Tuesday, July 31
Back-scratching
In a bewildering matrix of cross-marketing, Starbucks, XM Radio and Dave Matthews Band have "teamed up" to promote, well, each other. As of today, the XM Radio site carries a few of the details: The satellite radio company has a channel, called Starbucks XM Cafe Channel 45, which will be playing lots of DMB tracks. Meanwhile, the coffeeshops will be holding sweepstakes in which the prizes are meet-and-greet sessions with DMB and you enter by signing up for a free trial of XM Radio Online. As for the band, they’ll be selling their new album, Live Trax, only at Starbucks. It’s all rather dizzying, in a corporate kind of way. We just hope that, after toiling in obscurity for so many years, the nice guys in DMB will now finally get some exposure.
Wednesday, August 1
"Heart" as an organ and a metaphor
This week sees the launch of Hospital Drive, an online literary journal published through the UVA School of Medicine and devoted to writing and art by health care providers—in the first issue, everyone from a certified nurse’s aide to a Seattle neurologist. Here’s a sample, from Renée Rossi’s poem "Consent for a Laryngectomy:" "a textbook opens its glossies in front of / my eyes, false cord strumming, epiglottis flapping." Hospital Drive will publish twice a year. Theme for the next issue, to be released in winter: "the experience of pain."
Shadyac gets props
Along with a truly strange picture of Tom Shadyac, FilmStew.com has posted a story about Shadyac’s project of creating a homeless shelter in the former First Christian Church on W. Market Street. The Evan Almighty director, as previously covered in C-VILLE, bought the church for a reported $2.5 million and set in motion plans to turn it into a multipurpose facility for sheltering and rehabilitating Charlottesville’s homeless population. FilmStew also reports that some Downtown merchants are nervous about the shelter’s location near the heart of the Mall.
Thursday, August 2
How to eat chicken
Shenandoah Valley-based food guru Joel Salatin—who’s a favorite media source all over the country on topics like sustainable farming and the local food movement—writes in the August/September issue of Mother Earth News about eating in season. That means more than just munching tomatoes when it’s hot, says Salatin: "Seasonally speaking, it makes sense to eat chicken in the summer and beef in winter." Salatin’s own meat products appear on the menus of local restaurants, so you too can eat season-appropriate fare raised by a quasi-celebrity.
Friday, August 3
Bridges to nowhere
Along with many other media sources, The Roanoke Times today examines a topic fresh in everyone’s mind: bridge safety. The collapse of a highway bridge in Minnesota has prompted Virginia road officials to take a second look at bridges in this state, especially those similar in age and design to the one that failed in Minneapolis rush hour traffic August 1. The Times quotes VDOT’s chief engineer, Malcolm Kerley, to the effect that Virginia’s 20,000 bridges are safe, notwithstanding that 16 percent of them are "functionally obsolete" and 9 percent are "structurally deficient." This is logic only an engineer could love.
Saturday, August 4
Spacek a Hot Rodder
 Sissy Spacek’s latest film provides more evidence—as if we needed it—that decent roles for actresses over 40 are tough to come by. Her character in Hot Rod? An oblivious mom |
Apparently in a carefree mood career-wise, local movie star Sissy Spacek (whose resumé includes an Academy Award) is now part of a thoroughly silly project: the motorcycle-jumping comedy Hot Rod, which opens this weekend. Spacek plays the oblivious mother of Rod Kimble, an amateur stuntman who battles with his stepfather and trains to jump over 15 buses while, naturally, falling down a lot. Rod Kimble is played by "Saturday Night Live" castmember Andy Samberg, the guy from the "Lazy Sunday" video. Reviews so far aren’t kind. Variety calls the movie "lazy" and Spacek’s role "little more than a paycheck part."
Sunday, August 5
What a drag
WCAV reports tonight that a 22-year-old Gordonsville man, having stopped in the Lucky Seven convenience store on E. Market Street, was surprised to look out the window of the store and see someone starting to drive away in his car (which he’d left running). He gave chase and was dragged about 25′, somehow escaping injury, before letting go. The thief was later stopped by Albemarle County Police and charged with DUI, driving on a suspended license and refusing to take a Breathalyzer test. Police do not believe there is a connection between this incident and a recent rash of other Downtown assaults.
Monday, August 6
Civil rights defender dies
 Oliver W. Hill, in wheelchair, meets Queen Elizabeth II at the State Capitol in Richmond on May 3 of this year. He died Sunday at age 100 |
Though not as well-known as his colleague Thurgood Marshall, Oliver W. Hill—who died Sunday at his home in Richmond—was instrumental in winning some of the major legal battles of the civil rights era. His death is widely reported today, including by The Washington Post. The Howard University-educated lawyer was the lead attorney on the 1951 Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va. case, in which black students in Farmville sued over substandard conditions in their segregated school. The case was later combined with four others by the U.S. Supreme Court into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Hill took on dozens of other civil rights cases, enduring intimidation as a result; he also, in 1948, became Richmond’s first African-American city councilor to be elected in 50 years. He was 100.
