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COMMENTARY: TRUMP & SANDERS: IT’S ALL ABOUT THAT BASE

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COMMENTARY: THE GOP DEBATE: “WE DON’T NEED NO BADGES…”

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INTERVIEW: CARTOONIST TED RALL ON SANDERS AND SNOWDEN

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SPOTLIGHT: GRAVITY: PAINTER/ MUSICIAN ALEJANDRO GUTIÉRREZ

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ON THE COVER TED RALL, editorial cartoonist and columnist, has a new biography of Bernie Sanders.

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He comes to Burning Books

PLAYBILL: A guide to theater offerings this month.

Thursday, January 28.

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CHS-AppealForJustice-10x14-COLOR_Layout 1 1/14/16 5:02 PM Page 1

FROM 100 COMMUNITY LEADERS:

An Appeal for

TO: Bishop Richard J. Malone Diocese of Buffalo 795 Main Street Buffalo, NY 14203

Dear Sirs,

TO: Anthony Tersigni, EdD, FACHE President and CEO, Ascension Health 101 South Hanley Road, Suite 450 St. Louis, MO 63105

TO: Richard Gilfillan, MD President and CEO, Trinity Health 20555 Victor Parkway Livonia, MI 48152

As community leaders in the Greater Buffalo area served by Catholic Health, we wish to bring to your attention the recent report by the Workers’ Rights Board of Buffalo’s Coalition for Economic Justice.

The report highlights multiple areas where Catholic Health has strayed from its mission and stated values with serious impact on our community and our neighbors who work for Catholic Health.

In particular we hope that you will look carefully at the report Breaking Faith: How Catholic Health Executives Abandon Catholic Social Teachings.

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Catholic Health stands out for having an executive compensation bonus plan that rewards its Human Resources Vice President for extracting financial concessions from employees.

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Catholic Health's own IRS filings indicate that it offers uncompensated charity health care at a rate of only half the national average and half what the other large hospital system here provides.

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Catholic Health has embraced outsourcing jobs to for-profit companies outside of our area and beyond our national borders.

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Catholic Health favors non-union contractors without a commitment to local workers, apprenticeship programs, diversity, and sustainable prevailing wage and benefits packages. In doing so, it violates its own

Justice

“Memorandum of Understanding,” adopted in the mid-1990’s that constitutes the working arrangement to which both the Diocese and Construction Trades had agreed.

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Catholic Health has repeatedly flaunted both the spirit of its own grievance procedures and the National Labor Relations Act.

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Catholic Health has penalized numerous non-union employees who have special medical or other needs.

Fortunately, the report lists numerous recommendations that would begin to restore Catholic Health’s place among health providers that truly serve their communities with Reverence, Compassion, Justice and Excellence. It should be noted that many of the recommendations cost little or nothing to implement but rather invite a spirit of collaboration and mutual respect, benefitting hospital management, patients and staff alike.

We recognize the critically important role Catholic Health continues to play in our Western New York community. For this reason, we offer the Report with our hope that you will insure that Catholic Health returns to the values expressed clearly and persuasively in your own Mission Statement.

The report can be found at: http://cejbuffalo.org/posts/campaign/2015/10/breaking-faith/

Sincerely and respectfully, Robert Adler

Duane T. Flemming

Rev. John R. Long

Matthew Pope

Julie Algubani

Lou Jean Fleron

Sam Magavern

Bernice Radle

Karima Amin

Dr. Fred Floss

Joan Malone

David Rivera

Pat Mang

Casimiro Rodriguez

Mark Manna

Christopher Scanlon

Martha McCluskey

Marc Schroeder

Katie McDade-Burd

John Shinn

Roger McGill

Rev. Merle Showers

Commodore (Ret.), The Buffalo Harbor Sailing Club Executive Director, Western New York Muslims Founder, Black Story Tellers of Western New York

Thomas Barrett

President, Buffalo Professional Firefighters Association

Liaison, Sick and Shut in Ministry Co-Director, Partnership for the Public Good Professor, Department of Economics and Finance, Buffalo State College

David Franczyk

Aaron Bartley

Buffalo City Councilman, Fillmore District

Michael Blake

President, University District Block Club of Buffalo

Daryl T. Bodewes

Director, Western New York Hispanics and Friends

Carlene Boisaubin

Executive Director, Western New York Council on Occupational Safety and Health

Executive Director, People United for Fair Housing Founder, South Buffalo Soccer Club Financial Secretary, North East Regional Council of Carpenters Member, Contemporary Music Ensemble, St. Joseph University Parish

Ulanda Frank Andy Garcia

Germaine Harnden Josephine Harris

Pastoral Associate, First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo

Grand Knight (Ret.), Knight of Columbus—Father Baker Council Chairperson, Buffalo Young Preservationists

Co-Director, Partnership for the Public Good

Buffalo City Councilman, Niagara District

Secretary, Living Wage Commission of Buffalo

President, Hispanic Heritage Council of Western New York

Mayor, Village of Kenmore

Buffalo City Councilman, South District

Council Member, Town of Amherst

Comptroller, City of Buffalo

Professor, University at Buffalo School of Law

Director, USW District 4

Trustee, Village of Kenmore

Chair, City of Buffalo Living Wage Commission, United Methodist Church

Fire Chief, Bellevue Volunteer Fire Company

Justin Booth

Den Leader, Cub Scout Pack 816

Francis McLaughlin

Mary Heneghan

Sheila Meegan

President, South Buffalo Crew

Kathy Boyd

President, Gaelic American Athletic Association

Ronald Hosinski

Tara J. Melish

Project Director, Western New York Worker's Center

Executive Director, Go Bike Buffalo President, Willowgrove Community Association

James Briggs

President (Ret.), Corpus Christi Church Social Athletic Club

Paul Brown

President, Nurses' Guild, Mt. Erie Baptist Church

Rev. Anthony Brown

Board of Directors, Dnipro Ukrainian Association

Marty Burchalewski

Mount Erie Batptist Church

Walter Burgett

Leadership Team, Sisters of St. Joseph

Larry Cannan

Associate Professor, Vice-President, Faculty Federation of Erie Community College

President Niagara-Orleans County CLC President, Buffalo Building and Construction Trades Council Program Manager, Buffalo SNUG Business Representative, IUOE Board of Education, Cheektowaga Central Schools Grand Knight, Knights of Columbus Council #3875

Roger Cook

Board Co-Chair, Riverside-Salem United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ

Karen Howard

Yuri Hreschychin

Rev. Jerry Hunter

Sister Judith Justinger, SSJ Patricia Kaiser

Casey Smiegelski

Director, Erie Country Veterans Services

Liz Smith-Rossiter, MPA

Town Supervisor, Town of West Seneca Director, Buffalo Human Rights Center, SUNY Buffalo School of Law

Gary Snyder

Darlene Mercado

Howard Stanger, Ph.D.

Captain (Ret.), Main-Transit Fire Company Professor of Management, Canisius College, Wehle School of Management

President, Hispanic Women's League, Inc.

Frank Messiah

Doug Stock

President, NAACP Buffalo

Barbara Miller-Williams

President, Dunkirk Area Labor Council

Robert Mootry, Jr.

Director, Oakfield Fire Department

John Mudie

Director, UB Center for Urban Studies and Urban Regional Planning

Bill Strugeon, Jr.

Erie County Legislator, First District

Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr.

President, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President, Western New York CLC

Executive Director, WNY Law Center

Louis Mustillo

Minh Xuan Tran

Laura Kelly

Joseph Keleman

Recipient, Bishop’s Alter Service Award of 2015, Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Actor, Mike and Molly

Andrea Dacey

Executive Director, Old First Ward Community Center

Lazara Nelson

Curator, Pausa Art House

Flo Tripi

George Kennedy

Michael Deely

Executive Vice-President, 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East

Jon Nelson

Director, Genkin Philharmonic Orchestra

Brian Trzeciak

Kevin M. Kennedy

President, Buffalo Police Benevolent Association

George Nicholas

Tod Kniazuk

Pastor, Lincoln Memorial Methodist Church

George Tutuska

Executive Director, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Arts Center

Carl Nightingale

Christine Vogel

William DeMonte

Jason Kulaszewski

Board of Directors, South Buffalo Chamber of Commerce Regional Director, New York State United Teachers

Jax Deluca

Assistant Director, North Tonawanda Emergency Management Operations

Julia Drinnon-Doran

Ladies of Charity, St. Pius Church

Anna Falicov

General Counsel, New York Foundation for Fair Contracting

Joel Feroletto

Buffalo City Councilman, Delaware District

Michael Fisher

President, Buffalo Citizens on Patrol Neighborhood Watch

WNY COALITION

Executive Director, Arts Services Initiative of Western New York Co-Chair, Young Citizens for ECC

Rev. Kirk Laubenstein

Executive Director, Coalition for Economic Justice

Rich Lee

President, Buffalo Board of Block Clubs

James Lint

President, North Collins Veteran's Tribute

Richard Lipsitz

President, Western New York Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO

FOR

Western Region President, CSEA Western New York Citizen Action Former Drummer, The Goo Goo Dolls

Professor, Department of Transnational Studies, State University of Buffalo

Vice President, Western New York Women Lawyers Association

Jeff Nixon

Pierre Wallinder

Greg Olma

Padraic Walsh

Peg Overdorf

Anthony Woods

Marc Panepinto

Ken Young

Executive Director, Sail Buffalo

Former Defensive Back, Buffalo Bills

Chairman, Irish Network Buffalo

Board of Directors, Mickiewicz Polish Library

Deacon Chairman, Mount Erie Batptist Church

Executive Director, Valley Community Center

President, Town Park Tax Payers Association

Senator, New York State

B E T T E R H E A LT H C A R E

Jason Zona

Niagara County Legislature, 5th District

2495 Main St.

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Suite 547

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Buffalo, NY 14217

DAILYPUBLIC.COM / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / THE PUBLIC

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NEWS COMMENTARY

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BASE Sanders, Trump, and appealing to white guys with no prospects

BY BRUCE FISHER IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT that Senator

Bernard Sanders wins the Democratic nomination for president, a consensus of political opinion researchers suggests that Sanders would defeat Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, or any other potential Republican nominee.

But should Sanders actually pose a threat to the economic interests he excoriates in every speech, that threat would come in the form of a Congressional Democratic majority that commits to Sanders’s program of large-scale tax reform, healthcare reform, and a foreign-policy reset that sharply reduces defense spending.

Sanders with Congressional majorities, a far more unlikely event than his nomination, might engender a reaction far more serious than the conventional Republican politics of legislative obstructionism.

One friend has even suggested that any serious threat to the status quo would result in Sanders becoming the American Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile who was elected in 1970, who actually delivered wage increases, child nutrition, healthcare reform, minority uplift, nationalization of banks and mines, land redistribution, and more, and killed himself in 1973 in the final hours of a military coup that destroyed democracy for the ensuing 40 years.

That would be pretty damned unlikely here.

Yet it’s settled that Sanders and Donald Trump are riding waves of disgust with conventional politics, loathing for corruption, fear that “the rules” do not apply to the rich and powerful. They are, separately, also surfing emotions based in the day-to-day life experience of a gap between aspiration and income. The experience of over two-thirds of the households in Erie County, New York, and over three-quarters of all the households in every single one of the other eight New York State counties that make up the Buffalo-Niagara Falls media market, is this: being inundated by messaging about consumption from every screen, speaker, headphone, billboard, and print publication perceptible, but not having the money to join in.

That’s not unique to this Rust Belt region. But this is not Appalachia, or the Rio Grande valley, or a rural region that has never known development. This is an old, settled area which has had waves of prosperity for more than 200 years.

Expectations matter.

But so do facts, and the fact is, most people in this media market report less than $50,000 a year in income.

These are mainly white people, because most of this part of America is Caucasian, especially outside the center-city neighborhoods in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Lockport, and Jamestown. So-called “visible minorities” comprise less than 12% of the population in Western New York. More than half of the 424,500 tax-return filers in Erie County reported taxable incomes in 2013 of less than $30,000 a year, which is what your gross pay would be were you to make $15 an hour.

There is another world, also largely Caucasian—the world of a very different 12 percent of this region. That’s the world of a little under 50,000 tax-return filers in Erie County, out of the 425,000—the taxpayers who make over $100,000 either from their executive or managerial jobs, from practicing medicine, law, accounting, engineering, or university teaching, who run successful small businesses, or who bring unearned income in from investments.

There has always been a class divide, always, and income divides, too. (The tiny sliver of the region’s population that reports over $200,000 in annual income has a hugely outsized share of total wealth, but that’s another discussion.)

Clearly, though, we must parse expectations. The economic experience of this Rust Belt region was, within the lifetimes of most of the most active Caucasian voters here, an experience of uplift, first for the unskilled but unionized industrial workers of the 1950s through the 1970s, and then uplift for the college-educated from the 1980s until the 2008 crash. Now? The new jobs, even for the college-educated, generally pay less than $15 an hour (most actually pay between $9 and $11 an hour), and come without benefits, job security, or much expectation of longevity.

It hurts. It more than hurts, actually. As recently reported

by Angus Deaton and Ann Case of the Princeton economics department, there is now a strikingly higher rate of death for middle-aged, working-class white men than ever before in American history. It’s not all white men. It’s 45to 55-year-old white guys without college degrees.

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QUICK HITS

GREENLEAF & BUFFALO STATE

DISLOCATION AND POLITICS

BY DAN TELVOCK

In the past year or two, there have been two unsettling lines of inquiry that poll-takers have been exploring. One is a joint operation by the Democratic Strategist and the Washington Monthly, with a group of policy wonks, sociologists, and journalists all asking the big question: What’s going on with white, working-class men?

The other investigation is by a London-based market research firm that presents itself as a rapidly growing, cutting-edge international aggregator of the views of the global online community. The firm is called YouGov. It recently polled the question of who among United States voters would accept a military coup, or, if not a coup, then government being run by the military.

The most alienated voters—the ones feeling most acutely disempowered, the ones who are shrinking as an electoral target, even as progressives ardently focus-group and message-craft and endeavor to connect economic experience with political messaging—are working-class white males.

They are sought-after because, since Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980, they have become, even outside the South and the West, a reliable part of the Republican base.

Yet the two opinion-research efforts show that working-class, low- and moderate-income whites without college are also the most convinced of the need for government reform, the need for making the economic establishment play by the rules, and the urgent need for a politics of straight talk.

That’s why voters from this population group form the core of the bloc—only about a third of all voters today— that sees the military as clean enough, patriotic enough, and trustworthy enough to run the national government.

So if Sanders were ever to be a presidential candidate in the general election, his candidacy might get a big boost were he to choose a running mate with Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines in his or her portfolio.

Preferably, for this group, still wearing a uniform.

SCENARIOS, FEARS, AND FANTASIES A larger plurality of Americans polled by YouGov found the idea of a military hand in running the government not only undesirable but hard to imagine. More than four out of 10 Republicans were fine with the idea. Progressives dislike the idea because they imagine a military dictatorship.

The United States, blessed by being so enormous and polycentric, is no Chile. Any would-be dictator would have a tough time being a Coriolanus Snow for very long.

The Hunger Games fantasy of evil fascism makes sense two hours at a time at the multiplex.

And the disgust that working-class whites (especially women) have for government corruption, and for Congress, doesn’t square with this country’s 50 states full of legislatures, city councils, school boards, and water authorities, every last one of them populated by elected officials who are universally convinced that they are at the very least the equal and probably the better of Congress, the Founding Fathers, and Frank Underhill, too.

But the question for 2016 remains: Will the target demographic group be moved by the economic populism of Sanders, or by the non-economic appeals of Trump?

That’s much more germane than wondering whether the Big 6 banks will try to stage a coup.

What is very clear, however, is that the conventional politics of competence in policy, expertise in foreign affairs, specificity in economic plans, the stock-in-trade of every other candidate running not only for president but for every other office, will probably not move many working-class white men from where they are now, which is solidly Republican, resentful, alienated, stressed, feeling broke, and perhaps getting ever closer to being susceptible to the appeals of a Cliven Bundy or, locally, a Carl Paladino.

Bruce Fisher is visiting professor at SUNY Buffalo State and the director of the Center for Economic and P Policy Studies.

THE PUBLIC / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM

n I chuckled a bit as I read the a story in the November 18 edition of The Record, the Buffalo State College student newspaper, which provided the owner of Greenleaf and Co. a forum to criticize my investigation of his business operations.

The newspaper also let Buffalo State officials further explain why they are supporting the company’s plan to build an off-campus student housing project.

My investigation, recently voted by our readers the top story in 2015, provided ample evidence that Greenleaf has a history of renting substandard apartments and not paying bills to contractors or taxes on time to the city, state and federal government.

Greenleaf certainly has a lot of unhappy former tenants. I interviewed more than 30 current and former tenants, contractors, employees and business associates for my story, which published and broadcast November 12.

Another 15 to 20 former tenants contacted me after the story ran or posted comments on Facebook. The Record, for its story, found still more unhappy customers.

So, we’re approaching 60 unhappy former tenants, and that doesn’t count the more than 70 who filed small claims cases against Greenleaf over the years.

Yet, Buffalo State officials—chiefly Michael LeVine, Buffalo State vice president for finance and management—are supporting Greenleaf’s project, which will cover almost an entire block between Grant and Rees streets.

Two things stuck out when I read The Record story.

Levine told The Record that the project is “not something the college just jumped into without doing its due diligence.”

Really?

In an interview with Levine before my story published, I mentioned some of the problems I had discovered with Greenleaf. Levine said he was unaware of them. In fact, he sounded surprised.

In addition, Hal Payne, vice president of student affairs, conceded to me on camera that the college had not begun any due diligence of Greenleaf or its owner, James Swiezy.

