16 Blocks Magazine - Issue #18

w w w. 1 6 b l o c k s m a g a z i n e . c o m

b l a c k s b u r g

a r t s

com edy n i ght 14

the n ew ki ds on the block 2 0

prick lit 19

&

c u l t u r e issueno.18 lo gos: h un ti n g pe ace 2 4

02 1 6 B L O C K S

14 19

SHOW ME THE FUNNY

Anthony Quinn, MC and standup, hosts the longest running show in Blacksburg.

Pri c k Lit

Self-proclaimed asshole Tucker Max shares a polite chat with 16 Blocks. They do serve beer on the bus.

20

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

23

LOGOS: HUNTING PEACE

...or maybe a riposte from the Old School. Blacksburg Arts Collective brings theater downtown, with more to follow.

Days in the life of a bullied, high-IQ 5th grader who becomes the unwitting catalyst for a chilling crime in his small mountain town.

04 Chatterblocks 06 Politics: Len Rants 08 The Grain: Cellar Beers 10 Cooking With Trent 12 Guerilla Gardening

13 Expatriate: Flash Clark 16 Summer in Southwest VA 23 Book Review 26 To Do List 30 Idle Minds

NO.18 1 6 B lo ck s

Arts and Culture Magazine September 2009 Issue #18 A division of 16 Blocks Media LLC. Contact us for subscription rates, general questions, corrections, if you’re interested in submitting short stories for our Logos Section, letters to the Editor, or if you just want to say hey.

editor’s note:

by Amy Splitt

Why

the shock and awe surrounding the movie, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”? A dude is getting rich telling stories about getting drunk and putting one over on a string of women. This is not a new and controversial movement in literature.

Tucker Max’s point of view is totally mainstream and acceptable. It’s the American Dream. It’s an archetype

people want to see. Flip through the channels or the pop-science articles online. The story is: “Humans are shallow, predatory creatures.” Comedians have fed on this topic for centuries. And I am supposed to hate it with a passion reserved for someone who murdered my family. Women are supposed to be outraged. That’s part of the fun. What’s the purpose of swinging a dick unless it

slaps a few faces?

Did I laugh at the sushi pants story? Yes, it was funny. The Miss Vermont story? No, it was sad and creepy.

Laugh at the stories if they make you laugh. If they piss you off, devote your energy to creating a culture you enjoy.

The controversy machine is only there to manufacture drama and fulfill the same old archetypes again and again.

Dan chastain, owner of the lantern

16blocksmagazine@gmail.com www.16blocksmagazine.com myspace.com/16blocksmagazine Check us out on Facebook!

Follow us on Twitter @16blocks P.O. Box 279 Blacksburg, VA 24063 No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

C ove r Starlite Drive-In Photo by David Franusich

staf f

Hart Fowler

Editor in Chief, Publisher

16blocksmagazine@gmail.com David Franusich

Head Print Designer, Art Director

16blocks.graphics@gmail.com Christina O’Connor

Director of Photography, Art Director

16blocks.photo@gmail.com Amy Splitt Editor

asplitt@gmail.com David Williams Webmaster

dtw@vt.edu TYLER GODSEY

Business Development Manager

tyler.godsey@gmail.com KEVIN FITZGERALD Head of Distribution

CON T R I B U TORS Danny Phillips - Illustrator Aerin Toler - Illustrator Tuan Pham - Photographer Al Fayez - Photographer Len Comaratta - Features Writer Danny Flad - Beer Writer Trent Crabtree - Food Writer Russell Chisholm - Book Reviewer N. E. Boyce - Guest Writer (Logos) Flash Clark - Guest Writer Chuck Ronco - Chess Guru

Why did The Lantern close?

Myself and Brian had been looking to sell The Lantern starting in March '09.

This was mainly due to being undercapitalized. We had not yet had a profitable month and our money was running out.

Poor attendance and not having a mixed drink permit were big factors. Many people would drink at other nearby locations and then come to The Lantern to see the show, leave and go nearby if they wanted a shot or mixed drink, and then come back. We did not make any money from the cover charges, as the vast majority of that goes to the bands with a small amount taken out to pay the sound tech and PA expenses, so all of our sales came from food and beer.

We felt there was huge potential for The Lantern and wanted to work with someone to keep the same format and keep it going until it reached its potential, so we started looking for a buyer among other downtown business owners and among the public. We found a buyer who wanted to buy the LLC and keep the business as it was. Unfortunately soon after that we became aware that a suit was being filed against our LLC, and the buyer was no longer interested in buying a business under suit. We continued to look for buyers to purchase the assets and transfer the name to their company but were unsuccessful.

Our money ran out and we closed the doors May 14th.

I feel like we had some really great shows at The Lantern and that it reminded a lot of people in the area what its like to have great live music close to home. Of course there are the occasional «big» shows at Jefferson Center and at Virginia Tech, but being able to go see a show and be 15 feet from the performers in an intimate setting is amazing. Also having the choice to go see live music as an alternative to the standard bar scene contributes a lot to the culture of the area. People in general need to broaden their perspectives and live music is a great avenue for that.

Any progress on the sale?

No, there was interest but no one has

made any offers and the interest has faded. At this point it looks like we are going to be in massive debt to cover the rest of the lease in addition to our initial investment.

If you could do it over again, what would be the main things you would change?

I would do it in a different state. In respect to being a music venue business venture in VA there are a lot of obstacles. Virginia ABC laws make it impossible to create a business model that has live music as its priority. It's priority must be food sales. This has led to an overabundance of sports bars and college bars and the lack of cultural nightlife options across the state. The law's objective is to remove establishments that only cater to the drinking crowd.

The food sale requirements make the establishment, in the law's eyes, a restaurant and not a bar.

In our case, while we generated lots of sales from ticket prices and we were clearly providing services beyond alcohol sales, the food sales were not enough to receive our mixed drink permit, which is one of the major revenue generators in any restaurant/bar or music venue. Somehow, in the eyes of the ABC, cultural entertainment sales have no value but chicken wing sales do.

I fully believe if we were allowed to operate solely as a music venue we would have had great success. There would be a big reduction in overhead and a big increase in sales.

with nationally touring acts that just aren't super well-known yet, like Seepeoples and Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum, where hardly anyone showed up. I get the feeling that most people like to hear stuff that they are familiar with and have heard many times before. There seems to be a lack of musical intrepidness in Blacksburg. People seem unwilling to take a shot on seeing a band they don't know. Maybe I'm just a spendthrift but spending $5 to check out some new music and help support some road weary musicians seems like a good deal to me.

Of course we did have some great supporters and a loyal base that would come out several times a week. I would see the same faces at a metal show and then a few days later at a bluegrass show. This kind of support was invaluable in keeping me optimistic about music in Blacksburg. Overall I think that the Blacksburg music scene and its supporters still have a long way to go. It's something that needs to be cultivated over time, and the longer that live music is an option for entertainment the more people will start to support it.

What were your best show memories?

To make it as a music venue in VA, the business must primarily be a restaurant, and a music venue secondarily.

Honestly I have too many to list. I enjoyed the whole process and was blown away more than once by a band's ability to entertain. The best thing for me about the whole time of The Lantern was that I was able to see over 200 shows within that time. There were plenty of times where I was really impressed by a band that was out of my musical comfort zone and that I may not have seen otherwise.

How would you judge Blacksburg show-goers' support of live music?

Any plans to go into show-promoting, or venue-owning in the future?

The support was kind of hit and miss.

The bigger shows where we had a well known touring band like Perpetual Groove or Railroad Earth were easy sellouts. We also had some really good turn outs for a few of the local bands as well. Most of the other shows had moderate to poor attendance though.

We had some absolutely great shows

Who knows. In Blacksburg I thought I saw an opportunity to work in a field that I love in a place that had a void to fill. If I come across another situation like that and have the means to make it happen, then I don't see why not. As for the meantime I am pursuing other endeavors.

I S S U E 1 8 05

by Len Comaratta illustration by Aerin Toler

W

ith so much crap being spewed by the purposely misinforming talking heads and the idiots who follow them, there is so much to bitch about -- and like my old man says, I ain’t happy unless I’m bitchin’.

Birthers – You people fall into two categories – IGNORANT IDIOTS and RACIST IGNORANT IDIOTS. And to be fair I will let you pick which one you are. If you are the latter, you are grasping at straws over your insecurity about having a black man in power, and your attitude shames you and this country. Number one: Hawai’i is in fact a state. Number two: even if Barack Obama had been born on the moon, would his citizenship have been subjected to this kind of repeated scrutiny if he had an Anglo-Saxon name and a mother who was a lifelong American citizen?

Health Care Debate - Or really a lack thereof.

