And so it goes.....

Artists and Models affair at the old Central Terminal on Broadway in Buffalo this Saturday.

I wouldn't mind seeing this.....whilst I don't particularly care for Hallwalls, I'd be into seeing what the Central Terminal looks like now that it's been abandoned and vandalised over a period of, like, 25 years (I remember, many, many moons ago going there to meet my sister returning from college on the Amtrak from Chicago at, like, 3AM with my father). They are allegedly working on renovating it, but I'd like to see how that's actually progressing (they have allegedly been trying to renovate it for about 15-plus years now)......

....plus, it's been, like, 23 years since I'd been to an Artists and Models event. Hallwalls claims that this is the 20th event, but I vividly remember going to thee very first Artists and Models (before Hallwalls got their grubby little paws on it) in 1984 with Will and Quazi at a place right next to Shea's called "Cabaret 650" (at, of course, 650 Main Street). The Cabaret 650 is probably on my top three of all time best Buffalo clubs, along with The Continental (which, appropriately enuff, was sandwiched between, on one side - a church with a huge neon cross that said "Jesus Saves" - and on the other by Planned Parenthood) and The Adventure Club (a place at 124 Elmwood Avenue that used to really piss off the Allentown Latte drinkers who resided in that area)......neither of which exist currently.

.

Neither of those other two clubs, that is. The Latte Drinkers are still happily ensconced in Allentown....

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New pics on the misc. picture page from last weekend (which actually ended with my return to Portlandia yesterday)......

.

-E-

Just makes me proud........



....to be Polish!



Just another one of those "Did she really say that??" sort of things.....I mean, I love that quote: "At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby ... Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone."



Well, what about a Man Purse? Maybe poor, misunderstood Tinky is just a METROsexual?? And, I mean....HOW's this going to "....be a burden...."?? I mean, WHERE the hell's he gonna put a wallet? And what, when he's out filming this week's episode of the Teletubbies, you think he's gonna have Mrs. Winky walking five feet behind him, hauling all his shit around for him? That's just sexist!!

.

.

I mean, this whole issue is like something outta a Goddamm Borat Movie!!! I is gonna E-Mail my relatives in Krakow about this.....wonder what their take is on this.....

More soon from Mayberry....

-E-

REMEMBER......

.....invading Iraq was NOT about the oil!! It was all about removing a tyrannical despot from power and securing the safety of the United States from weapons of mass destruction!

Um-hum.......


Sure it was.......yep.....

So, WHY then are the Right-Wingers in the Administration so pissed off that the Iraqi Parliament is refusing to pass a bill that will give foreign (namely U.S. and British) oil companies Carte Blanch over Iraq's oil reserves?


Hmmm...........


The veto of the price-gouging bill is great! Apparently, restricting supply (like several large oil conglomerates have been caught doing with their little refinery shell game) to artificially drive up prices isn't "price-gouging" in Dubya's world!

Christ.....worse than the Goddamm airlines.......
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Gonna be travelling most of the next two weeks........I'll post when I can.....new pics if I find anything interesting.....

-E-

Idaho and Utah.......

......'nuff said! 'splains everything right there in just those two words alone!


First, we'll remember college kids with guns in Utah.....but now, this wack job!

I love this little redneck - quote-: "There have been good opportunities to speak to people," he said. "I make sure they know that open carrying is legal, why I carry and I encourage them to consider doing so themselves."

Wonder if an African-American male just moved into Post Falls, Idaho.......would Zach walk up to him, welcome him to Post Falls, and encourage him to consider carrying a gun??

Northern Idaho is one of thee scariest places on Earf!! It's where Mark Furman and most Los Angeles cops go and retire. It was the home of the Aryan Nations before their "security guards" at their "compound" got drunk and started assaulting some local Native Americans....who then sued the absolute hell out of the Aryan Nations and won in court and took possession of the Hayden Lake compound and the trademarked name "Aryan Nations."

Just creepy......

-E-

OH! As a postscript to the post below.....



.....RE: R.I.P. Veronica Mars -



No, this is NO SHIT! I AM NOT, repeat, AM NOT making this up!



This is what the CW Network is going to put on next season........



.....are you ready?





..........



.........





TA-DAH!!! Thee new smash hit reality show, Farmer Wants a Wife.



Which is as described below in this snippet taken from an AP article:



In midseason, the CW will bring on a reality show, "Farmer Wants a Wife," about a country guy choosing among 10 women fed up with big-city prospects.



