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Week in Review

What to Do With Trico Plant #1

by Geoff Kelly

Attending the Issue of Teacher Performance

by George Sax

Kearns vs. Fahey

by Geoff Kelly

Scorecard: The Week's Winners & Losers

by Zachary Burns

News Analysis

NFTA Update

by Aaron Lowinger

It’s not really a joke. At least it shouldn’t be. But the state of the NFTA at times reveals a byzantine web of conflicting interests, inexperience, strange math, and outdated coin machines on buses. It’s hard not to laugh darkly at the absurdity the system provides the public, in the “If you don’t laugh, it’ll just drive you crazy” kind of way.

Special Report

Where the Sun Don't Shine

by by Jim Heaney, InvestigativePost.org

A lot gets written this time every year as the press “celebrates” Sunshine Week. The focus is often on government’s failure to live up to the spirit, if not the letter of the Freedom of Information Law. But the problem goes well beyond efforts to stonewall the press and public under FOIL.

The Drinking Issue

Buffalo's Drunkest Rock Bands Ever

by Donny Kutzbach

Peanut butter and jelly. Han Solo and Chewbacca. Rock-and-roll bands that play in bars and alcohol. These are all things that go naturally together. For every band that made their trade playing in local nightclubs, there is a story of how the bottle got the best of them.

The Drinking Issue

The Goodness of Irish

by Aber Gerrity

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, there are numerous faux pas that one should take care to avoid when preparing authentic Irish cuisine. For starters, despite the high demand for it this time of year, corned beef and cabbage is not a traditional Irish dish. Rather, bacon and cabbage is. Furthermore, adding whiskey or ale to a dish, or crème de menthe to a dessert, does not in fact make it Irish.

The Drinking Issue

The Goodness of Beer

by Joe George

Beer as a beverage can be so satisfying, and is so ubiquitous, that it’s often overlooked as a cooking ingredient. While wine is thought of as the optimum cooking alcohol—and rightly so—beer, too, has its place. And like wine, beer has been used in this manner for millennia.

Theater Week

A Golden Age of Theater

by Anthony Chase

The 2011-2012 Buffalo theater season continues to be a banner year. The offerings have been abundant, diverse, and of impressive quality.

Theater Week

Playwright Jonathan Tolins Reveals Secrets of the Trade

by Anthony Chase

Buffalo United Artists has special enthusiasm for the work of playwright Jonathan Tolins. They’ve staged successful productions of his plays The Last Sunday in June, about a group of friends in a New York apartment on the date of the gay pride parade, and The Twilight of the Golds, about a couple that takes part in DNA test that indicates their baby will be gay.

Theater

Stagefright

by Javier

The fabulous Daphne Rubin-Vega (pictured above left, with stage and soap opera star Saundra Santiago, right) will be back on Broadway this season in the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, which begins previews on April 3. Rubin-Vega will play Stella Kowalski in this new, multi-racial production, which also stars Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker.

Artvoice B.O.O.M!

Round 4, Week 3: Sleepy Sparrows vs. Beggar's Best

Congratulations to Bryan Johnson and Family for winning this week’s online vote. With that win, they secure a spot in the next BOOM Live Showdown, coming up on April 7 at Nietzsche’s.

Film Reviews

In the Blood?

by M. Faust

Robert DeNiro and Paul Dano in Being Flynn. Also, 21 Jump Street, Jeff, Who Lives At Home, John Carter, A Thousand Words

Film Clips

Tomboy

by M. Faust

Summertime to a child seems infinite, an endless opportunity of complete freedom after the restrictions of school. The 10-year-old at the center of this lovely French film is doubly liberated, as part of a family that has just moved to a new neighborhood outside of Paris.

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, March 16 - Thursday, March 22)

Film Now Playing

Featured Events

See You There!

Artvoice's weekly round-up of featured events, including our editor's picks for the week: The Old Neighborhood St. Patrick's Day Parade, at noon on Saturday the 17th.

Art Scene

Rich Tomasello at 464 Gallery

by J. Tim Raymond

Canisius College Faculty Art Show

by Jack Foran

Classical Music Notes

A Feast of Chamber Music

by Jan Jezioro

This week, two of Western New York’s top chamber ensembles show why their concerts remain memorable, long after the music has stopped playing. On Sunday, March 18 at 2pm, A Musical Feast takes the stage in the Tower Auditorium of the Burchfield Penny Art Center, while on Wednesday, March 21 at 7pm, the Buffalo Chamber Players offer a program in their home at the Buffalo Seminary.

Puck Stop

"These Are Our Playoffs!"

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

So now it’s come to this. As many as nine teams, all bunched in together in the standings and all desperately competing for two playoff berths—one the third seed, which will go to the champion of the Southeast Division, and the second the eighth seed.

You Auto Know

Car Collecting 101

by Jim Corbran

My computer’s dictionary defines “collection” as: “an assembly of items such as works of art, pieces of writing, or natural objects, esp. one systematically ordered.” Some car collectors, like maybe comedian Jay Leno, on the other hand, may define “collection” as: “and then buying several old airplane hangars and spending millions of dollars on pristine examples of every car ever made on the face of the earth.”

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

An annual spring fertility festival in Vietnam’s Phu Tho province is capped by a symbolic X-rated ceremony rendered G-rated by wooden stand-ins. At midnight on the 12th day of the lunar new year, a man holding a wooden phallus-like object stands in total darkness alongside a woman holding a wooden plank with a hole in it, and the act is attempted. As the tradition goes, if the man is successful at penetration, then there will be good crops.

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Seahorses have an unusual approach to reproduction. It’s the male of the species that cares for the eggs as they gestate. He carries them in a “brood pouch” on his front side.

Advice

Ask Anyone

I have this friend who’s always borrowing money and slow to pay it back. It’s never a huge sum, but like $20 here or there, $50 once in a while. Over time, I get most of it back, I guess. It’s not like we have formal IOUs or anything. He’s been struggling more of late because he lost his job, and my heart goes out to him. The problem is, I lent him $100 back in January to pay some parking tickets so he could get his car back on the road and now he’s claiming he already paid it back.