There hasn’t been a debate, because the side opposed to reform is too far removed from reality to want to engage in any civil discourse. We have people showing up to town meetings with guns and signs wishing death to the president, and then we have one guy tearing up a picture of Rosa Parks. This shows you what kind of mentality we are dealing with.

Side note: I love the irony of these people now holding signs telling the government to keep its laws off their bodies. So for health care you want the government out of your life, but regarding abortion and birth control you want the government all over someone else’s body. These same people being duped by this so-called «Socialism» bullshit are the same ones who blindly allowed the previous administration to enact a pseudo-fascist agenda (note I said pseudo – write to me care of this magazine if you want me to elaborate).

Socialism – Fascism – Communism – Stop using these terms if you do not know what they mean.

Just because the term “Nazi” is derived from “National

Socialist Party” doesn’t mean that it has a thing to do with Socialism as anyone now knows it, or Hitler's version thereof. The next time you are truly worried, look at your paystub. You have been contributing to a social democracy your entire working career. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, your general infrastructure such as highways, schools, and even the police are paid through a system funded by the population at large.

And for the good Christians out there who are opposed to government-run programs helping the poor, take a look at your scripture. Jesus was all about sharing the wealth with the needy, even with convicted criminals.

Let's see: Matthew 25:41-46 (New International Version) 41. «Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

44. «They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

45. «He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

06 1 6 B L O C K S

Left, right, I think we have our answer here.

And to those who can’t think or don’t want to bother to think, let’s shut the hell up about these BS socalled “death panels.” First off, what they are calling death panels are really end of life counseling for living wills and such. This is something that the Republicans (and Washington in general) have favored in the past.

And more recently, while still governor in April 2009, the right wing's heroine, Palin herself signed legislation in Alaska supporting the exact things she is labeling as “death panels”. If only her parents had practiced the abstinence that she taught her children…oh wait, I guess they probably did.

Change to Washington - Will you all shut the hell up about how Obama promised to change Washington but it is still the same old same old in DC. Wow… after a whole 8 months you expected him to be able to rout out and wipe clean 50 years of entrenched behavior by individuals who are extremely skilled at selfpreservation. It will take years for a total reversal of behavior and attitude to come to Washington in order for it to be nothing like it is today. Your attitudes on this are just as bad as on the economy.

Where are the jobs!?!?! How come we are still losing jobs? - Maybe because job loss is one of the last things affected by a depression, recession, or an economic speedbump. Jobs are lost when the economy suffers. But those jobs can’t be suddenly reinstated once the economy begins to look good on paper again.

It takes time. You may not want to wait, but unfortunately in order for jobs to return businesses must be stable and they can’t be stable unless the economy is.

Bottom line…employment rates usually show results months to years after a fix has been implemented. So have patience, they will return.

I S S U E 1 8 07

Bre ws that g o g reat with the Blues

by Danny Fla d p ho to g rap hy by Tuan Pham

D

owntown Blacksburg can be a great place to celebrate the weekend, but it’s during the rest of the week that some of the sweetest deals and best entertainment can be found. For me, one of the highlights of any week is Blues Night at The Cellar. The music starts around 9:30 every Monday, but it’s a good idea to get there early and grab a seat while you still can. Before long, the place is crowded with musicians queuing up for a chance to play and a host of locals and visitors alike eager to listen. What a perfect spot, I thought, to find out what folks in Downtown Blacksburg were drinking. I headed there one Monday and asked the bartender, Chase Coble, what some of his customers’ most popular choices were. Armed with his suggestions - Blacksburger Pils, Shooting Creek Rebel Ale, and Highland Gaelic Ale - I shared a few beers with the crowd and asked the what they thought.

Ava Howard, Cellar regular Blacksburger: “I really like the taste and color. It’s a little bit sweet and light. It’s something I could sip on all night.”

Rebel Rye: “It’s a bit heavy and bitter, but I’m no expert.”

Gaelic Ale: “Dark and heavy but milder than I expected.”

Amanda Park, student Blacksburger: “I don’t really taste much… doesn’t have much flavor.”

Rebel Rye: “This is delicious… it’s really good! Perfection in a glass!”

Gaelic Ale: “It’s pretty good, just not my flavor.”

Adam Ferguson, software developer Blacksburger: “Smooth but not too smooth. It’s not too bitter and not too sweet but it lets you know it’s there.”

Rebel Rye: “It’s got a little bit of a zing. I really like this. This is good beer!”

Gaelic Ale: “Hoppy and malty. The flavor really jumps out at you. It goes down really smooth.”

Danny Richardson, writer Blacksburger: “I like the hops but the malt is a little weak and watery.

A good pils, but pils is not my favorite.”

Rebel Rye: “There’s a frutiness to the malt and a citrus nut finish that’s smooth and long.”

Gaelic Ale: “Nice head and color… nutty, nutty, nutty malt. You can smell the hops but they don’t linger.”

08 1 6 B L O C K S

And my opinion?

Blacksburger: Brewmaster John Bryce’s latest creation has a crisp bubbly head and a nice golden color. As you raise the glass to your lips, you can catch the aroma of Halertau hops, the kind you would find in any good German Pils. It goes down sweet and malty at first and then the flowery, slightly bitter balance of the hops kicks in. The clean, fresh finish will leave any fan of German lager eagerly anticipating another sip.

Rebel Rye: Wow! What a great thirst quencher for a sunny day!

You can taste lots of apple and pear notes up front but they are more than balanced by the healthy bitterness of the hops. The hint of Rye gives this beer the perfect zip and leads to a nice satisfying finish.

Gaelic Ale: Highland’s flagship ale is a great stepping-stone beer for those looking to move up from the world of domestic swill. It has a beautiful amber hue and a nice frothy head. It is extraordinarily well balanced with lots of fruit and caramel flavors to the malt and just enough hop bitterness to stop the sweetness from becoming overpowering. The mild, toasty finish leaves you with the same giddy satisfaction you might find after eating a home cooked meal.

As you can see, opinions on the same beer can vary, so try your own taste test with your friends. Maybe I'll see you at the Cellar.

General education courses that transfer to many four-year colleges are offered at the NRCC New River Valley Mall site in Christiansburg.

Also, engineering, information technology networking, drafting and design, game technology programs are based at this location.

SEND ME INFORMATION, PLEASE:  College

Brochure College Catalog  Financial Aid Information



Other _____________________________________



Name ________________________________________________________________________ Street ________________________________________________________________________ City, State, Zip _________________________________________________________________ Mail to: NRCC Office of Planning and Advancement, P. O. Box 1127, Dublin, VA 24084

nr.edu

CHRISTIANSBURG

674-3610

Solar Decathlon Team

Invites you to visit!

Platinum Sponsor

TICKETS: $20/$30 Adv. | $25/$35 Gate Designated Driver & Ages 13Ͳ20 Ͳ $10 | 12/under Ͳ FREE

DC shington a W , m u Muse Building l 009 a n io t a th-27th 2 5 The N r e b m e Sept C hington D s a W , ll 009 nal Ma th-18th 2 The Natio 5 1 & h t 9th-13 October

www.lumenhaus.com

Tickets available online at blacksburgbrewdo.com

I S S U E 1 8 09

“Time for Lunch” Campaign brings its National Day of Action to the NRV

by Trent Crabtree

O

photography by Christina O’Connor

n Labor Day, September 7th, The Child Nutrition Act came up for reauthorization. Around the same time, Slow Food USA promoted the Time for Lunch campaign, which will sponsor hundreds of Eat-Ins across the US, offering communities the opportunity to share a meal with their fellow citizens. This nationwide Eat-In will send an obvious message to legislatures: providing our nation’s schools with healthy and local foods needs to happen without delay.

Not too long ago I was approached by a friend, Heather Taylor, who was organizing a planning committee on behalf of Slow Food USA. She asked if I would like to be involved in planning to organize an Eat-In to support getting nutritional food back in schools for our community's children. How could I say no? Although I don’t have children, I am well aware that fast food has moved into schools across the nation. I see providing our children with a nutritional meal in school lunches as the responsibility of every adult. Although prepared to take part I still wanted to know more: what is “slow food”?

Slow Food USA is a non-profit organization whose goal is to educate people on nutritious food, created with care from healthy plants and animals with methods that have a positive impact on local environments. Simply put, slow food is the counter-measure to fast food in our society, especially in our schools.

The Time for Lunch campaign is part of a national movement created by Slowfood USA to update the Child Nutrition Act which governs the National School Lunch Program.

According to Slow Food, the USDA reimburses schools for every meal served: $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for e reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. Since the reimbursements must also cover labor costs, overhead, equipment and maintenance, schools are left with approximately $1.00 to spend on each child’s lunch. One dollar is simply not enough to effectively provide for what may be a needy child's main meal of the day.