Normally, I couldn't believe what an idiotic and absolutely moronic premise that is....then I remember, there IS hope for the U.S.



You see, most of these stupid shows actually ORIGINATE in Europe (this gem came from the U.K., as did Big Brother. Survivor came from Sweden, I believe) and NOT from the United States.



Three cheers for us!!
















-E-

Too Many Deaths.....



......Rest In Peace to the following:



The Buffalo Sabres....

They who were simply out-coached. Lindy Ruff simply doesn't know how to tell the talent he has that when the ice is in thee, thee shittiest condition it has EVER been in, that you CANNOT play Ice Dancing with multiple horseshit passes back and forth! The Goddamm Swedish Judge may give you a 9.9 but when the other team scores more goals than you do, they win!!

I mean, yeah....it's cool to do a double salchow followed by a triple-lutz and then pop a wrister up where Momma Hides The Cookies in the middle of January, when it's, like, 20 degrees below zero outside in Buffalo! Cool....yeah....do that then.....

When it's in the upper 60's outside, and the Goddamm ice surface is something resembling slush, you simply shoot, shoot, shoot and shoot some more on the net!! Hope to pick up a garbage goal on a scramble, a rebound given up by the goalie, a screen that somehow gets through....IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, LINDY!!!!!

Yeah....OK: So, the ice was shit indeed. But GOOD coaches MAKE ADJUSTMENTS (often stated by several people as to WHY Marv Levy never won the Super Bowl)....BAD ones think that what got them there ("there" meaning the playoffs) in the first place is thee tried and true formula, even when it's not working......and they refuse to try something else!

So much for Jack Adams Trophy #2.........





Les Schwab....

The stereotypical-looking Westerner and a typical Oregon success story! On borrowed money, after having lost both of his parents at the age of 15, Les started a tyre shop in Prineville, Oregon, in 1952 and today, it's probably thee largest tyre and auto chains on the Pacific Coast and Intermountaine West/Great Basin region.

Bashed by a few as running a sexist company (although, almost all of the links to her "evidence" are broken on this chick's website....hmmmmmmm), Les struck me as a pretty all right guy (I have obviously never met the man, but had one dealing with his company....got brand new McPherson struts all the way round my car. They work great! Fair price! Very friendly people......I'd go back there again....and probably will for needed brake work), and very few others from my research have had issues with his stores.

His stores sponsor thee largest High School Basketball tournament in Oregon, and donated to many other charitable causes (including the Oregon Special Olympics).









Happy trails, Les.....



THE OBITUARY IS HERE






Veronica Mars......

This one reeeaaaallly hurts! I mean, with rabid fans such as Kevin Smith and Stephen King (Smith actually had a cameo on Veronica Mars, as did the lead in his film Chasing Amy, Joey Lauren Adams [who, by the way, has thee greatest voice]), you'd think SOMEBODY at CW Networks would listen.

Alas, I guess not.

But, I mean, have you seen some of the shit that passes for TV nowadays? I mean, seriously, it's a farce!! Pure and absolute rubbish like Pussycat Dolls and Survivor - Season Ten: Newark, New Jersey are actually allowed to stay on the air whilst one of thee very few quality shows to show up on TV in a long-ass time gets the ax?? I mean, I saw this one show on Versus after a Sabres match. It was called some shit like "I'm Ted Fucking Nugent and I'm gonna eat your flesh for dinner" or something stupid like that!

Seriously, when I saw this show, I literally thought that it was a MadTV or Dave Chappelle parody or something. But no, it was real, and it was on TV, and right there, big as life, was Ted Nugent, acting like the asshole that he is!

And things like that get and stay on TV????????????

Meanwhile, a well-written show, with a main character who's very intelligent, biting dry sense of humour, rather attractive girl (even though her on-again-off-again boyfriend on the show sounds like he's talking with a mouthful of marbles), an interesting single father person raising her, and some pretty weird friends........and that gets axed??

Or, as stated in obituary II, quote:

Self-described "huge fan" Angela Hanigan, 31, told The Associated Press on Wednesday she would be "extremely crushed" but not surprised by the show’s demise."I don’t expect shows with brilliant writing and three dimensional characters to stay on the air for very long," the teacher from Fullerton said dryly in an e-mail.

And they even love this girl in the Czech Republic!!!!

