50 High Street

The other night I took a photo of some odd construction work near Buffalo General Hospital. I quickly took some pictures.





Only today I found out what the heck was going on:



More info by The Buffalo News.

"The Famous Disappearing Goal Light"

[cover]

The other day Dave and I were hanging out at the influential SPoT Coffee when we discovered a stack of home-burned CDs. Why pass up a free CD? What we found was a great local artist, part Daniel Johnston, part Wesley Willis, and part Mark Russell. He has no website that I know of. The only information I have says that "John Bartles lives somewhere outside Buffalo, New York, and claims to have put together almost 50 albums between 1985 and 2005." If anyone out there knows who this guy is or has any more of his work, let me know.

In any case he fully encourages free copying. You may not like his voice or think his lyrics are corny, but if you've ever lived in Western New York I guarantee you at least one enjoyable listen.

[insert]

You can download the entire album or each track individually:

01 Life Without Art
Dedicated to longtime local broadcaster Art Wander

02 Fat Wives and Screaming Kids

03 Roger Crozier
Dedicated to the former Sabres goalie

04 When the Sun Goes Down in Cheektowaga

05 I Met Her At the Bills Game

06 Muskie Heaven

07 Bob Moses Parkway

08 Morton Feldman
I find it hard to believe Bartles was inspired by this guy, but I digress

09 Fat Old Guy Polka

10 As I Walk Down Elmwood Avenue

11 The Place of Great Evil.
In case you're wondering, it looks like this.



Tell me if the links break, and keep circulating the tapes!

Video Rodeo

My Bookmarks menu has become increasingly clogged over the past semester. A lot of these were found via FARK.com. FARK recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of "I'm stuck to my chair. I'm so very scared. Help," the greatest BBS thread in history. Anyway, go to town on YouTube while I clean things out.


Madd Dogg, President, After Dark Events. I once started work on a documentary of this guy but this mockumentary is an awesome idea.


Louis Armstrong duets with Johnny Cash


Tom Waits plays "Chocolate Jesus" live on Letterman


Tech Support in the Middle Ages


Elton John improvises a new song using cooking instructions for an oven


"Weird" Al Yankovic's video for "Bob"


Body Flex II: wrinkle removing exercises


Richard Simmons OUTBURSTS!


The animated script of Pulp Fiction. You'll see.


My favorite of the bunch: "This is a clip from 'Troop of One Hundred', taken from a Japanese comedy/prank show, where a 100 people chase after random strangers and you see their reactions."


So round, so firm, so fully packed!


Proof that Family Guy steals from The Simpsons


The best of Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show

LOBSTER STICKS TO MAGNET

Live Stock Market Updates from Weebl & Bob Investments

Drinking Time at Dartmouth

Here too are some YTMND clips I didn't get sick of.
Breakup Letter, Dramatic Reading
Parents, eh?
United States of the Holy Grail
Snoop Dogg's Pink Floyd Shirt
Roll Fizzlebeef (MST3K fans only)
Back to the Future: Source
Rush: For the Nintendo Entertainment System

Deus Ex Machina

Grandpa's old Minneapolis-Moline baler was just donated to the Western New York Gas and Steam Engine Association. Jerry brought over a Minneapolis-Moline tractor he's been restoring off and on so Uncle Raymond could take some final pictures. I don't know anything about this stuff (UPDATE: check out Jasson's site for more information) but I showed up anyway.







As long as I'm posting pictures:


The new couch I bought for $30 on Thursday night


. . . to put in the new apartment I'll move into on the 1st. Is it a bad idea to post pictures of your home?

Duke Sucks

Several weeks ago I intended to post about all the tourists visiting Buffalo during the NCAA Tournament. It was eerie to see so many ill-dressed people downtown, apparently thinking college sweatshirts substituted for coats during a lake effect storm. Even stranger was the helpless horde looking for something to do and no natives with any helpful info. But truthfully, I really just wanted to post this video taken at the HSBC Arena:



Yesterday I surfed around for some Virginia Tech news and discovered that this Greg Paulus guy has been shown up more than once on national TV. VT, here's one happy thought for you:



Finally, local law requires a Sabres mention.

Three Cubed

Some jerk had a birthday recently and I had to go to the party. Lucky it involved copious amounts of chocolate, a three-course meal at Pearl Street where everything was cooked in beer (including the ice cream), and a Sabres victory. Some other stuff happened but I'll post about later.




Ye Olde M&T Plaza lit up for the game


Even the Unabomber has playoff fever

4-25-80
Late that afternoon, (I think it was Friday), your mom and I needed gas in our cars. She had a 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger, I had a 1970 Chevrolet Impala. We went Akron Oil behind us where the road was all full of pot holes and very rough. I told your mom that she needed a rough ride for you to be born. We also needed to get groceries......So after the cars were filled, we went to PIXLEYS. We had just began shopping when your mom's water broke......there in the middle of the store. So we knew that this was the beginning of things to happen. We quickly left for home to get the things we needed...and for me to take a bath because I was still grubby from work. We left approx. 5:30 for the hospital.
We headed out down County Road to Transit. You guessed it.....Transit was only two lanes then up to Maple...Traffic was slow and congested. Well your mom was having major contractions at this point. With wanting to have you right there in the car. We speeded down Maple to the hospital arriving aprox 6:00 PM. They quickly took your mom to the delivery room where you were born a little past 6:30 PM.....

