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NEWS: CHARTER SCHOOLS, PUBLIC POWER, ETC.
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SPOTLIGHT: TANGO WITH MOSHE SHULMAN
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ART: MICHAEL BEAM, ORIN LANGELLE
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FILM: KUBRICK EXHIBITION IN TORONTO
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GOOD NIGHT, LESLIE FEINBERG (1949-2014). (SELF-PORTRAIT BY THE AUTHOR OF STONE BUTCH BLUES.)
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THIS WEEK ISSUE NO. 2 | NOVEMBER 19, 2014
NEWS: Visiting Tesla, charter schools, prison issues, and more.
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BOOKS: Remembering a summer with poet John Berryman.
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EMPLOYMENT IN THE COMMUNITY
We neglected to credit Craig LaRotonda in print for his beautiful cover illustration last week. Sorry, Craig, we didn’t mean to Miley Cyrus you…
WNY PETS
BUFFALO’S MISSED CONNECTIONS
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COVER ART: ISSUE NO. 1
BY CRAIG LAROTONDA
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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Moshe Shulman tangos.
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THEATER: Lombardi and Death of a Salesman.
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ILLUSTRATION: Mind Over Mortar by Mickey Harmon.
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FOOD & DRINK: New on local menus, and other restaurant news.
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THE PUBLIC / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
Alexander O. Levy (1881–1947), Winter Delaware Park (detail), c.1928; Oil on board, 12" x 12"; Collection of Catherine & Dana Tillou.
On view at the Burchfield Penney Art Center through March 29, 2015. Alexander O. Levy (1881–1947) was at one time thought of as Buffalo’s most important artist. His work captured and defined the look of the early 20th century. This unique retrospective exhibition features more than 75 of Levy’s works from both public and private collections, shown together for the first time.
For additional information, please visit www.BurchfieldPenney.org.
DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 3
NEWS PAPER STREETS
BLAME SOMEBODY The sweet temptation of believing that things are worse than ever
BY WOODY BROWN
It is hard to remember that things in general do not really change all that much. Part of the reason for this is that the very word “news” pretty sharply defines news as being, well, new—new developments, new catastrophes, new words. All news media is fundamentally concerned with reporting new things, which makes an obvious, stupid kind of sense. But think of how much of a mess it is every time an ostensibly new word comes along. Last year, magazines, radio shows, and newspapers spent the better part of a month covering the scandalous introduction of “badassery,” “selfie,” and “twerk” into the Oxford Dictionaries. What, pandering reporters pondered, is the world coming to? Is this how the world ends? Not with a bang but with dancing “to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance”? Nevermind the fact that the dominant white discourse has always been averse to any language that could be even briefly construed as having even a minor connection with black people. I just finished reviewing Sweetness #9, the first novel by Stephan Eirik Clark. It follows the life of David Levereaux, a flavorist who was briefly involved in the development of Sweetness #9, an artificial sweetener with all of the obesity-inducing, carcinogenic qualities of aspartame that we learn, forget, and relearn every year or so. The novel is a lot of fun and you should read it. But one thing struck me in particular; namely, that neither narrator nor author sees fit to consider other possible causes for all of the feats of human degradation supposedly achieved by Sweetness #9. By the end of the 1990s, the sweetener is omnipresent: Its lack of calories and supersweetness make it popular with both consumers and food development corporations. It is eventually responsible for everything from David’s son’s refusal to say any verbs to his wife’s yo-yoing weight to national depression, anxiety, and suicide. Or so we are to believe. I don’t believe that at all. To vest Sweetness #9 or aspartame or GMOs or Nalgene bottles or cellphones with sole responsibility for all our ills is to perform what the Ancient Greeks called pharmakos: the ritual slaughter of a scapegoat. The sacrificial lamb, whether it be a chemical or a device or a person, comes to stand for a wide range of undesirable things that often have no human cause—the weather, earthquakes, occasional unhappiness—and the only solution for these problems is the death of the unfortunate thing. Which is of course not to say that Monsanto is a pitiable, shivering lamb. Clark’s novel takes for granted the claim that things in general are worse now than they have ever been before and posits artificial food additives as the reason for that. Unfortunately, this is the way conversations about things like mental illness, genocide, fanaticism, and kids in grade school having a hard time paying attention in class often go. The discourse makes two fatal assumptions: First, that whatever we are dealing with now is worse than whatever anyone has had to deal with before, and second, that there is a cause for that. The causes almost always align with one or the 4
other political ideology. For example, if there is a horrifying school shooting, it happened because of a Republican refusal to fund treatment for the mentally ill and a Republican refusal to control gun ownership. If Bashar al-Assad gases another 10,000 Syrian civilians, it is because the Democrats did not want to bomb the entire country out of existence. If Hurricane Whoever again floods part of New York City, it is because the Republicans are single-handedly causing global warming. If Ebola appears in Dallas, it is because the Democrats have refused to block frightening, yucky Mexicans from crossing the border into our obese homeland. The news is always someone’s fault. The most compelling narrative, though, is when the fault is our own. We couldn’t listen to the bumper stickers, we couldn’t let the power of love overcome the love of power, and now we have to pay the price and eat our artificially-sweetened just desserts. Some of these explanations hold more water than others. What they all have in common, though, is their tendency to collapse large problems with numerous and varied causes into monosyllabic, partisan rallying cries. When it comes to the environment or public health, the claimed objectivity of science is always used as ammunition to show that one or the other side is rejecting irrefutable fact like a big dumb idiot. In the end, Sweetness #9 is another small, well-written voice advancing yet another single explanation for why everything is terrible right now. In that sense, it is as useful as streaks and splotches of grey in a Jackson Pollock painting: it certainly adds something, but it is not the single load-bearing column that is the necessary condition for everything else. That would be the canvas. But what if you reject the depressing idea that everything is terrible? This, in our world, is almost criminally ignorant. If we do this, we become part of the problem—almost as if it is our duty to be upset, to be unhappy and annoyed and dissatisfied along with everyone else. How could we not be? Look at it all! Everything already looks like Blade Runner or Se7en, especially in Buffalo: wet, gunmetal, dirty, robots everywhere, grotesque dioramas of sin, etc. This all sounds too easy to me. Things are not as bad as we apparently think they should be (or wish they would be). The thing is that the only news that is ever fit to print is bad news. We like to be scared, to come face to face with images of skyscrapers crumbling and homes in splinters and non-white children blown to bits on a beach in Gaza. This is endemic in the publishing world, which has apparently always been dying. For years, for decades, people have been writing articles and
THE PUBLIC / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
THE SKY SEEMS TO BE PERPETUALLY FALLING. AND YET IT HAS YET TO FALL, HASN’T IT? SO WHY SHOULD IT FALL TOMORROW? AND IF IT DOES, WHY SHOULD THE CAUSE BE GENETICALLY MODIFIED COWS? thinkpieces and whatever about how no one reads books anymore, the novel is a dead form, paper will be a dated relic in ten years, children can’t focus long enough to write their own names, etc. etc. ad nauseam. And yet, remarkably, I am still writing this, I am writing it and it will be published in a brand new publication, and you, miraculously, are still reading it. You may not be reading it on a piece of paper, but being unhappy about that makes about as much sense as being unhappy that you’re not reading it on a vellum scroll. Dan Piepenbring, in The Paris Review, writes, “In publishing, the sky is always falling. Every year is an abysmal year for books and a terrific year for books. Editors no longer edit, except when they do; publishers care only for their bottom line, except when they don’t; the three-martini lunch is always dead, always quietly continuing.” The sky seems to be perpetually falling. And yet it has yet to fall, hasn’t it? So why should it fall tomorrow? And if it does, why should the cause be genetically modified cows, especially considering the fact that “no verifiable untoward toxic or nutritionally deleterious effects resulting from the consumption of foods derived from genetically modified crops have been discovered anywhere in
the world”? In Buffalo, the general mood seems to imply that the sky fell a while ago, and now we are just floating here like idiots, embarrassed at our own will to survive in a fallen place. But the commute is short and the houses are cheap, even though we still have to tackle pesky problems like entrenched racism, segregation, and public corruption. And did you know that children are reading more now than they ever have before? “It does not appear that time spent using screen media (TV, video games and computers) displaces time spent with print media,” says a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation of youth reading habits, quoted by Hannah Withers and Lauren Ross. 96.8% of North Americans aged 15-24 can and do read, according to a UNESCO report, and if they, like many, read all of the books in the A Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia series, they will have read more than 13,500 pages just for fun. But that shouldn’t keep us from prescribing them Ritalin and Adderall—all they do is play Minecraft P and send each other nude Snapchats. Right?
STORY NEWS
TESLA, VOLTS, & SNOWDROPS A visit with the inventor at Niagara Falls State Park
BY NANCY J. PARISI The Walkers of Arlington, Virginia. PHOTO BY NANCY J. PARISI
Inspired by the November 16 broadcast of This Day in History, a daily WBFO feature spoken by Mark Wozniak, stating that the day marked the 118th anniversary of electricity reaching the city of Buffalo, I drove to Niagara Falls State Park to visit the seated bronze statue of Nikola Tesla on Goat Island. In this depiction he is larger than life, gazing down at an open book on his lap; the exposed pages gleam brightly from the occasional tourist who crawls up for this welcoming photographic opportunity. This Tesla is a copy of another (with different base) bronze located at Belgrade University, carved by Croatian sculptor Frano Kršinić. He was a gift of the people of Yugoslavia, dedicated during the United States’ bicentennial year. Currently at the edge of a large parking lot (and
yards of chain link fencing during interminable park renovations), and facing the waters leading to the Falls, the statue is reportedly being re-sited some time in the future at a place of greater prominence. Suggestions for Tesla’s new home have included a traffic rotary on Rainbow Boulevard, alongside the remaining transformer house where the Falls’ thunderous power became electric, or on Stedman’s Bluff further north on the island. Tesla, today honored by eponymous Tesla Motors electric car company and a sign at the corner of 6th Avenue and West 40th Street (Nikola Tesla Corner) in Manhattan, is the Croatian-born inventor who, at an early age proclaimed that he was “fascinated by a description of Niagara.” A few years later, he said that he would harness its surging powers. And he did.
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Visiting the Falls, and Tesla, on this electric anniversary was Rolando Brady of Florida. While working in Watertown he decided to take the three-hour drive to sight-see. He pulled out his smartphone to make an image of the sculpture and realized his battery was too low. He didn’t realize, due to the several construction barricades in the park, that he could get much closer to the cataracts’ precipice. “He wasn’t credited for electricity, I don’t know why,” he said. Originally from the Ukraine and now living near Toronto, Alexandra Danshina was thrilled to see the sculpture. “He was an Eastern European guy,” she began, “and he worked on electric impulses.” As wet snowdrops fell in the park a family of three walked up to Tesla from the parking lot—engineer Rich Walker, journalist Jamie Walker, and their
daughter Natalie, still wrapped in her clear plastic Cave of the Winds poncho. The three, from Arlington, Virginia, were elated to be in Niagara Falls: Rich had been to the attraction when he was his young daughter’s age and the other two had never seen the Falls before. Cave of the Winds had left a great impression on Natalie who climbed up on the statue’s base but who would not sit on Tesla’s lap. Rich knew about Tesla’s coil, electromagnetism, War of Currents (Tesla versus Edison), and more. The trio, it was revealed, was in town for the launch party of a book that Jamie had just designed for author and attorney Laurie L. Menzies. The book, Embracing Elderhood: Planning for the Next Stage of Life, was being feted at MusicalFare Theatre at P Daemen College that evening.
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NEWS EDUCATION
CORPORATE CHARTERS
THE FORUM RESOLUTION AND THE SCHOOL BOARD MAJORITY’S VISION In July, the Buffalo School Board Majority released its mission statement, “A Vision for Buffalo Public Education,” making its intent clear regarding the future of charters in Buffalo: “The Board should actively recruit high performing providers by offering space in vacant school buildings, co-location space in operating schools and an enhanced charter reimbursement formula.”
Buffalo school board majority’s vision tested
(Three phrases should set off alarms in the head of a thinking person: “high performing,” “co-location” and “enhanced charter reimbursement formula.”) Last week, the contentious issue hit a low boil after school board majority member and local developer Carl Paladino was accused of having a conflict of interest.
BY SHANE MEYER Last Saturday the meeting on Corporate School Reform [CSR] briefly lost its momentum, skidding over slippery linguistic terrain. “Should we even call the movement to privatize education ‘reform’ – a word that itself calls to mind progressive struggles and ideals?” asked one member of the scores of school teachers, parents and concerned citizens present. “More like Corporate School Deform!” rang out an alternative suggestion from the other end of the room. There was no formal agreement on the future use of the verb, although the informal suggestion did echo through the vaulted space of Karpeles Manuscript Library unchallenged. At the heart of a seemingly minor point of usage is the seed of a major debate about what the privatization of public educational resources means. Three speakers took the floor of Karpeles, offering three perspectives on the fight over the control of educational resources: Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters and resident of New York City, gave a front line account of the effects of heavy charter school influx; Dr. Mark Garrison, Professor of Education Policy and Research at D’Youville, denounced the radical change in the conception of the student brought about by privatization advocates; and, Eric L. Mihelbergel, a parent activist with the New York State Allies for Public Education [NYSAPE], outlined strategies for parents who want their kids exempted from the Common Core tests. The present article centers on Haimson’s case study, as it provides an example from recent history of what the privatization agenda looks like in action.