By updating the Child Nutrition Act, schools will be reimbursed $3.57 for each meal served. This allows our community to protect itself against food

10

that puts children at risk. At many schools children can purchase junk food from vending machines that are placed in the cafeterias through corporate subsidies.

On top of that, many fast food chains such as Taco Bell and Pizza Hut have contracts with schools and are providing the food served at school lunches, exposing the children to more unhealthy choices.

Once “fast food” is eliminated as an option, schools will have the opportunity to get one-time grants towards Farm to School programs, school gardens and purchasing local foods to teach children healthy eating in the classroom. For kids, food is all about the taste.

When kids have an active involvement in planting and picking, they gain an investment in what they produce.

Curious to give more fruit and veggies a try, they will begin asking for them at school and at home.

Purchasing locally will create green jobs for teachers, administrators, farmers, and cooks to make sure the National School Lunch program is protecting children’s health, at the same time strengthening our community making us more self-sufficient. Purchasing local foods will also eliminate the time it takes food to get from the farms to the table and will ensure the food is as fresh as possible.

With an estimated 9 million children suffering from obesity in the US, it has been called one of the “pandemics of the 21st century”. That means one in every four children is overweight or obese and one out of every three will develop diabetes in their lifetime.

Researchers have pinpointed that swapping out «convenient» high-calorie and fatty foods in favor of nutritious foods in schools will be a major factor in fighting childhood obesity.

Access to healthy food is a universal right, regardless of income. For some children, the school lunch is the one opportunity each day they have to get a nutritious meal. Every day a child has a school lunch, we have the opportunity to build a strong foundation for a child's health through the food schools serve.

School lunch reform will give children the opportunity to enjoy food that is good for them and learn healthy habits they will apply throughout their whole lives.

Simply put...

Renew Your Space With Snyder & Associates

A basement protected by TUFF-N-DRI Exterior Foundation Waterproofing System, backed by a 30 year warranty, seals both block and concrete poured walls to keep basements dry. Our commercial products cover a wide range, from valclay to sheet membrane.

If you have corrections for your ad, please include Building you can trust since 1985 Residential • Renovations company’s name and your response email.

Additions • Commercial • Excavation

the rundate in the subject h

500 South Main Street Blacksburg, VA 24060 Phone: (540) 552-3377 • FAX: (540) 552-2972 Email: snyder@usit.net www.snyderandassoc.com

LEED AP certified personnel on staff Certified WBE

I S S U E 1 8 11

Interview with a Downtown Plant

by Griffin Covey photography by Christina O’Connor

S

ituated under a College Avenue meter next to the Bollo’s bench, who’d a thought country garden roots would hole up just fine under sidewalk concrete. Bulging green fruit makes it look like this plant will be here for awhile, at least through the fall. As a firm believer in downtown produce, 16 Blocks welcomes this pioneer to the community with a short Q&A. GC: As our first downtown tomato plant, I'd like to welcome you to the 16 Blocks.

character. But for all I know, the wind blew me in from God knows where.

How do you like the view?

Yeah, not quite ripe though.

I don't speak with them at all really, but I’ve come to know a lot of the Bollo's regulars. They'll come outside from the coffee shop to have a smoke or to enjoy the outside. I think they're kind of like plants too, you know, coz during the daytime they're around nearly as much as I am, and I LIVE here.

How about the nighttime?

DtTP: Thanks for having me, by the way, I'm a big fan of the magazine. I really liked the Garden as Art piece.

I like to see my fellow flora getting some press. Also, I've heard there's a tomato plant in front of the Cellar but I don't know. I don't get out much.

We'll look into that. Why beside Bollo's?

I don't know really, I was just planted here and have been here ever since. I don't know who planted me.

I'd like to think it was some Johnny Tomatoseed-like

12

They're not exactly in the concrete, but underneath it.

The water seeps through in the hole around the meter and it's really nice. Feel these new fruits. Juicy, yeah?

At first, I didn't sleep well. It's a whole other scene here when the sun goes down. Especially when the bars let out. I would have nightmares of getting peed or puked on, squashed, trampled, or picked. Horrifying stuff when you don't have legs to run with or arms to defend yourself. But then I thought, Hey, worrying about it's not gonna help. Lately I've been sleeping just fine, dreaming of great sunshine and wonderful rain.

How can you make roots in concrete?

A little green, but they'll be ripe soon enough.

Have you been feeling the rumbling underground from the new Farmer's Market construction?

Yes, most definitely and I think it’s great. Coming from a tomato plant surrounded on all sides, I'm all for breaking up pavement and bringing some more greenery into the scene.

Thanks for the time, DtTP. Anything you care to say to 16 B's readers?

Thanks for all the love and respect guys - you know who you are. And smokers, watch the butts, those filters take centuries to decompose.

Former 16 Blocker Flash Clark writes a letter to the ‘Burg

Dear B.,

Sorry it has been so long, but I’ve been studying and writing my tail off at this crazy Naropa University in this little city called Boulder, Colorado. I think about you a lot though. Your lazy miles of blue ridges and soft green countryside. But Boulder has been good for the soul. Good for the head. I just had to get away for a while and figure things out, you know?

After I left . . . I landed in a place where the sky is wide. wide open and painted a deeper hue than blue, and wild plums, apples and grapes seem to grow everywhere. The sunsets are purple and pink and the nearest mountains are a ten minute bike ride away from my place near town. Twenty minutes in a car and a person can be over ten thousand feet in elevation.

Snow covered peaks, even in summer. From Mount Sanitas, due east of my house, a person can see Denver in the distance, thirty-plus miles away hovering at the foot of the Flat Irons, the mountain range that separates the Rockies from the flat plains of the Midwest.

Everybody talks in terms of “east of this” and “west of that,” which is cool, but confusing at first.

Some of the world’s best Aikido is headquartered here and walking home after class I discovered that on summer Wednesday nights ordinary folks gather in the park behind the YMCA on 28th Street to play horseshoes and slow pitch softball while a little four-year old drops his drawers to pee on the sidewalk with his mother looking at me smiling saying, “When you’re four years old you can get away with this.”

There aren’t really any old people here, which

makes me think they’re all boxed up in crates under the desert at Fort Collins. Like in the X-Files. And everyone seems to be tan and in shape, except for the homeless who are very tan and in shape. People are really smart and nice enough, too. While there is a certain superficial “hippie” contingent for the most part the city is filled with optimistic, health-minded, liberal, eco-political folks with good intentions.

This place is filled with perfumes of flowers that grow perfectly in the Colorado sun; green lawns and cottonwood trees that flourish along Boulder Creek (Boulder’s namesake). In the Spring they blossom and the air gets clogged with what looks like milkweed - so much so I have inhaled more than my fair share. And the town recycles everything, including the kitchen sink, and even has a city compost program that runs in tandem with the trash pickup. So now I compost my coffee.

Since coming here, I have seen baby prairie dogs (cute little buggers that can carry the bubonic plague virus); made friends with a squirrel named Mr. Biscuit; been attacked twice by red-winged black birds; had nightmares about being attacked by Mr. Biscuit; ran across a sign in the woods that said, Beware of Bears; seen mountain lion poop; hiked a mountain; seen a man pet a red fox; watched 10,000 Colorado of University students create their own weather system on April 20; fallen in Boulder Creek while running; written hundreds of pages of text; published the worst five; read poetry to a crowd of two hundred in the

same spot as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs; learned to dance; drank a lot of good beer; and seen a 60-year old lady in spandex rollerblading with a parrot on her shoulder.

I have almost passed out from altitude sickness at just over 9,000 feet, which is a lot less fun than it sounds. I also learned that three beers at just over 9,000 feet equals something like a pony keg at Virginia’s elevation. I camped in a yurt, ate elk chili, played pool with international poetry rockstar, Semezdin Mehmedinovic and made Chicken Alfredo Tacos with very very very poor results. I have worked with some of the greatest minds in the Beat lineage and accrued more student loan debt than I can even begin to fathom. I have made some incredible friends here and told them all about you many times. Too many probably. I met a girl but you don’t want to hear about that. I get paid like I still live in Virginia and everything is expensive but there is always a way, and even though I keep thinking, “How can I afford to stay?” I can’t help but wonder, “ How can I afford not to go back to you when all this craziness is over?”

Anyway I just thought you might like to know how things were going. Sorry it’s such a long letter.

Take care of yourself, B. I hope you are doing well. I’ll be back. But don’t wait up.

Your friend, Flash

13

Comedy Night at Attitude’s with Anthony Quinn

by Griffin Covey

photography by Al Fayez

O

n any given Wednesday night at Attitude’s Bar in Blacksburg, a buzz starts building around 8:00.