“We have not been in the business of doing due diligence on a proposal until just now,” Payne said.

His words, not mine.

Finally, let’s deal with one of the more “creative” rebuttals from Swiezy.

He claims to have sent Investigative Post a list of over 20 contractors, and 25 to 30 long-term tenants of Greenleaf apartments.

In fact, Sweizy provided me a list of 10 contractors; I called five and quoted two.

Another fact: He provided me a list of 16 other names; 10 are renters and six are neighbors of his rentals.

I called each tenant multiple times and visited the apartments, leaving my business card in their doorjambs. None called. I reached a Bird Avenue apartment tenant, who had lived there only two months. The rest of the tenants interviewed I had used in the story.

That’s hardly a list of 45 to 50 people, let alone a list of 25 to 30 long-term tenants.

Greenleaf’s project is expected to break ground soon. The Common Council has approved the rezoning for Greenleaf, which expects to begin construction at the end of March.

UPCOMING EVENT: n Investigative Post is hosting its second Trivia Night on Wednesday, January 27. The festivities begin at 7pm. Our first trivia night in October attracted a big crowd and we’re expecting another large gathering at Brawler’s Deli, in basement of Pearl Street Grill.

Kevin O’Connell of WGRZ will serve as quizmaster. Admission is $10 for non-members and Investigative Post Bronze members and free for Silver, Gold, and Platinum members. Tickets can be purchased online or at the door.

Investigative Post is a nonprofit newsroom that produces independent, non-partisan investigative stories and analysis on issues that matter to the citizens and taxpayers of Buffalo and Western P New York.

LOCAL NEWS

THE PUBLIC RECORD

FLAHERTY’S CAMPAIGN CHEST

BY GEOFF KELLY THE $300,000 MAN: Last Friday was the deadline for January’s campaign finance disclosure reports,

required of all active campaign committees. The first report we turned to was that of the campaign to elect Michael Flaherty Erie County District Attorney, which has raised an astonishing $297,000 since October, when he began collecting money. Flaherty is currently acting DA, holding down the job that his former boss, Frank A. Sedita III, vacated in order to become a New York State Supreme Court judge. That’s right: He began raising money before Sedita had even been elected judge.

About $142,000 came from individual donors, comprising family members, staff in the DA’s office, local law firms, and a handful of political apparatchiks whose names appear often in the rolls of contributors to candidates who are not allied with Erie County Democratic Party headquarters.

(A curious coincidence about the DA staff contributions: On his way out the door, Sedita’s campaign committee began refunding donations he’d received from staff members in 2015; in many cases, that money appears to have been rerouted to Flaherty’s campaign.)

A smattering of donations comes from unions and other candidates’ committees. The better half, $168,000, comes in the form of loans from Flaherty and his wife ($38,000), family members ($90,000), and his campaign’s finance chair, James Eagan ($40,000).

Rumor has it that Eagan—generally tied to a persistent anti-headquarters, pro-Steve Pigeon insurgency in the local Democratic Party—is responsible for some political hardball that convinced Buffalo City Court Judge Tim Franczyk to withdraw from the race. Franczyk had the support of headquarters and a broad swath of the legal and law enforcement community. Franczyk had been expected to resign his judgeship on January 1 in order to pursue the DA’s office; he announced he would not do that on January 5.

Two other Democrats are expected to run against Flaherty: Mark Sacha, the former ADA who accused Sedita of protecting political ally Pigeon from criminal prosecution and was fired for his trouble; and former Tonawanda Town Judge John Flynn. Erie County Republicans have not yet settled on a candidate, nor said with certainly that they will field one. Neither Flynn nor Sacha has yet registered a campaign committee with the state board of elections.

In addition to using possession of the office to his fundraising advantage, Flaherty is using staff too: Amy Hughes, chief of administration for the DA’s office, sent out at least a dozen press releases in Flaherty’s first two weeks as acting DA, touting new initiatives and prosecutorial successes.

In less than four months, acting Erie County DA Mike Flaherty has raised $300,000 in his effort to remove “acting” from that title.

NOTHING FROM THE “RIGHT DEMOCRATIC TEAM”: A campaign committee called the Right Democratic Team, active in last fall’s contentious primaries in Cheektowaga, has still failed to file anything but an 11-day pre-primary report, despite clearly raising and spending money. The committee is allied with the Steve Pigeon wing of the county Democratic Party; acting DA Flaherty has tried to distinguish himself from his old boss by saying he will pursue public corruption and election law fraud. I guess we’ll see.

More to come at dailypublic.com, we’re we’ll be parsing campaign finance peculiarities and readP ing tea leaves all week.

Public Exhibition Opening for Erin Shirreff

Friday, January 22, 2016 7–9 pm

Join us for a FREE public opening of the first large-scale United States museum survey of Erin Shirreff’s work, organized by the Albright-Knox and ICA/Boston.

On the occasion of the exhibition opening, join us for a FREE conversation

FREE

between Erin Shirreff and Senior Curator Cathleen Chaffee at 7:15 pm, part of the Emerging Voices in Contemporary Art Lecture Series.

Image: Erin Shirreff (Canadian, born 1975). Monograph (no. 3), 2012. Set of five black-and-white inkjet prints, edition 3/4 and 2 AP, 37 x 48½ x 3 inches (94 x 123.2 x 7.6 cm) each, framed. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Edmund Hayes and Sarah Norton Goodyear Funds, 2014. © Erin Shirreff. Image courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

1285 Elmwood Avenue Buffalo, New York 14222 albrightknox.org

Erin Shirreff and its accompanying publication have been made possible, in part, through the generosity of Albright-Knox Contemporary and Modern Art Foundation Canada and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., with additional support from Keller Technology Corporation, Deborah Ronnen, and an anonymous donor.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc. for its generous support of the Emerging Voices Lecture Series.

DAILYPUBLIC.COM / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / THE PUBLIC

5

NEWS COMMENTARY

“BADGES…I DON’T HAVE TO SHOW YOU NO STINKIN’ BADGES” Some notes on the January 14 Republican “debate” in South Carolina

BY BRUCE JACKSON Author’s note: Save for this paragraph, these comments were written and submitted before the Sunday, January 17 debate among Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley in Charleston, South Carolina. The most recent Republican event is described in this article. The Democratic event was very different: It focused on issues and differences in the candidates past positions and current ideas.

The questions posed by NBC anchor Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell went to policy and potential, and the candidates responded in kind. There was, so far as I could tell, no demonizing, outright lying, or wandering into a universe wholly disconnected from fact or possibility.)

WHAT DEBATE? It wasn’t a debate. It was a Republican campaign event, one in which the “debaters” mostly had at two people who weren’t there—Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—and the “moderators” were really enablers. In the post-debate “Spin Room” session, one of the Fox anchors said, “I’m a Republican; I want the Republicans to win.”

A debate is two sides arguing one another’s positions trying to prove a point. What went on here was seven men on a stage occasionally attacking one another but mostly telling outrageous lies about two people who weren’t there: Clinton and Obama. Normally, in a debate, when someone says something that is mendacious or untenable, the opponent pounces on it next time up; here, the opponents mostly expanded on it.

WHAT MODERATORS? In a real debate there is a moderator who does not take sides, who is basically a traffic cop at a busy intersection.

Fox Business Network anchors Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo were anything but. Many of the questions they posed weren’t questions designed to distinguish positions among the candidates, but rather slow-ball pitches allowing them to have at the Democrats.

Bartiromo, for example, asked Ben Carson, “And what do you think of the notion that Hillary Clinton is an enabler of sexual misconduct?”

Cavuto said, in part of a question to Bush, “For the third time in as many months, the Iranians have provoked us, detaining us, as we’ve been discussing, with these 10 Navy sailors Tehran had said strayed into their waters. The sailors were released, but only after shown on video apologizing for the incident. This occurring only weeks after

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Iran fired multiple rockets within 1,500 yards of a US aircraft carrier and then continued to test medium range missiles.” And after one of Governor John R. Kasich’s statements, Cavuto said, “Thank you, John.”

We’re all pals here tonight.

The two asked very few follow-up questions. One time Baritromo tried to ask one but Cavuto shut her up and changed the subject. When they did ask one (because their original question had been met with a response to a question they hadn’t asked, bombast, or a flat-out lie), they usually got in response another response to a question they hadn’t asked, more bombast, or a reiteration of the lie or a new one, whereupon they would go on to a different subject.

THE CANDIDATES Mostly the candidates—Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Chris Christie, Governor John R. Kasich, former Governor Jeb Bush, and real estate tycoon Donald Trump— scapegoated Obama for things he hadn’t done and dissed “government” (in which four of them now work and another worked in the past). They fell over one another showing which would be better at eliminating gun control, sitting on the Chinese economy, and killing terrorists.

There were, so far as I could tell, no ideas and no plans for the future. There were a lot of lines on the order of “We’re not going to do it like that,” or, “We’re going to rid the world of the world’s problems.” Those are not ideas or programs; they are assertions and slogans. It was no more substantial than the pig named Pegasus Abbie Hoffman’s Yippie party ran in the 1968 presidential election on a platform of “eternal life, free pay toilets,” and one other thing I can no longer re-

member. The Yippies knew they were absurd and knew we knew they were absurd; these guys were absurd and hoped we wouldn’t notice.

LIES, ASSERTIONS, FOOLISHNESS, AND GIBBERISH —Bush: “We need to lead a Sunni-led force.”

—Kasich: “We need to intercept ships from North Korea.” That is an act of war. On what grounds would we undertake this enterprise?

What would we do with the ships once we’ve intercepted them?

—Rubio: “The Employment Prevention Agency—the EPA.” Tell that to the folks in Flint, Michigan, who recently learned their drinking water is laced with lead and other toxins and that thousands of children may have been poisoned.

—Cruz: “Abolish the IRS.” He wants a 10-percent flat tax. If we abolish the IRS, Rubio pointed out, who is going to collect it? Who is going to monitor compliance?

—Carson (who always seems medicated and whose eyes shut for curiously long periods, like someone fighting to stay awake or dealing with badly fitted contacts): “Every regulation is a tax.”

Like “Speed limit 55”? Or “No smoking in the lavatory”? Or “Fasten your seatbelt and turn off all electronic devices”?

—Rubio: The San Bernardino killer was “posing as fiancée” while an ISIS agent. She was a fiancée and she came here before ISIS existed.

—Bush: “We should put NSA in charge of the civilian side.” Civilian side of what? Abolish the FBI, state, and local police departments, and turn it over to NSA? NSA is an information agency, not an operations agency. Who is going to issue the parking tickets?

—Rubio: “Our rights don’t come from govern-

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ment; out rights come from God.” Then why does the Supreme Court quote the Constitution rather than the Bible? And even if those rights did come from God, which one? There are a lot of them out there.

—Cruz: “America will repeal Obamacare, we will defeat terrorism, and we will defend the Constitution.” And what will you replace Obamacare with? Exactly how will you defeat terrorism, which is not a group but a technique in asymmetrical warfare? And what defense will you provide the Constitution that it is not getting now?

Cruz didn’t say, and neither Cavuto nor Bartiromo asked.

—Trump said we got the 10 sailors back because we paid Iraq $150 billion. No: We got the 10 sailors back because of quiet negotiation by Obama’s State Department and because the Iranians gave them and their two boats back 11 hours after they were picked up for illegally being in Iranian waters.

—Christie said Common Core had been eliminated in New Jersey. He also said: “So let’s set the facts straight. First of all, I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor. Secondly, I never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood.” Common Core is alive and well in New Jersey; Christie previously crowed that he contributed personal funds to Planned Parenthood, and that he endorsed Sotomayor.

—Trump: “When I look at the migration, I looked at the line, I said it actually on your show recently, where are the women? It looked like very few women. Very few children. Strong, powerful men, young and people are looking at that and they’re saying what’s going on?” According to the State Department, the great majority of refugees are women and children. Only two percent of the refugees in the US are men of combat age; 2.5 percent are adults over 60.

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COMMENTARY NEWS

LOOKING BACKWARD: MAIN & NIAGARA, 1964 “Renewal is a fresh, spring word that is echoing down the streets of most US cities.

In its wake, some of the very structure and tradition of a city falls. Only time will tell if renewal justifies itself.” —Ellen Taussig, Buffalo Evening News, 1967 The Main Place Renewal Project, started in 1964, would remake the face of downtown Buffalo. Here, the core of the downtown shopping district is viewed looking south from the upper levels of the Liberty Building. Some of the 81-odd buildings slated for demolition—including the Erie County Savings Bank—are visible at the intersections of Main Street with Eagle and Niagara streets. The renewal project, a clearance of eight blocks, would also begin to dismantle Buffalo’s system of radial boulevards, called “inefficient” by local architect and urban renewal promoter Milton Milstein.

Shelton Square itself—one of three squares set aside in Joseph Ellicott’s 1804 plan for the city, and called by Buffalo Evening News writer Ellen Taussig “the primary valve in the heart of downtown”—would be displaced. By 1968, the Main Place Mall would open on the site of Shelton Square, Eagle and Niagara streets, and three of the P demolished blocks. -THE PUBLIC STAFF

—Trump denied having told the New York Times he wanted a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

“They’re wrong. They’re always wrong.” The next day, the Times produced a recording of him saying exactly that.

(Trump’s color kept changing. When he was on camera alone, his skin looked normal, but when he was alongside someone else, his orange tanning lotion looked grotesque. I assume the Fox cameras adjusted for normal face tones in the solo shots but the corrective program was inoperative when someone with a normal face tone was also in the shot. It was freaky and disconcerting: Sometimes he was pink, sometimes orange, and always there was that absurd comb-over. Someone later posted on Facebook what at first glance looked like a cover of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but it had Trump’s face and the German letters spelled Mein Coif.)

—Cruz: “And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man or service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the United States of America.” How, exactly, will he prevent that the world round? And does that mean his response to the Iranian detention of the American sailors illegally cruising their waters would have been a military attack, which would have gotten a lot of people killed, rather than quiet diplomacy that ended the incident in 11 hours?

—Rubio: “Barack Obama does not believe that America is a great global power. Barack Obama believes that America is a arrogant global power that needs to be cut down to size. And that’s how you get a foreign policy where we cut deals with our enemies like Iran and we betray our allies like Israel and we gut our military and we go around the world like he has done on 10 separate occasions and apologized for America.

“He doesn’t understand the threat in ISIS… When I’m president of the United States, we are going to win this war on ISIS. The most powerful intelligence agency in the world is going to tell us where they are, the most powerful military in the world is going to destroy them. And if we capture any of them alive, they are getting a oneway ticket to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and we are going to find out everything they know.” No one on stage contradicted him on any of this foolishness and no follow-up question—something simple, like, “What’s your evidence for what you just said about Obama?”—was asked. Nor did anyone ask if his last sentence meant that he intends to reintroduce torture.

—Rubio: “We elected a president that doesn’t believe in the Constitution. He undermines it. We elected a president that is weakening America on the global stage. We elected a president that doesn’t believe in the free enterprise system…

When I become president of the United States, on my first day in office we are going to repeal every single one of his unconstitutional executive orders.” Obama taught Constitutional law at University of Chicago; Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe said Obama was one of the best students he’d ever had in his Constitutional law class. No one on the stage contradicted Rubio or asked him to prove those wild assertions. Nor did anyone point out that no court had found any of Obama’s 147 executive orders illegal or that he

has issued fewer of them than Nixon (346), Ford (169), Carter (320), Reagan (381), Bush I (166), Clinton (364), and Bush 2 (291). The only response was Bartiromo saying, “Thank you, Senator.”

—Rubio said: “This president every chance he has ever gotten has tried to undermine the Second Amendment.”

—Cruz: “Eric Holder said he viewed his mission as brainwashing the American people against guns. He appointed Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, someone who has been a radical against the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.” When and where, exactly, did Attorney General Eric Holder say that? In what country does the Attorney General have the power to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court?

THIS FALL When it comes to the actual election campaign, this kind of foolishness won’t work. Whether the Democratic candidate is Clinton or Senator Bernie Sanders, comments like outright lies and untenable assertions will not go unchallenged.

Moreover, the Democrat candidates will have these off-the-wall statements to throw back at the Republican nominee. This stuff may play well in front of an audience of the converted, as in South Carolina; it will play differently when the audience is composed of a full spectrum of the potential electorate, people who are really thinking about issues, rather than getting cranked up in a frenzy about boogeymen.

BADGES When it was over, both the debate and the “Spin Room” banter, I found myself thinking not of politics but of my second favorite scene in John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre.* The blustery, mendacious Mexican bandit leader Gold Hat (played by Alfonso Bedoya) tells the characters portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim Holt that he and his men are federales, government police.

Fred C. Dobbs (Bogart) says, “If you’re the police, where are your badges?

Gold Hat responds, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”

Substitute the word “truth” or “facts” for “badges” and you’ve got a perfect summary of the Republic/Fox raree-show last Thursday night.

It wasn’t, as I said, a debate; it was a Republican campaign dog-and-pony show. And the Fox Business Network anchors were neither moderators nor journalists; they were pimps. What else would you expect from Fox? What else would you expect from the Republican party now? *My favorite scene in Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the one in which Walter Huston’s toothless character discovers gold dust blown down from the mountain and he tells the other two what idiots they are.

Bruce Jackson has written on political and social issues for the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, and other publications. He is editor-at large of The Public and on the faculty of P University at Buffalo.

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BOOKS INTERVIEW

From Bernie, Ted Rall’s biography (new this week) of Bernie Sanders.

