The-Burg.com - Central Virgina's Arts, Culture and Entertainment Weekly

Simon Cowell was granted his final wish on “American Idol.“

Ali Ferguson has a serious problem on her hands.

“Mom,” she says nervously, “Mani’s leg is broken.”

Luckily, it’s nothing a little wood glue can’t fix.

Hollywood heroes are expanding their age demographic this summer.

With a new karate kid, a middle-aged iron man, the return of the school girl-teen wolf-vampire love triangle, and a 1,500-year-old sorcerer, studios seem to have something for everyone from 9 to 999.

When Barbara Cornett goes to work in her art studio, the results are often unpredictable.

“If I know what I’m going to do, I’m not going to do it,” says the Lynchburg resident. “I like the experience. The opening up to new ideas and new ways of doing things.

“I play with the fabric, and that will give me ideas on what direction to go.”

New year, new favorites? You tell us. We want to know who does what best in Lynchburg.

Not so long ago, a wall existed between “real” beer makers and home brewers.

Real beer was what was produced in vast factories and sold in bars and convenience stores and supermarkets. Home brewing was just a hobby, spawning barely palatable concoctions that the hobbyists foisted upon their friends.

Now, that wall is cracking and crumbling all over the United States, allowing lots of very drinkable beer to flow through it.

Recent health reports have advised that we should all be taking at least 10,000 steps, about five miles for the average person, every day.

Get the skinny on Geralds, Drug Store Grill and the Hash House.

There’s usually one person at any party who proudly claims to never, ever watch television.

“Except,” this person will add, “for this one show, you may have heard of it, called ‘The Wire’?”

Such is the piety around which seriously good TV arranges itself and even becomes full of itself: There is (was) “The Wire,” the Baltimore epic of our era from creator and executive producer David Simon, and then there is everything else. That is how backlashes are born, too — if everybody loves something too much, then there has to be a fault to find, or a hubris sets in.