It's been all over Twitter, but the recently released video by Muppet Studio is an impressive bit of puppetry. And the music isn't bad, either. They even get away with a fair amount of Muppet-inspired reworking of the original material.
The NYTimes Magazine once again proves the value of long-form journalism in its lengthy piece by James Traub on the ways in which Vice President Joe Biden has comfortably transitioned into being one of the most influential vice presidents in history. The piece begins with a look at Biden's' [...]
The cupcake scourge that has been sweeping the American retail landscape for the past several years has become a full-fledged industry. (Brandon Fox was so on top of things way back in 2005 when a cupcakery was something novel and fascinating.)
In fact, Richmond is [...]
Freelancers around the globe will be busy during this time of recession repopulating this pie chart with their own saucy messages for clients who aren't paying their bills in a timely manner -- yet continue foisting work their way. (Thanks to Richmond designer Carrie' [...]
I'm admittedly no expert in land trusts, but I've been struck by a recent news story on Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity's new community land trust initiative. (sorry, I missed the press conference, Chris!)
Essentially, the organization has placed about 20 parcels of land in a South Richmond neighborhood into [...]
By the sound of the post's title, this makeover will go on for weeks, but the reality is that it ends around noon today when I sadly ball up the snappy clothes on loan from various stores around town and hurl them into the corner -- to be put back [...]
Reading Eric Morris' post on the Freakonomics blog at the NYTimes today made me wonder what has been happening with Virginia's shovel-ready transportation projects that may or may not be funded as part of the transportation stimulus package. Morris takes a look at California, which has only distributed' [...]
We spend a lot of time in the Richmond region wishing we were stuck in another part of the country, or in time, or just plain ol' somebody other than who we are.
Welcome to the Richmond Region website, a bit of a grassroots endeavor with the hearty, bold and' [...]
About a month ago, I quietly kvetched to my wife that my favorite physicist (of the three I avidly follow, sort of avidly) was coming to town as part of the Richmond Forum. I'd attended the Forum twice over its 20+ years of bringing talking heads to town -- on' [...]
The Social Media Club of Richmond is beginning to demonstrate some real staying power with three events in November alone -- an election wrap-up discussion about social media and politics; a Tweetsgiving karaoke and bowling charity mega-event; and next week's SMCEDU-RVA event at the University of Richmond.
The election event should [...]
Hands On Greater Richmond's Board Link is another great idea from one of the region's snappiest organizations. Hands On started out several years ago connecting volunteers with organizations looking for a pair of hands (or three) to get some work done. They're raising to bar with Board Link,' [...]
Nice piece in this week's Style Weekly showing how one of the forgotten retail corridors of Richmond -- the shadowy Southside Plaza -- is actually a pretty amazing success story, one which has built a relatively firm financial foundation by (wait for it...) serving its community.
In addition to spotlighting' [...]
Never friend Chris Dovi. That's the lesson I learned from this week's edition of Style Weekly, which reveals that a reporter (possibly Dovi himself!) with Richmond's intrepid weekly friended a former employee of Scoot Richmond on Facebook -- and helped police move her into lockup.
The former employee has been' [...]
A funny thing happened on the way to the Berlin Wall's ultimate demise. Actually, the entire collapse of the Berlin Wall early in November of 1989 was a funny thing. Unless you were a Soviet or East German political or military leader.
Like most daily newspapers of any heft, the Washington Post has been searching for years for the right mix of content, design and technology to give their local readers a close and personal window into the news. It's probably been close to twenty years since they' [...]
As a former special ops guy, student of war and prognosticator on the future of peace, John Robb has garnered quite a bit of attention in recent years for his view on an increasingly unstable global future and how resilient communities are one of the few things that can hold [...]
Four billion pieces of artificial flavor can't be wrong. Or can they?
The New England Confectionary Co. is going all-natural with its namesake, the chalky Necco wafers that few of us have put in our mouths (in public, at any rate) since we were six and at our grandmother's house. I [...]
