One of two teens charged in the March 27 shooting rampage along Interstate 64 was ordered held without bond today in a closed Charlottesville Albemarle Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court hearing.

Judge Dwight Johnson refused to allow the press to attend the hearing of the 16-year-old Western Albemarle High School student who faces 10 felony counts in the gun play that terrorized members of the community and made national news. Five occupied vehicles were shot– four from the Route 690 overpass in Greenwood and one from the Ivy exit on I-64, and two people suffered minor injuries.

Johnson, most famous for sentencing a couple to eight years for serving alcohol to minors, closed the hearing under a Virginia statute that allows cases involving juveniles 14 and under to be closed and also allows cases involving older teens to be closed at the discretion of the judge.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford said only that the youth had been detained and the next hearing would be April 16. She did not comment on whether the teen will be tried as an adult, or whether the next hearing will also be held in secret. (more)

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In addition to grabbing a great burger and a cold beer, on Tuesday, April 8 at around 8pm you’ll also be able to watch a female arm wrestling tournament. Apparently, there’s a female arm wrestling league in town called C.L.A.W. (Charlottesville Ladies Arm Wrestlers), and they’re holding the event at the Blue Moon to raise money for someone called Peace Scooter Girl, who plans to travel around the country talking to people about– well, peace. Anyway, we can’t imagine there’s anything more interesting that that going on on a Tuesday night.

Blue Moon Diner Classic old diner on West Main with an artsy twist. Burgers, breakfast, brunch, dinner. 512 W. Main St. 980-6666.

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Following an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 2006, Gail “For Rail” Parker is once again running to represent Virginia in the world’s most deliberative body. The 62-year-old retired Air Force officer will run under the banner of the Independent Green Party and will offer a platform of installing a light rail train system to solve the Commonwealth’s transportation woes. Parker announced today that she has the requisite 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot, which she will present to the State Board of Elections today.

Her ‘06 campaign gained national attention, and not only for the fact that she may have swayed the unprecedentedly close election to Jim Webb with her last minute endorsement. No, Parker’s legacy is greater than that; her radio ads featured (more)

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According to his MySpace page which launches Clint Black’s hit country song “Like the Rain,” and calls its owner a ‘lost bogger,’ Slade Allen Woodson is a “just a poor country boy tryin to survive.”

On a page decorated with autumn leaves, the confederate flag, and standing invitation to go “mud boggin’,” a portrait emerges of a hard-working, hard-playing young man who didn’t quite finish his senior year at Western Albemarle High School and now stands arrested and accused of injuring two Interstate 64 motorists and shooting up various other area sites.

At a 6pm press conference yesterday, a State Police spokesperson announced that Woodson and an unnamed 16-year-old, also now in custody, will be charged with at least 10 felonies each in the shooting spree that closed Albemarle County schools Thursday and created havoc on I-64.

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Just two years ago, when he was Western Albemarle student-athlete, Slade Allen Woodson made a 12-foot pole-vault in a regional tournament. Today, the 19-year-old Batesville man has been launched into custody for his alleged role in the shooting spree that injured two motorists and provoked terror responses, including closed schools and canceled soccer practices.

At a morning news conference, State Police spokesperson Steve Flaherty said that Woodson was one of five people inside a house at Yonder Hill Farm at 4:48am when a law enforcement team arrived to serve a search warrant.

One person inside the house, whom police do not consider a suspect, was injured by gunfire and transported to UVA Medical Center. Police declined to detail the person’s injury or injuries, nor would they release the name (more)

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8:20am update: WINA radio newsman Rob Graham is reporting that the search warrant was served at Yonder Hill Farm and that neighbors report hearing gunfire and seeing a medical evacuation helicopter flying overhead eary this morning.

According to County tax records examined by the Hook, the 91-acre Yonder Hill Farm is owned by David and Christine Charters. While they have a local phone number, the tax records list a Centreville address for the couple. A message left by the Hook at their Crozet phone number was not immediately returned.

(Author’s addendum: Given that Christine Charters recently purchased a house in her own name in Centreville, and given that her co-owner here is actually “Estate of David Charters,” perhaps the good Mr. Charters no longer resides on this earth. Moreover, given the paucity of information, I cannot say whether the folks occupying this house on her farm are renters, squatters, friends, relatives, or something else.)

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Newsplex: warrant served in I-64 spree (original 6:57am headline)

Authorities have served a warrant at a house on Jarman’s Gap Road and Lane Place in connection with the shootings on I-64, according to a story recently posted by the Charlottesville Newsplex. In another tantalyzing news bit, NBC29 reports that officials are interested in an AMC Gremlin seen at the scene of a bank shooting in Waynesboro.

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Will Van Halen eventually play John Paul Jones Arena? We’ll find out in “The Long Run.” Until then, classic rock fans have ’70s giants the Eagles to look forward to when they come to the JPJ on Wednesday, May 21.

Tickets for the show go on sale next Friday, April 4 at 10am and will be available at the box office, online, or by calling 1-888-JPJ-TIXS. No word yet on what seats will cost, but considering that tickets to one of their four shows already on sale range from $65-$185, don’t expect ticket prices to “Take It Easy” on fans’ wallets.

