In case you are glued to cVillain and never visit other sites, I highly recommend you visit these sites and the articles for their awesomeness:

1. Coverage of Steve Earl, who performed at the Paramount last night was done photographically by Tom Daly and with written word by Shaun Harvey on cvilleMUSE.  Shaun begins… “As Steve walked out on stage a roar erupted from the crowd.  He strapped on his guitar and a harmonica and for the first thirty minutes of his set he played songs from his extensive catalog of early classics.  There was ‘Tom Ames Prayer’ and an awesome version of ‘South Nashville Blues’.” 

2.  Coverage of the One Million Dollar Sign Budget by Outskirts.  I really, really enjoy it when Outskirts Guy goes on tirades.  This one, in particular is worth the read. When you begin with “How fucking dumb are the locals?” how can you go wrong?

3.  Local Real Estate Analysis by Jim Duncan.  Our resident expert on local real, Jim gives us a much needed slap to the face.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Daily Progress story about record housing inventory resulted from Jim’s diligence and research associated with an analysis of early 2008 Charlottesville real estate.

4.   Personal Issues.  Ah, our resident guest blogger, Stanley lives with a roomate who adopted a black widow spider.  That thing is scary… even scarier when it goes to town on a cricket.

5.   Food treasures?  Cogwheeler in his/her blog “Notes from C-ville” reviews the Highland County Maple Store.  Scroll down to the bottom of the article.  Maple syrup donuts!? I’m in love.

6.  Garden much?  If you garden locally and you don’t read Life in Sugar Hollow, you are missing some serious expertise.  Sugar Holler has just started her spring garden.  Why do I care about this?  Because, I can barely keep a cactus alive and I love watching her garden as it grows. The pictures on this blog are great.

7.  Love story gone awry.  Anoop, who was fondly in love with Continental Divide (read our review here),  has now fondly fallen out of love with his former “favorite restaurant.”  Why?  Simple, for Anoop, “as always, the food was good, but Continental Divide has become more trouble than it’s worth.”  But, you must read about the service issues that he has experienced in order to fully understand this conclusion.

Now, go visit other blogs and make them happy someone is reading their stuff!

Popularity: 32% [?]

Our little baby sister, StreakTheLawn has shut down after an editorial in the Cav Daily and our recent post about “Gossip sites ruining UVA.”

Cloudbrain’s blog reads:

A recent post on the CVillain blog mentioned us at being behind a new UVA blogging site gaining some recent press. Several UVA students, with help from Cloudbrain, launched a “gossip”-focused blog at UVA a few weeks ago. The desire was to explore social media and the changing face of publishing on the Internet - as well as to celebrate fun and social life at UVA. Thanks to some other, more scandalous, sites the blog has found itself in the middle of an interesting conversation regarding publishing, anonymity, privacy and appropriateness. We have taken the site down.

But, why? Strength in NUMBERS!!

Popularity: 38% [?]

A little birdie sends in an article about UVA Gossip sites.… I always wonder why the Cav Daily staff can’t produce better articles. They totally miss some obvious things. We discover the “anonymous editors” who run StreakTheLawn.com and help out the Cav Daily with a deeper look into those gossip sites.

The first thing they missed:

UM, HELLO YOU MISSED CVILLAIN, WHICH SPAWNED THE OTHER SITES! »Read More

Popularity: 29% [?]

I’m thinking yes, cause it doesn’t find anything.  Before I vent (believe me I really hate this thing), do you agree that it should be  killed?  Read more about the SWICKI.

Popularity: 27% [?]

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last day or so you may have missed our new “Charlottesville Social Search” widget on the right sidebar.

What is this!?

Don’t freak out. Welcome to the internet. Swickis learn from your search results and rankings to help you find what find what you want. If we all start collaborating and using the swicki to search for Charlottesville things, we can build a more intelligent, local search engine. It’s free and if you don’t like ours, you can build your own.

»Read More

Popularity: 5% [?]

[pic]

Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up for your week in review.

We got villains dissing on wine bars, gunshots at the Outback and some Grecian food. Don’t forget to stop around back to sample our smelly PR move, celebrity wannabies, and your favorite musical acts. When you leave, grab the gift bag– it’s full of tats, lawsuits, and monkey sex. Enjoy!

»Read More

Popularity: 21% [?]

While the holidays were a little quiet here, we wanted to announce that we had over 130,000 page views for January. We’re growing quickly and we have you to thank. Keep coming back and let us know what we can do better. We are always trying to improve things and make stuff easier.
»Read More

Popularity: 3% [?]

Daily Progress’ holding company, Media General issued a “cease and desist” letter to BookofJoe.com.

Media General explains that BookofJoe must immediately remove all licensed content from its website. The letter explains that BookofJoe “cut and pastes” articles directly into its blog and that is a violation of copyright and terms of service.

What do you think? Will we (or another local blogger) be next? Are these rules even well defined? I’m sure BookofJoe referenced DailyProgress.

My thoughts on this are simple. Would Daily Progress prefer local bloggers to summarize articles and not link back to their site or do they want to be open with their content? Will the editors at Daily Progress use this as a story (haha, no)? How much traffic do you think BookofJoe is sending to Daily Progress? I know the DP writers read this site; but they probably can’t comment on anything which sucks.

(remember we keep all identities a secret!)

Click through to read the letter.

»Read More

Popularity: 4% [?]

With cynical commentary!

“You’d never even know we’re drinking toilet water! So refreshing.”
Slate.com: It’s Time To Drink Toilet Water by Eilene Zimmerman, 1-25-08
Mmm! You think on that one!

“Sure, I worry about world hunger and AIDS. But of all these problems, I know in my heart that I have to take a stand on dry-cleaning hangers.”
GulfLive.com: Cleaners caught in hanger dispute, 1-26-08
Why can’t we be a nation that accepts wrinkles? On skin or clothes? WHY? But seriously, how random is that. That’s not a question.

“Yes, I understand that you want us to be exclusive, but I’m still seeing my therapist. I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t look at me like that. You’re doing it right now. You think I’m gay, don’t you?”
NewYorker.com: Shouts & Murmurs “Last Session” by John Kenney, 1-28-08
This is hilarious. I can’t be cynical because it’s already cynical.

“Kate Beckinsale’s cat almost caught fire. Isn’t that like so interesting?”
Stuff.co.nz: “Hollywood star’s cat catches fire before awards” 1-29-08
Based on the look of her huge head on her toothpick neck in that publicity photo, I’m guessing the bitch was so starved she tried to rotisserie the thing.

“Post feminism–they make Raisin Bran, too, right?”
Slate.com: Have post-feminists checked out politically? 1-29-08
Not a blog I read. Shocker.

“I feel like we’re really connecting, so can I ask you a hypothetical question? If you shattered your hip Jell-o wrestling at a party on your school property in Jell-o your school cafeteria provided, you’d sue your school, let your friends call you Wet Blanket, and let the administration ban Jell-o wrestling forever too, right?”
NewsDay.com: Judge tosses $1M NYU Jell-O wrestling suit, 1-29-08
Bright, lime-colored future for this genius.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Besides the lovely complexity of having too much wine this week, we break the story on Pink Paintballs, (hopefully) find a restaurantuer a chef partner, chat with bartenders and break a rumor of a high end steak place. Oh, we also make some rule.

The week in review continues below:

»Read More

Popularity: 13% [?]