If I wore a hat, I'd tip it to Harry Kollatz, Richmond Magazine's man about town and longtime urban observer.
Kollatz was quick to leap to downtown Richmond's defense last week after the Washington Post published a Mark Anthony travel story:
But this really got me: “We set out for' [...]Has it really been seven years since the U.S. Congress was embroiled in a war of silence over the possibility of an American invasion of Iraq? I use the phrase "war of silence" because -- with the exception of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who angrily took to [...]
There are a few things I love about this TV-6 clip from former print reporter Mark Holmberg (I wonder how long he'll carry that tag?):
He's wearing jeans. His shirt tail is hanging out. He's sporting his shaggy mane. The City of Richmond's Department of Parks and Recreation is moving ahead with [...]For some reason, when I learned that four Republican lawmakers have submitted a formal request with the House of Representatives' sergeant at arms to investigate interns who might be Muslim spies, the remake of the Dead Kennedys' "California Uber Alles" came to mind.
I think because its title -- "We've Got'" [...]
We're in the midst of the largest recession in almost a century, barely faced down the unraveling of the global economic system and watched a $8 billion housing bubble settle down around the heads of 16 million unemployed Americans, and the friggin' chairman of BB&T Corp. has the gall to [...]
What happens if 1,000 people engage in more than 40 community projects supporting Richmond's nonprofit community, schools and parks -- and the region's major newspaper and TV stations don't show up? Does anyone hear about it?
A quick scan of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and all three television news sites shows' [...]
The NYTimes' recent 36 Hours in Richmond travel story reminded me that my friend Jim Johns and I had penned a similar article way back in the August of 1993 issue of Caffeine magazine. Well, not actually similar at all.
In contrast to the generally positive spin in the' [...]
There are times when I am embarrassed by how much affection I have for an Irish rock star who looks more and more like Robin Williams.
But then he goes and explains -- and so succinctly -- exactly why much of the rest of the world sees President Obama in an [...]
Let's get this out of the way fast: Hands On Day is the Richmond Folk Festival of community engagement.
The event, which matches hundreds of volunteers to dozens of community projects for a half day engagement, put the wraps on its second annual day of service today. And somewhere around 1,000' [...]
It's easy enough for Richmonders to miss the mark when it comes to describing or experiencing our city, so you might well imagine the potential wince factor that comes with a blow-through visit by a travel writer. Even one from the creme de la creme of travel coverage, the New' [...]
Pick up a copy of the New York Times this Sunday. Find a comfortable spot, grab a cup of coffee or tea, curl up and enjoy their take on a trip to Richmond.
That's right. The New York Times went to Richmond and all you got was a lousy 15 column' [...]
Another great collaboration has emerged from NPR's Project Song, which recently threw J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines) and Chris Walla (Death Can for Cutie) into the studio for two days with a photo of a house in a flooded canyon. Their assignment? Build a song.
But it didn't take long [...]On Saturday, Hands On Richmond is bringing more than 1,000 volunteers onto the streets of Richmond to put a little sweat equity into some 45 service projects around the city. If you're one of the folks rolling your sleeves up, take a few moments to tweet about your experience' [...]
RVANews is collecting bags of candy to distribute on October 30 as Virginia Delegate Jennifer McClellan and the Virginia BioTech Research Park team up to freak small children out with clowns, and celebrate the pagan holiday we affectionately call Halloween:
The Harvest Festival is scheduled for October 30th and will [...]
I love it when the kids weigh in on some of the awesomely terrible music that was generated 30 years ago in a haze of good, old-fashioned rock-and-roll intentions. Music like AC/DC's seventh release, Back in Black, which was filled to the brim with crazy hits like "Hell's" [...]
It's no secret that I was rooting for the Flying Squirrels as the name for the new minor league baseball team coming to Richmond; it's also not a surprise to learn that I've been to precisely three baseball games in my adult life (one in Baltimore). Chalk me up' [...]