CHARTER SCHOOL CASE STUDY: NEW YORK CITY The book on charter schools, warns Haimson, is in: they suck up public funds, while keeping their own records private; they are relentlessly focused on testing to the detriment of traditional learning models; they have a poor record of dealing with special needs students, and a worse record of booting kids who aren’t living up to their standards; and, they are intent—in partnership with data-mining companies—to market and sell students’ personal info. In some cases, charter schools and public schools are housed in the very same building—two schools in one. From co-location—he technical name for the public/private splice—has sprung problems never seen before by educators. Turf battles over territory within schools.
In a Monday editorial, the Buffalo News came out on the side of Paladino, while accusing his accusers of obfuscating the issue: if Paladino’s vote is rendered nil, then the majority is no longer a majority, and the board’s ability to make decisions compromised, the paper opined.
Administrative wrangling for space comes at the students’ expense. “It’s common to see special needs kids getting attention in stairwells and hallways,” remarked Haimson. At this point during Haimson’s talk, the specter of Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, wafted into the room. Moskowitz, a divisive figure, is lauded by advocates of CSR as a no-nonsense visionary, and reviled by opponents as an overpaid (salary and bonus for 2012-13: $567,500) and harsh administrator, whose schools employ non-union teachers. A recent New York Daily News opinion was remarkable in its inability to make Moskowitz: “Is Eva Moskowitz the Michael Jordan of education reform, or is she Mark McGwire? I have no idea…” Writing on her blog, Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education under Bush Sr. and Clinton, had a different sports analogy in mind: “Her numbers are gimmicks, obtained by removing low scoring students from her schools. The high-scoring students remain and the low-scoring students are gone, along with their potentially disruptive effects on classrooms and the school as a whole. Eva is more like Lance Armstrong. They both win through artificial means. Lance through blood transfusions and EPO. Eva through attrition of students and obsessive test prep.” In May, Haimson, in a testimony before the NYC Council Education Committee, denounced the “myth” that charter school students scored higher because they’re better at educating kids. Echoing Ravitch, she claims that the numbers are cooked. In particular, she noted that the combined average suspension rate at Success Academy schools was about twice as high as district public schools. She added that the Success Academy schools lose half of their students by sixth grade. Teachers in the audience at Karpeles were themselves familiar with the experience of accepting—often in the middle of the school year—underperforming kids that had been cut free by local charters.
In their defense the News doesn’t say that Paladino doesn’t have a conflict of interest—instead, downshifting into relativity mode, the editors invite the reader to ponder the meaning of ‘interest’: “Paladino said he expects only a 10 percent return but invests in charters because he believes in them.” Or does he believe in them because he expects a 10 percent return? Indeed, if the schools perform at a higher rate, would the conflict become greater? Finally, what percentage would the investments have to achieve in order for the News to reconsider its position? The News wraps the editorial with an uninspiring flourish, noting that, depending on where one comes down on the conflict of interest issue, the “real losers” will be the children “whose education might be rescued by an expansion of charter schools.” Might be! Not exactly a ringing endorsement. The resolution from Saturday’s forum was less wishy-washy: “[We] express our support for the teachers, parents, students, staff and administrators opposing the efforts to privatize Buffalo public schools and turn them over to private charter school interests, including handing over public school buildings and space for free. We represent teachers, parents, students and community members from Buffalo and surrounding school districts and we stand together for public control of public schools.” The Buffalo News’s editorial board is eager to add its weight behind the push for the Board Majority’s vision for increased charter school presence; however—as reports on their underwhelming performance and questionable practices in New York City show—the urge to do something should not preclude the opportunity to do something good. This week there’ll be a chance for parents, teachers and concerned citizens to voice their concerns to the school board. Forum members have organized a “Pack the Boardroom!” event for the upcoming board meeting on Wednesday, November 19 in Room 801, Buffalo City Hall at 5:30pm.
HERITAGE INSIGHTS: LARKIN TERMINAL WAREHOUSE The 10-story, 600,000-square-foot Larkin Terminal Warehouse, designed by Lockwood, Greene, & Co., was completed in under one year from 1911 to 1912. An example of the “simplest, plainest, and most straight-forward expression of reinforced concrete framed construction,” in the words of architectural historian Reyner Banham, “it is a totally self-assured design, as if architects had been designing in this mode for four centuries, instead of four years.” The gravel used in the reinforcing concrete was dredged from the Niagara River’s Strawberry Island, one reason that the island is no longer shaped like a strawberry. -PUBLIC STAFF P
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POLITICS NEWS
POWER & THE PUBLIC:
MONEY GROWS ON FAMILY TREES BY LITTLESIS
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent campaign finance filings provide a useful guide to one of Buffalo’s more prominent family trees, that of the Jacobs family, owners of the multi-billion dollar concessions conglomerate Delaware North. In the three months prior to his election, the governor received a series of $5,000+ contributions not only from Jeremy Sr. and his wife Margaret, but also from every one of their six children ( Jeremy Jr., Lisann, Louis, Charles, Margaret Reichenbach, and Katie Robinson), plus five of their children’s spouses (Alice, Bruce Platt, Joan, Kimberly, and John Reichenbach). No politician had ever received contributions from all 13 contributors, though Jeremy’s nephew, Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs, came close in 2010. Some of the checks were likely handed over at a September fundraiser that Jeremy and Margaret hosted for Cuomo at their East Aurora estate. Other leading members of Buffalo’s power elite paid $2,500-$25,000 to attend the event. In October, Cuomo reported a $5,000 in-kind travel contribution from a Delaware North-related company, Management Services, Inc. We suspect that Cuomo is familiar with its Gulfstream G200 corporate jet. All told, Cuomo received $74,750 from the Jacobs family this year.
Attempting to establish a clear link between a particular campaign contribution and a related payoff is always a perilous exercise, fraught with uncertainty. Perhaps the Jacobs family’s generosity towards Cuomo had something to do with the controversy that arose last year when Delaware North sought millions in public subsidies to move its headquarters a few blocks. At the time, Cuomo rose to the Jacobs family’s defense, placing a call to Jeremy Sr. that was reported on the front page of the Buffalo News. The subsidies were eventually approved. There was also New York State’s approval of another project by Delaware North and Uniland, the $150 redevelopment of Niagara Falls’ Rainbow Centre mall into a hotel and entertainment complex called “Wonder Falls.” That project, which will receive subsidies as part of Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion, was announced in August, just one month before the Jacobs fundraiser. Or perhaps the payoff is related to Delaware North’s gaming business in New York State. Cuomo’s casino commission is in the process of approving four new casino licenses. One of those proposed casinos is located near Delaware North’s Finger Lakes Gaming and Racetrack, and so could pose a threat to its bottom line if it gains approval. Notably, the gaming interests of Delaware North’s predecessor, Emprise
(founded by Jeremy’s father, Louis), led to a 1972 conviction of the company on federal racketeering charges for concealing an ownership stake, alongside mob interests, in a Las Vegas casino. In 2010, the Jacobs family did not bother to bundle smaller contributions to Cuomo—Jeremy and Margaret just cut him twin $50,000 checks. Since then, the governor has been hit with a federal inquiry into his efforts to thwart the Moreland Commission, which was supposed to investigate questions of pay-for-play politics in New York State. In this environment, the optics of accepting upper-limit contributions from the Jacobs family while being so attentive to their business interests are not particularly good. Then again, the family tree method hardly puts questions of a quid pro quo to rest. But really, the family’s universal support for Cuomo probably has less to do with one tidy payoff, or even with the several possibilities listed above, than with Cuomo’s overall record as a public servant. This is a governor that can rise above the fray (perhaps with the help of a Gulfstream jet), overcome democracy, and get things done for the billionaire class. And that’s the sort of leadership that a Jacobs can believe in. LittleSis.org (the opposite of “Big Brother”) tracks information on power networks in Buffalo and throughout the United States. Have a Buffalo power tip for us? Email tips@littlesis.org. P
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NEWS LAW
IMAGE SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA /PHOTO BY BOB JAGENDORFT
The woman spent her days alone, the vast majority of it locked in a small room that had become her entire world. The world outside was a horror show of brutal attacks and daily harassment. Her pleas for help were ignored by the uniformed men and women whose duty it was to keep her safe from harm; in the end she destroyed her previous home, flooding her toilet to force them to punish her with the relative safety of this lonely box. The woman spent her days alone, the vast majority of it locked in a small room that had become her entire world. The world outside was a horror show of brutal attacks and daily harassment. Her pleas for help were ignored by the uniformed men and women whose duty it was to keep her safe from harm; in the end she destroyed her previous home, flooding her toilet to force them to punish her with the relative safety of this lonely box. Time spent alone and confined took their toll on her mental health. She asked the people who kept her alive for help; they refused. Again, she was forced to resort to destruction to receive assistance—this time targeting her own body. She took off her reading glasses, broke them into sharp pieces, and sliced her wrist and arm until help finally came. The woman is Casey Smith, an inmate serving a sentence for robbery in a men’s prison in upstate New York who told her story to Solitary Watch, a web-based prisoner advocacy group, and the nightmare outside her cell was the reality of sexual assault in American jails and prisons. Nearly 10 percent of former state prisoners were sexually assaulted at least once while incarcerated, according to a 2012 Department of Justice (DOJ) study. For transgendered women placed in men’s facilities like Ms. Smith, advocates say the risk can be as much as 13 times higher. In 2003, in one of the few-and-far-between moments you can say this lately, the federal government jumped in and did something good about it. Pursuant to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), the DOJ published standards for the prevention of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in correctional facilities in order to stem the long-joked-about but seldom-addressed issue of sexual and gender-based violence in America’s jails and prisons. Those standards took effect in 2012 and required monitoring of at-risk inmates, caseby-case placement evaluations for LGBT inmates, annual audits, and a host of other site-specific protections. The US houses around one quarter of the global incarcerated population, so while the PREA was a welcome watershed moment for those in the criminal defense and prisoner advocacy communities, reform would never be an easy task. That said, two years later, a look at the progress at both state and federal levels shows the massive scale of the undertaking and reveals blind spots in the reform framework itself.
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PRISON NOTES:
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN AMERICA’S JAILS What the federal and state governments are doing about it BY JACOB DRUM
THE STATES’ RESPONSE
THE FEDERAL RESPONSE In October, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report that details some of the actual and anticipated trouble spots in the PREA reform process. One of the basic flaws in the effort is the assignment of jurisdiction for investigations into sexual abuse: the OIG investigates allegations of abuse by corrections officers, while the FBI investigates inmate-on-inmate allegations. More troubling, the PREA Working Group that is managing the transition seems to have a lax attitude towards the investigations themselves. Each correctional facility is mandated to have an independent PREA auditor, a kind of ombudsman that determines whether a facility is living up to the regulatory standards. Before this year, the auditors could not call a facility compliant if the agencies investigating sexual abuse cases were not compliant with certain standards for the conduct of investigations and the training of investigators. But in April, the Working Group issued guidance telling auditors to find a facility compliant even if its investigators weren’t, ostensibly to keep from penalizing a facility for the noncompliance of an agency they can’t control. This was shown clearly in the case of CI Taft, a privately run prison in southern California that houses federal inmates. The PREA auditor there found that the FBI hadn’t been compliant with any of their mandated investigation standards, while CI Taft had been compliant with all of theirs. Thus, prior to April 2014, Taft couldn’t be listed as compliant. But according to the report, there are no procedures in place within the DOJ to determine whether OIG or the FBI have complied with their investigative responsibilities. So after the recent shift a facility could be listed as compliant without any indication that the agencies responsible for investigating sexual abuse claims are compliant themselves. In another incident, the Office of Justice Programs (OJP)—yet another set of initials tasked with managing PREA implementation—sent a letter to the FBI noting its concern that they had not produced documentation demonstrating their compliance. The FBI wrote back that it was in full compliance, but didn’t know that it had to produce any documents to prove it.
THE PUBLIC / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
new fee arrangements, and as of January 2014 only 14 percent of IGAs had the new compliance language. While this may all seem like a bunch of administrative paper-pushers quibbling over a timelines and agency autonomy, it’s important to remember what’s at stake here: prisoners are being raped and sexually abused at a rate of ten percent, compared to a rate of about 6.5 percent nationally. They are disproportionately nonwhite and poor. And they are forced to live in close proximity with their attackers every day. In that light, a three-year wait for compliance at any given prison is an eternity, and a law enforcement agency’s claim that it is already doing enough feels singularly out-of-touch.
