Charlottesville Breaking News
Genre crossing: Third 'Hangover' more action, less laughs
Publicity photoBy Richard Roeper
SPOILER ALERT!
I have to tell you about some of the things that happen in The Hangover Part III to tell you what I think about The Hangover Part III, so if you don't want to know anything other than the title, go away. (But please come back after you've seen the film.)
There's no hangover in The Hangover Part III, which isn't quite as strange as there being no weapons in Lethal Weapon 3 or no toys in Toy Story 3—but it's quite unexpected nonetheless, especially since The Hangover Part II was such a blatant copy of the original mega-hit about a bunch of guys who wake up with the world's worst collective hangover and have to piece together just what the hell happened the night before.
The Hangover Part II was one of the lazier sequels of all time. They just moved the locale from Las Vegas to Bangkok and repeated most of the gags from the original. Even the characters kept...
Garden to market: There's hard work behind those local veggies
Sunrise at the Charlottesville City Marketlinda jenkinsBy Charles McRaven
I’m finding out some of what it takes to get those big red tomatoes and peppers, bright green melons, and yellow squash to the farmer’s market Saturday mornings.
I’m driving a tractor as slow as it’ll go while my son-in-law Daniel rides behind on a piece of machinery equipped with a wheel with spikes, punching holes in the black plastic that covers the rows. He’s snatching tomato or broccoli plants from flats of little starter boxes with one hand, shoving them into the holes with the other.
A 300-gallon tank overhead streams water and liquid fertilizer down into the holes. We’ll put 1,000 or so plants in the ground before noon, and he and his friends planted 15,000 onions last week.
With my proven black thumb, I’m abandoning my own weed patch this year, trading work for veggies from the seven acres Daniel and our daughter Ashley are farming. He’s a master gardener after having worked at Dave Matthews' farm (The Best of What's Around), at Monticello for two years, and spending three years running a CSA in Delaware. Consumer Supported Agriculture is popular now, with members paying a set fee, receiving a variety of whatever’s ripe each week.
Daniel’s opted for machinery at this new location here near home, instead of multiple paid helpers. One contraption hills the tilled soil, lays down drip-irrigation pipe, the black plastic, and covers its edges with dirt in on...
Dem duke-out: Candidates face off in June primary
Wes Bellamy, Adam Lees, Kristin
Szakos, Bob Fenwick, and Melvin Grady want to be on City Council,
where two seats are open. Usually the Democratic
primary in Charlottesville means game over for the general election
in November. This year, two Republicans— attorney Buddy Weber and
city cop Mike Farruggio— will be on the ballot for City Council to
challenge that routine in the fall.
Meanwhile, five Democrats are jockeying for nomination in the June 11 primary for two open seats on City Council. Councilor Dave Norris is not running again, and Kristin Szakos seeks reelection.
In a trend started last year with the arrest of Albemarle Supervisor Chris Dumler, who pleaded guilty to sexual battery, candidates had barely announced when one, Wes Bellamy, was arrested for not showing up in court. That charge was dismissed May 16, and he was fined $10 and $61 in court costs for not having a license, which was suspended when he was late paying a speeding ticket in Sussex County.
Also on the primary ballot are candidates for two contested consti...
Reversal of fortune: Halsey Minor declares personal bankruptcy
It's
official. Halsey Minor has burned up his fortune, once estimated at
nearly $400 million.
A spate of vanity investments and the litigation that followed
appear to have pushed the high-flying technology entrepreneur into
bankruptcy court. The Charlottesville native, once considered an
icon of entrepreneurism, threw in his proverbial towel Friday, May
31, when he voluntarily filed for Chapter 7 protection from his
creditors. In his May 24 filing in a federal court in Los Angeles,
Minor cites debts measuring in the $50 million to $100 million
range while his assets fall below the $50 million mark. Minor
himself now appears to concede what his critics have long claimed:
that he stretched his finances past the point of insolvency by
buying houses, racehorses, and artworks.
What's up with the Landmark?
What's up with the Landmark?
One c...
Whose hands? Your clothes hold stories
Flickr/biesThe sewing machine motor surged again and again, a comforting rhythm as I closed my eyes and sank into sleep. A few days before, a pile of red blazers had appeared on the table by my mother’s curvy, black Singer, a complicated contraption with gold lettering on it. I was four years old, and Mum had been hired to do piecework for a clothing manufacturer. Only after I was in bed did she have time to get to work on the blazers, attaching the sleeves and sewing in the labels.
The memory of that came back to me last night, as I folded the clothes in our laundry basket and checked the labels to see where they were made.
It was, of course, April’s horrendous building collapse at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh that focused my attention and made me think that the very least I can do is notice where my clothing comes from.
In Bangladesh, it’s common practice to build multistory buildings, with different factories— separate legal entities— within. The Rana Plaza building housed five factories within its nine floors. There are apparently irresistible tax incentives in Bangladesh for building owners to keep stacking additional stories on their buildings, regardless of whether that resulting structure is sound and complies with safety codes.
As with so many things that happen on the other side of the world— buses packed full of people that skid off steep cliffs, overburdened ferries that sink and take nearly all passengers down with them...
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