There are seven brave souls who have put themselves in the public space with their unique ideas on what they would like to share at the October 22 Social Media Club of Richmond event. The top three vote getters will have 15 minutes to present their [...]
The folks at Good (the genius minds behind Good Magazine) call this video "oddly touching", but I'd describe it as a hybrid of fucking beautiful and terribly heartbreaking. The filmmakers do a powerfully good job of holding the camera just long enough at the right moments, letting' [...]
The most interesting thing about this year's Top 40 Under 40 list -- Style Weekly's usually on-point take on 40 people in Richmond who are young, engaged [...]
One of the coolest, most ambitious initiatives around returns to Richmond for the second year on Saturday, October 17.
The Second Annual HandsOn Day crams 5,000 volunteer hours into one Saturday morning, and in the process transforms some swaths of our city long in need of a little TLC. It's' [...]
I mean, come on. This is the total and complete reason to spontaneously hug the man behind Tobacco Avenue:
Less than two weeks after a Class AA baseball team said it would move to Richmond, the general manager said the organization is backing out of the deal effective immediately after a list [...]
You know them (individually and/or jointly) as the brains behind RVABlogs, the exasperated voice of Made in Richmond, the second half of PharrOut or the dynamic news duo running RVANews. Or, maybe you just know them as Ross and Val.
Whatever.
Richmond BizSense has a piece up on muralist Ed Trask's attempt to take over the world with his massive murals and stylish billboards. He's got a new one up on a rooftop in Scott's Addition, that forgotten neighborhood just west of the Boulevard between Broad Street and the Greyhound' [...]
Over at CNN Money, which I'm sure all of you peruse with bated breath regularly, there's a fantastic piece on the hyper-energetic Chelsea Lahmers and her fast-growing Scoot Richmond scooter shop.
I don't own a scooter, but I've been an avid follower of Chelsea's' [...]
Richmond's first Talk 20 event -- seven creatives with 20 slides and 20 seconds to talk about each slide, or scramble to catch up with their slides -- was a hit. At least the first half of it was; I had to slip out of the 1708 Gallery after the' [...]
I take my hat off to Boing Boing for re-alerting me to the amazing Wondermark Genre Fiction Generator. My next novel will be set in a post-apocalyptic, terraformed Mars where a young idealistic revolutionary stumbles across an encrypted data feed which spurs him into conflict [...]
Chalk me up as a fan of the Richmond Flying Squirrels, one of the most absurd leaps of branding you might expect from a general public desperate for a baseball team, any baseball team. A fan because it is ridiculous, and sometimes you've just got to' [...]
There's a time and a place for integrity in journalism. In fact, there are countless times and places for integrity in journalism.
One such moment is captured in a blog post by NBC12 reporter Rachel DePompa who essentially kicks the Richmond Free Press in the teeth for their tasteless, deliberate' [...]
If you were living in Richmond at the start of 2006, then you know how a significant portion of Richmond region collapsed in on itself at the news of the New Year's Day murders of Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey.
Out of tragedy, hope.
Just ten months after their deaths,' [...]
A few months back, Garry Trudeau penned a detailed transcript of Doonesbury correspondent Roland Hedley's coverage of the early spring meeting of the G-20 in London. (And a follow-up visit to Baghdad.) It ran in the New Yorker. Seemed appropriate to plug it -- or a few of' [...]
I'm throwing the obligatory embedded video above for the six of you who have not seen the almost-viral RiverCityVA804 video, which has gone from 300 to 15,000 views on YouTube over the past 24 hours. (Viral is a slower process in Richmond.)
There was one line that caught my attention in Nicolai Ouroussoff's NYTimes piece on reinventing America's urban landscape.
The line? "We long for a bold urban vision." Too bad our city's leaders aren't yearning with us.
Ouroussoff argues that the time is now to not only restore, but to renew [...]
You know, cynic that I sometimes am, I really wanted to hate it. But it's just too endearing in the way it captures the lifestyle of one segment of Richmond's more essential populations -- the younger, quasi-professional set who make the downtown hum at all hours of the day.