THE RESTORATION Author and cartoonist Ted Rall come to Burning Books to talk about Snowden, Sanders, and the return of the American Left

BY GEOFF KELLY TED RALL IS an editorial cartoonist, graphic

novelist, columnist, and reporter whose work has appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, earned him a passel of awards, and ranged in subject matter from the wars in Afghanistan (where he has traveled extensively) to the diminution of the American Left in national politics.

His last two books have veered into biography: In November he released a cartoon-and-text book about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; this week he has released a book about Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose surprising candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president seems to have breathed life into the progressive movement for which Rall has despaired in his previous work. In the Sanders biography, Rall charts the history of the rightward drift of the Democratic Party over the past 50 years and its apparent sudden change of course.

Rall comes to town to discuss both books next Thursday, January 28, at Burning Books (420 Connecticut Street), at 7pm. We caught up with Rall by phone late last week.

How long have you had your eye on Bernie Sanders? I actually have been paying attention to him for a long time, because he’s a weirdo. I’m 52, and for most of my life there’s been this strange socialist guy, the only selfidentified socialist in American politics.

8

Socialism is a part of American politics; the New Deal was socialist. But socialism and communism get no play in our schools or in our media—which has no problem hosting writers like Bill Kristol, who is basically a lite fascist, or Pat Buchanan, who is an anti-Semite. Such people and their extreme right-wing views are commonplace in the American media, but even moderate socialist views are not permitted any exposure. To be labeled a socialist or a communist is considered political death.

So here you have a guy who’s willing to categorize himself as a democratic socialist and still consistently be reelected. (I don’t think he’s really a socialist in the European sense; he’s really just a McGovern liberal Democrat.) With Bernie, you’re looking at this guy who was an outlier.

Okay, there’s not going to ever be a lot of legislation passed that’s sponsored by this guy. He’s not going to be very effective. But how does he keep getting reelected? And elected to higher and higher office? The only explanation has been, “Well, it’s Vermont.”

But after 2009 and the financial crisis, there were polls that showed about 39 percent of Americans actually wanted to abolish capitalism and favored socialism and communism as economic systems.

There’s a lot of people who feel that the economic system has failed them or is failing them, and they want something else. Bernie is the only voice

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in electoral politics who articulates these ideas, and that’s why he is of interest to me.

Specifically, this is really a followup to my Edward Snowden book. It’s in the same exact format. And the Snowden book, like the Bernie book, is a reaction to a criticism of my work that people have made for a long time, and which I think is probably fair—which is that I’m very negative.

The Bernie book especially has a sort of hopefulness to it, which, because I know you, I found strange and alienating. [He laughs.] Something bad will happen, I promise.

But really, people are always asking me, “Who’s your idea of a great president,” and I say, “I don’t know—Jefferson?” I don’t have any heroes really. In Edward Snowden I found as unvarnished a hero as couple possibly be—a guy who risked everything to tell us what we needed to know. So

I thought, instead of picking people apart—like Obama or Clinton—here’s a role model: Edward Snowden is what we should try to be. Someone who is willing to put important ideas ahead of his individual self-interest.

After that book, I thought, are there other heroes? Are there other people we can look up to?

Are there other people who are trying to effect change, albeit in other ways? Snowden is a consummate rebel: He’s a guy who is so outside of the system that he’s wanted and faces life in prison or even execution.

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, is an insider who has nevertheless been willing to be an outsider within the inside. He’s been in the Senate for a long time, and even though a lot of Republicans like him, no Bernie Sanders ideas are going to be allowed to reach the floor unless he’s willing to change his emphasis on income inequality and economic injustice.

He’s not willing to. His stance has been consistent. He’s almost boring as subject of biography because there’s no political evolution. He’s been this guy since the early 1960s. What’s remarkable is that, because the economic crisis and its consequences have not really been resolved, it’s his moment. There is now a credible path to the Democratic nomination for him.

INTERVIEW BOOKS But in the early 1960s there was room for him on the inside of the Democratic Party.

And you’re saying that circle of inclusion drifted one way and now perhaps it’s drifted back? I think that’s right. He’s a reflection of the American democratic cycle. We’re just getting back to roughly the early 1970s. There’s still no organization or movement like there was back then, but I think that’s right.

I think I’m critical of Sanders where he deserves it—on, for example, the way he responded to Gaza, the fact that he gives a blank check to Israel, or that he’s certainly not willing to criticize Israel very harshly. Although he does favor a twostate solution, which is where I think most of the American Left is now.

The important thing to understand about him is that he reflects a really important historical moment: the restoration of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has been in exile since 1972, even though most progressives and leftists have been in denial about that.

Recently, The Atlantic published a piece by Peter Beinart positing that the popularity of the Sanders and Donald Trump candidacies indicates a shift to the left in the American electorate. By which I think he means a rise in populist sentiment. Does that make sense to you? They are not the same thing, but in a Venn diagram there is overlap. There are people who could vote for Sanders or for Trump. In fact I’ve seen interviews with people like that from Vermont.

This is a year about authenticity, and that’s why Hillary is in trouble all of a sudden. Whenever people start paying attention to her, they just always see this packaging. It’s interesting to me: She has so much money, you’d think she would be able to hire better advisers. If I were working for her, I’d say, “Hey, listen, you have made this entire campaign about you: ‘If I’m elected, then I will be a historical moment, and won’t it be great for me to be the first woman president.’ Well, first of all, what about other women? What are you going to do for women? And there is a whole other half of the population, and you’re going to need their votes too.

What’s in it for us? She can’t articulate that. Her husband didn’t give a shit about any of us but he was able to pretend. She somehow is not even able to pretend. She doesn’t care and she can’t even fake it.

Bernie Sanders clearly does care about economic injustice. And as my book shows, he will readily tell you that a lot of this comes out of his personal experience. Certainly he’s no longer poor—he’s not rich, but he’s no longer poor—and he could just forget all about it and say, “I’m in the Senate, I’ve got mine.” But he remembers what it was like, and he thinks it sucks, and he wants to fix it.

And that, I think, is why he’s catching fire.

The Trump phenomenon is intriguing because he drips of authenticity in a fake way. I mean, he was a Democrat basically. So why is he running as a Republican? That’s not very authentic.

Economic populism is huge. I think what we’re seeing is the chickens coming home to roost because Obama bailed out the banks and not Main Street. People are so pissed, not only because they were not helped to keep their homes, and there was no pressure on the banks to free up credit, and no pressure on employers to keep jobs here or to hire more people, and there’s been no jobs program.

They are pissed off enough about those things, but what really pisses them off is their invisibility.

People hate being invisible more than anything.

Every month they’re having trouble paying their bills, which are getting bigger and bigger, and the rich are getting richer, while their income is stagnant or shrinking. But nobody talks about their problems. Nobody addresses them. Obama never addressed them, never proposed any solutions to their problems.

Trump and Sanders are the only two mainstream candidates who are talking about these issues in a credible way, and that’s why they’re getting so much traction. Trump does it by blaming immigrants, saying they’re taking way your jobs, but the point is he’s addressing the issue. He’s lying, but he’s addressing the issue.

They’ve found traction in the year leading up to the primaries, but do you imagine they can sustain their popularity through the spring and into the general election season? Primary voters are different from general election voters, for sure—for one thing there are far fewer of them. But that doesn’t matter because

the choices they make are the choices the rest are stuck with in the general election.

I think we’re looking at a likely Trump nomination. Ted Cruz appears to be self-immolating because of this loan thing. [Cruz funded his election to the Senate with a $1 million loan from Goldman Sachs, where his wife is employed.] This is a year when people don’t want corruption. All Donald Trump has to say is “I’m a billionaire; I don’t have to borrow a million dollars from some sleazy bank.” And I think that’s the end of Cruz.

Marco Rubio has faded, Ben Carson is gone.

And you can’t dismiss the one guy who has led the polls for six months. You just can’t.

So now the attention must focus on the Democratic side. It seems pretty clear at this point that Bernie can carry Iowa and New Hampshire. And Hillary should carry South Carolina. The question is what happens after that. Obviously there are going to be shades of 2008 if she loses Iowa.

People will say she was not supposed to lose Iowa.

And the political classes will say that it shows Bernie has a ground organization, that’s it’s real, and that Bernie has cash.

Also people tend to vote for people they think will win; even though that’s stupid, it’s what they do. As momentum shifts to Sanders, I think there’s a credible path. Last week I would have said he had a three-to-one chance of being the Democratic nominee; now I would have to say it’s like 55-45 in favor of Hillary. We’re still two weeks away from Iowa; that’s an eternity.

Now, if you have Sanders-Trump matchup, first of all: best election ever.

Maybe for you and me. For journalists it will be fun. Maybe not for the country. Well, it’s going to be bizarre. Trump is such an asshole and Bernie is such a gentleman. How does that debate play out? Do people watch Trump trying to eviscerate this courtly man and think, “God, what a dick,” or do they just see Bernie twisting in the wind?

I don’t know. According to the Real Clear Politics matchups, right now Bernie beats Trump. But that’s a million years from now, so who knows?

What’s notable is Bernie is viable. That’s a fact; there’s no question.

I agree that Trump is dangerous. I think he does have the hallmarks of a fascist lite. He has the ability to tell people whatever they want to hear—a little from the left, a little from the right.

Those are the signs of a demagogue. People compare him to Huey Long, but Huey Long had a detailed program, he had a whole reform package. Trump has absolutely no programs whatsoever, no policies, nothing. Just malarkey.

A lot of people are wondering when the Republican establishment—the big donors, the the powers that made Mitt Romney the party’s standard-bearer in 2012—will try to marginalize Trump and coalesce around a candidate palatable to them. Do you see the Democratic establishment trying to pull down Sanders that way? They just can’t.

He’s kind of bulletproof. You look like a jerk if you attack him too hard. Which Hillary’s SuperPAC just started doing. She has started to lie about him, too. She says that he would dismantle the Affordable Care Act—well, yeah, because he wants to replace it with a single-payer system.

She says this guy wants to get rid of your current salary—well, yeah, to give you a raise.

Historically the Republican Party tends to fall in line behind their insurgents once they become inevitable. Like when Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California in the recall against Gray Davis. They didn’t want him. They had other people in mind. But when it became clear he was leading in the polls, they got behind him. I think the Republicans always fall in line. If they nominated Ted Cruz, they’d fall in line. If they nominated a potato, that’s the best potato and we should all vote for him. With Bernie there’s a danger—or maybe it’s a blessing—that the DNC will sit on its hands and give less than full-throated support for him. But I think that might help him. It will help his reputation as authentic and an outsider.

There aren’t too many US senators who can run as an outsider, but he can.

And he’s pretty much done this his way, without making some awful compromises. And he’s an interesting reflection of this moment: The American people have been programmed to hate the Left, and yet the Left seems to be alive within the Democratic Party for the first time in years.

It’s interesting that Hillary doesn’t get it.

Read more about Rall’s take on Snowden at dailypublic.com.

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9

ARTS REVIEW

Glacier, Volcano, and Glacier Erratic.

FEATURES At BT&C Gallery, Julian Montague enlarges and extends a centuries-old landscape painting tradition

BY JACK FORAN SO WHAT ALL’S GOING ON in artist Julian Montague maximum

simplicity paintings of environmental subject matter? A score or so of them currently on view—an exhibit called Features—at the BT&C Gallery. A few others were in the last Hallwalls exhibit.

In an emphatically bare bones graphics representational style—each painting composed of just three or four adjacent flat monotone color or simply tonal areas—depicting such environmental features as an iceberg, an island, a glacier, a volcano, sunrise, sunset, a mountain peak. And a single word subject matter title somewhere on the painting. Iceberg. Island. Glacier.

Some possible art historical source or inspirational precedents of the radically reductionist mode: artworks by Matisse, aspects of Japonisme, kids’ coloring books.

Montague has employed such simplistic graphical strategies and forms in previous work, but the forms basically as symbols rather than pictorial elements. These are paintings, in a landscape painting tradition that goes back a few centuries.

But enlarging and extending the tradition. Representing a turning point in the tradition, in accord with the turning point we’re experiencing in the environment itself, and thus our relationship to the environment. What it has meant to us. What landscape meant.

IN GALLERIES NOW = ART OPENING Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 882-8700, albrightknox.org): Monet & the Impressionist Revolution, 1860-1910, on view through Mar 20.

Looking at Tomorrow: Light and Language from The Panza Collection, 1967–1990 on view through Feb 7, 2016. Erin Shirreff monographs; free exhibition opening including a conversation with the artist on Fri, Jan 22, 7-9pm. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm, open late First Fridays until 10pm.

Art Dialogue Gallery (5 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14209 wnyag.com): Edward G. Bisone, A California Suite. On view through Mar 18 2016. Tue-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 11am3pm.

Artists Group Gallery (Western New York Artists Group) (1 Linwood Ave, Buffalo, NY 14209, 716-885-2251, wnyag.com): Members show on view through Feb 12. Tue-Fri 11am5pm, Sat 11am-3pm.

Betty’s Restaurant (370 Virginia Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 362-0633, bettysbuffalo. com): Captured Travels, water media paintings by Carol Case Siracuse. Opening reception Mon Jan 25, 6-8:30pm. On view through Mar 20. Tue-Thu, 8am-9pm, Fri 8am-10pm, Sat 9am-10pm, Sun 9am-2pm.

Benjaman Gallery (419 Elmwood Avenue Buffalo, NY 14222, thebenjamangallery.com): Man of Extremes: A Survey of the Work of Wes Olmsted. Thu-Sat 11am-5pm.

Big Orbit (30d Essex Street, Buffalo, NY 14222, cepagallery.org/about-big-orbit): Listening party: The Moving Decade by Bean Friend, Thu Jan 21, 7:30pm.

BT&C Gallery (1250 Niagara Street, Buffalo, NY 14213, 604-6183, btandcgallery.com): Features, paintings by Julian Montague, on view through Jan 23. Closing reception Jan 21, 6-8pm. Fri 12-5pm or by appointment. ¡Buen Vivir! (148 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, 14201 buenvivirgallery.org): The End of the Game–The Last Word from Paradise Revisited; photos by Orin Langelle. Tue-Fri 1-4pm, Fri 6-8pm, Sat 1-3 pm.

Buffalo Arts Studio (Tri Main Building 5th

FEATURES BT&C GALLERY / 1250 NIAGARA ST, BUFFALO 604-6183 / BTANDCGALLERY.COM PHOTO BY DAVID MOOG

These things used to be objects of awe, pretty much pure and simple.

Now they are object lessons, about our power to destroy even what is awesome.

Even willingness to destroy. When a substantial part of the populace—as a dogma item of one of the political parties—refuses to acknowledge the reality of the turning point, crisis point.

Regarding the source or inspiration of the environmental paintings, as much as or more than art historical precedents, they seem reminiscent of the story of when Vince Lombardi during one of the Packers’ practice sessions—when they just didn’t seem to be getting it—halted the session and called the players around himself and addressed them, in an ultimate back-to-fundamentals speech that began: “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

What Montague seems to be saying with the environmental paintings—particularly to the segment of the populace that isn’t getting it—is: “Gentlemen, this is a glacier. This is an iceberg. This is the environment.” Etc. Pay attention. Understand what’s happening. It’s called global warming. And it is a crisis.

In his artist’s statement about the paintings, Montague talks about how “in their simplicity and stillness the images are meant to evoke the very slow, very long march of geological time.” That’s there— slow geological time—in the recollection of the landscape tradition.

But just as prominent, the current crisis moment, when the march has speeded up. Dizzyingly, maybe disastrously.

The BT&C exhibit continues until January 23. A closing reception P is scheduled for January 21, from 6 to 8pm.

Floor, 2495 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214, 833-4450, buffaloartsstudio.org): Auto-Cannibalism by Mark Snyder; DopeDupe

by Peter Sowiski on view through Mar 4. Opening reception Fri, Jan 22 5-8pm.

Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 10am-2pm, Fourth Fridays until 8pm.

Buffalo & Erie County Central Library (1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY 14203, 858-8900, buffalolib.org): Milestones on Science: Books That Shook the World! 35 rare books from the history of science, on second floor. MonSat 8:30am-6:00pm, Sun 12-5pm.

Buffalo Society of Artists (1221 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14209, buffalosocietyofartists. com): Anniversary Kick Off and 125th Anniversary Year Open Member Exhibition in the Czurles Nelson Gallery in Upton Hall of SUNY Buffalo State.

Burchfield Penney Art Center (1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 878-6011, burchfieldpenney.org): Art in Craft Media, on view through Jan 24 Squeaky Wheel: 30th Anniversary Exhibition, on view through Jan 24, 2016. Through These Gates: Buffalo’s First African American Architect, John E. Brent, on view through Mar 27, 2016. Inquisitive Lens: Richard Kegler/P22 Type Foundry: Charles E. Burchfield (The Font Project), on view through Jan 10; Body Norms, selections from the Spong collection on view through Mar 11; Artists Seen: photographs of contemporary artists by David Moog; Mystic North: Burchfield, Sibelius, & Nature, on view through Jan 31; A Few of Our Favorite Things: Recent Acquisitions 2013-2015, on view through Apr 11. Roycroft from the Collection, on view through Jun 24. Tue, Wed, Fri (Second Fridays until 8pm), Sat 10am5pm & Sun 1-5pm. Admission $5-$10, children 10 and under free.

Castellani Art Museum (5795 Lewiston Road, Niagara University, NY 14109, 2868200, castellaniartmuseum.org): Paintings in Progress, paintings by Robert Harris. On view through April 24. Opening reception Jan 24, 2-4pm, artist talk at 3pm. Tue-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm.

The CG Jung Center (408 Franklin Street, Side Entrance, Buffalo, NY 14202, apswny. com): The Omega Point Project: The Noosphere, 2012 and Beyond, graphite drawings

by Lory Pollina. Artist talk Fri, Feb 5, 7pm and Tue, Feb 23, 7:30pm.

