Bring in the noise

There are no white-hot breaths of feedback, no gallumphing bass lines, bleeding from Jarrod Hood’s small wooden house in Belmont where local heavy metal band Horsefang practices a couple nights per week. Not yet. Instead, there are a few yips from Hank, a skittish hound, and Rigel, a squat bulldog, as Nicholas Liivak, Horsefang’s guitarist, […]

Mix masters

I met Dan Trub on Halloween night, 2005. He was wearing a 2-year-old’s pumpkin costume. I think he might have tried to make me wrestle him. The next time I saw him, a mutual friend begged Dan to do his signature trick, and after a few minutes of reluctance, Dan gave in and started singing […]

Where the money isn’t

Correction appended When you step into the box office at The Paramount Theater, it hits you—everything in this place is for sale. To buy tickets, one must stand in the BB&T vestibule, at ticket windows sponsored by LexisNexis, Hantzmon, Wiebel & Co. and a couple named “Taylor.” The auditorium itself, a renovated movie theater which […]

Will play for food

Robert plays a flute. Standing in front of the Jefferson Theater, he places the thin metal instrument up to his lips and blows, the sweet sounds wafting up and down the Mall. Inside a black fedora on the ground are five copper pennies. “I need to get a new shirt,” he says. “And something to […]

Zen and the art of Monkeyclaus maintenance

In 1995, on a couch in Boston, Peter Agelasto sat up suddenly and said, “Monkeyclaus! That’s what I’m going to do with the rest of my life!” He then went to India to try and figure out what that meant. Going bananas: Matthew Clark (left) and Abel Okugawa (right) behind the boards for a recording […]

Voting for law enforcement

It’s nominating season for local political parties hoping to select candidates to carry the elections in November. In addition to positions like the Board of Supervisors, a few of Albemarle County’s most important “law and order” jobs are also up for grabs. Veteran defense attorney Denise Y. Lunsford received the Democrats’ bid to challenge Commonwealth’s […]

Secretary stole more than $145k from employer

A 27-year-old former legal secretary pleaded guilty May 16 to defrauding her boss, a Louisa County lawyer, for more than $145,000 in credit card charges and bank withdrawals she made in his name. The case reads like a bad novel. Paula Jean Hufner was a secretary for what court documents call “Acme Law Firm,” and […]

City stalls on JPA apartment project

One item on City Council’s consent agenda hit a snag at a meeting May 7. A special use permit for a small apartment building to be built on a one-acre site on Jefferson Park Avenue threw Council into the ongoing debate about how the city is supposed to house all the ’Hoos. Robby Noll of […]