Next, the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) contacted the FBI with the same request: Show us how you’ve implemented the new regulations so we can determine which of our facilities are compliant. The FBI responded with a letter describing why the FBI thought the FBI was compliant. An independent PREA auditor who reviewed the letter found the information was insufficient to make that claim. When the OIG interviewed FBI officials for this report, they stated that the investigation procedures the FBI had in place before the PREA even came into being were sufficient to comply with the new standards, “even though it does not have policies uniquely applicable to sexual abuse investigations in confinement settings” and does not provide investigators with specific training for prison rapes—in other words, the entire point of the PREA. Further problems arise due to the relationship between state and federal corrections agencies. One major speed bump in the PREA reform process is the difficulty presented by intergovernmental agreements, or IGAs. An IGA is an intergovernmental partnership wherein federal prisoners are housed in state and local facilities for an agreed upon fee. As of early 2014, there were 925 active IGAs used by the US Marshal Service (USMS), which transports federal prisoners and detains them before trial, and 123 used by the BOP, which houses federal inmates after they have been convicted and sentenced. Adding to the complexity, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has about 100 agreements with state and local governments that allow them to use USMS IGAs under the same terms negotiated by the Marshals. IGA contracts don’t have a formal start- or enddate, according to the OIG report, “but rather last as long as both parties are satisfied with the agreement.” Renegotiation would take place if either side disagreed about the payment or the number of detainees housed in the state facility. Unfortunately for federal prisoners, that means there is no chance to insert PREA-compliant language until one party decides they want to change the fee arrangement, for example, meaning that PREA reforms are put on hold indefinitely. According to the report, it commonly takes three years for facilities to ask for
Under the 10th Amendment, the federal government can’t force states to enact specific policies— but it can bribe them. In 1987, the Supreme Court decided South Dakota v. Dole, stating that Congress can constitutionally require that states comply with certain conditions before they receive federal funding. This is how the PREA could require changes to the investigation and prevention of sexual abuse at the state level: by tying DOJ funds earmarked for state prison systems to PREA compliance. However, the approach appears to be all carrot and no stick. In order to receive federal funds, a state is supposed to certify PREA compliance through a series of audits conducted on a three-year cycle, with one-third of the state’s facilities being audited each year. In June, however, the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange reported that states could qualify during the first three-year cycle by merely providing a written assurance that they would spend DOJ funds on becoming compliant. This is a little like paying a contractor to paint your house without requiring that he finish the job, as long as he promises to spend some of the money on brushes and rollers. At present, states can use a written assurance to avoid audits during the initial three-year cycle, which ends August 19, 2016. But the DOJ hasn’t closed the door on accepting assurances beyond that date— and, as mentioned, in the context of prison rape a three-year delay could lead to thousands of new victims or uninvestigated allegations. Massive government reform will always carry bureaucratic gridlock and inconsistency in a country as large and complex as ours. However, the progress we’ve made to prevent one of the worst crimes against a vulnerable population that is essentially owned by the taxpayer stands in stark contrast to the speed with which other recent mass reforms have begun to have real and lasting effects on the public (see: the Affordable Care Act or No Child Left Behind). Further, the lack of attention paid to these reforms and their implementation shows that despite the PREA’s nominal steps towards progress (not to mention the popularity of TV shows like Orange Is the New Black and Lockup), America’s P prisoners remain a societal afterthought.
MEMORY BOOKS
JOHN BERRYMAN'S SHOTGUN Remembering a summer with the author of The Dream Songs BY BRUCE JACKSON
HBO’s recent mini-series, Olive Kitteridge, which starred Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, and Bill Murray, made frequent direct and indirect reference to the poet John Berryman, who committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis on January 7, 1972, into the cold waters of the Mississippi River. It even includes a line on a napkin over a bar from Berryman’s “Dream Song 235”: “Save us from shotguns & fathers’ suicides,” one of his books in a critical scene, and a shot of that book in the opening shot sequence for all four episodes. Olive Kitteridge is full of people who consider suicide, who do or do not commit suicide, or who are the children of suicides. At the end Frances McDormand’s character is about to do it but doesn’t because some children come upon her (she’d earlier told another character considering it to think about the mess if children came upon his shotgunned body). Berryman is now primarily known for his The Dream Songs (1969), a slimmer version of which, 77 Dream Songs, had been published in 1964 and won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize. One of the poems in it is about the suicide of Ernest Hemingway, who killed himself with a shotgun in Ketchum, Utah, on July 2, 1961. It begins, “My mother has your shotgun.” The later “Dream Song 255” refers to the poem’s protagonist shedding “tears in a dining room in Indiana that day.” I remember that. We were together that day. I heard the first poem before it was published. I was a student that summer in the School of Letters at Indiana University, taking seminars with Berryman and Steven Marcus. The first day of class, Berryman asked me, “Where can you get a drink around here?” It was a little before noon. The campus was dry so another student and I took him to a bar in downtown Bloomington. After a while, we had to leave. “I’m okay here,” he said. About six that night I got a call from a guy who said he was a bartender in that joint. “Will you please come and get your friend?” he said. I asked him what he was talking about. “The guy you left here at noon. He’s had a dozen double martinis. I can’t serve him any more. Get him out of here, please.” I later found out Berryman had gotten my phone number from the class list. So I drove down there and picked him up. I couldn’t bring him to the University hotel, where he was staying; they’d have thrown him out. So I brought him home. My wife was wearing a red, white, and blue outfit. It had no particular meaning; that was just what she happened to be wearing. We were coming up on Fourth of July Weekend, so for the next 12 hours he referred to her as “Miss American Flag.” During those 12 hours he recited some of the “Dream Songs” he was then writing, a lot of Blake, and a lot of stuff I no longer remember. He told stories about his friends Saul Bellow and Alan Tate. At one point I started a tape recorder going and that tape is in the Library of Congress. Throughout the six weeks of that School of Letters class we had several similar encounters. In the morning we’d talk about “Major and Minor Form in Poetry,” the subject of our class, which I never understood but thoroughly enjoyed, and then had boozy evenings in which John told stories and recited poems until nobody could stay awake any longer. I was then sending a lot of stories and poems to magazines and accumulating nothing for it but rejection slips. I once said to him, “You don’t know what it’s like sending stuff out and it never gets published and nobody says anything.” He looked
WE HAD NO IDEA HOW DEEP THE QUARRIES WERE…WE CALLED, BUT THERE WAS NO ANSWER. at me without sympathy and said, “You don’t know what it’s like when you send something out, it gets published, and still nobody says anything.” He subsequently got one of my poems published in The Noble Savage, co-edited by Bellow. I was, that summer, working as a bartender and bouncer in a place called Nick’s English Hut. The bar had two constituencies. One was students and faculty from the University. The other was people from what we in the university called “the stonecutters,” people who worked in the limestone quarries surrounding the town. There was no communication between the two. One night Berryman was in the bar with Steve Marcus and a few other people, and he began putting moves on a woman at a stonecutter table. From behind the bar, I could see the hostility rising. After a while, I went over and said, “John, she’s with a guy, you’ve got to stop.” He said he would, but he didn’t, and I saw the guys at the stonecutter table getting more and more pissed off. Any bartender or musician knows what I’m talking about here; rooms have rhythms and you know when they’re going discordant. Finally I went over said, “This table is flagged. Nothing more for anybody.” They didn’t argue that but Berryman kept making moves on the woman at the stonecutter table. Every bouncer knows its far easier to prevent a fight than to break one up, so I came around the bar and picked Berryman up and carried him out to the street. He was a skinny guy and didn’t weigh very much. Steve Marcus pounded my back saying, “Put him down, you brute, don’t you know he’s a famous poet?” I said, “Don’t you know I’m saving his fucking life?” Marcus and I never got on after that. Berryman never remembered it. At the end of that six-week seminar we had a party at our house. Around midnight, eight or 10 of us went out to one of the water-filled stone quarries outside of town—a place called the H-Hole—and swam. John disappeared. We had no idea how deep the quarries were; no one we knew had ever gotten to the bottom of this one. We called, but there was no answer. We dove, but it was dark and we couldn’t see anything. After a long time, when we decided we were in deep shit because we’d lost a major American poet, John called to us from a rock he’d been sitting on the entire time. He said it had been wonderful watching us jumping in the water, coming up for air, then plunging into the black water searching for him again. We went back to our flat and the party continued for one more day. John and the sister of one of the students in the seminar disappeared for a while, then came in with blood leaking from the bridges of both their noses. “What the hell?” I said. “We thought we should do something to remember one another by,” John said, “so we bit each other on the nose.”
Not much to say after that, so people began to drift away and the party ended. The next morning was Sunday. John called and wondered if I’d meet him at the Indiana Memorial Union for brunch. I did. He was cold sober. He talked about the pleasure of clarity that comes with sobriety. It was as if the previous six weeks hadn’t happened. We had a lovely talk about current poets. Then he said, “I have one little problem.” The problem was, the Union was dry, so he’d been dumping his empty bourbon bottles into a locked suitcase in his room, and now he was leaving, but he couldn’t find the key. He needed the suitcase to put his clothes and books in and he needed someone to carry out the empty bottles. Did I, perhaps, know a locksmith? And would I, perhaps, find a large bag…. I found a locksmith, we got the bottles out of the room and his clothes into his suitcase and he went back to Minnesota. There was one other thing. He often referred to his good friend Robert Fitzgerald, who was my generation’s great translator of The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid. The following summer I would have a seminar at Indiana with Fitzgerald on the Homeric poems, and the year after that, when Fitzgerald went to Harvard as Boylston Professor of Poetry and I went there as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows we would frequently talk. Berryman told me that Bob’s nagging problem was that he was a “lapsed Catholic.” That was a phrase I hadn’t heard before, so I asked him to explain it. “It’s a Catholic who no longer believes or practices, but who is uneasy about it, uncomfortable about it, who is displaced because of it.” One time, when we were both settled in at Harvard, I mentioned that to Fitzgerald. He shook his head. “I have six children. It’s John who was the lapsed Catholic, not me. He was telling you about himself.” Berryman often said that his “Dream Songs” were about a guy named in them as “Henry,” not about himself. After that conversation (and several of a similar nature) with Fitzgerald, I don’t believe it at all. When John wrote, after Hemingway’s suicide, “My mother has your shotgun,” he was indeed thinking of his own father, who did himself in in such fashion. And he was thinking of himself, who would use another technique, but achieve the same end, only a few years later.
I was driving from New York to San Francisco that night in January 1972 when John Berryman jumped off that bridge into the Mississippi River. I’d been in Buffalo for a few days, seeing friends, then had gone down to the Bronx House of Detention for Men to interview Herbert X. Blyden, one of the key figures in the Attica uprising a few months earlier, for a magazine article. (We would get to know one another and become friends 20 years later during the Attica prisoners’ civil rights trial in Buffalo. One day, Herbert said to Akil al-Jundi, the lead plaintiff in the case, “Brother Bruce and I been knowing each other a long time now. I was a young man then.” I said, “So was I. We’re the same age.” “I know that,” Herbert said.) I was somewhere in Nebraska when the car radio picked up a newscast that said something about “the famous poet who jumped to his death in the Mississippi from a bridge in Minneapolis,” then faded. If you’re old enough, you remember how you’d lose AM stations driving across the country in those days, and how sometimes you’d get them back and sometimes you wouldn’t, and how FM stations only went so far and then were totally gone. It wasn’t until Nevada that I found a station with the report simple and direct. I’d been pulled over by a Nevada state trooper for a bad taillight. We sat in his car talking for maybe 30 minutes while he ran a check on my car. After a while, I said, “Hasn’t that been taking a long time?” “Oh, the report on your car came in 20 minutes ago. You’re clear.” It was a cold winter night in the desert and he was just bored or lonely and wanted to talk with somebody. “You get that light fixed now,” He said. I said I would. I got back in my car and he u-turned and headed back up the road. The car radio started picking up California stations. One of told me that the poet leaping from the bridge had indeed been John Berryman, and that a student crossing the bridge on foot was about a hundred yards away when he went over the rail and had reported it to the police. The three people I’ve known who more than any others understood the nature of poetic voice were John Berryman, Robert Lowell, and Robert Creeley. That—finding the nature of voice—is what all art in any medium is finally about. If you find your voice, as they did, you can sing. Otherwise, it’s just noise. Berryman found his voice in The Dream Songs. P
DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 9
MUSIC FEATURE
FRIENDS FOREVER Real Friends leads a pop punk resurgence BY KRIS KIELICH
Pop-punk has undergone different stages since
its grew popular in the 1990s. We saw its rise back then, then again in the mid 2000s, and now a new wave of pop-punk is rising. These young bands aren’t messing around, as the new breed of pop-punk is punchier, gutsier, and more emotional than ever. These kids know how to cut to the core, and no one does it better than Real Friends. The five-piece out of Illinois are at the top of the class of this new movement. With a headlining show approaching at The Waiting Room on Tuesday, November 25, we were lucky enough to talk with songwriter and bassist Kyle Fasel about how the band’s songs come together and how he thinks they make an impact.
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I think of lot of people out there would put both your band and Neck Deep as two bands who are at the forefront of the new pop punk movement that seems to be emerging now. How did your tour with Neck Deep come to be, and how does it feel for you guys to play together every night? We’ve toured with them before actually, so it’s cool going into the tour knowing them. Both bands share the same fans so I think it’s really rewarding for the fans and for us to have both our bands play together. In terms of your songwriting, Real Friends is a band that resonates deeply with so many out there, and I think that’s really thanks to your stream of consciousness lyrical style. Did this style of writing develop naturally from the start, or did it kind of evolve over time? I think it was something that just kind of happened. One thing we built our whole band on was being honest, and that goes hand in hand with the lyrical content. I don’t think that songwriting should have to be this big, well thought out thing. In a sense there’s been a great change in pop punk since the early 2000’s. Lyrics are more focused on cutting to the core of emotion with straightforward language rather than using wordplay and anecdotes to describe a lot of the same issues. Do you feel this way as well? We’re a whole different generation, so we group up with a whole different set of experiences. It comes with the evolution of the whole style. When a genre makes a comeback, things need to change. 10 years ago it was much more about the hookiness and catchiness. Bands are now drawing from many different genres, which has inspired more lyrical honesty.