10 THE PUBLIC / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM

Collect Art Now (Virtual gallery, collectartnow.com): Featured artists: Rita Argen Auerbach, Emily Churco, A.J. Fries, Evan Hawkins, Mark Lavatelli, Polly Little, Esther Neisen, Maria Pabico LaRotonda, and Jason Seeley.

Dana Tillou Fine Arts (417 Franklin Street, Buffalo, NY 14202, 716-854-5285, danatilloufinearts.com): The Old and the New: 180 Years of Painting and the Arts. Wed-Fri 10:30am5pm, Sat 10:30am-4pm..

El Buen Amigo (114 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14201, 885-6343, elbuenamigo.org): Hispanic Christian folk art exhibit. Mon-Sat 11am-7pm, Sun 11am-5pm.

Enjoy the Journey Art Gallery (1168 Orchard Park Road, West Seneca, NY 14224, 6750204, etjgallery.com): Reflective Life, work

by Danielle Heyden. On view through Jan 2. Tue & Wed 11-6pm, Thu & Fri 2-6pm, Sat 11-4pm.

Hallwalls (341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202, 854-1694, hallwalls.org): Amid/In WNY Part 6 installation works by Caitlin Cass and David Mitchell, paintings by Jay Carrier, drawings by Nicholas Ruth, Joan Linder, and Todd Lesmeister, book sculptures by Scott McCarney, and photographic diptychs by Charles Clough. Tue-Fri 11am6pm, Sat 11am-2pm, Closed on Sundays & Mondays.

Karpeles Manuscript Library (North Hall) (220 North St., Buffalo, NY 14201): Great Moments in Medical History, on view through Apr 28. Tue-Sun 11am-4pm.

Karpeles Manuscript Museum (Porter Hall) (453 Porter Ave, Buffalo, NY 14201): Maps of the United States. Tue-Sun 11am-4pm.

Meibohm Fine Arts (478 Main Street, East Aurora, NY 14052, 652-0940, meibohmfinearts.com): Winter Feature: New & Rediscovered on view through Feb 13. TueSat 9:30am-5:30pm.

MUNDO IMAGES Gallery (Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214, Suite #255 Lobby): Colors From My Gypsy Soul, watercolors by Fritz Raiser. Tue-Fri, 11:00am4:30pm.

Native American Museum of Art at Smokin’ Joe’s (2293 Saunders Settlement Road, Sanborn, NY 14123, 261-9251) Open year round and free. Exhibits Iroquois artists work. 7am9pm.

ARTIST SEEN

AMANDA BESL

Amanda Besl is an internationally exhibited painter who lives and works in Buffalo. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts from SUNY Oswego (1998) and an MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan (2001). Throughout her career she has focused on the inner worlds of adolescent girls, painting documentary-style portraits of contemporary teenagers and still-lifes informed by Greek mythology, Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and the Victorian-era preoccupation with women’s hair. For more information on her work, visit burchfieldpenney.org.

“Artists Seen: Photographs of Artists in the 21st Century” is an ongoing project by photographer David Moog in partnership with the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State. Moog has set out to make portraits of every self-identified working artist and arts professional in Western New York. To be included in the project, call David Moog directly at 716-472-6721 or contact the center at 716-878-4131. Artists working in all media are welcome; visit burchfieldpenney.org for more information.

Niagara Arts and Cultural Center (1201 Pine Avenue, Niagara Falls, NY 14301, 2827530, thenacc.org): ”I Can See Canaan Land”: Artists of Color exhibition inspired

by African-American experience: Betty Pitts Foster, Cheryl Gorski, Cornelia DohsePeck, Dejuan Hunt, George Pagano, Michael Beam, Michelle Costa, Phyllis L. Thompson, Richmond Futch Jr., Tim Maloney, Youssou Lo, Jessica Thorpe, and Ray Robertson.

Opening reception Fri Jan 22 6-8pm. On view through Feb 21. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 12-4pm.

Nichols School Gallery at the Glenn & Audrey Flickinger Performing Arts Center (1250 Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY 14216, 3326300, nicholsschool.org/artshows?rc=0): Seeing Through Nature: new mandalas by Jody Hanson, on view through Mar 16. MonFri 8am-4pm, Closed Sat & Sun. Nina Freudenheim Gallery (140 North Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 882-5777, ninafreudenheimgallery.com): Kyle Butler, Joan Linder, and Michael Stefura. On view through Jan 21. Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Mon open by appointment only, and closed on Sundays.

Pausa Art House (19 Wadsworth Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 697-9069 pausaarthouse. com): The Abstract Tableau, paitings by Mary Begley. On view through Feb 27. Live Music Thu-Sat. See website for more info.

Queen City Gallery (617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, 868-8183, queencitygallery.tripod.com): Neil Mahar, David Pierro, Candace Keegan, John Farallo, Chris McGee,Tim Raymond, Eileen Pleasure, Eric Evinczik, Barbara Crocker, Thomas Bittner, Joshua Nickerson, Susan Redenbach, Barbara Lynch Johnt, Kristopher Whatever, Michael Mulley. Tue-Fri 11am-4pm and by appointment.

RO (732 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 240-9387, rohomeshop.com): Recent work by Irene Haupt. Tue-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 11am-4pm, closed Mondays.

Sports Focus Physical Therapy (531 Virginia Street, Buffalo, NY, 14202, 332-4838, sportsfocuspt.com): Prints by Jane Marinsky. On view through Feb 28. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm.

Spot Coffee (1406 Hertel Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14216): Celebrate Buffalo, paintings by Stephen Coppola. On view through Jan 2016.

Starlight Studio and Art Gallery (340 Delaware

Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202, starlightstudio. org): Trevor Grabill with Larell Potter. Opening reception Fri, Feb 5. On view through Feb 26. Mon-Fri 9-4pm.

Studio Hart (65 Allen Street, Buffalo, NY 14202, 536-8337, studiohart.com): The Rest Is Silence: new work by Amy Greenan and Elizabeth Switzer. Tue-Fri 11:30am-3:30pm, Sat 12-4pm.

Sugar City (1239 Niagara Street, Buffalo, NY 14213, buffalosugarcity.org): The Belt Line: Hiding in Plain Sight: photographs by Brendan Bannon, Max Collins, Molly Jarboe, Christina Laing, and David Torke. On view through Jan 31. Open every Fri 5:30-7:30pm and by event.

TGW@497 Gallery (497 Franklin Street, Buffalo, NY 14202, 981-9415): 3 Months, new paintings by David Vitrano. Wed-Fri 12-5pm, Sat 12-3pm.

Tri-Main Center (2495 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214, 5th floor, 697-2599): Magnified Alleviation, mixed media by Jamie Schmidt.

Temporary gallery space. Opening reception Fri Jan 22, 6-9pm. Private appointments possible, call or email jamieschmidtart@gmail.com.

UB Anderson Gallery (1 Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo, NY 14214, 829-3754, ubartgalleries. org): A Tribute to David K. Anderson, Cravens World: The Human Aesthetic, on view through Dec 31, 2016. Wed-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm.

UB Art Gallery (Center for the Arts, North Campus, Amherst, NY 645-6913, ubartgalleries.org): Splitting Light, work from Shiva Aliabadi, Anna Betbeze, Amanda Browder, Erin Curtis, Gabriel Dawe, Sam Falls, Nathan Green, John Knuth, David Benjamin Sherry, and Hap Tivey. On view through Jan 10, 2016. Tue-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 1-5pm.

UB Libraries Poetry and Rare Book Room (420 Capen Hall, Amherst, NY 14260, (716) 645-2918, library.buffalo.edu/specialcollections): Artifact, works from the UB Libraries Special Collections, on view through Jan 15.

Mon-Fri 9am-4pm.

To add your gallery’s information to the list, please contact us at info@dailypublic.com. P

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PLAYBILL ALL MY SONS (drama by Arthur Miller): Just after World War II, revelations about a military accident hits the homefront back in the States. Of course, there are chilling parallels to present treatment of combat forces. However, universal questions cannot be avoided about responsibility of individuals in a community crisis. Greg Natale, who directed Miller’s The Death of a Salesman for Irish Classical Theatre last season, returns to stage Peter Palmisano, Josie DiVicenzo, Chris Kelly, Anthony Alcocer, Candace Kogut, and others for the company. Opens January 15 and closes February 7 at Andrews Theatre, 625 Main Street, 716-853-ICTC(4282); irishclassicaltheatre.com.

END OF THE RAINBOW (drama with music written

by Peter Quilter): The drama here is the late career struggle as Judy Garland prepares for a five-week gig in London, one of the final concert appearances. The music is a parcel of songs she rehearses and performs as part of her act. This international hit had a brief but notable run on Broadway. British actress Tracie Bennett earned Tony and Olivier award nominations for her performance as Garland, a grueling effort physically, emotionally, and vocally. Lisa Ludwig directs Greg Gjurich and Chris Hatch as the men in Judy’s life. Guest artist Natasha Drena stars as Garland. Through January 31 at Kavinoky Theatre, Porter and Prospect, on the D’Youville College campus, 716-829-7668, kavinokytheatre.com.

FREUD’S LAST SESSION (drama by Mark St. Germain): God. War. Science. Politics. Psychoanalysis. Atheism. Literature. Enough loaded topics of conversation so that it is not surprising that this session would last longer than the proscribed therapy session. Sigmund Freud, atheist-Jewish father of psychoanalysis, has found refuge in London as World War II ignites on the Continent. Freud, in his 80s and in the final stages of cancer, seeks lively conversation so invites C. S. Lewis, the English novelist turned Catholic and half Freud’s age, for a chat. Katie Mallinson directs Matt Witten and David Oliver for Road Less Traveled Productions. Opens January 22 and continues through February 14, at the company’s new home 500 Pearl Street, 716629-3069, roadlesstraveledproductions.org.

KEELY AND DU (drama by Jane Martin): Du is a nurse who is part of an extremist right-to-life group. Keely is pregnant, having conceived by way of a rape. Du and her colleagues have kidnapped Keely (they would say rescued), chaining her to a bed to prevent her from having the abortion she seeks. The irreconcilable stances of “right-to-life” and “right-to-chose” cadres are actively represented in Subversive Theatre’s production. Kelly Beuth and Kate Olena star as the women in conflict under the direction of Toni Smith Wilson. January 14 through February 13 at Manny Fried Theatre, 255 Great Arrow Avenue (third floor; elevator access), 716-4080499, subversivetheatre.org.

ORDINARY DAYS (musical by Adam Gwon): Four young New Yorkers…albeit recent arrivals from elsewhere. An exponential number of coincidences amongst them. A dozen or so emotion-driven songs about the city, loneliness, love, and the future. A post-9/11 fable about the internal search for one’s soul and the perpetual search for a soulmate. Reed Bentley, Edith Grossman, Adam Hayes, and Jennel Pruneda appear under the direction of Victoria Perez-Maggiolo for O’Connell & Company. Opens on January 21 and closes on February 21 at Park School Auditorium, 4625 Harlem Road in Snyder, 716-848-0800, oconnellandcompany.com.

PIPPIN (musical with a script by Roger O. Hirson; music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz): A brightly conceived restaging of the 1972 Broadway hit, presently a hit revival on Broadway.

The original staging by Bob Fosse famously gave this show sizzle. Its new staging makes the show soar—literally. Pippin, the young and seemingly hapless son of history’s mighty Charlemagne, searches his soul for the meaning of life. His only clue is the hunch that life means more than European war, court intrigue, wealth, and fame. A chipper Steven Schwartz score adds to the fun. National touring company of the Broadway production comes to Shea’s January 26-31. At Shea’s Performing Arts Center, 646 Main Street, 1-800-745-3000, sheas.org.

RING OF FIRE (musical revue created by Richard Maltby, Jr. and conceived by William Meade): For many, Johnny Cash was the voice of country music. In fact, he was many voices for a variety of songs. In his long, varied career, he dipped into gospel, bluegrass, rockabilly, Christian, and punk. This revue pulls together 30plus songs which Cash recorded or performed during is career. Musicalfare’s creative team, headed by director-choreographer Michael Walline and musical director Theresa Quinn, aim to make use of the Cash songbook, providing the show with distinctive interpretations, both musical and staged, for each number. Ring of Fire was first developed for production at Studio Arena in 2006 before a truncated run on Broadway. A year ago, Richard Maltby, Jr., the show’s creator, revised the show and staged it for Milwaukee Rep. Apparently rethinking this revue for to better establish its worth is in the air. At MusicalFare Theatre on Daemen College campus, 4300 Main Street in Snyder, 716-8398540, musicalfare.com.

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE (comedy by Christopher Durang): Proving that family is a reliable source of humor is this entry form Christopher Durang, who has followed this thought, exhaustively, and made us laugh, exhaustively. After almost a lifetime of separation, siblings Vanya, Sonia, and Masha reunite at the family’s rural vacation home. Vanya and Sonia are virtual recluses while Masha returns from her glamorous movie star life with her buff, boy-toy beau. Three guesses what his name is. The sibs hash over all that they have missed through the baby boomer years as they prepare to face the future. Doug Weyand guides Louis Colaiacovo, Lisa Ludwig, and others to and through the laughs in the Second Generation Theatre production. Opening January 22 and closing February 8 at Lancaster Opera House, Central Avenue in Lancaster, 716-508SGT0, secondgenerationtheatre@gmail.com.

WHY WE HAVE A BODY (drama by Claire Chafee): Still muttering since the holidays how odd your family is? Meet Mary. She is a drifter in the habit of robbing convenience stores. Lili, her sister, is a private investigator whose specialty is digging up evidence for divorce cases. Their mom, Eleanor, has picked up roots and wanders through the rain forest. The lyrical meanderings as each woman tries to find herself—or each other—is the thrust of playwright Chafee’s writing. Presented by Brazen-Faced Varlets under the direction of Elizabeth Oddy and featuring Heather Fangsrud, Jennifer Fitzery, Lara Haberberger, and Jeanne Huich. The show will be performed on Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm from January 30 through February 14 at Rust Belt Books, 415 Grant Street, 716-5981585.

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THIS WEEK'S AGENDA THURSDAY JANUARY 21 American Low

BUFFALO GAY MEN’S BOOK CLUB 7PM at Panera Bread, 765 Elmwood Ave.

A discussion of Armistead Maupin’s The Days of Anna Madrigal, the ninth and final novel in Maupin’s bestselling Tales of the City series, which follows one of modern literature's most unforgettable and enduring characters—the legendary transgender landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.

THURSDAY JANUARY 21

Humble Braggers

QUEEROTRY 8PM at Dreamland, 387 Franklin St.

Agender spoken-word and performance poet Alan Ginsberg from Baltimore, Maryland, and queer poet Linette Reeman from Jersey Shore, perform. $5 suggested donation. No one turned away.

FRIDAY JANUARY 22

RADIATION 11PM-3:30AM at Underground, 274 Delaware Ave.

Buffalo’s best and longest-running Goth Night, in walking distance from Chippewa Street. Featuring the best in EBM, industrial, goth, new wave, 1980s, indie electro, and more. No cover.

MONDAY JANUARY 25

BUA SINGS! 7:30PM at Alleyway Theatre, 1 Curtain Up Alley

Buffalo United Artists presents an evening of songs from its previously produced musicals as part of its countdown to its 25th birthday. Hosted by Jimmy Janowski and Kerrykate Abel, with Chuck Basil at the piano. Tickets: $25; reserve by email to buffalobua@gmail.com.

LOOPMAGAZINEBUFFALO.COM

Kevin Scoma

THE PUBLIC PRESENTS: THURSDAY JAN 21 AMERICAN LOW, HUMBLE BRAGGERS, KEVIN SCOMA 8:30PM / NIETZSCHE'S, 248 ALLEN ST. / $5 [ROCK] After taking a couple of months off, The Public Presents is back. This month’s edition will feature three indie rock bands—one that will make their debut, one up-and-coming act, and one established. Kevin Scoma, though no newbie to the Buffalo music scene, will debut his solo material with a full band. American Low—Mike Brady, Ben Gigone, and Jeremy Shields—formed about a year ago and quickly released a video for their first single, “Cloud,” a poppy grunge track that has garnered the band some local popularity. They’ll make their first appearance at The Public Presents.

Finally, Humble Braggers return to our series a year after initially performing for us. Since then, the band has released an EP titled Disposable Friends and played dozens of shows, and their music was even recently featured on an episode of the CW show, iZombie. So come check out these three bands when they play at the next Public Presents this Thursday, January 21 at Nietzsche’s. -CORY PERLA

THURSDAY JAN 21 Taylor Williamson 8pm Helium Comedy Club, 30 Mississippi St. $15-$31

[COMEDY] Taylor Williamson has been performing standup since he was in high school, but he really came into the limelight after performing on America’s Got Talent and Last Comic Standing. His nerdy voice and whiny cadence work perfectly in conjunction with his childish humor—jokes like “Why do they call them Number 2 pencils? That’s disgusting." His geeky laugh caps it all off. Catch Taylor Williamson at Helium Comedy Club on Thursday, January 21 through Saturday, January 23.

-KELLIE POWELL

FRIDAY JAN 22 Magnified Alleviation

Jerry Seinfeld 7pm Shea’s Performing Arts Center, 646 Main St.

[COMEDY] Having made a killing on “a show about nothing,” Jerry Seinfeld can certainly afford to do nothing now. Instead, Seinfeld regularly stops into small comedy clubs in New York City or New Jersey to insert himself in the night’s lineup and try his new material on unsuspecting audiences. If you were lucky enough to snag tickets to either of Seinfeld’s sold-out shows at Shea’s this Friday, you can rest assured that each joke has been buffed to a perfect shine.