Go to hell, CW Network!!!! And people's jaws drop in shock when they come over to my house and discover that, indeed, I only have thee barest of bare-bones basic cable TV. The ONLY person I know who has a lower level of TV service than I is my friend in Denver (who still gets TV signals over the airwaves).

I guess now, the TV will just literally have no reason to come on at all........

Latest Reports out of the CW Network camp had a spokesperson stating that there is a distinct possibility that the 9PM - 10PM Tuesday Night slot curently occupied by Veronica Mars might be filled with a new show called Ow! My Balls!!!

I mean, when I was studying in London, I took a theatre class taught by this really hip, cool guy who is a theatre professor at the University of Wyoming. Really nice guy by the name of Bill Downs, and usually when you think "Theatre Professor" you think arrogant, pompous pretentious jerk. Bill Downs is probably about as real as they get! Probably thee least pretentious person I have EVER met. So Bill would tell lots of bizarre stories about Hollywood. Apparently, this guy used to be a writer for Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and he just got soooo sick and tired "....of the pure tripe, the endless amount of absolute crap I was churning out that people felt was somehow funny, that I just couldn't take it anymore."

And he just got so fed up with bad writing, hollywood sit-com politics, all that shit! So he packed up his wife and all of his possessions, took a psychotic pay cut, and went to teach theatre in Cheyenne.

I suspect that Bill would know where I'm coming from.....

THE OBITUARY IS HERE

Veronica gets two obituaries

OBITUARY II IS HERE

The English Language in the United States.......

Now, in some nations, such as.....oooooooh......say, Canada, for example, they have two OFFICIAL languages! French and English. Now, therefore, even products sold in British Columbia and Nunavut (who possess very minimal, if any, Francophone populations), have to have both, French and English writing on their labels, like.....say, if you buy a bag of Alley Cat brand cat food in Kamloops, B.C., on one side, it'll say "Alley Cat" and on the other, it'll say "Mistigri" (which, from my VERY LIMITED knowledge of French, is something having to do with cats, and it's not usually used in a glowingly positive context). And, I'm sure in Sept-Iles, Quebec, they're proably wondering "What the hell is Le 'Alley Chat'???" Grapefruit juice?? Other side of the carton will say "Pamplemousse" or something like that. OK....fine, fair to BOTH OFFICIAL languages! Cool...makes sense.....OK.

So when I go to my local WinCo supermarket and I'm about to buy a box of nukeable popcorn, my first thought was that I was accidentally in the Mexican food aisle. Then, I thought: "Hmmm.....wow, those Mexicans did a pretty good rip-off of the Act II nukeable popcorn label......wow, that's impressive."

Then, I look carefully.....and I'm like, holy shit! WHEN Did Spanish become this nation's second official language? Whaaa? It didn't?? The WHY THE HELL is this on one side of the container of our products??????

THE OBITUARY IS HERE

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Should have a new song and video out before The Fourth of July....keep ya posted....

The end is here.....more soon.....

-E-

Saturday May 19th, 2007......2:05pm EDT......

























And their wearing their GOOD uniforms today (the COOL blue ones on the left, NOT that Goddamm Golden Slug thing they came out with this year)........























And everybody is calling me, "Sabres in Seven", they'll tell me......



We'll see....as long as they don't do the Goddamm Ice Capades show and don't try five blind-behind-the-back passes before trying to sorce!



JUST SHOOT THE GODDAMM PUCK.......knock in a rebound, blast thru a screen, jump on a garbage goal......and we'll win!!!




-E-

Ran Away.....



.....to The Ocean yesterday.



Took a day offa work and hauled on a loooong-ass ride on my skooter. New pics on the pics page......



And The Sabres had actually showed a pulse, according to physicians in Ottawa. Defibrillation wasn't necessary at this time.....perhaps on Saturday!



And finally.....



....would you trust this man with your money? And would you also trust MSNBC.com to publish thee best fotograff of yourself if you had done something newsworthy??

I guess we can cross out "America's Next Top Model" for Paul's future career options......

....so, does this now mean that everyone is gonna start clamoring once again for Bono to take the reins of the World Bank??

More later....

-E-

Aaaaaah......thank Christ for (video) crackheads......















.....they're why Oregon won't be stupid enuff to pop in a smoking ban in bars!

Interesting stuff, smoking bans in bars. Evidence has shown that the State of Oregon (thee major video-crack supplier) stands to lose up to $100 million PER YEAR on smokers going elsewhere to smoke and gamble (instead of their local, where smoking will be banned).