REAL FRIENDS TUE 11/25 . 6PM WAITING ROOM 334 DELAWARE AVE. $15 - $17
Pop punk is a genre of music that appeals, mostly, or only to a younger generation. Do you think this is a way of thinking that will always stay around, or do you think that it doesn’t have to be that way? I don’t think it has to be that way. I never want to classify our music for a specific age group, but a lot of people in that generation listen to our music because they’re going through the same things that we’re writing and singing about. Music is something that kids now really invest in, which is really cool to see. It has a lot to do with what kids go through in this day and age. There are a lot of young bands emerging right now that will obviously be following the example of bands like yours, as you guys have become pretty successful over the past few years. What do you think up and coming pop punk artists need in their toolbox to succeed? Only tour when you feel like you need to. We waited a while, and there’s no point in playing in front of nobody. In those situations, everybody loses money. Things like paying dues don’t really matter. If this was back in the day, you would tour a ton, but now it’s a completely different game. Get a following through the internet. You draw people in with your music first, then you go on tour. And really perfect your songs, and get the quality up to the point where you enjoy it. Make sure every song is good and worth listening to. P
SPOTLIGHT MUSIC
NOW THRU NOV. 30 ONLY! PHOTO BY IRENE HAUPT
MOSHE SHULMAN BY CORY PERLA
“Tango is a music of love, passion, and hatred,” says Moshe Shulman, in a thick Russian accent. Shulman usually performs tango music in Buffalo as the director of the Buffalo Tango Orchestra but starting November 22, he’ll have a new monthly tango event at the Gypsy Parlor with his friend and fellow musician Miguel Benitez. As a duo, the two have been performing at places like Pausa and the UB Center for the Arts, but Shulman is looking forward to a regular gig at the Gypsy Parlor, where he’ll play a variety of instruments from the violin to a rare Argentinian instrument called the bandoneon. A bandoneon is an air-based—or
free-reed—instrument that is played with both hands; similar to an accordion. But unlike a standard accordion, it has a much sharper sound. He says he is the only person within a 300-mile radius who owns and plays the bandoneon. When most people think about tango music, they think about dancing. But Moshe says it’s not always meant for dancing, and many people simply relax and enjoy the music at his performances, which usually consist of Shulman playing his violin or bandoneon, while Migeul sings in Spanish and strums along on his guitar.
Shulman was born in Russia but moved to Buffalo to study music at UB in 2007. Now he’s got a PhD in music composition and is an adjunct professor at UB, teaching world music to his students. As a professor of world music, he also learns by teaching. UB is a diverse place, and he often asks his students to bring in music from their home countries, which he and his ensemble learn to play together. For Shulman, learning about music from around the world is important. “It keeps the mind open.” P
THIS WEEK ON DAILYPUBLIC.COM CULTURE>MUSIC THE DECEMBERISTS
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DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 11
MIN
12 THE PUBLIC / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
ND OVER MORTAR / MICKEY HARMON is a local illustrator and graphic designer. His work reflects the environment in which he lives, Buffalo, NewYork. You can view all of his work at mickeyharmon.com and @groveycleves on Instagram.
DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 13
EVENTS CALENDAR PUBLIC APPROVED
WEDNESDAY NOV 19 The Heavy Pets 8pm Buffalo Iron Works, 334 Delaware Ave. $8-$10
[JAM] Jam music can sometimes get a bad rap for encompassing a lot of genres, but never being particularly good in any aspect. That couldn’t be further from the truth with a band that’s coming to town this week. The Heavy Pets are making some big waves lately, fluidly blending genres like rock, jazz, funk, reggae, and others into a homogenous mix of beautiful melody and feel-good tone. Their prowess is incredible live and is a reason for their propulsion as of late. On Wednesday, November 19 the band will take the stage at Buffalo Iron Works with openers Skypilot. -JS
IN PRINT
THURSDAY NOV 20 Peter Ramos & Noah Falck 7pm Talking Leaves Main Street, 3158 Main St.
[Poetry] Enjoy an evening of poetry with local poets, Peter Ramos & Noah Falck at Talking Leaves on Thursday, November 20. Ramos will read selections from his latest collection, Television Snow. Rich in vivid imagery, these poems submerge the Gen-Xer in nostalgia, and make the Millennial feel like an anachronism. Falck will read selections from his archive of poetry that “project the nonsense of the everyday. They have basketballs in them, cult figures of the 1970s, denim, sex, airplanes, and rain. Probably too much rain.” -KELLIE POWELL
DAMIAN “They Fill The Space They Believe In” Remix (Song) Recommended If You Like: Sun Kil Moon, Pedro the Lion
“They Fill The Space” is the first reworked track from the mumblecore folkie’s planned remix album of early 2014 release, You Don’t Need It. Weber replaces the original’s slacker riffs with dreamy synths and nervy guitar. You Don’t Need Shit is set to drop in a couple weeks.
BRIMSTONE BLONDES
FRIDAY NOV 21 Reverberation
MARLON WAYANS THURSDAY NOV 20 8PM / HELIUM COMEDY CLUB, 30 MISSISSIPPI ST. / $30-$37
“Afterparty” (Song)
4 Wackiest Marlon Wayans Characters
RIYL: Talking Heads, Franz Ferdinand, Art Brut
[COMEDY] Marlon Wayans has been all over the film industry; from actor and writer, to taking credit
Follow up single from buxom garage glam quartet’s debut EP, AGE OF CONSENT, front man Matthew Danger Lippman drunkenly delivers a lonely tale of listening to R Kelly’s “Ignitions [Remix]” on a cold weekend night. Mohawk Place will host the filming of the song’s music video later this month.
LESIONREAD “So Lonely Without” (Song) RIYL: Yip Yip, Dan Deacon, Yacht
Originally found on electro producer’s Dogs Pt 2 EP, the jumbled and contorted love song recently was re-released with accompanying music video for its inclusion on LR’s Greatest Hits Vol 1! cassette.
DAVOR “City Night” (Song) RIYL: Jamie xx, SBTRKT
Along with Darksleep and FOTISPORN, Davor is one of the many underground electronic producers to emerge in 2014. His latest, “City Night,” is a playful electro pop track full of youth and innocence.
LOCAL SHOW PICK OF THE WEEK WHITE WARDS W/ DREAM JOURNAL WED, NOV 19 / 6PM / $7
as producer and director on a few films. One thing that is always consistent with Wayans is the quality and depth of characters he’s helped create, funny or not. In the spirit of his comedic skill, we reflect upon four of the wackiest characters he’s made over the course of his career as he is headed to Helium Comedy Club this weekend for a stint of shows, Thursday, November 20 through Sunday, November 23 performing twice on most nights. Mr. Ugly Man - In Living Color The only thing worse than the singing voice of reggae ladies man, Mr. Ugly Man, is his distorted face. In a parody of Shabba Ranks’ “Mr. Loverman,” Wayans’ showcased his Mr. Ugly Man character in a music video on In Living Color for a parody song called “Shabba Ranks.” His backup singers sing: “He is so damn ugly, he’s even ugly on the phone,” which at the time was the monstrous Motorola MicroTAC flip phone. Loc Dog - Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood Starring opposite the hilarious Ashtray (Shawn Wayans), Loc Dog held his own with a less obvious comedic role, but he was hilarious nonetheless. The unsuspecting role led to blindsiding lines that hit you right in the gut. One thing we learned from Loc Dog: When a job application asks “sex?”, “hell yeah” is not an appropriate response. Shorty Meeks - Scary Movie Series As a stereotypical drug dealer, Shorty quickly becomes a fan favorite with his infectious, yet terrible laugh. Although in the first film his role wasn’t as pronounced, he had a huge comedic role in the second film and spawned many one-liners.
6pm 871 Seneca St., 871 Seneca St. Free
[ARTS] The Benjaman Art Gallery is hosting a pop-up show out of one of the many storefronts-in-transition in Larkinville on Friday and Saturday night. The free event will host the work of a panoply of local artists including Bruce Adams, Augustina Droze, A. J. Fries, Amy Greenan, Richard Huntington, and many more. The exhibition will feature food and libations from newly opened neighbors Flying Bison and Hydraulic Hearth as well as Community Beer Works and Nickel City Cheese. -AARON LOWINGER
Punching In: A Day at the Plant 6pm Steel Plant Museum of Western New York, 871 Seneca St. Free
[ARTS] This generation will never truly know what it was like to work at Bethlehem Steel. A visit to the Steel Plant Museum of Western New York is as close as you’ll get, and this Friday they’ll be opening a new exhibit; Punching In: A Day At The Plant, which will feature numerous artifacts from various departments of Bethlehem Steel. The exhibit will be interactive, allowing visitors to choose in which department they’d like to work. -CORY PERLA
Four Year Strong 6pm The Waiting Room, 334 Delaware Ave. $15-$65
[PUNK] Get your Massachusetts punk fix at the Waiting Room on Friday, November 21 with Four Year Strong. Since 2001, Four Year Strong have been on four different record labels, released three studio albums, and have toured the world relentlessly. Joining FYS on the tour are Transit, Such Gold, and Seaway. Such Gold, from Rochester, just released their new album The New Sidewalk with Razor&Tie Records and will be playing what should feel like a hometown show. -SEAN HEIDINGER
Marcus Copeland - White Chicks
Steve Miller Band
Wayans has played many comical roles, but this one as an undercover police officer, disguised as a famous, yet white female, socialite was one of his most ridiculous. Despite poor reviews, the heavy makeup served Wayans with more confidence. He and his brother Shawn, were hilarious, despite the controversial theme. -JEREMIAH SHEA
[ROCK] Coming off of a tour with Journey, the Steve Miller Band has no intentions of slowing down. The classic rock band, lead by 71-year-old singer and guitarist Steve Miller, helped define 1970s music with hits like “Fly Like an Eagle,” and “The Joker.” The band comes to the Seneca Niagara Events Center on Friday, November 21. -CP
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8pm Seneca Niagara Events Center, 334 Delaware Ave. $40
CALENDAR EVENTS PUBLIC APPROVED
LIVE MUSIC EVERYNIGHTFOR OVER 30YEARS! MONDAY
NOV 19
THURSDAY
NOV 20
FRIDAY
NOV 21
Kathryn Koch 9PM FREE
Governess, The Soul Butchers, Pink Elephant, Heavy Temple 9PM $5
The Jony James Band 6PM FREE
Sparky’s B-Day Bash: Fredtown Stompers, The Surfing Cadavers, Ronald Raygun, Shaken Stylus 10PM $5
FRIDAY
NOV 22
WEDNESDAY
NOV 26
DR FAEMUS W/ SONDER FRIDAY NOV 21 9PM / BUFFALO IRON WORKS, 334 DELAWARE AVE. / $10-$13 [JAM] Dr. Faemus may not ring any bells, but Allen Aucoin is likely better known as the drummer for one of the top current jamtronica bands, The Disco Biscuits. His solo side project is headed to Buffalo Iron Works this Friday, November 21 for a special show. Sonder, an up-and-coming local band in a similar vein, is launching their brand new EP at this show and are excited to share. The brainchild of some deeply entrenched people in the scene, this band may be new, but possesses some serious experience. The trio includes Ryan Bress on drums, Andy Buck on keys/synths, and Mike Pfeil on guitar and bass synth. Their reach is deep and they pull in many influences, which makes their first album all the much more exciting to hear. Things will kick off around 9pm and Space Junk will get the night started. -JS
Pierce Fulton 10pm Lift Nightclub, 334 Delaware Ave. $10
[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] If his latest single, “Kuaga,” a multi-ingual electro house banger, is any indication of the amount of energy and bass young producer Pierce Fulton puts into his live show, then Buffalo is in for a treat. “Kuaga” is big room EDM, but it’s a powerful track, which he balances out with the more tech heavy b-side “Noon Gun.” The 20-yearold producer from New England comes to Lift Nightclub on Friday, November 21 with local support from SunGlasses Mike. -CP
The Good Neighborhood Presents:
Lady Lush & The Vinyls 9PM $5
Thanksgiving Eve!!!!