-KP

6pm Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main St.

[ART] Anyone interested in works that explore recovery as it relates to psychological trauma should head down to the fifth floor of the Tri-Main Center this Saturday, January 22, where Buffalo painter and mixed-media artist Jamie Schmidt will unveil a new series of pieces centered around the theme of trauma as portrayed through wounds, different stages of healing, and the human body. -JC

14 THE PUBLIC / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

CALENDAR EVENTS PUBLIC APPROVED

◆ FRIDAY, JANUARY 22 ◆

Happy Hour:

TONY DeRosa 5PM ◆ FREE!

◆ FRIDAY, JANUARY 22 ◆

LIVEMUSICEVERYNIGHTFOROVER30YEARS! WEDNESDAY

JAN 20

Kathryn Koch

5PM ◆ $5 ADVANCE/$7 DAY OF SHOW

Presents:

HUMBLEBRAGGERS AMERICAN LOW, KEVIN SCOMA 8:30PM $5

Reggae Happy Hour w/the Neville Francis Band FRIDAY

JAN 22

Tina Marie Williams Band

9PM FREE

THURSDAY

JAN 21

The Mike Zogaria Band The Chris Squier Band

6PM FREE

Tough Old Bird, Caleb & Carolyn, The Brothers Blue 10PM $5

◆ SATURDAY, JANUARY 23 ◆

Punk + Ska Extravaganza part deux:

Johnny Revolting D.N.R. ◆ The Abruptors On the Cinder Radical Operations 8PM ◆ $5

◆ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27 ◆ rd

3 Wave Ska Pioneers:

SATURDAY

PHOTO BY BETH INSALACO

INTERVIEW: BEAN FRIEND THURSDAY JAN 21 7:30PM / BIG ORBIT GALLERY, 30 ESSEX ST [AMBIENT] If you find yourself at Silo City staring at an upright piano and wondering how it ended up there, you can thank Bean Friend for that. The musician from Philadelphia by way of San Francisco moved to Buffalo from Toronto this summer and immediately plugged himself into the local art and music scene. He was quickly drawn to Silo City, where this fall he recorded an album of reverberating minimal piano tracks titled The Moving Decade. The 29-year-old artist will hold a listening party this Thursday, January 21 at Big Orbit gallery, where photographer Max Collins will also be showcasing some of his similarly themed photography.

How did you end up in Buffalo? Basically, my wife is from Buffalo but she hasn’t lived here since high school. She’s what you call a boomerang, I guess. They leave and experience other cities and return home. It seems like it’s been happening more and more recently. We had this moment where we were in Toronto and we came back to Buffalo for a weekend and we just had a blast.

How did you hook up with Max Collins?

I met Max after seeing some of his art. I got his number off of his website and gave him a buzz. Striking up a relationship with him was great. He’s got some phenomenal photos from the silos that made sense with my album thematically.

How did your record this album? I went down to Silo City a couple times, just socially.

I met Swannie Jim, Bob the Builder, and Rick Smith. They gave me a tour of Silo City one day and they brought me into Marine A. I said, “Wow, I’d love to record here. I’d love to bring a piano down here.” And they were like 'Yeah, cool.'” I think they were like, “Is this motherfucker really going to do it?” They put me in contact with Kevin Cain and I just called him and we chatted and he was really into it too. So what I did after that is I went on Craigslist and found some free pianos.

It’s easy to find free pianos on Craigslist? Yeah, it actually is. There were maybe five free pianos in Buffalo. It’s mostly people who are moving and can’t bring it with them.

So it’s free if you can get it out of their house. I picked one, rented a U-Haul, and we drove the piano straight to Silo City. So then there was just this upright piano in the middle of the silos, which was really cool.

And then you’re like, “Okay, now I’m going to record an album on this piano that I’ve just found”? Yeah. You know what’s funny? I didn’t even think that far ahead. I didn’t

even have anything written. I’m not even much of a—I mean I come from mostly a rock background. But anyways, I got the piano tuned. I met Sharon Mok, she’s in Tiny Rhymes—I occasionally fill in for Tiny Rhymes on bass—and she tuned the piano for me, twice. Once in the beginning and once in the middle because the temperature and humidity changes there pretty often and it kinda went out of tune in the middle.

When was this? This was the end of September. I went down there and set up the microphones, and at first it didn’t sound that good.

Over the next couple of weeks it was a lot of just messing with miking techniques and moving the piano around.

Did you give yourself a deadline? Yeah, when it got really cold.

Like, don’t die in here. A literal deadline.

The last day I was there I remember trying to play piano and my fingers were so cold. There was just a disconnect. I couldn’t do it. That was the first week of November.

So would you say a lot of it was about adapting to the space? Yeah. And setting everything up. The first day it took me three hours to set everything up. Carrying all of the equipment from my car into the silo. By the time I was done setting it all up I was so exhausted. I sat down at the piano and I realized, like, now it’s time for me to play and I don’t even really play piano!

Well, you could have fooled me. I listened to the album and it’s really intimate and emotional, without being melodramatic.

Everything was written in the silos and I was by myself. If you can imagine, on days that I didn’t have anything going on, I would go down there, be there by noon hashing out the songs.

I wrote about 30 tracks in five weeks. It was a steep learning curve but I got better at piano and I got better at recording. -CORY PERLA

JAN 23

Ben Whelan Your Mom & the Reach Arounds, Cookie & the Crumbs, Acoustic Kuebler 10PM $5

WEDNESDAY

JAN 27

THURSDAY

JAN 28

Jon Lehning Sextet 9PM FREE

yali, Jacob Peter, Kothen 9PM FREE

The TOasters The Abruptors The Barksdales

7PM DOORS / 8PM SHOW ◆ $12 ADVANCE/$14 DAY OF SHOW

47 East Mohawk St. Buffalo

BUFFALOSMOHAWKPLACE.COM

Happy Hour: The Fibs FRIDAY

6PM FREE

JAN 29

Burnt Sugar Superfreaks the Rick James Playabook!

10PM $10

SATURDAY

JAN 30

Garbaz Presents:

LIVE MUSIC

FREE MUSIC FRIDAYS

Blouses of the Holy: a Tribute to Led Zeppelin 8PM $7

WEEKLY EVENTS EVERY SUNDAY FREE

FIRST SUNDAYS: THE JAZZ CACHE 6PM. ANN PHILLIPONE 8PM . DR JAZZ & THE JAZZ BUGS (EXCEPT FIRST SUNDAYS)

EVERY MONDAY FREE

TOM STAHL WED JAN.22 • 7pm No Cover • All Ages

8PM. SONGWRITER SHOWCASE 9PM. OPEN MIC W. JOSH GAGE

EVERY TUESDAY

8PM. RUSTBELT COMEDY 10PM. JOE DONOHUE 11PM. THE STRIPTEASERS $3

EVERY WEDNESDAY FREE 6PM. TYLER WESTCOTTS PIZZA TRIO

APEX DOWN

LIQUID SUNSHINE DANCE

EVERY THURSDAY FREE

5PM. THE AFTERNOON TRIO W. JOHN, PAUL, & BILL

EVERY SATURDAY FREE

4:30-7:30PM. CELTIC SEISIUNS (TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY)

248 ALLEN STREET 716.886.8539

NIETZSCHES.COM

WED JAN.29 • 7pm No Cover • All Ages #THISISHARDROCK

NIAGARA FALLS, USA 333 PROSPECT ST. | +1-716-282-0007 HARDROCK.COM ©2016 Hard Rock International (USA), Inc. All rights reserved.

join hardrockrewards.com

DAILYPUBLIC.COM / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / THE PUBLIC 15 UNT185NF16 Niagara Falls Public ad_FMF_2.35x6.9.indd 1

1/18/16 11:38 AM

EVENTS CALENDAR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

Whoopi Goldberg 7pm Seneca Niagara Events Center, 310 4th St. $25-$95

PUBLIC APPROVED

[COMEDY] Whoopi Goldberg is an iconic, transcendent part of the pop culture fabric.

One of few entertainers to hold the distinguished “EGOT” (an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony), her career began at a time when the prevailing standard of beauty for black women in Hollywood was light complexion and long, straight hair, but Whoopi never feared being the outlier. Whoopi’s career began in the standup arena, where she quickly caught the attention of directors and producers who were charmed by her honest wit. After her breakthrough role in The Color Purple, Whoopi became a household name, splitting her talent between comedy films like Sister Act, dramas like Ghost, and even animated features like The Lion King. To every role she brought a special flavor that was refreshingly honest and could single-handedly take a film’s game up a few pegs. Now a moderator on the daytime talk show, The View, Whoopi remains as relevant as ever.

Hate her or love her, Whoopi left a searing impression on pop culture. Catch Whoopi Goldberg at Seneca Niagara Casino on Friday, January 22. -KP

PeaceBridge 8pm Milkie’s, 522 Elmwood Ave

[HIP HOP] Milkie’s on Elmwood hosts a night of hip hop and funk this Friday, January 22.

Artists include hip hop/funk group PeaceBridge, hip hop collective Good Huemans, Dashuri Egriu & Jenevieve Egriu, and Trappy Gilmore. -CP

SATURDAY JAN 23

ORCHESTRA MEETS JAZZ THURSDAY JAN 21 7PM / KLEINHANS MUSIC HALL, 3 SYMPHONY CIRCLE / $34.50 [JAZZ] The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has been around 76 years. The Colored Musicians Club has existed for 99. Venerable musical organizations both, and together they combine to share the stage at Kleinhans Music Hall on Thursday evening, January 21.

This is a summit meeting of sorts: Both the BPO and CMC enjoy international reputations as musical organization of the highest caliber. Thursday, they get to show how really close they are as together they present “Orchestra Meets Jazz,” the newest edition to the BPO’s popular "Know the Score" series. Providing samples of the original music that inspired the works, associate conductor Stefan Sanders will conduct are CMC members saxophonist and clarinetist Carol McLaughlin, pianist George Caldwell, bassist Barry Boyd, and drummer Abdul Rahman Qadir, with vocalist Donna Robbins joining in for Buffalo native Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow.” That combo will offer a Scott Joplin rag, a blues in the New Orleans style, and Duke Ellington’s standard “Sophisticated Lady,” from which the BPO takes its cues and renders Stravinsky’s Ragtime, Copland’s “Burlesque” from Music for the Theater, a bit of Gershwin’s American in Paris, and topping it off with “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein.

Your guide for the evening is George Scott, president of the Colored Musicians Club, who will fill you in on the club’s remarkable history and the important role Buffalo played in fostering many jazz greats.

Plan to stick around for an after concert party in the Mary Seaton Room with music by the George Scott Big Band. For more about the concert and the Colored Musicians Club’s contribution to the world of jazz, see dailypublic.com for an interview with Stefan Sanders and George Scott.

-DOUGLAS LEVY

PUBLIC APPROVED Jamal Gasol 7pm The Waiting Room, 334 Delaware Ave. $10-$12

[HIP HOP] Gasol hails from Niagara Falls, and he's been rapping since the age of nine about the city's high rate of crime, sparing few details. (Check out "Ice Cream Man.") Along the way he launched his Piff Music Empire, which has kept him collaborating with and promoting other regional artists. Catch him Saturday, January 23 at the Waiting Room as he readies two new singles, "10-4" and "Bad Boy," for release in the new year. Also on board are locals Jottibee and Shmaurice, among others. -CJT

#MarchForBernie 12pm Bidwell Park, Elmwood Ave at Bidwell Parkway

[POLITICS] Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will gather in the Elmwood Village's Bidwell Park this Saturday, January 23, for an event called #MarchForBernie. So if you're feeling the Bern, you can share the sentiment with some fellow supporters on Saturday. -CP

Punk/Ska Extravaganza Part Deux 8pm Mohawk Place, 47 E Mohawk St. $5

[PUNK] Punk and ska come together for a delish sweet-and-sour lineup of locals at Mohawk Place on Saturday, January 23, featuring the return of D.N.A. (with new tunes!) after a 10-month hiatus. Leading the herd is Johnny Revolting, who are in the process of making a zombie flick (for willing participants, someone will be on hand filming short interviews). The Abruptors will deliver the ska beats, but come early for On the Cinder and Radical Operations. -CJT

EXPLORE BUFFALO'S WINTER CELEBRATION SATURDAY JAN 23 7PM / SHEA'S PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, 646 MAIN ST. / $50 [FUNDRAISER] There’s a long-simmering debate over the purpose of historic preservation in our architecturally rich urban core, symbolized most recently by Ellicott Development’s proposed demolition of the Bachelor building at the corner of Franklin and Tupper Streets. Ironically, a huge factor in Ellicott Development’s success has been the successful preservation of the Ellicott Square Building. It doesn’t matter which side of the debate you fall on; there is a local organization devoted to discovering what is best about Buffalo and how its historical layers can amplify its present. Explore Buffalo does exactly that, and this Saturday it’s affording an exclusive glimpse inside the magnificently restored Shea’s Theater. Food, drink, and music from the Colored Musicians Club’s Ladies First Jazz Band will accompany a silent auction; docent-led yours throughout the evening.

Attendees will even get to vote on Explore Buffalo’s 2016 tour offerings! Visit explorebuffalo.org for tickets. -AARON LOWINGER

16 THE PUBLIC / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM

s ’ e e i g k n l u i Lo

CALENDAR EVENTS

Mlmwood

PUBLIC APPROVED

E

ment

tain enter

its, & WEEKLY LIVE ENTERTAINMENT

spir food,

Jan. 21

KARAOKE @ 10 PM / FREE

Jan. 22

PHOTO BY ADRIANA IRIS BOATWRIGHT

PeaceBridge w. Special Guests: DASHURI & JENEVIEVE, GOOD HUEMANS, + TRAPPY GILMORE

SUNDAY JAN 24 Boy Harsher

Doors @ 8 PM / $3

7pm Dreamland, 387 Franklin St.

ROBERT HARRIS: PAINTING IN PROGRESS SUNDAY JAN 24

The Casual Mondays

Doors @ 8 PM / $3

2PM / CASTELLANI ART MUSEUM, NIAGARA UNIVERSITY [ART] Robert Harris is omnipresent on the regional art scene: He makes every exhibit opening; he haunts the cafes and bars where artists gather; and on social media, as Baron Robert von Ticklebomb, he updates his many followers on the progress he’s making on a painting, on the films he’s watching, on the art that is engaging him. This Sunday, January 24, 2-4pm, he’ll be at the Castellani Art Museum, this time for the opening of his first-ever solo exhibit, Painting in Progress, in preparation for which, he is happy to tell you over a coffee or a beer, he’s been working slavishly and somewhat apprehensively for the past several months. Harris’s work is colorful and bold, sometimes disturbingly obsessive, and always, like the artist himself, engaging and honest.

The solo exhibit runs through April 24. -GEOFF KELLY

MONDAY JAN 25 Dirty Smile/Nikki's Wives

Jan. 23

Every Tuesday

Every Wednesday

Open Comedy Mic Night

Y

[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] With Jae Matthews channeling hypnotic vocal musings and Augustus Muller conjuring beats and synth stabs worthy of an 1980s techno underworld, Boyharsher delivers the sort of gothy synth pop that reels listeners into a dance-fueled daze. This Sunday, January 24, they'll return to Dreamland, joined by a lineup of musical kin including Armageddon Party, Night Slaves, StreetCleaver, and DJ Shurdo, subsequently transforming the venue into a fog-lit den of ominous electronica with hints of industrial. That is to say, come ready to sweat. And yes, it is urged that you sport your leather. -JEANNETTE CHIN

@ 8 PM

@ 8 PM

e.coma g n u odlo e @ Utic o w m iesel wood Av .58 8 1 k l i m 2 Elm 82 8 .

6 52 1 7

PUBLIC APPROVED

7pm Sportsmen’s Tavern, 326 Amherst St. $3

[ROCK] Led by the powerful vocal chops of Megan Brown, Dirty Smile remains a consistent local draw with its sturdy brand of rock and roll, pulling on influences both recognizable and revered. They share a bill with Toronto alt-pop trio Nikki's Wives (who will be doing a 2pm Record Theatre in-store earlier that afternoon) at Sportsmen's Tavern on Monday, January 25. -CJT

TUESDAY JAN 26

EWIGE

Yellow Claw 8pm Town Ballroom, 681 Main St. $22-$25

[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] With releases on two of America’s most popular dance music record labels, LA’s Mad Decent and the Steve Aoki-helmed Dim Mak, the Amsterdam-based DJ crew Yellow Claw are taking off around these parts. If you’re into mainstream electronic dance music, chances are your favorite artist (Skrillex, Diplo, Flosstradums) has worked with these guys. They’ll bring their roaming party to the Town Ballroom on Tuesday, January 26. -CP

Scott Stapp

BLUMEN

CRAFT

BEER

THE TOASTERS WEDNESDAY JAN 27

BUY COMMUNITY

7:30pm Buffalo Iron Works, 49 Illinois St. $32

[ROCK] Scott Stapp is a highly revered vocalist as the former Creed frontman, but he's struggled to establish a solo career. After a series of high profile legal run-ins and rumored personal struggles, he revealed his bipolar disorder last spring. Stapp comes to Buffalo Iron Works on Tuesday, January 26 at the start of a proper tour to support his most recent release, Proof of Life. For Creed fans, this is a must—the set is heavily weighted with classic material. Rockett Queen opens. -CJT

7PM / MOHAWK PLACE, 47 E MOHAWK ST. / $12-$14 [PUNK] Formerly the manager of the famed Forbidden Planet comics outlet on Broadway in New York City, Toasters founder Robert “Bucket” Hingley has evolved into a punk-ska institution with a 35-year musical career. Considered a third-wave ska band, the Toasters landed an auspicious debut gig as openers for Bad Brains in 1981 and have remained a live favorite ever since. Their 1987 debut full-length was produced by none other than Joe Jackson and featured a horn section, resulting in a fuller sound. Supplementing their punishing tour schedule with commercial work (jingles for AOL, Cisco Systems, Miller, Anheuser-Busch, and Coca-Cola) and some film scoring, Hingley and company deliver an unusual blend of ska with elements of pop, rap, R&B, and calypso, played by a diverse lineup of musicians that’s helped glean a larger cross-section of fans. Local punk band the Barksdales and ska band the Abruptors will round out the bill next Wednesday, P January 27 at Mohawk Place. -CHRISTOPHER JOHN TREACY

COMMUNITYBEERWORKS.COM

DAILYPUBLIC.COM / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / THE PUBLIC 17

ART SPOTLIGHT Copyright law is what piqued Gutiérrez’s interest in law in general, but only because it became necessary for him to acquaint himself with the laws as a recording artist in a jam.