It’s partly because of the cheap highballs that are cascading into plastic cups from behind the bar.

Twenty-something students are streaming in, Big Johnson from Hot 100 is broadcasting live, and host Anthony Quinn is warming up the room, reminding everyone to head toward the stage area. The seats fill up fast.

Over the past 5 years at Attitude’s, Quinn has grown one of the most loyal and regular weekly audiences in town. The seats are filled and the spillover reaches into the bar area where the stage and audio mix is broadcast onto a flat screen for those who didn’t get a seat.

Quinn takes the mic: “Let me start things off by letting everybody here know that this is an adulterated show.”

The crowd hollers, “Fuck, yeah!”

“Thank you, everybody, and for all the people who are new and never been here before, when I say it’s an adulterated show, you guys say, ‘Fuck yeah.’ THIS IS AN ADULTERATED SHOW!”

14 1 6 B L O C K S

Crowd: FUCK, YEAH! “Yeah, that means the comedians will say anything and everything they want on stage -- fuck babies, anything, I don’t give a fuck, after this warning you cannot get your money back. Fuck you.”

Quinn riffs off the crowd, building them up with 15-20 minutes of material for the guest comedians. “I try to make things that happen in my life translate on stage.

Like talking about my family and my college and my awkward relationships,” said Quinn, who does IT work for Virginia Tech while pursuing his Masters Degree in Sociology. He also dates a lovely waitress named Rachel, who works at Attitude’s as well. “I find it best if people believe what’s coming out of your mouth. People can tell if you’re making up a story. It’s best if the things actually happened with only a little bit of exaggeration.”

When Quinn is on, he draws some great laughs. This is the reason for the consistent draw to Comedy Night week in and week out. He does a regular bit that involves volunteering an attractive (and usually white) girl from the audience and having her count the number of black people in the room. The number then corresponds with a board that is onstage listing things which Quinn will riff off of.

will “ Thesaycomedians anything and everything they want on stage... anything, I don’t give a fuck, after this warning you cannot get your money back.

“

“The Negrometer board is negrAHmeter, not NEGROmeter. NEGRO-meter is racist, Negrometer is scientific. Negrometer measures the maximum amount of black people that can be in a public area, 15 being the maximum in a public area in Virginia according to state law.”

Quinn taunts the mostly white crowd while the girl counts with the audience, warming up now that the spotlight is on them. Quinn then raises his voice like an emcee, hyping the crowd for the traveling comedians.

Much of Quinn’s work as host occurs off stage. He manages the scheduling of the comedians, makes sure that they’re satisfied, that the crowd is satisfied. He makes sure everybody has a seat, that the sound is working properly and that music is played at the right times.

“Every Wednesday is a big show. We run a really tight ship. Many of the traveling comedians say that our room is one of the best ever,” Quinn says.

Comedy Night features a rotating list of two traveling comedians, many of whom have appeared on Comedy Central or BET Comedy. A typical week takes them from Blacksburg to DC, to Harrisburg, to Boston. They

don’t have health insurance, gas is a big expense, and they tend to get paid in cash. Quinn says it’s a difficult life, but most would tell you they wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Quinn has performed on the road himself, notably at the Improv in Washington DC, and has opened up on local stages for Bobby Miyamoto and Reno 911’s Kyle Dunnigan. After Quinn completes his Master’s degree, he’s interested in an extended working road trip.

“Hopefully I’ll be in position to tour and do colleges on the weekend, because I’m more of a college nightclub type of comedian,” Quinn said.

“I think its so important to have a place where people can go and laugh and get away from things, especially in these times, and keeping it going in a tight knit community like Blacksburg is very important,” said Quinn.

“I get up there once a week and it makes me a new person the next day.”

The crowd filters out through the glass doors. The staff begins closing, the bouncer takes letter by letter off of the marquee in a very well rehearsed process.

Anthony Quinn hosts Comedy Club between 30-40 nights a year. All for a laugh.

I S S U E 1 8 15

And the living’s easy...

3 Photo Vignettes by David Franusich

16 1 6 B L O C K S

Fixed in a neverending predusk hazy-pink glow, it is as if the summer sun doesn’t want to go down. You can read your watch outdoors at 9:00 PM in the natural light. Summertime is for pleasantly warm and lazy evenings, for gardens and baseball games and walks. Summertime is for beach trips, tubing trips, and lake trips; splashes, rapids and waves. Backyard lawn mower whirrs and charcoal smells and the neighbor’s dog is barking. Summer dresses, sandals and shorts and sunglasses, tans and burns. The undergraduates are away, downtown is mellow and traffic is sparse.

Summertime’s for outdoor gatherings.

The bands are on the outdoor stages, picking, jamming, singing, playing tunes of heartache and love and redemption. The fair comes to town with spinning wheels and lights and livestock and produce exhibitions showcasing the bounty of the crop. Street festival art and the streets are closed down as a concourse for walkers with funnel cake and smoky meat fire smells rise above the assembled tents. Summertime’s for the demolition derby, the drive in, the car show. This is our summer, and it wanes like campfire embers at the time when you take notice of the chill.

photo by Christina O’Connor

I S S U E 1 8 17

I PPL SU

E SUPPLIE

CLAY OFF ICE

RD

ES PAINTING

SC A

S& STATIONE R Y

TING AF DR

H

125 N . M AI N S T .

.

D O W NT O W N B L A CKS B U RG

. 5 40-5 5 2-1020

ART SUPPLIES & SO MUCH MORE! RAF TI TATIONERY D

C

&S DS AR

AFTS CR

G

AR

CLAY

exhibition of new wo rk by Jennifer F owler Sept. 4 – O ct. 1

KIDS

OFFICE SU P CLAY P LIE S

OF F

P iNS PIRED BY PROCESS An

AKING FRAMING TM M RIN

IC

THE GALLTHIS MONTH AT ERY AT MI SH MISH

LIES PAINTIN UPP G S E

Y OBB H NG

S KER

CRAFTS D R A WI N

biggest calzones in town $5.75 Lunch Special Pita Pizza with three

toppings and a Coke

2 full bars

1 smoke

free

Live music No Cover Charge

Now open for lunch

7 days a week

Visit us online at www.the-cellar.com 540.953.0651 302 North Main Street, Blacksburg Va 24060

18 1 6 B L O C K S

An interview with Tucker Max

by Hart Fowler

If

you don’t know Tucker Max, unlike the 300 or so that crowded into The Lyric Theater where he was showing the movie based on his book “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”, then check out his stories on his website tuckermax.com. That is, if you have the stomach for what the New York Times called, “Life as a self-­absorbed, drunken womanizer.” Max’s show sold out the Lyric in the first week of classes.

This gross-out sex comedy is reaching the student population in a big way, and 16 Blocks went right to the source to see what makes Tucker Max so popular. Writer Hart Fowler bypassed the movie screening to tape a session on the bus drinking beers with Max, his dog, and his crew, including co-screenwriter Nils Parker.

16B: We have to ask about the protests at your last stop in Raleigh/Durham.

TM: I mean, what is there to respond to? There aren’t accusations of fact. What if I called you a Nazi? You would be like, “What the fuck?” I don’t understand. I can kind of understand someone calling me sexist. OK, fine. Misogynist, maybe, I kind of feel like it’s bullshit, because a misogynist is someone who hates women, and I fucking love women. I love women, that’s why I do all this shit. So, whatever. All the rape-culture shit.

Come on man, I don’t know what to say.

16B: I used to be a taxi driver and heard the Greek boys talk some dumb shit in the back of the cab and I’m curious what you think separates you from them?

TM: [Turns to Nils] You weren’t in a fraternity either, what do you think separates you and I from frat guys but people peg us like that.

Nils: Frat guys don’t understand that women are strong conscious beings and can enjoy sex and hooking up and going out as people on the same playing

field. We go out to have a good time, have lots of fun, hook up if you hook up, but you engage women at the same level.

TM: It’s more like a social status of the Greek hierarchy that is kind of socially imposed that doesn’t make sense.

TM: Going out is about having fun, and not about conquest. I like hooking up, but if you take hooking up as conquest, it’s not interaction, it’s taking away from it.

Nils: Defined by conflict.

Nils: It’s like a backward ticking clock for frat-guys, you’ve got till 2 AM, we’re going to be here for four hours, and the shots start coming. Coercion is coming, finding the girl you can take home and bag her.

Drunker and drunker, and more about...

TM: To me, Greek Culture cool is about your social status within the Greek culture. To me cool is about being comfortable with who you are. And that has nothing to do with Greek culture, that has nothing to do with drinking, it has to do with you being comfortable with who you are, the person you are, being self-actualized as a person, that makes you cool.