Yes, I'm' [...]
What a difference a couple of generations can make.
When the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War rolled around in 1962, much of the nation was fully embroiled in one of the most significant -- and long-overdue -- turning points in our collective history as a nation. The Civil Rights [...]
I noticed Simon Owens' re-review of the seminal classic The Cluetrain Manifesto and made a mental note way back in the spring to hunt down the 10-year anniversary edition. While my subconscious was looking for the trademark orange jacket, the local bookstores were stocking the' [...]
A while back, Suzanne Morse of the Pew Center for Civic Engagement posted a brief tidbit about a LISC-initiated project taking place in two Rhode Island communities. The New Communities model:
has five major tenets: 1) expand investment in housing and other real estate; 2) increase [...]I've found that most evenings -- after waking before dawn with the toddler, cobbling together a new business, returning home to give Nikole a break from said toddler, dinner time, bath time, our dinner time -- I'm too tired to work more and too brain dead to blog.
Which leaves plumbing [...]
Appropriately enough for one of Richmond's more spectacular collections of street-level performance art, this year's Festival of 5 Fires -- an annual production of Gallery 5 -- falls on Halloween weekend. Talk about adding fire to fire:
Gallery5’s most highly attended and extravagant event of the year, will [...]
Former Virginia Governor and longtime political spoiler Doug Wilder grabbed a few small headlines at the end of his career -- headlines that will be sadly familiar to longtime observers of Virginia's political scene. Over at SLANTBlog, Terry Rea calls it what it is.
In his statement, the former governor' [...]For all the politicos waiting on the sidelines for Mayor Dwight Jones to do something, today he acted. The question hovering over today's shake-up at City Hall is whether we're seeing the side of Mayor Jones more focused on creating stronger alignment and greater efficiencies within a decidedly shaky City [...]
I wasn't able to get out Friday night to see Heks Orkest rock the South of the James at the Manchester Bike Lot, but I did hang out in our sun room listening to two songs by the Richmond super-group available online. Groovy.
I find' [...]
The scruffier Jack Berry works within a stone's throw of the James River, while the more clean-cut Jack Berry has his desk just north of Broad Street on the fringes of Jackson Ward. They've both made a big impact on Richmond in recent years, [...]
I wish someone would do this for me every morning before I climbed out of bed:
This morning, some friends and I had a "Green2Steam" party, where we start with green coffee beans, roast them in a hot-air popper, grind them, and immediately brew them up in a siphon brewer over a [...]As part of an ongoing video series of local blogs, NBC12's Phil Riggan turns his sights on Jeff Kelley of Tobacco Avenue today.
In what can only be described as a set-up, Riggan's film crew captures lascivious footage of Kelley's ankle as he feigns blogging during a recent interview.' [...]
Back in the early summer, John Bryan of the Arts Council of Richmond, invited a couple of dozen local bloggers to lunch. His intention was to do this on a regular basis, as a way of getting the word out about his organization's resuscitation (it has been renamed CultureWorks) and' [...]
Here's a simple request for regular readers and less frequent visitors to Buttermilk & Molasses: Drop by Richmondmom.com and cast a vote for my wife, Nikole Sarvay, in their 2009 Richmond Mommy Makeover contest. Or cast a vote for one of the other supermoms listed.' [...]
I'm not sure if my aging hipster bones are up to a Pavement reunion, especially since I bagged their last appearance in Richmond -- maybe a decade or more ago. But rumors being what they are, could 2010 be the year that the hipster darlings with Virginia/California roots get' [...]
This Wednesday, September 23, I'll be hanging out with the cool kids at the Virginia International Business Council (VAIBC). (You and George might remember it as the Import-Export Club.)
Sonali Shetty of Compleo will be speaking to the group about how digital branding and social media can be effective tools' [...]
