Tuesday, November 20
Alleged killer confesses
One of two men arrested for the murder of 26-year-old Jayne Warren McGowan has revealed his role in her death, reports today’s Daily Progress. According to a police search warrant affidavit, 18-year-old Michael Stuart Pritchett said that he and his 22-year-old cousin, William Douglas Gentry, planned to rob McGowan and knocked on her door. McGowan answered, saw their intent and said, "No," and backed toward the couch where she was shot by Gentry. While Pritchett was in another room, he said he heard more shots and then returned to the living room to also shoot her. [For more, read C-VILLE’s article on the McGowan murder from this week’s issue.]
Wednesday, November 21
Born in the JPJ
 The Boss will bring his Magic to JPJ on April 30. |
April 30, people: Mark it down. The Boss is back with the E Street Band, and the whole lot of them are coming to Charlottesville. Bruce Springsteen announced yesterday the dates for his 2008 tour, and the John Paul Jones Arena is his last stop. The Jersey rocker and the band that made him famous will play the JPJ on April 30. The sale date for tickets has yet to be announced. Springsteen and the E Street Band are touring on the back of their new album, Magic, the Boss’s 23rd release. According to Rolling Stone, the new album is "in one way, the most openly nostalgic record Springsteen has ever made."
Thursday, November 22
Coming to…cough…to get you!
Geez, can’t a guy cough without a reporter recording its phlegmy-ness? Apparently not if you’re UVA defensive end Chris Long and the biggest game of your life is three days away. The Associated Press has a brief but in-depth story on Long’s case of strep throat. Midway through Monday’s practice, Long headed home, feeling too sick to work out. As for Long’s status in Saturday’s game against arch-rival Virginia Tech, UVA coach Al Groh says the Cavs are taking a "wait and see" approach. Reporters tried to contact Long Tuesday, but like any quarterback killer trying to shake off an illness, Long was too busy lifting weights.
Friday, November 23
Va GOP: No nookie education
 Attorney General Bob McDonnell is puzzled by Governor Kaine’s elimination of abstinence-only education funding. Well, all that evidence that abstinence-only education doesn’t work is confusing. |
The Washington Post reports that state Republicans are calling for Governor Tim Kaine to reinstate funding for abstinence-only education. In October Kaine pulled $275,000 in matching funds for abstinence-only programs, the Post reports. "The research shows programs that are abstinence-only are not successful," Kaine said. "The budget will not have funding for abstinence-only programs. If the people look at the research, the answer is pretty clear." Attorney General Bob McDonnell, Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling and other Virginia Republicans are apparently not those people. "He is a Catholic, and I am a Catholic, and I know our church teaches abstinence," McDonnell said. "I am puzzled by his decision."
Saturday, November 24
Not-so-brotherly love
The UVA men’s basketball team was off to a fiery five-game winning streak before their trip to the Philly Hoop Group Classic to play against Seton Hall. The Cavs had made short work of a couple of teams with names that sound like those of the feeble kids that get picked on in grade school (Drexel, an exhibition against Carson-Newman) and even rocked the knee-socks of the serious hoopsters from Arizona. Whether word of a Cav football loss reached and disheartened the team or it was just a bad karmic day for UVA, Seton Hall maintained an 8-point lead through the latter half of the game and tacked a few on at the end to hand No. 23 Virginia squad a 74-60 loss. The Cavaliers, still undefeated at home, take on Northwestern in Charlottesville on Tuesday night.
Sunday, November 25
Freud: Psych’s loss, literature’s gain
 Mark Edmundson, UVA english prof, has no problem loving Freud, even if psych departments are throwing over psychoanalysis. |
Psychoanalysis is dying in campus psych departments but flourishing in just about every other discipline, reports today’s New York Times. Among those: the English department, and the Times quotes UVA English prof Mark Edmundson on the place of Sigmund Freud in the pantheon. "Freud to me is a writer comparable to Montaigne and Samuel Johnson and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers who take on the really big questions of love, justice, good government and death," said Edmundson, who has gotten a lot of attention (including from C-VILLE) for his recent book, The Death of Sigmund Freud.
Monday, November 26
Party parents free to go
This weekend’s Washington Post contains an interview with Elisa Kelly, the local woman who along with her ex-husband George Robinson was sentenced to jail time for serving alcohol to her teenage son and his friends. The notorious 2002 party had originally earned the couple an eight-year sentence, but it was reduced to 27 months—which many observers still considered too harsh—and they were released on parole before Thanksgiving after serving five months. Kelly told the Post that because of other inmates’ resentment over the media attention her case attracted, she ended up serving part of her sentence in solitary custody, during which, she tells the Post, "I wanted to blow my head off."