16Bs: Humor is one of the hardest things to write. Do you take your tape recorder with you when you go out?

TM: I have an iPhone now. Technology changes. So if I say something funny I can be like, “Hey, I said something funny.” Or at this point it’s like, we’re on a tour now with 12 people, I say something and someone remembers it, “Like dude, what’d I say about midgets?”

You read my stories – it’s like, funny, funny, funny, straight through. But that’s like an 8 hour night, and it takes 20 to 30 minutes to read the story. I’m not writing down everything that happened. It took me learning how to write. Figure out what’s funny and what’s not, what to include and what to leave out.

16B: What do you like to read, or which writers have influenced you?

TM: I would say my inspirations are people like Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club, because he’s very terse, you know, almost every sentence if not every word has meaning. P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores, what he does with politics I do with drinking, very pop-cultural and jokey. John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces is like my favorite book... Those three books are my biggest influences. But ultimately my biggest influences are my friends. This all started with e-mails to them, and if they thought they were

Continued on pg. 29

I S S U E 1 8 19

The first steps of the Blacksburg Art Collective

by Hart Fowler photography by David Franusich

20 1 6 B L O C K S

the arts to explode

E

ndgame is the title of their first play, but it is more like the opening gambit for the newly formed Blacksburg Art Collective. Any good chess player will tell you the opening is all about putting your best pieces into position, and founder Amanda Shumate has done just that.

Local filmmaker Jack Bennett, Swoop Gallery curator and artist Joe Kelley, 16 Blocks editor and writer Amy Splitt, and 16 Blocks contributor and artist Pris Sears make up the cast. Set designer and architect Aaron Horst designed the staging area for Endgame as part of his senior thesis while at Virginia Tech. The play, by Samuel Beckett, runs October 1-4 at the Old Red Cross building. New Life Christian Fellowship operates out of the downtown spot. This will be the first performance held in the newly renovated space besides regular NLCF functions.

“The themes are what people in Blacksburg talk about. This idea of routine existence, and talking about all the changes you’re going to do, and places you’re going to go, and all the while you stay here,” Shumate said while seated in the Performance Arts building on campus awaiting rehearsal. “’Next month I’m leaving here’, and then they don’t go. Its relevant to the community and a very exciting play. It’s very stark, and I like the style.”

Shumate, 29, studied Theater at Virginia Tech. She founded the group this summer having just

“

seems like this “Ittown is ready for

returned to town from a two-year stint in Los Angeles working with artist Lauren Bon. Shumate took notice of the concentrated move towards more arts culture in Blacksburg, including Kelley’s gallery, the new School of Performing Arts and Cinema building downtown, and this magazine.

“It feels like this town is urging towards more culture and that’s really exciting. It seems like this town is ready for the arts to explode, and it’s something I didn’t feel before,” Shumate said. “You just go out and do it. That kind of creative ambition is just alive in this town now. I feel really excited about it.”

Working alongside friend Vanessa Ragland in 2004, Shumate produced, directed, staged, and acted in Goo Art, a series of pieces presented by various locals and students. These performances drew sizable audiences, and Shumate expects much of the same for Endgame.

Shumate cuts a dashing figure, her shock of spiky black hair complementing her penchant for stovepipe jeans and clean buttondown shirts or T-shirts inspired by menswear. Her speech deftly navigates the tension between careful thought and the choosing of one electric phrase, then another. It’s not hard to understand how in the space of two months her energy has inspired so many people to see her vision.

“We’re expecting 60 people a night, which is our capacity. I hope we sell out. It seems to have a good

buzz about it, we hope to have to turn people away,” Shumate said. “I think we’ll do all right. What would that be? Like, 240 people, I think we can do that.”

Ticket prices are $7 for October 1-3, and pay what you can for the October 4 finale. The Blacksburg Art Collective solicited sponsorships from local business owners to finance this first performance, and the group couldn’t be more pleased with the response.

Shumate raised over $1000 in about one week, and believes it is a sign of good things to come for the BAC and local support of art in Blacksburg. Half of all proceeds from Endgame will go back into a fund to finance future events.

Shumate said the BAC will be hosting an art event this Fall entitled Home. They will be mailing out 25 8”x5” cards made from cardboard to artists “we know, people we love that have touched our lives in some way.” The artists will be asked to depict what home means to them; “a place a person a smell, what is it that is home to any individual.” This fall the BAC will also be holding a screening of Jack Bennett’s muchanticipated new films, as well as looking into some music performance.

“We’re interested in keeping it really diverse.

We’re going to have a lot of things happening with consistency - hopefully monthly,” Shumate said.

With the pieces in align, there only remains one more question: Will the audience be?

I S S U E 1 8 21

22 1 6 B L O C K S

Josh Weil’s The New Valley review by Russell Chisholm

F

ull Disclaimer: I bought a copy of Josh Weil’s The New Valley. A free copy then arrived from the publisher via DHL. So that makes me and Mr. Weil even. If I had another twenty-two bucks, I would buy you a copy, you would read it, and then maybe Weil’s characters would stop inhabiting the shadows around the corners of my house, the murmurs in the minutes before I wake up. Not since Donald Ray Pollock's Knockemstiff has a book stepped on my windpipe this way.

Like Pollock, Weil riffs in a form that supposedly nobody reads or publishes: the novella. Short fiction fans can celebrate tight, condensed, powerful stories populated with characters bleeding authenticity similar to those in Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned or in the spare, disarming writings of Miranda July. The aforementioned are great short fiction writers, but none hailing from the creeks, hollows and two-tracks in whispering distance from the New River.

The New Valley opens up a chasm so dark and beautiful you start to see colors in its depths, beginning with Ridge Weather, parts of which originally appeared in Narrative Magazine. Weil frames the first story, from the 544 phone prefix to the Pembroke landmarks and VA-42, with enough local touchstones for the reader to pull themselves back from a story of loss, despair, horror and confusion.

Osby, the grown son of cattle farmer Cort-

land Caudill has gotten to the phone too late to stop his father from scattering the contents of his life and his skull onto a pile of old clothes in the family farmhouse.

The son buries his grief in his desire to be useful to the things that need him: the cattle herd, things that without him could not survive. Weil expertly illustrates the toll that this quest for utility takes on Osby, how the need to do something precludes intimacy, prevents him from truly grappling with his loss.

The writing is acute, as in this lament after Osby fails to dispatch a miserable steer: “He knew then that it was over.

If he had just pulled the trigger, he might have driven back home, made breakfast in the quiet kitchen, satisfied with the knowledge that he had done something that could never be undone, that he had left a mark on another being as strong as any that man, or even God, could make.

But he had not.”

In Stillman Wing we meet a man attempting to resurrect both an ancient tractor and his relationship with his reckless, obese daughter. Weil again masterfully avoids caricature and reveals human beings struggling simultaneously with their painful histories and their desire to remain relevant to the people they love. Despite an obsessive avoidance of risk, the

title character’s capacity for love reveals itself as he rebuilds the Deutz Diesel and takes a potentially lethal leap into the communal culture where his daughter, Caroline, has made a new life. This is Stillman’s story, but readers might like to know more about Caroline and “the Booe child,” who flits in and out of the story like a ghost.

If I had another twenty-two bucks, I would buy you a copy of The New Valley and you would read it. You would read it for the first two stories, but you would remember it for the third. Sarverville Remains is the most powerful of the three novellas, told in the unusual voice of Geoffrey Sarver whose letters to a man in prison trace the outlines of a terrible crime. Geoffrey is “diminished,” but only in a way that makes him trust and love the people who will manipulate and injure him in horrific ways. The author reconstructs Geoff’s story with the same patience and care that Stillman Wing applies to his rebuilding of the Deutz Diesel and the same determination Osby musters in resurrecting his ailing steer.

Josh Weil has painted his characters so vividly you will see them around Sinking Creek. Release me.

Seek them out and ask them to tell you their stories.

I S S U E 1 8 23

short fiction by N. E. Boyce

B

illy huddled in the bus shed awaiting the big yellow torture mobile. Snow swirled about the cubby that wasn’t much bigger than a telephone booth. Darkness was barely starting to recede. The white shed was almost hidden among the wind swept fluff and dimness. Billy wished he could hide there forever.

He kicked about the dust from thirty years of kids. As cold as it was, the smell inside was pungent and musky. How many kids had gotten sick in this thing? How many animals wandered through when the kids weren’t using it? Spider webs and dirt were the primary tenants except for Billy’s quarter hour each morning. Soon the pain would begin.

It rumbled up like the ghost of Christmas past.