In the mid 1990s his band at the time, Gazeuse, had signed a contract to record an album. They were set to tour Europe when he got the boot. “Then I was left holding the bag and I had to dig out of that. I became an attorney because of that. It was like I’m getting sued and I was unemployed!”

He later turned to immigration law, which he practices to this day, working with clients who are under threat of deportation by the federal government. He talks a little bit about the dilemma many of his clients face.

“If you break a law there is a statute of limitations depending on how bad your crime is. If you’re a murderer yeah, any time they run into you they’re going to throw you in jail. A lot of the people I represent are people that broke the law by crossing the border when they were kids,” he explains.

“Basically their parents brought them over or they came over themselves because they were flat broke and had no hope for a future at 15 or 16 or 20. But now they’ve been in the country 20 or 30 years and now they have kids and now the government is saying, ‘You broke the law 30 years ago, you crossed the border. Out.’” This year, the Obama administration decided to prioritize things, he tells me.

“For the time being, we’re not going to deport these people, but there is no sense of future. I have people who were ordered deported 10 years ago with families. Their daughters are in college. They have to sell their house. They’ve been in the situation for years.”

Needless to say, his job can be frustrating, but Gutiérrez tries to focus that frustration into artwork, a strategy that he discovered at the age of five years old after his mother passed away.

Gutierrez grew up in Colombia and came here as a teenager. His mother was an art teacher.

At the time of his mother’s death, his family used art in one sense as a distraction for him, and in another as a therapeutical tool to help him get through the difficult situation.

Alejandro Gutiérrez and one of his creations.

ALEJANDRO GUTIÉRREZ Meet a painter who sees himself as an applicator and gravity as the artist

BY CORY PERLA IN A MODEST OFFICE BUILDING on Englewood Avenue in

Kenmore, Alejandro Gutiérrez practices immigration law and creates brilliant pieces of abstract artwork. Walking in the front door, guests are greeted by one of Gutiérrez’s largest pieces—what he describes as a “self-portrait.” And now that he mentions it, I can see it in the chaotic puddles of paint, which the 49-year-old splashed and dripped onto his 72-by-60-inch canvas. The painting was inspired by a severe ear infection that he had at the time.

Yellow and green oceans of paint spiral wildly and wash from the center, fringed by dark pink streaks of anguish—its layers seeping together without mixing. Gutiérrez’s technique is to let the paint do most of his work. You’ll rarely, if ever, find a brushstroke in any of his paintings. He does not deal in brushstrokes, but gallons of paint pushed and stretched by gravity that create what he sees as microcosmic forms.

“You’re dealing with fractals. This is microscopic. There is no way I’d ever be able to do this with a brush technique,” he says as we examine the paintings hung in the kitchen of his office. The kitchen is decorated by a series of minimal, two-color paintings that Gutiérrez creates by pouring paint enamel onto a canvas using a single gesture. The paintings are shiny, distorted donut shaped two-color forms modeled after art made by the Gutai group, a group of Japanese painters who in the early 1950s created radical abstract art. Gutiérrez has titled the series Gutai, partly because of the technique he’s borrowed and partly because the word sort of resembles the first syllables of his last name.

“The moment that you’re trying to second guess what you’re doing, is the moment you screwed up,” he says. “Small changes make big differences.”

It’s clear that Gutiérrez sees himself as an applicator, and that gravity is the artist. As he sees it, his main role in the creation of his art is just to not screw it up.

The question of how gravity functions is a question that humans have been asking since the theory of gravity was put forth by Sir Isaac Newton. Gutiérrez is enamored with the mysterious force that he utilizes in his paintings, tilting and rotating them after he’s applied a few layers of paint on his canvas by simply pouring it from the paint can.

“So, yeah, that’s where I’m going, pursuing truths of the universe,” he says with a smile.

“It’s about how do you tilt it, how do you contain it. Do you let it spill or not? Certain colors may appear to be dominant and you may move it a little bit and something reveals itself. Then you look at it and you say do I stop where it’s going?”

18 THE PUBLIC / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM

ALEJANDRO GUTIÉRREZ

“I would grab whatever oil cans or paint cans and I’d make these mixtures and make these messes,” he says.

He moved to the United States and, after finishing high school in Minneapolis, studied sound recording at Fredonia.

In our discussion on music, he meditates on a man who was a fellow student at Fredonia, Dave Fridmann, who has gone on to produce records for well-known experimental indie rock bands including the Flaming Lips.

“Even though we pursue the same strangeness, and pushing the limits, he was the only one out of 100s of talented musicians who graduated from Fredoina who was anointed by the record industry to be producer of the year and all that. I admire him for doing what he does. He’s a reminder of how strange life is.”

ALE-G.COM

Back in his warehouse work area we talk about some of the challenges he faces making his unique “action paintings.”

@PLAYINGITBYEARSTUDIO

His primary challenge, as he posited earlier, is to not screw up.

Since he doesn’t use any tools, once the paint is poured, all he can do is attempt to contain it.

On a few of the Gutai pieces, he uses the additional ingredient of gold flakes, an idea he says was inspired by the work of the German artist Wolfgang Laib. “[Laib] collects pollen and then sifts the pollen on the floor…He goes flower by flower in the mountains and collects it. That is his meditation, his zen. What attracted me was that any disturbance changes the path of the powder. So putting that together is like oh, ok I can not stop, it has a life of its own. You have to be confident and patient,” says Gutiérrez.

He was never a good draftsman, he tells me. He’s never really attempted to paint what he says, “already exists.”

“I’d rather look for something that hasn’t been seen before,” he says.

In a way, his music is made in much the same way. Much of it is improvised, and his latest album, ©℗®™ was recorded almost entirely live, nurturing an atmosphere of discovery and spontaneity.

Musician Andrew Biggie worked on two songs from Gutiérrez’ new record—playing bass on “Happy Dependence Day” and “Pluto by Helen,” which also features violinist Sarah DiChristina. Biggie and Gutiérrez originally came together as members of the band Bourbon & Coffee. Biggie says that collaborating with Gutiérrez is a very genuine experience—an experience that for this record was impromptu. “[Gutiérrez] is a very good person. Good-hearted person. He’s artistic and very creative,” says Biggie. “He’s a sincere person, which is always a benefit when playing improvisational music—someone who is able to express themselves freely without sort of any reservations, continuing these conversations as musicians playing.”

The album—mostly experimental sound pieces broken into with bits of political spoken word poetry somehow marries the man’s two halves—attorney and artist. The title has a double meaning, at once alluding to the emergency medical procedure CPR (“first aid for the soul in this time of planet crisis,” according to Gutiérrez), but also the legal symbols for copyright, publishing, registration, and trademark.

“It’s all very simple but they all turn out very different even if you think you have a formula. The moment that you start, you cannot stop.”

He says that there are times when he sees a painting in its perfect form as it is slipping out of his control.

“The moment comes when I know that I went passed it because then there are no breaks. If you are fearful of going full on, then you will never be able to experience it. The frustrating part is when you are losing.”

His secondary challenge, which also applies to music, is trying to decide when a piece is done. He explains to me that all of the paintings in the workspace are unfinished, and all of the paintings hanging in his office are finished. Sometimes, however, a painting will move from the office back into the workspace, even in some cases after it has been in shows or hung in galleries.

“A painting may be finished and all of a sudden it will call you to say you need to do something.”

He points to a painting, explaining that it was once two paintings.

“All of the sudden I decided to put the one on top of the other.

Next thing I know, someone liked it and it became the cover of a local art magazine at the time. It was like, ‘Huh, I’ve been working on this for 20 years.’ How would it happen that one day I put it together and within a week…’” He trails off. “That’s what drives me. It’s the unknown.”

Throughout our conversation, Gutiérrez reinforces that he sees abstract art as a microcosm of the human body, which is a microcosm of the universe itself. It’s all relative, really.

“We are ourselves a universe. Each cell in our body knows where to go, what it is. And each cell in our body has the capability of becoming any cell in our body or a complete body. You can do it in the little or you can do it in the big, and you’re still asking the same question or exploring the same, I guess, undeniable truths,” Gutiérrez says in summation of his art. “It is what it is when it is P and until it’s not.”

CROWDFUNDING LOCAL

THE BLACKNESS PROJECT THEBLACKNESSPROJECT.ORG @THEBLACKNESSP THEBLACKNESSPROJECT

is to be that vehicle, that representation—to let people speak.”

A personal quest is how Pete Johnson sees the collaboration. Both men are young fathers of sons, and both are committed to raising them in a hometown hurting from a kind of endemic separatism. They remember better schools with diverse enrollment, and people working at jobs that supported family life.

“This film is a priority for us, getting us to stop whatever else we are doing—this is the one we choose to focus on,” says Johnson. “Every project I have been passionate about lately is race-driven…My question is, ‘What are you doing as an individual to help this?’ Not everyone is going to agree with what they hear here. Our primary goal is creating awareness. Korey and I are making individual quests to help solve some issues here.

But every person has to assume accountability for what is happening out there…”

He and Green believe that ignorance is not only no excuse, but it makes certain problems worse.

With the prevalence and advancement of technology, from ubiquitous cell phones to dash cams, “more people are seeing what has been going on,” says Green. “Look at current events— race right now is the biggest topic.”

Wed. Night Wednesday Special Everyday Lunch Special “Now we have too much content!” adds JohnVegan Specia l son. “You can’t run from it. And Korey is very + Atruth—being TWOtelling SLICESthe 20OZ. DRINKtruthful LARGE CHEESE + 1 ITEM PIZZA ANY LARGE VEGAN PIZZA adamant about only $5.65 only $11.95 only $16.25 to himself, and to the people in our communiFilmmakers Korey Green and Pete Johnson want your help ty.” He said The Blackness Project, due to wrap in late February, is an educational exercise as well as to bridge the gap between black and white 94 ELMWOOD AVE / Delivery 716.885.0529 / ALLENTOWNPIZZABUFFALO.COM 94 ELMWOOD AVE / Delivery 716.885.0529 a point of departure for discussion. The film is organized in literary fashion with chapters, beHours SUNDAY-THURSDAY: 11AM-12AM / FRIDAY-SATURDAY: 11AM-4:30AM ALLENTOWNPIZZABUFFALO.COM

BY MARIA SCRIVANI ginning with a discussion of how people felt after viewing The Whiteness Project, and continues with questions about history—what do you think At the same time his lifelong friend Pete JohnARE WE DONE TALKING ABOUT RACE YET? you know about slavery, affirmative action, steson—an actor, author, and filmmaker whose Nope. Not by a long shot. And in fact that conreotypes, racial profiling? “It’s hard to be proud work references racism in many forms, including versation has really just started, and needs to be of who you are and where you come from if you starring recently in Road Less Traveled Theater’s an ongoing discussion, according to two Buffadon’t know that history,” says Johnson.

Race—saw the Dow film and felt compelled to lo filmmakers. Korey Green and Peter Johnson, respond. They decided to collaborate on, and AGILITY • BALANCE • CONFIDENCE writer/director and producer, respectively, of The Ultimately the project is a rescue mission, to prioritize, a new project with a very direct title.

Blackness Project, believe that dialogue is the path save the city they love. “As long as we are dividto understanding and acceptance, if not total “Look, ours could be called The American Projed, we can never excel,” says Green. “But I have agreement, between two long-divided segments ect,” says Green. “Buffalo is really rich in cultremendous hope. If I didn’t, I couldn’t do this; of society, black and white. ture. I felt we had to do something not only to I would just be an angry black man. But we do represent our race and culture, but to show that have solutions, too. Educate. Be conscious. Know “The dialogue is what encourages me most,” says Buffalo is much bigger than the representation our history and where we are going. We need a Green, who decries the “us” and “them” menERRORS WHICH THISreally PROOF, THE BEand HELDbetter RESPONSIBLE. inYOU thatAPPROVE earlier film…We deal ARE withON some betterPUBLIC economicCANNOT structure education.PLEASE EXAMINE THE AD tality that seems to permeate all aspects of life IF tough topics EVEN in ourIFfilm, andISour goal is to get THE AD A PICK-UP. in this city. The creator of The Forgotten City, a THOROUGHLY Give people jobs and a stronger foundation. A people talking, even at the risk of discomfort, and documentary exploring politics, drugs, racism, lot of the hate and racism will dissolve if we start offense beingTO taken.

And just as much as you � are CHECK thinking COPY CONTENT and crime in Buffalo, Green says he was inspired MESSAGE more progressively.” Advertisers Signature ADVERTISER tired of hearing about racism, I am, too, but I also anew after seeing The Whiteness Project, shot in Thank you for advertising with And keep on talking. live with it daily. Please Every African-American Buffalo by independent filmmaker Whitney THE PUBLIC. review your we in____________________________ terviewed for thisforhadany some personal Dow. That film considered the white point of ad and check errors.

Theexperience � CHECK For IMPORTANT DATES go to more information with the wrath People need view. Green wanted to create a work that would original theblacknessproject.org. To help fund the layoutof racism. instructions havean outlet, some followed representation.

Our job as filmmakers here show the black perspective. project, visit its Kickstarter page. been as closely as possible.

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GOAL: $35,000 This week Buffalo-based photographer Aaron Ingrao launched a Kickstarter campaign to support his upcoming photobook, Keepers of the Craft: Cocktails Across America. Ingrao will spend one year traveling the country, documenting the bars, bartenders, barrel makers, and distilleries that steward the tradition of AmerP ica’s craft cocktail culture.

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FILM REVIEW

Anomalisa

INFINITE DARKNESS OF THE MINDLESS SPOT ANOMALISA / YOUTH

BY M. FAUST LIKE ME, A LOT OF YOU ARE FANS OF CHARLIE KAUFMAN, writer of some of the most unusually conceived American films of the last decade: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

ing Cincinnati, where he has been booked to speak at a convention of customer service reps. While he’s here, he also plans to look up his ex-girlfriend, whom he broke up with for reasons even he doesn’t understand years ago. He has since married and had a son.

Reportedly his scripts for those films were somewhat altered by their directors. Kaufman’s first film as a director, Synecdoche, New York, wasn’t as commercially successful as those: It’s dour and difficult, less a maze with a reward at the end for the patient viewer than a spiral taking you down the drain into oblivion. But it pulled you into its obsessions about art and life and death; I saw it three times and found something new each time.

At this point, I guess I need to mention that Michael and all the other characters are portrayed by stop-action puppets. They have been painstakingly created, and look about as real as the characters in motion-capture movies like The Polar Express, which is to say, lacking in the expressive possibilities of animation but close enough to people on the street to be disconcerting.

So I was eager to see Anomalisa, Kaufman’s first film since 2008, when it played the Toronto Film Festival in September.

I loathed it. I disliked it so much that when I saw it a second time at a local screening in December, willing to give it another chance, I left halfway through. It’s only 90 minutes long, but at a certain point I just couldn’t face looking at another 45 minutes of it.

I know that a lot of you have been looking forward to Anomalisa’s local opening. Far be it from me to talk you out of a film you’re looking forward to, and let me point out that I seem to be alone in my opinion. Of the 38 reviews compiled on metacritic.com, all but two are positive, and even those two are mixed. Nearly half of the positive reviews are scored 100 percent—an unqualified rave.

So if you buy a ticket and afterward want to tell me I’m wrong, you will certainly be in the majority: I’m not trying to ruin anything for you.

That said, as far as I’m concerned Anomalisa is 90 minutes of Kaufman rubbing your nose in how stultifying banal modern life is. His protagonist is Michael Stone, a writer of motivational books. His latest is How May I Help You Help Them?, a guide for sales workers. When we first meet him he is on a plane approach-

IN CINEMAS NOW

BY M. FAUST & GEORGE SAX

PREMIERES OPENING FRIDAY, JANUARY 22

ANOMALISA—Charlie Kaufman wrote and directed (with Duke Johnson) this puppet animation film with David Thewlis as the voice of a depressed motivational speaker. With the voices of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan. Reviewed this issue. Amherst DIRTY GRANDPA—And you thought Robert DeNiro’s career hit rock bottom with The Intern?

Co-starring Zac Efron and Zoey Deutch. Directed by Dan Mazer. Area theaters.

THE FIFTH WAVE—Ushering in yet another series based on a shelf of teenage dystopia adventures. With Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Maika Monroe, Maria Bello, and Liev Schreiber.

Directed by J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed). Area theaters.

IP MAN 3—Donnie Yen returns as the martial arts grandmaster of the 1930s whose most famous

Why did Kaufman (in collaboration with co-director Duke Johnson) chose this method for a story that seemingly could have been accomplished more simply with real actors? For one thing, because Michael (whose voice is provided by David Thewlis) sees everyone as essentially the same: They all talk with the same voice (provided for male and female characters alike by Tom Noonan), and they all look more or less the same, which is easier to do with puppets than with actors and actresses.

