Setting it up was pretty easy, though I had to triple my memory allocation over what I was using with nginx+mongrel.

• I created a new virtual machine, but with more memory than usual: PRIVVMPAGES="150000:300000"
• I vzctl enter <the new machine>
• as root:

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$ apt-get ruby ruby1.8-dev rubygems apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork build-essential vim
$ gem install fastthread 
$ gem install rake (i have rails frozen into my apps, otherwise I would have installed it also)
$ gem install passenger

• for some reason, my binaries were not linked, nor the rubygems path exported, so:

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$ ln -s /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/* /usr/bin (heavy handed, but it works)

• run passenger-install-apache2-module and follow the instructions

after starting apache2, i was able to see my site up and running. yay!