Now, if you know ANYTHING at all about state legislatures, you KNOW that they're not going to take away the ca$h cow that provides them with so much pork!! Southern Ontario was a great example!! Ontario enacted a total, total province-wide smoking ban to EVERYWHERE. What happened?? the casinos in Niagara Falls, New York, USA and Detroit, Michigan (both casinos that ALLOW smoking) cleaned up in a big way! The same will happen with people pouring to Tribal casinos in Washington State from Oregon (where you can smoke) if this ban got passed! Fortunately, I doubt that it will...

I was reading a piece in Governing magazine that blathered the same fallacy that the Antis- like to trot out again and again about smoking bans: That smoking bans have a minimal, SHORT-TERM downturn in business in bars and pubs and then there's his huge gush of non-smokers coming in, the bar or pub makes a killing, and everyone lives happily ever after!

As a sign I saw on Hertel and Starin in Buffalo shortly after the New York State smoking in bars ban came into effect said: "Smoking ban is now a fact of life! So come on, all you non-smokers - WHERE ARE YOU???"

Other evidence? Try this link. I hadn't looked at it in a while now, but I was stunned at what happened in Washington State over just a short period of EIGHTEEN MONTHS that their draconian-like smoking ban has been in effect!



It's all right, though.....swarms of non-smokers randomly came out of the woodwork and saved every struggling bar.....



......uuhhh, yeah, sure........

That fact alone is very chilling and scary......no, NOT the smoking ban fact, but rather that I now read dorkwad magazines like Governing and The Journal of the American Planning Association instead of Loaded and Viz....which I used to read back when I was a lot more fun!!!!



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Congrats, Portlandia!!!



I used to LOVE these books when I was younger! A pure demographer's dream, and great sources of info (that breaks down the data veeeeerrrrry specifically, not just take-it-or-leave-it), these two books have recognised PDX as a pretty decent place to live!



Sperling's Bestplaces.net has Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton at #3 in terms of best cities in the United States (but we got beaten out by Bellingham, Washington?? How THAT happen?? I mean, I ACTUALLY LIVED in Bellingham and couldn't fucking tolerate it) and Places Rated Almanac has us #4 (just below Goddamm Seattle - HATE THAT!!!) for best places to live overall.











But I've really got to wonder about methodology!! I mean, Places Rated Almanac has Rochester, New York at #6 out of 376 rated metro areas and Sperling's Bestplaces.net has it ranked #296 out of 400? How the hells THAT happen???


I don't know about this, though....we have a few jerks, but we're generally pretty nice, if not totally incompetent, behind the wheel!!


More soon......

-E-

Whilst I'm not really crazy at all.....





.....about Bucky Gleason, about once every year or two he'll make an intelligent statement (Remember: This is the same guy who tried to run Doug Flutie out of Buffalo and who just couldn't shut up about how Rob "The Statue" Johnson was going to bring the Bills, like, twenty superbowls, end world hunger and do it all without breaking a sweat). Today, he wrote something that I have to just simply nod my head and agree with:





Yep....Ottawa is simply the better team. That's all there is to it. The Sabres are a decent hockey team, but I mean, Ottawa crushed Pittsburgh in five games (the same Pittsburgh team with all of those high-flying rookies that kept giving Buffalo fits during the regular season) and The Sabres had to claw and fight and dig deep into the reserve tank to dispatch the New York Rangers in six games. This Rangers squad was NOT composed of world-beaters, either......





People like Drury, Connely and especially Pominville just are nowhere to be found! And whass with al this fancy-ass tricky passing shit?? Guys!!!!!! IT'S SIMPLE!!! JUST SHOOT THE PUCK....thass all....just simply shoot the puck! A garbage goal off of a mishandled rebound.......tip-in (seen several of those this postseason).....lucky shot that seared through a total screen.....whatever!!! It's NOT brain surgery - You CAN'T win if you don't shoot the puck!!


Mike Grier....where are you? At least you showed up every night, ready to play...... and he wouldn't take the kinda shit that we're taking now like Daniel Alfredsson's cheap cross-check into the boards on Ales Kotalik in game two. I swear, Bryan Murray, Hitler-On-Ice himself, puts his players up to this shit.....(here is a vid of Bryan Murray participating in the Senator's pre-game skate)

Well...it was a good season...I mean, NOW it goes to Ottawa for two games.....that should be about it!