Billy had seen A Christmas Carol just this week, and the chains holding the beastly bus to the road reminded him of it. He sagged up the steps and muttered a “Mornin’” to Frank Sharp, the bus driver. Billy didn’t like Mr. Sharp too much. It wasn’t that Mr. Sharp had ever done anything to him, but it was because Mr. Sharp never did anything for him either. Not to mention the fact that Mr. Sharp had spawned and armed the most evil being on the planet.

Billy worked his way through the elementary kids but didn’t want to go too far. The high schoolers in the back could be pretty mean too. He finally came to a seat two rows in front of the monster. Would this be enough space? Could he get to school unharmed? He turtled into the seat and hoped for the best.

Missy and Beth, two fellow sixth graders, sat in front of Billy; they chatted about a friend’s crisis.

“So then Jason kissed her, a bunch.”

“Really? Did she like it?”

“She did at first and was gonna do it again after school, but then Tony told her she was gonna have a baby now.”

“Oh no, a baby, right now?”

“Yep. Tony told her you get babies from kissing so she was crying the rest of the day and scared to go home to her parents.”

“Has she talked to Jason?”

“Nope, she’s afraid he’ll try to kiss her again.”

Billy usually tried to stay to himself, but sometimes his mouth just wouldn’t stay shut. He peeked over the seat and said, “Uh, Missy, Beth, you can’t get pregnant from kissing.” Billy grinned. He liked knowing answers and facts. “There has to be sex. You know, like when the cows are on top of one another. There

24 1 6 B L O C K S

is a penis…”

A blinding pain washed over Billy. He crumpled into the floor, arms raised protectively over his aching skull. Tony Sharp had moved up two seats and thwacked him in the back of the head with his daddy’s U.S. Marine Corps ring. Tony had mastered the art of snapping people in the cranium with his father’s gift.

“Whut you know about it, queerbait? Penises, huh, you probably want some penis yourself, dontcha?

You oughta just keep your hole shut.”

Tony started laughing and was soon joined by the other kids nearby, including Missy and Beth. He spit a wad of gum in his hand and reached down grabbing Billy’s hair. Tony dragged Billy up into the seat and tapped him again with the ring. Tony licked his chapped lips, “There’s a present for ya, pretty and pink just like you.”

“You kids sit down. These roads are rough and I ain’t losing this bus because of you brats.” Frank to the rescue.

Jake’s Place After school, Billy loped up the rutted track to Jake’s place. To visit Jake you either walked or had four-wheel drive. Brush and thistle competed with webbed gullies to keep away the unwanted: Jehovah’s Witnesses, magazine salesmen, ATF, and other pesky types. Eventually Billy crested a flat which lay in the crook of the ridge, an acre of rest before the mountain continued steep.

Centered on the dirt-patched yard a grand carcass known as The Shed strained to remain standing. It was almost as big as a barn, but Jake called it The Shed. Scattered about the rest of the property were the typical denizens of many mountain homesteads: half-length, half-sunk single-wide, rest for Jake; chicken coop, rest for chickens, guineas, and a couple of musk ducks; and the broken remains of former friends, John Deere, Henry Ford, and Cyrus McCormack, who all served now as bullet stops. The centerpiece, however, was The Shed. Billy could make out Jake working in the open garage area.

Billy didn’t like the idea of being shot or gutted, so he called out from several yards away. “Hey there Jake. It’s just Billy.”

Jake glanced up from the limp, torn mass in his fingers. Plucking rooster. “Yeah, I heard ya. Haven’t started drinkin’ yet.”

Billy still approached cautiously. Jake was his best friend in the world, but The Shed could be a dan-

gerous place. Hooks, chains, traps, machetes, nails, The Shed was many things: workshop, meditative sanctum, trophy collection, abattoir.

There were some new cats. Not scampering around playfully, but flat against the black-gray shingles that struggled to hold to the building. They were nailed there. Billy observed, “Mrs. Peterson had better start breeding cats quicker.”

“She don’t have to work hard at creatin’ these pests.” Jake stopped ripping out feathers, lifted the rooster, and flipped up the lid of a rust infested chest freezer that doubled as workbench. The old freezer was surrounded by trophies, deer skulls and antlers, squirrel tails, rabbit tails and feet, snake skins, lines of teeth from all sorts of animals. Tossing the rooster in the freezer, Jake rubbed his hands in a patch of snow and dried them on his coveralls.

Billy headed to the back of The Shed. Once out of the sunlight, The Shed became a very different place. At the back of the open garage area, a metal door was set into a much sturdier wall than the exterior. Inside was a cozy escape from the world. Walled in wormy chestnut and about twenty feet on a side was Jake’s “Thinkin’ Room.” Here were the two sagging Laz-E-Boys they sat in to play chess. Here was the library: the Foxfire Books, Gray’s Anatomy, Britannica, and, of course, Playboy back to Monroe. Jake came in behind Billy.

“The cats bother ya don’t they?”

“Nah, not much Jake. I like to pet them sometimes, other places.” Billy understood Jake, but Jake rarely understood Billy.

“Well, I’ll tell ya right now boy. There are two kinds of animals in the world, the ones of use and the pests. Me and my chickens say cats are pests.” Jake took down the chess board. “You done with your school work?”

“Yeah, now I wanna think.” Billy smiled at Jake.

“Yep, know what ya mean. I been thinking a bunch lately. Been catching up on my reading since the game warden has started haunting my woods.

He’s determined to catch me up there out of season.

Anyway, I’ve been looking over the Bible some.”

Billy took one of Jake’s pawns. He then stared at Jake for a moment. “Jake, you know the Bible by heart, and the Torah, the Quran, the Bhagavad-Gita, and all sorts of philosophy and such. Why bother reading it when I keep bringing you good stuff.”

[

[

The Shed could be a dangerous place.

Hooks, chains, traps, machetes, nails, The Shed was many things: workshop, meditative sanctum, trophy collection, abattoir.

“Oh, I do read your stuff, Billy, but that stuff ain’t real.”

“And the Bible is?”

“In a way. It all serves as a guide you see. Tells ya how to act. Like Galatians 6, you know, 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’” Jake stared at the bruises on Billy’s arms, and then he noticed the ball of gum in his hair. Jake pulled a Buck knife from under his chair and cut out the gum. “See Tony today?”

Billy’s eyes fell back to the board. “Yep, it’s alright though, you know, he moves on to high school next year. Just a few months till Summer, and I won’t see him much for the next couple years. He may grow out of it. Adults do don’t they? I mean it’s a crime to be a bully when you’re old, right?”

Jake made a move on the board, rubbed his salt and pepper stubbled chin. “Maybe so. Maybe he’ll change. Maybe he won’t.”

They played late into the night.

Trophies Billy had a quick step up Jake’s rutted path on Monday. He wondered if Jake had heard the news.

The cats were looking pretty dried out. Jake was in his Thinkin’ Room and smiled at Billy when he came in.

Billy wasn’t smiling but seemed excited.

“Tony’s dead. He was up on William’s ridge shooting junk and somehow shot himself. Can you believe that?” Billy wasn’t overjoyed about it. In fact he seemed sort of sad.

“Good for him. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer feller.” Jake said as he pulled the chess board down.

Billy sat. “He would have grown out of it. He hurt me, but I didn’t want him dead. Every kid picks on other kids.”

“No they don’t, Billy. Just the pests. The useful people don’t behave that way.”

Billy saw a new glint on the wormy chestnut wall and went over to it. It was a new trophy. It was a Marine Corps ring that would never hit the back of his head again. He turned around and stared at Jake. Jake would never understand. Billy walked from The Shed and headed home. He never talked to his best friend Jake again. He still hunts for peace.

I S S U E 1 8 25

t s I l o D O t S k c 16 bl0 find out what’s goin’ on!

th e

co w bo y ju n ki es 10/15, 8PM

The Lyric Theater, Blacksburg Junkies. Since the midToronto’s classic indie quartet, the Cowboy and drums, enriched bass r, guita of tang blues ’80’s, the country and have haunted auins by the dangerous angel vocals of Margo Timm artists. Opening other many diences and inspired filmmakers and its witchy synwith nts leme comp ctly perfe act Lee Harvey Osmond per of vocalwhis lly copated percussion, slide guitar, and the grave ist Tom Wilson.

mUsic 9/18 - 9/20

Rhythm & Roots Reunion Downtown Bristol, TN (just over the state line) I’m not gonna lie, this looks like an amazing festival. Webb Wilder, Patty Loveless (yes, you read that right), Justin Townes Earle, Larry Keel & Natural Bridge, plus many more. For tickets and directions go to www. bristolrhythm.com . $40 for the whole weekend.

Tuesdays

Open mic night Abella’s cafe (formerly the OC) Draper Road, Downtown Blacksburg Open mic night. Every town needs one.

more on pages 27 & 28!