When he meets up with his ex, she is no different. It isn’t until after their meeting goes badly that he hears a voice that is different (and provided by Jennifer Jason Leigh). He sets out to pursue it.

Will the woman bearing it bring happiness into his miserable life?

Do you really want me to answer that?

Michael is staying at a place called the Fregoli Hotel, a reference to Fregoli syndrome, a disorder in which one thinks that a person or other people, or in rare instances all other people, are actually the same person. (There’s a theory that John du Pont, subject of last year’s film Foxcatcher, suffered from this.) In interviews Kaufman has warned against taking that too literally: Michael does not suffer from Fregoli delusion (as it is also called), and it would clearly be an entirely different story of he did.

pupil was Bruce Lee. Co-starring Mike Tyson. Directed by Wilson Yip. Regal Elmwood YOUTH—The new film by Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) stars Michael Caine as a retired composer contemplating mortality while vacationing at a European spa. Co-starring Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Paloma Faith, and Jane Fonda. Reviewed this issue. Eastern Hills

ALTERNATIVE CINEMA DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)—Terrence Malick’s dramatically wan but visually rapturous movie in which the farmlands of the west (in the Oscar-winning cinematography of Néstor Almendros) and the score by Ennio Morricone command more attention than the characters played by Richard Gere, Sam Shepard, and Brooke Adams. Mon 9:45pm.

North Park HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD (2015)—Documentary about the history of Greenpeace. Directed by Jerry Rothwell. Reviewed this issue. Free and open to the public. Presented by Cultivate Cinema. Wed Jan 27 pm. Burning Books IMAGES OF THE WORLD AND THE INSCRIPTION OF WAR (Germany, 1989)—The late Harun Farocki’s

20 THE PUBLIC / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM

No, Michael is merely a sad man with no grip on his life, But I found it next to impossible to feel anything for him, least of all sympathy. He’s too thinly sketched, a mope in an ugly world.

He doesn’t know why he hates his life and the people in it, and grasps at straws in an attempt to save himself, an attempt doomed to failure.

That’s a formula for a dull movie. The reason why I hated it is that Kaufman has stacked the deck against him. From the opening of the movie, Michael exists in a trivial, soul-numbing world whose banality the filmmakers belabor. The cabbie who takes him from the airport to his hotel prattles on about the wonders of Cincinnati, even though he seems to know next to nothing about it.

The bellboy who takes his bags to his room drones on and on explaining things that don’t need to be explained. The room service operator who takes his order insists on repeating every part of it back to him in the full marketing name of each item. The people he meets can’t make conversation, they can only whine about their own dull problems, or repeat third-hand quips from pop culture.

Of course the world is full of stuff like this: It’s the polluted sea we all swim in every day. But we don’t dwell on it. You can find happiness and contentment in the world—maybe not enough, but at least you make the effort. And if you want to complain, there are things you can complain about where your shared perspective might make a difference. Anomalisa is 90 minutes of contempt for life that refuses to find anything good in the world. It’s a movie that makes you happy to get back to reality. It’s also a movie that makes you feel very sorry for the man who made it. *** ITALIAN FILMMAKER PAOLO SORRENTINO got the largest audience of his career for last year’s The Great Beauty, winning of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Oscar winners often follow their success up with an indulgent pet project, which is certainly one way to view Youth. Working with a cast filled with internationally recognizable names—Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, and British neosoul singer Paloma Faith—Sorrentino has put together an loosely woven essay on aging in a format that once again recalls Fellini: A retired conductor (Caine) looks back on his life while vacationing at a Swiss resort. It’s a film that engages you in many small ways even if the plot thread tying everything together is never quite satisfying. It’s lovely to look at, in the ways we imagine the lives of the rich and famous must be, and has at least a few juicy clumps of dialogue for every member of the leading cast to chew on. And it’s fun to watch Caine and Keitel working together—given the number of movies the two have in their combined credits, it’s hard P to believe they’ve never done so together before.

essay film on the nature of perception using several historical anecdotes, including US military surveillance photos taken in 1944 that were not noticed to have revealed information about Auschwitz until decades later. Co-presented by Squeaky Wheel; free to Squeaky Wheel and Hallwalls members. Wed Jan 20, 7pm. Hallwalls MAD MAX (Australia, 1979)—The film that made Mel Gibson an international star and spawned a genre of post-apocalyptic action thrillers. Directed by George Miller (Happy Feet). Sat-Sun 10 pm. North Park PANDORA’S BOX (1929, Germany)—The film that made Louise Brooks a sexual icon, though not until many years later—on its original release, this was shown in most places only in cut or reedited versions. The great director G. W. Pabst provides a suitably dank, visually heightened setting for her performance as a Weimar Berlin prostitute who wreaks havoc on every man she meets, something she is not unwilling to turn to her advantage. Presented as part of the Buffalo Film Seminar. Tue 7pm. Amherst ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953)—Newspaperman Gregory Peck helps slumming princess Audrey Hepburn enjoy herself when she escapes her handlers in Rome in William Wyler’s classic romantic comedy. An Oscar winner for Hepburn and

then-blacklisted scripter Dalton Trumbo, Sun 11:30am. North Park ROSENWALD (2015)—Biographical documentary about Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago philanthropist who helped Booker T. Washington build 5,400 Southern schools in African-American communities in the early 1900s. Directed by Aviva Kempner (Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg). Sat 11:30am. North Park STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)—Raymond Chandler wrote the screenplay from Patricia Highsmith’s novel for this classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller about two men who pass the time on a train formulating a perfect murder plan. But when they get off, one of them takes it seriously. Starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, and Leo G. Carroll. Fri-Sun, Tue 7:30pm. Screening Room

IN BRIEF THEATER INFORMATION IS VALID THROUGH THURSDAY, JANUARY 21

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE ROAD CHIP—Sequel. With Jason Lee and Bella Thorne. Directed

by Walt Becker (Old Dogs). Flix (Dipson), Regal

IN CINEMAS NOW FILM

LOCAL THEATERS

AT DAILYPUBLIC.COM: The Heroic Hired Guns of Benghazi: In his new movie, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi, Michael Bay eschews his usual bombast. It isn’t likely to be a breakout commercial success, says reviewer George Sax, but it is likely to become a useful tool in advancing a political agenda. Read Sax’s review at dailypublic.com.

AMHERST THEATRE (DIPSON) 3500 Main St., Buffalo / 834-7655 amherst.dipsontheatres.com AURORA THEATRE 673 Main St., East Aurora / 652-1660 theauroratheatre.com EASTERN HILLS CINEMA (DIPSON) 4545 Transit Rd., / Eastern Hills Mall Williamsville / 632-1080 easternhills.dipsontheatres.com FLIX STADIUM 10 (DIPSON) 4901 Transit Rd., Lancaster / 668-FLIX flix10.dipsontheatres.com FOUR SEASONS CINEMA 6 2429 Military Rd. (behind Big Lots), Niagara Falls / 297-1951 fourseasonscinema.com

Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Rebut writer-director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Stagal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria tion) convinced him to let him use the character in a spin-off film focusing on the illegitimate HALLWALLS THE BIG SHORT—If you want to learn about the son (Michael B. Jordan) of Apollo Creed. Dedeep and complex causes of the 2008 bank341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo / 854-1694 termined to follow in his father’s footsteps, her ing crisis that nearly brought down the Amerhallwalls.org persuades the retired Rocky (Stallone moving ican economy, you’d be better off watching a into the Burgess Meredith part) to coach him. documentary on the subject (especially Charles The result is a crowd-pleaser that pays affecHAMBURG PALACE Ferguson’s Oscar-winning Inside Job). On the tionate tribute to memorable locations and 31 Buffalo St., Hamburg / 649-2295 other hand, you can’t argue that a fictionalized characters from the Rocky films while following movie starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad hamburgpalace.com a different structure. Coogler also retains StalPitt, and Ryan Gosling, directed and co-written lone’s sentimentality, and the notes struck by by Will Ferrell partner Adam McKay, is likely to LOCKPORT PALACE the cast here are honest, even if the challenge reach a lot more people. Working from the book faced by his hero feels contrived. With Tessa 2 East Ave., Lockport / 438-1130 by former Wall Street insider Michael Lewis, the Thompson and Phylicia Rashad. –Greg Lamberlockportpalacetheatre.org film whirls around several unconnected characson Four Seasons, Regal Transit ters who all came to the conclusion that money DADDY’S HOME—Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg could be made by using the market to bet on MAPLE RIDGE 8 (AMC) as the past and current husbands of the same it’s own inevitable failure. Its explanations can 4276 Maple Rd., Amherst / 833-9545 woman (Linda Cardellini) battling for the affecbe confusing, though McKay makes that part of amctheatres.com tion of her kids. Directed by Sean Anders (Sex the story—the narration notes that the financial Drive). Aurora, Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, world is designed to make outsiders feel stupid.

MCKINLEY 6 THEATRES (DIPSON) Regal Walden Galleria, Flix (Dipson), Regal NiCo-starring Marisa Tomei, Rafe Spall, and Melisagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit sa Leo. –MF Amherst (Dipson), Aurora 3701 McKinley Pkwy. / McKinley Mall Hamburg / 824-3479 BROOKLYN—Saoirse Ronan stars as an Irish girl THE DANISH GIRL—Loosely based on the life of who emigrates to the United States in 1951, Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), the Danish mckinley.dipsontheatres.com when the economy of her home country was landscape artist of the 1920s whose posthuin shambles. Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s 2009 mously published diaries (under the name Lili NORTH PARK THEATRE novel by Nick Hornby, Brooklyn is not only an Elbe) have been inspirational to the transgen1428 Hertel Ave., Buffalo / 836-7411 extraordinarily good film; it’s also an important der community. It’s a handsome production dinorthparktheatre.org one, arriving as it does at a time when so many rected by Tom Hooper with similar period detail people are being forced to leave the lands of as his Oscar-winning The King’s Speech. But it walks an uncertain line between transvestitism their birth and so many normally decent peoREGAL ELMWOOD CENTER 16 and transgender, often seeming to imply that ple want to turn them away. Emotionally ren2001 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo / 871–0722 the two exist on a continuum. Fine performancdered by an attractive cast and crafted in the regmovies.com es by Redmayne and Alicia Vikander notwithbest traditions of mainstream filmmaking—it standing, its appeal may be limited to those wouldn’t look out of place if you were to see it who have read Lili’s diaries, though those are some evening on Turner Classic Movies—BrookREGAL NIAGARA FALLS STADIUM 12 lyn is a captivating and rewarding moviegoing also the viewers most likely to care about the 720 Builders Way, Niagara Falls liberties that have been taken with them. With experience, the kind that at best comes along 236–0146 once or twice a year. Co-starring Emory Cohen, Matthias Schoenaerts, Sebastian Koch, Ben regmovies.com Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, and Julie Whishaw, and Amber Heard. –MF Eastern Hills (Dipson), North Park Walters. Directed by John Crowley (Closed Circuit). –MF Amherst, Eastern Hills (Dipson) REGAL QUAKER CROSSING 18 THE FOREST—Horror movie starring Natalie Dor3450 Amelia Dr., Orchard Park / 827–1109 CAROL—Based on the novel The Price of Salt, mer as a woman searching for her missing twin written by Patricia Highsmith from an experiin a haunted forest in Japan. With Eoin Macken regmovies.com ence in her own life and published under the and Stephanie Vogt. Directed by Jason Zada.

Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal pseudonym “Claire Morgan” in 1952, Carol reREGAL TRANSIT CENTER 18 Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria counts a romance between an aspiring young Transit and Wehrle, Lancaster / 633–0859 writer and a married suburban woman she met THE HATEFUL EIGHT—At two hours and 45 minregmovies.com while working as a department store clerk. For utes, Quentin Tarantino’s latest burns slowly, director Todd Haynes, this provides another but despite a lot of promising sparks fizzles out chance to explore repressed gay love in the REGAL WALDEN GALLERIA STADIUM 16 by the time it gets to its gore-soaked finale. Set Far From Heaven .

But staid 1950s, as he did in One Walden Galleria Dr., Cheektowaga sometime in the years just after the Civil War, while he recreates the era to visual success, he’s with many of that conflict’s passions still fresh, 681-9414 / regmovies.com not as concerned with imitating a Douglas Sirk it contrives to place a bunch of characters in a melodrama this time around. (You may or may remote Wyoming way station during a blizzard RIVIERA THEATRE not consider that a plus.) Languid and seducthat makes travel impossible. The dialogue tive, it’s a slow burner with Rooney Mara and 67 Webster St., North Tonawanda lacks the florid orotundity that is Tarantino’s Cate Blanchett as an exquisitely matched pair.

692-2413 / rivieratheatre.org stock-in-trade—you can see why he didn’t cast With Kyle Chandler and Sarah Paulson. –MF AmChristoph Waltz—which leads you to think that herst (Dipson), Eastern Hills (Dipson) he may be after more serious concerns than THE SCREENING ROOM CONCUSSION—Far be it from me to complain too in previous films. But everything that appears 3131 Sheridan Dr., Amherst / 837-0376 much about a movie with lines like “God did not to be dissecting the American character turns screeningroom.net intend for us to play football.” But Concussion is out to be merely a diversion from a spaghetanother example of a movie that tries to make a ti Western story that could—and should—have Hollywood hit out of material that would better been told in a trimmer film. Excellent Ennio SQUEAKY WHEEL be served in a documentary. Will Smith stars as Morricone score. Starring, in alphabetical or712 Main St., / 884-7172 Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Pittsburgh pathologist der, Demian Bichir, Bruce Dern, Walton GogVISIT DAILYPUBLIC.COM FOR MORE FILM LISTINGS & REVIEWS >> squeaky.org who while investigating the apparent mental gins, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, decline and suicide of a retired Steelers player Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, and SUNSET DRIVE-IN Channing Tatum. –MF Maple Ridge, Regal Nidiscovered a condition, chronic traumatic en9950 Telegraph Rd., Middleport 735agara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal cephalopathy, brought on by excessive blows to 7372 / sunset-drivein.com the head—a sine qua non of football. Writer-diWalden Galleria rector Peter Landesman (adapting a GQ article JOY features a terrific performance by Jennifer

by Jeanne Marie Laskas) struggles to make TJ’S THEATRE Lawrence as a real-life heroine Preston Sturges this part of a conventional dramatic narrative, would have loved, the Long Island woman who 72 North Main St., Angola / 549-4866 in which Omalu’s undeniably interesting perinvented the Miracle Mop and became rich sellnewangolatheater.com VISIT DAILYPUBLIC.COM MORE FILM REVIEWS sonal historyFOR inevitably distracts from LISTINGS the cening& it on the then-new>>able channel QVC. Like tral story. Co-starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Sturges, writer-director David O. Russell packs Baldwin, Albert Brooks, David Morse, and Luke TRANSIT DRIVE-IN his movies with characters who all think they’re Wilson. –MF Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal 6655 South Transit Rd., Lockport the star of the story (and, in a different handling, Walden Galleria could be). But while he has all the right ingredi625-8535 / transitdrivein.com CREED—Sylvester Stallone finished his long-runents, Russell isn’t much of a cook. He stirs and ning Rocky series with Rocky Balboa in 2006, stirs to haphazard results. The first half of the

CULTURE > FILM

CULTURE > FILM

film, charting our heroine’s domestic problems, are mostly just depressing, And the film’s third act seems to have been stuck on just to give the story a dramatic conclusion. With Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Édgar Ramírez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, and Isabella Rossellini.

–MF Flix (Dipson), Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria THE MARTIAN—It makes sense to update science fiction variants on the Robinson Crusoe story every so often to take advantage of both new technology and new knowledge. And the armchair survivalist will be engrossed by at least the first half of this adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel starring Matt Damon as a can-do science guy stuck on Mars. But scripter Drew Goddard, who has given us such logically wobbly films as The Cabin in the Woods and World War Z, is less interested in illustrating Weir’s problem-solving than the more familiar stuff about NASA mounting a rescue operation. The overall result would be more enjoyable on a popcorn level if the first half hadn’t put you in a logical mode P that the second half abandons. (The disco music is particularly idiotic—as if a mission to Mars in even the near future couldn’t come equipped with at least as much music as you could fit on a thumb drive right now.) With Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Pena, and Sean Bean. Directed by Ridley Scott (Prometheus). -MF Four Seasons, McKinley (Dipson) NORM OF THE NORTH—Animated movie about a polar bear and his lemming friends who are displaced from the Canadian north to Manhattan.

Flix (Dipson), Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria THE REVENANT—It’s never a good sign when a nearly three hour movie starts with the words “I know you want this to be over,” and the new film from Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) is something to be endured more than enjoyed.

Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly went through no end of physical discomfort filming his scenes as an 1820s frontiersman struggling to survive after being mauled by a bear in the forest and abandoned as dead by his colleagues, but there’s a limit to how much pain you can watch before you either stop watching or simply stop caring. It doesn’t help that the various other stories interwoven with Leo’s are poorly fleshed out, or that co-star Tom Hardy’s dialogue is largely incomprehensible. Like Birdman, it’s an impressive technical accomplishment, if that’s all you want from a movie. With Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, and Forrest Goodluck.-MF Flix (Dipson), Hamburg Palace, Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria RIDE ALONG 2—Sequel. Starring Kevin Hart, Ice Cube, Ken Jeong, Olivia Munn, and Benjamin Bratt. Flix (Dipson), Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria SISTERS—Not a remake of the 1973 Brian De Palma movie, unfortunately. Starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, John Leguizamo, and Dianne Wiest. Flix (Dipson), Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS—Sequel. Flix (Dipson), Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI—Reviewed on dailypublic.com. Flix (Dipson), Maple Ridge, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria P

CULTURE > FILM

VISIT DAILYPUBLIC.COM FOR MORE FILM LISTINGS & REVIEWS >> DAILYPUBLIC.COM / JANUARY 20 - 26, 2016 / THE PUBLIC 21

PUBLIC MARKET TO PLACE AN AD CALL (716)856.0737 OR EMAIL CLASSIFIEDS@DAILYPUBLIC.COM / DAILYPUBLIC.COM/CLASSIFIEDS THE PUBLIC’S NOTICE The Public encourages you to use caution while participating in any transactions or acquiring services through our classified section of the newspaper. While we do approve the ads in this section, we do not guarantee the reliability of classified advertisers. If you have questions, email classifieds@dailypublic.com.