Happy Birthday Fred!!
Dad

In summary:

Mom: "Why are you going down this bumpy road?! Don't you know I'm nine months pregnant?!"
Dad: "It'll be good for you! What harm could come from shaking a baby?"

Mom: "My water broke."
Dad: "Whatever. I'm taking a bath."
Mom: "But I'm giving birth NOW!"
Dad: "Well I had a rough day at work! Not everything's about YOU, you know."

Nerdfest '07

News Flash: I have a fan club. (You'll need a Facebook account to view.)

Meanwhile, the Sabres have led me to drink. There's a film of this somewhere but you can't see a bloody thing and it's sideways. (Nice camera work there, Dave.) So what did I think of my first beer? Personally I liked its toffeeish accent, with a raisiny, plumy fruity note. Remember: had I not drank Lord Stanley's Scotch Ale that night, the Sabres would have never won the President's Cup. It was my civic duty.


This can be found at the CEPA Gallery downtown. Art Art Bo Bart, or Banana Fanna Fo Fart? You make the call.

Also at the Gallery is this:

You might want to check it out.

Did you know there's a Maritime Museum in Buffalo? More importantly, that it's free? I ducked inside during a rainstorm and spent an hour looking around.








Ha ha! Discharged seaman!


The Dun Building next door

Other pictures to catch up on. . . . Some architecture enthusiasts and I went to Boston Valley Terra Cotta, one of only two producers of the stuff in the country. Their first project was redoing the outside of this thing. Some of their newer commissions include buildings in New York damaged by 9/11.


This clay is still drying


A scale model


The real thing


Part of some state capitol. Utah, I think.


Neuman's Own Red Clay Dye


The Burger King

One more picture before I go. Here's the view from the 11th floor of ECMC. For a guy who won't move to downtown for another month, I sure spend a lot of time there.

Ben Folds at Canisius College, 16 April 2007

My dying camera and I checked out Ben Folds at the Canisius College Koessler Center. Here's some shaky video. YouTube probably messed up the A/V sync on my clips again, so it's best to view the video with your eyes closed.

"Happy Birthday Julia" (improv for a fan)



"Bitches Ain't Shit" (the studio version is here)



The end of the encore:



The first concert I ever saw was Beck/Ben Folds Five/Elliot Smith way back in '98, but I don't think Folds has lost his chops since then. It was a solid two hours of rockin' that got the audience to forget about the Sabres, for once. Also, if that was the piano they keep in the Grupp Lounge, I think Ben Folds and I have used the same instrument.

Let's Go Exploring

Calvin and Hobbes Snowmen in Real Life

Wouldn't ya know: just when I thought a YouTube of my dog trying to escape a singing puppy toy would catapult me into fame, fortune, and the ubiquitous Today Show appearance, along comes a video SO cute, SO hideously darling, SO disembowelingly precious that poor Misty had no chance of making me rich. What I'm talking about is this:



Otters holding hands. Two and a half million hits. Jerks.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago I made a quick run to the Darwin Martin house for their Open House. As I had visited several months before I really wanted to check out the (almost) completed structure. Here are some comparisons.

Outside before:


Outside now:


Molly, Jake, and the Greenhouse then:


Random old people and the Greenhouse now:


Gift Shop then:


Gift shop now:


So that was neat. Then, last weekend, I dragged two buddies to the Decemberists concert at the UB Center for the Arts. The nosebleed section was not conducive of photography so just pretend that I took this:



The performance was complete when two guys in a whale costume came out during "The Mariner's Tale" and ate the band. My Brightest Diamond was a sweet opener to boot.

THIS weekend I will "give" my final exam for the Buffalo Tours group. This involves giving a two-hour tour of downtown Buffalo's architecture and history. If you would like a free tour of Buffalo (a $10 value!), come to the Market Arcade building on Saturday at 10 AM and I'll be your docent for the day.

NEXT weekend I will run the Shoes for Shelter 5K in Forest Lawn Cemetery. My new year's resolution (of several) was to finally take to the treadmill. There were a couple of setbacks early on, like all those times I just about died, but now I run about four miles in thirty minutes. How I'll take to the hilly terrain of Forest Lawn I'm not yet sure but I think all the tombstones will help remind me to hurry the hell up.

Oh, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will be playing that night. Good times.

THE WEEKEND AFTER NEXT is the big Montreal trip. As the elected Planning Coordinator I promise that I will eventually get around to planning and coordinating this event. Mon francais est tres mal!

Finally, I leave you with two really disturbing videos. One is Kermit the Frog singing Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" while the second is Richard Simmons throwing temper tantrums. Which is more messed up? Shudder to think.

