Shaun Harvey, formally from cvilleMUSE, did a four part series on the top 100 Albums on his music blog, the velvet rut.  Think albums are dated? Does Shaun “suddenly feel like he’s trying to build a fire to keep the dinosaurs from catching a cold?”  Perhaps, but you should check out the series, starting with part 4. As for the albums, you’ll have to guess for yourself except I will spill the beans on #1:  Kind of Blue.

Did you know we have a resident beer geek blogger. He’s compiled a list of the places to drink beer in Charlottesville that is worth a bookmark.

Jim Duncan blogs so much he does video podcasts from his car, WHILE DRIVING.  Keep on blogging, Jim… just be careful. It’s dangerous, sometimes.

cvillestyle’s Heather has a two part series on local business names, logos and brands.  As one of Heather’s passion areas, you probably can learn a lot about how your brand fits in the Charlottesville community. [part 1 and part 2]

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On slow news days I go out and read pretty much every single blog on the internet, making note of local goodies and trying to discover Charlottesville blogs new to the scene.  Besides our obvious sister sites, cvilleMUSE and cvilleStyle, there are some other sites you need to check out.

Double Single Double: A whimsical journey of ADD, ritalin and Xanax (and two married people?)

It’s a lovely little gem that takes you all over the place, whether you like it or not.  From the random local articles to the funny videos, it’s a good read.  Also, check out my favorite recent post about Swannanoa, an once indulgent mansion just over the mountain that houses a New Age religion.  I’m serious, read it.

CVA Sports:  Local high school sports, represent.

Not just a blog, more a local high school sports fan information mecca, this site lives, breaths and eats local high school sports. Not exactly my cup of tea, but I thought a lot of you should know about this if you are involved in the local sports thing.

P.S. Don’t forget you can win free tickets to the What Made Milwaukee Famous & Wild Sweet Orange show from cvilleMUSE!

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Well, we featured the Bubble Blog yesterday, but there are so many other little gems you need to read.

First off, we have The Daly Dose, which I only spend a few seconds on every few days.  But, those few seconds are filled with amazing pictures.  In good cVillain manner, I appreciate the hangover on the beach pic.

Why so serious?  It’s like we’re joker and Waldo’s Batman.  Only, we’re still alive for the sequel.  He publishes cvillenews which discusses  pertinant local issues. If you don’t have time to read about drinking, restaurants and parties, and only want the pith, checkout cvillenews.  You won’t miss anything important to Charlottesville news.

Outskirts Guy is the most underappreciated blogger in Charlottesville.  He’s anonymous (Villain +5 Points), he’s snarky (Funny +5 Points) and he breaks stories (Rapture Sold +10 points).  Oh, did you know all these places could be breaking the sign laws?!

I am no mother.  But, if you are a mother, and you work,  you should read Cville Working Moms, a blog about juggling parenting and a work life. Is it  harding than juggling drinking and a work life?  NO, but it’s a close second.  Oh, did you know you can save 40% on your water bill by spending $50 bucks?  You would if you read Cville Working Moms.

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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!

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!!

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

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.

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.

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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!

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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.
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