Funktional Flow, Sky Pilot, Tropidelic 9PM $7 ($5 W/CANNED FOOD DONATION)
248 ALLEN STREET 716.886.8539
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Kat Dahlia 6pm Studio at the Waiting Room, 334 Delaware Ave. $1-$10
[HIP HOP] On Friday, November 21, catch Kat Dahlia performing at the Studio at Waiting Room. Heralded as one of the most fiery up and coming singer-rappers, the soulful artist is known for packing a radio-hit punch with a flair of soul and substance. She’s sassy without the cute, raw without the sentimentality, and magnetic without exploiting her sexuality. Craig Strickland, Daniel Robinson, and Ten and Two open the show. -JEANETTE CHIN
SATURDAY NOV 22 QCC Presents: Backstage 11pm Allen Street Hardware Cafe, 334 Delaware Ave. $5[ELECTRONIC/DANCE]
The Queen City Cartel is back with Backstage. For their third installment they’ve got DJ Lulu, Swagglerock, and Medison; who will provide some jersey club and a variety of other bass music for your listening and dancing pleasure. Check out Backstage this Saturday, November 22 at Allen Street Hardware Café. #pluraf. -CP
EVENTS@DAILYPUBLIC.COM
CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 15
EVENTS CALENDAR PUBLIC APPROVED
Brass band, Dixieland Jazz, Americana & Burlesque 9pm Mohawk Place, 334 Delaware Ave. $7
[ROCK] For some reason, the idea of pairing folk rockers Folkfaces with a burlesque show makes perfect sense. The award winning band will share the stage with the Stripteasers this Saturday, November 22 along with the Fredtown Stompers, and 12/8 Path Band as part of Brass Band, Dixie, Americana, and Burlesque at Mohawk Place. -CP
Get The Led Out 7pm Tralf Music Hall, 334 Delaware Ave. $23-$40
[Rock] Led Zeppelin is to the Golden Age of rock music, as Beethoven is to the Classical Era – instrumental and influential. While the death of Zeppelin drummer, John Bonham, dismantled any chance of a reunion tour, you can quench your thirst with Get The Led Out. The seven-piece tribute band aims to deliver a carbon copy of Zeppelin’s original recordings to a live audience. GTLO defines themselves as fans, not impersonators. Above all, GTLO pays honorable tribute, not just in terms of sound, but also originality – a trait that drove Led Zeppelin’s cultural influence. GTLO will play on at the Tralf Music Hall on Saturday, November 22. -KP
BOYZ II MEN SATURDAY NOV 22 8PM / UB CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 334 DELAWARE AVE. / $40-$60 [R&B] It is not unusual for Boyz II Men to bring their hits to Buffalo when they hit the road. In 2013 the group played their tops hits such as “I’ll Make Love to You” and “Motownphilly” at a packed First Niagara Center on The Package Tour with 98 Degrees and New Kids on the Block. This year they are back on Saturday, November 22 at UB’s Center for the Arts for a much more intimate performance, presented by The Derico of East Amherst Corporation to benefit the Ronald McDonald house of Buffalo. Timeless hits, countless awards and 60 million records sold—combined with 20 years of sold out global tours—proves that their performance this week is not one to miss. R&B and soul music aficionados argue that Boyz II Men redefined the genre and could without question be the best R&B group of all time. The trio is among a select group of artists that have held the Billboard number one spot for at least 50 weeks cumulatively falling just behind Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Mariah Carey on the list. Each of their albums since 1988 has earned major critical acclaim including a 2014 release titled Collide. Tickets are available through tickets.com as well as at the UB CFA box office. -SH
PUBLIC APPROVED
MONDAY NOV 24
Jack and the Coax 7pm The Forvm, 334 Delaware Ave. $5
[ROCK] Self proclaimed “sultry rock and roll band,” Jack and the Coax, will kick off their East Coast tour at The Forvm on Monday, November 24 presented by For The Music Productions. The five-piece band, hailing from four different cities across the country are part Dr. Dog, part Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, yet still maintain an air of originality. Buffalo “zombie rock and roll band” Blackwood Terror and indie rockers Urban Reverie open the show. -CP
Paul Giallorenzo’s GitGo 8pm Hallwalls, 334 Delaware Ave. $10-$20 donation suggested
[JAZZ] You don’t need to drink a pitcher of hot-wine in order to experience a series of spasmatic physical gyrations while listening to Paul Giallorenzo‘s über-nasty Chicagobased quintet. His ensemble GitGo have found a way to pluck and mule at the puppet strings of associative thought while allowing the listener plenty of overhead space to enjoy their fantasy ride of joyful sound splattering. Head to Hallwalls for this free show, Monday, November 24. -MARION KANE
EOTO SATURDAY NOV 22 8PM / TOWN BALLROOM, 334 DELAWARE AVE. / $20-$25 [ELECTRONIC/DANCE] EOTO might be a bit of a niche act in the sense that they don’t get the same attention some of their peers like STS9 and The Disco Biscuits get, but they are of the same ilk regardless. As a group that has been pioneering this electronic-meets-organic instrument meld, the band has carved a memorable music path through their history. This Saturday, November 22, EOTO is set to play the Town Ballroom—presented by MNM Presents—with a stage show that is as unique aurally as it is visually. Boundaries will certainly be broken as longtime fans have known this band to completely improv their entire set, creating music on the fly with nothing pre-recorded. It is spontaneity and musical serendipity at its finest. -JS
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CALENDAR EVENTS
TUESDAY NOV 25
PUBLIC APPROVED
Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy 7pm Tralf Music Hall, 334 Delaware Ave. $21-$34
[Rock] In the 1970s, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (ELP) helped forge the path for progressive rock, and percussionist Carl Palmer’s dynamic drumming was the linchpin of their sound. At age 60, his explosive technique and speedy hands haven’t tired out. He still plays at a frenetic pace with the thunderous attack of a 20-year-old. Carl Palmer will play at the Tralf Music Hall on Tuesday, November 25. -KP
WEDNESDAY NOV 26 Tension 7pm The Waiting Room, 334 Delaware Ave. $10
[PUNK] When Tymn Waters, frontman of legendary blitz-rock band Tension, casts his ferocious gaze into the collective eye of the crowd, it will be best to be wearing a welder’s mask. This seemingly 12-foot man and his assemblage of crunch hungry cravens are known for tearing holes in all the wrong places and leaving the blinding taste of rust in the mouths of all victims within sonic range. Industry of Life Divine and Kevin K Band open the show at the Waiting Room on Wednesday, November 26. -MK
Can Jam 9pm Nietzsche’s, 334 Delaware Ave. $7 or $5 with canned item
[FUNK] The night before Thanksgiving is always a huge night for partying, and Nietzsche’s might be your best bet for a relaxing, funky evening. The legendary Allentown venue will host Can Jam, a night of funk music and jam bands with a discount for those who donate one or two canned food items. You might recognize headliners, Funktional Flow, as one of the region’s premier jam bands. They’ll be matched by soul/funk band Sky Pilot, and Ohio based reggae/hip hop band, Tropidelic. -CP
STARS SUNDAY NOV 23 7PM / TRALF MUSIC HALL, 334 DELAWARE AVE. / $20-$22 [ROCK] As part of their North American tour spanning from Montreal to Los Angeles, Canadian indie-rock force Stars will be stopping into the Tralf Music Hall on Sunday, November 23 in support of their latest album, No One Is Lost. Fittingly recorded above a discotheque, the album crosses over into the shimmering territory of synth-pop; driven by warm guitar progressions, precise house-like rhythms, and youthful optimism: always facing the sun. As NPR has articulated, “To be a Stars fan from the beginning is to have ridden out long phases and detours: springy guitar-driven pop, fatalistic chamber-pop ballads, grandiose statements about love and war, and dance-floor fillers with a sinewy throb to them.” Reputed for their dynamic stage presence and sheer delivery power, Sunday night at the Tralf is sure to turn into a dance party you will not want to miss. -JC
PUBLIC APPROVED
Well Rounded People’s Party 3 6pm New Skateland Arena, 334 Delaware Ave. $5
[PARTY] If you haven’t been to a Well Rounded People’s Party yet, you probably shouldn’t miss this one. This time they’ve got the one and only DJ Cutler on the decks, dropping a mix of classic hip hop, funk, and disco as skaters tear up the wooden floors. UVB76, Greg Howze aka Twist, and DJ Dance Dancehammer will also provide some tunes for your skating pleasure. Expect an interactive live video instillation from Chris Svoboda, and whatever a “story catching booth” is, which will be presented by the Ferry Street Corridor Project. It all happens at New Skateland Arena on Wednesday, November 26. -CP
LAGWAGON WEDNESDAY NOV 26 7PM / TOWN BALLROOM, 334 DELAWARE AVE. / $22-$2H2 [PUNK] LAGWAGON is the last of a dying breed: the California skate punk band. A few big names still remain; Bad Religion, Pennywise, and NOFX, but as a whole, it’s an aging genre. Lagwagon are rightful torchbearers, though. The band, formed in 1990 in Goleta, California, have been consistently releasing records—on the same record label, Fat Wreck Chords—since their 1992 debut Duh. Their latest record, Hang, which was released just a few weeks ago, is full of the type of power punk you might expect from a band that has been in the game for nearly 25 years. Check out “Obsolete Absolute,” a dystopian prog-punk burner that pitches between hard riffing and break-neck drum beats. Though the band has dismantled and reassembled several times over the years, they’re back on track with mostly original members and the same punk rock substance they’ve carried with them all along. Check out Lagwagon at the TOWN BALLROOM on WEDNESDAY, November 26 with support from P SWINGIN’ UTTERS and THIS LEGEND, presented by Funtime. —CP
DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 17
ARTS REVIEW
A tree uprooted during Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua.
CLIMATE KILLERS Orin Langelle’s photos at ¡Buen Vivir! BY JACK FORAN
Photojournalist Orin Langelle’s exhibit at his new ¡Buen Vivir! gallery at 148 Elmwood in Allentown takes on two enormous issues: world climate change—and associated criminality of corporate denial and delay tactics in response to the issue—and the official media so-called “fairness doctrine.” He says in an opening statement: “I eschew the concept of objectivity; photojournalism should present truth. Great journalists like John Reed and photojournalists like Robert Capa told the truth, and did not worry about being ‘objective.’ The trend toward ‘objective’ journalism…where the truth must be counterbalanced by untruth, has no place in a just society, especially when corporate propaganda already dominates so much of the media.” Photo locales range from the Arctic to Africa, from Bonn to Bali. The subject matter is environmental devastation due to traditional energy sourcing and use policies and practices, and popular protests against the corporate and government power structures intent on continuing business as usual, environment be damned, populations be damned. Outspoken protests, in ways you don’t usually get a sense of on the evening news videos. Marchers at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in 2009 carrying a large banner with graphics of some suit and briefcase business and banker types, and the slogan in huge letters: “They Don’t Give a Fuck about Our Planet.” Another photo of a man in African garb with a poster showing the face of an infant or toddler and the slogan: “Climate Change Kills Me.” The “Copenhagen Accord” developed in the 2009 conference mainly by the power nations set a target limit on increase in temperatures 18 THE PUBLIC / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
worldwide of two degrees Celsius. African delegates to the conference, excluded from decision-making on the accord, responded with a protest march, while chanting: “Two degrees is suicide.” A spokesman for the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance averred that two degrees Celsius worldwide would mean 3.5 degrees in Africa (or more than six degree Fahrenheit), which he said would result in “death to millions of Africans.” Another photo, from the Durban, South Africa, UN Climate Change Convention in 2011 shows a UN official addressing protesters—perhaps chastising the audacity of their questioning the wisdom and good will of the convention heavyweights—while a woman identified in the caption as a local activist looks on with a look of something between dismay and horror. (The picture is reminiscent of the famous Weegee photo of the two rich old biddies, dripping in ermines and pearls, and the bag lady on the sidelines, hissing righteous hatred of them and all they represent.) A series of photos of environmental ravages due to extreme weather events and prior environmental management malpractice. One startling picture of a large tree uprooted and stuck upside down in a vast mud field in Nicaragua after a crater lake collapsed during a hurricane in 1998, causing a mudslide that buried whole villages, killing upwards of 3,000 people, and leaving another 5,000 homeless. Previous deforestation for land for coffee production was a contributing factor to the crater lake collapse.
from the shell game of carbon trading to the production and use of biofuels, being of dubious economic benefit in the first place, but also a threat to biodiversity, and in third-world countries responsible for displacement of native populations to give over ancestral lands for cultivation of biofuel crops. Whereas, there are “thousands of solutions” to the climate change problem, but they are all “small-scale and community-based.” Several photos touch on the work of La Via Campesina, an international coalition of individuals and organizations promoting family farms and sustainable agriculture, and various other organizations promoting peasants’ rights and campaigns to halt violence against women. A series on Cree and other native peoples’ opposition to Hydro-Quebec plans in the 1990s to expand electrical energy production facilities—more dams, more displacements—on native peoples’ lands. This protest effort worked, at least for the time being. The Hydro-Quebec plans have been put on hold. A Cree spokesman is quoted in a caption: “Saving the environment is as important as saving one’s life. The land is our life.”
Other photos of cleanup work in Vermont after Hurricane Irene. A photo of desiccated corn husks still on the stalks during a drought in Missouri in 2012.
Somewhere around here—in line with the official media model— you look for some industry shill or right-wing think tanker to come in to claim it’s all a hoax, this climate change and global warming stuff, and in fact the scientists are in disagreement—not getting into the 97 percent versus three percent statistic, or hard evidence versus dogmatics matter—so we can’t do anything yet. Meanwhile, just keep extracting fossil. And hold up on the solar and wind ideas, and rather burdensome—and so rather un-American—idea of smaller individual footprints.
A theme is the folly of false solutions to the climate change problem,
The Orin Langelle exhibit stays up through December 19.