If you’re under the age of 30 or over the age of 70, the Eagles are one of the best-selling bands in the world, scoring five #1 singles, six #1 albums, and selling more than 100 million albums worldwide, including 29 million copies of Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975, which officially passed Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 2000 as (more)

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Downtown’s biggest parking company reports that fewer downtown concerts, along with a pair of business shuffles, conspired to reduce cars in its lots by 18 percent in 2007, according to a fireworks-packed annual meeting that included the confiscation of a reporter’s notes by a company lawyer.

“2007 was another good year for CPC as we continued our purpose of providing low-cost parking for downtown shoppers,” said Charlottesville Parking Center chair Jim Berry at the meeting in an office on Westfield Road. He reported that a late 2006 boost in parking prices coupled with a ban on validated parking in the company’s surface lot helped the company gross more than a $100,000 in additional revenue despite a drop to 587,000 hourly parkers, down from 717,000 of them in 2006.

As Berry explained to at least 25 stockholders and company officials, the year’s annual profit of $370,000 was second only (more)

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The maven of Mitford, author Jan Karon, told a sold-out crowd at the Virginia Festival of the Book luncheon at the Omni today that she created 700 characters in her most recent book, Home to Holly Springs, and sometimes found it hard to tell which voice she was hearing in her head.

Albemarle resident Karon created the wholesome Mitford series and published the first of nine books about Episcopalian priest Father Tim and his flock in 1994. “When I started writing the Mitford books, I thought he was a little boring,” she said.

Her relationship with the pudgy priest changed over the years, and in her most recent book, she leaves Mitford, set in her native North Carolina mountains, and follows Father Tim to his new fictional locale, Holly Springs, Mississippi. She compares the launch of the Father Tim series to (more)

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Ever strolled the Downtown Mall on a warm day looking for a place to throw your empty drink container, but awash in enviro-guilt as you discarded it in one of those black garbage cans? If only you look a little harder, walk a little further, you think, maybe you could recycle it.

Well, now you can tell that still, small voice in your head to pipe down. Just yesterday the City installed 12 new green recycling bins (like the one Parks & Rec employee Clifton Brown is installing at left) beside the black ones on and around the Mall.

Currently, plastic, glass, and aluminum are the only materials that can be deposited in the new receptacles. However, if you find yourself with a used paper cup or newspaper (more)

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One day after the Hook’s first article about possible lay-offs at LexisNexis was posted online, the company reacted by sending a soothing mass email to each of its 300 Charlottesville employees, reassuring them that all is well and that there is no corporate plan to systematically eliminate positions, as several employees said they feared.

“What is true is that the more than 300 employees, colleagues, friends, neighbors, spouses, partners, acquaintances, and confidantes gathered here under the LexisNexis name all matter�€“ each and every one of us,” says the email, which disputes several claims in the Hook’s article.

The email denies that Lexis’s local workforce (more)

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Three separate locations of last night’s shootings on I-64 were confirmed this morning in a press briefing: the Ivy exit at mile marker 114, the route 690 overpass (Greenwood Station Road), and the Virgina Department of Transportation (VDOT) maintenance shop in Yancey Mills.

Virginia State Police Superintendent Colonel W. Steven Flaherty said that while police are still awaiting ballistics testing, it “appears that the same type of gun was used in all three locations.” Based on witness accounts, Flaherty said that more than one suspect was involved. Although multiple shooters are suspected, Flaherty said he is not sure if multiple guns were involved or if (more)

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6:50am: The Miller School has now closed for the day.

6:30am update: All lanes on I-64 have reportedly reopened.

6:22am update: Albemarle schools and the Miller School are reportedly on a two-hour delay because of the Afton situation.

5:38am update– It’s a shooting! Four vehicles were hit by gunfire, according to an online story in the News Virginian in Waynesboro. Two people were injured, but their injuries do not appear to be life-threatening, according to the newspaper.***

I-64 slammed shut to W’boro (original 5:31am headline)

Traffic is backed up for miles this morning as both directions of Interstate 64 have been closed all the way from Charlottesville to Waynesboro.

Highway spokesperson Lou Hatter concedes in a release that authorities don’t know how long the road— shut from Exit 96 in Augusta County to Exit 118 in Albemarle County due to “police activity”— will remain closed.

Hatter says motorists are advised to avoid the area and expect “significant delays” on Route 250 and other nearby highways. Real-time updates can be obtained at www.511Virginia.org.

Hatter’s release didn’t say whether the closure was related to the forest fires currently burning in Augusta County and throwing copious volumes of smoke into the Western reaches of Albemarle.

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Charlotesville radio veteran Dick Mountjoy passed away this afternoon at age 61, after a two-year struggle with cancer.

“He died very peacefully, and he died knowing people cared for him,” says his longtime WINA co-host, Jane Foy.

For four decades, Mountjoy had been an institution on the central Virginia airwaves: first spinning Top 40 hits on local AM station WELK in June 1965 as a 19-year-old UVA first year. Soon he climbed the radio ranks to become the station’s programming director, and even became one of Charlottesville’s first television personalities, reading the news when NBC29 first began broadcasting. When WELK disappeared in the wave of new FM music stations, Mountjoy made the transition to morning talk on WINA-AM, where he remained until 2006.

