliate networks (CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, etc.) will show assorted other cool competitions. Bear in mind that there’s a five-hour time difference between host city London and the American east coast, so avert your eyes from the Interwebs in case of spoilers.