APARTMENTS LOOKING TO RENT AN APARTMENT? Let The Public know! We are running a special rate for a 3 line / 4 week print / 6 week web advertisements. Contact us today!

---------------------------------------------2 BEDROOM APTS. AVAILABLE at The Westbrook. corner of Delaware & North in Allentown District. All utilities included, from 1100-1350 sq.ft., priced $1200-$1375. Off street parking available. Beautiful city views! Application on website www. thewestbrook.com - Call for an appointment to view (716) 884-9100.

-------------------------------------------------KLEINHANS AREA Historic Orton Pl., 2 bdrm lwr, appl, lndry, wlk to BPO/ Allen Street. Avail Jan 1, 2016. $700 + sec/util. 882-5028 -------------------------------------------------ELMWOOD VILLAGE Large 2 brm on Bryant, steps to Elmwood, LR, DR, office, hardwoods, appliances. $950 includes util. except electric. Off street parking. Please call Ted at 716481-5478.

-------------------------------------------------ELMWOOD VILLAGE Colonial Circle / Richmond. Large 2BR, HW, off-street pkg. Entire 3rd floor. Very nice, must see! $1,275 incl. all util. No pets.

Please call 912-2906.

EMPLOYMENT THE REFINERY located at 77 Saranac Avenue in Buffalo is looking to hire a full/part time stylist with cutting experience. Commission based pay.

Please email therefinery77@gmail. com or call (716)783-9051.

THE ARTS COMEDY CLASS Laughter is the Best Winter Medicine! Stand up comedy class with Kristen Becker starts Feb 6th. Only $225. More info @ kristenbecker.com.

COMMUNITY EVENTS FREE YOUTH WRITING WORKSHOPS Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30 - 6 PM. Open to writers between ages 12 and 18 at the Just Buffalo Writing Center.

468 Washington Street - 2nd floor., Buffalo 14203. Light snack provided!

-------------------------------------------------REINSTEIN WOODS AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM A one-hour program for kids featuring a different, fun outdoor activity each week. For children in grades K-5. No registration required.

Every Thursday from 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM. 93 Honorine Drive, Depew. More information at reinsteinwoods.org/ events/after-school-escape-3/ -------------------------------------------------TIFFT NATURE PRESERVE WELLNESS WALK Drop by Tifft Nature Preserve and enjoy the fresh air and the sights and sounds of the season with a healthy outdoor walk on our beautiful and accessible trails! Offered every Thursday at 10am all year. $2.00 per person donation appreciated. Please call 825-6397 the morning of to confirm walk will be taking place.

-------------------------------------------------ERIE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY The Milestones of Science is a collection of first and rare editions by world famous early scientists. The collection features 11 science-related disciplines and their fundamental first edition masterworks by world-renown scientists, explorers and inventors.

Ongoing.

-------------------------------------------------CHESTNUT RIDGE PARK WINTERFEST SATURDAY 1/24 11 AM-4PM. Free family activities including sledding, snowshoe hikes, marshmallow roasting, arts & crafts, snow sculpturing, hay rides.

More information is available by calling the Parks Department at (716) 858-8513 or visiting their website at erie.gov/parks.

GREATER NIAGARA FISHING AND OUTDOOR EXPO Thursday 1/22 to Saturday 1/24 Niagara Falls Conference and Event Center 101 Old Falls St. Niagara Falls, NY. Exhibitors, retailers, speakers, seminars, kids activities. The largest fishing show in New York State and on Lake Ontario.

IT’S E->Z — BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

-------------------------------------------------WINTER WONDERLAND SNOWSHOE TREK Tuesday 1/26 6:30-8:30PM, Ellicott Creek Park. FREE if you bring your own snowshoes. $10 to rent. Meet at Survival of the Gear, 2463 Niagara Falls Blvd. Be sure to wear appropriate clothing and footwear. Call 716-7757669 or email pat@SurvivaloftheGear. com to register.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

ACROSS 1 Optimistic 5 Riding around the city, maybe 11 “La ___” (Debussy opus) 14 Outside introduction 15 City on the Merrimack River

BILL NEHILL

16 “___ seen worse”

MARK DUGGAN ERIC PALUMBO

17 Possible autobiography title for comedian Horatio?

ELIZABETH LEWIN

19 Canceled (with “out”)

LONNIE BARLOW

20 Chocolate stand-in

SARA HEIDINGER LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD

21 Hardly Mercedes quality?

KYLE MARLER

23 French numeral 24 Part of IPA 27 Told

GLOBAL JUSTICE ECOLOGY PROJECT, a Buffalo-based non-profit with a social & ecological justice mission, seeks a part-time Operations & Support Assistant. GJEP also manages the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery, an art gallery committed to use of art & photography to inspire social change.

For full job description, go to: bit. ly/1RPn8OQ. No phone calls.

28 Some grads of RPI or MIT

Couples, ages 18-30, needed for confidential, paid study on marijuana use & relationship dynamics at University at Buffalo. Earn up to $240 each. Call 887-3394 or email ccdstudy@ria.buffalo.edu.

56 Air gun pellets 57 Hip bath in the great outdoors?

60 Pie-mode connection 61 Getting a move on, quaintly 62 Singer of “The Man With the Golden Gun” theme song 63 Daisy Ridley’s “Star Wars” character 64 Conducive to peace 65 Suffixes denoting sugars

29 ___-foot oil

30 Thin, fibrous bark (or one-third of a dance instruction for Lisa Simpson) 31 Become sharply attentive 33 Eric of “Pulp Fiction” 34 Basketmaker’s willow 36 Like people on some dating apps 37 “It’s hard to tell” 38 Process of determining gender, as zoologists do 39 Row of buttons on a screen 42 Seoul food

DOWN

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54 “Buona ___” (Italian sign-off)

1 Coast Guard mission 2 Rating at the pump 3 Long looks

4 You may walk the dog

44 Latin for “higher,” as in the Olympic motto 45 Wee 46 Ramona’s sister, in Beverly Cleary books 48 2008 Jordin Sparks/

with it YOU APPROVE 32IFSpring harbingerERRORS WHICH ARE ON THIS PROOF, THE Chris Brown duet 5 Guest quarters PUBLIC CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. PLEASE EXAMINE THE AD 33 Medium-hot chili pepper 52 “Hook” sidekick THOROUGHLY EVEN IF THE AD IS A PICK-UP. variety 6 Constantly criticize

Meet& Roxie e Lace are Meet the adora ble Roxie and Lacee ! These twohome new their to go to need they that d so bonde toget her. Come meet these two cuties , as well as all of their friend s, at the SPCA ! . YOURSPCA.ORG .

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Thank you for advertising 36with Cracker must hand THEyou PUBLIC. Please over to get through? review your ad and check any errors.

The original 39for Mexican restaurant layout instructions have staple been followed as closely as 40 Demographic nickname possible.

THE PUBLIC offers coined 1980s with two designin the services at with no (chat charge.

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50 Falsehood

53 Twirl around CHECK 7� Trade org.COPY CONTENT 55 City that the band a-ha CHECK IMPORTANT 8� Bush Labor SecretaryDATES hails from Elaine � CHECK NAME, ADDRESS, 9 PHONE Relatives nieces #, &ofWEBSITE 10� Flea market PROOF OK (NO CHANGES)

59 Coin collection appraisal 11 � Hodgepodge PROOF OK (WITH CHANGES) co. (found in COLLECTING COINS) 12 10 seconds for 100 yards, in running lingo Advertisers Signature

13 Old Spice deodorant ____________________________ variety 18Date Big name in electric _______________________ guitars Y16W3 Issue: ______________________ 22 Renewable fuel derived from organic matter

THIS PROOF MAY ONLY BE USED FOR25PUBLICATION IN THE PUBLIC. Colorful sports artist

51 Fuzzy green stuff growing on a former Comedy Central “Dr.”?

58 “Here Comes the Hotstepper” singer Kamoze

Neiman

26 Load of gossip

LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

FAMOUS LAST WORDS BACK PAGE

THE GRUMPY GHEY: TOO MUCH SALMON?

BY CHRISTOPHER JOHN TREACY I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME SOMEONE MADE THE SUGGESTION.

“You could definitely stand to lose a few pounds,” Dr. Newman said in his usual cards-on-the-table tone.

It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d put on the kid gloves. Panic set in. My fears were now medically validated. I’d ballooned. What was once an innocent after-school ritual of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies and cans of Sunkist had become something that compelled commentary from my pediatrician.

I was crestfallen.

My folks had recently sent me off to a private school, and I was hating it. I wanted to like it, I really did. But, having left my hometown peers after fifth grade, all I felt was odd. Suddenly I was a student at an upscale institution halfway across the county, and the formality of my new daily routine made me feel like I was perpetually in trouble, more singled out than ever before. Sequestered.

And of all the possible unfortunate developments, I now literally rode a short bus to school. That it took an hour to get us there was just salt in an already grisly wound.

“Maybe you’ll find other kids that like Kurt Vonnegut,” my mom had said, earnestly trying to sell the idea and creating a false illusion of choice. Sometime after documents were signed and checks were written, a summer reading list arrived in the mail.

I thought the world had ended. Reading for enjoyment? Sure. Reading things my parents thought were too racy for a kid? Definitely. Reading Willa Cather’s My Antonia for a sixth-grade English class that didn’t start for a few months? Fuck off.

I was up earlier in the morning for that goddamned short bus than for anything else before or since.

And it didn’t bring me home until almost 5pm, nearly 12 hours later, after a lengthy afternoon study hall, which pretty much ensured I’d pass out on the ride home. I distinctly remember thinking, “I’m just not wired for this shit.”

So what did I do? Well, I ended up pulling a prank the following year that resulted in my being asked to leave. Problem solved (sort of).

But before that happened, I started eating. A lot.

Food evolved into a soothing comfort that eclipsed everything else. And wouldn’t you know it, the fancy new school had a snack bar, complete with fresh donuts delivered daily. That, and Nestle Crunch had a contest going that involved spelling out their brand name with letters hidden on the inside of the candy bar wrappers. I’d eat several every day.

by eating pancakes. Both a guy I dated in Texas and another who seemed interested in me treated their respective bodies as works in progress, building rapid mass, and I’m not talking about muscle. These dudes were eating to spread out like Paula Deen at a picnic table.

in a natural, jeans-and-tee aesthetic that breeds a greater degree of comfort in one’s own skin. In their less adulterated, less manicured maleness, they come across as a fair bit sexier and less hung-up than the perpetually primping, tightly coiffed-andgroomed crew.

While these men ate cans of Kraft Easy Cheese, generously squirted on Chicken in a Biscuit crackers, I got diagnosed with high blood pressure and was warned of pre-diabetic trending in my blood work. It didn’t seem fair. My associates wouldn’t be happy until they hit they tipped the scales past the 300 mark, and I was going to stroke out below 250.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as my Lisinopril-cough became a nightly hassle: Was this a mind-frame issue? If I embraced my heaviness more graciously, would my blood work miraculously improve?

What to make, then, of the growing propensity among bears toward becoming and/or staying obese? Given the fallout from all our finger-pointing and shaming, it’s no longer simple to say when something is a healthy choice that represents a comfortable confidence and when it’s self-destructive. We are no longer allowed such judgments. But there’s a large subculture of bears known as chubs— it’s no small faction—that is sexualizing obesity. And they’ve got plenty of admirers. All of which is awesome, if it weren’t for one thing: Isn’t anyone worried about the health risks?

We live in an increasingly bitched-up culture where shaming calls the shots. We’ve gotten very busy making one another feel horrible about every choice, every statement, every pleasure. When I hit 200 pounds in my mid-20s, my boyfriend commented that I’d begun waddling. I can recall meeting my parents for lunch at a Connecticut deli after I quit drinking, only to have my mom comment on the amount of mayonnaise I was spreading on my sandwich.

At home, my dad and I ate copious amount of ice cream, pound cakes, cookies, and Danish rings. I had croissants for breakfast with fresh pats of butter on each bite. My mom, meanwhile, left us to our nasty habits and began a serious exercise regimen that she maintains to this day. But I slowly morphed into a sluggish, bloated version of my former self, just in time to turn 13.

When I lost the weight I put on from all the mayo in early sobriety, middle-aged women I knew started calling me a “skinny bitch.” Shortly thereafter, several people took me aside and warned me they thought I’d gotten too fit, too lean, and needed to “look at the nutrition.”

So began my ongoing battle with weight and body dysmorphia. I won’t bore you with too many additional details, but suffice to say: When things got tough for the Little Grump, the Little Grump stuffed his face. Later, he got drunk. And when there was no more drinking to be done, he went out to lunch.

And stopped for dessert. And then ordered a pizza. And microwave-softened the vat of pumpkin pie ice cream so the graham crackers he’d be using to scoop it out of the carton wouldn’t break in half.

In retrospect, the nutrition was just fine, thank you.

Maybe they needed to “look at the jealousy.”

Now, a decade since my fitness plateau, I’ve had to work really hard to get my diet under control. I’d fallen prey to metabolic syndrome, which can be tricky to steer away from once the pattern is established. To correct for all the bad eating I’ve done, I’ve had to remove processed sugar from my diet and put a tight cap on carbs. Sometimes I get to the supermarket and am at a loss for what’s okay to eat.

My weight has fluctuated dramatically as an adult, from an emaciated, drug-addicted 125 pounds to a feed-bag-strapping, buffet-vacuuming, “don’t mind if I do” 240-and-change. At 5’ 11”, I was never meant to hit either of those extremes. Bottom line? Fitness has come and gone at fleeting intervals, but chunky has remained my prevailing physical paradigm.

Slowly the weight has begun coming off. But even if I were to become a so-called “skinny bitch” again (not likely), I would still choose to hang with the bears. To me, gay bear culture has never really been about weight. Being a bear is a frame of mind. It’s a rejection of the mainstream gay physical ideal, yes, but it’s also just a less fussy stance across the board. Bears are neither metro-sexual nor lumber-sexual. They are themselves. They tend not to shave body hair or fuss with fashion, but they’re not devoid of style. Instead, they revel

Imagine my shock when I began encountering gay men who were striving for bigness—gay men who wanted to be fatter or daydreamed about fatter boyfriends. Someone I dated in Boston confessed to fantasizing about fattening me up. I responded

Am I engaged in fat-shaming just by raising these questions? Given my own struggle with weight, I should hope not. But I’m not sure I can separate being heavy from its negative physical implications.

A headline caught my eye this past week that speaks to this issue, at least on some level. It had to do with a discussion at University of California, Santa Barbara, hosted by the school’s Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity. It will feature Dr. Jason Whitesel, whose book Fat, Gay Men: Mirth, Girth, and the Politics of Stigma explores the impact of fat-shaming on the gay community.

The event made headlines because a conservative group of UCSB students got all twirled up, yammering on about the use of precious taxpayer and tuition dollars to foster a discussion about “How to Sodomize Overweight Men.” The campus’s resource center clarified that the money came from what’s known as student lock-in fees, which get voted on periodically. So the conservatives had it wrong.

The ridiculous drama at UCSB aside, Whitesel’s book attempts to help us look at gay obesity in a new light and answer some of the questions raised above. I’ll delve into the book in much greater detail for the next edition of the Grumpy Ghey, but I would raise the following question in the meanwhile: Is stuffing yourself to achieve an unnaturally fat body any different than becoming obsessed with sculpting a radically thin one? It seems to me there’s a danger lurking, in which the subculture I describe encourages people to stay big, even when doing so may have dire consequences. To me, that’s got little to do with being comfortable in one’s own skin and even less to do with the embodiment of being a bear. Maybe Whitesel can offer some valuP able insight.

MAP ELMWOOD VILLAGE Some of our old and new favorites around Buffalo’s Elmwood Village...

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1 BIG ORBIT GALLERY / 30D ESSEX ST. Site of Thursday’s Bean Friend listening party (see page 15), this neighborhood gallery specializes in the avant-garde.

2 FARM SHOP / 241 LEXINGTON AVE.

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Old Buffalo still thrives in the old Elmwood Lounge. Open mic (with comedy) on Tuesday and music on the weekends.

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3 MILKIE’S / 522 ELMWOOD AVE.

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A mini farmer’s market featuring White Cow Dairy and Butter Block baked goods open Thursday through Saturday.

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5 SOLE HIGH + SOLE MAN / 565-9 ELMWOOD Buffalo’s sudden shoe district emerges: Sole High, a sneakerhead wonderland, and Sole Man, a specialty retailer and cobbler.

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An ocean of beer from the nation’s best craft breweries and accompanying food pairings, somehow contained in a little storefront.

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6 KUNI’S / 226 LEXINGTON AVE. An institution of Japanese cuisine. I’ll take the salmon collar, the hot fish salad, and a radish sprout roll.

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7 BLUE MOUNTAIN COFFEE / 509 ELMWOOD

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