26 1 6 B L O C K S

10/26, 10PM

All Kinds of Gravity Moe’s, Downtown Bburg The fusion of rage and soul = passion.

Blacksburg’s All Kinds of Gravity, with a slew of new material playing a free show after the Miami game. Other bands TBA.

10/3, 2-9PM

Big Lick Blues Festival Elmwood Park, Downtown Roanoke Rain location: Roanoke Civic Center Big Lick Blues Festival brings hot spicy blues and BBQ all day long. Headliner is Texas bluesman Delbert McClinton, composer of the “B-Movie Boxcar Blues.” Also look for Pianist Envy, the keyed-up duo of Rev. Billy C. Wirtz and Victor Wainwright. $20.00 Advance tickets (sold online now; and will be on sale at all regional SunTrust Bank locations on or about Sept. 10). $18.00 SunTrust Bank Customers (when purchased at SunTrust Bank locations). $26.00 Day of Show - at the gate. $22.00 Day of Show (with valid student ID). Kids under 12 get in free.

10/6, 8PM

Perpetual Groove Attitude’s Savannah, GA’s Perpetual Groove live in concert. One-time jam band that’s grown into elements of Southern rock, trance, and electronica. $14 at the door.

LIVE 135 College Ave. Blacksburg, VA

Romeo and Juliet American Shakespeare Center

Friday, September 11, 8pm Tickets will go on sale August 6th. $20 Gold / $15 Silver / $12 Students Cash Bar Available

Cowboy Junkies

Thursday, October 15, 8pm Tickets will go on sale September 3rd. $30 Gold / $25 Silver Cash Bar Available

Mark Nizer

Saturday, October 24, 3pm Tickets will go on sale September 11th $15 Gold / $10 Silver

Cadillac Sky

Friday, November 13, 8pm Tickets will go on sale October 2nd. $23 Gold / $20 Silver Cash Bar Available Call 540.951.4771 or visit us online at www.thelyric.com

Late Night Stage @ Gillie’s sic tic Mu Acous Thursday Ever ySaturday and 00 pm @ 7:

Late Night Fall Kick Off featuring

Facepaint, Senryu, and The Bastards of Fate!

Fri Sept 11 9:30P|

The Stereofidelics

Fri Sept 18 9:30P| Asheville multi-instrumental duo

The Young Sinclairs

Fri Sept 25 9:30P | Magic Twig psychadelic-pop

Venue oking m S n No

Los Dos

Fri Oct 2 9:30P | featuring Jordan Harman Band & Jamiel Allen of The Alliens

6 Day Bender

Fri Oct 9 9:30P | Charlottesville rock & speed grass!

Coming in October…

Saluda GroovaScape visit us online: www.myspace.com/gilliesmusic 153 college street | downtown blacksburg | 540.961.2703

I S S U E 1 8 27

f f U t s d o O g e R mo 9/19, 10AM

Aud itio ns The Lyric Auditions for the second annual in MUSE: A Celebration of Women t mee and nt tale the Arts. Bring your plan to art of ses des other local god the March 19th event.

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS IN OCTOBER

Octobe rfe st at Mt. Lak e g, A celebration of Fall with Toastin r you out ak Feasting and Music! Bre for s glas r you e rais lederhosen and at one of the best times around. Gre the food and great fun provided by Sauerkraut Band. This is not to be missed! $35/person www.mountainlakehotel.com

10/26, 9AM-5PM

Haw k Watch ing Meet at the Rec Center on Patrick Henry Dr chSoaring the Ridgetops: Hawk Wat ying enjo and g hikin day a nd ing. Spe Rapthe view from the Hanging Rock nMou r's Pete tor Observatory atop see will you g, ittin perm ther tain. Wea noste for $10 s. bird zing ama of ton a if $20 s, rger ksbu sibly taxpaying Blac its.

Lim n Tow in with you don't live

16 bl0ckS tO Do lIst

continued!

10/3, all day, all over

Gre eks Giv ing Bac k n This is the first of what Town Gow bewill es hop s tion Community Rela ch come a long legacy of events whi risoro offer VT's fraternities and in ties to improve their reputation ice serv lic pub of day a ugh town thro nup, projects. Yard work, graffiti clea street cleaning. Individuals, busimay nesses, charities and day cares tch@ whu at s chin Hut ley Wes tact con ect. proj thy vt.edu to propose a wor Can't we all just get along?

THURSDAYS thru 10/29, 7PM

s Cof fee wit h the Can didate The Easy Chair Coffee Shop n See what may lie ahead for tow al casu a ying enjo le whi ent governm sells atmosphere. The Easy Chair also a varied collection of used books. .com See http://easychaircoffeeshop ng eari app e's idat cand ch whi see to when.

aRt 9/4-11/7

Taubm an Museu m of Art Downtown Roanoke New fall exhibits include a 2-room installation of giant paper mobiles and other works by LA artist Pae White, a room full of creepy and gorgeous stained glass light boxes by Philadelphia's Judith Schaechter, and «Remembrancer», a mixed media laboratory by composer and computer geek Alberto Gaitan, whose net-connected robotics create intricate fields of color and sound before your eyes.

Mondays, on the Taubm an Museu m Websit e: Podcasts discussing pieces of the museum’s Early American Art collection in depth. www.taubmanmuseum.org

9/8-10/10

Perspe ctive Gallery Squire s Studen t Center Virginia Tech Campus Primal States and Portals: Sculpture

by Kurt Steger. The centerpiece of this installation invites participation by the visitor: the 12-foot-long “Burden Boat” was created “to hold the burdens we all share”. From 9/10-10/3, please stop by during gallery hours to drop a piece of paper with a note or drawing on it representing something you want to let go. On October 4th at 2:30, a procession will start at the gallery and finish in a location where the boat will be destroyed by fire.

9/8-10/17

Armory Gallery 201 Draper Rd Bburg FUNCTION NOT FUNCTION: The work of Denise Woodward-Detrich and David Detrich, a married couple whose work complements and contrasts in a high-energy collection of sculptural ceramics, graphic design inspired mixed media and more that elicits a spontaneous, «Wow!»

10/3, 10AM-5PM

Historic Giles County Courthouse Downtown Pearisburg Art on the Lawn, a free festival of work by artists from 75 miles around.

28

liTeratuRe

thEater 9/11, 8-10PM

Ro me o an d Ju lie t Lyric Theatre American Shakespeare Center performs «Romeo and Ju liet.» Sex and death in Renaissance high society.

SAMUEL BECKETT FESTIVAL

Well, not quite. By coinc idence, two performances of lesser -performed plays by the Irish absur dist are showing within days and a downtown block of each other.

9/28-9/30, 7:30PM

Ro ug h fo r Th eatr e, II Performing Arts Build ing, VT Campus Rough for Theatre, II -- A series of precisely paced storie s exposing the tension in everyda y interactions.

Directed by MFA candid ate Dorothy Atkinson. $FREE.

10/1-10/4, 7PM

En dgam e Old Red Cross Building Draper & Jackson, Do wntown Bburg Endgame -- a dark, ou trageous comedy about four more or less decrepit people awaiting the en d of the world, their own deaths, or the ir liberation from the demented na rcissist whose caprices run their live s -- whichever comes first.

Early October Date and time TBD

Th e Da rw in Pr oj ec t Studio Theatre Squires Student Cente r, VT Campus The Darwin Project, a conceptual musical inspired by the the ory of natural selection and species diversification.

Conceived by Ann Kilkel ly, Directed

by Bob Leonard. Nume rous familiar faces from Tech and downtown participated in the works hops leading up to the final compositio n.

9/18, 7-9PM

Studio Theatre Squires Student Center Virginia Tech Campus Righteously acclaimed author Dorothy Allison reads from her work for the 5th annual Queer in Appalachia literary festival at Tech. Disturbing, funny, and true, her homepage epigraph proclaims: “Understand me.

What I am here for is to tell you stories you may not want to hear. What I am here for is to rescue my dead.

And to scare hell out of you now and then. I was raised Baptist, I know how to do that.”

10/8, 7-8 PM

Volume II Bookstore A reading by Margot Singer, winner of the Flannery O'Connor award for short fiction.

9/25, 7-8PM

Volume II Bookstore A reading by transplanted part-time local author Josh Weil, whose latest ripping good tales of the people of rural Southwest Virginia are reviewed in this magazine.

Tucker Max from pg.19 funny, then I replicated it, and if they didn’t, I asked what was wrong with it. It’s like you can’t bullshit your friends. My style became really curt and humorous because it’s like e-mail, friends - there’s nowhere to hide.

16B: How about Hunter S. Thompson, or Charles Bukowski?