In another of their insane efforts to feature community-generated content, RVANews is launching a new photo feature that will spotlight the work of 18 local photographers (and people who just happen to own cameras) each month:
Every month we’ll choose a theme, and snap-happy folks can submit any photos they may [...]Tonja Softic, a Bosnian-born associate professor of art at the University of Richmond, has landed a $22,000 grant from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation to support her work on a series of large-scale art pieces.
"Migrant Universe" contains 18 mixed media works on paper, according to a [...]
I knew Richmond was a hotbed of food bloggers. I didn't realize there was a sub-scene of pizza bloggers roaming the streets and dishing on, well, dishes. But according to the ladies at Pizzalicious! there is at least one other pizza-friendly blogging team in Richmond -- the folks at' [...]
It'll take a lot to convince me that Charlie Diradour is the right guy to represent the 7th District in Congress, but not as much as it would take to convince me that the current occupant of that office -- the winsomely arrogant Eric Cantor -- deserves to keep the' [...]
Elegy for September 10
Before all of our totems fell, you drew
A talisman on my forehead. I prayed
For a late harvest and rose like a
Steel-eyed crow, scouring
As many grains as I could devour before the last
Burnt vestiges of summer sloughed from my skin;
Before the light touch of early wind could suggest
Our [...]
The University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership is launching their new forum series with a chat framed around Richmond's favorite philosopher, John Stuart Mills, and march forward with a slate of public discussions that knock the socks off of many of the 23 other public lecture series that [...]
If you've been smart enough to follow sisters Jen Lemen and Patience Salgado around on the Internet, then you know that they are intentional about the essential nature of positive energy in the world, and committed to their role in helping maintain the flow in an ever-increasing, upward' [...]
There was a time when I stalked the Internet ruthlessly in search of new and interesting and crafty sites that would inspire or amuse me -- or cause me to gnash my teeth in angst. That was before we had a baby and I launched my own business. I now [...]
I can't even begin to tell you how glad I am that Chris OBrion is pawning his editorial wares at RVANews, because both of them really do each other justice. The amazing thing is that I wrote that first sentence without any irony, because they're both spot-on what [...]
One of the reasons fewer people in Richmond ask casual acquaintances what they do for a living is that the odds of someone replying, "Well, until last year I worked for a great Richmond-based Fortune 500 company" were pretty high.
Which has led more and more of us back to Richmond's' [...]
Leave it to Paul Krugman to cover 300 years of economic history as part of a NYTimes Magazine piece. His thesis? Modern economists -- you know, the ones who called the end of economic theory a few years ago? (A few years after the historians who cheered "the end" [...]
We ran into Karen Atkinson a couple of times recently -- at the South of the James market and the market in Northside's Bryan Park -- and learned that her Market Umbrella, which runs both markets and several others around town, has gotten a green late to take on the' [...]
In the wake of a summer filled with arts vs. bureaucracy news coverage, Mayor Dwight Jones appears to have drawn a more friendly line in the sand for area art galleries, according to Style Weekly's Chris Dovi. It started with a September 1 meeting between the mayor and Christina' [...]
The Checkout Girl, whose blog caught the attention of Richmond months ago with its no-holds-barred, scathingly clever and well-written observations of life on the retail front lines, or trenches, or front-line trenches, is now gracing RVANews with a new series, "100 Bad Dates."
Gallery 5 has a snappy new website (that looks like it was designed by the same gurus behind the redesigned RVA Mag site earlier this summer). It's clean, attractive and makes me want to start painting so I can have an exhibit' [...]
Social Media, or whatever it's calling itself this week, has been a long-overdue kick in the pants for Richmond's Collaborative Arts Group, which is returning the love next week at its monthly get together. The Collaborative Arts Group, which is open to anyone with a yen for art of any [...]
I've been hearing about the masterfully remastered or digitized or fancy-pants Beatles' catalogue for a while now, but it wasn't until I read this track-by-track analysis by NPR Music's Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton that I actually understood what all the hubaloo was all about. [...]