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REVIEW ARTS
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DADA REDUX Michael Beam at Big Orbit Gallery BY BRUCE ADAMS
It all comes back to Duchamp. In 1917 a ceramic urinal was tipped on its side, signed R. Mutt, and anonymously submitted to the art exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists. Later, one of the Society’s members, the esteemed Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, would lay claim to the act. Though the Independents promised to display all work submitted, when the test of their resolve came, they couldn’t accept the urinal as art. In retrospect, this seemingly modest act of artistic anarchism was a momentous event, one that forever altered how we define art. Henceforth, as Duchamp put it, “An ordinary object [could be] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” Critics have called Fountain, as the urinal was titled, the “most influential artwork of the 20th century.” This icon of modernism was never exhibited, seen only by a handful of people, and then lost, likely thrown away. A single photograph is all that exists today. Perhaps no other work of art has been subjected to more documentation and scholarly analysis, including challenges to its authorship. But the story doesn’t end there. In the 1950s and 1960s at the dawn of the pop art movement, as Duchamp’s ascendance into the pantheon of art gods was gaining speed, he commissioned 17 Fountain reproductions that can now be found in museums around the world. These are essentially pricy commemorative mementos of a piquant act decades earlier that signaled a seismic shift in the tectonic plates of the art world. They are widely revered as near-sacred objects. Keep all this in mind when you visit Ne Plus Ultra, a 10-year survey of the art of Michael Beam, now on view at Big Orbit Gallery. Beam makes droll use of a broad range of Dada stunts, including enlisting a sequin-jacketed actor to speak at the exhibition’s opening reception—in French. The actor then oversaw a free raffle of three artworks on display, and gave away two bowties from a company Beam invented, followed by a Champagne toast. It was theater of the absurd ripped from the Dada playbook. Much of the painting, assemblage, and mixed media on display involve appropriated images or found objects, what Duchamp would call “assisted readymades.” Some are grin inducers, such as the assemblage titled Work, comprised of a silver squirrel-shaped nutcracker, surrounded by an assortment of nuts, encased in an elaborately-engineered glass box. This sits incongruously atop a book titled Bonaparte. Down the front of the box in black lettering is the word “work.” Like all of Beam’s art, this is open to a variety of interpretations and associations. The squirrel has his work cut out for him. Is he a metaphor for the resolute ambition of Bonaparte? Does a nutcracker make work easier? It’s a head-scratching game of 20 questions that’s played out many times throughout the exhibition. Beam isn’t just mimicking early 20th-century Dadaist absurdity using updated images and objects. He ladles on another rich layer of meaning that speaks to the act of presenting art itself. It helps to know that Beam is the Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Castellani Museum at Niagara University. Much of his daily life revolves around establishing provenance, cataloging, conserving, and displaying art. Each of the works in Ne Plus Ultra is exhaustively and often amusingly documented in explanatory text panels. Language Weaver and Machine Translation Algorithms, for instance, is comprised of bits of confetti-like paper sandwiched between ornately framed glass sheets, topped with a picture light. Printed on the glass is the absurdist phrase, “the vodka is good but the meat is rotten.” The tag tells us that the confetti is actually several shredded artworks, the anarchistic antithesis of art conservation. Significantly, we are not told why the works were chosen, who made them, or what they looked like. Rather, with deadpan museum professionalism,
Beam lists the make and model of the shredder, along with the specific brand of paints, paper, and other art materials in the shredded artworks. Then he describes Language Weaver, a corporation with ties to the CIA (an organization not unfamiliar with paper shredding) that produces translation software. Beam recounts an apocryphal story of a humorous software mistranslation that produced the Dada-worthy phrase on the front of the work. And so it goes in a succession of interconnecting Venn diagrammatic circles that fall just short of connecting everything to Kevin Bacon. To Beam an act of culture is an act of culture. No matter how seemingly insignificant or mundane, items of cultural interest merit the same reverential conservation and documentation as Duchamp’s Fountain replicas. In one untitled work, a “Gelatinous mass of coagulated cheese ‘powercoating’ found in a 32oz. Utz CheeseBalls container” has been elegantly encased in epoxy. The epoxy ingot looks a bit like a slender bar of yellow soap. It’s signed and dated, marked 1.8 ounce, and lovingly displayed on a custom faux leopard fur salver. Every ingredient of the processed snack is listed on the tag, along with the specific product code. This is all contained within a glass display case next to a series of four similar epoxy-coated gelatinous masses made to look like Bazooka Brand Ring Pops, complete with their own crystal display cubes. This meticulous detailing highlights another salient point about Beam’s art; all this stuff looks great. The slick presentation imbues the work with feigned gravitas and genuine bling. At times the work glitters with—well—glitter. Michicolated House 1726 (French Castle for JPCEONTCC) is a shaped canvas, the contours of which are based on an early plan for what would become known as the French Castle at Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, NY. It’s one of several works relating to local history. The surface is an abstract camouflage pattern made of colorful glitter, then coated in thick epoxy. Fort Niagara’s French Castle is a massive military fortification that the French originally described to the Iroquois as a trading post, misleadingly naming it “House of Peace.” Glittery camouflage indeed. While much of the work demands this sort of viewer conjecture, sometimes Beam curiously spells out his intent, as with the large painting Kuru—Basura. The wall text identifies the work’s appropriated cartoon sources, the meaning and origins of the title, and the artist’s reason for painting it. It’s as if curator Beam feels compelled to guide viewers through the workings of artist Beam’s mind. Not that all this elucidation diminishes this delightfully quirky work any, but it takes some of the mystery out of it. Other notable works include two clear epoxy boxes with food sealed inside without oxygen. As the food slowly decomposes, Beam documents the process. The science fair vibe is enhanced by hyper-detailed documentation and an ersatz museum presentation. One untitled work utilizes custom tinted Home Depot paint, to match a detail in a Frederic Edwin Church painting of Niagara Falls. A large canvas is nearly completely covered in the dark color, and then sealed under a thick epoxy coating. White letters across the work wistfully spell out, “I can’t paint like I used to. It frustrates me.” Untitled (The Pledge of Allegiance) is another acrylic cube containing a bit of Astroturf, a miniature American flag, and a number of white plastic letters scattered randomly inside. One imagines that the letters could spell the pledge, but who knows? Beam’s work resonates with viewers due to its familiarity. Everything here reminds us of something we know or have experienced. Not everything is equally effective, but there’s plenty to entertain and occupy the P curious mind. Duchamp would be amused.
DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 19
THEATER REVIEWS “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.” So said Vince Lombardi, legendary head coach of the Green Bay Packers football team during the 1960s. Eric Simonson, author of Lombardi, is far from the first person to use football as a metaphor for life. And human imperfection is certainly at the heart of all drama. Simonson’s achievement is to filter these ideas through the irascible yet remarkably charismatic personality of Vince Lombardi and his wife Marie. The anchor of the MusicalFare production, directed by Randall Kramer, is a solid and captivating performance by Matt Witten in the title role. With a compact physicality and a booming voice, Witten embodies the man so fully that at times he seems to be getting larger, in the way an actor does when a movie camera comes in for a closeup. This is a presence that we suspect could intimidate nature itself— though we will learn, at the conclusion of the evening, that nature will be Lombardi’s downfall. With Witten’s performance looming so large, it becomes unimportant that the various team members in this production seem to blur together, and we can forgive the fact that lovely Susan Drozd is about 20 years too young for the role of Marie and comes across as more coarse than stoically world-weary. As the title suggests, this play is about Lombardi. While many of Lombardi’s most familiar quotations are about “perfection,” the theme of this play is actually “imperfection.” The man may have been the greatest football coach who ever lived, but this play suggests that his own children disliked him, that the success of his marriage was entirely dependent upon the patience, sacrifice, and sympathetic insight of his wife, and that he was his own worst enemy.
Tim Goehrig and Matt Witten in Lombardi.
PHOTO BY JIM BUSH
LOMBARDI & THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION
Moreover, Lombardi’s efforts to control every element of his world— his children, his high-spirited and self-indulgent players, his wife, and even the reporter for LOOK magazine (played by Tim Goehrig) who has come to write a profile of him—are all doomed to failure. Nothing in this life is truly perfect. Nothing can be entirely controlled. The frustration of Lombardi’s life is that he knows this, and yet he is driven by his Jesuit education to pursue excellence relentlessly. This is a man who attends daily mass and agonizes over every failure, no matter how minor.
At 710 Main Street Theater
The critical consensus about this play has generally been to say that it is a highly flawed work that provides thrilling opportunities for actors. While I agree with the later part of that assessment, I think when we follow the spine “to pursue perfection,” Simonson’s play emerges as an astute and inspiring modern tragedy. A perfectionist is one who takes pains and gives them. This was the tragic flaw of Vince Lombardi, and also what made him great.
BY ANTHONY CHASE
The MusicalFare production of Lombardi continues through November 23 at 710 Main Street Theatre.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN At Irish Classical BY GEORGE SAX
There are two major thematic currents working their way through Arthur Miller’s landmark mid-20th-century play Death of a Salesman, the playwright’s most famous work. It works on at least two levels, or, perhaps comes at us from two directions. There are moments and scenes in which these two dynamics seem to coexist or interact awkwardly. The Irish Classical Theatre Company’s generally admirable current production of the play can feel as if it’s reflecting this uneasy balance. Miller’s play depicts one exhausting, increasingly unsettling day in the life of the embattled, haunted protagonist, Willy Loman (John Fredo) and his family. The roughly 24-hour span arrives at a searing climax that’s been hinted at for much of the two acts. Trouble seems to follow, to dog Willy from the play’s very opening. He comes home to Brooklyn, bone-weary and heavy-spirited, lugging his heavy sample cases. As he explains to his wife Linda (Ellen Horst), he couldn’t’ make it to appointments in Boston, barely getting beyond Yonkers before he found himself almost driving off the road, his mind wandering dangerously. This condition besets him repeatedly through the play. Willy is 63, and he’s been a drummer for almost 40 years, but he’s just about reached the end of his thread. Willy’s beat, in more than one sense. As Linda hastens to comfort and reassure her troubled spouse, he’s confronted with another stressful surprise: His two adult sons, Biff and Happy (Paschal Frisina III, Adam Rath) are asleep in their old bedroom. Biff, the elder, has been away for most of the last 15 years, and his parents haven’t heard from him in a long time, as he worked as a farm and ranch hand in Texas. Biff was Willy’s golden boy, a star high school athlete and a student leader whose shining promise, along with a university scholarship, has been lost. Why remains a mystery to Linda and Wil-
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ly. What remains between father and son are resentment and recrimination. Biff obliquely indicates to his mother that he knows something disturbing about Willy. Meanwhile, she has elicited a promise from him to ask his boss for a less taxing job in the New York office. Salesman makes its conflict-ridden, time-shifting way inexorably toward a devastating resolution. Willy remains at or near the center of this 24-hour journey. His character and life must be the key to the play’s meaning. But this has been contested ground since it opened 66 years ago. With a writer as politically out front as Miller, it’s no surprise that critics on the left, right, and center have contended over that elusive meaning. Is the play about the universal plight of the little man, worn, or ground, down by the system, as Miller seemed to believe? Is Willy a tragic figure? Certainly not in a classic sense. Willy hasn’t challenged that system; he’s believed in it. His Dale Carnegie-esque faith in winning success through cultivating a “well-liked” persona has left him stranded and economically strapped. The “American Dream” in this “greatest” country has let him down, but he can’t see this. Nor does he understand that his aggressive attempts to inculcate his faith in his sons has indirectly lead to his estrangement from one, and helped make the other a glad-handing maneuverer, and a philandering bum, as his angry mother calls Happy. Yet this salesman’s plight also has its origins in his personal weaknesses. The illustrious literary critic Harold Bloom has called the play “a tragedy of familial love,” but this goes too far for me. Still the parts don’t always fit together tightly, and this may be discernible in the Irish Classical’s production. Fredo’s Willy captures the poignant bewilderment, anger, and fear, but he’s sometimes less successful at communicating Willy’s bythe-book charm offensives. Sometimes Fredo seems to be too energetic for Willy’s stressful, addled mind frame. But there’s no gainsaying the actor’s great delivery of his character’s personally and socially false consciousness, of the fact that he doesn’t know who he really is, as Biff observes very near the end. Horst’s sensitive, piercing portrayal of Linda is the finest of the cast’s very good ones. In a real way, Linda is the play’s heroic and tragic character and Horst is very credibly besieged and courageous. Her reading of the famous little “attention must be paid” speech about Willy is disturbingly hard to forget. Frisina and Rath play very well together and individually, the contrasts and similarities between the brothers coming through. Gerry Maher, as the mildly acerbic and perhaps cynical neighbor and benefactor of the Lomans, is smoothly, perceptively a counterpoint to Willy’s delusional mindset.
John Fredo as Willy Loman.
ICTC Associate Director Greg Natale’s direction is largely if not consistently successful.His efforts to manage the play’s occasional unwieldiness are complicated by the company’s theatre-in-the-round playing space, which is less than ideally suited to Miller’s shifting time frames and his overlapping nearly simultaneous actions in some scenes. The playing area sometimes seems too cramped and some of the staging and set decoration are cumbersome and distracting. But he’s managed the cast’s intimate encounters and interactions skillfully. This production conveys the often raw, disturbing power of P Miller’s celebrated play.