Awwwww

I'm too busy to breathe right now, let alone write a post. Still, I thought people would find this adorable. Here is an old video of the family dog, Misty, as a three-month-old puppy. Maybe I should submit this to CuteOverload.com

White Chicks & Gang Signs

The big news is that I'm getting an apartment in Buffalo after the semester ends. If anyone has a hot lead on a decent place in the Allentown/Richmond/Symphony Circle area that will open up in about three months, let me know. If all goes as planned you'll see me walking around this summer's Art Festival in my pajamas.

Megan sent me this old picture of her and her sister. Don't tell her I posted it online. Awwwww:



Lately I've spent time in the ECMC mental ward. No, not for public nudity. And no, I was just VISITING. It's pretty much like you'd expect (Green Day's video for "Basket Case" comes to mind, sans colorization) but one thing struck me as oddly . . . normal . . . maybe? Whenever Sabres are on the whole ward slowly files into the rec room. They watch the game intently and quietly for the full two-and-a-half hours. When the game ends they all get up and slowly file out. I don't even think they celebrate goals. Do they relate to the sight of 18,000 "Cup Crazy" fans in ways the average person can't comprehend? Does watching other people who are out of their freaking minds calm them down? Guess I'll have to Read The Book.



Lately I also attended a special showing of the documentary Murderball with a special talk given by special guest, quadriplegic Olympian Mark Zupan. I had no idea he lived in Buffalo for several years as a kid. This was supposed to be a picture of him in the movie theater. Sorry. In honor of his accomplishments the entire audience sat through the remainder of the film.*



When I lived at Canisius I often took walks past this odd building on Hedley and wondered (A) what kind of rat-infested hole it really was inside and (B) why it didn't look like the buildings surrounding it. Just recently I found out it (A) literally was a rat-infested hole. However, now it is being refurbished because it (B) was originally built in the 1850s as an orphanage and is one of the oldest structures in Buffalo. We'll put this in the Things Only Fred Finds Interesting file.**

Finally, someone please tell me what's going on in the picture below. I laugh my ass off every time I think about it.



*That joke is lame.***

**"TOFFI" for short

***Oh great, I did it again.

Dylan Hears a Who

The Original Site

Someone had the brilliant idea of having a Bob Dylan impersonator sing Dr. Seuss books. Amazing stuff, really. In case the site doesn't work (and it didn't yesterday), I uploaded all seven .mp3 files on a .zip over here. My personal favorite is McElligot's Pool: a little on the long side, but if you squint your brain a it actually sounds like something Dylan would write. Special thanks to BigO for first showing me these.

Oh, and then there's this thing:

Weekend Update

The only film Leadbelly ever made

A post? From me? I shouldn't have.

A couple of milestones occurred in the past week, and as a nerd I must document them. Here are pictures of my car hitting the 100,000 mile mark.




Once your adrenaline levels go back down, check out the StatCounter to the right. This week it finally hit 10,000, or something like 20 hits a day. It's no Zombo.com, but at least this site is updated.

* * *

Not long ago I got on the Buffalo subway while a guy was having a seizure inside. As a certified teacher I'm actually trained to respond in situations like this. By "training" I mean they showed me a video. By "response" I mean you pretty much make sure they aren't going to hit their head on anything and you leave them alone. Even in a more serious case like this, where the guy was on the ground for a good minute, there is little reason to panic. All I did was give him some room. Other passengers felt differently. One passenger who(m?) I've named Charlie Mensa screamed for an ambulance for five minutes. During those five minutes the man on the floor actually got up AND LEFT THE TRAIN. When Mr. Mensa realized his patient had disappeared he began to give his diagnosis to who(m?)ever was still around. "He must have been embarrassed." Brilliant. "I bet that guy was under a lot of stress. That's how you get those things: you're under a lot of stress." Or, maybe it's a common condition called epilepsy. I'm surprised Mensa didn't just ask the guy to calm down.

* * *

Recently I was also in a bookstore. When I made it to the register one of the customers/cashier's friends began to squeal with delight. "OOH!" she said. "That BOOK! It's been giving me an aura all week. That always means someone's going to buy it." My first thought was "Lady, you need better hobbies." But secondly, you make the call. What kind of "aura" does this book give you?



* * *

This happened in class:

Me: "I learned a new history joke. Want to hear it?"
Class: "Yeah."
Me: "What's brown and hides in the attic?"
Class: "?"
Me: The Diarrhea of Anne Frank.

Student: "I don't think that's very funny."
Me: "Sorry. That was pretty juvenile of me."
Student: "No, who is Anne Frank?"

* * *

I'll end this post with some great pictures. Buffalo City Hall has an observation deck that's been closed for reconstruction about the past year. Using some connections, I was able to get in. Other buildings are taller but not open to the public. Even more unique about going upstairs was that all of the Plexiglas barriers had been removed, giving me and a few guests the best view of downtown buffalo that any tourist has seen in about 30 years. My camera has a water spot (or something) but you can still tell how remarkably clear the sky was last Saturday morning. In the background you can see Niagara Falls:



The Central Terminal, center:



The inner harbor is shaped like a buffalo:



I even got to break into the Council chambers. Here is the President's chair:



. . . and here I am in it.