Boing Boing brings us (once again) a link to the Sweet Juniper blog's photo gallery of abandoned houses in Detroit. There are at least 10,000 abandoned structures in Detroit, which has been hammered by the current economic calamity. Sweet Juniper has captured a few' [...]
God only knows (oh, and also the Aztecs) when civilization is going to collapse, but when it does the Caspian Sea is going to be one insane place to hang your pontoon boat. BLDGBLOG has an amazing post on the craziest patchwork of concrete, rail tracks and boats ever [...]
Local artist Ed Trask has just received the largest commission in his 20+ year career as an artist, according to Tobacco Avenue, Richmond's premiere misinformation site:
City Council members last night passed a landmark 9-0 resolution that will require murals by famed local artist Ed Trask to be' [...]
A few weeks ago, I had a crazy idea.
It involved Park(ing) Day, which is coming up on September 18. It's a national event that (surprise, surprise) started in San Francisco. Those nuts.
Essentially, you take a parking space -- preferably on a busy downtown street -- and you install a' [...]
The Creative Change Center (C3) is one of Richmond's quieter organizations, partly the result of losing its physical space several years ago (it's now a virtual organization) and partly because everyone and their second cousin is in on the creativity kick in Richmond these days.
Be that as it may, [...]
I'm sure the organizers of today's tour of the revamped Carpenter Center and new CenterStage complex were hoping that they'd have more takers, but that didn't stop Valerie and Ross from RVANews and me from taking advantage of the rolling dessert cart that accompanied us as we took in [...]
Richmond's mayor and his staff should read and discuss the paragraph from the latest Worldchanging blog post about bike infrastructure, and consider how to take it to heart:
Increasing the number of bikes on the road is becoming a serious goal for forward-thinking leaders. As Elisabeth Rosenthal recently wrote in the New' [...]I just woke up and realized that a decade was almost over.
The decade whose name never caught on -- unless you like referring to them as "Largely the Bush Years."
It ends in a few months.
I only know this because Paste Magazine is wondering what the album of the decade [...]
There are plenty of things to love about Carrie Brownstein, who hangs with the cool kids at NPR Music and pens the Monitor Mix blog. One thing to love is her latest post, which belatedly chronicles her arrival in New York City:
As for the music in the car, it [...]Sci Fi Wire has the best list of the year -- hands down. It's a list of 15 Doomsday prophecies. Naturally, they were all disappointments for folks looking for a little global drama.
Maybe the Mayans won't let us down in 2012.
Perhaps the most justifiable moment of End Times [...]
Maybe we could call it the conflict forgot, or the war to forget all wars. It's been almost invisible since the triumphant arrival of American forces on the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, way back in the winter of 2001-2002. (For the record, the journalists got there first.)
Don't count on it [...]
Let it be said that I spent the weekend reading Brandon Sanderson's epic, 592-page tome "Warbreaker" -- because it was fun, interesting and well-written. It's also found in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of your local library or bookseller.
Point in your favor, Lev Grossman.
Further proof that people make the business: Even under the best of circumstances, I couldn't have imagined myself thinking much about Morton's the Steakhouse a year ago.
What a difference AnnMarie Grohs and her energetic efforts to link Morton's with interesting voices and engaging trends in the Richmond region can make.
At least somebody in this year's gubernatorial election is focused on what counts.
Unfortunately, that somebody is the editor of Bacon's Rebellion, one of the Commonwealth's longer-running, better-written online resources.
Yes, Jim Bacon is back from hiatus, and he's not especially happy about the state of the race between lackluster Creigh [...]
Sure, there was actually the chance that Blossom Russo was going to get more and more flaky as she aged but she was also the eminently practical one on the show!
I should probably also note that Mayim Bialik only played an eclectic, sassy and cute teenager named Blossom on TV.
But [...]
Color me impressed, President Ayers.
This weekend, I ran into a friend who works at the University of Richmond. I asked her how the first week of school was going. She practically gushed -- about the diversity of the freshman class, about two protests on campus during the first week, about [...]