FEATURE FILM
TIFF’s The Shining exhibit visited by Kubrick’s widow Christiane, producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, director of exhibitions Laurel MacMillan, and director of film programmes Jesse Wente. PHOTO COURTESY OF TIFF
KUBRICK IN TORONTO
The filmmaker’s archives and more at the Bell Light Box BY M. FAUST “We’ve wanted it since before the Bell Light Box was built,” says Jesse Wente, director of programming at TIFF. “It’s been our most requested exhibition.” The Stanley Kubrick exhibition now running in Toronto through January 25 is also the largest ever to grace this space, filling 7,000 square feet on two floors with nearly 1,000 artifacts. If you’re a Kubrick fan—and who isn’t?—it’s a fascinating collection of materials, from the photos the Bronx teenager sold to Look magazine in the 1940s and the incorporation papers for his first production company through original film materials like the “star baby” from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the masks worn in the orgy sequence of Eyes Wide Shut. The exhibition features a specialized room for each film, organized chronologically and decorated with recreations like the carpet from the Overlook hotel and the barracks room from Full Metal Jacket. Even if Kubrick isn’t a personal favorite, it’s an invaluable peek into the work of mounting feature films from a director known for his intense attention to detail. The shooting schedule from Paths of Glory resembles an intricate flow chart, gives you an idea of the complexity of shooting a film and the rigorous sense of organization needed to accomplish it. If you’re not a regular visitor to Buffalo’s northern neighbor (it’s less than two hours by car, as long as you avoid rush hour), the Bell Light Box is a movie lover’s treasure. Built in the heart of the Toronto arts district to provide a year-round home for the community established by the Toronto International Film Festival, the five-story building features five cinemas, one of which Hollywood veteran Douglas Trumbell ranks among the best in the world; two restaurants and a lounge; two galleries, three learning studios, and a research center for students and scholars. And of course the exhibition space. Exhibitions like this one, which was put together in 2004 by the Deutsches Filmmuseum and the University of the Arts London with the cooperation of the Kubrick family, only come to the world’s most respected ven-
IN CINEMAS NOW: PREMIERES: THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1—Multiplexes are cramming this teen-oriented sequel onto so many screens that there’s no room for anything else this week, making it a good time to catch up on movies you missed. Starring a bunch of good actors who hopefully got fat paychecks from it, including Philip Seymour Hoffman for the last time ever.
ALTERNATIVE CINEMA: FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS DATE FRIENDS—From Albion, an independently made romantic comedy centered on a young woman watching her friends pair off, split up and re-pair. Filmmaker Rhonda Parker provides tart dialogue for characters played by actors who don’t look like they’ve rolled off a Hollywood assembly line. Tues 7pm. The Screening Room, Northtown Plaza in Century Mall, 3131 Sheridan Drive, Amherst (837-0376) screeningroom.net
ues. This is only its second stop in North America after Los Angeles. That’s not to say that, in the event you had a chance to see the Kubrick exhibition in Berlin or Krakow or Sao Paolo, you would see exactly the same thing in Toronto. The design for the space is unique to each venue. And, says programmer Wente, “An exhibit like this grows over the years as new items become available. Just prior to our opening Jan Harlan [the filmmaker’s brother-in-law] added Kubrick’s copy of the novel of Barry Lyndon with his notes, and the three-wicked candles that were designed for shooting the candlelight scenes in that film.” A longtime Kubrick fan himself, Wente reveals that even he didn’t get to pore through items like the films’ shooting scripts very much. “A representative comes with the exhibit to set it up in glass cases and will take it away when it’s done. Like all archival material, it has to be protected from excessive wear, like oily fingers.” Those shooting scripts—the scripts that were used in production, including material that was removed or changed along with the director’s notes—are some of the exhibit’s most fascinating items. The room for The Killing lets you read a longer version of Timothy Carey’s monologue about guns. And anyone who has followed the long history of Steven King’s dissatisfaction for the film of The Shining will be amused at Kubrick’s notes complaining about King’s excessive backstories for his characters. It would be fun to hear what King might have to say about the international version of The Shining, which will be shown as part of the retrospective of Kubrick’s films. Wente explains that a shorter cut of the film was required for overseas markets where the theaters are locked into two-hour screening slots. So Kubrick himself prepared a 113-minute version of the film, 30 minutes shorter than the one you’re use to seeing, described in the program notes as “more enigmatic and oblique version.”
FROM UP ON POPPY HILL (Japan, 2011)—Retired from the arduous task of his hand-animated films, Hayao Miyazaki contributed to the screenplay for this feature by his son Goro, a realistic story about boys in 1964 Yokohama as the city prepares for the 1964 Olympics, an event it is hopes will rouse the country from the aftermath of World War II. Sat and Sun 11:30am. North Park Theatre, 1428 Hertel Ave (836-7411) northparktheatre.org INSOMNIA (Norway, 1997)—The original version of a movie whose 2002 remake (starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams) you may be more familiar with. At the height of the night-less Scandinavian summer, a detective becomes caught in a cat and mouse game with the killer he is investigating. Starring Stellan Skarsgård and Sverre Anker Ousdal. Directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. Presented by the Buffalo Film Seminars. Amherst Theatre, 3500 Main St. (834-7655) dipsontheatres.com. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955)—A small Vermont town is thrown into turmoil when a corpse appears and everyone has a different interpretation of what happened to him—and what needs to be done with the body. One of Alfred Hitchcock’s few ventures into overt comedy (1941’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith is the other) isn’t a fan favorite, but it’s a
“I don’t think it’s ever been shown in North America, and given that it’s a film with a particularly avid cult, it’s something we thought people would be interested in. It’s not that one or the other is the ‘official’ version or the ‘director’s cut’—he approved of both of them.” The retrospective also includes a few Kubrick related items, like Room 237, a documentary detailing some of the elaborate interpretations fans have made of The Shining, and Steven Spielberg’s A.I., based on a script Kubrick had wanted to make for years but postponed until technology was adequate to his vision. (To judge from the sketches on display, Kubrick’s version of the film would have looked a lot more like A Clockwork Orange.) The one Kubrick film you won’t see at TIFF is his first feature, Fear and Desire (1953). Says Wente, “This is an exhibit to honor Kubrick, and he wouldn’t have wanted it shown. He tried to suppress it all his life because he considered it embarrassing. It’s been restored by [Rochester’s] George Eastman House, so it’s out there. And real Kubrick fans would find it interesting looking backward from the vantage point of the filmmaker he became. But on its own…” Kubrick came to filmmaking as a self-taught camera buff who remained fascinated with photography for the rest of his life. He died in 1999, just before digital technology began to take over photography. But Wente feel that he would not have shunned it. “He was always fascinated by technology, pushing the limits of what was available by developing new lenses. And he was preparing to make a movie (A.I.) that would have required those kind of effects. So I think he would have embraced it, though by bringing it into his own preferences. “He was always aware of how his films would be seen—he always made versions available that would work on television as well as theatrically, back in a day when no one paid any attention to that.” As a fan, Wente says that preparing the exhibit for TIFF gave him insight into a filmmaker who, in his lifetime, was often depicted in the media as a recluse who preferred to remain hidden at his home in England. “He didn’t do many interviews or allow set visitors, and he didn’t do advance publicity for his films, so there was always a certain amount of mystery to them. When you look at the amount of work he did for Napoleon, a film that was never made, you get an idea of the commitment of the man who made these films. “Someone who was close to him asked if he knew what he meant to people, and he really didn’t. For the most part when his films were first released they weren’t well received by critics. It was only ten or fifteen years afterward later that they warmed up to them. So I think he would like knowing that his films are still being appreciated, still being watched, and not just on television. “I think he’d now be OK with people poring through his stuff. His family says he would have, and I choose to believe that.” The TIFF Bell Lightbox is located on the northwest corner of King and John Streets (350 King Street West). All spaces, including the cinemas, are wheelchair accessible to the public. It is open daily from 10am to 10pm. Tickets are $12.50 for adults, $10 student and senior. A combination ticket for one of the films in Stanley Kubrick: A Cinematic Odyssey and the exhibit is $20. Timed-entry tickets guarantee admission at half-hour intervals, a leisurely tour of the exhibition takes about 90 minutes.
real flights. In the end it’s too much structural complexity for one film to handle. Co-starring Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough. -GS DUMB AND DUMBER TO—A few good laughs at the end aren’t worth the agonizingly dull 100 minutes preceding them in this sequel to a hit from 20 years ago. Creators the Farrelly Brothers (There’s Something About Mary) seem to have lost the light touch they used to have with bad taste; combined with the noticeable aging of stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, it makes for a desperately unfunny comedy. With Kathleen Turner, Rob Riggle, and Laurie Holden. -M. Faust FURY—War has seldom been portrayed more hellishly than in writer-director David Ayer’s (Training Day) film that follows an American tank crew in the very last days of the Second World War’s European Theatre operations. Brad Pitt plays the sergeant leading this crew as a quasi-mythic figure, a profane but all-American warrior-saint. His philosophy is presented as he trains a green kid (Logan Lerman in a sensitive, persuasive performance) in the cynicism and savagery that are natural consequences of war. The theme of brothers-in-arms fades under all the juvenile pulp-fiction fantasy, and by the last overblown, drawn-out, catastrophic battle scene, it has become impossible to take seriously. With Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña and Jason Isaacs. -George Sax THE JUDGE—As you might expect in a dramatic offering from auteur David Dobkin, best known for Vince Vaughn vehicles like Fred Claus and The Wedding Crashers, this is insistent hokum, grabbing your lapels to get your involvement and sympathy. Robert Downey Jr. gives a technically impressive but emotionally uninvolved performance as a cynical big city trial attorney defending his cranky father (Robert Duvall), a small town judge accused of vehicular homicide. Duvall still has his acting chops, as he sometimes manages to evoke a dignity and sympathy that the movie doesn’t really deserve. Between the overheated, dysfunctional family complications and the courthouse collisions, the movie has a certain crude power, but 140 minutes of it is mostly exhausting. With Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D’Onofrio, Dax Shepard and Grace Zabriskie. -GS NIGHTCRAWLER—It could be called Skincrawler for Jake Gyllenhaal’s viscerally creepy performance as sociopath Lou Bloom, pitched somewhere between Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin. (A younger Robert DeNiro would clearly have been the first choice for the role.) An LA bottom feeder looking for a path to success, Bloom finds it selling video footage of crime and accident scenes to a television station where the overnight news director (Rene Russo) is desperate to save her career. Writer/director Dan Gilroy keeps his examination sharply focused, shooting mostly at night on streets that crackle with danger and excitement. Bloom’s recitations of speeches learned from internet self-improvement classes add a satirical edge to story that is no less unsettling for being somewhat obvious. With Riz Ahmed and Bill Paxton. -MF ROSEWATER—Jon Stewart’s directorial debut is a respectful, solidly crafted drama about Maziar Bahari, the Iranian-Canadian journalist who was jailed in Iran after reporting on that country’s 2009 presidential election. He was charged with spying, and part of the evidence used against him was an appearance on The Daily Show. Perhaps sensitive to possible charges of glibness, Stewart avoids any use of humor, even when it would be useful in portraying a ridiculous if tragic situation. The result is adequate but rather bland. Starring Gael García Bernal and Kim Bodnia. -MF
IN BRIEF:
ST. VINCENT—Bill Murray may shout to the heavens that he doesn’t want an Academy Award, but it’s hard to see this mawkish comedy-drama as anything other than a calculated shot at an Oscar. His performance is fine enough, but there’s only so much you can expect from a story about a curmudgeon saved from a life of whoring and gambling by his friendship with a lonely boy who moves in next door with his harried mother (Melissa McCarthy). Plausibility is never the film’s strong point, but the contrived finale is so shameless that it looks like an old SNL parody. Written and directed by Theodore Melfi. With Naomi Watts, Chris O’Dowd and Terrence Howard. -MF
BIRDMAN—Too much and not enough. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s “meta-movie” stars Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson, a once famous actor whose career took a downturn after he stopped playing the superhero character he was famed for. In need of a comeback vehicle and artistic validation, Thomson mounts a Broadway play as a vehicle for himself, a troubled production that forms the basis of this film’s increasingly wild proceedings. It’s certainly challenging, dynamic and technically fluid. But it’s also erratic, lurching from scenes of banal domestic confrontation and confession to deliberate comic excess to sur-
WHIPLASH—Inspired by his own experiences at a musical conservatory, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s film about an obsessed drum student and his even more obsessive teacher takes its cues less from movies about the arts or academics than the military, starting in An Officer and a Gentleman territory before plunging unexpectedly toward Full Metal Jacket. An excellent performance by Miles Teller as the student is overshadowed by J. K. Simmons in the role of a lifetime as the teacher who believes in pushing students past what they think their limits are. The finale arguably undercuts everything the rest of the movie stands for, but it’s so well exeP cuted it’s hard to complain. -MF
low-key charmer that fits in well with his post-war oeuvre. Starring John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, Shirley MacLaine (her debut), Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock, and a pre-Beaver Jerry Mathers. Sat and Sun, 7:30pm. The Screening Room, Northtown Plaza in Century Mall, 3131 Sheridan Drive, Amherst (837-0376) screeningroom.net
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EATS FEATURE
TASTE WATCH New on local menus, and other food news… BY LYNN FREEHILL-MAYE
Above all, the chefs were coming together for a worthy cause. Big Fuss, held on November 12, was the fourth annual fundraiser by Western New York restaurants for Western New York farms. This round, chefs donated their food and time to Middleport’s Prudon Farms, which had been damaged by fire. “Saving small local farms is one of the most important things we can do,” says Black Sheep chef Steve Gedra, who organized the event with Feed Your Soul Productions and Slow Food Buffalo Niagara. But when there’s a little friendly competition between chefs, diners benefit, too. The culinary talents behind CRaVing, Toutant, Black Sheep, Bourbon and Butter, Marble + Rye, Nickel City Cheese & Mercantile, Lloyd Taco Trucks, Elm Street Bakery, and Ristorante Lombardo served up samples of their best cooking. Community Beer Works, Leonard Oakes Estate & Winery, Lockhouse Distillery, and Chateau Buffalo poured their favorite beverages as well. Altogether, it was a rich preview of some standout local foodie offerings. Here are some of the culinary themes to look for over the next few months.