That’s when he began to experience a sore throat that wouldn’t go away. After several alleged missed diagnoses, doctors eventually found a large (more)

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How quickly we forget. In a Daily Progress story today about the new $21 million Jefferson Scholars Foundation headquarters (photo bottom right), a 25,000-square-foot complex to be built on the site of the former Eugene Bradbury-designed Beta House/Compton House (photo left) on Maury Avenue, it’s mentioned that the “project drew criticism over the past year from several local historic preservationists who denounced the foundation’s decision to demolish a 93-year-old house to make way for the new structure.”

And that’s it.

In fact, Charlottesville’s own preservation and design planner, Mary Joy Scala, called the demolition of the Beta House (more)

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What’s wrong with this picture (besides the clumsy photography)? Normally the three winners of the Hook short story contest, handpicked in a blind reading by our judge, John Grisham, would appear in this photo with Hook editor Hawes Spencer, the guy on the right.

That didn’t happen this year.

In a freakish convergence of fate and fiction, previous contest winner and published novelist Sally Honenberger, left, took second AND third place. Less-published writer Christy Strick, former catering manager at Farmington, takes home the grand prize of $700. Her story, “Moving,” according to Grisham is “Not the typical way to end a marriage, but a very funny scheme to divide the assets.”

Read it in this week’s Hook, which hits the stands March 27. Honenberger’s last entries to the Hook fiction contest will appear when the weather gets warmer.

Other parts of the opening were what we’ve come to expect: Rob Vaughan, head of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, makes his opening remarks and somehow manages to keep his comments fresh, despite this being the 14th time he’s done this. The youths who’ve won the Letters About Literature contest proudly read their epistles to authors whose books have changed their lives.

Also: The Big Read, which this year is To Kill a Mockingbird, is plugged. And an author says something profound about books and reading. Mercifully, Charles Shields draws laughs with a cautionary tale of his father’s reading, which had reached “a kind of mania,” and Shields notes that “after a life time of reading thousands and thousands of books, [his father] still had the working class prejudices of a man who’d never gone to high school.”

To cram as many bookish events as possible into the next few days, check out the Hook’s hot lit picks for this year’s Fest.

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Local filmmaker Barry Sisson unveils his latest picture tomorrow night in Calabasas, California, as the opening night selection of the Method Fest Independent Film Festival.

Familiar Strangers, a low-budget family comedy/drama starring Road Trip veteran D.J. Qualls and 2004 Golden Satellite award nominee Shawn Hatosy, debuts at 7pm Thursday at the Louis B. Mayer Theatre.
“We’re excited to be the opening film,” says Sisson, who financed the 2003 picture The Station Agent, which was distributed by Miramax to rave reviews. A subsequent film produced by Sisson’s Cavalier Films production company called Charlie’s Party, however, went straight to video.

“We’re excited to be here,” says Sisson, leading an entourage of seven in Calabasas. “This is not a gigantic festival, but it’s a prestigious one because it celebrates great acting.”

Shut out of Sundance, Familiar Strangers will get another showing in late April at the Newport Beach Film Festival, which reportedly draws more industry execs.

The picture was shot in the Shenandoah Valley, received local test screenings, and is directed by near-rookie Zackary Adler.

Sisson is eager to find a distributor and get the movie into theaters. “We make these movies to show them to people,” says Sisson, “and it’s frustrating to have them sit around.”

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Local country rock outfit Sons Of Bill has become the latest band to sign with Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management, joining a clientele that includes the likes of such heavy music biz hitters as Alanis Morrisette, Cheap Trick, Trey Anastasio, and Robert Randolph & The Family Band. The announcement came via the sudden appearance of the band’s name on the homepage of Red Light’s website. The group is only the third Charlottesville band to become a Capshaw cohort, after last year’s signing of one-time Hook cover boys Sparky’s Flaw and some fiddle-and-sax band from the early ’90s.

The group’s name is meant to be taken literally, as the band’s lineup includes the three sons of William Wilson, the assistant dean of arts and sciences at UVA: lead guitarist Sam Wilson, rhythm guitarist and lead singer James Wilson, and Abe Wilson on keyboards and banjo. After the brothers added bassist Seth Green and an ever-changing series of drummers to the mix in 2005, their live act steadily gained a following both at home playing clubs and abroad playing military bases in Asia at the behest of the Pentagon.

Soon, the band caught the attention of (more)

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The Daily Progress is losing its senior reporter, the man whose 31 years of experience may be more than the total of the combined metro news squad. According to stories in this morning’s Progress and Newport News Daily Press, senior reporter Bob Gibson, who writes the influential “Political Notebook” column among other duties, is leaving the newspaper to head the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, succeeding Sean O’Brien, who left to head a new Constitutional center at Montpelier.

Gibson’s track record covering an array of topics— including an award-winning early ’90s investigation of racial sentencing disparities— has made him the “dean” of the local journalism world.

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