TM: A lot people say those two must be influences, right? They’re both great writers and I respect them, but I’m not a big reader of either one of them. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - I’ve never done drugs so I don’t get it right, and politics aren’t a big deal to me.

Charles Bukowski is a great writer, but he approaches everything in the opposite angle from me. I’m like happy-fun let’s go have a good time, Bukowski’s like “Life sucks, I had a drink and fucked a chick for a minute.” I take the opposite tack. They’re both great writers, but they don’t resonate with me specifically.

can find material. People are out there that can make good movies that aren’t mainstream Hollywood people.

You know why, every publisher and agent in the country and all over the world turned me down. Literally everyone turned me down. They all turned me down.

I said, fuck it. That was in 2002. Pre-MySpace, which is dead now. I had to learn html. They had bandwith limits, 1000 visitors a day. No one would know who I was if it wasn’t for the internet. Everyone turned me down.

16B: I thought maybe Playboy.

TM: DUDE, it’s so funny you said Playboy, we were just talking TODAY, my PR people called Playboy and said, “What the fuck is wrong with you, you’re not covering this.” The editor told them, “I can’t say no quick enough.” And it’s like, you guys wonder why you’re not culturally relevant anymore.

16B: Blog to book to movie, is that the modern way?

TM: Care for another beer? [Digs around in the bus’s cooler] I know there’s more. Its not that a blog is the best way, but I feel Hollywood limits itself on where it

Nils: Darko Entertainment financed the entire movie, they made Donnie Darko. Were behind us and gave us creative control to make this movie the way we wanted to make it, and without that type of support

we wouldn’t be here on this bus.

16B: I’d like to see tours like this happen with movies all the time. What were you riding in for your first book tour?

TM: An RV. A shitty broke-down RV. And now we’re in a three class tour bus. Every step is a little easier.

16B: What do you think of Blacksburg so far?

TM: Blacksburg is like a mecca for college football, and I’m kind of pissed we came too early to go to a game, but a some point either this year or next year we’re coming back. It’s such an awesome crowd, seriously, it really was. No bullshit, you can go look at the interviews at the other cities I’ve visited. This is by far the best crowd we’ve had, as far as being hyper and excited.

Nils: They were stoked, they were in line as we pulled up, TM: They were screaming, they were interactive, there’s no question we’re coming back.

I S S U E 1 8 29

food

for

your

brain

Solution: 1. Rxa5+ Kb8 (If 1... Nxa5 2. Qd8+ Ka7 3. Qxa5+ Kb8 Qd8+ Ka7 7. Qa5+ Kb8, draw by repetition) 2. Qd6+ Rc7 (If 2... Kc8 3. Ra8#) 3. Qf8+ Rc8 4. Qd6+ Rc7 5. Qf8+ Rc8 6. Qd6+ Rc7 (draw by repetition)

Across

1. Amusement 5. Aftermath 10. Space 14. Banned apple spray 15. Spring up 16. Drum sound 17. Adult male deer 18. Island in the East China Sea 19. Golden 20. Warm-blooded 23. Compass dir.

24. Petroleum 25. Churchly 33. ___ Grows in Brooklyn 34. Split 35. Pother 36. Vessel 37. Closes 39. Problem with L.A. 40. Type of shirt 41. Portico 42. Rows 43. Incompatible 47. Knock vigorously 48. ___ de guerre 49. Sympathetic 56. Peruse 58. Concerning 59. Up and ___!

60. Memo heading 61. Style 62. News bit 63. Honey producers 64. Gardening tool 65. Tibetan monk

Down

1. Deep wound 2. Choir member 3. Polite address 4. Thus 5. Branching 6. Speaks publicly 7. Accompanied by 8. In ___ (actually) 9. Mild personality disorder

Chuck Ronco’s

CHESS PROBLEMS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

26

28

33

31

32

54

55

39 42

44

45

47

48

49 57

30 35

38

41

43

56

29

34 37

40

13

24

27

36

12

22

23 25

11

50

51

46

52

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

10. Wild sheep of Asia 11. Agitate 12. Former measure of length 13. Cockpit abbr.

21. Wight or Man 22. Baseball glove 25. Early anesthetic 26. Old newsman 27. Brown-capped boletus mushroom 28. Son of Abraham 29. Wholly 30. Humped ruminant 31. Love deeply 32. Records 33. Italian wine city 37. Strike 38. Great length of time 39. Bro or sis 41. Con game 42. ___ -shanter (Scottish cap) 44. Wears away 45. Make certain 46. Linger aimlessly 49. Vexation 50. In the sack

53

51. Album unit 52. Arrest 53. ___ boy!

54. Abound 55. Anarchist Goldman 56. Umbrella part 57. Compass dir.

Crossword Puzzle provided by Bestcrosswords.com, used with permission SOLUTION ON NEXT PAGE

the piN and the pendulum Black’s threat of checkmate, his two passed pawns, and and extra knight are enough pressure to start White thinking about a draw...

White to move and draw.

Solutions at top of page.

30 1 6 B L O C K S

This edition’s puzzle is the product of Radford’s newest chess wunderkind, Andrew Vaccaro. At fourteen, he taught himself chess and has been taking the chess community by storm!

Wondering how 16 Blocks gets published, when we have never charged for a single copy? Does a grant or bank loan help us bring you the unique content and provocative, beautiful graphics we’ve become known for? Do we have wealthy parents or did one of us seduce a millionaire? None of the above.

C n

K

L

T

ee

.

St

H

Av

Dr

E

.

er

St

ap

ch ur

ll

Co

a Ro

L

e.

e eg

.

St

no

S

c

Ja

ke

Ch

Every issue of 16 Blocks Magazine comes to you courtesy of our advertisers. Businesses from our community entrust our team to bring you their messages along with our own. We give thanks to our advertisers for their continued support. We could not exist without them.

o ks

t.

.

Rd

blacksburg, va N

B S.

.

.

St

St

lay

ain

M

hi

as

on

t ng

.

St

C

N.

Ma in

St.

W

D A G .

es

ic Pr

d kR

r

Fo

A: Attitudes (Ad on pg. 7) B: Snyder & Assoc. (Ad on pg. 11) C: Ceritano’s (Ad on pg. 11) D: Crossroads (Ad on pg. 9) E: Cabo Fish Taco (Ad on pg. 27) F: Sake House (Ad on pg. 11) G: Smith’s Landing (Ad on pg. 18) H: Mish Mish (Ad on pg. 18) I: The Cellar Restaurant (Ad on pg. 18) J: New River Community College (Ad on pg. 9) K: Gillie’s Restaurant (Ad on pg. 27) L: The Lyric Theater (Ad on pg. 27)

F

E D G E R

B E E S

G E N

I

63

N

60

64

R E

61

R E A D

56

57

P A

R A

P

47

50

R R E C O N C E E

40

44

41

I

S H

R E E

A

36

T

33

P

S T O A

E C C

25

26

27

H O M O

20

S T A G

17

A

R

L A

E

G A M

14

2

3

4

L

38

E S

S S E

23

I

21

48

I

45

L

I

28

15 5

O

24

S U

I 7

T I

52

S E 8

9

T

22

53

B L I

E M E M T

54

E

55

E

E R S

S M O G

39

I L

E R M A

R O W E N 6

T

42

S T

29

T

R

I

A

O T H A

S

T

O N A

L A

46

S L

34

M A

18

I

A

59

N O M

S E A

37

I

62

T

S S

51

I

L A M A

65

R E

B O U

58

T

43 1

A

C O M

49

J

I S S U E 1 8 31

G

19

A D O

35

C A

30

31

L I

L

R O L

16

A

10

L

32

T L

R E A

11

12

13

Big lick blues FESTIVAL Sizzlin’ Hot Blues & Smokin’ Ribs

FEATURING

Rev. R Re v. B v.

Bil Billy illly il ly C C. Wi W Wirt Wirtz irttz w/ Victor Victtorr Wainwright Waiinwriight Wa ight

33-Time -Time G Grammy rammy W Winner inner

Stacy Stac St acyy Broo ac B Brooks roo ooks ks

Delbert D elbert M McClinton cClinton

PLUS

The Mo’Hippa Band – 2009 Blues Society’s competition winner!

Martin’s Rib Eating Contest U.S. Foods People’s Choice Rib Competition and More

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:00 - 9:00 PM

ELMWOOD PARK • DOWNTOWN ROANOKE, VA Rain location Roanoke Civic Center

$26 at the Gate • $20 in Advance • Children 12 & under free Advance tickets sold at SunTrust Bank Locations or online at www.BigLickBlues.org Lawn chairs encouraged

540-342-2640

www.BigLickBlues.org