QUINCE FRUIT Quince may be a cousin of the apple, but outside of the Eastern European countries where it’s most often grown, the unconventional fruit gets a lot less glamour. Now local food and beverage purveyors are sourcing and finding creative ways to serve quince locally. Pastry sous chef Emily Savage and the Elm Street Bakery team used local quince in a mostarda, an Italian blend of candied fruit and mustard seed, mustard powder, raisins, and walnuts. Savage spread it into a savory-sweet layer on a baguette. Leonard Oakes Estate & Winery made quince a guest star in a special edition of its Steampunk hard cider. Leonard Oakes produced 200 cases of what it’s calling Steampunk Elloquince, outside sales director Jerod Thurber says. The winery sourced it from Brown Farms in Albion. “It adds a bitterness to what’s going on,” Thurber says. “We’re starting to get funkier with our ciders.” Snap up Elloquince at Buffalo Proper and Black Sheep within the next few weeks.
CHICKEN LIVER MADE ELEGANT The French have been making pâté of foie gras, or goose liver, for centuries. But why be as hidebound by tradition as the French? Buffalo chefs are playing with the more plentiful, economical, and humble chicken liver. Following up on a popular Elm Street menu item, executive chef Brad Rowell whipped the liver
into a mousse (topped with the quince mostarda and then pickled brussel sprout leaves that Big Fuss foodies raved over). Chef Bruce Wieszala of Bourbon and Butter made it into a denser but equally fabulous pâté. He sourced the chicken liver from Oles Farm and spread it on crisp toast with the evening’s other mostarda, this one made with cherry and pear.
BEAUTIFULLY COOKED PORK BELLY Although the essentially uncured bacon that is pork belly has been hitting menus for a few years now, a venture outside the country can show that not everyone does it well. South African chefs, for instance, tend to serve it cooked hard, like extra-fatty slab of regular meat. Fortunately, the soft, melt-in-your-mouth American take on pork belly remains alive and well in Buffalo. Black Sheep’s Gedra had his tasting caramelized. The secret is leaving the skin on, Gedra reported. “What I’ve noticed in 37 years on this planet is a lot of restaurants don’t serve the pork skin,” he says. “We got peppered with grease for four hours. But we are willing to suffer for crispy pork skin.” He spiced it with juniper, black pepper, salt, sugar, fennel seed, and trés-French esplette pepper, then served it with beer jam, apple-rosemary puree, and pickled sweet potato.
GOAT CHEESE FOR DESSERT For years, self-proclaimed “sinful” chocolate cakes dominated American dessert menus. But no longer does the final course have to be rot-your-teeth sweet. Christian Willmott and Michael Dimmer, the duo behind the Black Market Food Truck, made a whiskey apple pie that was decadent, then cut the sugar with a goat cheese ice cream. The team behind Lloyd Taco Truck whipped chevre into cream to top an apple upside-down cake. Jill Gedra Forster and Emily Pierce-Delaney of Nickel City Cheese & Mercantile offered up a light-yet-satisfying goat cheese cheesecake they’ll be selling at the shop through the holidays. Pierce-Delaney used chocolate-coconut crackers for the crust—and tread lightly on the
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IMAGE SOURCE: WIKI COMMONS
sweetness. “I think about the people out there who want dessert but don’t want to drown in sugar,” she says. “If your mouth can have a conversation with what’s it’s eating and identify all the flavors, you’re more satisfied.”
garlic. You have all this tender meat in the middle—we call it crispy pork Milanese. As soon as you put the word crispy in front of something, it tends to do well.”
HOUSE-CUT AND -CURED MEATS
EXCITING RESTAURANT OPENINGS
Charcuterie is everywhere, and Buffalo’s most talented chefs are having fun ordering whole animals and playing with the meat in-house. Chef Adam Goetz of CRaVing made a rich pork confit from a heritage breed T-Meadow hog, and he even folded the pork lard into biscuits to serve it on. Chef Michael Obarka of Ristorante Lombardo served a vegetarian offering (an autumn-perfect bruschetta with ricotta, squash, maple syrup, and toasted pumpkin seeds), but he was also overheard talking about going whole-hog. The Hertel Avenue neighbor restaurants each cure pork into charcuterie-board staples like prosciutto, coppa, and lonza. Obarka likes to start with a hog’s head: “As soon as they come in, we take the head and poach it in heavily salted water and make a cross between a head cheese and a terrine,” he says. “We chop it up with toasted
Chef James Roberts, a Louisiana native, is opening Toutant with what he calls “grassroots cuisine” early next year. If his Big Fuss winter vegetable and mesquite-smoked brisket hash (complete with a soft egg and Tabasco salt) is any hint, great meals await. And Willmott and Dimmer of the Black Market Food Truck have their new restaurant, Marble + Rye, coming in spring 2015 and specializing in meat and whiskey. Not represented at Big Fuss but also fresh on the culinary scene are Hydraulic Hearth, a gastropub in the Larkinville area, and (716) Food and Sport in the brand-new Harborcenter complex. Both opened this month, promising local ingredients and craft beer. Clearly, there’s lots more to taste P in Buffalo ahead.
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REAL ESTATE
COMMUNITY EVENTS FOOD TRUCK TURKEY AT LARKIN A Thanksgiving Eve edition of Food Truck Tuesday, presented by First Niagara and sponsored by Independent Health. 5-8 PM. 30+ food trucks!
APARTMENTS FOR RENT ELMWOOD VILLAGE Beautiful, spacious 2 bedroom available Dec 1! ! Large living room, dining room, and kitchen with a large pantry attached as well as more storage area. Access to washer and dryer-no coin necessary. Water and garbage included. Call Justin 563-0725
CORY W FROM BOTTOMS UP We met a couple weeks back, you were stoked about 1989 coming out, we realized we talked on scruff too, please hit me up if you want to meet up. thanks. OUTSIDE ELMWOOD LIBRARY Once saw you get out of your car on Elmwood. Black mercedes. Heard you say something was “for the kids”. I feel we should talk. Please get in touch. SNOW BUNNY - WILLIAM & BAILEY I saw you appear headlong out of snow drift. You were wearing all white and I almost plowed into you in my trucks. Couldn’t really see your face. But I think it was exactly what I’m into. Respond with the model of my trucks. CAR DIED ON FRENCH ROAD I just wanted to say thank you to the two people that stopped to help me yesterday when my car died on French Road. Thank you to the guy who stopped the first time to make sure I was okay and came back about an hour later just to do the same. Also thank you to the tow truck driver who helped me push my car to the side of the road so I was no longer blocking traffic. I really appreciate both you for your kindness :) SPOT COFFEE ELMWOOD AVENUE Doctor/resident in scrubs parked Audi 2door on Elmwood outside of Spot Coffee a few weeks ago. We crossed eyes at the parking machine and again as I went into yoga. Hope your studying went well. <3 Mini Cooper Girl ENCORE BARTENDER Tattoos, glasses, gorgeous, muscle. Let’s do this, big guy. #watermelon MISSED CONNECTION NOTICE If you would like to follow up with a missed connection seen here, contact information will be provided to you by emailing sean@dailypublic.com.
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WELCOME HOME BUFFALO IS ecstatic to welcome you home for Thanksgiving, Alissa Vogelsang! Heal fast and know the whole town is on your side!
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THE ARTS DANCE LESSONS
10. Gallery with a Michael Beam exhibit
DYSFUNCTIONAL HOLIDAY If you are interested in getting a vendor table at Dysfunctional Holiday this year, send an email to kevin@squeaky.org - The event is on 12/13 at Market Arcade atrium, $35/table!s.
14. “... -- the whole thing!” 15. Elmwood or Linwood, vis a vis West Ferry 16. Starbucks competitor 17. “Iron pumper”
WINTER MARKETS
18. Jai ___
HORSEFEATHERS WINTER MARKET features a minimum of 12 vendors selling a wide variety of local produce and products. The market will be held in the building’s renovated basement and first floor every Saturday from Jan. 5 through May 4, 2013. Several permanent food tenants will also do business out of the Horsefeathers Building.
19. SHOVELING AND SUCH BELLY DANCE CLASSES by Nadia Ibrahim. All levels welcome. 560-1891 nadiaibrahim.com
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62. Ralph Wilson activity 63. Park in Lancaster 64. Don’t become an ex-pat 65. THE BLIZZARD OF ‘77, ARGUABLY
DOWN 1. Main hospital 2. Forty winks
THEATRE ANNOUNCEMENTS
3. Great Plains Indian
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PAUL ROBESON THEATRE presents BI*CH from Nov 7 - 30. Directed by Mary Craig. aaccbuffalo.org
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6. “Maid of Athens, ___ part”: Byron
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7. Hive production
CLASSES STUDIO SOPHIA in Kenmore! Buy 5 classes get 1 free, 10 get 2, 20 get 3. Offering pilates fusion, hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, zumba & boot camp! Call 903-1009
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HEALTH: MIND & BODY
QUEEN CITY MARKET will be held on a Saturday, December 13, 2014 from 11am - 5pm, at the Karpeles Manuscript Library on Porter Ave (453 Porter Avenue 14201) Buffalo, NY. This event will feature 50+ local vendors, selling either handmade or vintage items.
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8. Biblical brother
37. Fight-ending letters
9. 1040 EZ IDs
38. Bouillabaisse go-with
10. Head cases?
39. One of TV’s “Bosom Buddies”
11. Kuni’s supplier, essentially
40. These: Fr.
C
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FOR SALE
BIG MIKE NOWADLY KEITH BUCKLEY DANNY CARR SUSIE HART NEWELL NUSSBAUMER NOEL SUTTON HIS 196TH BIRTHDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2015 PLACE AND TIME T.B.A.
DELAWARE AVENUE 1 bedroom luxury apartment available immediately for $1,075 per month. Located minutes away Children’s Hospital, Buffalo General Hospital, Allentown district, Elmwood Village, and Downtown Buffalo. Laundry, hdwd floors, parking, fitness center. Includes heat, cable and internet. Call 332-2141
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY! BIDWELL PARKWAY 1 bedroom apartment. Super location, great apt! Rents from $795 to $850, including all utilities. Parking, laundry, hardwood floors, quiet secure building , entry system, elevator. Lease/security required, sorry no dogs. Call 885-5223
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AUTOMOBILES
MISSED CONNECTIONS
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THE PUBLIC MARKET SIGNED POSTERS by local rock band Cute Is What We Aim For $1.00 per poster. 15 for $10. Call Jeff at 598-1436
PUBLIC PERSONALS
SNOW BELT
33. “Peter Pan” dog 34. Fashionable Christian 35. Ricky Nelson’s usual greeting to Ozzie 36. Articles by nonstaffers 39. QEW abbr. 40. Advil buyer’s choice 41. Work retail 42. “... ___ I have to spell it out for you?” 43. Bridge option 44. At will 47. Frequent Mother’s, say 48. Skylit lobbies 49. “___ a Letter to My Love”: 1980 film 50. 11 Down catch, perhaps 53. Hail ___ 54. Word before bag or board 55. Dwarf planet beyond Pluto 56. WWII group
12. “-- porridge hot...”
60. Like no Bills Super Bowl ever
13. Up for discussion
61. Comedian Philips
41. HIGH TEMPERATURE, FOR EXAMPLE
20. Opportunity maker?
44. Quaker makers?
21. “ ___ cost you!”
45. Wife of late union organizer Emanuel Fried
23. Shea’s president Tony
46. Grill’s street
24. Nickel City Chef contenders
49. Birth control option, initially
28. ___ Guys; old Kmart competitor
51. “Love You” lead-in
29. Fills the hold
52. STORM IN MAY, SAY
30. Disney Store collectibles
57. To be in France
31. Came to rest
LAST WEEK’S ANSWERSBy Donna H BANNER DAY E X T R H E C H A R D O R E R E A S A A B N Y M E T O W I T S C H Q U E E U M A A S I S L A K E L Y E S
A E X R B C O P L O D A L O T H E P O L E R E R N C I Y G O E R I F R
T B I L L S U A T M F E E
R A A A L L D I E S G E A B O U H U N A L E B L I C N O N S Y G E T R I O R B R T E E S H V O
B R A X T O N M O S C O N I
C S O P G O R I T P S A M E A N B S A C S K E R C E
DAILYPUBLIC.COM / NOVEMBER 19, 2014 / THE PUBLIC 23
WNY’s Only High-Tech Indoor Cycling Experience Opening its first location at the corner of Delaware & Hertel Avenues.
Beginners, intermediate and advanced riders welcome!
Be entertained while burning 800 calories or more in as little as 45 minutes!
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G N I V GI AY AW
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S E S S A CL
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1094 Hertel Ave Buffalo, NY 14216 | 875-RIDE (7433) IF YOU APPROVE ERRORS WHICH ARE ON THIS PROOF, THE PUBLIC CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. PLEASE EXAMINE THE AD