As a funny aside, Ottawa Senators goalkeeper Ray Emery (a lovely, upstanding citizen who used to have an image of convicted rapist Mike Tyson on his helmet) had stated that there really isn't much to do in Western New York on nights off!

I myself have never been to Ottawa, but a friend of mine, after driving up to Montreal and suddenly finding out that there were literally no hotel rooms at all available (Molson Indy Grand Prix or some auto race shit like that) decided to pack up the car, and try Ottawa......

.....he said quote: "The entire city is very much like a convalescent home, where everything wraps up for the evening at around 4pm......"

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But my Colorado Rockies are in last place in the National League West in mid-May! This is good, simply because usually, at this time, they are in the lead in the N.L. West division and, at about June 1st, they begin their slow death descent and by September 30th, the finish in last place....





.....who knows? This season, maybe the opposite??

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And Bills mini-camp for rookies began this week....they're actually supposed to contend this year......wow....imagine that....

Not much else.......more later....

-E-

Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT the hell was THAT????????


..........Errrmmm, oh yeah, that's right! It's the Ottawa Senators skating hypersonic circles around the Buffalo Sabres!


Shit.....OK....OK....OK. All right. So you really can't know everything from ONE match, but still......guess I hadn't seen "scary good" until now.
















No, please don't misunderstand me: It's NOT that the Sabres sucked ('cause they actually played an average game)! It's just that Ottawa is good.....reeeeeaaaaalllllly good.





I haf baaaaaad feelings about this series! But I'm hoping that the world will see just HOW good The Senators really are, and the Sabres will once again be relegated to the role of Underdogs......



THEN the Sabres take the series in seven!



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Aaaah.......a bit unnerving, to say the least.



A few months ago, I had been told by a friend to watch some pretty traumatic stuff on YouTube. OK...look up the keywords he told me to type in, and there it is! Whhhooooaaaaa! Whoa!



Man, it REALLY WAS traumatic shit!



Basically, I was told to type in "Iraqi sniper" in the keywords box....so I did, and MAN! There were these insurgency videos filming American G.I.'s getting blown away. One was a rather disturbing one where the soldier's head is bobbing up from the turret of a tank, and he's looking around......



....a puff of white smoke in front of the camcorder, and the next second, he's slumped over.



It sickened me, and I really didn't like this shit at all.....kinda made me a bit angry......



The scary part about it is the past tense used above. "....it really WAS traumatic....."



Shortly thereafter, Google bought out YouTube. Now, these videos have been taken off altogether and Google has done a pretty effective job of making sure they won't come back on. Yeah, there's the one that went out on the mass media, but the damage had already been done as mainstream outlets (i.e. - CNN) had shown this....so Google figured "Hey, we're safe: the big boys showed this one on National TV, so......"



These disturbing videos that have mysteriously disappeared from YouTube are put out by some assholes who call themselves "Juba" or "Juma" or some rubbish like that.



Scoured the Web for these videos.....ALL links were broken and cut off.



Finally found it. THIS IS NOT NICE STUFF.....so, I'd use caution before watching this....it's very disturbing!



In no way shape or form would I like to actually assist these fundamentalist jerks at all.....but seeing what's really going on over there, and then having it censored from The Internet (thee alleged wide-open free forum), in addition to the 2003 ban on photography at Dover Air Force Base as our brave men and women are returning home in coffins, is something that really scares me!



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Errmm......you ARE kidding, right.......right....?















I thought this was a joke.....apparently, so did this guy from Forest Grove (an exurb of Portlandia).



I mean.....if he shipped in, say.....oooooh.....20 or more watches.....OK. That's one thing!



But EIGHT??? To give as joking trinkets to friends and relatives? 55 G's they fined him!! His attorneys even put the letter on the 'Net! Too funny.....





Finally, just yesterday, the Feds gave up and dropped the charges and fines.......


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And, finally......EEEEEEEWWWWEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Man, and when I lived in Dallas and saw a wolf spider in my house, and freaked out (spiders don't usually freak me out at all, but this one was huge!!! I mean, fucking Fucillo HUGE!), I thought that was bad.....















But this story is gross.......check it out.......

Later,

-E-

P.S. - Oh yeah....forgot: Pop some canned goods in your mailbox tomorrow......do some good.....

New pics on the pics page......

Wrote a blather and I lost it somehow.....damm......too lazy to write again.....more later.

-E-